Connecticut

Connecticut State Representative Proposes 10 Percent Tax On Mature Video Games

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Ed. note: This post appears courtesy of our friends at Techdirt. We’ll be sharing law-related posts from Techdirt from time to time in these pages.

Silly reactions to violent video games are coming so fast these days it makes one’s head spin. Redundant labeling of games, doubling down on unconstitutional laws, and even special 1% taxes for games with a rating of “Teen” and above… It’s quite difficult to parse out the well-intentioned silliness from the grandstanding silliness. What’s clear, however, is that there are a great many people who don’t recognize games as the speech that they are.

One state representative from Connecticut, home of the Sandy Hook tragedy, is now upping the ante on that last idea and proposing a 10% tax on games that are rated “mature”….

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Are You Desperate Enough to Pay for Legal Experience?

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‘Please sir, some more gruel experience.’

Anyone who’s been following the implosion of the law school bubble is well aware of the fact that many recent graduates have been left floundering when it comes to employment prospects. And given the vast media coverage of the legal academy’s existential crisis, everyone and their mother knows that entry-level law jobs are few and far between. People are hungry for experience, but they’ve quickly come to the conclusion that it’s a real seller’s market out there. In today’s economy, it’s kill, be killed, or work in retail with a law degree (a fate which, for some, may be worse than even death).

As expected, some employers have chosen to take advantage of this situation. Take, for example, the “excellent position” we covered last summer, after a number of tipsters emailed us to express their outrage. The job was touted as providing “valuable experience,” and even though it had a sad little yearly salary of $10,000, some 32 people applied.

In the wonderful world of legal one-uppance, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with an even more audacious employment scheme. Would you be willing to pay someone for legal experience? Because that’s what this Connecticut law firm expects you to do.

Leave it to a lawyer to come up with a way to turn this dearth of job opportunities into a revenue stream….

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Open Thread: School Shooting In Connecticut

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I think we all know how I feel about things like this. I just wanted to give the ATL community a place to talk about their thoughts on today’s tragedy in Connecticut.

I’d like to think that we could do something a little more substantial than praying for the families of victims, but I’ll pray too.

Feel free to discuss.

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Lawyerly Lairs: A Castle Fit For A King (& Spalding Partner)

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Steven Guynn

Back in March, we wrote about Steven Guynn, who at the time was a corporate partner at King & Spalding. Above the Law readers who work at K&S are happy campers, giving the firm a solid grade of B+ in our Career Center. Alas, the allegations against Guynn would seem to merit an F. As you may recall, Guynn was accused of assaulting his alleged mistress, Jeannette Schaefer.

Today we have some updates about Steve Guynn (all via Teri Buhl). First, Guynn is reportedly getting divorced from his wife, Kristie Guynn. Second, the criminal case against him no longer appears in the online docket for the Connecticut courts (perhaps because it has been moved to a domestic violence docket). Third, he is no longer at King & Spalding.

(We reached out to King & Spalding to confirm Guynn’s departure from the firm. They did not respond to our inquiry, but Guynn’s bio has been pulled from the firm website. Here is a cached version, which shows Guynn’s impressive educational and professional background, including the two other top firms where he was once a partner.)

The allegations against Steven Guynn have never been proven. But here is one thing established beyond a reasonable doubt: his multimillion-dollar mansion is fit for royalty. Shall we take a peek?

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Recent Bar Exam Results: Open Thread
Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana — any others?

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These days, passing or failing the bar exam can have a great impact on employability in what little remains of the entry-level job market for recent law school graduates. That’s probably why those who took the July exam have been so cranky lately — they want to know if they’ll even have a chance to launch their careers.

Not even a month has passed since our last open thread devoted to bar exam results, but it appears that we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. It’s not yet November, so New York and California test takers still have some time left to wait, but we do have confirmed news about results from other states.

Within the past week, including today, at least three states announced their bar exam results. In fact, test takers from one state were so desperate to find out whether they passed that a post about the state’s results from two years ago is one of our most heavily trafficked pages today.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

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Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana — any others?“

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Why Does the Connecticut Judiciary Have ‘Erotic Fondling’ on its Official Website?

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Government websites have never been known for pizzazz or cool design. Half the time court websites barely seem to function on modern computers. At best, dealing with the government online is a boring, tedious chore.

So imagine our surprise — and hey, a little excitement too — when a tipster forwarded us information about a funny glitch buried within the State of Connecticut’s Judicial Branch website.

Click through to see some unexpected “erotic fondling” (don’t worry, this is totally safe for work)…

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Why Go Through the Trouble of Clerking for a Judge When You Can House Sit for One Instead?

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Clerking for a federal judge is supposed to be a prestigious way to spend your first year after you graduate from law school. Clerking for a state judge is not quite as prestigious, but a job’s a job, and in this economy, beggars can’t exactly be choosers.

But why go through the trouble of getting all of those recommendation letters when you can just house sit for a judge instead?

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Thanks to the Second Circuit, You Won’t Be Seeing Olympic Cheerleading Any Time Soon

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Back in 2010, we presented our readers with one of life’s great unanswered questions: is cheerleading a sport?

This important question was asked of Judge Stefan R. Underhill of Connecticut, when the women’s volleyball team of Quinnipiac University sued in an effort to stop the school from dissolving the team, alleging Title IX violations. Quinnipiac claimed that it made up the loss of the volleyball team with opportunities in other sports, including more than two dozen positions on the school’s cheerleading team.

But much to the chagrin of cheer moms everywhere (yes, that’s a thing, and soon there will even be a reality TV show about them), Judge Underhill ruled that cheerleading is an activity, and not a sport.

But did you think that cheerleaders — and their university funders — would just give up the fight? Think again, because they pledged to fight, fight, fight with all their might, all the way up to the Second Circuit.

What news does the Second Circuit have for us on this issue today?

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A Law Dean Switches Schools — Not At The End of the Year, But Right Now, Weeks Before Classes Start

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When the music stops, will your law school have a dean?

Earlier this year, we wrote about Jeremy Paul, the dean of the University of Connecticut School of Law.

UConn Law has dropped a number of spots in the U.S. News law school rankings over the past few years, and in March, Dean Paul announced that he was stepping down as dean at the end of the 2012-2013 academic year.

Paul is an interesting case. After he tried to explain UConn’s performance in the most recent U.S. News rankings, we caught an email from a law professor trying to cheer up the beleaguered dean.

But Paul doesn’t need anybody’s pity. He’s ready to blow this popsicle stand, and he’s set to do it in the middle of the summer….

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A Lawyer Attempts to Slice, Dice, and Julienne Fry All of the Competition on ‘MasterChef’

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Here at Above the Law, we frequently write about lawyers and law students who have put their legal careers on hold to compete on reality television shows. In the past year or so, we’ve profiled two former Bachelor contestants whose hearts were broken (one from Illinois Law, and one from Houston Law Center); a Harvard Law student who tried to win over his tribe on Survivor; a Northwestern Law student who attempted to weasel his way out of getting fired on The Apprentice; and a former Biglaw attorney whose health-food dishes made the judges want to choke on America’s Next Great Restaurant.

That being said, imagine our surprise when we found out that yet another attorney had decided to make a foray into the wonderful world of reality TV. If you recall, back in May, we brought your attention to a job advertisement for an attorney chef. We thought that was a unique career alternative, but apparently someone had already beaten us to the punch. The latest lawyer turned reality competitor actually is an attorney chef — one who will appear on the new season of MasterChef, which is set to premiere tonight on Fox.

So who is this attorney chef? Was he able to roast the competition like he would have during oral arguments?

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