* A hilarious read if you’ve been there, even if I tell you that the punchline is that this 70-year-old rich lawyer dude with 40-year-old sheets now has a 22-year-old Russian girlfriend. [New York Times]
* I think I heard a colleague at one of my first jobs say he wanted to f*&k me like an animal. It was a good thing I didn’t find any cause of action, because it turns out it was just that Nine Inch Nails song playing in his cubicle. [Workplace Prof Blog]
* You are actually a day older than you think, a fact hopefully irrelevant to ATL readers. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Groupies are much less trouble. [MSN Music]
Romance and Dating
- 7th Circuit, Birthdays, Celebrities, Music, Non-Sequiturs, Real Estate, Romance and Dating, Rudeness, Sexual Harassment, Violence
Non-Sequiturs: 03.29.07
By Stella Q- Crime, Lunacy, Media and Journalism, Morning Docket, Native Americans, Pictures, Politics, Romance and Dating, Stephen Breyer, U.S. Attorneys Offices
Morning Docket: 03.05.07
By Billy Merck* Domenici asked for ousting of New Mexico U.S. Attorney. [New York Times via How Appealing]
* Descendants of ex-slaves not welcome in Cherokee Nation. [Jurist]
* Prosecutors decide to pass on attempted murder charge for astronaut in kidnapping case; CNN decides to use a more flattering picture. [CNN; compare with CNN (2/05/07)]
* And speaking of unflattering pictures… [CNN]
* Breyer to appear on NPR “comedy” show. [AP via Yahoo!]
Update: In case you were hoping to attend the “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” taping, you should note that it has been pushed back by a week.
- Blackberry-Crackberry, Celebrities, Divorce Train Wrecks, Football, Pillsbury Winthrop, Romance and Dating, Sex, Weddings
Lawyerly Lives and Loves: A Linkwrap
By David LatIn the past week or so, the romantic exploits (and misadventures) of lawyers and law students have been in the news. Here are a few noteworthy links:
1. ‘ABORT’ SHOCK IN GIANT DIVORCE [New York Post]
Football star Amani Toomer (at right), a wide receiver for the Giants, is divorcing his wife, Dr. Yola Dabrowski. The parties’ divorce filings are full of salacious allegations, but here’s what jumped out at us:
Dabrowski’s papers complain that Toomer: … * Sabotaged her dream of becoming a lawyer by stealing her computer and files, making it impossible to study for her law-school exams and leading to her getting an incomplete for the term.
If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, the way to a law student’s heart — or the way to break her heart, as the case may be — is through her papers.
Another allegation:
[W]hen she didn’t want to have sex, Toomer acted “irrationally and outrageously” – once urinating on her clothes, and another time tossing her BlackBerry into the Hudson River.
Destroying your spouse’s Blackberry? Now you’ve thrown down the gauntlet. If The War of the Roses were updated for 2007, there would surely be a scene of Blackberry destruction.
2. Date Lab [Washington Post]
“Date Lab,” in which the Post sets up two people on a blind date and then writes it up, is one of our favorite guilty pleasures. This recent date, involving Pillsbury Winthrop associate Damon Colbert (at right), actually went fairly well. (The column is more fun when the dates are disasters.)
But the WaPo reader comments — “the two shallowest people in all of Creation,” “this Date Lab made me unbearably sad” — are kinda vicious. And we thought ATL commenters were harsh….
3. Page Six: Ready To Wed [New York Post]
Gillian Hearst Engaged! [Socialite Rank]
From Page Six:
LOVE is in the air for Hearst heir Gillian Hearst-Shaw and her yearlong boyfriend, Christian Simonds. Sources say the gorgeous brunette socialite and philanthropist was proposed to with “a blindingly huge diamond engagement ring” from Simonds. Her hubby-to-be, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer, popped the question last weekend, following a romantic sleigh ride for two in the Berkshires. Mazel tov!
Page Six doesn’t identify his firm, but as Socialite Rank points out, Christian Simonds is an associate in the New York office of Lowenstein Sandler. Next time you make a disparaging remark about the New York office of a New Jersey law firm, ask yourself: “If my firm is so much better, then why am I not marrying a beautiful media heiress?”
