Yesterday, with hours to spare, the Mississippi Supreme Court stayed the execution of Willie Manning by a vote of 8-1. The stay was granted based on letters from the Department of Justice casting doubt on the scientific value of testimony from FBI experts at the trial almost 20 years ago.
The lone dissenter, Justice Mike Randolph, outlined his interest in putting someone to death immediately over the objections of the Department of Justice and its FBI experts. The decision reads like satire, making the case for the stay stronger than any majority opinion could. Oh, and then there’s some conspiracy rantings about the Obama Administration because, you know, Mississippi…
* The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to wade into the constitutional contretemps of recess appointments, but if the high court refuses to take up the case, it may be back to the drawing board for the NLRB. [National Law Journal]
* The Am Law 100 law firm rankings are out, and it looks like there’s a new leader of the pack in terms of gross revenue. But which firm could it be? Not Skadden or Baker & McKenzie. We’ll likely have coverage on this later. [American Lawyer]
* Apparently the FBI wanted to continue questioning Dzhokhar Tsarnaev under Miranda’s public-safety exception, but a judge read the accused bomber his rights anyway. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]
* “This case is over. Someone should put it out of its misery.” Be that as it may, New York’s attorney general is desperate to get AIG’s Maurice Greenberg on the stand at trial. [DealBook / New York Times]
* “I have had it with these motherf**king snakes in my motherf**king files!” This spring, clerks in this old Mississippi courthouse are finding more and more snakes filed under “Ssssssss.” [Associated Press]
* It’s amazing that sports betting is not legal in New Jersey. What possible moral wackadoodle says that it’s okay to have something like the Jersey Shore (the place, not just the TV show), but you can’t take Michigan to out-shoot the Syracuse zone and then break Louisville’s legs. [Legal Blitz]
* Cloud tools for lawyers. Or as partners understand them: “Newfangled virtual file cabinets.” [Smart File Blog]
* Pro se prisoner wins! He probably wouldn’t have had he consulted a lawyer. [Simple Justice]
* Actually, congratulations to Christopher J. Paolella, who argued before the Court on behalf of Kim Millbrook — and scored a 9-0 victory. [Reich & Paolella]
* Apparently “we gotta fix that” is Obama-speak for “Let’s form a commission to study how Republicans are disenfranchising voters instead of actually stopping them.” [NPR via Election Law Blog]
* Goodbye and good luck to Bruce Carton of Legal Blog Watch. [Legal Blog Watch]
* I thought this was a law already on the books in Mississippi. [The Onion]
* Instead of Angie’s List ranking law schools, I’d like to see U.S. News ranking plumbers. Undoubtedly, they’d use size of exposed butt crack as a key factor. [TaxProf Blog]
* Prosecutor charges America’s official groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, for failing to accurately predict the weather. Good to know Pennsylvania prosecutors are on top of the groundhog beat after messing up the “sexual predator coaching a football program” beat for about a decade. [Washington Times]
* UPDATE: Judge Easterbrook is getting hitched to former Anchorage City Clerk Barbara Gruenstein on May 12. [Anchorage Daily News]
* Tattoo convention discusses copyrights. As long as I don’t have to remove the giant butterfly tat on the small of my back I’m cool. [Washington Post]
* “Pope Francis changes Holy Thursday plans to celebrate Mass in prison.” OK, ready yourself for the Pope Francis “Man in Black” phase. [Catholic News Service]
* Defending yourself from solicitation charges counts as “Official Senate Business?” Actually, that sounds about right. [Lowering the Bar]
* UChiLawGo sums up the end of law school. [UChiLawGo]
* Sad news, “Mississippi State Rep. Jessica Upshaw (R), an attorney who had been a lawmaker since 2004, was found dead at the home of former state Rep. Clint Rotenberry (R) in Mendenhall, Mississippi…Mississippi Bureau of Investigation spokesman Warren Strain said it did not appear to be a natural death.” This is the fifth Mississippi lawmaker to die in five months. The other four all died of natural causes…so they say. [Jezebel]
* David and Elie will be showing up at Georgetown this Thursday afternoon. RSVP at the linked ACS site. [ACS]
* Today is the 50-year anniversary of the SCOTUS decision in Gideon v. Wainwright establishing the right to counsel in criminal cases, but we haven’t got much to show for it except for a still broken system. [National Law Journal]
* “I am 57 years old. Don’t you think it’s time for things to change?” This from a woman whose desegregation lawsuit is still pending after 48 years in federal court. That’s not funny; it’s absurd. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]
* Anheuser-Busch InBev and the Department of Justice are buying their second round in an attempt to work out their antitrust problems with regard to the company’s planned purchase of Grupo Modelo. [Bloomberg]
* Attention Biglaw partners: if you’re looking for a quick way to boost your profits, just follow SNR Denton’s lead — the firm’s profits rose by 12 percent after trimming the fat of underperforming equity partners. [Am Law Daily]
* A random dude wants to pay Casey Anthony $10K in exchange for her promise never to tell her story. OMG, please don’t take the money! I live for the day when Lindsay Lohan plays you in the movie! [New York Post]
Maybe people in Mississippi should watch this to figure out why the Voting Rights Act is still important.
My mother was born in 1950 in Mississippi. I’ve been to Mississippi. There are still brothers trying to escape to freedom from Mississippi.
