Law students gone wild? What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas when the allegations get this ugly.
A pair of men who appear to be Boalt Hall law students have made national — and even international — news. Keep reading for the disturbing allegations against them….
Continue reading “Law Students of the Weekend: Alleged Berkeley Bird Beheaders”
* This is why you shouldn’t feed your illegal pet monkey Frosted Flakes — or own an illegal pet monkey, I guess. [Chicago Tribune]
* In other incredible pet law news, a Rhode Island woman is not pleased that her neighbor’s cockatoo has been calling her a “f**king whore.” Awk! Polly want a restraining order? [Legal Blog Watch]
* This is a pretty good round-up of the summer’s most whacked-out legal stories. Think naked people covered in Crisco, kids destroying thousands of dollars in MacBooks — by peeing on them — and a nasty death-by-sex situation. [Legally Weird]
* Making people log in to unsubscribe from junk email isn’t only annoying as sh*t, it’s also probably illegal (as it freaking should be). [Ars Technica]
* A “Man-gina” lawsuit from Texas. I don’t need to say any more. [Houston Press]
* This dude says smoking pot made him a better dad. I somehow doubt this is part of Elie Mystal’s preparation regimen for the stork’s impending arrival. [New York Times]
* Congratulations to everyone who just passed the MPRE — you can learn your score on the MPRE website. [MPRE]
Talk about a pole tax…
* Dewey know if Citibank is planning to sue other former D&L partners over their capital contribution loans? According to one court document filed by Luskin Stern & Eisler, the bank’s counsel, the fun has just gotten started. [Am Law Daily]
* Unlike the voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina, the Department of Justice has approved New Hampshire’s law of the same ilk. Apparently hippies from the “Live Free or Die” state are incapable of discrimination against minorities. [CNN]
* Arizona, on the other hand, can discriminate against minorities all the live long day — for now. A federal judge ruled that the “show me your papers” provision of S.B. 1070, the state’s strict immigration law, may be enforced. [Bloomberg]
* The latest argument raised in the case over the Mongolian Tyrannosaurus Bataar skeleton is that the bones are actually a “Frankenstein model based on several creatures.” This movie is getting boring. [WSJ Law Blog]
* “[T]he state of New York doesn’t get to be a dance critic.” We’re sure that any man would gladly tell the New York Court of Appeals that lap dancing is a form of art, but should it enjoy a tax exemption? [Associated Press]
I’ve been going through comments looking for a Comment of the Week, and I’ve got to say that the entries were not strong.
Part of that has been the news cycle: there have been a lot of posts about rape and child porn this week. Predictably, the comments have been filled with largely inappropriate comments about porn and inaccurate comments about rape (seriously commenters, I hope some of you are trolling, otherwise a bunch of you are just date rapists trying to justify ridiculous behavior).
Instead of going with some obvious Todd Akin riff, I’m going with a comment that was largely overlooked, on a story that many of you missed. But I think once I play one of the greatest clips in movie history, you’ll all understand….
Continue reading “Comment of the Week: Let’s Talk About the Birds and the… No, NOT THE BEES”
Bees: nature's most lovable insect.
Here’s a fun way to deal with declining law school applications across the country. UVA Law is literally sweetening the deal for their students. The school is now providing free honey in Slaughter Hall. That’s where UVA houses its student organizations, in addition to some administrative offices.
I think it’s a great idea. Honey is a tasty treat that… wait, hold on, I’m getting some new information. Sorry, sources are now reporting that the the free honey is due to an… am I hearing this right… an infestation of bees at the law school.
Can you pop a collar on a beekeeper suit?
Continue reading “UVA Law Tries To Attract More Law Students With Honey Than With Collars”
We talk a lot around these parts about the versatility (or lack thereof) of a law degree. Does a J.D. help you grab non-law related jobs? Maybe, maybe not.
