Lawrence Lessig

  • Non-Sequiturs: 11.25.16
    Non-Sequiturs

    Non-Sequiturs: 11.25.16

    * Orin Kerr isn’t persuaded by Larry Lessig’s argument in favor of the Electoral College picking Hillary Clinton as president. [Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post]

    * What do people think of President-elect Donald Trump’s appointments so far? Survey says…. [Instapundit]

    * If the justice(s) Trump appoints to SCOTUS end up overturning Roe v. Wade, what would happen next? [New York Times via How Appealing]

    * Speaking of the Donald, not everything is his fault. [Guile is Good]

    * No, this wasn’t said by Trump: “I am not a racist and my voters are neither. They are people who want their country back and who are sick and tired of not being listened to.” [Althouse]

    * Congratulations to the 177 lawyers from 76 firms who were just named Law360’s 2016 MVPs! [Law360]

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 11.04.15

    * Fans of this man’s dopey mugshot grin will be sad if they’re deprived of another jailhouse picture, but lawyers for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton want their client’s securities fraud indictment to be tossed over what they claim was a faulty grand jury investigation. [Reuters]

    * Friday is apparently “Love Your Lawyer Day,” and the ABA recently passed a resolution to commemorate this special day every year. Biglaw firms can show their love for lawyers by announcing bigger, better bonuses! [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

    * Alabama thinks the legal fees and costs that are being requested by attorneys in the state’s landmark same-sex marriage decision are “entirely excessive” and should be “cut dramatically.” It’s not like these lawyers had to “reinvent the wheel” or anything. [AL.com]

    * “I may be known in tiny corners of the tubes of the Internet, but I am not well-known to the American public generally.” One-issue Democratic candidate Professor Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School is dropping out of the presidential race. [Boston Globe]

    * It’s high time you joined the green rush, lawyers: although Ohioans voted against legalizing marijuana yesterday, more and more states are adding ballot measures for the legalization of marijuana or medical marijuana to be voted on in 2016. [Washington Post]

    * “I’m glad Houston led tonight to end this constant political-correctness attack.” In other election news, voters in Texas repealed an LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance that would’ve prevented bias related to several important areas in life. [New York Times]

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  • Copyright, Fashion, Legal Ethics, Non-Sequiturs, Reader Polls, Television, Weddings

    Non-Sequiturs: 09.08.14

    * David Letterman and CBS got smacked with the latest internship class action. To think, poor Paul Shaffer’s been working for free all those years. [Deadline] * Class action could be on the horizon over high-frequency trading. [Wall Street Journal] * Frankly, I don’t know what the problem is. [Washington Post] * You may have been following the story of Justice Ginsburg’s officiating a wedding in New York this weekend. Well, if so, here’s the Times write-up. [New York Times] * The federal courts are looking at tightening the word limits on appellate briefs. How do you feel about this move? I’m with the author that “The number of cases where attorneys think they need a word extension is greater than the number of cases that actually warrant one.” [New Mexico Appellate Law Blog] * Scott Brown, formerly of both Massachusetts and the Senate, is threatening to sue Harvard’s Larry Lessig after Lessig labeled the Nixon Peabody “advisor on governmental affairs” a “lobbyist.” Lessig asks if the campaign preferred he write the more technical, “sold his influence to a DC lobbying firm.” Ha. [Time] * Fordham professor Susan Scafidi, founder of the Fashion Law Institute and designer Narciso Rodriguez make the case for strong legal protection for fashion designs. [Room for Debate / New York Times] * On Friday, Keith Lee wrote about a lawyer who billed a client for sanctions. We’ve written before about lawyers billing for the time spent boning their clients. A law professor who teaches professional responsibility asks: “Is billing for sanctions better or worse than billing for sex. I say sanctions. Can we have a survey on this?” Of course you can. Poll after the jump….
  • Basketball, Biglaw, Clerkships, Law Professors, Law Schools, Minority Issues, Morning Docket, Politics, SCOTUS, Sports, Supreme Court

    Morning Docket: 05.12.14

    * Due to the extreme polarization of SCOTUS, with its near constant 5-4 opinion line-ups, “it becomes increasingly difficult to contend … that justices are not merely politicians clad in fine robes.” Yep. [The Upshot / New York Times]

    * Tim Wu, the Columbia Law professor who first introduced the term “net neutrality” to the world, had two of his clerkships (Posner; Breyer) “arranged” by Professor Lawrence Lessig. If only we could all be so lucky. [New York Times]

