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.
I was just on HuffPost Live debating gun regulation with Professor Eugene Volokh, among others. It was a good discussion where I argued that guns should be regulated like cars, and Volokh thought it would be a good idea to regulate guns like cars… and then we completely disagreed about what that would mean.
But I wasn’t off the webcam for five minutes when another tragic story about gun violence came across the wire. A man in Alabama shot himself inside an Alabama federal courthouse.
I’m not sure that there’s any regulation, up to and including abolishing the Second Amendment entirely, that would stop these kinds of situations entirely. But I am, again, shocked that courthouse security was such that this guy was able to get a firearm in there in the first place….
Continue reading “Attempted Suicide at an Alabama Courthouse”
An 18th century firearm.
One doesn’t have to be a historian to realize that a right to keep and bear arms for personal self-defense in the 18th century could not rationally have been limited to the home.
– Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit, overturning an Illinois law prohibiting loaded weapons from being carried in public.
(Perhaps if Posner were a historian, he’d have remembered the whole “a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” clause that precedes our supposedly inviolable rights to carry around loaded hand cannons that pack the lethality of half of the Continental Army.)
* Munger Tolles & Olson recently announced a new partnership class, 75 percent of which is composed of women. Let’s hear three cheers for diversity in the practice of law! Oh, and uh… congratulations to the lone white guy, too. [The Careerist]
* Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition: in an opinion penned by Judge Richard Posner, a divided three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit struck down an Illinois law banning the concealed carrying of loaded weapons outside the home. [Bloomberg]
* Holy crap! Law students asked for change, and the Arizona Supreme court is giving them exactly what they wanted, which is impressive. 3Ls will now be able to sit for the February bar exam. [National Law Journal]
* And speaking of Arizona, the Phoenix City Council and state Board of Regents have approved ASU Law’s plans to move its campus, and the city even threw in $12M to sweeten the deal. [Phoenix Business Journal]
* Remember the defamation suit Cooley Law filed against a former student who anonymously criticized the school on his blog? His lawyer will defend his anonymity today in court. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Nevermind the fact that he’s a “person of interest” in a homicide case, because a Guatemalan judge ordered that antivirus mogul John McAfee should be released due to his illegal detention. [Los Angeles Times]
* I’m not sure what it takes to be a top “Global Thinker,” but I’m sure these law professors are worthy. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Good to see that I’m not the only one who gets crazy pitch letters from lawyers. [Popehat]
* If somehow this results in a Simpsons episode where the 11th Circuit rules on whether or not the family can have another Snowball, I’ll be happy. [Find Law]
* No joke, the “things you can’t do on a plane” series is probably my favorite thing in the blawgosphere right now. [Legal Blog Watch]
* Keith Magness, the lawyer accused of masturbating on the office furniture of girls in his firm, entered Alford pleas. But the pleas kind of stuck together. [Times-Picayune]
* But really, how is anybody going to get trial experience if everybody is entering pleas all the time? [Underdog]
* Could a benevolent monopolist fix legal education? Perhaps. But I’d vote for a malevolent blogger instead. [lawprofblog]
* This law student is worried about the tax implications of getting free donuts. He’d better be worried about letting me know that he can get donuts whenever he wants. (Yes, I make the jokes so you can’t hurt me, then go home to bacon-wrapped, fried steak wedges, which don’t judge). [Tax Prof Blog]
* I was on Geraldo at Large for about 30 seconds this weekend telling a gun range owner that guns should be regulated while standing in the middle of his gun store. I wore bright orange because, well, I didn’t want to get shot. [Geraldo at Large]
There’s no gay bar at the Supreme Court right now.
* I’m not sure that it’s legal to tag the cars of people who park poorly, but it’s certainly satisfying. Honestly, every time I see one of those commercials where the dude needs freaking birds to park his “I’ve given up on life” minivan-SUV, I want to scream, “You could act like a man!” [Legal Blog Watch]
* SCOTUS is acting like an old college roommate who just came out is inviting them to a gay bar, and they’re trying to politely decline without looking like raging homophobes. [SCOTUSblog]
* To all the people who didn’t pass the California bar exam, here’s a guy who did it while only studying for 100 hours. Yeah. So… umm, I didn’t really think this blurb through. [Blake Masters]
* Do lawyers need to “love” their clients? Come on, isn’t loving the money they give you enough? [Underdog]
* Jason Whitlock took the Jovan Belcher and put the focus exactly where it should be, on our gun laws. Then Bob Costas blew a big megaphone on Sunday Night Football. [Fox Sports]
* It’s funny, I’m against sex offender registries because even though sex crimes are heinous, registries are bad things that create second-class citizens and tend to unfairly lump people who didn’t commit the worst stuff in with disgusting humans. That means I should probably be against animal abuse registries too, but man I don’t think animal abusers suffer nearly enough. So, whatever, I’m a hypocrite. I’m a hypocrite who cares more about dogs than children. [Simple Justice]
Just try telling him to put out his smokes. Not gonna happen.
