More than a decade ago, Cory Maples of Alabama murdered two people. After an evening of heavy drinking, playing pool, and riding around in a friend’s car, Maples killed two friends, shooting them execution-style.

According to court documents, he signed a confession, “stating that he: (1) shot both victims around midnight; (2) had drunk six or seven beers by about 8 p.m., but ‘didn’t feel very drunk’; and (3) did not know why he decided to kill the two men. Faced with this confession, Maples’s trial attorneys argued that Maples was guilty of murder, but not capital murder.”

A jury found Maples guilty and sentenced him to death.

Maples appealed his capital murder conviction with the help of attorneys at Sullivan & Cromwell:

Maples subsequently filed a petition for post-conviction relief pursuant to Alabama Rule of Criminal Procedure 32, claiming, inter alia, that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to investigate or present evidence of: (1) Maples’s mental health history; (2) his intoxication at the time of the crime; and (3) his alcohol and drug history.

The trial court dismissed Maples’ Rule 32 petition, and sent notice of the decision to the attorneys at Sullivan & Cromwell and to local Alabama counsel. There was a 42-day period for filing a notice of appeal, but all the lawyers involved dropped the ball on the case, PepsiCo-style.

So what’s the explanation for S&C’s missing the deadline for filing an appeal?

We wrote earlier today about Brian Schroeder’s Halloween misadventures. On the morning of October 31, the Harvard Law ‘09 grad set fire to a chapel housing the remains of unidentified 9/11 victims. He turned himself in that evening.

Sidley Austin has responded to our inquiry regarding Schroeder, who had summered with the firm in 2008. The firm says it officially rescinded Schroeder’s job offer today.

Many have written to us about Schroeder, expressing surprise that he would do something like this. A collection of comments, after the jump.

Faithful Coca-Cola drinkers can laugh about this one. PepsiCo is having a rough month, reports the National Law Journal. PepsiCo’s purified water brand, Aquafina, has cost it a pretty penny.

Charles Joyce and James Voigt of Wisconsin sued PepsiCo earlier this year for stealing their idea of bottling and selling purified water. They claim that they had confidential discussions with distributors about the idea in 1981 and that the distributors passed those trade secrets along to Pepsi. It sounds like a bit of a ridiculous lawsuit; PepsiCo calls their accusations “dubious.”

But the Wisconsin men won. They won big. They won $1.26 billion dollars.

How did they win? By default judgment. PepsiCo’s lawyers never responded to the complaint, and the judge awarded the Wisconsin plaintiffs a default judgment.

Why did the Pepsi people never respond? Meet PepsiCo legal secretary, Kathy Henry.

SMU Dedman School of Law in Texas has turned out at least one charmer. We now have evidence that it can produce the not-so-charming type as well. Multiple readers alerted us to this thread on Reddit.com: How to Get Kicked Out of Grad School Before You Even Start.

It’s an email conversation between Jonathan Eakman, an SMU Dedman law school student, and the admissions office of the SMU Cox School of Business. Eakman was supposed to start the MBA portion of a JD/MBA joint program this fall. Before starting classes, MBA students must complete three mandatory online tests. These emails track Eakman’s series of excuses for not taking the tests. They include “having too much fun this summer” and “a car wreck, computer problems, stupid family issues and a kidney stone scare.”

He asks the admissions office to “be cool on this” since, in a previous job, he “dodged having to take responsibility for a billion dollar budget, so [he knows] what [he’s] doing.” It only gets more hilarious from there.

We contacted Jonathan Eakman by Facebook. After the jump, we give you the email thread as well as the postscript. SMU Cox Business School did not greet Eakman with open arms on the first day of school.

Ed. note: This post has been updated from the original version. Please see below.

The only thing worse than being tied to your BlackBerry at all hours is missing something important because you were not tied to your BlackBerry the hour you were needed.

Wait, this just in. There is something worse than missing a crucial request because you weren’t checking your BlackBerry. That would be when the partner you are working for emails all of the firm’s associates reminding them to compulsively check their BlackBerries because of your mistake.

Welcome to the world of a Quinn Emanuel associate. The associate apparently didn’t send a fax because he hadn’t been checking emails after business hours. QE partner Bill Urquhart decided to use the incident as a teaching moment for the entire firm:

From: A William Urquhart.
To: Attorneys.
Time: 9:21 a.m.
Re: CHECK YOU [sic] EMAILS OFTEN

Now more than ever there are many talented lawyers and law firms competing for our business. Doing really good legal work is not enough. Clients expect that and well they should given what we charge for our services You must all realize that we are in a service business. In this day and age of faxes, emails, internet, etc. clients expect you to be accessible 24\7. Of course, that is something of an exaggeration—but not much.