    * We’re getting the sinking feeling that the lack of diversity in law school is one of those problems that everyone and their mother claims to be trying to fix, but the lack of momentum keeps it from ever truly improving. [National Law Journal]

    * When contemplating what law schools would have to do to get a bailout, this law professor has three ideas, and they involve changing her colleagues’ lives in uncomfortable ways. Well played. [Boston Globe]

    * Cole Leonard is struggling to decide between going to law school and going to Mars. Well, he’s more likely to have a job doing anything on Mars than here on Earth as a lawyer. HTH. [Dallas Morning News]

    * The L.A. Clippers have a new CEO, for the time being. Say hello to Dick Parsons, the former chairman of Patterson Belknap, a man who the world hopes is not quite as racist as his predecessor. [Am Law Daily]

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  • Election Law, Football, Free Speech, Larry Lessig, Non-Sequiturs, Religion

    Non-Sequiturs: 10.10.13

    * Who says bipartisanship is dead? Senators McCain and Gillibrand hammer Obama’s nominee for Navy Undersecretary. Gillibrand went after her specifically over prosecuting sexual assaults. [Breaking Defense] * Lawyers per capita by state. For everyone who says lawyers make the world worse, note that Arkansas has the fewest lawyers per capita and do with that information what you will. [Law School Tuition Bubble] * A bunch of rabbis were arrested for plotting to kidnap and torture a guy into granting a Jewish divorce. This is a thing? [Wall Street Journal] * Professor Larry Lessig thinks the administration should have made originalist arguments in the McCutcheon case to salvage campaign finance limits. First, I don’t see why this would have worked. Second, someone in Washington has to be an adult and resist the urge to make stupid arguments just because someone might listen. [The Atlantic] * An agent is facing 14 felony counts for giving improper benefits to college athletes. For all the alleged cheating, you’d think UNC would be better at football. [Forbes] * A Texas judge ordered a teen to move back in with a sex offender. This was a poor decision. [USA Today] * Upon hearing former NYC Mayor David Dinkins saying, “You don’t need to be too smart to be a lawyer, so I went to law school,” the dean of New York Law School said, “So you went to Brooklyn Law School?” Which of course Dinkins did. What is wrong with NYU’s Tribeca campus? [NYLS (exchange begins at 23:00)] * Is this related to the law? Not really. Is it the cast of Archer doing the video of Danger Zone? Yes…
  • Associate Advice, Copyright, Jersey Shore, Jury Duty, Law Schools, Lawrence Lessig, Movies, Non-Sequiturs, Television

    Non-Sequiturs: 10.01.13

    * A California judge sentenced a man to 53 years in prison and then officiated his wedding. So she gave him 53 years followed by a life sentence? Hey ho! [CBS News] * Jersey Shore’s The Situation suffers the indignity of a legal defeat. I mean, if he has dignity left. [South Florida Lawyers] * Who would make a better juror: a non-citizen or Charlie Sheen? I’d prefer to have Sheen… I don’t know if there are many crimes he wouldn’t understand. [The Atlantic] * The results are in from Kaplan’s just completed 2013 survey of law school admissions officers. The headline is that 54 percent of law school admissions officers report cutting their entering law school classes for 2013-2014 and 25 percent plan to do so again next year. Time to build another law school! [Kaplan Test Prep] * A comprehensive list of the crimes committed by Batman in Batman Begins. And I’m not entirely sure everything he did in his hostile takeover of Wayne Enterprises was on the up-and-up either. [Salt Lake Tribune] * Here’s a list of online resources for new attorneys. Here’s another helpful one. [Associate's Mind] * An attorney bit his 3-year-old son. Hurray for bath salts! [KRQE] * A record label threatened to sue a guy. Unfortunately for them they threatened to sue Professor Lawrence Lessig. [NPR] * Student loan default rates are at the highest level in 20 years. Seems like a sustainable model. [Chronicle of Higher Education] * The recycling of policy debaters into litigators brings good and bad habits to the legal profession. On the plus side, there’s the refined research skills. On the other hand, stenographers have a hard time keeping up. [Houston Law Review] * The new song “Lady Justice” by lawyer-artist DNA (featuring Zoha). He’s already figured out that all the good songs these days have to be “featuring” someone. Song after the jump…
  • Craigslist, Football, iPhone, Jury Duty, Law Schools, Lawrence Lessig, Non-Sequiturs, Pro Se Litigants, Technology, United Kingdom / Great Britain

