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Morning Docket: 06.07.13

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Tax Men?

* Oh, and by the way, it’s not just Verizon that the NSA is spying on. It’s every major phone and internet provider, too. They must see an amazing amount of foreign pornography on video chat. [Guardian]

* The IRS is under siege over its conservative targeting scandal, and now a training video parodying Mad Men has surfaced with a focus on “customer service.” How incredibly ironic. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Francine Griesing, the woman who sued Greenberg Traurig for $200M over the firm’s so-called “boys’ club” (and later quietly settled), has tips for women who want to succeed in the law. [Am Law Daily]

* This ruling has to do with collecting fees following a law school clinic victory, but the key takeaway is that law students’ “time and effort still has monetary value.” Hear that, ABA? [National Law Journal]

* Rutgers Law-Camden is trying to recover from “an existential threat” after its class size unexpectedly dropped by more than 50 percent. But… that’s a good thing these days. [Philadelphia Business Journal]

* A judge dismissed Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett’s lawsuit against the NCAA for “fail[ing] to advance the ball.” How kind of her to entertain us with some football references. [Legal Intelligencer]

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Lawyerly Lairs: Judge Judy Parts With Pricey Pied-à-Terre

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Judge Judy makes partners look like paupers.

Don’t pee on her leg and tell her it’s raining (affiliate link). Instead, relieve yourself inside the powder room of Judge Judy’s former pied-à-terre.

Maybe it has a gold-plated urinal? If it doesn’t, it should. Isn’t $8.5 million for two bedrooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms a bit steep?

Also steep: the $17,411 a month in common charges. That’s right, common charges, maintenance — not the mortgage, not the real estate taxes.

But the Honorable Judith Sheindlin, better known as “Judge Judy,” can afford it. How much does she make a year? And just how fabulous is this judicial diva’s former courtroom in the sky?

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Non-Sequiturs: 06.06.13

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* A recovering attorney is starting a cake pop business. Never had a cake pop? Then you’re dumb. Or, I guess, diabetic. Sorry if you’re diabetic. [Kickstarter]

* Wondering what happened to the survivors of the crash of the USS Vengeance in the new Star Trek movie? This is how their trials would likely go down. [The Legal Geeks]

* If you’re looking for a new dean for your law school, look no further. [Law Prof Blawg]

* Student debt is crushing the business dreams of a Tulane law grad. Apparently she just can’t make her payments running her sorority recruiting business. Wait a minute? I thought “sororities” handle “sorority recruiting.” [Bloomberg]

* New York City feels hipsters everyone needs to be warned not to wear bowling shoes outside. [Lowering the Bar]

* As promised, the second installment of an interview with biochemist attending Yale Law School. [Science to Law]

* Before rising 3Ls realize nobody is coming to interview them, maybe we should point them towards the Schola2Juris program of Waller Lansden? It’s application period opens on June 7th. [Schola2Juris]

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From Biglaw to Boutique: Dress Code

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Tom Wallerstein

A law school friend told me about a deposition he defended in Waco, Texas, where the temperature reached 105 degrees. At the time, my friend Geoff was an associate at a stuffy BigLaw firm, and there was never any doubt that he was required to wear a suit. And especially because the deposition was videotaped, the witness did, too.

Plaintiffs’ counsel was the owner of a smallish firm in Florida and he showed up wearing shorts, sandals and a short-sleeved polo shirt.

When they arrived at the deposition location, Geoff and his witness were dismayed to learn that the air conditioning wasn’t working. As the day progressed, the conference room grew increasingly warm. By late morning, the witness was restless and hot and kept firing glances across the room to the dormant air conditioner. The video was priceless; every answer was punctuated by the witness sweating and mopping his forehead. Geoff told me later that he thought his witness looked like he was lying even when he wasn’t.

Learn the truth about Geoff’s deposition…

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‘Anti-Semitic Elmo’ Thinks Law School Tickles!

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I should have gone to law school instead of doing the e-learning.

– Dan Sandler, commenting on a career alternative he might have pursued had he not become an anti-Semitic street performer in an Elmo costume. Sandler was recently charged with grand larceny, aggravated harassment, and stalking, after allegedly attempting to extort $2 million from the Girl Scouts of the USA.

