John Grisham

  • Biglaw, Facebook, Kids, Lateral Moves, Law Schools, Morning Docket, Partner Issues, Real Estate, Trials

    Morning Docket: 10.16.14

    * Dickstein Shapiro’s IP practice was raided by Manatt Phelps & Phillips, and now the struggling firm is down one practice group coleader thanks to its partner defections. [Am Law Daily]

    * Contrary to popular belief, O’Melveny & Myers is not opening a Portland office. Instead, the firm is setting up a temporary shop to work on a local patent trial. [Portland Business Journal]

    * You can turn an IPO into a gold mine for your firm using this one weird trick. Discover how you can turn that one deal into your future. Prepare to be shocked. [Law360 (sub. req.)]

    * Now isn’t the best time to enroll in law school. It’s also not the best time to rank law schools as “top” schools based on enrollment alone. Seriously, have you even heard of all of these law schools? [Birmingham Business Journal]

    * Thanks to this Georgia appellate ruling, parents may now be held responsible for what their silly little children who weren’t supposed to be on Facebook are posting on Facebook. Dislike. [WSJ Law Blog]

    * John Grisham says not all consumers of child pornography are pedophiles. Here’s a story about one of his law school pals: “He shouldn’t ‘a done it. It was stupid, but it wasn’t 10-year-old boys.” [The Telegraph]

  • 3rd Circuit, 7th Circuit, Biglaw, Books, Deaths, Gay, Gay Marriage, Law School Deans, Law Schools, Morning Docket, Partner Issues

    Morning Docket: 09.05.14

    * A unanimous Seventh Circuit panel, in an opinion by Judge Posner, just struck down Wisconsin and Indiana’s bans on same-sex marriage. The result isn’t surprising in light of the blistering benchslaps delivered by Judge Posner at oral argument, but the timing is faster than usual (for a federal appellate opinion in a high-profile case, not for the prolific Posner). [BuzzFeed]

    * Bad news for Cahill Gordon: the Third Circuit just revived a fraud case against the high-powered firm and one of its clients, a unit of BASF. [WSJ Law Blog]

    * And badder news for BP: a federal judge just concluded that the oil giant was grossly negligent in connection with the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. [New York Times]

    * Freshfields gets fresh talent, adding former Wachtell partner Mitchell Presser and former Skadden partner James Douglas to its ranks. [American Lawyer]

    * The dean of Seton Hall Law, Patrick Hobbs, will step down from the deanship at the end of the current academic year. Congratulations to Dean Hobbs on a long and successful tenure. [South Orange Juice]

    * And congratulations to John Grisham and Jason Bailey, winners of, respectively, the 2014 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and the 2014 ABA Journal/Ross Short Fiction Contest. [ABA Journal]

    * Brittany McGrath, Brooklyn Law class of 2014, RIP. [TaxProf Blog]

  • Biglaw, Celebrities, Disasters / Emergencies, Guns / Firearms, Law Firm Mergers, Law Professors, Law School Deans, Law Schools, Money, Morning Docket, Movies, Patton Boggs, Student Loans, Violence

    Morning Docket: 04.03.14

    * Dentons still has the urge to merge with a U.S. firm, and now it’s trying to tempt Patton Boggs away from Squire Sanders with a “serious overture.” Bow chika bow wow. [The Lawyer]

    * Despite all the outrage over Albany Law’s faculty buyouts, some have already accepted the package offered. Looks like anything’s possible for the right price. [Albany Business Review]

    * Guess which law school is cutting tuition by a whole lot? Some hints: it’s in New York and it’s been selling off real estate. We’ll have more on this later. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

    * Perhaps this could be considered a gift of provisional accreditation: Alberto Gonzales, U.S. Attorney General in President George W. Bush’s administration, is now dean at Belmont Law. [The Tennessean]

    * Take a look at this new paper by Professors Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld on race and culture in law school admissions. Actually, it’s fake, but it’s sad that it could, in theory, be very real. [Washington Post]

    * Zac Efron is going to star as a Yale Law grad forced by criminals to work in the world’s largest Biglaw firm in a film adaptation of John Grisham’s book, The Associate. OMG, he’s so cute. [Hollywood Reporter]

    * Our thoughts go out to the families of those wounded and killed during the Fort Hood shooting. [AP]

  • Books, Non-Sequiturs, Politics, Rape, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Television