4. Wendi Adelson and Dan Markel [New York Times]
Happy Anniversary to Wendi Adelson and fellow legal blogger Dan Markel, of PrawfsBlawg fame!
We’re bestowing this honor upon Malik Cupid, and not just because today is Valentine’s Day. He actually did something to earn this award.
From the NJ Blog (emphasis in original):
Malik Cupid, an attorney, Democrat party activist and current aide to Governor Jon S. Corzine’s administration, was arraigned in Westchester County (New York) Supreme Court yesterday (which also happened to be his 31st birthday) after being charged with stealing $1,400 from his old girlfriend’s bank account and hacking into the former girlfriend’s account while she was serving on active duty with the Army in Iraq.
All told, the Westchester County district attorney’s office charged Cupid with four felonies, including grand larceny, identity theft and eavesdropping. He faces up to 16 years in state prison.
More details here — including a picture. Check out Cupid’s snazzy bow tie.
Cupid Is Crazy [NJ Blog]
Cupid Arraigned on Larceny Charge [Journal News]
For those of you who are new to ATL, welcome to Legal Eagle Wedding Watch. In this recurring feature, we review the wedding announcements in the storied society pages of the New York Times, pick out three couples in which one spouse is a lawyer, and then score them numerically — on their credentials, families, looks, and “couple balance.” Each week, we declare a winning couple. The winners then square off in our “Couple of the Month” contest.
Due to competing claims on our attention — e.g., associate pay raise news — we’ve fallen a few weeks behind in LEWW. If you can think back that far, please cast your mind back to early January….
The weekend of January 6-7, the first wedding weekend of the new year, was a busy one. The most notable nuptials: the marriage of Ann Leventhal and Judge Jon O. Newman, of the Second Circuit. Numerous legal blogs took note of it.
But there were other lawyer weddings that weekend. Here are the three that we will review and score:
Scores and commentary for the aforementioned couples, after the jump.
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: January 7, 2007″
- Asians, Blogging, Crime, Dewey Ballantine, Education / Schools, Free Speech, Job Searches, Kids, Non-Sequiturs, Old People, Politics, Racism, Rank Stupidity, Romance and Dating, Sex
Non-Sequiturs: 1.19.07
By Stella Q* Too soon, Daily Princetonian, too soon. And what’s more, you budding SNL-writers are so completely unfunny that you might consider law school instead. Dewey Ballantine would probably hire you. [IvyGate Blog]
* Retiree sick of junk mail claims that (literal) poo-slinging is constitutionally protected. [AP via Forbes]
* If only Jason were just a tad younger, they’d be just another couple of happy, teenage parents. [Sheboygan Press]
* But we’ll always have YouTube. [ValleyWag]
* Want to do more than just blog? Ernie is looking for a freelance legal researcher. Sounds like a great gig if you like that kind of thing. (I obviously don’t, or I wouldn’t be putting this out for all of you to see.) [Ernie the Attorney]
- Celebrities, Copyright, Crime, Cyberlaw, Education / Schools, Environment / Environmental Law, Intellectual Property, Movies, Music, Non-Sequiturs, Romance and Dating, Television, Violence
Non-Sequiturs: 01.17.07
By Stella Q* If you support intelligent design, then these Inconvenient Truth-opposing parents want you in their PTA. [Seattle Times]
* If he had thrown down the gauntlet beforehand, might that be a mitigating factor? We can see the headlines now: If the glove doesn’t fit… [TaxProf Blog]
* Diana, you know the audience will be cheering for Effie, but Florence Ballard died 30 years ago — and you’re going to be an American Idol “mentor”! Yeah, life has definitely been unfair in your favor. [AP via Yahoo! News]
* Some real-life law and order from a man known to die-hard L&O fans like myself as Chris Noth’s partner in the second season. (And, incidentally, it appears that the younger Sorvino daughter likes them as young as her brother-in-law.) [People]
* Napster rip-off Kazaa introduces its new YouTube rip-off called Joost. Why do I care? Because I wrote my law school thesis on Kazaa. And because Joost (as in “juiced”) is as stupid a name as “Kazaa.” [Los
Angeles Times]
- Enron, Latham & Watkins, Media and Journalism, Money, Pictures, Romance and Dating, Sean Berkowitz, Shopping
“And You Say He’s Just a Friend…”
By David LatLast year, Jesse Oxfeld — formerly of Gawker, now of New York Magazine — delivered this fun scoop:
Bethany McLean, the Enron-busting Fortune reporter who co-wrote The Smartest Guys in the Room, is dating the man who put Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling away. The fetching, recently divorced McLean, who covered the trial, is now seeing the lead prosecutor in the case, Sean Berkowitz, an assistant U.S. attorney from Chicago. “They started dating after the trial concluded, and after Bethany’s coverage of Enron was complete,” a Time Inc. spokeswoman e-mailed in response to an inquiry to McLean.
