Oh my god, I’m going to kill you.
– Lindsay Lohan, muttering under her breath in frustration during her court appearance yesterday after her lawyer, Mark Heller — a man who was previously scolded by Judge James Dabney for being “incompetent” as to California law — kept speaking even though the starlet had already directed him to shut up, numerous times.
(Don’t believe us? We’ve got the video to prove it.)
Continue reading “Lindsay Lohan’s Lunacy: ‘Mean Girl’ Threatens to Kill Lawyer”
Jodi Arias: too happy for murder?
This trial has lasted much longer than we ever anticipated, and it’s been richer and deeper than we would have ever imagined.
– Scot Safon, the executive in charge of HLN, commenting on the news channel’s intense coverage of the Jodi Arias trial.
(If you haven’t been watching all of the Casey Anthony-esque reporting on the Arias trial, she’s accused of killing her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, who was stabbed 27 times, shot in the head, and had his throat slit. Arias claims she killed him in self defense.)
One of our writers thought Billy Joel was saying, “We didn’t start the fire. It was always burning, said the worst attorney.”
– Comedian and television host Jimmy Fallon, commenting via Twitter on some of the world’s worst misheard lyrics.
(Do you know of any other entertaining, law-related misheard lyrics? Feel free to post them in the comments.)
Judge Judy
[I]f this 50-year-old woman would spend her time more productively at trying to find a job, instead of abusing the judicial system with frivolous lawsuits, we would all be a lot better off.
– Judith Sheindlin, more popularly known as “Judge Judy,” commenting on a six-figure suit that was filed against her by Patrice Jones, her producer’s ex-wife, over a set of ridiculously expensive china and flatware that was allegedly sold to the TV jurist in a conspiracy to keep the funds from Jones in the divorce.
Gilberto Valle, aka the ‘Cannibal Cop’
Sitting in judgment of another human being is difficult. This case in particular has not been an easy one … [with] material that degrades the human spirit.
– Judge Paul Gardephe, thanking the jury that just convicted Gilberto Valle, the so-called “cannibal cop,” of conspiracy to kidnap.
(More about this grisly case, after the jump.)
Continue reading “‘Cannibal Cop’ Convicted in Kidnapping Conspiracy Case”
Thomas Edwards
Under the American criminal justice system all individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
– Thomas L. Edwards, a Florida lawyer who handles DUI defense, offering comment on his recent legal wranglings. Edwards was criminally charged this weekend in an alleged drunken hit-and-run accident, and a banner ad for his law firm appeared on the same page as his mug shot.
Nate Silver
As much as it pleases me to see statistical data introduced in the Supreme Court, the act of citing statistical factoids is not the same thing as drawing sound inferences from them.
– Nate Silver, statistician extraordinaire, rebuking Chief Justice John Roberts’s use of statistics during oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder, and noting that the voting ratios cited weren’t “meaningful in either a statistical or a practical sense.”
Not pictured: Wall Street Journal.
[The article] lays it out. It gives motive, it gives you methodology, it reflects experts who think it’s valid. This is not the only piece. This article takes the same kind of approach that you have taken in this case.
I mean, frankly, I am totally puzzled, given that plaintiffs’ bar in this area uses the Wall Street Journal as their source of clients and cases, right? You guys read it every day, looking for scandal, right? Other people read People Magazine, but you read the Wall Street Journal.
– Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald (S.D.N.Y.), discussing inquiry notice of plaintiff’s claims with David Kovel of Kirby McInerney, counsel for plaintiffs in the Libor lawsuits, during Tuesday’s hearing.
(The article Judge Buchwald mentions ran in the Wall Street Journal in 2008 and raised serious questions about Libor’s integrity.)
I am not so sure if I would like to serve on a jury.
– A response generated by an artificial linguistic internet computer entity during an interview in response to whether the device, a program that simulates conversation, would ever go to jury duty. This interview was conducted because researchers are currently studying robots’ capability to gauge false testimony.
Stroking the gavel of justice?
Don’t come knocking if the jury room is rockin’.
– An instant message that was allegedly sent by Judge Eugenio Mathis to his wife, a court employee, prior to his resignation from the bench.
(The New Mexico Judicial Standards Commission notes that the good judge allegedly engaged in “communications of a sexual nature” with his wife during court proceedings, “including intimations that he had or would be having sexual relations with her during the workday and/or on court premises.” Mathis continues to deny those claims.)
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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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
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