LESSON NUMBER ONE: You should check your emails early and often. That not only means when you are in the office, it also means after you leave the office as well. Unless you have very good reason not to (for example when you are asleep, in court or in a tunnel), you should be checking your emails every hour. One of the last things you should do before you retire for the night is to check your email. That is why we give you blackberries. I can assure you that all of our clients expect you to be checking your emails often. I am not asking you to do something we do not do ourselves. I can assure you that John Quinn, Peter Calamari, Mike Carlinsky, Faith Gay, Fred Lorig, etc. all check their emails often.

Yesterday I was working with a relatively new associate on a project which both he and I knew was a rush. It was for a relatively new client whom we were trying to impress. The associate did a nice job under pressure. Before I left the office at about 7:30 I sent an email to this associate asking him to perform a task—fax a draft letter for review and comment. I assumed the task was done. Turns out the associate left the office and did not check his emails until this morning. I assumed the task had been completed. It had not been. In this case it was no harm no foul, but I think we can all imagine scenarios when this could be a disaster.

CORRECTION: The original version of this post had a line in the blockquote that was not in the Urquhart email. (It was actually commentary on the email from a source.) That line has been removed. I apologize for posting an incorrect version of the email.

That’s harsh. But is it fair?

We thought something was off about the discussion of the recruiting situation at Yale Law School in last week’s big New York Times article about the tough legal job market.

It turns out we were right. Check out this correction, which appeared in yesterday’s paper:

An article on Wednesday about a cutback in hiring by law firms misstated several firms’ recruitment decisions involving Yale Law School. Two firms — Baker & McKenzie and Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy — did not register for the program in 2009; another, White & Case, registered but dropped its registration before scheduling any interviews. None of the firms “canceled interviews in New Haven.”

The errors were brought to the attention of the Times by a YLS spokesperson, who explained that the school was never contacted by the reporter and had no idea as to where he obtained his information.

“No students were ‘stunned’ by the canceling of any interviews,” the spokesperson explained to ATL. “That just simply did not happen.”

Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools [New York Times]

Earlier: All the News That’s Fit to Recycle

We realize that Elie makes we make our fair share of typographical errors here at ATL. But this is just a blog, not a document being sent to a client or filed with a court, and we’re more focused on substance than style, due to the speed of the news cycle and our desire to be… FIRST! So please cut us some slack.

(But do continue to point out typos to us, either in the comments or by email. Readers are our unofficial copy editors, and we frequently fix typos after they’ve been brought to our attention.)

In any event, at least our typos don’t cost anyone millions. From the New York Times:

The Rushmore, a new 41-story glass and stone condominium tower on Riverside Boulevard at the Hudson River, seemed serene on a recent visit. The flowers in the interior courtyard were in full bloom; the ground-level pool had been filled. Sixteen buyers had already moved in.

And yet an error of a single digit in an arcane document — the densely worded 732-page offering plan — could upset that happy picture, and cost the sponsors, the Extell Development Company and the Carlyle Group, tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue, lawyers say.

Of course, this isn’t the first example of an expensive typo (assuming it’s a typo; this is open to debate). Remember the $900,000 comma, or the $40,000 missing “L”?

But, if given effect, the glitch in the Rushmore offering plan will certainly be one of the more expensive ones. Find out the nature of the mistake — and the law firm responsible — after the jump.

Last summer, Winston & Strawn only had a 90% offer rate for summer associates. Last year, that was worrisome. This year, summers would likely injure baby seals for a 90% offer rate.

Summers are getting nervous, and it appears that a video conference from Winston’s managing partner, Tom Fitzgerald, didn’t help matters. Here is one tipster’s report of the proceedings:

The entire Winston summer class watched a video-conference speech given by Tom Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald explained that we would be notified of offers during Labor Day weekend. We were also told that the demand for legal services has plummeted, and that we were very talented and would do well no matter whatever field or firm we joined. He even talked about some past Winston summers who went on to do great things … Overall Tom seemed to be preparing us for a slaughter come September. He also mentioned at the end of his address that those who did get offers would start January 2011 at the earliest. Needless to say the summers were feeling pretty s****y.

We haven’t been able to confirm that Winston & Strawn will be instituting a mandatory deferral for summers that receive an offer to return full-time.

Of course, it’s not all bad news for the firm. Just last week, Winston hired Thomas Cottingham III and a number of other attorneys from Hunton & Williams. The move should bolster Winston’s Charlotte office — good news for the firm, as well as the city of Charlotte.

