But what about handcuffs?
I was not strapping on leather and bearing a whip. I have never done that. I have never taken part in an orgy. Ever.
– Amanda Knox, the American student who was convicted and then acquitted of the murder of Meredith Kercher, commenting on the absurdity of the theory of the case against her — specifically, that she had been a part of a “sex game gone horribly wrong.” Knox’s acquittal was recently overturned by Italy’s highest court.
* Amanda Knox is free, but could be retried. Can’t wait to see her Craigslist roommate ad. [New York Times]
* The budget deal still screws over the courts. [National Law Journal]
* You know, in 20 years, Republicans are going to be telling us that the federal government’s pot taxes are too high. [Washington Post]
* DLA Piper might get in trouble from bragging about the size… of its bills. [Dealbook]
* Michele Bachmann is under investigation for being a demon spawn of the fifth circle from… oh, wait sorry, they’re just looking at her use of campaign funds. [ABC News]
* Is anybody else unreasonably excited to hear what offensive, homophobic remark Justice Scalia makes today? [National Review]
* With everybody looking at gays, I wonder if this will be the day for the Supreme Court to declare the end of racism against white people while doing nothing about racism against black people with a 5-3 (Kagan recusing) decision on Fisher. [SCOTUSblog]
* So, this BlackBerry thing doesn’t seem to be going very well. [Forbes]
The case of Amanda Konx — nicknamed “Foxy Knoxy” by tabloid editors unwilling to let an attractive woman in the news live without a childish play on words — is back in Italian court, for what Knox hopes is the last time.
Knox, the American college student charged with killing another student while studying abroad in Italy, spent four years in jail before her murder conviction was overturned, but she deserved that jail time just for being a student at the University of Washington. Huck the Fuskies.
Now her case is back in Italian court…
Continue reading “Foxy Knoxy Appeal — Come on Italy, It’s Done. Get Over It.”
* Extra frothy: Santorum’s trifecta of wins in Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri has made Mitt Romney angry. Because even a guy who wins nonbinding primaries can be dangerous to a man’s campaign. [New York Times]
* Richard Holwell, the judge who presided over Rajabba the Hut’s case, will be resigning and starting a boutique firm with two partners jumping ship from Kasowitz Benson. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Joe Amendola claims that evidence is being withheld in his client’s case — evidence like the alleged victims’ phone numbers. Why does Sandusky need those? So he can call and breathe heavily into the phone? [Philadelpha Inquirer]
* Foxy Knoxy’s lawyer is appealing her slander conviction in Italy, claiming that the police “manipulated” her during questioning. You were already cleared of a murder charge, stop pushing your luck. [USA Today]
* It’s really too bad that Lindsay Lohan doesn’t employ Biglaw firms for all of her drama, because given what she’s spent on legal fees in recent years, those prized spring bonuses would assured. [Huffington Post]
* A man on trial for sex crimes at a Minnesota courthouse allegedly shot three people yesterday, including prosecutor Timothy Scannell. Guess it’s time to get a metal detector. [Duluth News Tribune]
* Instead of trying to force Citigroup’s hand on a tougher settlement, the SEC is appealing Judge Rakoff’s rejection of the original. Don’t want to make the SEC do more work now, judge. [Bloomberg]
* You’d think that by now, law schools facing scrutiny over employment data would be willing to turn over some information to Law School Transparency, but you’d be wrong. [National Law Journal]
* China’s King & Wood and Australia’s Mallesons Stephen Jaques are combining to form a happy family this March. If this were in Japan, they’d be the Godzilla of law firms. [Wall Street Journal]
* Obvious news alert: Foxy Knoxy was acquitted of murder because there wasn’t enough evidence to prove she was guilty of murder. Thanks for this brilliant observation, Judge Hellman. [CNN]
* The Toy & Action Figure Museum will be opening a lawyerly superhero exhibit. This generation of lawyers has no superheroes, because unemployment isn’t a super power. [ABA Journal]
Karolina Stefanski
* Anna Nicole Smith is still screwing old white men from beyond the grave. Biglaw firms want Heller Ehrman’s claims to be decided in federal court, not bankruptcy court. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Kirkland & Ellis is pledging $2.75M to Stanford Law over the next five years in an effort to convince more students to take douchey pictures in front of their office signage. [Stanford Daily]
* Slow and steady wins the race, especially when it comes to reporting the news. A few news sites were eager to let readers know that Amanda Knox lost her appeal… except she didn’t. [Atlantic Wire]
* The Supreme Court has rejected yet another Obama birther lawsuit. Legal reasoning? “STFU, we’ll probably only have to deal with this dude for another year.” [CBS News]
* TWU to NYPD: Please don’t force us to listen to these Occupy Wall Street fools. We’d rather have our regular crazies on board. Of course, their lawsuit says it a bit more eloquently. [Wall Street Journal]
* Karolina Stefanski is being sued by an ex over some blank checks to the tune of $80K. Seriously, who cheats on a Playboy model? I mean, come on, boobs. [New York Post]
Here is Matt Drudge’s pithy commentary:
Amanda Knox testified in her own defense in the appeal (which is allowed in Italy; the appellate court can revisit the facts). She told the eight-member jury, in Italian, “I’m not a promiscuous vamp. I’m not violent … I have not killed, I have not raped, I was not there, I was not present.”
After 11 hours of deliberation, the jury issued its verdict, overturning the convictions of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in the murder of Meredith Kircher, Knox’s former roommate. Congratulations to Knox and Sollecito, who now get to say ciao to prison.
Amanda Knox murder conviction overturned [MSNBC via Drudge Report]
* You realize that if the general public could kill all the lawyers and replace them with robots, they’d do it in a second. [Slate]
* Dear career women: choice is an illusion. [The Careerist]
* Moms can’t complain without being sued for defamation? [Overlawyered]
* Why be small enough to fail when you can be so big that the government has to bail you out? [The Volokh Conspiracy]
* Age discrimination in this economy wouldn’t happen as much if older people lied about their age on Facebook and Twitter. [Huffington Post]
* An update on the appeal of Amanda Knox, who was previously convicted, together with ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, of killing her former roommate, Meredith Kircher. [CNN]
* You gotta be kidding me, these Occupy Wall Street protests are still going on? [Washington Post]
* At least the protesters are providing good training for cops who like to use excessive force. [Dealbreaker]
* Criminals and foreclosure victims subject to criminal mortgage rates now have something in common in New York: guaranteed legal representation. [New York Times]
* Not getting your fill of Broadway injuries from Spider-Man? Then Billy Elliot’s got a deal for you — tickets now come with a complimentary face smash worth $4M. [New York Post]
* Dumb kids are going to continue to eat Play-Doh, no matter how it’s spelled. And trust me, “play dough,” edible or not, doesn’t taste good. [Boston Globe]
* You’d think that the government could do better than just saying “this stuff happens” when it comes to rape and gangbangs in the military. [MSNBC]
* Facebook: connecting you with the people around you. It’s just too bad that they sometimes bleed to death in the process. [Chicago Tribune]
* If libeling the police was a crime in the United States, a lot of more rappers would probably be in jail — or out of business. [CNN]
* Stephen Baldwin and Kevin Costner are fighting about water clean-up technology for oil spills. Um, hello, dude was in Waterworld, I think he knows his sh*t about water. [The Hill]
* I’m just a girl, but don’t speak, I know just what you’re saying. There is no doubt that this video game lawsuit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S. [Company Town / Los Angeles Times]
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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Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
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