Having just discussed Janet Jackson (or her breasts), we're going to remain on the subject of music. This installment in our continuing series of open threads on career alternatives for attorneys -- i.e., "things you can do with a law degree other than Biglaw (or contract attorney work)" -- is inspired by lawyer turned rapper Mekka Don.
There are many attorneys out there with musical side projects. When do you decide to take the leap and dive into your music career full-time? According to Mekka Don, the answer is "after one year at Weil." He wrote to us in March:
My name is Emeka Onyejekwe (aka Mekka Don) and in the spring I left my job at a top ten law firm in order to help save Hip Hop. I graduated from NYU in 2006 and worked at the firm for a little less than a year. Many people (probably including you, lol) think I'm crazy, but I believe it was a calling from God. I've begun to memorialize what I am doing through a reality show.
He may be too late. According to Nas, hip hop is dead! But good luck with that.
ABA Journal's July issue has a profile piece on the "legal hustler." Taking the struggling artist career route sounds challenging. To make ends meet, Onyejekwe is "modeling, event planning and sports marketing along with running a small legal practice with his sister."
Does a legal background help much in this career? Once you make it big, those contracts classes may come in handy. It also looks to be useful in the comments on the ABA piece. Someone questioned Mekka Don's use of "Law & Order" for the title of his mixtape, and he responds by citing the "fair use" doctrine.
When you think of clerks of court, you probably think of those annoying people who bounce your filings because you used the wrong font size. They don't seem like a fun bunch of people.
But Harvey Ruvin, Clerk of Courts for Miami-Dade County, is not your ordinary court clerk. How many clerks do you know who can rap?
Okay, "rapping" may be a generous characterization. Ruvin sounds less like a rapper and more like a stand-up comedian who superimposed his routine over some throbbing beats. "Climate change -- what's up with that?"
But we're not rap aficionados, so judge for yourself. Our observant tipster points out: "Note at 1:49 in the video, in the 'o' in the Stop the Hatred sign, you'll find a marijuana plant."
P.S. And where, you're wondering, did Harvey Ruvin go to law school? None other than the University of Miami School of Law -- one of ATL's favorite law schools.
As Justice Holmes famously wrote in his Lochner dissent, "The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics." But does it enact, say, Mr. Alan Flusser's Dressing the Man?
This doesn't affect us, since we usually don't put on pants before 5 p.m. But for those of you who do get dressed and leave home in the morning, check out this story:
Pine Lawn, a mostly black municipality outside St. Louis, is among a growing number of U.S. cities enacting laws that ban low-slung pants.
Critics say the bans amount to government attacks on youthful fashion that some find offensive. And constitutional scholars say they may not be lawful.
"People have a right to express their identity through speech and action," said Neil Richards, a First Amendment expert at Washington University in St. Louis. "On the other hand, municipalities have a vague power to control the health, safety and welfare of citizens.
Linda Greenhouse has written a letter in response to C-SPAN in which she defends herself against their accusations. In it she claims that the "issue is not one of 'open media access to public policy discussions,'" as C-SPAN's Terence Murphy wrote in his letter, but "one of communication and simple courtesy."
Ignoring the question of whether she received an email warning her that C-SPAN was going to be present, Greenhouse writes, " I learned about the plan to cover the Supreme Court panel only when I showed up and saw the cameras. Prof. Gajda told me yesterday that she had only learned at 5:00 p.m. the day before that C-Span intended to cover our panel."
Read the rest -- plus a bonus Linda Greenhouse Rap!!! -- after the jump.
No, this has nothing to do with Bill Clinton. We're talking about the other Monica -- former Justice Department lawyer Monica Goodling, one of our favorite personalities here at ATL.
Over the weekend, the New York Times published the best article we've read in a long, long time. Check it out (annotations ours):
Now this is the point in the post where we should start highlighting the best parts of Eric Lipton's article, followed by mildly snarky quips. But the entire piece is so delicious that it would be wrong to pick out excerpts. Please read the whole thing for yourself, by clicking here.
Okay, are you done? Great. Discussion continues after the jump.
* Still excited about last weekend's Kentucky Derby? Here are the rules for betting on the Iowa and NH Derbies. [Slate]
* NBA playoffs as a metaphor for the presidential race. [SI]
* World Bank panel finds Wolfowitz violated rules in getting his girlfriend a job. [MSNBC]
* Prominent U.S. lawyers to dine with Queen of England. [WSJ Law Blog]
* "A series of sometimes bizarre events, including a judge's tumble from a ladder and a case of appendicitis, have delayed" R. Kelly's trial for five years. [CNN]
* The headline screams "Britney!" But, in fact, this plaintiff was not wearing too-long jeans and fleeing the press -- he was tasered. [Houston Chronicle]
* In my college days, this kind of activity was confined to private study booths known as "weenie bins." We respected the books. [AP via Yahoo! News]
If Karl Rove's rap performance has caused you to harbor grave doubts about the ability of white guys to rap, this video -- a "Beastie Boys" parody, produced for the 2006 Virginia Law Libel Show -- may restore your faith:
The inside jokes will be lost on non-UVA types. But the dancing and rapping are impressive, especially coming from law students, and the production values are solid. Nice use of freeze frames.