But expanding during a recession is always a difficult thing to do. After the jump, take a look at one attorney’s thoughts about how Winston’s expansion in China is going — thoughts apparently intended for the firm’s former and current chairmen, but accidentally disseminated firm-wide.

UPDATE AFTER THE JUMP (1:00 P.M.): One Winston tipster says the “attorney” weighing in on the Chinese expansion is just a spammer.

Here’s a blast email that went out last night to journalists who regularly receive updates from the U.S. Department of Justice. This particular press release was issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana.

Pay special attention to the subject line.

Fifteen minutes later, a corrected version went out. It was identical to the original version, except for a new subject line: “CORRECTED: FEDERAL GRAND JURY RETURNS INDICTMENT ON INTERNET BOMB THREATS.”

If you’d like to read the full press release, notwithstanding its manifest suckiness, we’ve posted it after the jump.

For a Midwestern firm, Husch Blackwell drew a lot of comments (and a huge amount of email) yesterday. Perhaps that had something to do with the fact that firm chairman Dave Fenley

declined to use the term “layoffs” in connection with the firm’s actions, saying the term wrongly implied the attorneys were let go because business at the firm had slackened.

Well, there was a firm-wide meeting yesterday at the large Midwestern firm (yesterday, I incorrectly categorized the firm as “mid-sized” — my bad), and Fenley apologized … almost. A tipster reports:

Fenley admitted being a “bonehead” in his communications yesterday.

But Fenley couldn’t keep his foot out of his mouth for a whole meeting. More wisdom from Husch after the jump.

K&L Gates associates have not heard about their 2008 bonus or their 2009 raises yet. Bonus news is historically late at the firm, and raise news should come in March.

In the meantime, associates got an unexpected bonus along with their second paycheck of the year. This is an excerpt from the e-mail associates received yesterday:

Please see the email below regarding an error with the direct deposit of the January 22nd payroll. In short the issue is that your payroll appears to have been deposited 3 times and the firm is in the process of request [sic] 2 of those be returned. So, please be careful not to spend more then your normal pay until you see that they [sic] corrections have been made to your account.

On the downside, K&L uses an inept payroll company. On the upside, the firm’s cash flow must be nice and healthy if it can afford to triple pay all of its associates. Indeed, as we reported yesterday, profits per partner at K&L are up.

The associate who sent the e-mail along to us is a brave one:

they said they’d take it out by early next week. i think i could head up to atlantic city. triple it. then put it back in my account by next monday.

Sounds like a plan to us. Not a good plan, but a plan. Full e-mail from the director of payroll after the jump.

The second time was a charm. Constitutional crisis averted.

Okay, it was hardly a “constitutional crisis.” But it was probably wise to take a mulligan on the oath, to avoid crackpot claims of illegitimacy. In the words of law professor Jonathan Turley, who recommended retaking the oath:

He should probably go ahead and take the oath again. If he doesn’t, there are going to be people who for the next four years are going to argue that he didn’t meet the constitutional standard. I don’t think it’s necessary, and it’s not a constitutional crisis. This is the chief justice’s version of a wardrobe malfunction.

Turley seems to place blame for the screw-up on Chief Justice Roberts, as does CNN (see their headline below). Based on the results of yesterday’s reader poll, ATL readers concur.

Obama retakes oath of office after Roberts’ mistake [CNN]
Experts say Obama should retake the oath [San Francisco Chronicle]
Reading of the Presidential Oath, Take Two? [WSJ Law Blog]

Earlier: Whoops. How does that Constitution go?

As we type this, our fingers are still thawing from standing in the cold on the National Mall during today’s inauguration. The number of people willing to brave the cold was impressive. Every time President Barack Obama appeared on a jumbotron screen, the crowd went crazy with shouts of “O-bam-a” and “Yes, we did.”

The crowd quieted down in order to hear Obama take the oath of office. But what followed was a bit confusing. SCOTUS Chief Justice and now-President Barack Obama appeared to be talking over one another. In the crowd, people started asking, “Who screwed it up?”

MSNBC.com reports that Roberts is to blame:

The Constitution prescribes the text: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

But Chief Justice John Roberts, using no notes, flubbed his lines, and Obama knew it.

First, Obama jumped in before the “do solemnly swear” phrase, which seemed to throw the chief justice off his stride. Roberts rendered the next phrase as “that I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully.”

“That I will execute,” Obama repeated, then paused like a school teacher prompting his student with a slight nod. Roberts took another shot at it: “The off … faithfully the pres … the office of President of the United States.”