Today the big story (at least in liberal circles) is that Mississippi finally officially ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, after two Ole Miss employees saw the movie Lincoln and decided to look into why their state hadn’t officially ratified the amendment. You can’t make that up: Mississippi needed a Spielberg movie to remind them to ratify the amendment banning slavery. I can’t wait till Mississippi sends an expedition to Isla Nublar to check into this whole “dinosaur situation”“Jesus Horse situation.”
You can see why liberals love this story. It’s the perfect deep south story: a tradition of holding people in bondage, slow response times, and incompetence.
And I’d leave it at that.
Except that as the Supreme Court gears up to eviscerate the pre-clearance requirements of the Voting Rights Act, it’s important to remember that not all states are created equal….
Justice never sleeps… except during Obama’s SOTU addresses.
* “You just sit there, looking stupid.” The justices of the Supreme Court aren’t required to show up and look like “potted plants” at the State of the Union address, but some of them do every year. [CNN]
* Well, thanks to the DOJ’s fraud lawsuit filed against ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, it’s starting to look a lot like a litigation gang bang up in here as far as the states are concerned. [Bloomberg]
* Dewey know whether D&L’s retirees are still kicking (legally speaking) or if they’ve decided to send their claims to hospice? We certainly do, and we’ll have more on this later. [Am Law Daily]
* That “death and taxes” thing may be true, but when you’re trying to navigate the U.S. tax code as a married same-sex couple and the government won’t even recognize your union, there’s an uncomfortable air of uncertainty. [New York Times]
* “Have we seceded already? The execution is faster than I thought.” Guess which state in the Deep South accidentally raised a Confederate battle flag over the building that houses its Supreme Court. [Clarion-Ledger]
* Mama said knock you out: if you’re trying to figure out how to get a job after graduating from New England Law School, moonlighting as a champion boxer will help you beat down the competition. [Boston Herald]
* What kind of a Dewey pun will be used later today when we discuss this global “clawback” deal for former D&L partners? I dunno, but “Dewey know how f**ked we are?” seems rather appropriate at this point. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]
* Judge Lucy Koh recused herself from a Facebook privacy lawsuit without providing a reason for doing so. Given that a petition to impeach her popped up online, she probably doesn’t want to piss off any other tech companies right now. [Reuters]
* Mississippi: a state where legislators want to protect women from unscrupulous abortion practitioners their own choices about their bodies. A judge has extended a temporary order to allow the state’s only abortion clinic to remain open. [CNN]
* Good news, everyone! Median starting salaries for recent law school graduates are no longer in the six-figure range due to an “erosion in Biglaw jobs.” Still think you’re going to make big bucks? [ABA Journal]
* A San Diego, California fireworks fiasco that lasted all of 15 seconds yielded not only a bunch of fabulously entertaining YouTube videos, but also great lawsuit fodder for environmental groups. [National Law Journal]
* Note to unemployed law school graduates in New Jersey: selling black-market kidneys isn’t a half-bad career choice, because if you get caught, you’ll likely only be sentenced to 30 months in prison. [Bloomberg]
* As it’s told, the Supreme Court never leaks, but two sources who were close to the Affordable Care Act deliberations thought this tidbit was worth sharing with the public. Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts isn’t so noble after all, because he was originally batting for the conservatives. [CBS News]
* The Department of Justice will not be filing a criminal contempt case against Attorney General Eric Holder, despite Congress’s seal of approval. Alas, if looks like you need to do a little bit more than piss off a few legislators to get prosecuted for a criminal offense. [Blog of Legal Times]
* Is fear of accidental spittle from a close talker enough to warrant slapping a Biglaw partner in the face? Yup, and it seems it’s even cause to file a lawsuit with allegations of slander and assault. [Am Law Daily (reg. req.)]
* A judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of a new law that could have shut down the only abortion clinic in Mississippi. It’s refreshing to know the judicial system is willing to bring out the kid in you. [Washington Post]
* What do you do when the U.S Anti-Doping Agency has filed formal charges against you? Take to Twitter and link to an ATL post about one of the anonymous Review Board member’s pervy predilections. [ABC News]
* “It was an accident, it was an accident, it was an accident.” That may be the case, but much like your law school loan debt, you can’t take it back. Jason Bohn was arraigned for murder. [New York Post]
* Yet another appeals court has has ruled that Obamacare is constitutional. Aww, can’t we wait for the other side to catch up a little before it goes to the Supreme Court? [Wall Street Journal]
* How did it go for this controversial ballot initiative? As it turns out, the personhood amendment was so stupid that it couldn’t even pass in Mississippi. Color me surprised. [New York Times]
* Raj Rajaratnam has to pay $92.8M in penalties in his SEC case, but come on, he’s a billionaire. Much like the honey badger, Raj don’t care, and he certainly don’t give a sh*t. [Bloomberg]
* We thought this might be a swing and a miss, but the Dodgers won approval to pay Dewey & LeBoeuf and Young Conaway after hitting the Trustee’s curveball out of the park. [Businessweek]
* Best use of footnotes ever? Pitbull’s lawyers are trying to get LiLo’s case against him removed to federal court, and gossip rags are cited in the footnotes more than law. [Hollywood Reporter]
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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Yesterday, with hours to spare, the Mississippi Supreme Court stayed the execution of Willie Manning by a vote of 8-1. The stay was granted based on letters from the Department of Justice casting doubt on the scientific value of testimony from FBI experts at the trial almost 20 years ago. 
