We should have known that the Fisher opinion was going to be a letdown — a “great big dodge,” as my colleague Elie Mystal put it. Instead of readying herself for an historical moment, Justice Elena Kagan spent yesterday doing some window-shopping.
Where did she go, and what merchandise did she check out? Here’s an eyewitness report….
Continue reading “The Eyes of the Law: The Apple of Her Eye”
* I would totally go see “Jaws 2013: Lawyers On The Beach.” [The Legal Geeks]
* Downey Brand laid off support staff this week. Man, I thought that laundry detergent was recession-proof… oh, wait, I’m being told that Downey Brand is law firm, a very well-scented law firm. [ABA Journal]
* Sleep expert testifies in Michael Jackson case. Keeps jurors awake! [Expert Witness Blog]
* It’s illegal to burn you ex’s clothes? Bah. Next you’re going to tell me you can’t set fire to his car. [Legal Juice]
* Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s inability to prosecute his political rivals makes it harder for him to do whatever he wants by threatening his political rivals with prosecution. That’s not exactly a bad thing. [Simple Justice]
* Oh look, the FAA might finally acknowledge that making people turn off their electronic devices during takeoff and landing is a stupid rule that has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on flight safety. [Wall Street Journal]
Erika Harold
* AG Eric Holder sat down and had a little chat about what’s been going on at the Justice Department. He’s not impressed with his agency’s work, but he claims he’s not stepping down just yet. [NBC News]
* “Can you hear me now?” Oh, Verizon, what an apropos slogan you’ve got considering the latest government scandal. The NSA has been spying on you through your phone records since late April. [Guardian]
* Lawyers for Matthew Martoma still want more time to comb through millions upon millions of documents in their client’s insider trading case, but it seems rather pointless after a judge’s kiss of death. [Reuters]
* Looks like she got her wish: thanks to Judge Michael Baylson, a little girl with terminal cystic fibrosis may have a better chance at getting a longer lease on life in this donor lung transplant case. [CNN]
* Being a politician didn’t really work out so well for him, so John Edwards is going to try his hand at being a lawyer again. Just think of all of the lovely ladies he’ll be able to pick up as clients. [USA Today]
* Speaking of former public servants who are getting back into the law, Ken Salazar will be opening the Denver office of WilmerHale — and when it comes to pay, he’s got a “very good package.” [Denver Post]
* And not to be forgotten, famous flip-flopper Joe Lieberman will be taking his services to Kasowitz Benson. We certainly hope the firm will appreciate his superior legal mind. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]
* The ABA is considering law school job data collection 10 months after graduation, instead of nine, because bar exam results come out so late. Like that extra month will help… [National Law Journal]
* Erika Harold, a Harvard Law grad and ex-Sidley associate known for her reign as Miss America, is running for Congress in Illinois. What will she she do for the talent portion of the competition? [Politico]
* Let’s be honest, if it wasn’t for 9/11, we’d already be allowed to leave our cellphones on during flights because before 9/11 we weren’t beaten and cowed by the rights abusing airline industry. [The Legal Satyricon]
* “The Child Support Lady” is the lady that helps Dads avoid paying child support by representing fathers. I think I’d prefer the child support lady who helps Dads avoid paying child support by passing out condoms. [Miami Herald]
* Check out his warning label on a doormat. [Overlawyered]
* Christmas isn’t a deadweight economic loss, because sometimes people surprise you. [Daily Beast]
* And now for the obligatory “look how lawyers would ruin Christmas if they could” posts. First, the oldie but goodie. [Tax Prof Blog]
* And now here’s an issue spotter about Santa Claus. [Constitutional Daily]
* Just in case you haven’t seen enough responses to the Case Western Law dean’s New York Times op-ed, here are some more. (Plus, with this, you’re getting the additional bonus of an incredibly sad letter from a young lawyer.) [Associate's Mind]
* Oh mon dieu! Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s legal team is now denying that that there was ever a settlement in the hotel maid’s sexual assault suit civil suit, and especially not a $6M settlement — because that’s apparently “flatly false.” [Slate]
* You’ve probably led a sad and lonely existence if you’re laying on your death bed and worrying about who will inherit your iTunes library. Don’t worry, they’re headed to a “legal black hole,” anyway. [Legal Blog Watch]
* The Supreme Court might be taking the phrase “don’t judge gay people” a little too literally. [WSJ Law Blog]
* And in other news, some teenagers are so obsessed with their tech gadgets, like cellphones, that they’d allegedly be willing to kill their family and pry the damn thing from their cold dead hands. [Legal Juice]
* Please remember to vote for your favorite law blog (coughcough Above the Law coughcough) in the Blawg 100 in the News/Analysis category, and all the rest of the sites you read in other categories, too! [ABA Journal]
* After the jump, Bloomberg Law’s Lee Pacchia speaks with law firm consultant Tim Corcoran of the Corcoran Consulting Group about the future of rainmaking and business development in Biglaw….
Casey Anthony is not impressed.