Is there a little pro-Obama bias there? We’re not so sure Roberts is totally to blame. As one ATL commenter says:

First Flub: Obama. Roberts proceeds with the swearing in and Obama jumps the gun before Roberts gets done. Second Flub: Roberts.

Watch the video here. What do you think?

Read the transcript from MSNBC.com, and see our take, after the jump.

Earlier this week, we created an open thread for the sharing of on-campus interview screw-ups. We then picked out a few favorite tales from the thread, and asked you to vote for the best (or worst?) of the bunch.

Here are the results:

You can read the winning story by clicking here.

Many of you seemed to enjoy the horror stories — and they’re informative, too, providing lessons about behavior to avoid. But don’t put too much weight on them. As one commenter observes:

[The problem with these stories] is that they presume that the stupid act in question was the sole reason the person didn’t get a callback. Not everybody at OCI gets callbacks. Plenty of people who don’t do one stupid thing in an interview don’t get callbacks. I suspect that these stories of stupidity are actually rationalizations for rejection.

See also this comment:

People who think they got rejected because they accidentally dropped a business card on their way out are deluding themselves. They tell themselves these bullshit tales of woe because if you think you got dinged because you dropped a business card, then next time you can tuck it into your portfolio tighter. And then you’ll SURELY get the offer! But the truth - that you are getting rejected because you are a mediocre student at a [mediocre] law school who should have tried to get a job at a mutual fund instead of spending $200,000 to learn about community property - that’s a lot harder to fix.

Loyola 2L, we missed you.

So, readers, what do you think? Are interview bloopers irrelevant because there may be other, less conspicuous reasons for not getting a callback or offer (e.g., you just didn’t stand out)? Or are they irrelevant because the hiring process is so “paper driven,” i.e., all about your transcript, resume, and law school ranking?

Earlier: OCI Bloopers By Students: Selected Stories (and a Poll)
OCI Bloopers By Students: Share Your Horror Stories

Last week we covered some goings-on — or non-goings-on, to those of you who found them boring — at Shearman & Sterling. Here’s a quick update.

We reported that, according to the firm, there have been no staff layoffs. One source writes:

I’d like to know how they define administrative staff, as they laid off their entire word processing / document production center (i.e legal word processors, proofreaders, EDGAR operators, and supervisors) in February 2007. It has since been disastrously outsourced….

Outsourcing from a year and a half ago isn’t what we had in mind when we asked about recent layoffs. But we pass that along, for what it’s worth; we do aim to be accurate.

In the comments, there were some rumors about start dates for 2009 associates. We’re looking into the rumors and will report back. If you can confirm, please email us.

Update: We’re still waiting for official word from the firm, but one Shearman offeree confirms that yes, start dates for incoming associates next year will be no earlier than November 30, 2009.

Finally, we wondered whether there might be an interesting story surrounding the one out of 140 summer associates who didn’t get an offer. It turns out that there is.

Find out what it takes to get no-offered by Shearman these days, after the jump.

Their personal identity information gets compromised by data breaches. From the Washington Post:

Sometime late last year, an employee of a McLean investment firm decided to trade some music, or maybe a movie, with like-minded users of the online file-sharing network LimeWire while using a company computer. In doing so, he inadvertently opened the private files of his firm, Wagner Resource Group, to the public.

That exposed the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of about 2,000 of the firm’s clients, including a number of high-powered lawyers and Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer….

A spokesman for Breyer said the justice had no comment on the security breach, which came to light after the reader notified Security Fix and the blog alerted some of the Wagner clients.

Eh, but who cares about lowly — or low-paid — Supreme Court justices? Lordly law firm partners were also victimized: “‘This may explain why two weeks ago I got a $9,000 cellphone bill from AT&T,’ said Steven Agresta, a partner with the law firm Alston & Bird.”

Or maybe a certain A&B summer associate got a hold of Agresta’s cell phone, and decided to call his homies back in Croatia. Did Agresta also get charged for a small fortune in necktie purchases?

Update: Some of you have asked for an update about Divljan Shatterhand Steele. He’s still a summer associate at Alston & Bird, where he is doing well and has become something of a minor celebrity.

Justice Breyer Is Among Victims in Data Breach Caused by File Sharing [Washington Post via Drudge]

While we’re on the subject of Supreme Court clerks…

The AMK clerk who worked on Kennedy v. Louisiana, in which the Court held that imposing the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, has committed an even bigger boo-boo than the JGR clerk who screwed up the Bob Dylan quotation.