None of her fellow Enron-trial reporters question McLean’s professionalism, but post-trial, the relationship did seem unusually chummy. One notes that McLean attended Berkowitz’s birthday party in Chicago, held ten days after the verdict, and she was considered to be notably sympathetic to the prosecution’s case.
If you question the characterization of their relationship as “unusually chummy,” then check out the photograph that appears after the jump.
We’re not the only ones who spend way too much time curled up with the New York Times wedding announcements. So does NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams.
Here’s his amusing (and true) commentary on the “Vows” column, aka “the Big Box,” from his blog:
In my experience, brides in the Big Box have some common traits:
They are invariably “more at home in a pair of combat boots than they are in high heels.” They are ALWAYS described as “spontaneous.”The brides-to-be are a “constant blur of activity” and are apt to “kayak down the Hudson at Midnight on New Year’s Eve.”
Many of the men are in passionless relationships until they are hit squarely on the forehead by the club of love, in the form of the aforementioned combat-boot wearing free-spirited woman.
A fair number of these men, of course, are lawyers. Williams continues:
Weddings are always on a bluff, a dune or a “sweeping lawn,” and are usually officiated either by an Enormously Powerful Federal Judge who’s a friend of the family or a member of the online ministry community with names like “The New Life Church of the Free Spirit.” Participants seldom wear shoes.
“Enormously Powerful Federal Judge”: Isn’t that redundant?
Okay, fine, some federal judges are more powerful than others. And some federal judges officiate at NYT-featured weddings more than others. In our years of reading the “weddings and celebrations” page, we’ve noticed a lot of Judge Pierre N. Leval, of the Second Circuit. He appears to have officiated at almost 30 weddings profiled in the Times. See here.
A trivia challenge: Do you know of a federal judge who has officiated at more NYT weddings than Judge Leval? If so, please name him or her in the comments to this post.
Nonstop News [The Daily Nightly]
Brian Williams: ‘NYT’ Styles Section Is Like “Dessert on Paper” [Gawker]
- Blogging, Jessica Cutler, Prostitution, Robert Steinbuch, Romance and Dating, Sex, Sex Scandals, Trials
More on Steinbuch v. Cutler
By David LatWe were pretty lazy in our recent discussion of the upcoming trial in Steinbuch v. Cutler. And even our former colleagues at Wonkette were kind of phoning it in.*
But not everyone is so unmotivated. Over at Eat the Press, Melissa Lafsky — of Opinionistas fame — has penned an excellent analysis of this case and controversy. It’s exactly the sort of informed yet accessible account that would one expect from a lawyer-turned-writer, and we recommend it highly.
* We can hardly blame the Wonketteers for tiring of L’Affaire Washingtonienne. Wonkette has been covering that blogospheric sex scandal since since blogging was in its infancy.
(And yes, we think blogging has moved beyond the infant stage. But we concede that it’s not yet potty-trained.)
Sex, Bloggers & Privacy: Let The Lawsuits Begin [Eat the Press / Huffington Post]
-
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Hong Kong/China and Singapore US Associate Lateral Markets Improving With New Openings In Cap Markets, M&A, Fund Formation, Project Finance And FCPA / White Collar Litigation
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
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