Movies

Tom is really excited because he made the list twice.

Regardless of anyone’s opinion about people who work in the legal industry, it’s hard to deny the fact that many of the greatest American movies revolve around attorneys. When I watched Bloomberg Law’s new video compiling the “The 10 Greatest Legal Movie Lines,” it was cool to see that several of the featured movies are among my favorite films of all time. It’s because there is something timeless and intrinsically cinematic about the work lawyers do, which allows for great stories, and great TV and movies.

But cutting the massive catalog of great legal-themed films down to only ten is tough. A lot of people have to get left out. Only two of the ten characters in Bloomberg’s video even made it into the Elite Eight of our fictional lawyers bracket from last year. And lawyers are not the only ones saying the “greatest” quotes in question.

So the selection might cause a little bit of controversy among ATL readers. Let’s see who made the cut…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Bloomberg Names The Best Legal Movie Quotes of All Time; Can You Handle the Truth?”

Penny Lane and Brian Frye, in the Catskills home they've placed on the market.

As we have mentioned, we’re trying to diversify the coverage here at Lawyerly Lairs. After all, the world does not consist entirely of Park Avenue apartments owned by mega-rich law firm partners (as seen here, here, and here). Toward that end, we recently wrote about the housing search of some NYU Law students.

But that was still in New York City. Let’s leave Manhattan behind and head to upstate New York, where we’ll visit the beautiful Catskills house of a law professor and his filmmaker wife….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Lawyerly Lairs: Hipsters in the Catskills
(Hey New Yorkers, Looking for a Country House?)”

Legal services are expensive. Duh. And sometimes clients do not want to pay their bills. Maybe the case outcome wasn’t what the client hoped for. Maybe the bill was significantly higher than expected. There are all sorts of reasons that attorneys just have to say, “Eff you, pay me.

The thing is, you normally associate breach of contract disputes with litigation or other standard lawyering. Not Biglaw attorneys brokering movie finance deals, and suing when the client doesn’t pay his finders fee.

But Akin Gump filed suit last week against a Hollywood movie producer, for breach of contract and promissory fraud, alleging that he did not fork over the finders fee he owed a firm partner for helping secure loans and finding a distributor for one of his projects.

The firm says Mark Manuel owes a lot of money. So how much does he owe, and which movie is at the center of the controversy?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Akin Gump to Movie Producer Client: Where’s Our Money, Man?”

When I was a kid, my father leaned across the dinner table and whispered to me, “Never ask a woman’s age or weight.” He then stole a glance at my mother, who was busy shoveling mashed potatoes into her maw, and sighed. I could never tell whether my dad was trying to offer the wisdom of the ages or making a statement about the tyranny of manners, the clichés they birth, and the way in which politeness can imprison a good man in a loveless relationship that inevitably leads to you watching your 400-pound wife shovel potatoes back like she was auditioning for The Biggest Loser.

And so it was that the Internet Movie Database, aka IMDb, found itself under attack for revealing an actress’s age and “real Asian name.” Kash detailed the charges last October. A few weeks ago, we noted that the woman would have to put up (her name) or shut up (legally speaking).

Well, I don’t want to waste any more of your precious time. The grand reveal is finally here.

After the jump, pictures of an attractive Asian woman….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Who’s the 40-Year-Old Asian Actress Suing the Internet Movie Database for Revealing Her Age?”

These days, mentioning the California city of Oakland conjures up images of tear gas and violence. It’s not a place that people associate with innocent fun right now.

But Oakland isn’t all protesters and police. We bring you a report from a recent visitor to that city, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Judge Kozinski Occupies Oakland”

Non-Sequiturs: 10.19.11

* The American Bar Association is hiring Carol Stevens, former managing editor of USA Today, as its new director of media relations. Yeah, ’cause it’s the media that makes the ABA look bad, not the ABA’s refusal to regulate law schools during a time of dishonesty and profiteering by member institutions. [Poynter]

* Let’s play “count the stupid lawyer stereotypes” in this paragraph, many of which could lead a person into making a grave financial mistake. [Boise Weekly]

* Look, if an animal escapes from a zoo, it wins. It shouldn’t be hunted down and taken back to captivity. That’s just natural law. [Legal Blog Watch]

* Breaking news: if you sign your name on a petition, people might find out you signed your name to a freaking petition. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Pretty awesome collection of t-shirts people are wearing in their mugshots. [New York Daily News]

