Connecticut

Finals week is stressful for everybody, and it leads to lots of screw-ups. But some law students and professors manage to rise above their mistakes…

* He may not have authoritah to respect! George Zimmerman received more than $200K in donations for his legal defense fund, but Judge Lester isn’t going to increase his bail just yet. [New York Times]

* Is Joe Amendola’s client, Jerry Sandusky, rubbing off on him? First he advises people to call a gay sex hotline, and now he’s spilling loads (of info) on boys all across Pennsylvania. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

* Thanks to an inquiry by the New York Post, Columbia Law has changed how it reports its post-grad employment statistics. Perhaps more publications should get their b*tch-slappers out. [New York Post]

* If every day were filled with science experiments, laser demonstrations, and art projects at Crowell & Moring, then maybe lawyers would think twice about allegedly embezzling millions. [Washington Post]

* Lawyers need to know how to be lawyers before they can be lawyers? “Way too meta, dudes,” say law school deans in California. Maybe next time, bar examiners, maybe next time. [National Law Journal]

* “With these grades, you could be a stripper.” That’s quite the report card! Guys Teachers in my high school used to allegedly sexually harass former students all the time, it was no big deal. [Connecticut Post]

* Walter L. Gordon Jr., a groundbreaking lawyer in the era of segregation, RIP. [Los Angeles Times]

* Dewey need to take a look at the Biglaw industry in general before more firms implode? Hell yes, says an author who’s written on the economics and management of law firms. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Wal-Mart was served with its first shareholder suit over its alleged bribery scandal, because the only thing on rollback this week is the price of the company’s stock shares. [Reuters]

* Does diplomatic immunity give you a free pass for getting handsy with the maid? Guess we’ll see next week, when a judge rules on DSK’s motion to dismiss his civil suit. [New York Daily News]

* As long as you’ve got money, the TSA will totally look the other way if you’ve got suitcases filled with drugs. Vibrators, on the other hand, are simply out of the question. [Bloomberg]

* As of yesterday, Connecticut became the seventeenth state to kill the death penalty. But not so fast, death row inmates. You still get to die. Isn’t that nice? [CNN]

* Franchise agreements be damned, because even judges can understand that sometimes, you just need to eat a delicious sandwich while you’re getting a lap dance. [KTVN]

When you are representing someone you have love and affection for, you’re going to work twice as hard and there’s no question about it. It is not a detriment to the relationship. My advice to a woman going through a divorce is, find a competent trial lawyer and make him your boyfriend. — Zenas Zelotes, […]

It is not hard to imagine an angsty teenager, angry at her school, hitting the 'net and writing cruel words about a school employee on her blog. It's also not hard to imagine word getting back to the school, and some unpleasant consequences for the student. What just doesn't compute is how that scenario translates to a four-year legal saga culminating in an appeal to the United States Supreme Court....

Had I known all of what you just told us, I would have voted differently. I’m sorry. — Justice Richard Palmer (the deciding vote in the groundbreaking Kelo v. New London case) of the Connecticut Supreme Court apologizing to Susette Kelo and keynote address speaker Jeff Benedict at a dinner honoring the Court. Benedict’s novel, […]

Hurricane Irene: She came. She saw. She blew. She sucked? In the wake of Hurricane Irene, people have been expressing their displeasure with the way this natural disaster panned out. After days of preparation, there is still a lot of damage to deal with in the aftermath of the storm. In the legal world, we know that it pays to be prepared, but there are some things that we just can't work around....

Why is it so hard to administer the bar exam? Here are tales of woe from around the country.

Layoffs at law firms have slowed to a trickle (although we still hear the occasional rumor; email us with your tips). In the public sector, however, layoffs continue — and may even accelerate, as state governments and the federal government grapple with contentious budget issues. Today brings word of major layoffs in Connecticut. In a […]

* Did Malcolm Gladwell’s endorsement lead to an increase in Colorado Law applicants? Malcolm Gladwell, a man whose book Blink was described by Richard Posner as “written like a book intended for people who do not read books.” [Law Week Colorado] * A litany of legal challenges faces the Obama administration now that they’ve backtracked […]

In 2009, a paramedic in Connecticut went home and complained about her boss on Facebook. Then she got fired. “Love how the company allows a 17 to be a supervisor,” 42-year-old Dawnmarie Souza wrote. A “17” is the code her company, the American Medical Response ambulance service, uses for a psychiatric patient. She also called […]

Almost a month has passed since our last open thread devoted to bar exam results. So we have some catching up to do. It’s not yet November, so California and New York test takers still have some time left to wait. But if you took the Massachusetts bar exam, release of the results is imminent, […]