Canada

* AG Eric Holder can thank Obama for this homework assignment from Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, because it seems like our president, a former con law professor, forgot about Marbury v. Madison. [CBS News]

* Dewey need to buy this Biglaw firm a functional calculator? New information shows that the imploding firm was off by roughly $153M when partners reported 2011 earnings to the American Lawyer. [Am Law Daily]

* You know there’s got to be something questionable about a law school when the accreditation machine that is the ABA gives it the side eye. And no, Duncan Law, a judge still won’t force its hand. [National Law Journal]

* Stephen McDaniel pleaded not guilty at his arraignment for the murder of Mercer Law classmate Lauren Giddings, but will he be released on bail before trial? Only if he’s got $2.5M sitting around. [Macon Telegraph]

* More law school lawsuits are coming down the pipeline, but local lawyers in Massachusetts don’t think that they stand a chance. Why? The highly-educated consumer argument strikes again. [Boston Business Journal]

* Thanks to Gloria Allred, transgender beauty queen Jenna Talackova may be able to participate in the Miss Universe pageant if she can meet the legal requirements for being a woman in Canada. [MSNBC]

* Obamacare’s individual mandate may be in jeopardy, and it’s all because of that stupid broccoli debate. No, Scalia, as delicious as it is, not everyone would have to buy broccoli. [New York Times]

* Biglaw firms aren’t going away, but thanks to the recent onslaught of partner defections to small law firms, their high hourly rates might soon be going the way of the dodo. [Corporate Counsel]

* The “good” news: Northwestern Law will be limiting its tuition hike to the rate of inflation. The bad news: next year, it will cost $53,168 to attend. I officially don’t want to live on this planet anymore. [National Law Journal]

* A Littler Mendelson partner is recovering from a stabbing that occurred during a home invasion. On the bright side, at least he’s not a partner at Dewey — that’s a fate worse than being stabbed these days. [Am Law Daily]

* Law school applicants are dropping like flies, but some law schools were able to attract record numbers of students. UVA Law must have some real expertise in recruiting collar poppers. [The Short List / U.S. News]

* “I have a suggestion for you; next time, keep your [expletive] legs closed.” O Canada, that’s the basis of one crazy class action suit, eh? Dudley Do-Right would never treat a female Mountie like that. [Globe and Mail]

* Yahoo! continues to try to save its fading empire… by filing a patent lawsuit against Facebook. [Dealbook/New York Times]

* Dispatch from SXSW: employing homeless people as Wi-Fi hotspots. I see no problems here. [New York Times]

* Dick Cheney has canceled a trip to Toronto. Because Canada is “too dangerous.” It’s actually kind of reassuring that the former Vice President, who drunkenly shot his friend in the face with a shotgun, is just as much as a wuss as the liberals he has mocked for the last 12-odd years. [National Post]

* It’s my jury and I’ll tweet if I want to, tweet if I want to. You would tweet too, if it happened to you. [Wall Street Journal Law Blog]

* A new United Nations report says Wikileaks suspect Bradley Manning endured “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment during the months he was incarcerated before his trial. The report comes just in time for the Department of Defense to completely ignore it and continue throwing the book at Manning. [Threat Level/Wired]

If you're a law student or a lawyer, do you regret going to law school, or are you happy with your decision? If you're in the former camp, this video's for you.

* Apparently attorneys at a “prestigious firm” in Washington, D.C. are fans of hobo hunting. What the hell does that mean? Well, there’s an app for that (one that Apple has rejected three times for its outrageous offensiveness). [VICE] * “I want to (blank) Michelle Bachmann in her (blank) with a Vietnam era machete.” First […]

Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg is one of the most respected law firms in Canada. It's consistently ranked highly on the Chambers list, and the firm has a low partner-to-associate ratio. People who work at Davies are called "Slavies" because of how hard they work. The advertising people at Davies decided to have a little fun with the moniker. Now some people are calling the ad insensitive to, oh, we don't know, slaves?

Somebody got a hold of a password-protected report from LSAC that discusses the state of law school applications. Do you want to hear the good news? It's too early to know the full scope of this law school application season, but the early numbers suggest that law school applications are going to be down -- way down....

* Apparently Gloria Allred will only take male clients if they’re controversial enough to keep her in the limelight. She’s representing the alleged sex abuse victims in a suit against Syracuse and basketball coach Jim Boeheim. [CNN] * Law School Transparency breaks it down for the guy who believes that the “apocalyptic” views of the […]

Given all of the other opportunities that you may have had, was going to law school the best choice you could have made? If you knew then what you now know, would you still have signed on the dotted line and accepted your seat in the class? What would you have done instead of going to law school?

Canada's legal education system is different -- and, by some accounts, better than ours. At least if you define "better" in terms of "better at getting law school graduates into legal jobs." But could things up north be changing -- for the worse, eh?

* Saying your dog ate something isn’t a creative enough excuse these days. Try this instead: “I kept the clients’ missing money in my car, which I left running in the parking lot to keep my dead dog’s ashes from freezing. Someone then stole the car, and now the missing client money is gone forever!” […]

You'd figure that when people grow up, go to law school, and get real jobs as attorneys, that name-calling would stop. But you'd be oh so wrong. With the advent of modern technology, name-calling is ten times easier than it was before. Lawyers can now insult colleagues in the blink of an eye and with the click of a button, making for great email scandals. But has name-calling become a part of law firm culture? One wrongful termination suit claims that it has....

* Paul Bergrin wants to represent himself in his racketeering case. They say that a man who represents himself has a fool for a client, but that’s not the case when you’re considered the Baddest Lawyer in the History of Jersey. [Philadelphia Inquirer] * Hordes of Biglaw lawyers couldn’t stop the DOJ from trying to […]

People see our sign. They read it. They walk away. They turn around. They come back and they grab a handful. — Shelley Hayes, chair of the ABA AIDS Coordinating Committee, commenting on the fact that even lawyers can’t pass up a free condom. The Committee offered free condoms and HIV testing at the ABA […]

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an attorney who faced some humiliating — and completely false — allegations. Doesn’t get much worse, I thought. Wrong. This week we have another intersection of technology and false accusation. But this time, the attorneys appear to be the bad guys. A recent Canadian court ruling sheds a […]

Here’s a cautionary tale for every woman. Never, never, never allow your husband (or anybody else) to take dirty pictures of you. The pictures could wind up on the Internet. You could be publicly humiliated. You could lose your privacy, your dignity and your career…. Lori Douglas’s only crime was to choose an unstable spouse, […]

Remember Madam Justice A. Lori Douglas, the Canadian judge featured in pornographic photos that found their way to the internet? As it turns out, Judge Douglas will be subjected to a public inquiry for her nudie pics, and may be disrobed yet again.

I was a very good student in Catholic school (except for the Catholic bits). But a quick Google search reveals that God explained rainbows to Noah as follows: “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I […]

* If you divorce a male banker, you’ll probably get to keep the kids — but be ready to fight over the dog. [Dealbreaker] * Former escort now a lawyer in Canada. I can see the Lifetime movie now: Prosti-Suit. [Toronto Star] * Speaking of prostitutes, if they were legal it’d be much harder for […]

The high-powered law firm of Paul Weiss has a legendary litigation practice. But their corporate department is strong too — they’re working on, for example, the big Warner Music deal — and it’s only getting stronger. Yesterday corporate lawyers at Paul Weiss received an unusual email: “We would like to ask all counsel and associates […]