* You can take our lives, but you can never take our freedom to slowly take our own lives by smoking cigarettes in public! [U.S. Eighth Circuit / FindLaw]
* Some humorously sketchy legal advice, courtesy of Reddit. [Associate's Mind]
* A Russian in-house attorney got dumped and then allegedly went to work and shot seven people. [ABA Journal]
* L.A. County voted to force porn stars to wear condoms during shoots. In other news, the entire porn industry packed up yesterday and moved to… somewhere outside L.A. County. [Legal Blog Watch]
* Dean Boland, one of Paul Ceglia’s ex-lawyers, just lost an appeal of a $300K judgment after he allegedly manipulated “photos that depicted minors engaged in sex acts.” [WSJ Law Blog]
* Elie says: You’d think that covering up your own extra-marital affairs would be part of the CIA Director entrance exam. [New York Times]
Go Giants?
Last week, a friend told me he hoped the Giants didn’t win the World Series because of the rioting that would inevitably follow. Now I understand why.
When I left Oakland, I thought I was also leaving behind insanity like this. Apparently not.
Last night, after the Giants swept the Detroit Tigers to win the World Series, San Francisco literally went up in flames. In the Mission — my neighborhood — alone, I saw at least four large fires burning in the middle of major roads. In other parts of the city, cars were set ablaze.
Click through to see pictures and video of the mayhem, and let’s ask ourselves how the law should handle this kind of widespread destruction celebration….
Continue reading “World Series Winners (Or Their Fans, At Least) Are Above the Law”
* The Fifth Circuit upheld a federal law banning gun sales to people under 21 years old. Oh! The humanity! What will the nation’s teenagers do without booze or their own guns? [WSJ Law Blog]
* A New York cop is charged with planning to kidnap, cook, and eat 100 women. Gross. I wonder if this will tarnish the NYPD’s sterling reputation. [Daily Intel / New York Magazine]
* Scratching your nuts in public is gross, but it’s not the same as, uh, some other grosser, more illegal activities. It would behoove this woman to learn to recognize the difference. [Legal Juice]
* Should wearing “personality” glasses count against a criminal defendant? I dunno, but as a guy who has to wear glasses I find it bizarre that people choose to wear them as fashion accessories. Might as well wear a useless prosthetic arm too; I hear they’re the next hip trend. [Legal Blog Watch]
* Another intra-family lawsuit: Geoffrey Richards, who teaches at Northwestern Law School, has been sued by his 95-year-old grandfather over a family financial dispute. The grandfather is also calling Richards a “scoundrel” and the “greatest disappointment” in his life. Ouch. [DealBreaker]
* President Obama has endorsed several same-sex marriage ballot proposals. Nice work, Barry. [BuzzFeed]
* Insights and advice for people interested in fashion law (from Ron Coleman and others). [Likelihood of Confusion]
Is Kagan turning to the dark side?
The news from the Supreme Court this morning isn’t about affirmative action or campaign finance or health care for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Today’s news is the gossip that (conservative) Antonin Scalia and (liberal) Elena Kagan apparently enjoy each other’s company. In our polarized political climate, it’s news that Scalia and Kagan have gone hunting together, without trying to kill each other.
Yeah, you heard that right, hunting. Scalia took Kagan hunting. Scalia has now corrupted one of the liberal justices into murdering defenseless animals for sport. When reached for comment, Scalia said of Kagan “I could feel her anger. It gives her focus, makes her stronger.”
Kagan can’t go out like this. If she’s going to start killing things for amusement, it’s got to be part of a deal where she makes Scalia do something, I don’t know, compassionate and human. You know? Or at the very least, she’s got to take him to a gay bar in Chelsea or something….
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
Keep reading »
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