* Viacom cancels Ted Olson, taps Paul Smith as his mid-season replacement. [Hollywood, Esq. / Hollywood Reporter]

* I’m trying to figure out what this report on parenting styles can tell us about Bonobo_Bro’s upbringing. [Dealbreaker]

* If you’ll be in New York on October 26 and would like to attend a free screening of the new, buzz-generating HBO documentary, Hot Coffee, followed by a conversation between Lat and director Susan Saladoff, click here to RSVP. [New America NYC]

It’s said that it’s rude to ask a woman her age. In fact, it’s only rude to ask women 30 and over about their digits. It’s far worse, however, to ask a woman with decades under her belt for her age and then to publish it for the world to see. An actress in Texas says it wasn’t just rude but financially costly for her when the movie database IMDB publicized her nearly over-the-hill age in 2008. Cue, Robert Murtaugh.

The Hollywood Reporter has a copy of the actress’s complaint against Amazon.com, which owns the Internet Movie Database, in which she alleges that everyone’s favorite website for figuring out who-that-guy-in-that-one-movie-was-and-what-was-that-other-movie-he-was-in-with-that-girl screwed her over after she signed up for a Pro IMDb account. After entering credit card information and personal details, including her birthdate, to start the account, her age all of a sudden appeared on her public profile page, “revealing to the public that Plaintiff is many years older than she looks,” according to her humble complaint.

Age isn’t just a number, says her counsel, “Internet lawyer” John Dozier, but a $1,075,000 number…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Actress To IMDb: ‘I’m Too Old For This Sh*%’”

Morning Docket: 10.18.11

Would you like some doc review with that?

* How can you pick a side when it comes to fairness and the law? Can you straddle the fence? Don’t ask Justice Alito, because he’s still not really sure what the answers are. [New York Times]

* Paul Ceglia is finding out the hard way that court orders aren’t like annoying Facebook friend requests. You can’t just tell your lawyers to ignore them and hope they’ll go away. [Bloomberg]

* From occupying Wall Street to occupying the courts? 99% lawyers are threatening to clog up the courts if their demands aren’t met. At least they’d have a toilet to do it in. [New York Daily News]

* “If your choice is between going to Liberty Law or working a deep-fat fryer, you might as well go to Liberty, right?” Lat, I think we really need to have a chat. [Commercial Appeal]

* If I had a dollar for every dude who had an Asian adventure involving a Thai ladyboy, I’d be rich, but it doesn’t mean that The Hangover II was based on their exploits. [Hollywood Reporter]

Morning Docket: 10.11.11

The Penthouse Club is no Bada Bing.

* The legal sector lost 1,300 jobs in September. And because that’s not depressing enough, lawyers now have to compete for jobs with computers. Guess it’s time to learn binary. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Week kicked off yesterday in West Virginia. Too bad this campaign isn’t in Michigan, where a woman is suing over a misleading movie trailer. [Washington Post]

* Think you had it rough on the bar exam? Try being in active labor during the MBE. Our congratulations go out to Elana Nightingale Dawson for passing the Illinois bar! [Daily Herald]

* What’s the point of being in witness protection when you’re getting sued over dueling nudie bars in Texas? You may be the real life Tony, but you’re disrespecting the Bing. [New York Post]

* Pants on the ground / Pants on the ground / Lookin’ like a fool with your pants on the ground. A judge in New York finally took General Larry Platt’s words of wisdom to heart. [Daily Mail]

Really? You're still suing?

* Sorry Missouri, but your reign as the “Show Me” state is over. Thanks to its immigration law, Alabama is going to be taking over as the “Show Me Your Papers” state. [CNN]

* Time to review the footage. Irving Picard stands to lose the game for the Investors if he can’t get an instant replay on Judge Rakoff’s home run decision for the Mets. [Bloomberg]

* Reebok has to pay out $25M in refunds because contrary to popular opinion, wearing a pair of sneakers won’t give you a nicer butt. Dammit, foiled again. [Blog of Legal Times]

* The EEOC is suing because a 680-pound man was allegedly fired for being too fat. Everything really is bigger in Texas, and now it’s considered a disability. [Houston Chronicle]

* Unpaid interns who worked on “Black Swan” are suing because they didn’t benefit from the job. Seriously? They should be sued for not appreciating all the film’s HLA. [New York Times]

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