People in certain lines of work -- e.g., litigation, rapping, blogging -- develop pretty thick skins. If you get attacked, insulted, and criticized on a daily basis, you stop noticing it pretty quickly.
(He claims he's going to court to protect his 11-year-old daughter, Hailie, from being exposed to negative comments about her father. But we suspect she has plenty of other issues.)
After we posted our open letter to Shanetta Y. Cutlar, Chief of the DOJ's Special Litigation Section, an ex-minion of hers contacted us with an email address for her. We sent a message to that address -- and unlike our past messages, it didn't bounce back. So presumably our "open letter" has reached Shanetta's inbox (assuming it didn't get caught in her spam filter).
(A commenter also posted an address for Shanetta. But a message we sent to that account bounced back.)
You'll recall that in our open letter, we asked Shanetta Cutlar for a photo of herself. Receiving one would make us unspeakably happy. But we realize it's unlikely that she will comply with our request (even though we're told that, at one point in time, the DOJ website featured a photo of her, as part of a diversity-touting publicity effort).
To get a better idea of what Shanetta Cutlar looks like, we asked some of our tipsters to describe her. We asked: "If a movie or TV show were to be produced, based on the Special Litigation Section under Shanetta Cutlar, who should be cast to play Shanetta?
We received two responses. Here's the first:
Well, you've got a large African-American woman with what appears to me like (emphasis on anti-libel weasel words) a nasty little personality disorder. So I'm going to say Queen Latifah, but the character would be more like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.*
And here's the second response (which we enjoyed even more):
[F]or your mental picture, think Oprah Winfrey (but with long, flowing hair). I can't even watch Oprah's show anymore because it sends shivers up my spine. It leaves me with a pit in my stomach, by bringing back memories of working there. I feel like I have post-traumatic stress disorder from working for her.
You can no longer watch "Oprah"? Add that to the damages claim in your lawsuit against Shanetta.
* Fatal Attraction, by the way, is one of our favorite movies. And whenever we watch it, we root for Alex Forrest (Glenn Close).
* Another shakeup in the Administration: high-ranking government official resigns from his position, takes other high-ranking government position. [New York Times; CNN]
Wednesday, December 13, 2006 5:38 PM - By Stella Q
* This is beautiful and noble. Painting with your butt -- or, rather, using your butt as a type of giant rubber stamp -- not so much. [Richmond Times Dispatch]
* Not all law students are holed up in the library 24/7, but it’s clear that cramming has taken a lot out of Legal Bachelor’s game. [Chicks Dig Law Students]
Yet another sign that reality television has gone too, too far:
City leaders have apologized after a program on Tempe's cable channel showed a white police officer telling two black men they could get out of a littering ticket by performing a rap....
[After pulling the car over,] the officer then tells the men that they can avoid getting a littering ticket "if the two of you just do a little rap about — what do you want to do a rap about? Littering? About the dangers of littering."
The two men agree, and each performs a short rap, laughing afterward. One says, "The dangers of littering, you will get a ticket. If you ain't wit' it, you better be experienced."
The second man raps, "Yo, I just got pulled over 'cause I threw my trash out the window when they rolled over. They got behind me and pulled me over."
They got out of the ticket. But query whether they should have been fined for their mediocre rapping.
The cop also pulled over an Asian woman for making an illegal turn. He told her she could get out of a ticket by being a bad driver.
* Look, pal, we don't do it that way around here. Instead, we give all our girls years of self-esteem-destroying mixed messages, double standards, and hypocrisy. [AP via FindLaw]
* Pleasssseee come back! We swear it won't suck this time. We'll give you a real office! [National Law Journal]
* This is for stealing my boyfriend; in your face! [CNN.com]
* There was no probabizzle causizzle for the arrestasizzle, you know what I'm saying? [AP via Yahoo! News]
Having just discussed Janet Jackson (or her breasts), we're going to remain on the subject of music. This installment in our continuing series of open threads on career alternatives for attorneys -- i.e., "things you can do with a law degree other than Biglaw (or contract attorney work)" -- is inspired by lawyer turned rapper Mekka Don.
Continue reading "Career Alternatives for Attorneys: Rapper?"
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* NRA defends the rights of hurricane victims to 
As Justice Holmes famously wrote in his 
To follow up on our 
* Still excited about last weekend's Kentucky Derby? Here are the rules for betting on the Iowa and NH Derbies. [
* The headline screams 
People in certain lines of work -- e.g., litigation, rapping, blogging -- develop pretty thick skins. If you get attacked, insulted, and criticized on a daily basis, you stop noticing it pretty quickly.
* Congress weighs its constitutional war powers. [
After we posted our 
Yet another sign that reality television has gone 
* Diebold with a vengeance. [