    Non-Sequiturs: 09.23.13

    * Sort of, not really spoiler alert: Saul Goodman apparently left New Mexico and joined Covington’s D.C. office. That’ll be a good fit. [Legal Cheek] * There’s a Broadway version of A Time to Kill? And Fred Thompson is in it, because this is a lot better than putting in that modicum of effort it takes to mount a campaign for president. [A Time to Kill on Broadway] * A bestselling author is suing USC for discrimination. I find that hard to believe. If USC turned any discriminating eye toward hiring, they wouldn’t employ Lane Kiffin. [Courthouse News Service] * Check out the new book by former firm partner Liz Brown about the process of leaving the legal profession. [Life After Law (affiliate link)] * A humorous take on the Supreme Court’s preparations for the new term. Justice Ginsburg is basically a Time Lord. [McSweeney's] * Class certification is denied for the Thomas Jefferson School of Law grads alleging the school misled them with false and inaccurate employment statistics. The case was doomed from the beginning, because there’s nothing “typical” about TJSL students! [San Diego Courts] * A profile of Ted Cruz by Jason Zengerle. It’s unfair to call Cruz a “Wacko Bird from Texas”; he’s a “Wacko Bird from Canada.” [GQ] * Lawyers defending the accused rapists of a Naval Academy Mid asked the victim to describe her oral sex technique, if she “felt like a ‘ho,’” and if she wore underwear. The goal was to teach Afghanistan to be more like the U.S., not to teach the Navy to be more like the Taliban. [Jezebel]
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  • American Bar Association / ABA, Bankruptcy, Bernie Madoff, Biglaw, Billable Hours, Dewey & LeBoeuf, Federal Government, Gay, Gay Marriage, Law Professors, Law Schools, Lunacy, Money, Morning Docket, Small Law Firms, War on Terror

    Morning Docket: 08.12.13

    * Dewey know which Biglaw firms and ex-partners were sued by the failed firm’s bankruptcy estate? Sadly, they must all be asking, “Howrey going to survive now that Allan Diamond is on the case?” [Am Law Daily]

    * You’d probably love to work as an associate on a 9-5 schedule with billable requirements so low you’d get canned anywhere else. There’s just one catch: You’d have a “proportionately lower salary.” [Daily Report]

    * “Law professors and law deans are paid too much,” so the ABA is reducing tenure requirements for law school accreditation, which will make it easier for them to be laid off. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

    * The ABA also decided to cut law schools some slack in terms of graduates’ employment data, and it’s likely due to the U.S. News rankings reckoning. Say hello to the 10-months-after graduation jobs statistic. [National Law Journal]

    * Following the Windsor ruling, the Social Security Administration is paying claims for married gay couples living in states where same-sex marriage is recognized. As for the rest, better luck next time. [BuzzFeed]

    * Would-be senator Cory Booker has taken annual payouts from his former firm, Trenk DiPasquale, since he left. You may remember that firm’s name from the C&D letter seen around the world. [New York Post]

    * Author John Grisham was so pissed his books were banned at Guantánamo Bay that he took up the cause of prisoners wrongfully accused, detained for years, and released without apology. [New York Times]

    * Almost as if to add insult to injury, Bernie Madoff was allegedly involved in a love triangle with one of his employees who’s about to go to trial. Apparently having dirty money is a desirable trait in a man. [Reuters]

    * Amanda Bynes is still in the psych ward on a 5150, and her mother was granted a temporary conservatorship over her cray cray kid’s financial affairs. Way to follow in Britney Spears’s footsteps. [CNN]

  • Non-Sequiturs

    Non-Sequiturs: 02.03.12

    * If you ever encounter a one-eyed, dart-throwing lawyer, for the love of God, don’t misspell his name. [LA Weekly] * WikiLeaks and Anonymous are still doing their thing. Right now, that thing is hacking into law firm websites and exposing sensitive personal information. CHECK YOU DATA SECURITY. [Gizmodo] * Our own Staci Zaretsky will […]
  • Letter from London, Media and Journalism, Privacy, United Kingdom / Great Britain

    Letter from London: 'Privacy Is For Paedos'

    “Privacy is for paedos,” announced tabloid journalist Paul McMullan, formerly of Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct British tabloid News of the World, while speaking last week at an enquiry set up in response to this summer’s phone hacking scandal. Firmly unapologetic for having harassed celebrities via an impressive range of mediums, McMullan continued: “Fundamentally, no one […]

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