(On second thought, he’d like to “continue doing [his] Elmo gig because [he] make[s] a lot of money.” Ideally, he’d like to do it for the rest of his life.)

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Live CLE for Young Lawyers – Saturday, June 8 and Sunday, June 9 – New York, NY

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Join Lawline.com‘s Bridge the Gap weekend to satisfy an entire year’s requirement of New York Newly-Admitted CLE Credits for only $249. Receive a total of 16 CLE credits that cover 3 Ethics, 6 Skills, and 7 Professional Practice credits required for new attorneys. Location 55 Exchange Place, 5th Floor, New York, NY. Register here.

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A Legal Career Can Be Hazardous For Your Waistline

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Everyone likes to think that real lawyers are as glamorous, thin, and gorgeous as the ones they see on television, but that’s sadly not the case. Sure, some lawyers in the real world are beautiful, but the key word there is some. The truth is that most are just average in the looks department, and as we learned in Clueless, many, many more are like full-on Monets — from far away, they’re okay, but up close, they’re a big old mess. Oh, and most of them are overweight.

And just like that, “Fat Week” continues on Above the Law…

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Jury Sez: Killing a Hooker Is A-OK. Guess Which State!

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Oh come on, this will be fun.

Here are the details: The defendant, Ezekiel Gilbert, 30, shot and killed an escort that he’d hired off Craigslist. The woman was paralyzed and ultimately died several months later. Gilbert was charged in the killing and walks because he says the woman refused to have sex with him.

So the jury acquitted him because she had it coming for not doing her job.

Biglaw partners in this state had a cocktail party to celebrate this new motivating factor for young associates.

Any guesses on the state?

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How Much Would You Pay To Go To ‘Law Camp’?

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When Professor Paul Caron of TaxProf Blog sent me a link to a story on his blog last night, all I could do is hit “reply all” and say, “Are you sh**ting me,” only without the bleeps.

I think, my friends, I have seen the most desperate and naked money grab by a law school in the modern era. They’re only asking for a thousand dollars, but if you know somebody willing to pay it, you should just steal $1,000 from them and punch them until they figure out why…

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Caption Contest: Choose Your Own Bar Exam Adventure

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Bar exam prep season is officially upon us. Until the end of July, your Facebook news feed will be plagued by updates from recent law grads who feel the need to languish in their own self-imposed agony. Your Twitter feed will run rampant with hashtags about the #barexam and impending doom (e.g., #baddecision, #killmenow, #torture, #iwelcomedeath, #stuDYING). To put it plainly, these people are in the depths of despair.

Nothing could possibly make their lives worse at this point, but they made their choice long ago to suffer this fate. They could have quit before reaching this point, but this was the path they chose.

Why not rub their misery in their faces?

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Old Politicians Never Die, They Just… Join Law Firms

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Former Senator John ‘McDreamy’ Edwards

It’s perhaps unfair to bastardize General MacArthur’s famous farewell speech to Congress, but there’s a fitting juxtaposition between informing politicians of the honor of fading away from the public scene while those very politicians run to law firms to continue lobbying their former colleagues.

It’s a career path ordained by God.

Which is why it’s newsworthy when three prominent, but out of work, political figures eschew a lobbying practice to be real lawyers…

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A Tale of Sound & Fury (But No Transcript): In Defense of Judge Edith Jones

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Several organizations filed a Complaint of Judicial Misconduct against Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones earlier this week. The complaint charges Judge Jones with a variety of offenses, but the headline-getter is the claim that she made racist remarks during her speech on February 20, 2013, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s chapter of the Federalist Society.

With no transcript or recording of the event, the 12-page complaint relies on the affidavits of a few individuals who attended the speech, including Marc Bookman, the Director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation. Bookman’s affidavit serves as the primary account, with the other affiants agreeing and adding relatively few details. About a week before the Penn Fed Soc speech, Bookman published an essay in Mother Jones titled “How Crazy Is Too Crazy to Be Executed?”, about Texas murderer Andre Thomas. Whether Bookman intended ahead of time to use his account of the Fed Soc event as the basis of a misconduct complaint or not, he was likely expecting to be offended when he attended a Federalist Society speech called “Federal Death Penalty Review” by a pro-death-penalty, Texas-based judge. Just a guess….

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