Today is the sentencing hearing for Dharun Ravi in the Tyler Clementi case. Ravi has been convicted of invasion of privacy and bias intimidation.
Prosecutors in the case have been asking Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman to sentence Ravi to prison time. And of course there are a bunch of other people who want Ravi to pay the stiffest possible penalty.
I’ve been listening to the hearing all day. Let’s take a look at what happened…
Various UPDATES have been added after the jump. Refresh this post for the latest.
* Studying for the LSAT helps your brain. No really. It can even make you smart enough to avoid law school all together. [LSAT Blog: Ace the LSAT]
* Looks like Jamie Dimon decided to send in The Wolf. [Dealbreaker]
* How famous do I have to be before weight loss companies compete to make me take their diets for free (plus hire me a personal trainer) so they can say their weight loss program “works”? Surely, I’m fat enough. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Instead of making laws against bullying, parents could also be less lazy and just learn how to use Facebook. [Orlando Sentinel]
* Hey, you’re going to be able to buy liquor on Sundays in Connecticut. Cool. Good to see that laws based entirely on weird, religious tradition are being found to be stupid. [WTNH]
* This is a fun time to think about law firm branding, don’t you think? Sorry, let me make that a little more clear: Dewey think this is a fun time to think about law firm branding? [Law and More]
* The Am Law numbers are out. PPP is up 3 percent. Dollar, dollar bill y’all. [American Lawyer]
* Hasbro — the makers of Nerf guns, a.k.a. the best toys ever — apparently hired some Baker & McKenzie attorneys to intimidate a guy who runs an Australian Nerf fan site. I hope they “intimidated” him with Nerf guns, because it would be funny, and no one would actually get hurt. [Crikey]
* At 85 years old, Congressman (and Georgetown Law grad) John Dingell learned that “teabagging” doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. Better late than never! [The Daily Dolt]
* I’m surprised that there are enough businesses horrible brave enough to ask for potential employees’ personal electronic information that it necessitates legislation. But I’m not complaining. [RedTape / MSNBC]
* Finding out that repeated concussions and head injuries may cause long-term brain damage is only surprising to people who have suffered repeated concussions and head injuries. [LexisNexis]
* A 14-year-old Georgia girl and her parents have sued some of her classmates because they acted like bitches on Facebook. Are these girls bullies? Yep. Is it the proper solution to turn the situation into 90210: Courtroom Edition? I still don’t think so. [Threat Level / Wired]
* Support local businesses, like your high-end neighborhood brothel. The Manhattan Madam is now accepting donations… to help her make bail by Mother’s Day. [Dealbreaker]
* Vote for Lat as the most likeable lawyer of 2012! [Likeable U]
I really, really hate being the one to defend stupid teenagers who get expelled from school. The ones who are kicked out for cursing online or for other forms of bullying.
Because I was a teenager once — not even that long ago — and I still clearly remember what it feels like to be on the receiving end of horrid teenage evilness. But somehow, I can’t help myself.
