Should the parties choose to string this case out to trial on the merits, the Court encourages reasonable discovery intercourse as they navigate the peaks and valleys of litigation, perhaps to reach a happy ending.
– Chief Judge Fred Biery of the Western District of Texas, denying a preliminary injunction sought by strip club owners in San Antonio who are challenging city regulations that would require bikini tops instead of pasties to avoid stringent licensing requirements.
(The Chief Judge produced over seven pages of genius double entendre. Check out the full opinion, which he entitled “THE CASE OF THE ITSY BITSY TEENY WEENY BIKINI TOP V. THE (MORE) ITSY BITSY TEENY WEENY PASTIE,” after the jump….)
* For any Catholics hitting up PaddyPower to lay down money on the conclave, you’ve probably had some restless nights wondering if Pope Gregory XIV’s edict per the Ius Decretalium still applies. It doesn’t. That’s a load off. [Canon Law Blog]
* A number of strip clubs are challenging San Antonio’s new regulations. One key to their argument: “the presentation of expressive dance performances is a beneficial social activity which creates an improved self image for the dancer….” Yeah, good luck with that argument. [KEGL]
* If you’re looking for emotional distress damages, maybe lay off the “I’m just embarrassed to be seen with him now” arguments. [Lowering the Bar]
* To challenge the law letting the government tap your communications in secret, you need to have full knowledge that the secret recording is happening. Thanks Joseph Heller. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* The new Copyright Alert System goes into effect, allowing copyright holders to make your service provider slow your Internet to a crawl if you’re identified as a repeat violator. I don’t see what the big deal is, but then again, I’m still using a Prodigy account. [Gawker]
* MC Hammer is softening, but still a tad miffed after police booked him for an expired registration after he told them, “U Can’t Touch This.” [Los Angeles Times]
* Are you kidding? University of North Carolina’s “Honor Court” is threatening to expel a student for “intimidating” her attacker by discussing that she was raped — without identifying her attacker. This is why North Carolina can’t have nice things. [Feministing]
Some say that models and bottles should be included in a lawyer’s employment benefits package, but failing that, VIP treatment at the local strip club comes in a close second. You just have to make sure you’re getting these perks on the down low, or else you might find yourself in the unemployment line.
That said, if you’re interested in potentially having to fish dollar bills out of your g-string as an alternative career due to your sudden joblessness, then perhaps you should consult with Ari Pregen, an assistant state attorney from Florida. Well, actually, that was his job before he got fired.
You see, when you walk into a strip club and expect to be treated like a king just because you’re a lawyer, you’re going to get yourself into some trouble when your superiors find out about it….
* Even though Obama wants to “make sure that [he's] not interjecting [himself] too much into this process,” the DOJ may still suggest that the Supreme Court overturn Proposition 8, California’s ban on gay marriage. [Associated Press]
* Anheuser-Busch InBev and the Department of Justice are cracking open a couple of cold ones to settle their differences over antitrust concerns with regard to the company’s planned purchase of Grupo Modelo. [DealBook / New York Times]
* It looks like Steve DiCarmine is being forced to take a break from his rigorous class schedule at Parsons to testify at a Dewey bankruptcy hearing next week. He’ll be happy to hear orange is in this spring. [Am Law Daily]
* Represented by Steptoe & Johnson, Jesse Jackson Jr. pleaded guilty to misusing $750,000 of his campaign funds for personal use. Most interesting purchase: Michael Jackson memorabilia. [Blog of Legal Times]
* When it comes to recruiting new talent, the ability to maintain a “collegial culture” is apparently a selling point for midsize law firms. And here we thought douchebaggery was the way to go. Sigh. [National Law Journal]
* Protip: do not flash your prosecutor’s badge to bypass cover charges and lap dance surcharges at the local strip club. You’re going to get fired. We’ll probably have more on this later. [Riptide 2.0 / Miami New Times]
* Don’t worry ladies, if you’re about to be raped, just pee or puke all over your attacker — or better yet, tell him that you’re on your period. Yeah, that’ll work. These tips are almost as good as “don’t dress like a slut.” [CNN]
* “[T]his is a ridiculous sideshow that’s horribly unbecoming to the parties involved.” The NCAA is now suing over a new Pennsylvania law designed to keep PSU’s Sandusky fines in the state. [San Francisco Chronicle]
I work in the IT department of a law firm and I set up conference rooms for meetings. A few of the rooms I set up are right across the street from a brand new apartment building that’s almost 50 stories tall. Most of the time you can’t see into people’s living rooms because the glass is reflective. But between 8 and 9 a.m., because of the angle of the sun, you can see right into people living rooms and bedrooms. One woman gets up around 8:30 a.m. and likes to strut around her bedroom naked.
I love it when my job requires me to put ‘stripper’ into an image search box.
