Plaintiffs and the class are now stuck with a law degree they did not bargain for. That degree cannot be resold or transferred like real estate. It will never be recalled or repaired like a carburetor. And, unlike almost any other product, the debt associated with a degree from TJSL cannot even be discharged in bankruptcy.
* The Mars Curiosity rover played “Happy Birthday to You” to itself on the first anniversary of its landing on the Red Planet. It takes about 13 minutes for transmissions from Mars to reach the Earth. Time Warner sued NASA 14 minutes after Curiosity’s performance. [io9]
* Fans of the Colorado Rockies… fans? Huh, okay! Anyway, the case posits that Rockies ticket holders should be allowed to sell them on the secondary market. If they can’t unload Rockies tickets, they may be forced to watch a team 11 games out of first place flounder. [Forbes]
* Paul Rampell, Donald Trump’s lawyer, advocates for replacing marriages with leases with defined terms. It gives new meaning to “trading in for a new model.” The thrice married Trump nods approvingly. [Washington Post]
* The Rumpus interviews Dean Frank H. Wu of UC Hastings. Turns out he’s writing “a bad trashy novel.” So it probably won’t make the 25 Greatest Law Novels ever list. But then again, they put The Fountainhead on that list, so don’t give up hope, Dean Wu! [The Rumpus]
* Poetry Corner: Kenneth Branagh Prepares Evidence For Trial. So long as he’s not preparing to direct another awful Thor movie, I’m fine. [Poetic Justice]
* Just what do Americans even want from an energy policy? That Cuisinart fusion reactor from Back to the Future, that’s what. [Breaking Energy]
* A defendant called a judge “Hon,” and it did not go well. I wonder what Judge Montes gets called at the club? [Sun Sentinel]
* Anthony Weiner once explained that he was “inspired” by a book about a lawyer who wants to cheat on his wife. Indeed. [BuzzFeed]
A lawyer who brings a lawsuit predicated on his own stupidity is a rare, beautiful, courageous creature. It’s one thing to represent with a straight face someone who tried to make out with an industrial fan, and another to admit that you personally couldn’t master simple technology.
It’s also a bold move for a partner in a law firm to admit that he’s bringing a lawsuit over losing ONE FRIGGING DOLLAR on his mistake.
That’s why this guy deserves some credit for being so comfortable publicly admitting what no one else would…
* The makeup of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is very homogeneous. Out of 14 judges who served this year, 12 are Republican and half are former prosecutors. Some diversity please? [Reuters]
* Dewey know how much Judge Martin Glenn shaved off of Togut Segal & Segal’s $8.8M fees and expenses in the latest D&L payout approval? Just $167.76 for subway fare and meal overages. [Am Law Daily]
* Ted Boutrous of Gibson Dunn is a very busy man, but he’s been categorized as a “Twitter freak.” The man is a self-professed news junkie, and he follows @atlblog, so you know he’s cool. #winning [Bloomberg]
* Facebook has named a new general counsel. We wish a very warm welcome to Colin Stretch, a man who’s a Harvard Law graduate, a former Kellogg Huber partner, and a former Supreme Court clerk to Justice Breyer to boot. [Facebook]
* If you’re waiting for your check to come for the BARBRI class action suit that was settled back in 2007, then keep waiting. But hey, at least the law firms are starting to get paid. [National Law Journal]
* Ariel Castro, a man you might’ve eaten ribs with, is looking at additional indictments in the kidnapping case against him. Thus far, he’s pleaded not guilty to all of the 329 charges he currently faces. [CNN]
The third week of June is a frustrating time to follow the Supreme Court.
If there’s any institution in contemporary America that understands ceremony, it’s the Court. Such a self-consciously dramatic institution is, in no way, going to underestimate the importance of timing in issuing opinions. The Justices know that there’s a big difference between a story — or a history book — that starts “On the last day of the Term, the Supreme Court decided,” versus “On the third to last day of the Term….”
There is, in short, just about zero chance that this close to the end, yet not quite at the end, the Supreme Court is going to issue an opinion in the Texas affirmative action case, the Voting Rights Act case, the challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, or the California Proposition 8 case.
And yet, the Court still issues opinions. And we still line up to hear them, or push SCOTUSblog’s liveblog viewer-count to even higher numbers, even if we all know, or should know, that the opinions we get are not opinions that will resonate through the ages.
Today, the Supreme Court did issue three opinions. And one of them is important, if only for disaffected teenagers. The rest you may not care about, unless you’re a felon with a gun or you ever signed an arbitration agreement….
