Disasters / Emergencies

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

Yesterday, we devoted some coverage to the devastation down in Alabama due to the terrible storms there earlier this week. In the National Law Journal, Karen Sloan has an excellent report about how the tornadoes are affecting operations at the University of Alabama, including its law school. It appears that the storms affected the college […]

Tornadoes don’t get cute names like hurricanes. Unlike volcanoes, tsunamis, and earthquakes there’s really only been one cool disaster movie about tornadoes with halfway decent CGI — and it wasn’t a very good movie because you can’t be a good movie when your main star is Bill Paxton. And since tornadoes mostly strike in the […]

On Tuesday we told you that McGuireWoods, Dewey & LeBoeuf, and Weil Gosthal were all contributing to the relief efforts under way in Japan. The response has been pretty great. While some people seem to think Japan’s status as a rich nation means it doesn’t need any international aid, I don’t see how the country’s […]

After the Haitian earthquake last year, we saw law firms step up in a big way to support relief efforts down there. Hopefully we will see the same reaction to the ever-increasing tragedy unfolding in Japan. Given an 8.9 a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, a massive tsunami, and a nuclear disaster that is already the second-worst nuclear […]

Here in New York City, the headquarters of Above the Law, we’re still dealing with the aftermath of the Great Blizzard of 2010. Check out our slideshow for some images (like the one at right). Although the snowstorm ended on Monday, and it’s now Wednesday night, many streets remain unplowed and many sidewalks uncleared. Mayor […]

As I alluded to last week, today I was supposed to be getting some action down in sunny Florida. Alas, thanks to the massive blizzard that hit the East Coast last night, I’m stuck in my Manhattan apartment — after three consecutive flights got canceled on me. I’m grumpy, but understanding (and enjoying a Glee […]

As we mentioned this weekend, the BP oil spill has been capped (for the time being), and now we can fully focus on who needs to get paid. As with so many things, it’s Ken Feinberg’s world and we’re just living in it. Bloomberg reports: Kenneth Feinberg, who is overseeing a $20 billion fund to […]

It’s getting hot in herre So turn off all your lights. I am… getting so hot… I wanna turn my lights off! [FN1] Here on the East Coast, things are heating up. Unfortunately, we’re not talking about the legal job market. We’re speaking much more literally. For the past few days, New York, Washington, and […]

Article II, meet Article III. Hope you enjoy the pwnage. CNN reports: A federal judge has blocked a six-month federal moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Several dozen plaintiffs had sued the Obama administration, arguing the ban would create long-term economic harm to their businesses. Well, think of it this way: the […]

Not many people are happy about the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — with the possible exceptions of (1) Elena Kagan, whose confirmation to the Supreme Court is all but guaranteed (since everyone’s too distracted to oppose her); (2) the lawyers who are getting work out of this disaster (as discussed […]

Jamie Gorelick is a Washington D.C. power lawyer. She’s a former Deputy Attorney General, former general counsel to the Defense Department, and current partner at WilmerHale, where she chairs the national security and public policy practice groups. She’s had — and continues to have — an amazing career. But does she really want to be […]