Courtroom or catwalk? Perp walk or runway strut? These are the “important” questions that the media has focused on in recent years when it comes to celebrities’ run-ins with the law. Headlines focus not on their underlying criminal offenses, but instead on their couture du jour.
This rings especially true in the case of Lindsay Lohan. From head to toe, LiLo’s courtroom fashion choices are hot-button issues that result in full-length articles in fashion magazines, gossip blogs, and even the New York Times.
When everyone is commenting on your clothing, you know that you’re doing something right (or something very, very wrong). And unfortunately for our favorite Mean Girl, those comments usually aren’t very nice….
* Should the Supreme Court be forced to televise oral arguments? Yes, but only on the condition that we get spin-off shows called Wise Latina Justice and Ruthie’s Law. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Rod Blagojevich won’t get leniency during sentencing. He’ll spend the next week lamenting the fact that can’t brush his beautiful hair like Marcia Brady while in prison. [Bloomberg]
* Brynee Baylor, a D.C. attorney, has been charged with fraud by the SEC. Hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to get yourself a pair of Jimmy Choos. You go girl. [Blog of Legal Times]
* Plan B, the morning-after pill, may soon be available on drugstore shelves thanks to the FDA. But so what? Plan A, keeping your legs closed, is a much cheaper alternative. [New York Daily News]
* Pakistani actress Veena Malik is suing FHM for $2M. She only wanted to go topless on the cover, but she claims they made her look full on nude. Have at it, pixel inspectors. [New York Magazine]
* Deborah Batts, the first openly gay judge to serve on the federal bench, got married this weekend. We hope she doesn’t become the first openly gay federal judge to get divorced. [New York Times]
* Things are getting hairy for Kim Kardashian, and not just because she’s Armenian. A hair removal company is suing her, saying she’s lying about how she gets all of that hair off her body. [Fox News]
* Lori David: she’s every teenage boy’s dream, and every mother’s nightmare. A hot Texas mom has been banned from the internet after sexting naked pictures to her son’s friend. [Daily Mail]
Let’s see what else the ladies are up to this morning….
Rover's last wish was to have his ashes sprinkled over a pile of money.
* Saying your dog ate something isn’t a creative enough excuse these days. Try this instead: “I kept the clients’ missing money in my car, which I left running in the parking lot to keep my dead dog’s ashes from freezing. Someone then stole the car, and now the missing client money is gone forever!” [Canadian Lawyer]
* Oh, to be a lawyer with the ability to tell opposing counsel that his client is a “spoiled, brainless twit.” It’s even better when opposing counsel’s client is Meghan McCain. [Spectacle Blog / American Spectator]
* Next time you feel like kicking the crap out of someone, make sure your twin is there, because there’s a high likelihood that you’ll both get off. [Legal Juice]
* A judge in Louisiana just threw a case out because he didn’t want to catch the flu from a witness. Elie was right: germaphobia is the real contagion! [Lowering the Bar]
* How would Jesus feel about guns in his church? He’d probably change them into dildos and tell the violence-bearers to go f**k themselves. [WSJ Law Blog]
* There’s been a lot of talk about personal branding for lawyers lately. This guy probably has the right idea, but you’ve got to wonder if he really wants to be known as the “Bald Lawyer” for the rest of his life. What happens if he decides to get plugs? [Legal Blog Watch]
* Are you applying to law school (or do you know someone who is)? Have Lat review the application essay — and support a good cause at the same time. [Kickstarter]
* I’m sure the soon-to-be first-year associates out there could use this guide on who to bill their hours to. [Going Concern]
* Everybody has advice for when lawyers should step back and remain calm. When is the appropriate time for lawyers to freak out, start screaming and pounding things, and run around saying “we’re all gonna die!”? I mean, I try to do that at least once a week and it makes me feel so centered. [Tips for Young Lawyers]
* As the son of a Haitian immigrant, I do have some Creole roots. But I think it would be awesome to be full-on French for at least one day. I’d definitely have sex with a hotel maid, pee on an airplane, and find a German to surrender to. [Times of Malta]
* True story: when I was a kid, I thought the difference between white men and black men was their hair. So like, a brother with relaxed hair like Al Sharpton was “white” to me, and a guy with a big Jew-fro was “black” to me. I didn’t learn my error, until I walked that nice Jewish girl home from school that one time and saw the look on her parents’ faces. [Gawker]
* I don’t think a lawsuit can sufficiently capture what should happen to a doctor who incorrectly amputates a penis. Next time I go in for surgery I’m writing “do not remove under any circumstance” on that bad boy. Yeah, it’ll fit. [MSNBC]
* I’m flying this weekend for the first time in over a year (it couldn’t be avoided). I’ll need to brush up on what rights I still retain during air travel. As long as I acknowledge TSA’s droit du seigneur to my wife, I’m allowed to carry an unopened water bottle on board, right? [Legal Blog Watch]
* There’s a statement from the University of Baltimore on the Phillip Closius situation. They say their “forward momentum” will continue. Does that mean they expect future Baltimore Law students to be unable to run a Google search? [WSJ Law Blog]
* Lat imagined a future legal career for Casey Anthony that starts with a Anthony getting a GED (before clerking on the Supreme Court and becoming a law partner of Jose Baez). But doesn’t Hustler seem like something more in her wheelhouse? [Gawker]
* Have we done irreparable damage to our credit rating, unless we can prove we have a legal “fail-safe” in case a vocal Tea Party minority hijacks the entire freaking nation again? [Blackbook Legal]
* 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]
This month’s heat wave forced professional types to start desperately thinking about whether spaghetti straps and speedos are appropriate attire for the office. (Hint: they’re not.)
Many offices do go casual over the summer, though. At Weil Gotshal, for example, you can buy your way into a pair of jeans on Friday. Says a tipster (with some high-rise excitement):
did you hear that weil is starting jeans fridays for july and august as a test run and potentially forever! in order to participate, we must pay $5 to go to a designated charity each month. we have had these $5 jeans fridays in the past maybe every other month… but now it’s every friday!
The downside: Those who don’t turn up in jeans on Fridays are revealed as either ridiculously stuffy or too cheap to give to charity.
Need help with clothing choices this summer? A recent career newsletter from The Ladders had a useful feature on summer fashion, including dos and don’ts. The photo at right is among those featured. Is it a fashion do or a don’t?
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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.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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Courtroom or catwalk? Perp walk or runway strut? These are the “important” questions that the media has focused on in recent years when it comes to celebrities’ run-ins with the law. Headlines focus not on their underlying criminal offenses, but instead on their couture du jour. 
