Brazil

The decision to buy Twitter keeps getting more expensive.

If you are considering a gap year, don’t give up before looking into it because you think it’s impossible.

Is there a limit on how many cat puns we can have purr episode?

Your feel good story of the day, courtesy of the lawyer cat.

* A Brazilian judge ordered that Olympic swimmers Ryan Lochte and Jimmy Feigen surrender their passports and remain in Rio until investigators can determine whether they filed a false police report of being robbed at gunpoint. There’s one problem: Lochte is back in America. Jeah! [USA Today]

* As we mentioned yesterday, according to NALP, law school graduates in the class of 2015 landed fewer jobs in private practice than any other class in the past 20 years. There is a bright side, though: Biglaw firms are hiring in droves and the median starting salary for new lawyers has risen to $100,000, which is 5 percent higher than it was for the class of 2014. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Graduates who sued Widener Law in 2012 over the school’s allegedly deceptive employment statistics lost a federal appeal to overturn a denial of class certification. A three-judge panel of the Third Circuit — one which included Donald Trump’s sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry — rejected a class-wide theory of damages. [Law.com]

* Legal ethics professor Ronald Rotunda of Chapman Law wrote an op-ed striking out against the ABA’s adoption of a new professional misconduct rule which seeks to combat discrimination and bias in the law. He refers to the new rule as a misguided “foray into political correctness,” and thinks the ABA overstepped its bounds. [WSJ Law Blog]

* “At best he was doing something profundity stupid with the hopes of meeting someone he will never get to meet in his lifetime.” A lawyer for Stephen Rogata, the teen who scaled Trump Tower, says her client should receive psychiatric treatment instead of jail time. He’s being held on $10,000 bail bond or $5,000 cash. [New York Daily News]

* Behold! The power of a single judge. A Brazilian state judge shuts down Brazil’s most popular chat app, WhatsApp, for 72 hours. [The Intercept]

* The 16 most… unique legal defenses in history. [Reeves Law Group]

* Do ponytails count as a professional hairstyle? [Corporette]

* Former clerks of the late justice speak about Scalia’s legacy. [C-SPAN]

* Can the Urban Confessional Project actually help stressed-out lawyers? [Law and More]

* Germany is annulling the convictions of 50,000 men for homosexuality, saying the victims of this now obsolete law shouldn’t have to live with the stigma of conviction. [Wonkette]

* Michael Ratner, noted civil rights attorney who challenged the government’s detention of prisoners without judicial review at Guantánamo Bay, RIP. [New York Times]

* Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was chatty this week. In terms of same-sex marriage, the Notorious R.B.G. thinks “[t]he court handled both of those cases just the way they should have.” [Bloomberg]

* And just like a mean girl, Ruthie’s claws were out. After calling the Roberts Court “one of the most activist courts in history,” she offered comments on Justice Samuel Alito’s eye-rolling. [New York Times]

* Don’t cry for Argentina, the truth is it never respected you. After losing an appeal at the Second Circuit, the country has vowed to defy any of the court’s rulings with which it doesn’t agree. [Reuters]

* Texas takes the bull by the horns: the state’s Supreme Court will consider if it has the power and jurisdiction to grant gay divorces despite the fact that it bans gay marriage. [Houston Chronicle]

* “I have a temperament that doesn’t adapt well to politics. It’s because I speak my mind so much.” Joaquim Barbosa, chief justice of Brazil’s highest court and one of the most influential lawyers in the world (according to Time), isn’t afraid to tell it like it is. [New York Times]

* Since she was already acquitted of the murder of Meredith Kercher, Amanda Knox (fka Foxy Knoxy) will not be returning to Italy for her retrial. That would be as silly as admitting to participation in orgies. [CNN]

* Following a settlement on undisclosed terms, the suit filed against Paula Deen has been dismissed. It’s too bad that the Baroness of Butter’s career sunk like a spoiled soufflé in the process. [Businessweek]

* New York’s AG filed a $40M suit against Donald Trump, a rich man who can’t afford a decent hairstylist and allegedly makes students at Trump University weep with his “bait-and-switch” tactics. [NBC News]

Faking a kidnapping is not how adults deal with their parents...

* Dressing shrinks as wizards when they testify would be an AWESOME idea. I’m serious. Why can’t we have this? And titles, too. “Your Honor, I call Dr. Freud — Ph.D in weakness management and keeper of the sacred staffs of Ivory guard — to the stand.” [Overlawyered] * iTextbooks! Could be awesome, could widen […]

At Northwestern Law, the PC Police have a long and storied history. You are, of course, free to say what you want to say, but if you offend other people's cultural sensibilities, you had best expect a reaction from other Northwestern students -- whether the cultural slight was real or just perceived....

* Reason No. 564,857,495,736 Why Law Graduates Are Unemployable: They don’t have good skills. You know, like social skills, networking skills, bow hunting skills. Just the usual. [Wall Street Journal] * At 91, Justice Stevens has got a virile mind, but he may have suffered a premature evacuation from the bench of the Supreme Court. […]

UPDATE (5:30 PM): Please note that the veracity of this story has been called into question. For more, see the note at the end of this post. (Or ignore the note and pretend that the story is real; life’s more fun that way.) Fair warning: I will not succeed in writing this post like an […]

* The three defendants in the civil wrongful-death action brought by Robert Wone’s widow are keeping their mouths shut. [National Law Journal] * But their former house is open — and once again on the market, for the tidy sum of $1.6 million. [Who Murdered Robert Wone?] * Professor Eugene Volokh wants to know, with […]

* This is one former Clintonite that Obama won’t tap for his cabinet. California lawyer Wade Rowland Sanders, a deputy assistant secretary of the Navy under Clinton, was netted in a child porn investigation, with a whopping 600 images on his computer. [CNN] * There are many reasons to object to the U.S. taxpayers bailing […]