* “It’s a fine line society walks in trying to be fair.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke earlier this week on the perils of racial profiling with respect to the Chechen suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings. Were we fair here? [Associated Press]
* What keeps in-house counsel awake at night — aside from the tremendous piles of money they’re rolling around in? Apparently they’re expecting an “onslaught” of food labeling and data breach class actions. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]
* Susan Westerberg Prager, known for being the longest-serving dean ever at UCLA School of Law, will take up the deanship at another illustrious institution, Southwestern Law School. [National Law Journal]
* The February results for the New York bar exam are out, and with the highest number of test-takers ever, the pass rate was brutal. We may have more on this later. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Rhode Island just got a little more fabulous. The Ocean State legalized gay marriage yesterday, making it the tenth state to do so, and uniting New England in marriage equality for all. [Bloomberg]
* Back in December, we told you about an alleged “well-dressed” groper — an unemployed lawyer, as it were. Well, now there’s nothing alleged about it, because that guy just pleaded guilty. [New York Post]
What I find most ironic is that those individuals advertised themselves to law schools as great critical thinkers. Now they say they never considered the possibility that employment might include part-time jobs.
* To those of you who celebrate it, Happy Easter! Welcome the holiday by voting in the ABA Journal’s fifth annual “Peeps in Law” contest. [ABA Journal]
* If law firm brackets aren’t your thing, check out Professor Kyle Graham’s brackets for (1) law school classes and (2) law blogs. I’m thankful for ATL’s #1 seed but terrified by who we’re up against (because they’ve ripped me a new one before). [noncuratlex]
* Sorry, Judge Steiner, you wuz robbed; you should have been our Judge of the Day. It’s tough to top “allegations of a sexual quid pro quo with a female lawyer and the eye-opening confiscation of carpet from [chambers] for forensic analysis.” [OC Weekly]
William Shatner
* “William Shatner’s Seductive Powers Don’t Create a Fiduciary Duty.” Robyn Hagan Cain explains why. [U.S. Second Circuit / FindLaw]
* Citi settles securities cases for $730 million. Matt Levine is not impressed. [Dealbreaker]
* And Ted Frank is incensed by Bernstein Litowitz’s nine-figure fee request. [Point of Law]
* The latest update on the law school litigation front represents good news for New York Law School. [National Law Journal]
* Should summarizing a one-day deposition transcript really cost $90,000? Even DLA Piper might blush at such a bill. [Point of Law]
* Ropes & Gray isn’t backing down in the discrimination lawsuit brought by former partner Patricia Martone. (We’ll have more on this later.) [Am Law Daily]
* No, silly polo mogul, you can’t adopt your 42-year-old girlfriend to shield your fortune from litigation. [ABA Journal]
* Replacing “barbers” with “beauty culturists”? This is Indiana and not California, right? [WSJ Law Blog]
* Justice Sotomayor’s memoir made the NYT’s best-seller list, and in terms of sales, she’s officially beating the pants off other Supreme Court justices who’ve released books of a similar nature. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]
* In case you were sleeping under a rock yesterday when this happened, John Kerry was confirmed by the Senate as secretary of state. Don’t think we’ll be getting a Texts From John Tumblr, though. [New York Times]
* Despite having a “pretty spectacular” year, Blank Rome’s legal secretaries may soon find themselves blankly roaming in search of new employment. Better hurry up, the buyout offer expires on Friday! [Legal Intelligencer]
* Straight up now tell me, do you really wanna sue me forever? Corey Clark once claimed he had an affair with American Idol judge Paula Abdul, and now he claims MoFo and Gibson Dunn defamed him. [Am Law Daily]
* In this round of musical chairs, we learn that Orrick hoovered up three energy and project finance partners from Bingham, one of whom will co-chair the firm’s U.S. energy group. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Remember the Zumba prostitution ring? Now we know you can’t be prosecuted for secretly filming Johns in the act in Maine, because there’s no expectation of privacy in “bordellos, whorehouses, and the like.” [Wired]
* Energy drink makers are facing class action suits over claims made about their products. Fine, Red Bull may not give you wings, but it tastes like piss, and that’s gotta count for something, dammit. [National Law Journal]
* Much like herpes, Lindsay Lohan’s legal drama is the gift that just keeps on giving. Her longtime lawyer Shawn Holley wants out, and her new lawyer, Mark Heller, isn’t even licensed to practice in California. [CNN]
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.
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.
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…
Plaintiffs and the class are now stuck with a law degree they did not bargain for. That degree cannot be resold or transferred like real estate. It will never be recalled or repaired like a carburetor. And, unlike almost any other product, the debt associated with a degree from TJSL cannot even be discharged in bankruptcy.
