Media and Journalism

Above the Law Launches New Columns Focused on Small Law Firms

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As we recently mentioned, Above the Law is dramatically increasing its coverage of small law firms. Clients and lawyers are moving in the direction of smaller firms, and ATL is following suit.

In response to our posting for a new small-firm columnist, we received dozens of superb applications (and we thank everyone who applied for their interest). The pool of talent was so strong that we decided to take on not one but two new columnists — doubling our dedicated small-firm coverage, with posts on at least four out of five weekdays (in addition to our existing coverage of small law firms).

Let’s meet our new writers. One of them should be familiar to many of you, and one of them will remain shrouded in secrecy….

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Morning Docket: 02.07.11

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* Of shaken babies and unsure verdicts. This long piece in the Times Magazine, by Emily Bazelon, is well worth your time. For those who require a funny take on shaking, there’s always this totally NSFW Chris Rock bit. [New York Times Magazine]

* What do willful violations of antitrust law and not being admitted to the Super Bowl with a valid ticket have in common? Treble damages. [SI.com]

* David Stern got it turned around on him, like a guy who was the foreclosure king and won’t have any need for a strap-on where he’s going. [ABC News]

* Let us celebrate the Green Bay Packers win last night by remembering a more innocent time — a year ago, when viewers of the Super Bowl weren’t eye-raped by the Black Eyed Peas and, instead, eye-caressed by sweet sweet porn. [New York Daily News]

* Speaking of innocent Super Bowl revelry… child prostitution! [Time]

* Raquel Balsam paid too much for her SUNY education and now she says “I pretty much felt cheated on.” Like it got turned around on her… yeah, I’m using that twice. [New York Times]

* Yale law professor Akhil Amar shows Judge Vinson his pimp hand is way strong. [Los Angeles Times]

* AOL has purchased The Huffington Post. AOL, like Radio Shack, refuses to die. [Reuters]

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Non-Sequiturs: 02.04.11

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Mayor Luther Campbell?

* A Valentine’s Day deportation that separates a loving couple sounds exactly like something that would make Jesus happy. Oh wait a minute, that’s not right at all. [Stop the Deportations: The DOMA Project]

* Virginia Thomas, Clarence Thomas’s wife, is now a lobbyist. Well, one of them has to talk, I guess. [Politico]

* Ann Althouse doesn’t just marry commenters, she talks like them too. [Althouse]

* I understand why people are annoyed when somebody edits your work and takes all the “color and attitude” out of it. But I have a solution: start a blog! That way, instead of begging the New York Times to publish your unedited thoughts, you can just publish your unedited thoughts. All hail the 21st Century. [The Volokh Conspiracy via ABA Journal]

* Being a female lawyer is a bitch, might as well own it. [Lawyerist]

* Luther Campbell (of 2 Live Crew fame) is running for mayor of Miami. You can be a white professional wrestler and be governor; let’s see if you can be a black rapper and be mayor. [Miami New Times]

* This isn’t legal, but it’s certainly the most interested I’ve ever been in garbage in Austin. And you will be too. [City of Austin Community Forum]

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Inside Straight: The Illusion of Perfection

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s new column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.

When you write for as large an audience as reads “Above the Law,” you get a huge variety of responses to your posts. But two recent posts illustrated that point in a remarkable way.

Last month, I published one post about the care with which I edited bills (that is, daily time entries) that I sent to clients when I was in private practice. And I later published a post about how lawyers could improve communications by taking a moment to reflect on the “subject” lines of e-mails before hitting the “send” icon.

The response to those posts was fierce and immediate. Folks who published “comments” to those posts overwhelmingly reacted negatively: “What kind of idiot spends several hours a month editing time entries to ease a client’s life? This guy was a typical big firm drudge!” (I’m paraphrasing here, because some of our readers may be minors.) And, “He’s writing about the ‘subject’ lines of e-mails? What comes next — a post about the quality of the office staplers or the tissue in the restrooms?”

Simultaneously, I was receiving a host of e-mails — not anonymous comments, but signed e-mails — from folks saying that they were sharing the posts with other lawyers in their offices or asking permission to reprint the posts in internal newsletters.

This caused me to wonder: Why the divide?

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Dan Snyder, Owner of a Team Named After an Ethnic Slur, Sues Over Perceived Anti-Semitism

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This is rich. The owner of the Washington Redskins, Dan Snyder, has sued the Washington City Paper for a column he claims defamed him and used anti-Semitic imagery. That’s right, the man who has famously defended his right to name an entire football team after an ethnic slur is playing the ethnic card because a columnist made fun of him.

