Movies

Who are America’s Top 100 Entertainment ‘Power Lawyers’?

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A lot of legal work is decidedly uncool. Sadly, there’s just not much sexiness in talking about your latest corporate bankruptcy case or major document review project.

But there are exceptions. Case in point: entertainment lawyers. How sweet would it be to represent celebrities? (Except if you had to work for train wrecks veteran rock stars like Courtney Love).

So, that being said, let’s take a look at the Hollywood Reporter’s newly released Power Lawyers 2012 list, which rounds up the top 100 entertainment attorneys in America.

Maybe you know someone on the list?

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Welcome to Zombie Law 101

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No one likes a lazy welfare zombie.

How a person handles a semi-serious discussion of the zombie apocalypse can be an important indicator of a person’s sense of humor and general pleasantness to be around.

At my old apartment in Oakland, my friends and I would often discuss barricading the front door, disabling the elevator, transforming old liquor into Molotov cocktails to hurl off the balcony, how best to make use of the convenience store across the street… some actual thought went into our analysis. (We also lived in Oakland, so there’s that.)

But it’s not just weirdos like me who enjoy this stuff — turns out law professors do, too. Last week, we read about a law prof analyzing Jay-Z’s “99 Problems.” And today, we take a look at one legal academic’s investigation into the crazy problems the U.S. government must manage once it is forced to maintain revenues in the face of the rise of the undead….

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Not Even Batman Can Stop Nasty Anonymous Commenting
(In Fact, He Is Causing the Problem…)

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Leave my reviewers alone!

Here at Above the Law, we try to remain supportive of anonymous commenting. There are definite benefits — sometimes they lead to scoops or important details for a story we might not otherwise get (for instance, see Adam Kaiser). But sometimes commenting crosses the line and can endanger lives or unfairly damage reputations.

Who knew that opinions about The Dark Knight Rises, which officially comes out tomorrow, would be so strong that Rotten Tomatoes, the well-known movie review aggregation site, was moved to shut down anonymous commenting because of the terrible things being said about reviewers who dared to criticize Christopher Nolan’s newest opus.

All the ATL editors are accustomed to a cornucopia of criticism about our physical characteristics and mental capacities. But we have to hand it to our commenters, you don’t threaten to murder or rape us that often….

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The Harvard Law Exam That Requires You To Apply Lessons From ‘12 Angry Men’

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Last fall, we shared the evidence exam of Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson. His fall exam didn’t seem to require a lot of evidence knowledge.

This semester, Professor Nesson is teaching an “American Jury” class. We received a copy of the spring take-home exam.

How do you ace a class at Harvard? You better play a lot of attention to cases your professor is currently involved in, and you better not fall asleep during the screening of 12 Angry Men….

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Since When Is Merely Linking to Copyrighted Content an Extraditable Offense?

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The war on internet piracy currently being waged by entertainment industry lobbyists the U.S. Justice Department seriously puts me in an ideological bind. On one hand, I am a creative person. I understand the need for content creators to be compensated for their work. Whether that means movie producers, musicians, or journalists, the internet has deeply screwed with the compensation structure for “artists.”

On the other hand, that should not be the internet’s problem. The entertainment industry needs to figure out a way to update its outdated business model. Going after every 23-year-old with a few personal servers and high-speed internet is never going to fix the piracy problem.

But that would take a lot of actual work and planning and compromise. In the meantime, it’s business as usual. And that means extraditing a 23-year-old software engineering student from the U.K. who ran the website TVShack, a site which linked to streaming video files.

The kid has never been to the U.S. He did not even break any British laws, but OMG piracy, and woe to all who get caught anywhere near the crosshairs of the American entertainment industry….

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Fake Filesharing Lawsuits? Dang, That’s Devious

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After the feds took down Megaupload in January, the major change to many people’s lives is that it is now much harder to stream bootleg versions of the new season of Archer. What also happened is authorities took control of content hosted on the site and a lot of people who posted files there are worried getting busted as well.

