If such a shoe exists, the parties have not pointed to it, there is no evidence that Already has dreamt of it, and we cannot conceive of it. It sits, as far as we can tell, on a shelf between Dorothy’s ruby slippers and Perseus’s winged sandals.
– Chief Justice John Roberts, remarking in a recent opinion on the specific degree of fabulosity that would be required for Nike to renege on its covenant not to sue Already LLC for trademark infringement. The Supreme Court opinion can be found here.
Above the Law’s 2012 Lawyer of the Year contest is now over. Thanks to everyone who nominated a lawyer; thanks to our finalists, for being such accomplished and interesting individuals; and thanks to all our readers, who picked our victor after two weeks of voting over the holiday season.
Here are ATL’s past Lawyers of the Year:
For 2012, who will join their distinguished ranks? Let’s find out….
Continue reading “Above the Law’s 2012 Lawyer of the Year Competition: The Winner!”
The year is quickly drawing to a close, but we have unfinished business to conduct here at Above the Law. Come on, people, we still have to crown our Lawyer of the Year for 2012.
Thank you to everyone who responded to our call for nominations, in the comments or via email. We’ve narrowed down the nominees to a field of nine (although you’ll see only eight options in the poll because one is a joint nomination). As in past years, the contenders run the gamut from distinguished to despicable.
And the nominees are….
Continue reading “Above the Law’s 2012 Lawyer of the Year Competition: The Finalists!”
The Defense of Marriage Act. California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage. These were two of the big issues that the U.S. Supreme Court was deciding whether to hear this Term.
The Court just issued its certiorari orders. What happened?
Continue reading “Breaking: Supreme Court Decides To Hear Major Gay Rights Cases”
* Chief Justice John Roberts gave a Solicitor General’s Office attorney a vicious tongue-lashing for failure to be upfront about policy changes between presidents. Now that’s what we’d call a verbal benchslap! [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* When asked if they’d be following Cravath’s bonuses, a dozen Am Law 100 firms didn’t even care to respond or discuss the matter. It seems the partners would rather keep their associates squirming with suspense a while longer. [Am Law Daily]
* Watch out, world, because Catholic University of America just hired a Biglaw senior partner to lead its law school. Say hello to Dean Daniel Attridge, formerly managing partner at the D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis. [National Law Journal]
* A federal judge ordered tobacco companies to disclose in product warnings that they chemically induce smoking addictions to turn a profit, but those fools will keep puffing their cancer sticks anyway. [WSJ Law Blog]
* This just in from Flori-duh: you know you’re probably going to have a bad day in court when the judge won’t declare a mistrial even though the prosecutor technically wasn’t a member of the state Bar. [Miami Herald]
We know what you must be thinking: how could the Chief Justice of the United States have anything in common with the woman who wrote and starred in Girls, the overtly sexualized hit series on HBO? Chief Justice John Roberts thinks that corporations are people whose money talks, while Lena Dunham often appears naked on the small screen while contemplating raunchy sex acts. The pair seem like complete opposites — but as we know from that fabulous Paula Abdul song, opposites sometimes attract.
As it turns out, Chief Justice Roberts and Dunham were both big hits this year with liberal thinkers. Yes, you read that correctly. Roberts, once a bastion of conservative hope, is now being praised as a liberal hero alongside a woman who starred in an Obama ad that likened first-time voting to losing one’s virginity.
They’ve even been named on a few year-end lists together. Let’s check them out….
Continue reading “What Does Chief Justice John Roberts Have in Common With Lena Dunham?”
Chief Justice Roberts: he ain’t evolving.