* Will it be DOMA or Prop 8? The countdown until Friday starts now, because everyone’s waiting to see whether the Supreme Court will grant cert on one of the five same-sex marriage cases that has come before the high court. [UPI]
* Walk like an Egyptian — or, in this case, you can protest like one. Judges and lawyers are on strike and filing legal challenges to President Mohamed Morsi’s “unprecedented attack on judicial independence.” [New York Times]
* Dewey know when this failed firm’s bankruptcy plan will be approved? Team Togut is hoping for a February resolution, but the rascally retirees may throw a wrench in things with their committee’s continued existence. [Am Law Daily]
* Even though the Northern District of California has a historic all-women federal bench — a courthouse of their own, if you will — there’s probably no need to tell them that THERE’S NO CRYING IN LITIGATION. No crying! [The Recorder]
* New technology + old laws = a privacy clusterf**k. This week, a Senate committee will contemplate whether the Electronic Communications Privacy Act needs to be updated to get with the times. [New York Times]
* The New York State Bar Association may oppose it, but Jacoby & Meyers’s challenge to the state’s ban on non-lawyer firm ownership shall live to see another day thanks to the Second Circuit. [New York Law Journal]
* An Alabama Slammer is both a dangerous cocktail and a term for what happens when your Southern law school refuses to cut its class size and you’re left woefully unemployed after graduation. [Birmingham News]
* Casey Anthony finds relevancy again! Girls in my high school used to search for “foolproof suffocation” on Google and later get acquitted of murdering their daughters all the time; it was no big deal. [USA Today]
* Dean Boland, aka Paul Ceglia’s gazillionth lawyer in the Facebook ownership case, will soon find out if can withdraw as counsel. He’s got other things to deal with, like a $300K child porn judgment. [Wall Street Journal]
Are lawyers and BlackBerry breaking up?
Biglaw used to be the Kingdom of BlackBerry. Every attorney had one. You had to check it every 90 seconds or the world would explode — and you’d get fired.
The last part is still probably true, but many lawyers use other smartphones now. Like iPhones and Droids and technology invented after the Paleolithic era.
The American Lawyer recently published a survey of how far the mighty have fallen. It looks like lawyers have kicked their CrackBerry habit, and moved onto hipper, designer drugs phones….
Continue reading “Have Lawyers Finally Kicked Their CrackBerry Addiction?”
Maybe I’m a Luddite for feeling uninterested in letting Instagram know where I took my last photo. Maybe I’m crazy for not geotagging my Facebook updates.
But here’s the thing: your electronic privacy is like handling a bad romantic relationship. If you give yourself away too easily, you might not be surprised if your partner — or in this case, your cell phone carrier — sells your personal information to make money and help other companies sell you more crap.
Case in point: Verizon, which is catching fire from privacy rights advocates for the way it handles (read: sells) its customers’ cellphone data. Amuurica, f**k yeah….
Continue reading “Verizon’s Data-Mining Policies Are On A Whole Other Plane of Creepy”
Along with all the wonders and ease of technology — the world wide web at your fingertips, the ability to send photos of your family vacations from the top of a mountain — there are also some serious accompanying risks. Like the possibility of forgetting to delete a stray picture of your privates and accidentally showing it to a colleague in the middle of a cellphone slideshow of otherwise innocent family and church photos.
Oops.
But that’s what former Philadelphia traffic court judge Willie Singletary did. He resigned several months ago over the blunder, and now he’s been officially called out by the state’s Judicial Discipline Committee…..
Continue reading “Ex-Judge of the Day: Nobody Wants to See the ‘Judicial Penis’”
Since we last mentioned the new Above the Law App, sponsored by WestlawNext, more than 3,500 of you have downloaded it. To everyone else, what the heck are you waiting for? Not many things in life are free, but our app is!
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Download the app today! It’s available here on iTunes and here for Android. Enjoy.
The evolution of relationships between the genders continues. Currently, in law firms, there is an interesting conundrum; balancing the desire for a gender-blind workplace where “the best lawyer gets the work and advances” and the reality of navigating the complicated maze created by the fact that, in general, men and women do possess differences in their work styles. These variations impact who they work with, how they work, how they build professional connections and how organizations ultimately leverage, reward and recognize the talents of all.
Featuring Key Contributions and Candid Real-World Illustrations From:
Patricia Gillette, Partner, Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP
Henry Ford sat on his workbench and sighed. A year earlier, he had personally built 13,000 Model Ts with his own hands. Fashioning lugnuts and tie rods by hand, Ford was loath to ask for help. Sure, there were things about the car that he didn’t quite understand. This explains the lack of reliable navigation systems in the Model T. But Ford persevered because he knew that unless he did everything, he could not reliably call these cars his own.
“Unless my own personal toil is responsible for it, it may as well be called a Hyundai,” Ford remarked at the time.
The preceding may sound unfamiliar because it is categorically untrue. And also monumentally stupid. Henry Ford didn’t build all those cars by hand. He had help and plenty of it. Almost exactly one hundred years ago, Henry Ford opened up the most technologically advanced assembly line the world had ever seen. Built on the premise that work can be chopped up into digestible pieces and completed by many men better than one, the line ushered in an age of unparalleled productivity.
Today, an attorney refers business because he can’t do everything the client asks of him.
There are three reasons why this is way dumber than a made-up Henry Ford story…
Keep reading »
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: [email protected].
Since late last year, things have been booming in Hong Kong / China in cap markets, especially Hong Kong IPOs. M&A deal flow has recently been getting a bit stronger as well. Although one can’t predict such things with any certainty, all signs are pointing to a banner entire 2014 for the top end US corporate and cap markets practices in Hong Kong / China. This is not really new news, as its been the feeling most in the market have had for a few months now and things continue to look good.
The head of our Asia practice, Evan Jowers, has been in Hong Kong for about 10 days a month (with trips every other month to both Shanghai and Bejing) for the past 7 months, and spending most of his time there meeting with senior US hiring partners at just about all the major US and UK firms there, as well as prospective candidates at all associate levels and partner levels, and when in the US, Evan works Asia hours and is regularly on the phone with such persons, as our the other members of our Asia team. Our Yuliya Vinokurova is in Hong Kong every other month and Robert is there about 5 times a year as well. While we have a solid Asia team of recruiters, Evan Jowers will spend at least some time with all of our candidates for Asia position. We have had long standing relationships, and good friendships in some cases, with hiring partners and other senior US partners in Asia for 8 years now.
Keep reading »
