Last week, we dropped by NY LegalTech to find out What’s on the Mind of the General Counsel.

Three GCs were on the panel: Seth Krauss of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.; Dawson Horn III of Tyco International; and Jonathan Broder of Conrail. Conrail is, of course, the railroad company. Take-Two is a software and video game company, of Grand Theft Auto fame. Tyco is a well-known manufacturing company, of shower curtain scandal fame.

They provided some insight into the in-house world and what they look for when they hire outside counsel. “”We’re instruction-rich and cash-poor,” said one.

They offered advice to partners and lawyers who want their business. “Know something about me,” said Horn. In other words, Google him. And: “Believe in the cause,” he added.

That’s rather vague. More specific instructions for getting hired by a general counsel, and some advice for fellow GCs, after the jump.

A few months back, the Student Bar Association at Northwestern University School of Law got its panties in a bunch over inappropriate language and the “unthinking use of stereotypes.” Saying that you were “raped” by an exam, for example, was offensive to some on campus, said the SBA. (They preferred that Northwestern students engage only in consensual test-taking.)

At the time, we asked:

Is there an epidemic of vulgarity at Northwestern that the SBA is desperately trying to stop?

Apparently so. The school is gearing up for its Barristers’ Ball, and students are offended by language all over again.

The vulgar words this time?

* “Justice Hillary Clinton?” Next up in this traffic-whoring Daily Beast series: “Supreme Court Justice Palin?” [Daily Beast]

* Faegre & Benson partner Robert Matthews and his brother died in a small plane crash over the weekend. Matthews had a mid-air collision while piloting a Cirrus SR20 plane, also killing the other pilot. [Denver Business Journal via ABA Journal]

* NYU grad sues the university for revoking his MBA. [New York Post]

* Why do people pass along Internet links? The NYT says “awe.” Judging from our traffic patterns, we’d add shock-and-awe as a secondary reason. [New York Times]

* Keeping the John Edwards sex tape on lockdown. [Raleigh News & Observer]

* The class-action lawsuit headed by former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon against the NCAA can proceed. College athletes are one step closer to compensation for the use of their images and likenesses in television advertisements, video games and on apparel. [New York Times]

* On Larry Lessig, copyrights, and remixing, to the tune of Lisztomania…. [Julian Sanchez]

* Which is not our favorite Phoenix song. Our favorite after the jump…

“I used to be a bank robber.”

That’s an attention-grabbing lede for a personal essay for a law school application. Or:

“The Supreme Court granted my very first petition for cert. And then ruled in my favor unanimously.”

Shon Hopwood, 34, could start his application with either one of those statements. Convicted of five robberies in Nebraska in the late ’90s, he was sentenced to prison for 13 years, writes Adam Liptak in the New York Times:

Mr. Hopwood spent much of that time in the prison law library, and it turned out he was better at understanding the law than breaking it. He transformed himself into something rare at the top levels of the American bar, and unheard of behind bars — an accomplished Supreme Court practitioner.

Hopwood wrote a petition for cert for a fellow inmate, John Fellers, in 2002. Not only was it granted, veteran Supreme Court advocate Seth Waxman says, “It was probably one of the best cert. petitions I have ever read.”

High praise for a dude who doesn’t even have a law degree…

* Feminist lawyer Gloria Allred was not a fan of the Focus on the Family anti-abortion Super Bowl ad. [Orlando Sentinel]

* ABA President Carolyn Lamm is making big efforts to improve loan assistance for law students — and is making no effort to follow sports. “I don’t even know who’s playing,” she said on Saturday of the Super Bowl. Who dat? [ABA Journal]

* Oops, did we just say “Super Bowl”? We meant to say “Big Game.” [New York Times]

* California law to release inmates early to ease prison overcrowding causes mayhem (among lawmakers). [Associated Press]

* Federal Judge Vaughn Walker, who will decide the constitutionality of Proposition 8, has been officially outed, though his sexuality has never been under wraps. [San Francisco Chronicle]

* Race and gender matter. [ABA Journal]

[Brett Favre] decided to play the game at his age and all that goes with it, and the effect he had on Minnesota and on that team and a lot of sports fans was enormous. I think the excitement and the challenge is something that is very alluring, and if I can play a small part in paying the taxpayer back…then I will look back at this time and say, for all the knockdowns that I will inevitably have, it would have been worth the experience and the knowledge that I was helpful.

