Now with more briefs, but fewer breasts.
Not much…. I guess one difference is that, in our society, lawyers are treated with a little bit more respect than porn magazine editors — but only a little.
– Dan Kapelovitz, commenting on his unique transition from being the Features Editor of Hustler magazine to attending the UCLA School of Law. Kapelovitz now practices criminal law.
* Nepal had actual regulations regarding Yeti killing. When will America join the international community and enact strict protections for Sasquatch? [Lowering the Bar]
* A state bar association is actively discouraging students from going to law school. Which is odd, since the state in question has a top five law school… according to National Jurist. [Associate's Mind]
* A clever Civ Pro class used the system against Howard Wasserman to get an extension on their assignment. I respect Wasserman for crediting the students’ ingenuity, but it would have been a better life lesson if he’d impleaded the Dean for forcing him to have grades in early. Or at least ding the students with a Rule 11 claim. [PrawfsBlawg]
* Inmate forgotten for 22 months in solitary confinement wins $15.5 million reward. Hopefully he’ll be ready in time to protect us from that bioweapon attack from Alcatraz. [CNN]
* In honor of International Women’s Day, enjoy an interview of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [The New Yorker]
* To follow up on an old story, law grad/convicted sex criminal Chris Dumler is reporting to jail today. [WVIR]
* The Conclave is now set for Tuesday. Place your bets on the new pontiff now! [CNN]
You stole my building.
* Lawyers who re-argue 2,400 year old cases are lawyers with too much time on their hands, even if they’re doing it for charity. [ABA Journal]
* What do you know, free speech is allowed to exist on the internet. [Public Citizen Press Room]
* I shaved my balls for this fiscal cliff deal? [Huffington Post]
* Some law professors still don’t understand what the law school “disaster” is all about. [Associate's Mind]
* How much can you really charge for contract attorney work? [Point of Law]
* The best criminal law blog post in 2012 was… [Simple Justice]
* It never occurred to me that a building could be pirated, but here you go. [De Zeen Magazine]
Mmm... shoe porn.
* Dewey really need to keep coming up with punny headlines about D&L’s painful probe? Pass the lube, ’cause you better believe we dew! Steven Davis, the firm’s former chairman, has hired Barry Bohrer, a white-collar criminal defense lawyer and partner at the Morvillo Abromowitz firm. [WSJ Law Blog]
* “Of course all of that money for my baby mama is legal. I… uh… checked with my lawyers. Um, yeah. Just get the money in.” Cheri Young gave some pretty damning testimony yesterday during the John Edwards campaign-finance violations trial. [CNN]
* As if you didn’t have enough to worry about during finals, Law School Transparency has come out with a new clearinghouse that includes employment outcomes, salaries, and student debt loads. [National Law Journal]
* “I do not own a color. I own a specific color in a specific place.” Christian Louboutin was seeing red when he responded to interview questions over his trademark infringement suit against Yves Saint Laurent. [Fox News]
* Remember that Nutella class action suit? Ferrero settled, and you can cash in if you bought their delicious hazelnut crack during the relevant time period. Needless to say, they owe me $20. [American Thinker]
* Richard Bellman, the lawyer behind New Jersey’s “Mount Laurel doctrine,” RIP. [New York Times]
Friday night, I attended the first ever Innocence Project of Florida dinner. I was invited by a close, personal Twitter follower board member, and upon acceptance, asked by someone in one of my Google+ circles the Incoming Chair of the Innocence of Project of Florida to turn over a fairly large amount of cash to be a co-sponsor. Apparently, while Holland & Knight was receiving an award for their thousands of hours helping to free the wrongfully convicted, money for the dinner wasn’t pouring in from the establishment. Maybe next year.
As lawyer-type dinners go, it was a little different — poor lawyers representing alleged violent criminals mixed with Biglaw lawyers who spent the last decade doing the same, as well as three dozen judges, the elected state attorney, the appointed United States Attorney, and a slew of law students. Also in the crowd were a half-dozen exonerees. The exonerees included James Bain, who served more time than any other exoneree — 35 years for a crime he didn’t commit. He went to jail when I was four years old, and got out as I was planning a trip for my 40th birthday.
The night had its share of speeches and awards. One of the awards went to lawyer Marty McClain, whose client, Juan Melendez, was there among the suits wearing a t-shirt. Juan spent 17 years, eight months, and one day on death row before being exonerated. Marty’s other client, Frank Lee Smith, couldn’t make it because he died of cancer on death row before being exonerated. At his table was Marty’s high school buddy, actor Tony Shalhoub, who looked like a stalking fan taking pictures on his phone when his lawyer-friend was honored for being poor and a hero. While people were asking Shalhoub for pictures and autographs, he was busy being enamored with Marty….
Last week, we brought you the “weirdest job ad” of all time. Today, we’ve got a job ad that isn’t nearly as strange, but as our tipster put it, it’s “a bit off.” And our tipster is right. This might not be the weirdest job ad of all time, but it’s probably the most boastful.
With all of the hubbub about unpaid internships, you’d think that legal employers would start showing law students the money — but you’d be wrong. Because when you freely admit that you don’t have any cash, it’s hard to spread it around. Maybe that’s why this law firm is sacrificing applicants’ credentials for free labor.
Let’s check out a “unique posting” straight out of a law school in Flori-duh….
I have successfully avoided jury duty since I moved back to New York in 2003, but this week they finally caught up with me. This week, I’ve had to perform my civic responsibility of sitting in judgment of my peers (like I don’t do that enough already).
Sorry, I had to “be available” to sit in judgement of my peers. Nobody is ever going to pick me for a jury. I blog about law for a living, hold two Harvard degrees, and have a checkered past. I’m not getting impaneled. Instead, I was just looking forward to the rare business day when I didn’t have to invent an opinion or listen to “the internet” pontificate on my weight.
Then the lady who seemed to be in charge of the proceedings told me that I was looking forward to three days of that. I went to protest, but Nurse Ratched told me to sit down and wait for my lobotomy. So i started paying attention to my surroundings — because blogging is how I cope with the slings and arrows of outrageous people asking me to behave like a normal person.
I’ll deal more directly with Nurse Ratched at another time. Today I got an up-close look at the voir dire process in a criminal trial. While I was not picked, I feel like my McMurphy-esque fingerprints will be all over the case.
Let’s take a look inside our clearly broken jury system…
Continue reading “Elie Draws Jury Duty: Day One — Voir Dire”
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney
Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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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: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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