[T]here’s been a very significant retrenchment of resources journalistically at the Supreme Court, and we’re going in the opposite direction. We’re putting more work into covering the Supreme Court than anyone in history.
* If President Obama could send a love note to California Attorney General Kamala Harris, it’d probably say something like this: “Girl, you look good. Won’t you back that ass up?” [ABC News]
* The fun things you learn during a Supreme Court justice’s book tour: apparently Sandra Day O’Connor dated William Rehnquist when they were at school together at Stanford Law. [Legal Times]
* When it comes to law firms, size really does matter. Quite a few midsize firms had the urge to merge in the first quarter of 2013, according to the latest Altman Weil survey. [Am Law Daily]
* In case you haven’t heard the news by now, NYU Law School has a new dean, and he was poached fresh from Columbia. The bonus here is that he’s actually pretty cute. We’ll have more on this story later today. [NYU Law News]
* Law faculties may be a tad too liberal, say some at Harvard Law School, which is basically a bastion of leftie law professors. Cut to Ted Cruz muttering about Commies under his breath. [USA Today]
* Here’s an obvious protip that may not be obvious to 0Ls: if you’re going to ask for a recommendation letter, you should probably make sure that it’s going to be a positive one. [U.S. News & World Report]
I leave it to others to decide whether Harry Blackmun was a poor constitutionalist. But based on what he achieved with Roe, he was surely a brilliant politician.
– Francis Wilkinson, a member of the Bloomberg View editorial board, commenting on the politics of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in light of the recent gay marriage debate.
* “Beware of conservatives bearing gifts.” While there may be a federalism argument to be made in the DOMA case, it’s really about discrimination. It’s too bad some are afraid to stand up and say that. [Opinionator / New York Times]
* Sooo… was Melvyn Weiss, founder of Milberg LLP, really old, really drunk, or really old and drunk when he allegedly recited part of the alphabet as, “H, I, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, S, X, U, V, W, S, I, C”? [Am Law Daily]
* “Can’t fire me, I quit” moments are much better when they involve partners. Ogletree’s ex-VP was asked to leave over a dispute with another lawyer, so he resigned. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* The U. of Arizona is thinking about lowering tuition by 11% for in-state students and 8% for out-of-state students. On behalf of your indebted students, MOAR doing and less thinking. [Arizona Republic]
* Earlier this week, Governor Chris Christie banned minors from using tanning beds without parental consent. Fare thee well, GTL. Young Jersey Shore wannabes must be weeping. [Clarion Ledger]
* Some Supreme Court analysts are speculating that Justice Clarence Thomas could cast a vote to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, but at this point, that’s just about as likely as him speaking during oral arguments. [Talking Points Memo]
* When a practice group laterals out of a firm en masse, you know things were probably going on behind the scenes for a while. Apparently Bingham’s securities enforcement crew was in very high demand by other Biglaw firms. [Am Law Daily]
* Hot on the heels of a merger ménage à trois, Dentons (fka SNR Denton) is already eyeing new growth possibilities across the globe. Guess they’re down with orgies now… [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]
* “Clients don’t hire us because of our sex. They hire us because we win.” This, from Hillary Richard, one of the female name partners of a largely all-female firm. You go girl! [DealBook / New York Times]
* Silly Cooley, a “second-tier” law school by any other name would smell as stank. Our nation’s second-best law school is considering a union with Western Michigan University. [National Law Journal]
* It’s amazing that sports betting is not legal in New Jersey. What possible moral wackadoodle says that it’s okay to have something like the Jersey Shore (the place, not just the TV show), but you can’t take Michigan to out-shoot the Syracuse zone and then break Louisville’s legs. [Legal Blitz]
* Cloud tools for lawyers. Or as partners understand them: “Newfangled virtual file cabinets.” [Smart File Blog]
* Pro se prisoner wins! He probably wouldn’t have had he consulted a lawyer. [Simple Justice]
* Actually, congratulations to Christopher J. Paolella, who argued before the Court on behalf of Kim Millbrook — and scored a 9-0 victory. [Reich & Paolella]
* Apparently “we gotta fix that” is Obama-speak for “Let’s form a commission to study how Republicans are disenfranchising voters instead of actually stopping them.” [NPR via Election Law Blog]
* Goodbye and good luck to Bruce Carton of Legal Blog Watch. [Legal Blog Watch]
* I thought this was a law already on the books in Mississippi. [The Onion]
* Instead of Angie’s List ranking law schools, I’d like to see U.S. News ranking plumbers. Undoubtedly, they’d use size of exposed butt crack as a key factor. [TaxProf Blog]
Looking back, the part of last week’s arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court that stands out most for me is the last hour (DOMA merits) — a fitting finale to two days of historic argument on same-sex marriage.
The way things unfolded, the last hour is why we all came. It is why people slept on the sidewalk for days. It is why Americans tuned in and logged on for updates. It is why the attorneys signed up to argue.
We were there to discuss the future of marriage in this country, how different people see it, and where state and federal governments fit in.
The Prop 8 argument went to those core issues the day before, but in fits and starts. A muddy hybrid of standing and merits.
The last hour of DOMA went there and stayed there. Merits were the only thing on the menu, and we ate it up….
My first crush was a girl in this class whose name was Theresa. She’s the one standing to the right of Mrs. Goins. She’s good-looking; I always had good taste.
* Can you DIG it?! Well, SCOTUS can’t, at least when it comes to the Prop 8 case, but perhaps that’s what the conservative justices planned all along. You can probably expect a judicial punt on this one. [New York Times]
* The case for cameras at the high court became even more compelling last week, because people just now realized that having to “spend money to see a public institution do public business is offensive.” Damn straight. [National Law Journal]
* Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s new book, Out of Order (affiliate link), didn’t exactly get a glowing review from the NYT’s Supreme Court correspondent, Adam Liptak. It’s a “gift shop bauble”? Ouch. [New York Times]
* Oh, Lanny Breuer, you tried to be all coy by saying you were interviewing elsewhere, but we knew you’d return to Covington. That “vice-chairman” title is a pretty sweet new perk, too. [Legal Times]
* DLA Piper’s bills may “know no limits,” but in-house counsel claim that while the firm’s emails were “flippant,” they won’t have an impact their already meticulous billing review. [New York Law Journal]
* The true love’s kiss of litigation: Bingham McCutchen’s Sleeping Beauty may have found her prince in Judge Vincent O’Neill Jr., because he ruled that the firm won’t be able to compel arbitration. [Recorder]
* It’s really not a good time to be a prosecutor in Texas. Two months after the murder of ADA Mark Hasse, DA Mike McLelland and his wife were gunned down in their home. RIP. [Dallas Morning News]
* Good news, everyone! The class of 2012 — the largest on record, according to the ABA — was only slightly more unemployed than its predecessors. Cherish the little things, people. [National Law Journal]
Despite his status as an Article III demigod, Chief Justice John Roberts is a man of the people. Instead of reclining on a divan while eating frozen grapes fed to him by eunuch law clerks, which is how I’d roll if I were the Chief Justice of the United States, JGR patronizes places like Cosi, Au Bon Pain, and Carmine’s.
And the chief even goes to Starbucks — where His Honor recently revealed something surprising about himself….
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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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[T]here’s been a very significant retrenchment of resources journalistically at the Supreme Court, and we’re going in the opposite direction. We’re putting more work into covering the Supreme Court than anyone in history.