* In light of Chief Justice Roberts’s historic vote to uphold Obamacare, should we expect JGR to be more liberal going forward? According to Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Oath (affiliate link), “Do not expect a new John Roberts. Expect the conservative he has always been.” [Talking Points Memo via How Appealing]
* Law firm staff layoffs: they’re not just an American thing. Slaughter and May is dropping the ax on 28 secretaries. [Roll On Friday]
* “[A]ny robot or high school graduate can calculate numbers in a matrix to arrive at the highest possible sentence. But it takes a Judge — a man or woman tempered by experience in life and law — to properly judge another human being’s transgressions.” [Justice Building Blog]
* Professor Dershowitz’s $4 million Cambridge mansion? Robert Wenzel is not impressed: “if I lived in that house, I would want to attack Iran and most of the rest of the world, also.” [Economic Policy Journal]
* A man sues a strip club, alleging that a stripper ruptured his bladder when she slid down a pole and onto his abdomen. Ouch. [Legally Weird / Findlaw]
* Still on the subject of Torts, two attractive blonde sisters walk into a bar — and discuss who can be held liable if a man suffers a heart attack during a threesome. Video after the jump….
* Chief Justice John Roberts, in his capacity as circuit justice for the Fourth Circuit, has given the green light — for the time being — to Maryland’s continued collection of DNA samples from people charged with violent felonies. [New York Times]
* Professor Dan Markel isn’t a fan of the practice, arguing that it “is yet another abuse of the presumption of innocence.” [PrawfsBlawg]
* In other Supreme Court news, the proponents of Prop 8′s ban on gay marriage have filed a petition for certiorari with the Court. [Arthur Leonard / Leonard Link]
* And in other gay marriage news, yet another federal judge — Judge Vanessa Bryant (D. Conn.), a Bush II appointee — has struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. [Chris Geidner / BuzzFeed]
A California litigatrix's lawyerly lair.
* Lawyerly Lairs: Emily Alexander’s beautiful, light-filled home is awash in color. There are no hunting prints in sight — even though she used to practice at Sullivan & Cromwell. [California Home + Design]
* The mother of a man who died during a police chase has sued the SFPD over her son’s accidentally shooting himself. Opines SFist: “It remains unclear to us why [Kenneth] Harding has been chosen to serve as a martyr, given his not-so-stellar record and the self-inflicted wound.” [SFist]
* Poor Professor Campos — does his self-loathing know no bounds? The prominent law professor, one of legal academia’s harshest (and most eloquent) critics, has now turned his powerful fire on baby boomers — of whom he is one. [Salon]
Actually, just like most cert petitions, drama got denied. In an interview last night with Piers Morgan of CNN, Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court’s longest-serving member, denied that he had any kind of tiff with Chief Justice John Roberts over National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (aka the Affordable Care Act case, aka Obamacare).
Justice Scalia’s denial of drama is pretty funny, actually. Let’s read about it — along with the latest opinion polls about public approval of the SCOTUS….
Continue reading “The Not-So-Young and the Restless: Drama at One First Street?”
Sexorcise the demon!
* You don’t necessarily have to agree with what Chief Justice John Roberts did with respect to his health care opinion, but you’ve got to admit that it was an act of statesmanship that will forever define his legacy on the Court. [New York Times]
* CNN, one of the world’s most reliable news networks, reports that no many legal scholars were surprised unsurprised by yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to strike down uphold the Individual Broccoli Mandate Affordable Care Act. [CNN]
* Word to the wise: don’t get cocky over in the Eighth Circuit, because apparently boosting the length of a prison term based on whether or not a defendant is smiling at sentencing is not considered an abuse of discretion. [National Law Journal]
* Dewey know why the number of law firm mergers and acquisitions in the United States dropped during the second quarter? Truth be told, they’re all scared, because “[n]obody wants to wind up with a lemon.” [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* George Zimmerman, the man charged in Trayvon Martin’s death, is returning to court today to try to get himself released on bond… again. Let’s give him some credit, because he sure is tenacious. [ABC News]
* Listen, it’s not an easy thing to perform an exorcism these days. Sometimes a priest really just needs to kiss and caress the demon out of your body — a sexorcism, if you will. Nothing to sue over, nothing at all. [MSNBC]
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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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 »
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