Louisiana

Non-Sequiturs: 02.26.13

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* For any Catholics hitting up PaddyPower to lay down money on the conclave, you’ve probably had some restless nights wondering if Pope Gregory XIV’s edict per the Ius Decretalium still applies. It doesn’t. That’s a load off. [Canon Law Blog]

* A number of strip clubs are challenging San Antonio’s new regulations. One key to their argument: “the presentation of expressive dance performances is a beneficial social activity which creates an improved self image for the dancer….” Yeah, good luck with that argument. [KEGL]

* If you’re looking for emotional distress damages, maybe lay off the “I’m just embarrassed to be seen with him now” arguments. [Lowering the Bar]

* To challenge the law letting the government tap your communications in secret, you need to have full knowledge that the secret recording is happening. Thanks Joseph Heller. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Lindsay Lohan can’t catch a break with her legal counsel. Hey, LiLo! Next time check Avvo to find a higher rated lawyer. [Perez Hilton]

* The new Copyright Alert System goes into effect, allowing copyright holders to make your service provider slow your Internet to a crawl if you’re identified as a repeat violator. I don’t see what the big deal is, but then again, I’m still using a Prodigy account. [Gawker]

* MC Hammer is softening, but still a tad miffed after police booked him for an expired registration after he told them, “U Can’t Touch This.” [Los Angeles Times]

* Are you kidding? University of North Carolina’s “Honor Court” is threatening to expel a student for “intimidating” her attacker by discussing that she was raped — without identifying her attacker. This is why North Carolina can’t have nice things. [Feministing]

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Morning Docket: 12.21.12

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* Seven out of nine sitting Supreme Court justices were silent when it came to the passing of Robert Bork. Justice Antonin Scalia, of course, issued a public statement, as did liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (surprise!). [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* No one ever really doubted that it would take an army of Biglaw lawyers from the likes of Sullivan & Cromwell, Shearman & Sterling, and Wachtel Lipton to handle a monumental deal like the proposed $8.2 billion NYSE/ICE merger. [Am Law Daily]

* Can you coach with Nick Saban and be a Miller Canfield partner at the same time? No. But you can sue (and win!) when the firm allegedly forces you out due to its “culture of fear and intimidation.” [Detroit Free Press]

* Justice Rolando Acosta, who wrote the opinion upholding the dismissal of the class action case against NYLS, rates well among his peers as a nominee for the New York Court of Appeals. [New York Law Journal]

* Peter Madoff was sentenced to ten years in prison for his role in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, but the judge will probably let him go to his granddaughter’s bat mitzvah before shipping him to the pokey. [Bloomberg]

* Merry Christmas, now go f**k yourself. A federal judge has given a woman in Louisiana free rein to display holiday lights on her roof in the form of an extended middle finger. God bless America. [CBS 3 Springfield]

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‘How Did You Pass The BAAAAAr’? Frank Abagnale Jr. Says It’s Easy To Fake Being A Lawyer

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Catch Me If You Can is a fun movie. Tom Hanks has a delightful Boston accent that really captures the “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe people talk like this” aspect of the sounds. Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of teenage con-man Frank Abagnale Jr. is fun and entertaining. And there’s a Chris Walken sighting.

In the movie, Hanks’s FBI Agent, Carl Hanratty, chases after Abagnale as he forges checks, degrees, and a number of professions. One thing Hanratty can’t figure out is how Agagnale “faked” his way through the Louisiana Bar Exam and gained legal credentials. When Hanratty finally collars Abagnale (SPOILER ALERT: this movie came out in 2002), the con man revels that he didn’t “cheat” on the bar exam, he just studied “for two weeks and passed.”

For many lawyers, this was an anticlimactic end to a running joke in the movie. With all due respect to people who can’t pass the Louisiana bar, passing the Louisiana bar is not particularly hard (despite the test’s unusual length and civil-law components). I don’t know if you can do it in two weeks. But in a month? In six weeks? Even without going to law school, I’m not sure there is a bar exam in the country that is so hard that a reasonably intelligent person couldn’t pass it with intense study over a few months. Again, they’re not really teaching you what you need to do as a lawyer in law school, they’re just messing with how you think.

It turns out that the real life Frank Abagnale Jr. passed the LA Bar on his third try. But there wasn’t any deception involved, he eventually just passed the test. Once he earned the credentials, Abagnale says that pretending to be a lawyer was one of the easiest things to fake.

He’s not wrong…

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Morning Docket: 12.07.12

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* “Did the imperative use of the F-bomb … threaten judicial authority?” Wow, seriously? This is perhaps the most entertaining question presented for review in a Supreme Court certiorari petition in the history of man. [National Law Journal]

* Boy, Dewey have some expensive paintings for you to buy! This failed firm’s art collection will be hitting the auction block in February, and the entire LeBoeuf lot is supposedly worth $2.3M, but most pieces are pretty damn ugly. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* When anonymous commenting goes wronger-er: Jim Letten, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, has resigned amid the scandal caused by his underlings’ obnoxious comments. [Times-Picayune]

* Your employers really don’t want pictures of your office holiday party antics going viral online (but we do). Here are some of the many ways they’ll try to keep you from becoming internet famous. [Corporate Counsel]

* George Zimmerman, the man accused of killing Trayvon Martin, is suing NBCUniversal, alleging that the network and Today show reporters committed serious “journalistic crimes.” [Media Decoder / New York Times]

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When Anonymous Commenting Goes Wronger

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FIRST! Assistant United States Attorney.

