* A scam blogger hit it hard last week, calling Cooley out for policing the internet. Guess we know why s/he chose to go by “Rockstar.” [Detroit Free Press]
* Other than the fact that this dude waited nearly a decade to sue, Facebook now says it has “smoking gun” evidence that Paul Ceglia’s case is a fraud. Like. [Bloomberg]
* The Innocence Project says that past DNA evidence is a “poor judge of character.” You’d say that, too, if you exonerated a future rapist. [New York Daily News]
* Lady Gaga is being sued for copyright infringement. Seriously? Get it straight, lady: Gaga only copies from Madonna. [Daily Mail]
* In this economy, to get a job you have to make believe you love the law. Career advice for old farts can be applicable for young lawyers, too. [Boston Globe]
On Wednesday, white and nerdy musical genius Weird Al released “Perform This Way,” to his Twitter followers for free download, after Lady Gaga supposedly refused to approve it for inclusion on his upcoming album. The song parodies Gaga’s “Born This Way” and, while certainly no “Another One Rides The Bus” or “Rye or the Kaiser,” appropriately mocks the Gaga marketing machine with such gems as “got my straight jacket today / it’s made of gold lamé / no I’m not crazy, I perform this way.” The whole thing is kind of a meta-parody because “Born This Way” is really a low rent rip-off of Madonna’s “Express Yourself” and “Vogue.”
Lady Gaga denied Weird Al the right to release his parody of BORN THIS WAY, only the second time in his career that he’s been denied. [Ed. note: The other refusal came from Prince.] But he recorded the track at her request as a part of the approval process… the first time any artist has made that request. She summarily passed without comment. So instead of selling a couple hundred thousand or a million copies… he gave PERFORM THIS WAY away for free to his 2 million followers on Twitter.
Really, Lady Gaga wants to throw down with Weird Al?
Under normal circumstances, Lady Gaga can do no wrong in my eyes. After all, she’s done a lot for me. When I was sad, she advised me to just dance, because it would be okay. When I was drunk, she reminded me that I can’t text with a drink in my hand. When I was in court, she made sure I didn’t let anyone read my poker face.
Today, however, Lady Gaga has let me down. Today, Lady Gaga is disobeying her own mantra, because instead of being a queen, she’s just being a drag. Today, my friends, Lady Gaga has threatened to sue a company that sells human breast milk ice cream.
* Apparently more senators need to listen to Lady Gaga — and we’re not talking about her music. The attempt to repeal “don’t ask don’t tell” just failed in the Senate. [Metro Weekly]
* Chanel apparently does not think that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. [Fashionista]
* Supermodel Stephanie Seymour and billionaire Peter Brant go to court… to reaffirm their marriage, ending some very ugly divorce proceedings. Good luck to the happy couple. [New York Observer]
* Is masturbation against God’s law? Or — more practically speaking, since we know you’re going to do it anyway — how can you tell if you’ve been masturbating too much? [Bloggenheimer]
Word on the street is that President Obama is about to nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. This makes sense; there are many good reasons to nominate Kagan.
But what if Obama were to think outside the box in terms of SCOTUS nominations? What if he nominated, say, Lady Gaga to the high court? (She is not without ties to the legal world; she is, after all, the unofficial mascot of Cornell Law.)
If Lady Gaga were to become Justice Gaga, we could look forward to Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg filing dispatches for NPR like this:
Wow. That was bizarre. So what’s the story behind this video?
This is not a typical lede for a post on the Wall Street Journal Law Blog. Ashby Jones writes:
Cornell is the Lady Gaga of the law-school world. Both are white hot, but the explanations behind each’s popularity don’t fully add up.
Dem’s fighting words, Ashby. You’re not a bad guy, but Lady Gaga has more fabulosity in a single fake eyelash than you will ever possess. Her popularity is entirely explicable — due to her delightfully danceable music, and her genius as a performer — and richly deserved.
(Just watch the video for Poker Face. Res ipsa loquitur.)
Now, what about Cornell Law School? And other leading law schools — which celebrities do they most closely resemble?
Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past five years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com
Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December.
As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / China), please note that thus far in January ’12, we have already made seven US associate and counsel placements in Asia. This is an especially impressive number, considering the biglaw lateral hiring market in Asia is down right now (see state of the market brief overview below). These new placements are of new hires in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, who were interviewing with their new firm for a month or more and they are spread out among different practice areas, including project finance, litigation, fund formation, M&A and cap markets. We are close on four additional new associate placements, in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, that we expect to close soon. We do not discuss partner placements in these articles, but the pace of partner recruitment in Asia (a large part of our business) has continued.
Hedge Fund In-House Openings in Hong Kong
We are seeing a small run of new in-house openings in Hong Kong at hedge funds. We are currently filling three different in-house positions at three different hedge funds in Hong Kong, two of these searches we are handling on an exclusive basis. All three will most likely be filled by a US associate, with about 4 to 6 years of experience. Mandarin not required. Candidates from NYC and London will be considered, but at one of these funds the new hire will likely come from Hong Kong / China or Singapore (with HK being the strong preference).
Please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com if you are interested in these hedge fund openings. As you probably would expect, the competition for these spots will be fierce and the funds will be very selective when choosing which candidates to interview.
In 2009, a small group of Harvard Law School students noticed an absurd monopoly in the bar prep space, held by an unchallenged leader with a non-evolving product. In response, these students teamed up with Harvard Law alumni to launch BarMax on January 14, 2010.
The mission: democratize bar prep by embracing new technologies to provide the very best bar exam review courses at a fraction of the cost normally associated with these courses.
Since then, with the encouragement of thousands of students and an unwavering commitment to their success, BarMax has established itself as a comprehensive alternative to the stagnant, over-priced status quo.
As we continue to expand, we do not want to lose sight of the basic premises that led us to create BarMax in the first place. If you are a law student who believes that there is something fundamentally wrong with being forced to take out yet another loan to pay for a $4,000 bar exam prep course, you are not alone.
* A scam blogger hit it hard last week, calling Cooley out for policing the internet. Guess we know why s/he chose to go by “Rockstar.” [Detroit Free Press]
Continue reading “Fame Brief: Weird Al, Fair Use, and the Lady Gaga Saga”
This is not a typical lede for a post on the Wall Street Journal 
