Latest Stories

Clarence Thomas’s Bitterness Runneth Over

By

These guys do not look the same to me.

I don’t want to give a lot of burn to this story today, because sadly it is not news when a “Republican” Supreme Court justice takes a shot at the president of the United States. Conservative justices are just allowed to say crappy things about the president — this president — with everybody just accepting their partiality without calling for recusals. And depending on who gets to write what in Fisher, we’re going to have another opportunity to talk about Clarence Thomas’s ongoing jihad against black people in America who are not like him.

But we do have to at least mention Thomas’s latest slam at black people. As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Justice Thomas suggested that Obama only got to be president because he was a black man who said things “approved” by the media and elites.

Funny, I’d think that talking about his long dong silver would be exactly the kind of thing elites expected to hear from a black man.

What’s really happening is that Thomas continues to think that people hate him because he’s a black conservative, when really people hate him because he’s a black a**hole…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Clarence Thomas’s Bitterness Runneth Over”

58 Comments

Inside Straight: Don’t They Love You When You’re Walking In the Door?

By

First, an offer: I thought I had retired my “book talk” about The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law when I moved to London last fall. But I’ll be in the States for a few weeks in late May and June, and I’ve been asked to dust off the talk and give it a few times — at the annual meeting of the Association of Defense Trial Counsel in Detroit, and again in Chicago for Kirkland & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig. So long as I’ll have to flip through my notes and re-learn the talk, I might as well give it for your group, too. Please let me know by email if your law firm is interested.

Second, today’s thesis — and it’s a backwards one: Law firms think more highly of you for the years when you’re not working at the firm.

I’ll start with the easy example: I moved as a sixth-year associate from a small firm in San Francisco to a huge firm in Cleveland. When I arrived at the huge firm in Cleveland, partners treated me surprisingly well. Why?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Inside Straight: Don’t They Love You When You’re Walking In the Door?”

4 Comments

Morning Docket: 05.06.13

By

* It’s springtime, and the nation’s highest court is getting ready to drop some of its biggest decisions yet. If Tolkien had written this, Justice Kennedy would be the one to bear the One Vote. [UPI]

* But for SCOTUS to maintain legitimacy in the eyes of the people, its justices must do battle against a “modern-day tsunami of special interests.” How well are they doing? [National Law Journal]

* To answer that question, let’s look at their record. Political labels aside, thus far, the Roberts court has shaped up to be “the most pro-business court since the mid-1930s.” [New York Times]

* Meanwhile, Justice Thomas has been busy taking shots at President Obama, noting that he always knew the first black president had to be pre-screened by “the elites” and “the media.” [Mother Jones]

* Sometimes even federal prosecutors are willing to take pity upon rich old white men: Mel Weiss, formerly of Milberg LLP, won’t be returning to jail after his foray into DUI territory. [Am Law Daily]

* “Chevron can afford to litigate this case ‘until hell freezes over.’ But [Steven] Donziger can’t.” As it turns out, clients who can’t pay their bills are problematic for John Keker of Keker & Van Nest. [Reuters]

* Penn State Law is continuing with its plans to fleece students at two separately accredited sites, because clearly what the world needs right now is MOAR LAW SCHOOLS. [Centre Daily Times]

2 Comments

Lawyerly Lairs: Partners Part With Pricey Penthouse

By

Just outside the window: marble statues of Roman goddesses.

Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful Swedish woman. She came to the United States and studied at an elite college and top law school. After graduation, she went to work at Davis Polk — which is where all the beautiful people work.

While at Davis Polk, this blonde beauty met her Prince Charming — an older, extremely successful M&A partner. They got married at a Caribbean resort, and their wedding made the pages of the New York Times (of course). A few years later, she left the firm to become the general counsel to a global investment bank. Unlike many other power couples, they remain married to this day.

Fairy tales can come true. Let’s learn about a remarkable couple, then ogle their castle in the clouds….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Lawyerly Lairs: Partners Part With Pricey Penthouse”

26 Comments

Non-Sequiturs: 05.03.13

By

* Eugene Volokh analyzes the free-speech issues raised by the prosecution of Anya Bargh, the UConn law student accused of sending anti-Semitic and racist emails. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Lawyerist thinks you suck, not the gunners. Discuss. [Lawyerist]

* Law and the Multiverse now has CLE courses about comic books. Maintaining this license just got that much easier. [Law and the Multiverse]

* Some new developments in the Ed O’Bannon case against the NCAA. Basically, discovery has not been kind to the NCAA. [Bloomberg]

* All the editors-in-chief at Michigan Law are women. Now, if another 90 or so journals follow suit, Staci’s article will seem outdated. [Michigan Law]

* Ruh-roh. Did David Boies blow the lid off campaign spending limits last cycle? [Huffington Post]

* No, Mike Bloomberg was not denied a slice of pizza yesterday. [Gawker]

* WARNING: If you understand math, the latest from NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly will annoy the hell out of you. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Man injured in a drunken fight sues the bar that he says should have cut him off. [Overlawyered]

5 Comments

Jodi Arias Is a Woman That Not Even a Lawyer Can Love

By

Jodi Arias

It’s not about whether or not you like Jodi Arias. Nine days out of 10, I don’t like Jodi Arias…. But that doesn’t matter.

– Kirk Nurmi, a defense attorney for Jodi Arias, giving a glowing assessment of his client during closing arguments. Arias is accused of murdering her ex-boyfriend, and her trial has dragged on since January.