As noted yesterday, sometimes the Elect are “just like us.”

In Court Ruling on Executions, a Factual Flaw [New York Times]
The Supremes Dis the Military Justice System [CAAFlog]

Earlier this year, the Office of Career Services at NYU Law School sent out a very informative memo offering advice to future summer associates. We got our hands on it, so we thought we’d share. If you are a current or future summer associate, you should read it; check it out in full, after the jump.

The best part of the memo, “Real World Examples of Career Limiting Behavior,” is essentially a “greatest hits” list of summer-associate screw-ups, bloopers, and faux pas. They range from the mildly embarrassing to the offer-killing. We’ve reproduced it below.

The memo is titled “How To Succeed As A Summer Associate.” Think of these items as “How NOT To Succeed As A Summer Associate — or, alternatively, “How To Succeed As A Summer Ass.”

VIII. Real World Examples of Career Limiting Behavior:

A. Unimpressed with the quality of the wine being served at the summer welcome dinner, summer associate orders a special bottle of wine. To make matters worse, summer associate charges the wine to the firm.

B. Summer associate complains about having a windowless office and then claims to have been “promised” a window during the interview process.

C. Summer associate is criticized for filing motion without attachments … summer associate blames the secretary.

D. Summer associate shows up at all firm events involving food, and is so busy eating that they fail to socialize with anyone else.

E. Summer associate makes typographical errors in memoranda.

F. Summer associate paints their toenails in the office, assuming 10 p.m. is “her own time”.

G. Summer associate refuses to work past 7:00 p.m. or on weekends.

H. Summer associate sleeps 12 hours a day during the firm’s three-day sailing trip.

I. Summer associate fails to Shepardize.

J. Summer associate yells at support staff.

K. Summer associate misses a deadline.

L. Summer associate makes up citation to support the position he/she is trying to prove in a brief filed with the court (resulting in immediate termination and letter to Board of Professional Responsibility).

M. Wishing to play on the firm’s ice hockey team, summer associate loudly and persistently discusses their skill as a high school hockey player and claims that he would easily be the best player on the ice. The senior associate who organizes the team is a former NHL player.

N. Summer associate decides to give client legal advice without the express permission of supervising attorney.

O. Summer associate refuses to make edits to a draft brief because “I was an English major in college and I know your edits are incorrect.”

By the way, “Career-Limiting Behavior” is our new favorite expression. We’re going to start using that more often around here.

That’s just the start of the list; it’s rather long, but entertaining (and enlightening). Read the rest, plus the full memo, after the jump.

That’s what our colleagues over at Dealbreaker are reporting. But we just checked in with them, and they don’t know whether it was an in-house lawyer at JP Morgan Chase or someone at Wachtell Lipton, JPMorgan’s outside counsel on the deal. If you have more details, please email us.

P.S. If you’re not familiar with what’s going on here, read this earlier ATL post and this earlier Dealbreaker post, which supply the necessary background.

Update: A source at our former firm reports that “everyone at WLRK who worked on JPM/BS is still very much ‘with the firm.’” This is consistent with the chatter in the comments, to the effect that the lawyer in question works in-house at JPMorgan Chase.

People Moves: Anyone Need A Lawyer? [Dealbreaker]

Earlier: Wachtell Lipton: Fallible After All?

When judges preside over law school moot court arguments, like the one at Columbia Law School last week, they often dish out this compliment to the student advocates: “You’re better than most of the practicing lawyers who appear before us.”

And maybe they’re not just being nice. If we had gotten to this item a bit earlier — it’s from last week — Roger Phipps would have been a Lawyer of the Day. We’re happy to declare him our Lawyer of Last Week.

Over at the Legal Profession Blog, Professor Alan Childress draws attention to this per curiam opinion (PDF) by the Fifth Circuit. Here’s an excerpt:

[W]e would be remiss if we did not comment on the conduct of Roger Phipps, counsel for Hartz, during oral argument in this case on Tuesday, March 4, 2008. Phipps’ conduct towards the Court during argument was unprofessional. Even more serious was his admission that during his work on the case (including his preparation for argument), he had not read a key Supreme Court case. His cavalier disregard for his client’s interest and for his obligation to the Court was both troubling and disgraceful. [FN4]

Accordingly, we are ordering Phipps to provide his client, Hartz, a copy of our opinion immediately after it is released. In order to ensure compliance, we are further directing him to supply our Court with proof of service.

Ouch. So what did Phipps do to incur the court’s wrath?

Read the text of footnote four, after the jump.

Update: For a postscript to this story, see here.