Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law 3L Dave Johnston recently made a good showing on the online game show, "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"

He's not a millionaire, but thanks to his performance, and a little help from TruTV (formerly Court TV) anchor, Ashleigh Banfield, he is $50,000 richer. She was the celeb expert the show offered him for his "ask the expert" lifeline. He used it when he didn't know the answer to "'One woman writes a novel, another reads it, and the third lives it' is the premise of what movie?"

His answer options were "A: Cold Mountain, B: The Hours, C: Memoirs of a Geisha, D: Atonement." From the New York Post:

Banfield correctly told Johnston it was "The Hours," which won him $16,000. He went on to win $50,000 and promised to take Banfield to lunch. Banfield told us, "He took me to Gus' Place in the Village today and brought along friends from the office where he's a summer intern. But since he's using his winnings to pay the nearly $40,000 tuition for next semester, I picked up the check."

We're not impressed by Johnston's lack of familiarity with chick flicks, but we are impressed by his finagling a celebrity lunch out of the experience. The moment was captured by his BlackBerry in the photo at right.

Johnston notes that Banfield was slightly off. His 3L tuition will be $44,000, not "nearly $40,000." So he appreciated the free lunch even more. He tells us about it, after the jump.

* Earlier this week, Leah Ward Sears stepped down as Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. She penned this piece for CNN about her brother's suicide, the problems with no-fault divorce, and where she's going next. [CNN]

* Former Latham & Watkins partner Samuel Fishman sentenced to 15 months in prison for bilking the firm and clients out of several hundred thousands of dollars. [Dow Jones Newswires]

* J.D. Salinger wins his copyright suit. Judge rules that 'J.D. California's' spin on Catcher in the Rye is not transformative enough, and cannot be sold in the U.S. [Associated Press]

* Skadden Arps takes the top-billing throne. [ABA Journal]

* SEC lawyer Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot tried to warn superiors about Bernie Madoff back in 2004. [Washington Post]

* Time for a new edition of the Kama Sutra. Indian court makes gay sex legal. [New York Times]

Times are tough for the paper that gives us all the news that's fit to print, so we almost feel badly about calling the old girl out on this. But it is the New York Times after all.

The paper recently mentioned NYLS-grad-turned-cupcake-entrepreneur Lev Ekster, who's gotten lots of attention from us, as well as from other media outlets. But this recent article on the vendor truck turf wars incorrectly states that Lev is an NYU Law grad. Here's a screenshot:

The NYT is not the first to make this mistake. When Thrillist first broke the cupcake story in mid-May, it made the same mistake, since corrected. We all make mistakes, but we'd like to try to prevent the MSM making this one in the future. Here's our memo (with love):

To: The New York Times and other media outlets
From: Above The Law
Re: New York Law School vs. New York University Law School

New York Law School is not New York University Law School.

NYLS is in Tribeca. NYU Law is in Greenwich Village.

NYLS has 2 Girls 1 Dress. NYU has Arthur Miller.

NYU Law is ranked the fifth best law school in the land. NYLS is ranked.

Turf War at the Hot Dog Cart [New York Times]

Swine flu has struck firms. It has struck a district attorney's office. Even though it's summer, the nasty virus has now invaded at least one law school.

This year, a few Duke University Law School students are summer camp counselors instead of summer associates. Spending the summer with little kids instead of the BigLaw boys, and raking in four figures instead of five, must hurt a little. On top of that, these legal Blue Devils now have to deal with swine flu. From the Charlotte Observer:

There are 14 confirmed flu cases among campers and camp counselors at Duke University, campus officials say. Those 14 cases are probably the H1N1, or swine flu virus, officials said. More than a dozen other people have cases that are not yet confirmed.

It looks like a Duke Law student might be to blame for the outbreak. From a tipster:

A number of law students that are RAing for professors over the summer are working as supervisors of the [Talent Identification Program] and also teaching classes on the criminal justice system to the TIP students.

We received this email today:

"Dear All, I write to inform you that a Law School student was seen by Duke Student Health Services this morning with symptoms that closely match those experienced by individuals with H1N1 Flu. An actual diagnosis will not be available until Monday, at the earliest. The student is at home recuperating from his symptoms and following recommended isolation procedures for those with H1N1-like symptoms.

We have contacted all individuals who were in a class with this student to alert them to a possible H1N1 exposure..."

Read the full e-mail after the jump. And an UPDATE (12:25 p.m.) on patient zero.

* Happy Canada Day to our readers from the Great White North. You can enjoy the celebration of your day of union, but you can't yet celebrate a resolution of your lawsuit against river-stealing North Dakota. [Associated Press]

* The Michael Jackson autopsy report may have been fake, but his will is real. [New York Times]

* No more driving while under the influence of a BlackBerry in Virginia. [Washington Post]

* SCOTUS puts its right foot in and shakes it all about. [Washington Post via ABA Journal]

* Another case of online dating site customers getting screwed. And not in the good way. [Courthouse News Service]

Summer associates have landed at offices across the nation. They're working harder this year, even if some of the work is fake, and they're eating out less often. But the Biglaw recruits are still having fun -- sometimes too much fun.