So here you go. Keep reading to see why the ACLU is doing the right thing by defending three eighth-grade girls who were expelled for talking about killing people on Facebook…
* Here’s a reason why Proskauer Rose and Chadbourne & Parke might skip out on spring bonuses this year: millions of dollars worth of blowback from Allen Stanford’s Ponzi scheme. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* And speaking of spring bonuses, a lot of people noticed that Sullivan & Cromwell seems to have misled associates. “Just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t.” Yeah, right. [Am Law Daily]
* Next up in the war on women: a senator from Idaho thinks that women are such strumpets that they might be lying their way into abortions by claiming rape. Because that’s not incredibly insensitive. [Washington Post]
* Apparently George Zimmerman, the man accused of fatally shooting a boy armed with a pack of Skittles, wanted to become a police officer. Looks like it’s time to kiss that dream goodbye. [Los Angeles Times]
* Give me your lunch money, kid! Teachers aren’t supposed to be bullying students, but that’s what one Baltimore mother is alleging in a $200K lawsuit against the city’s school board. [New York Daily News]
* Here’s a nice round-up of some of the most controversial laws that will be enacted in 2012. Looks like California is going to have some fabulously multicultural litigation. [Associated Press]
* What do you get when you cross an artist with a penchant for Rastafarians with the son of a Boies Schiller name partner? The biggest copyright fair use appeal ever. [New York Times]
* A Massachusetts town paid Phoebe Prince’s family only $225K to settle. With lawyer’s fees, it’s almost not even worth suing if your kid gets bullied to death. [ABC News]
* Everyone is going cuckoo over Iowa’s conservatives, even the Eighth Circuit. Iowa Law’s former dean is facing a political discrimination suit. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Apparently, this PhoneDog Twitter account case is a pretty big deal in the world of social media law. I’ll turn discussion of this issue over to our social media expert, Brian Tannebaum. [CNN]
* An employee at a presumably small law firm in New York had her jaw shattered while a thief ransacked the office. Give this woman a bonus. Hell, give her a raise, too. [New York Post]
Earlier this week, the Michigan Senate passed anti-bullying legislation that included an exception that allowed religious nuts to bully gay kids if they wanted to. The Michigan Senators who voted for the bill wouldn’t characterize it that way, but let’s just say those jackasses won’t be hosting the Oscars, either.
Yesterday, the Michigan House also passed anti-bullying legislation. This time, there wasn’t an exception for those who want to pick on gay kids. House Republicans and Democrats joined on the bill.
As a person who isn’t a fan of anti-bullying legislation in the first place, I’ve kind of been looking at the developments this week with a feeling of: “You see what happens, Michigan?”
* Another victim of the vengeful prosecution of Tyler Clementi’s roommate might be the guy Clementi was hooking up with when Dharun Ravi broadcast it. [Gawker]
* As I said on Twitter, you have to give Obama a little credit: when he uses suspect legal reasoning to do whatever he wants abroad, he comes home with scalps. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Here’s a job opening for an attorney that might not actually exist. [Constitutional Daily]
* This job opening is much cooler. But, don’t get me wrong, no Cooley grads are allowed to apply. Seriously. [The Legal Satyricon]
* I think the lesson here is there’s no reason anybody should ever want to immigrate to Alabama. [Huffington Post]
* Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Halley Catherine Shaw, a law student at Texas Southern University who died in a car crash earlier this week. [ABA Journal]
* Mississippi’s “personhood” ballot measure could ban not only abortion, but birth control, too. This is supposed to “protect women.” Protect women from what, their right to choose? [Huffington Post]
* This defense attorney has seen plenty of big cases before, but this may be his biggest one yet. Paul Bergrin has been given the green light to represent himself in his own racketeering case. [The Record]
* More doctors are facing criminal charges than ever before. Here’s an idea: stop helping cultural icons (yes, this includes Anna Nicole) OD, and we’ll stop prosecuting you. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Raj Rajaratnam still has no idea why he’s been convicted of insider trading, but he’ll have plenty of time to ponder the law if he gets the maximum sentence later this month. [Bloomberg]
* “One of the plaintiffs, Kyle Rooker, 14, has not declared his sexual orientation but . . . likes to wear glittery scarves and belt out Lady Gaga songs.” Most fabulous plaintiff ever? [New York Times]
* Why the hell does Baker & McKenzie think that its associates in Japan need spiritual guidance? Everyone knows that lawyers have no souls. [Careerist]
When I was in college, it was not altogether uncommon for people to leave their laptops unattended with their Facebook accounts still logged in. It was not altogether uncommon for an enterprising prankster to creatively twiddle with said account. A little switch of sexual preference here, a mildly offensive profile picture there, and maybe a nonsensical new profile quote.
It was annoying, and at worst required minor social media damage control, but nobody seemed to care much.
Nowadays, people definitely care. The California Court of Appeals ruled on July 21 that the same sort of online mischief can lead to felony identity theft conviction.
Let’s learn more about Rolando S., a teenager who messed with the wrong Facebook account….
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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Today is the sentencing hearing for Dharun Ravi in the Tyler Clementi case. Ravi has been convicted of invasion of privacy and bias intimidation. 