But for certain brave — or maybe just kooky — individuals, there are jobs for which a J.D. is really neither here nor there. Think truck driver, sommelier, or a guy who lives in the woods and extracts venom from poisonous rattlesnakes for a living. You might have to sacrifice the corner office, but you make up for it with the thrill of dangerous living. The pay ain’t so bad either…
Continue reading “Career Alternatives: Rattlesnake Venom Extractor, a.k.a. ‘Pure Badass’”
I’m not going to pretend to care about Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. And here’s why: I don’t care about vampires, werewolves, trolls, magical rings, wands, space, fantasy or anything that encourages nerds of the world to be even more annoying. I am tired of walking by hoards of absolute losers waiting in costume at 4 p.m. for a midnight showing of a 3D movie about sexy blue people that live in a fake jungle on a different planet. I will not read a 700-page book about wizards and gargoyles. And since I do not wear Pink University sweatpants, listen to “OneDirection” or hang out at Cinnabon at the mall, there is absolutely no reason for me to see, or care, about Twilight.
But I do care about Twilight dogs. Obviously we all do.
You’ve no doubt heard that shifty minx “KStew” cheated on “RPat,” her boyfriend of three years, with Rupert Sanders, her creepy married director from Snow White and the Hunstman. This turn of events of was absolutely shocking because it destroyed eveybody’s faith in true love and also Kristin and Rob were supposed to maintain their sham relationship until their Twilight promotional duties are over for the third and mercifully final installment, to be released this November.
But when life veers off-script, true actors improvise and deliver the satisfying alternate storyline…
* Vietnam is now getting on the right side of history. A song, played on a same sex saxophone. A gay man sound, a lesbian sound, a cry that tells us love isn’t just for heteros. It’s telling me, to hold you tight, and dance like homophobia makes no sense in the world. [WSJ Law Blog]
* If corporations are people, that means they also get to have religion. We can’t be too far away from social conservatives trying to ban same-industry corporate mergers. [The Atlantic]
* Yeah, what I really want to hear is a 0L giving advice about how to choose which law school to go to. [Huffington Post]
* Once again, Romney really seems to support some kind of government-mandated health insurance so long as he’s not talking to Americans while he’s running for President. [Wonkblog / Washington Post]
* Whistling at whales could be a crime, because you don’t want to encourage them. No, I’m not making a BBW joke. I’m talking about actual whales. [The Volokh Conspiracy]
* So if we ban illegal immigrants from getting government assistance for an abortion, then aren’t we kind of supporting anchor babies? [Associated Press]
* Lat and friend model t-shirts designed by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski (for His Honor’s Romanian barbecue). [Twitter]
Last week, we told you that not much seemed to happen during the administration of the New York bar exam. In truth, in New York (and New Jersey), shenanigans usually don’t start until after the state boards of law examiners get their hands on the exams.
Still, things did seem quiet in the tri-state area this bar season. They were more dead than the proverbial curious cat.
But if we move upstate to Albany, there was an actual dead cat. Or perhaps we should say “horrifically murdered” cat? Try not to eat lunch (or take a bar exam) directly after reading this story…
Continue reading “Dead Cat Mars Usually Lovely Albany Bar Exam Experience”
Like you wouldn't go to court over the ownership of this toy!
If Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz is involved, you know we’re talking about an exciting aspect of jurisprudence.
We’ve been following the case of the Mongolian dinosaur bones, but really that’s just a small window into the world of antiquities law. It’s a field of law that should fire the imagination of any lawyer who was a liberal arts major in college but ended up in law. We’re talking about a field of law which will reward the art history majors of the world. The romance language majors. The random anthropology majors who didn’t have the stones to take Orgo, but spiked a 170 on the LSAT. This is a field of law for you.
The New York Times ran a long and fascinating article last week about the emerging law surrounding the provenance of antique goods sold at auction. After centuries of private collectors being able to simply steal and resell the history of poor countries, it seems like reputable auction houses and museums are finally refusing to legitimize the black market through their purchase of questionably-obtained artifacts.
But the new rules mean that some antique collectors now can’t unload treasures they believed they acquired legitimately. Even Professor Dershowitz is having some difficulty establishing the proper documentation of an item he wanted to auction….
Continue reading “Museum Law: It’s Law That All Relic Hunters Need To Know”
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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.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
Keep reading »
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.
Keep reading »
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