* They should teach “defending strippers” in law school. I feel like people could have a thriving practice just representing strippers against the various perils in their lives. [The Smoking Gun]
* And of course, that class should be taught by Marc Randazza. [The Legal Satyricon]
* Bill Maher v. Donald Trump. Offer v. Consideration. Comedian v. D-bag. This will make for a fun issue spotter for any spring term contracts classes. [Josh Blackman's Blog]
* Can you prove that a getting a legal aid lawyer actually helps? Are you sure? [Boston Globe]
* Birthers are now coming after Chief Justice Roberts. You know what they’re not coming after? Book learning! (zing) [Huffington Post]
* Here’s a formal job application, I think, to be the new Clerk of the Supreme Court. [Prawfsblawg]
* In the state of nature, this is how pizza places were kept down to the level of the rest of us. [Legal Juice]
Springfield, Massachusetts, is a city that’s home to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and my alma mater, Western New England University School of Law. I had the (dis)pleasure of living in Springfield for five years, and from earthquakes to tornadoes to purse snatchings, I thought that I had seen it all. Boy, was I wrong!
Apparently I escaped the slums of downtown Springfield just in time to avoid a stripper explosion (not an actual stripper explosion; that would be glittery and fabulous). No, as you may have heard over the holiday weekend, there was a massive natural gas explosion in Springfield that leveled a strip club, damaging numerous other buildings in the city’s entertainment district, about two blocks over from my old apartment.
At first, no one knew what could have caused the gas leak that triggered the blast, but now fingers are being pointed every which way. This may sound like a 1L Torts hypothetical, but who’s liable for the explosion?
Did the strippers grind so hard on the pole that they ignited a spark that set the blaze? Did the babies shrieking in the daycare center next door to the strip club (yes, seriously) inspire a childcare worker to light a match and burn that mother down?
Let’s get some insights from our readers on who will be held ultimately responsible for this calamity….
Last month, we discussed an interesting case that was pending before the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. The question presented: whether an adult entertainment club is entitled to a sales tax exemption for admission and lap dance fees under the theory that these dances qualify as “dramatic or musical arts performances.”
Flying with the speed of boobie tassels attached to a stripper gyrating furiously around a pole, the court handed down its ruling just a few short weeks after oral argument. Here’s what the court held….
* Everyone’s happy about the Dewey & LeBoeuf settlement except the Ad Hoc Committee and its LeBoeuf retirees, who called Judge Martin Glenn’s attempt to slap them down an “insult to injury.” [WSJ Law Blog]
* While South Carolina’s voter ID law wasn’t found to be inherently discriminatory, its enforcement was still blocked because people will be unable to get their sh*t together in time for the election. [Bloomberg]
* VP debate moderator Martha Raddatz’s 1991 wedding guest list has come under fire because Barack Obama was invited. Clearly there’s a conflict of interest worth arguing about here. [Washington Post]
* This man is nobody’s “butt boy”: Tom Keefe, the interim dean over at Saint Louis Law School, will be footing a $14,212 bill for his students in the form of ABA Law Student Division memberships. [National Law Journal]
* Strippers in California, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Texas, and Nevada will be making it rain, because they just scored a $12.9M class action settlement. That’s a whole lot of “college tuition”! [Courthouse News Service]
We have new developments to report in the case of Madam Justice Lori Douglas, the Canadian judge featured in pornographic pictures reflecting BDSM themes. As you may recall, the Canadian Judicial Council is currently investigating Douglas, based in part on claims that she sexually harassed a former client of her husband’s.
That client, Alex Chapman, claimed that the judge’s husband, Jack King, used the nude photos of Justice Douglas to try and entice Chapman into a three-way. Chapman testified that he was “disgusted” by the “terrible pictures” and that King “bull[ied]” him and “raped [his] mind.”
But if the latest allegations about him are true, Chapman is no innocent….
What does it mean to be “newly admitted?” To us, it means endless possibilities!
We recognize that you already possess the ability and intelligence to succeed in a variety of legal professions. Our job is to expose you to various practice areas in a way that ensures those very attributes are successfully applied. Our seasoned and successful faculty present unique programs that provide an approachable and practical understanding of the avenues of achievement available as you launch a fruitful, enjoyable and promising career.
Our Live Bridge the Gap weekends satisfy the entire year of New York Newly-Admitted CLE Credits in only two days!
After physically attending a full weekend, you will receive:
• 3.0 Ethics CLE credits,
• 6.0 Skills CLE credits, and
• 7.0 Professional Practice and/or Law Practice Management CLE credits
Date: Saturday, June 8 and Sunday, June 9, 2013 Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:35 p.m. (EST) Location:
55 Exchange Place
5th Floor
New York, NY 10006
Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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.
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
