Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Righteous Indignation, our new column for conservative-minded lawyers.
You probably saw this week’s topic coming. Until the folks at One First Street start tossing Elie and me some fresh meat to tussle over, my indignation — righteous as it is — must be directed elsewhere. Unless EM wants to argue that, when SCOTUS decided that Pelkey’s claim was not preempted by federal law in Dan’s City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey, the Nine were, like, racist or something. (Query: what race is Dan? Where was the supplemental briefing?!)
So. The IRS’s targeting of conservative groups applying for 501(c)(4) status. I couldn’t not talk about this scandal, right?
Truly, I kept avoiding devoting this week’s column to the IRS abuses. Seriously.
For one thing, I was not initially so scandalized by this supposed scandal, though I was appropriately dismayed. Second, this story is still developing. So, I hereby reserve my right to be feverishly pissed off later….
* Even JFK had mommy issues. Unfortunately, his came with possible nuclear armageddon. [Lowering the Bar]
* Washington, D.C. is a horrible back-biting hellhole. Except for the D.C. Circuit, where Judge Tatel and Chief Judge Sentelle apparently hold weekly kumbaya circles and talk about their feelings. [Concurring Opinions]
* Prosecutors file motions to keep George Zimmerman’s lawyers from bringing up Trayvon Martin’s past in the trial. Probably because “getting into school fights” is not particularly probative of “deserved to get murdered.” [WKMG]
* Another look at the DOJ/AP scandal from a unique perspective: a privacy lawyer who used to be a journalist. [Inside Privacy]
* Jones Day landed the plum job as restructuring counsel for Detroit by one “point.” [AmLaw Daily]
* When you’re choosing an expert witness, you should really look for that elusive “part-Don Draper, part-Lois Griffin” type. [The Expert Institute]
* This was an actual problem I encountered when I had to edit the bills of some of my colleagues. [First World Lawyer Problems]
Ed. note: This is the second installment of Righteous Indignation, our new column for conservative-minded lawyers.
In Pennsylvania earlier this week, the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell drew to a close. Gosnell, a West Philadelphia abortion doctor, is accused of murdering four children who were allegedly born alive after Gosnell’s efforts to abort them. The jury now considers four counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of the children, along with one count of third-degree murder for the death of Karnamaya Mongar, a Bhutanese refugee to whom Gosnell allegedly gave a lethal overdose of Demerol. He also faces twenty-three counts of performing illegal late-term abortions. If convicted of first-degree murder, Gosnell faces the death penalty.
Trial witnesses, including clinic workers, offered gruesome testimony. Some of the allegations: the lethal drug Gosnell injected into the babies in utero failed to stop their hearts, and they emerged from their mothers’ birth canals breathing, wriggling, even crying; Gosnell then “snipped” the backs of the babies’ necks with scissors, severing their spinal cords; and Gosnell joked about the size of the “fetuses” whose spinal cords he cut, including a baby who he said was big enough “to walk me home.”
A mother of another of Gosnell’s alleged victims reportedly delivered her baby into a toilet while waiting for Dr. Gosnell. A clinic worker testified that the child made swimming motions in the toilet bowl before another employee snipped the child’s neck. Prosecutors dubbed Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society clinic a “House of Horrors”….
The thing about promoting security on the Internet is that it, ostensibly, is about protecting individuals from identity theft. Sure, there are other possible harms, such as lost commerce, but the threat of stolen personal information is the primary concern of most folks.
So allowing employers to require their employees to hand over social media passwords would seem, to a reasonable observer, to be the exact opposite of a policy that promotes cybersecurity.
But in the wacky world of the House of Representatives, the majority rejected a proposal that would have barred middle managers from impersonating employees online. Because….