    Non-Sequiturs: 09.25.13

    * Apple gave the iPhone 5 fingerprint database to the NSA. This would be a gross invasion of privacy but Tim Cook masterminded this, so the NSA got the Ecce Homo of fingerprint image captures. [Hackers News Bulletin] * Charlie Sheen got dismissed from jury duty after only one day. #winning [TMZ] * Gordon from Sesame Street lost his palimony case. That’s because he was trying to duck out on the woman who mothered his “1… 2… 3… 4 kids! [thunderclap] Ah… ah… ah!” [Jezebel] * Remember the early days of Twitter? Legal Cheek went back and found some of the earliest Tweets from British legal luminaries. It’s just funnier when you imagine an English accent saying, “I appear to be on Twitter… why, I have no idea.” [Legal Cheek] * If you saw last week’s post on crazy people who claim that no court can try them because of maritime law, check out this epic opinion from Canada. Identifying those folks, like the maritime gang from last week, as Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument (“OPCA”) litigants, the opinion is 180 pages seeking “to uncover, expose, collate, and publish the tactics employed by the OPCA community.” [Alberta Courts] * Police crack down on a motorized bar stool. That’s fair, because if there’s one motor vehicle that you’re likely to fall off… [Lowering the Bar] * Professor Ilya Somin is touring the country and coming to a law school near you promoting his new book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter (affiliate link). Small government does usually smart, as in “cause a sharp, stinging pain.” [The Volokh Conspiracy] * An HLS grad working for the World Bank was rescued from the Kenyan mall hostage crisis. We wish her the best. [Daily Mail] * Senator Elizabeth Warren and Professor Lawrence Lessig are going to be speaking at an event called “The Founders v. The Roberts Court: Corruption, Campaign Finance, and McCutcheon v. FEC” tomorrow at noon Eastern. The event will be livestreamed at the link. [Constitutional Accountability Center] * Craigslist is suing Craigstruck, a company that specializes in delivering items ordered off of Craigslist. It’s how all those $5/hour attorneys get from place to place. Anyway, the owner of Craigstruck proposed to settle the legal dispute via football wager with Craigslist. If only all disputes could be settled this way. Video wager after the jump…
  • Copyright, Fashion, Health Care / Medicine, Intellectual Property, Larry Lessig, Law Schools, Non-Sequiturs

    Non-Sequiturs: 06.14.13

    * Marshall University is no longer a defendant in a case about a student shooting bottle rockets out of his anus. So from now on your sum total knowledge of the Thundering Herd involves the movie We Are Marshall and “shooting bottle rockets out of anuses.” [West Virginia Record] * Documentary filmmaker files suit seeking declaratory judgment that “Happy Birthday to You” is in the public domain. Why hasn’t everyone just accepted Larry Lessig’s new birthday song? [New York Times] * Men tend to think professional dress is one part white/blue shirt and one part brown/black/navy slacks. There’s more to it than that. Well, if you want to look good at all, there’s more to it than that. [Corporette] * Market realities catch up with law school plans. Pour a little out for the proposed Arlington Law School. [ARL Now] * Rough legal question: Should the U.S. refuse to send a child to a country employing Islamic family law? [Volokh Conspiracy] * A federal judge ordered HHS to give a little girl a lung transplant. Popehat wonders who lost out on a transplant in this exchange. I’m wondering why there aren’t more lung donors out there. [Popehat]
  • Election 2012, Election Law, Health Care / Medicine, Hotties, Larry Lessig, Law Schools, Lawrence Lessig, Non-Sequiturs, Politics

    Non-Sequiturs: 07.25.12

    * Interested in going to law school this coming fall? It’s not too late to apply, frighteningly enough. [Inside the Law School Scam via Tax Prof Blog] * Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Even graduates of Harvard Law School wind up homeless. [Concurring Opinions] * Sorry, I don’t like bike dudes; so many cyclists are rude, irresponsible, and annoying, to both pedestrians and drivers. If I were king, they’d go to prison; but I’m not, so we’ll have to settle for reeducation. [New York Times] * What does Bruce Springsteen think of Obamacare? [Althouse] * A few jurisdictions have laws against “attractiveness discrimination.” Try to guess which ones, then click on the link. [What About Clients?] * Larry Lessig and Ilya Shapiro debate the value of disclosure requirements in the campaign finance context. [Lean Forward / MSNBC]