When roided up, a juicer can lose his temper and try to kill his girlfriend in the heat of the moment like Ben Affleck did in this movie (or Jimmy did in this South Park bit homage to Affleck’s meltdown).
But can steroids make someone coldly seek out a hitman to off an estranged wife?
A fair number of lawyers or law school graduates work in creative fields. Over the years, “recovering lawyers” have worked as writers, actors, and even painters (such as Henri Matisse and Wassily Kandinsky).
But you won’t find many lawyers who are rock stars — and I’m not talking about tax or securities law “rock stars,” but actual, literal rock stars. The free-association creativity needed to make music goes against the inside-the-box thinking prized in the legal profession. Music also involves math, and we all know that lawyers — even lawyers for the IRS — are “not good at math.”
There are, however, exceptions to every rule. A few folks with legal training have entered the music world — including Julio Iglesias, Rubén Blades, and today’s “stealth lawyer,” an attorney turned rock star….
My expertise to address this topic may not be clear. For truth be told, I am ill-equipped to break out in song. My grade school music teacher labeled me a sparrow, not a robin, and instructed me to just mouth the words. Still, in my dreams I can be a great diva.
* There’s been a changing of the guard at Sidley Austin. Carter Phillips, one of our nation’s preeminent appellate advocates, is now the sole chair of the firm’s executive committee after a one-year stint as co-chair. Congrats! [The Recorder]
* You should really try to make the most of your summers during law school, even after your first year. Because duh, in case you weren’t aware, it’ll probably help you to get a job later on. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News & World Report]
* It looks like the trolls attorneys behind Prenda Law got benchslapped in the worst of ways — complete with a multitude of Star Trek references. We’ll likely have more on this later today. [Ars Technica]
* The California Supreme Court just ruined everyone’s high, because it ruled that cities and counties can ban medical marijuana dispensaries. Smoke ‘em while you’ve got ‘em, stoners. [Associated Press]
* Justin Bieber is being sued for copyright infringement, along with his musical mentor, Usher. Tween girl mob: ASSEMBLE! Defend your pop idol’s honor; after all, he just needed somebody to love. [Reuters]
Every year we have a law revue video contest, in which there are winners, there are losers, and then there are sore losers. This year, we saw some pretty wild accusations being tossed around (including “idea plagiarism,” which is apparently a thing in the minds of industrious law students).
No matter how hard our finalists tried to game the system with their various campaigns, one of them surpassed all the rest. Congratulations go out to the students at West Virginia University College of Law, the winners of our Fifth Annual Law Revue Video Contest.
Let this post serve as a reminder to vote for your favorites in our annual Law Revue Video Contest. Voting closes tomorrow night.
In fact, tomorrow is going to be kind of a big day here on Above the Law. You are definitely going to want to check in with us tomorrow.
In the meantime, let’s take a look at some of the law revue videos that didn’t make our cut for finalists, but were still interesting enough to be seen by the ATL audience…
You’ve seen the worst of the worst, and now it’s time to feast your eyes upon the best of the best. We thought that the 2013 law revue season was going to be a dud, but these schools totally brought it.
And by “it,” we mean they were able to carry a tune, had excellent comedic timing, and provided us with some pretty drool-worthy student bodies. Our finalists’ videos were a joy to watch when compared to many of the other submissions, some of which were absolutely cringe-worthy.
This year, your reviewers will be David Lat, Elie Mystal, and Staci Zaretsky. But we issue only advisory opinions; you hold all the power in this competition. Do the right thing: vote early, and vote often (unless you’re a bot).
Who will follow the winners of years past into the annals of Law Revue history? It’s up to you….
As law students gear up for finals, it’s finally time for us to grade the videos we received for our Fifth Annual Law Revue Video Contest.
As usual, we’ll start with the dishonorable mentions. We like setting the bar low so that when you see our finalists later this week, you can see how far they rose above the rest. Our dishonorable mentions weren’t necessarily the worst videos that were submitted; instead, they were bad in a somewhat interesting and cringe-worthy way. Their badness lent itself to discussion and analysis.
Still, we want to thank everybody who took the time to produce and submit a video. Even the bad ones were good for the ATL editorial team and the community. The trauma brings us closer together….
Garth Brooks had disappeared from the national radar for a bit. For those who missed out on the turn of the 21st century career of the popular crossover country artist, imagine Taylor Swift, but a guy, and capable of going 10 minutes without complaining about dating.
Well, the allegations of a new lawsuit against Brooks brought by his former business partner may shed some light on the fading of the country artist’s fortunes. The complaint alleges rank arrogance on the part of a singer who thought he deserved film stardom and couldn’t lower himself to star in a Spielberg film….
It’s mid-April, and you all know what that means: some people are already starting to freak out about the July 2013 bar exam — but not about whether they’ll pass or fail. This time, people are losing their minds over their hotel accommodations, or the lack thereof.
Yes, you read that correctly. Bar examinees in New York are going to be forced to find alternate lodging during this most crucial of times, because most major hotels do not have a single reservation available between July 28 and July 31.
But what on earth could be more important than the bar exam? And which test sites will be affected by this disruption in service?
We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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