16 Comments

From the Career Files: The Best Online Law Schools (J.D. and LL.M. Programs)

By

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from the ATL Career Center’s team of expert contributors. Today, Mansfield J. Park advises prospective law students on selecting an online law school.

Which are the very best online law schools?

This is hard question because there isn’t a clear ranking system — U.S. News doesn’t rank online degree programs (neither does Above the Law) — and actual first-hand information is scarce for online law schools. There isn’t much accountability at online law schools.

Let’s take a step back.

No juris doctor program at an online law school, at the moment, is going to give you the kind of career you would have if you attended a national top-tier law school like Harvard, or even a regional powerhouse (like University of Alabama if you live in Alabama).

Indeed, there are not that many online law schools, actually, that permit you to sit for any state’s bar exam. None are, at the moment, ABA-accredited (this is important because if you graduate from a law school with ABA accreditation, you can take the bar exam in any of the 50 states of the U.S.).

There are a lot more programs that offer a masters of law online if you already have a juris doctor.

So, with all of that as a warning, let me pick a couple of the best online law schools if you are dead set on getting an online law degree. Again, below, I consider juris doctor and LL.M. programs separately.

Read more at the ATL Career Center….

Is It Time To Close Guantanamo Bay?

By

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama reiterated his interest in shutting down the prison at Guantanamo Bay: “I’ve asked my team to review everything that’s currently being done in Guantanamo, everything that we can do administratively, and I’m going to reengage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not in the best interests of the American people.”

President Obama isn’t alone in being troubled by goings-on at Guantanamo. This morning I attended an interesting panel discussion where a retired admiral, the former Judge Advocate General of the Navy, spoke out in favor of closing Gitmo….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Is It Time To Close Guantanamo Bay?”

36 Comments

Warner Bros., MGM, Universal Collectively Pull Nearly 2,000 Films From Netflix

By

Ed. note: This post appears courtesy of our friends at Techdirt. We’ll be sharing law-related posts from Techdirt from time to time in these pages.

Michael Carusi points us to the news that Warner Bros., MGM and Universal Studios have agreed to pull nearly 2,000 films from Netflix’s library, in order to put them in the Warner Bros. Instant Archive. You may recall that Warner recently launched this archive, which is an incredibly overpriced and ridiculously limited offering. Apparently, they’re trying to bolster the offering in part by hurting Netflix. As we’ve warned, this sort of fragmentation does little to help anyone…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Warner Bros., MGM, Universal Collectively Pull Nearly 2,000 Films From Netflix”

Wrigley Field Beset By Wealthy Man Looking For A Handout

By

On Tuesday, I wrote about my own student loan debt. And how someone needs to do something quick about it before it, and things, get out of control. It took a great deal of personal responsibility on my part to own up to the fact that the government needs to bail me out. While I agonized over the decision of whether to come out against my own financial ruin, I eventually decided that if I could save one student from a lifetime of crippling debt, one adult from poverty, one person from pawning off their Billy Ripken f**kface baseball card just to buy eggs, well… I hope that one person is me.

In related news of Randian pluck and rugged individualism, America’s baseball teams have been swallowed whole by a hungry horde of destitute billionaires. The latest in this very proud lot is the Ricketts family, who bravely spent close to a billion dollars of someone else’s money to buy the Chicago Cubs. This week brought news that the clan may move the Cubs out of Wrigley Field, their home and frat boy toilet for close to one hundred years. And why is such an iconic urinal being threatened?

Because the owners of the Cubs don’t have as much money as they pretend to have. And because someone must pay. And that someone is someone else.

Let’s play two…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Wrigley Field Beset By Wealthy Man Looking For A Handout”

9 Comments

Commencement Speakers (2013): Any Controversial Choices?

By

With finals underway and graduation just a few weeks ahead, law students are left with only two things to bitch and moan about: their job/debt situations, and their commencement speakers. Law school graduation is supposed to be a day that will forever be etched in people’s memories; they don’t want to remember that they were seething with rage or slumping their shoulders in disappointment. They just want to be happy.

But apparently the lawyers of the future are incapable of that emotion. In the past, soon-to-be law grads have gotten so pissy about their law school’s selection of speaker that they’ve written open letters, donned protest buttons, and even organized commencement walkouts.

We’ve heard from several of our readers regarding their schools’ speaker picks, and students from a certain high-ranking law school (but not T14, at least in our own rankings) are REALLY unhappy….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Commencement Speakers (2013): Any Controversial Choices?”

65 Comments

The Return of the Mad-As-Hell Patent Attorney [WITH PICS]

By

Earlier this week, we discussed L.A.-based patent attorney Andrew Schroeder. For those who missed out on the first go-around, Schroeder penned a couple of blistering assaults on the quality of the USPTO’s work that were brought to the attention of University of Missouri Law Professor Dennis Crouch, who posted them on Patently-O.

But the story does not end there. Yesterday, I received an email from Andrew Schroeder pointing me to his blog post responding to Crouch (and, to a lesser extent, me). I found Schroeder’s original work to be professionally over the line — and at times a little offensive — but also very funny, so I was excited to see what the maestro of meltdown letters would say to his critics.

He did not disappoint…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “The Return of the Mad-As-Hell Patent Attorney [WITH PICS]“

30 Comments
Page 10 of 14461...67891011121314...1446