Kate Middleton

Dear World: Prank Calls Do Not ‘Cause’ Suicides

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Oh look, somebody executed a prank, the victim of the prank killed herself, and now the world is outraged. Where have I seen this before?

Last week, the world was shocked when nurse Jacintha Saldanha killed herself after being prank called by Australian DJs, Mel Greig and Michael Christian. Saldanha was not the nurse who dished private details about Kate Middleton’s pregnancy to the duo, she’s just the nurse who put the call through. But since she killed herself, the world needs somebody to blame, and “Mel and MC” are it.

For those playing along at home, I think the world reaction has gone something like this:

  • OMG. Duchess Kate is having a baby! Let’s find out EVERYTHING about this private, beautiful moment.
  • MOAR BABY NEWS!
  • Hahaha, these radio hosts prank called the hospital. What stupid freaking nurses to fall for it.
  • Was it criminal for these idiot nurses to divulge this information? What kind of low rate hospital are they running over there?
  • OMG. The nurse killed herself. DEATH TO THE DJs!

The DJs have been taken off the air, and the radio station is trying to cover its ass. Needless to say, I’m unimpressed by: the outrage, the excitement, the baby, the prank, the royals, the U.K., Australia, and blaming people when others commit suicide.

Let’s focus on that last point. Because trying to find somebody to blame when a person commits suicide has really got to stop. The Terminator may not be able to self-terminate, but us humans are fully capable of self-harm….

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Law Firm Merger Mania: K&L Gates Merging With Middletons

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you some important news about Middletons: she’s having a baby!

Oops, sorry, wrong Middletons. We’re talking about the Australian law firm, not the Duchess of Cambridge.

The long-running merger talks between K&L Gates and Middletons have borne fruit. The partnerships of both firms just voted to approve the transaction.

Let’s learn more about the shape of this new entity…

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Non-Sequiturs: 10.09.12

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Talk about bad romance.

* Can we please fill this Facebook pay-for-posts rabbit hole with cement, ASAP? Then let’s grow a forest on top of the cement, and then napalm the whole thing for good measure. [Not-So Private Parts / Forbes]

* In America, law school dropouts turn to aggressive blogging. In Syria, they join the rebel army. [LA Times]

* A U.S. judge upholds the government’s indictment of Kim Dotcom and Megaupload, despite the whole “they’re based in another hemisphere” snag. The only tricky part is getting him here. [Ars Technica]

* This insane wedding ended with a dead uncle, a relative in jail, and several dozen cops on the scene. I”ll bet ten-to-one Zach Galifianakis was somewhere nearby. [Dealbreaker]

* Hello, Jimmy, welcome to the Pleasantville Middle School Scrapbooking Club! We’re so glad to have you. But, first, could you please pee in this cup? [Overlawyered]

* This is an amusing video of British law students sucking up to William and Kate. More importantly, a reminder that Kate is gorgeous, even when she is unpixelated and wearing clothes. [Legal Cheek]

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Non-Sequiturs: 10.02.12

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* A case of alleged murder by legal form. Christ, this sounds like a bad Twilight Zone episode. [Lake Expo]

* A novel reason why teenagers should still refrain from posting party pictures on Facebook, future job concerns be damned. [ABA Journal]

* Kirkland & Ellis donated $5 million to the Northwestern University Law School. I think some celebratory key jangling is in order. [Northwestern News Center]

* Con law nerds, you can now check out the audio from the Supreme Court’s announcement of its ruling in the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. the Obamacare case. [Oyez]

* What do the naked Kate Middleton pictures mean for modern privacy law? Other than the fact that all famous people should just become nevernudes, obviously. [LinkedIn]

* A judge blocked the controversial Pennsylvania Voter ID law, at least until election season ends. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Although law school application rates are falling across most of the country, application numbers have spiked at the extraordinarily prestigious Kansas University School of Law. Wait, what? [LJWorld]

* Oh lord, here we go again. Samsung sued Apple for patent infringement in the iPhone 5. Let’s begin round #72,354. Ding! [CNET]

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Judge Orders Tabloid to Hand Over Topless Kate Middleton Pics; Rest of Internet Laughs and Right-Clicks ‘Save Image As’

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Well, that didn’t take long. Those topless sunbathing pics of Kate Middleton only went up a few days ago, and a French court has already slapped the offending tabloid around a little. A judge has sided with the royals and ordered Closer to fork over the pics and a little bit of cash for causing everyone the trouble.