We've been asking you about the big events for this year's summers -- concerts, movie previews, booze cruises, etc. Look out for contest finalists soon!

Cadwalader may have already established itself as a front runner in the competition. Last week, the firm took its summers to see a Mets game. Afterwards, some of the attorneys and summers went from Shea to shady. [FN1] From a knowledgeable source:

After the game, some of the male associates took some of the male summers out for some "after-event" bonding. The problem with this bonding is that it was a trip to the strip club. I'm not sure if the firm knew about the afterparty event or if it was sanctioned by or expensed to the firm, but this certainly seems to send a message of exclusion to women; or at least -- even if any female summers attended (which none did) -- that the firm not only tolerated but supported the objectification / degradation of women that occurs at these venues.

The firm was aware of the outing, but it doesn't support these Cadwalader cads. The official response, after the jump.

First years to 100K and an "apprenticeship"?

In the past two months, we've reported on three firms instituting an apprenticeship model for first year associates: Drinker Biddle, Howrey, and Frost Brown Todd. "Apprentices" start at the firm at a lower salary and are not billed out to clients, billed out at a lower rate than normal associates, or billed out for lower total hours. It sounds like an apprentice is a "paralegal plus." Of course, that "plus" includes a J.D. and its accompanying law school debt.

Still, when we polled you last week, almost 70% of ATL readers who voted said they were in favor of Howrey's $100K-plus-professional-training apprenticeship.

The National Law Journal (subscription) has an extensive piece on apprenticeships (noting two other firms that have instituted the practice -- labor firm Ford & Harri­son and Dallas's Strasburger & Price):

These firms are putting new recruits through additional apprenticeship programs that they say will better train their attorneys for life at a law firm and for handling clients. Think of it as the equivalent of a medical residency, only with suits instead of scrubs.

The latest -- and so far largest -- firm to move to an apprenticeship model, 659-lawyer Howrey, announced its program last week. Starting next year, first-years at the firm will get a pay cut -- from $160,000 to $100,000 in base pay plus a $25,000 bonus to pay down law school loans -- and they'll spend a good portion of their time attending classes with partners and shadowing them on client matters. The apprenticeship period will last two years.

Are law students really like medical students, in need of on-the-job training in order to operate in the real world? If apprenticeships become widespread -- which admittedly seems unlikely once the tough economic times are behind us -- should the training at a firm mean one less year in law school? Firm salaries are going down, but law school tuition is going up. Maybe it's time to rebalance.

A round-up of the salaries for BigLaw apprentices, and a poll on how law schools should be reacting to deflating salaries, after the jump.

It's been quiet here at Above The Law in terms of chatter about the summer associate experience. SAs seem a wee bit scared to reach out to us this year. We're trying to gather submissions for the SA Event Contest, and we've only gotten five submissions! And one is a fishing trip.

Is the summer associate experience really that lame this year? Or are you all just terrified to send us an e-mail with a little braggadocio about your summer events? There are workarounds, you know. One SA printed an event announcement and sent it to us snail mail style.

(Just a reminder that all tips are anonymous, so send us more submissions. Just do it from your personal account, or on Facebook, or via carrier pigeon.)

Okay. Okay. We understand your reticence. SAs are stressed out about getting job offers in this competitive environment. Georgetown Law sent out a memo to its students predicting that most firms will be offering jobs to 50 to 80% of their summer associates. They then offered some advice for current SAs, which basically consisted of "things to think about doing in case you don't get an offer." Georgetown also advised checking out a piece that appeared in Massachusetts Lawyer Weekly: Some Words of Advice for Summer Associates of 2009 [PDF].

In case you didn't surf over to it, we'll boil it down for you, along with some of our own advice, after the jump.

SCOTUS ruled today that strip searching middle school students is not cool.

When Arizona school officials suspected an eighth-grade girl of harboring ibuprofen, they made her strip down to her bra and underwear, and then a nurse watched as she shook her bra and shook her underwear to prove there were no pills in her... on her person.

This sounds totally crazy on the Arizona officials' part, but this girl was a suspicious character. She had been storing "several knives, lighters, a permanent marker, and a cigarette" in her day planner, according to the SCOTUS opinion [PDF]. That combined with Advil sounds like a rampage waiting to happen!

Lets take a look a those who concur, and those who dissent after the jump.

* New Jersey Internet radio talk show host arrested for blogging that federal judges Frank Easterbrook, Richard Posner, and William Bauer "deserved to be killed" after a recent decision on Chicago handgun ban case. [CNN]

* More Morgan Lewis Musical Chairs: Yesterday, the firm announced that it had tapped gas from Baker Botts. Good thing, because Morgan Lewis lost some energy to Pillsbury this week. [National Law Journal]

* We don't know how Aaronson, Rappaport, Feinstein and Deutsch does in the courtroom, but it's a big winner in the New York real estate market. [Observer]

* Nationwide (Law School) Layoff Watch: As predicted in May, layoffs have started at Harvard, despite HLS grads' protest. [Boston Globe]

* The Fourth Circuit supports the ban on 'partial birth' abortions in Virginia. [Washington Post]