Legal Fiction

Looking for some great weekend reading? Look no further.

If you are looking for insightful law school satire, consider reading The Ugly.

The Big Fear is a solid first outing for lawyer-novelist Andrew Case.

Meet Anthony Franze, a Supreme Court litigator and author of legal thrillers set at SCOTUS; his latest novel, The Advocate's Daughter, came out just last month.

Does aggressive policing reduce crime or simply set residents on edge? A new novel by lawyer Andrew Case explores this and other important questions.

* I guess 15 minutes of fame can really mess with you. The “cute mugshot girl” who took the Internet by storm a while back managed to get arrested again. Negative attention is still attention. [Gawker]

* The DOJ is about to file corruption charges against Senator Robert Menendez. Corruption in New Jersey? [CNN]

* With the assistance of the pro bono legal teams at WilmerHale and Polsinelli, 303 conservatives filed a historic amicus brief in support of marriage equality. [WilmerHale]

* A nice review of “A Conversation on Clerking” moderated by U.S. Supreme Court reporter Anthony Mauro of the National Law Journal, with panelists including our own David Lat; Judge Patricia Millett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and Lucas Townsend, an associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr. [American Bar Association]

* Looking for an extra $1,000 this year? Enter this legal fiction writing contest. Maybe you’ll write the next Supreme Ambitions (affiliate link). [The Expert Institute]

How can you write a novel while holding down a demanding day job as a lawyer? How can women and minority lawyers position themselves for success in Biglaw? Author Helen Wan shares her insights.

* Under the leadership of emergency manager Kevyn Orr, Detroit is now the biggest U.S. city to declare bankruptcy in history. Unfortunately, not even the strict Jones Day dress code could save them. [Am Law Daily]

* As one of our columnists David Mowry told us weeks ago, New York wants to close the justice gap by looking to the state’s best untapped resources for pro bono work: in-house counsel. [New York Law Journal]

* It turns out the “new employer survey” to be used by U.S. News is really just the old employer survey that’s been used in the rankings since 1990. How incredibly anticlimactic. [Morse Code / U.S. News & World Report]

* Law schools are officially ready to scrape the bottom of the barrel when it comes to filling their classes. Some are now accepting first-time June LSAT scores for fall admission. [National Law Journal]

* Our managing editor, David Lat, comes to the defense of fictional representations of the law, but seeing as he’s writing a fictional legal novel, we think he’s kind of biased. [Room for Debate / New York Times]

* Mobsters really don’t like rats, and it looks like someone who was planning to testify against Whitey Bulger may have been whacked after having been dropped from the prosecution’s witness list. [CNN]