* How bad is the job market? Wisconsin Law grad seeks unpaid position pushing a cart. [New York Daily News]
* Effortless Senate filibusters are really lame. And have been for a really long time. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* There’s a middle ground between “telling your significant other the whole truth” and “faking your own kidnapping.” [Lowering the Bar]
* Professor Gerard Magliocca notes that 3D printers (demonstration here) will strike a blow for privacy by allowing people to make objects in their home that they’d be embarrassed to buy in a store. He’s talking about dildos, people. [Concurring Opinions]
* “95 percent of sushi restaurants surveyed sold mislabeled seafood.” Yeah. That’s why I don’t eat sushi. [Consumer Advertising Law Blog]
* It’s Spring Break! Meaning crazy mass arrests in Florida! One mass arrest featured on the local news got me chuckling. So much to enjoy in this report — the bizarre decision to ankle-cuff kids for underage drinking, the reporter inexplicably waving a bottle of Captain Morgan into the camera, and of course, an arrested kid yelling, “Roll Tide!” The full video of the news report after the jump. [WJHG]
‘What, no power rings for the Law School Avengers?’
* In case you didn’t catch this yesterday when it was announced, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, is currently being held for trial in New York City. This will be the most unbiased jury in the world. /sarcasm [New York Times]
* According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, democracies shouldn’t depend “on what nine unelected people from a narrow legal background have to say.” Well then! I suppose we should look forward to the uprising. [The Big Story / Associated Press]
* Cooley and Winston & Strawn are working on the $600 million sale of everyone’s favorite store for slutty Halloween costumes, Hot Topic. Apparently that store still exists. I had no idea. Good to know! [Am Law Daily]
* Proskauer Rose is now the most powerful Biglaw firm in the sports world. It just goes to show that even if you’re too awkward to play ball, it doesn’t mean you can’t hit it out of the park in court. [Sports Illustrated]
* “I would love to blink and wake up in 10 years and see where all this ends.” Unemployed law grads are probably saying the same thing, but hopefully these law school law firms will be beneficial. [New York Times]
* A group of legal heavy hitters — “The Coalition of Concerned Colleagues” — submitted a cutting letter to the Task ABA Force on Legal Education. Next time, try “The Law School Avengers.” [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]
* If it’s proven that enough Native Americans find the Redskins team name offensive, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board may cancel the mark. Would it be offensive to call the TTAB Indian givers? [National Law Journal]
* An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but benchslaps are another thing entirely. Sorry, Gibson Dunn, but your document production “mistake” was “unacceptable” in Judge Paul Grewal’s courtroom. [Bloomberg]
If you have a mediocre law firm, here’s a new trick — just buy the ad-search rights to the names of better law firms. Every time someone searches for the better firm, a nice big ad for your firm will pop up.
Does that sound dirty? It kind of seems like cashing in on the good will of another firm. Not to mention the personal identities of the lawyers at the better firm.
So, yeah, it sounds dirty and not possibly legal.
Well, a state appeals court decided it was totally legal….
* The horror! The horror! Sacrilege! Constitutional law nerds nationwide will weep at the very thought of someone suggesting that our country’s governing document be amended to abolish life tenure for Supreme Court justices. [Los Angeles Times]
* Quite frankly, it’s pretty amazing how quickly the preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act went from being seen by states as something that wasn’t “onerous” to being “arbitrary and burdensome.” That’s politics for you. [It's All Politics / NPR]
* Jim Woolery, an M&A superstar formerly of J.P. Morgan, has made the jump to Cadwalader after only two years at the bank. Upgrade or downgrade from his Cravath partnership? [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]
* Some law professors stop teaching classes to tend to their divorce proceedings, but other law professors teach classes from their hospital beds so their students aren’t thrown to the wolves. [Tex Parte / Texas Lawyer]
* It you want to be employed, make damn sure you nail your interview because “[t]he stakes are higher than ever” — fewer than 13 percent of permanent law jobs were obtained from OCI in 2011. [National Law Journal]