The kicker is that on top of this amazing execution of rank hypocrisy, Snyder manages to insult all Jews who have actually dealt with anti-Semitism by coming up with an ethnic offense where none existed. The columnist wasn’t making Jewish jokes or playing off of Jewish stereotypes. He was calling Dan Snyder a terrible owner and a shady dude. Saying he was a victim of anti-Semitism degrades the term and make this entire lawsuit look like the petulant reaction of a narcissistic millionaire.

As Dennis Green might say: Daniel Snyder is who we thought he was….

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Annual ‘Best Companies to Work For’ List Includes Four Law Firms

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Every year, Fortune produces a list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, and every year a handful of law firms make the list. And every year I wonder why some law firms made the list, while others did not, and whether Fortune actually has any idea about what they’re talking about.

We cover this list every year (click here for our posts in 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007). Last year, six firms made the list. But this year only four law firms are among the top 100 companies.

Again, I can’t figure out what the two firms that dropped did wrong. But let’s congratulate the four firms that did stay on the list.

So, which firms made the cut?

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A Notable Correction to the New York Times Article on Law School

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It isn’t easy to wring a correction out of the New York Times. The Gray Lady is notoriously stingy when it comes to confessing error. [FN1]

But David Segal’s very interesting and widely read article about the perils of going to law school — which still sits at the top of the NYT’s list of most-emailed articles, several days after it first came online — now bears a notable correction…

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Max Mosley Fights for Right to Be Told About Nazi-Orgy News Stories in Advance

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In this file picture taken on July 14, 2008 pr...

Max Mosley wants to be warned next time he's the subject of a (s)exposé

Max Mosley, former head of international motorsports organization FIA, has been fighting with British tabloid News of the World for almost three years. In 2008, News of the World published a story about Mosley’s raunchy role-playing rendezvous with five sex workers, in which they played prison guards to his naughty prisoner. One of the sex workers had a camera supplied by the tabloid, so the story had a graphic video component. The News of the World focused on the fact that the sex workers spoke German throughout the role-playing, and thus described it as a “Nazi orgy.”

Not only was Mosley miffed to be part of a sex sting story, he said News of the World mischaracterized his sex fantasy. He said it was just a German prison camp, not a Nazi German prison camp (a crucial distinction — especially given that his father was Oswald Mosley, head of the British fascists, who did associate with Nazis).

Max Mosley sued News of the World for defamation and invasion of privacy. He won his case and was awarded nearly $100,000 plus legal fees. Heil yeah.

But by that point, it was too late to undo the reputational damage….

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Now That the New York Times Acknowledges the Perils of Law School Debt, the Next Question Is How to Recover From the Ruin

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Like many of you, I read the epic New York Times article on law school debt over the weekend. To answer the most consistent question I’ve received in the past 36 hours: no, I don’t feel like I’ve “won.” And I don’t feel like the NYT has somehow validated some of my commentary over the past two years.

Because the New York Times article, by David Segal, simply captures a story that everybody who has been paying attention already knows: law students are getting themselves into serious debt problems, with no plan for how to pay the debts back. This we know.

But there are things we don’t know. How do you get prospective law students to pay attention to the harsh economic realities before they sign up for law school? What can be done to make those economic realities a little bit less harsh? And what can be done after somebody makes a ruinous investment in higher education?

Now, as far as getting prospective law students to pay attention, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe a big-time article like this in the NYT helps. We already know, however, that unless it shows up in the U.S. News Law School Rankings, prospective law students don’t really care.

So let’s focus on the other questions…

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Hot Women Lawyers

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This month’s issue of the American Lawyer includes a very interesting feature. The magazine identified 45 up-and-coming female attorneys under the age of 45, at Am Law 200 firms. These kinds of lists tend to be nothing more than a popularity contest, but Am Law seemed to do a thorough job in culling through a lot of nominees to come up with their 45 people. They put in a lot of work.

What caught my attention was Am Law’s stated reason for putting together the list:

Whether it’s “Dealmakers of the Year,” “Litigation Department of the Year,” “Big Suits,” or “Big Deals,” the pages of The American Lawyer typically brim with pictures of men. But time and again, we’ve come across remarkable women lawyers, many of whom fell outside of our deals-and-suits-heavy coverage. To give them their due, we decided to identify the best of the best among young women lawyers in The Am Law 200, and bring them together in a single issue.

Does that strike anybody as slightly patronizing?

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