Thank goodness privacy and a sense of old-world decorum have been restored. Except not quite, owing to this little thing called the internet…

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Morning Docket: 09.17.12

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Kate Middleton

* Come on, people, Dewey really think that it’s fair that these proposed partnership clawback settlements blame only us for the firm’s implosion? The Steves and ex-CFO Joel Sanders don’t think so. [Bloomberg]

* “[E]ven if partners’ capital contributions were used to repay Dewey’s indebtedness—so what?” Well, that’s certainly one way to defend a suit alleging Citibank’s participation in a Ponzi-like scheme. [Am Law Daily]

* A $280K bonus sure seems nice, but do all Supreme Court clerks choose life in Biglaw once they’ve completed their stints at the high court? As it turns out, the answer is no — some view the money as “golden handcuffs.” [Wall Street Journal]

* Because nobody can ogle these crown jewels except Prince William: the royals’ potential suit against Closer magazine over topless pics of Kate Middleton has turned into full-blown privacy proceeding. [New York Times]

* If you’re struggling in law school, it may be wise to take some advice from those who’ve been there before you, like SullCrom’s Rodge Cohen, or the Ninth Circuit’s Chief Judge Alex Kozinski. [National Law Journal]

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Potential Lawsuit of the Day: The Royals Are Enraged Over Topless Pics of Kate Middleton

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Ever since the royal wedding last April, the male population writ large has been obsessed with Pippa Middleton’s greatest asset. (Seriously, there’s an entire website dedicated to it.) How dare she steal the spotlight from her sister, Kate Middleton, the blushing bride. But now, more than a year later, it seems that the Duchess of Cambridge herself has given British blokes something to inspire late night thoughts in their bachelor pads, albeit inadvertently: topless pictures.

A French magazine, Closer, took the photos while Kate was vacationing with Prince William, and published them in its latest issue for all the world to see. Needless to say, the royals are positively pissed, because this is the third instance of noble nudity in less than a month. Palace officials took a break from their tea and crumpets to threaten legal action for what they’re calling a “grotesque” invasion of privacy.

But given their celebrity status, are the royals really deserving of the same privacy rights as we commoners?

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Letter from London: How To Squander an Empire

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It takes a while to get over squandering an empire. As our habit of placing the prefix “Great” before “Britain” suggests, we’re still not quite there yet. But deep down we know we blew it. The evidence is everywhere: from our dentists, who don’t really know what they’re doing anymore, to our universities, which are crumbling, just like our schools, hospitals, and public transport.

Somehow, though, the U.K’s legal system has avoided being dragged into this spiral of decline. Yes, we’re still good at law — so good, in fact, that London is the top destination in the world for international companies to settle disputes, and English law the most popular among international in-house counsel (40% use it, with just 14% opting for New York law). And, in spite of the relatively tiny size of the British domestic legal market, our law firms manage to give yours a run for their money, with the Magic Circle quartet of Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Freshfields and A&O outdoing most of their U.S. rivals in terms of turnover and profits.

Doubtless part of this success stems from the fact that Britain is the home of the Common Law, which, unless some joker on Wikipedia is deceiving me, was invented around the 1150s by King Henry II. And as we saw during the April nuptials between Prince William and his bride Kate, our “Ye Olde Ingland” nostalgia sells very nicely to foreigners….

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The Royal Wedding: A Legal Look (Part 3)

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Ed. note This is the final installment in London-based journalist Alex Aldridge’s series of stories for Above the Law about the royal wedding of HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton. You can read the prior posts here and here.

Well, they got married.

Best man Prince Harry remembered the ring. None of Wills’ disgruntled exes opted to speak now rather than forever hold their peace. And Kate — who has been made a Duchess rather than a Princess — even smiled. So now for the party!

Unless, that is, you work at one of London’s U.S. law firms, where lawyers staffing American deals are missing out on the public holiday everyone else in Britain is enjoying. “There are no celebrations here,” one cheery soul told me this morning in that weird Madonna accent Yanks acquire when they’ve been in London too long.

Don’t worry, though, the joke will be on us on next week, when we enter the existential crisis that customarily follows royal hysteria.

“What the hell happened there?” we’ll mutter, warm beer still on our breath.

“Oh no, we’ve only gone and got over-excited about that bunch of royal weirdos again,” we’ll groan, as we remove our commemorative Wills & Kate mugs from view and pour our tea into alternative vessels.

“Why do we, the country that brought the world the rule of law, have a royal family at all?” we’ll wonder indignantly, gnashing our yellow teeth and feeling a touch murderous….

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The Royal Wedding: A Legal Look (Part 2)

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Ed. note This is the second in a series of posts that Alex Aldridge, a London-based journalist who covers legal affairs, will be writing for Above the Law about the upcoming royal wedding of HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton. You can read the first post here.

In Britain, middle-class people who don’t know what to do with their lives have the option of trying to wed a royal.

If that doesn’t work, the situation is much the same as in the US: they become lawyers. A case in point is Prince Harry’s on-and-off girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, who will begin a traineeship with “Magic Circle” law firm Allen & Overy in September, having failed to secure the ginger hell-raiser on a permanent basis. Had Kate Middleton’s 2007 split with Prince William proved final, our future queen — whose ex is an in-house lawyer — may well have gone down the same route.

Needless to say, royals don’t do law. It’s too aspirational. They don’t even sue; one lawyer who has had dealings with The Firm once told me (in jest, possibly): “The royal family don’t take people to court, they kill them.”

Perhaps this explains why they’re so keen on the military: Wills and Harry have followed family tradition by going into the air force and army, respectively. They probably won’t stick around long, though. Like Princes Charles and Andrew before them, the pair will soon be eased into a middle age of government handouts and state-provided housing. Royals, bless ‘em, are basically very rich poor people.

So is a union between a very rich poor person and a member of the middle class likely to work?

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