* Arizona has one of the least restrictive laws on involuntary commitment of nutters in the nation. Next time, Arizona. Next time. [Reuters]
* Talk of new gun laws is the perfect time to link to the most criminally underrated movie of all time…UHF. [New York Times]
* Two teen girls in Florida were arrested for creating a fake Facebook profile for another girl and posting fake nudes of her. The detective who cracked the case remarked, “The pictures looked shopped. I could tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in my time.” [Naples News via Gawker]
* A BYU Law grad who lied about his bar membership is charged with being an Indian Taker. [ABA Journal]
* Lawrence Taylor pleaded guilty yesterday to having a horrifying life and doing horrifying things that sadly diminish his Hall of Fame Tecmo Bowl career. [ESPN]
* “A naked housecleaner, who advertised services on a gay Website, used fear of police sodomy as a defense against murder charges — and it worked.” [New York Post]
* Hey baby, your placenta or mine? Four nursing students may have aborted their careers due to oversharing on Facebook — and now one of them is suing. [Wall Street Journal]
* Like sh*t through a goose: a woman claims she now has digestive problems because she got to second base with Donald Duck. [Washington Post]
* Can a school keep your kid from looking like a lesbian? These parents are fighting for their son’s right to look like Justin Bieber. [Indianapolis Star]
* No happy ending for Brett Favre. The QB tried to throw a pass to his masseuses’ tight ends, but he’s now getting sacked with a lawsuit. [New York Post]
* U.S. News wants you to know that if you go to Cooley, the only place your application will be transferred to is the paper shredder. [Get In: Law School / U.S. News]
* Rahm sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so stop writing parody songs about him, motherf**ker. [Change of Subject / Chicago Tribune]
In the comments earlier today, I remarked that it feels like law students are gearing up for finals. You can just tell. We’re getting more and more psuedo-substantive legal arguments that only look at one side of the issue, but are said as if the commenter is some kind of expert in whatever law he or she is talking about.
It’s cute. I really like this time of year. It’s like watching chicks frantically trying to learn how to fly before the flock has to migrate south.
[Cue David Attenborough voice] While it appears that the youngsters are having fun and games, this is a time of deadly seriousness for the students. Nerves are getting frayed; passions are inflamed. In the American South, we have an example of just what can happen when two law students collide over proper social etiquette at a time when ‘A’s are scarce. At a place called Florida State University College of Law, a missed assignment sent two dominant females into the arena called “Facebook”….
If I’m applying the First Amendment, I have to apply it to a world where there’s an Internet, and there’s Facebook, and there are movies like … ‘The Social Network,’ which I couldn’t even understand.
* The Canadian Supreme Court is debating whether a woman can give prior consent for unconscious anal sex. When it’s that cold, I guess you do really freaky things to stay warm. [Vancouver Sun]
* Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court is just plain being anal. Yesterday, the Court rejected the first of the Obamacare lawsuits, because it came too soon. That’s what she said. [CNN]
* Connecticut has added an eleventh man, Steven Hayes, to its death row. If executed, Hayes will be only the second inmate in the state to actually die since 1960. [ABC News]
* Oklahomans wanted to keep sharia law from sweepin’ down the plain, but a federal judge just kept everything from goin’ their way. [Wall Street Journal]
* Not just gay people kill themselves when they get bullied -– alleged child murderers do, too. Nancy Grace has to set up a trust dedicated to finding the missing son of a former guest who committed suicide. [Washington Post]
* The ACLU says that the government is trying to impose the death penalty on Anwar al-Awlaki without a trial. Kind of like the jihad he wants to impose on U.S. citizens, no? [Los Angeles Times]
* Think twice next time before you bitch about your employer on Facebook, because you might just get canned. [New York Times]
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Unless it involves defamatory Facebook postings and a retaliatory lawsuit.
The new CBS show The Defenders has Jim Belushi and Jerry O’Connell dramatizing and glamorizing the life and work of Las Vegas attorneys. But for the real attorneys working in the tumbleweeds of Nevada, it can be a tough gig. Ask Jonathan Goldsmith, a “60% Bankruptcy / 10% Family Law / 10% Criminal Defense / 5% Personal Injury” of counsel at Rosenfeld & Rinato. (They don’t bother with associates there — you’re either of counsel or a founding partner, even if you’re just two years out of law school; Goldsmith is a 2009 University of Las Vegas law grad.)
Goldsmith was plaintiff’s counsel in a divorce case, and the husband being divorced, Jordan Cooper, took a disliking to him. Which he naturally expressed on Facebook…
* Molly Wei, one of the two Rutgers students involved in the Tyler Clementi case, feels “attack[ed]” — but she’s hanging in there. [Celebitchy]
* Reports of a hunter’s death may have been greatly exaggerated, but they don’t entitle him to a defamation award. [Courthouse News]
* “Thinking of a Career in Law? Hahaha!” (Or: the U.K. legal market sounds a whole lot like ours.) [Charon QC]
* Can a lawyer use publicly available information on Facebook in a pending case without friending the person? [Adjunct Law Prof Blog]
* Vanderbilt law professor and leading class-action scholar Richard Nagareda, R.I.P. [TortsProf Blog]
Almost two years ago, I joined Twitter to help find a publisher for a book I was writing. A couple weeks later, a friend I followed on Twitter asked, “Does anybody know a contracts lawyer?” I responded and won a new client. A lawyer winning business on Twitter was somewhat unusual at that time, but it isn’t anymore. In the 2010 ABA Technology Survey Report, 10% of respondents “had a client retain their legal services as a result of use of online communities/social networking.” While 10% may seem small, it represents a dramatic shift in law firm attitudes towards social media.
So how are the successful attorneys doing it? By personally maintaining a presence online: 56% of attorneys reported having a presence in 2010, up from just 43% in 2009 and 15% in 2008. (In 2008, the social networks mentioned in the survey were Facebook, Second Life and LawLink — so times have changed a bit.) Bottom line is, there has been a clear shift over the last three years. Take a look at the classic innovation curve:
For those unfamiliar with the Rogers Innovation Curve, think of the first group of innovators as those who stood in line for the first iPhone, and the second group of early adopters as those who did their research and jumped on for the second version of the iPhone. The early majority represents widespread acceptance of the technology, and the late majority is when people like my father (who just recently stopped dictating emails to his secretary) buy iPhones. The laggards are those who have not yet figured out how to turn on their computers.
Participating in social networks is no longer a fringe activity enjoyed by the innovators and early adopters; it is now enjoyed by the early majority and a piece of the late majority. Social networks have hit the mainstream for lawyers, and since lawyers tend to lag behind the rest of the population in acceptance of new technology, I suspect there is even greater penetration among businesses and key decision makers.
How are different groups of lawyers responding to the social networking revolution?
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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* Arizona has one of the least restrictive laws on involuntary commitment of nutters in the nation. Next time, Arizona. Next time. [Reuters]