* Greenlight Capital’s case against Apple might have been perceived as a “silly sideshow” by some, but it looks like Judge Richard Sullivan of the S.D.N.Y. purchased front row tickets. [DealBook / New York Times]
* Speaking of silly sideshows, the DOJ recently joined the fray with Floyd Landis and his False Claims Act suit against Lance Armstrong. Perhaps it’s time for the disgraced biker to take his ball and go home. [Bloomberg]
* Alan Westin, privacy law scholar and professor emeritus of public law at Columbia, RIP. [New York Times]
* A study finds that over 93 percent of attorneys, judges, and legal writing professors think the writing they’re reading is bad. One could argue this is evidence of a crisis in writing skills. Or one could argue that lawyers are a**holes who think every voice other than their own is wrong. It’s a 50/50 shot. [Associates Mind]
* If you ever wondered how many OSHA violations one could find with Jabba’s Palace, wonder no more. [Legal Geeks]
* Are you scared of Obamacare? Here’s a roundup of your official survival guides! [The New Republic]
* If you’re trying to enter the United States, border agents can seize your electronics and look at all your private files because you need to respect their authoritah! [Forbes]
* Joseph Kennedy Jr. died helping to invent drones. OMG, you guys! The drone war is the final stage of the Kennedy family’s long-term liberal plan for world domination. [io9]
* Avvo is expanding their legal rating service into a full research tool to allow potential clients to pick out lawyers. So you’d better get in good with Avvo now. [Avvo]
* Now here’s a trick — watch Magic Circle lawyers disappear! Pepper Hamilton, now led by Louis Freeh, lures Linklaters lawyers to its ranks. [Thompson Reuters News & Insight]
‘They stole [accreditation] from us. Sneaky little ABA. Wicked, tricksy, false!’ — FAMU Law
Ed. note: Due to the Presidents’ Day holiday, we will be on a reduced publication schedule today. We will be back in full swing tomorrow. We hope you enjoy your day off (or feel free to lament your lack thereof in the comments).
* “[T]hey don’t want to hear nothing.” Vedel Browne, the man accused of robbing Stephen Breyer at machete-point while the justice was vacationing in his home in the Caribbean, now claims that he’s innocent, mon. [St. Kitts-Nevis Observer]
* You know what, the farmer in the Super Bowl commercial probably didn’t have to deal with bullsh*t like Monsanto’s seed patents, but today’s farmers do, and they’ll argue their case before the Supreme Court this week. [New York Times]
* “I’m a betting man. And I would bet and give odds that Sullivan & Cromwell has never said that publicly.” Who dares question S&C’s stance in the hot mess that is Herbalife? None other than Carl Icahn. [Am Law Daily]
* Here’s an important Biglaw math lesson that’s been provided to us via California-based firms like Irell & Manella, Munger Tolles, and Orrick: a little revenue minus a lot of partners equals profitability. [Recorder]
* Amid a flurry of filings on Valentine’s Day, love must’ve been a battlefield for the embattled Dewey & LeBoeuf refugees who were in desperate search of their once promised 2011 bonuses. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]
* From the department of things that suck: having to defend your office’s alleged “underhanded tactics” in a $150 million wrongful conviction case while you’re trying to get re-elected as district attorney. [New York Times]
* We got bitches in the office lawyerin’ on, and they ain’t leavin’ till six in the mornin’ — unless they want to be fired. An ex-Travers Smith trainee claims she was canned for leaving the firm “early”… at 6:30 a.m. [Telegraph]
* If it weren’t for Cosmo, this woman wouldn’t have known her landlord was an alleged creeper. A Maryland lawyer now faces criminal charges for allegedly filming his female tenants in the nude. [Washington Post]
* “We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious!” The ABA officially put Florida A&M on notice that its law school accreditation may be in jeopardy if they don’t shape up in terms of bar passage. [Orlando Sentinel]
* What do you do the second you step off a cruise ship that’s been described as “a floating toilet, a floating petri dish, a floating hell”? You grab the very first lawyers you see, and sue! [Nation Now / Los Angeles Times]
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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.
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Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Righteous Indignation, our new column for conservative-minded lawyers.