First amongst weird creation myths is that of the Mbombo god, who is said to have vomited up pretty much all of our world. Similarly, the story of how this website has been… thrown up is worthy of retelling. At its essence, it goes like this: A boy blogs about very sober legal issues in an incredibly earnest way and then the governor of New Jersey tells him to start Above the Law, The End. I may have missed some crucial details and got others flat-out wrong, but I think the kernel of truth is still in there somewhere.

At any rate, that boy was working for the United States Attorney’s office in Newark at the time. Doing anything on the internet, even if it was super-serious and incredibly sincere, could be considered controversial because of the position. The lawyers tasked with working in such a high-profile prosecutorial role must be seen as impartial, lest the cases they take on get tainted by their online presence.

Which is what makes it all the more surprising that history is repeating itself down in New Orleans, where two assistant United States attorneys have become embroiled in scandal after being caught commenting on not just the law in general (like our own dear leader), but the specific cases that came through their office.

It’s almost as if the New Orleans U.S. Attorney’s office is trying to outdo David Lat in some way. Which, I mean, trick please…

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Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now? Post-Election Secession Talk

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The 2008 Secession Proposal

In the wake of last week’s election, citizens from all 50 states have signed petitions calling for secession from the United States. These petitions have been filed with the White House’s “We the People” website, an initiative of the Obama administration to encourage public involvement in government. Once a petition reaches the threshold of 25,000 signatures within 30 days, the White House forwards the petition to its policy experts to draft a formal response.

It’s kind of ironic that these neo-secessionists submitted their formal demands through a government initiative specifically created by Barack Obama. It’s ironic because, while each state’s petition varies a bit in substance, the crux of every petition is “we don’t like that crazy Kenyan socialist president.”

Just to recap: Kenyan Head of Government. Not Kenyan Head of Government. Kenyan. Not Kenyan. Kenyon. Not Kenyan.

As of this hour, only a handful of states have reached the signature threshold to trigger an official White House response. Wanna take a guess which states are ready to bail? If you guessed “states that have past experience with secession,” you’d be right. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas have all finished their secession petitions.

Do these petitions signal a new round of secession?

(SPOILER ALERT: No)

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Above The Law Helps Crowdsource A Win In Cosmo’s Bachelor Of The Year Contest

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Two short weeks ago, we brought you news about the lone lawyer who represented the entire profession in Cosmopolitan’s 2012 Bachelor of the Year contest. Ryan Chenevert, also known as Mr. Louisiana, graduated from LSU’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center this past spring, and found out that he passed his state’s bar exam last week. October was already shaping up to be a good month for him.

When we last spoke to Ryan, he told us that he didn’t think he stood a chance against the competition — after all, there were professional soccer players and Olympic gold medalists in the running, and he was “just a regular guy with a law degree.” But as it turns out, regular guys with fine physiques and matching legal credentials can win big, too.

We knew that Above the Law had some major pull in the legal community, but never before did we think that we had the power to crowdsource a win in a national competition….

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Morning Docket: 10.17.12

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* Oh, by the way Dewey & LeBoeuf partners, the little contribution plan you signed that received court approval last week might not protect you from your former landlord’s claims for back rent. Hope you’ve all got an extra $45 million sitting in the bank. [Am Law Daily]

* Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Bernette Johnson will finally get to claim her seat as chief justice of the state’s high court after official judicial recognition — on both the state and federal level — that the year 1994 does indeed come before 1995. [Bloomberg]

* No matter how hard law school administrators wish it were so, or how much they beg Jim Leipold of NALP, he’s never going to be able to describe the current entry-level legal job market as “good.” [WSJ Law Blog]

* NYU Law School is changing its third-year program in the hopes of making a “good” market materialize. If you ship students to foreign countries for class, maybe they’ll get jobs there. [DealBook / New York Times]

* “[W]e’re determined to do everything we can to help them find jobs and meaningful careers.” We bet Brooklyn Law’s dean is also determined to avoid more litigation about employment statistics. [New York Law Journal]

* Has the other shoe finally dropped? After the Second Circuit ruled that YSL could sell monochromatic shoes, the fashion house decided to drop its trademark counterclaims against Christian Louboutin. [Businessweek]

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Recent Bar Exam Results: Open Thread
Virginia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania — any others?

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As the days roll on, more and more bar exam results from the July 2012 administration of the test are being released. Knowing that you’ll soon be admitted to the bar must be of some comfort (but not much) to those who are desperately searching for employment.

We’ve actually reached the point where just about every state in the country has unleashed its exam results except for the big ones (California, New York, and Texas). Those folks still have some time to wait on pins and needles, but for now, we’ve got confirmed news about results from states that came out at the end of last week, just in time for the weekend — and let’s face it, in the true spirit of the profession, whether you passed or you failed, there was likely some drinking to be done.

So it’s time for a round-up of all of the results that went live last Thursday and Friday, including Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington. Here’s an open thread for discussion of those outcomes, as well as results from any other states that have already been announced….

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Virginia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania — any others?“

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Meet the Lone ‘Lawyer’ From Cosmo’s Bachelor of the Year Contest

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We sometimes get complaints about the way that we supposedly objectify women here at Above the Law. Well, today let’s change things up a bit. Let’s objectify some men! Year after year, Cosmopolitan’s Bachelor of the Year contest is filled with studs from every state in our fine nation.

In 2010, there was some very strong lawyer representation in the contest (two law students and one practicing attorney), but last year, only one lawyer was nominated as a finalist. We were worried that perhaps male lawyers had somehow gotten less attractive.

This year’s edition of the contest again brought only one law school graduate to the table, but our worry about the decline in attractiveness of lawyerly lads has been put to bed, because this hunk looks strong enough to carry the weight of representing his entire profession in this competition on his shoulders.

Quality definitely makes up for quantity this year….

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