— Thomas Russo, 66, former chief legal officer at Lehman Brothers, discussing his departure from Patton Boggs to become the new general counsel for American International Group Inc.

Men, women, transgender, heterosexuals, gays, bisexuals. Every ethnicity. White-collar and blue-collar. It’s really very, very diverse — though we do have an unusually high percentage of lawyers. I don’t know why.

— Susan Wright, founder of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, discussing the people who attend erotic BDSM — bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism — parties.

Internet message boards tend to be rough-and-tumble places. Enter at your own risk. (This includes Above the Law comments — if you don’t like them, don’t read them.)

There may be employment risks for posters at Top Law Schools (“TLS”), a message board for gunners planning to apply to law school. This is one of those places online where people talk about what to bring to the LSAT and trumpet their acceptances by various law schools. In other words, it’s the place where future law school list-serv psychos cut their teeth.

Yesterday, Top Law Schools claimed that test prep company TestMasters is discriminating against its readers. A TLS moderator wrote a post alleging that a reader’s application to work as an LSAT instructor for TestMasters was rejected based on his being a frequent TLS poster. The moderator posted the rejection email the reader received (we’ve replaced the name of the TestMasters director with a pseudonym):

Dear “John”,

We have decided to cancel your interview and reject your application to work for us as an LSAT instructor. Applications are currently at an all-time high, and we do not have the time or resources to interview TTT candidates whose social lives consist of making thousands of posts on internet discussion boards. TestMasters only hires people who are cool, and unfortunately you do not meet that requirement.

Best regards,

“I-Wish-I-Worked-For-Kaplan”
Programs Director
TestMasters

When we got the first of many emails about this, we thought, “A programs director who actually uses the term ‘TTT’? ‘People who are cool’? C’mon. This is fake.”

But TestMasters is not disowning the email, and it appears that “I-Wish-I-Worked-For-Kaplan” actually waded into the cesspool to defend herself.

When we reviewed Morrison & Foerster’s new website yesterday, a commenter advised us to check out the firm’s career page for those who think they might have “that MoFo mojo” (in the words of the firm).

The commenter was amused by MoFo’s comparing new lawyers to pigeons, and its advice on how to avoid being “@$%#@! Pigeonholed.” We were amused, though, by its assessment of “what makes a whole lawyer” and how to be successful as a new associate at MoFo.

If you’ve ever felt like Biglaw just saw you as a beast of burden, MoFo confirms it, using a cow to illustrate the various cuts of a good lawyer:

Intellectual curiosity is important and is, sensibly, the flavor found in the cow’s head. What does MooFo ascribe to the rump?

Last month, as your ATL editors were leaving work, we ran into a fresh recruit to Biglaw, newly arrived in New York with a January draft date. He was at the corner of Mott and Houston after having looked at a possible apartment for rent. He recognized us as chroniclers of Biglaw’s troubles and complained about the New York housing search.

It’s not that it’s hard to find an apartment these days, thanks to the recession-inspired exodus from Manhattan. Instead, our Biglaw-bound reader said that he had found the perfect apartment but that the landlord had turned his application down. “I don’t have bad credit,” he said, and he looked respectable enough, going to open houses in a suit. “I think the landlord may have googled my firm and seen that it’s had layoffs.”

We doubt that landlords are coming to Above the Law to do background checks on potential tenants. We suggested that the rejection may be due instead to a certain housing phenomenon: discrimination against lawyers.