Well, one man’s crisis is another man’s golden opportunity.

Keep reading to see how a new batch of criminals is trying to cash in on folks already worried about Megaupload-related copyright liability. It’s actually quite a clever plot…

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Non-Sequiturs: 02.27.12

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* Wow. David Brock, head of the liberal watchdog group Media Matters, “paid a former domestic partner $850,000 after being threatened with damaging information involving the organization’s donors and the IRS,” according to allegations in a lawsuit. [Instapundit]

* Is the Supreme Court going to gut affirmative action in the Fisher case? Not necessarily, according to Dan Slater. [Daily Beast]

* Should we be shocked by allegations that Ted Frank’s adversaries misquoted precedent? Maybe not; Mazie Slater has a talking website. [Center for Class Action Fairness]

* Are you a legal geek with a weakness for interesting historical tidbits about famous cases? Check out Professor Kyle Graham’s new blog. [NonCuratLex.com via Volokh Conspiracy (Orin Kerr)]

* If you’ll be in Los Angeles on March 8, consider attending this legal industry “battle of the bands” — with proceeds going to worthy charities. [Law Rocks]

* Could next year’s Oscar nominees include a Dreier documentary? The film does look pretty cool (movie trailer after the jump). [Am Law Daily]

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Morning Docket: 02.27.12

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* It’s hard to get a mortgage if you have a lot of student debt, even if you make a lot of money. Who needs a house anyway? Your advanced degree will keep you warm. [BusinessWeek]

* A civil trial over BP’s Gulf Oil spill was supposed to start today, but it was postponed at the last minute. Is it just me or does it smell like settlement in here? [New York Times]

* As if anyone needed another reason to never take a Carnival Cruise…. [CNN]

* The Catholic Church just couldn’t handle sharing its ignominious spotlight with Penn State any longer. Attorneys allege that the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, former Archbishop of Philadelphia, destroyed a list of 35 active priests accused of child sexual abuse. [Washington Post]

* Some movie with no sound, color, explosions, or giant robots won a bunch of Academy Awards last night. I can’t say I care too much. Here’s a rundown of some classic cine con lawyers instead. [ABA Journal]

* Advice for art collectors: CHECK YOU PROVENANCE. [New York Times]

* Michael Rothenberg, executive director of New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, RIP. [New York Law Journal]

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Bloomberg Names The Best Legal Movie Quotes of All Time; Can You Handle the Truth?

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Tom is really excited because he made the list twice.

Regardless of anyone’s opinion about people who work in the legal industry, it’s hard to deny the fact that many of the greatest American movies revolve around attorneys. When I watched Bloomberg Law’s new video compiling the “The 10 Greatest Legal Movie Lines,” it was cool to see that several of the featured movies are among my favorite films of all time. It’s because there is something timeless and intrinsically cinematic about the work lawyers do, which allows for great stories, and great TV and movies.

But cutting the massive catalog of great legal-themed films down to only ten is tough. A lot of people have to get left out. Only two of the ten characters in Bloomberg’s video even made it into the Elite Eight of our fictional lawyers bracket from last year. And lawyers are not the only ones saying the “greatest” quotes in question.

So the selection might cause a little bit of controversy among ATL readers. Let’s see who made the cut…

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Lawyerly Lairs: Hipsters in the Catskills
(Hey New Yorkers, Looking for a Country House?)

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Penny Lane and Brian Frye, in the Catskills home they've placed on the market.

As we have mentioned, we’re trying to diversify the coverage here at Lawyerly Lairs. After all, the world does not consist entirely of Park Avenue apartments owned by mega-rich law firm partners (as seen here, here, and here). Toward that end, we recently wrote about the housing search of some NYU Law students.

But that was still in New York City. Let’s leave Manhattan behind and head to upstate New York, where we’ll visit the beautiful Catskills house of a law professor and his filmmaker wife….

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(Hey New Yorkers, Looking for a Country House?)”

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