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Non-Sequiturs: 04.17.13

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* How to hire an effective expert — in the model of Han Solo. [The Expert Institute]

* Here are the 10 most annoying lawyer clichés. Punch yourself in the face for every one you’ve used (non-ironically, of course) in the past month. [The Careerist]

* The NCAA chooses revenue for their member schools over the welfare of students? Shut the front door! [Sports Law Blog]

* Poor plaintiff trying to get off the Internet keeps putting herself on the Internet. Hail Streisand Effect! [Lowering the Bar]

* Grammar fail. Lawyer inadvertently calls his wife a “bitch” with poor sentence structure. [Spadea, Lanard, & Lignana]

* Georgetown Law is holding its second Iron Tech Law Competition, challenging students to develop technology to improve the access to justice or increase the effectiveness of representation. Cool idea. Other schools should consider this kind of program. [Georgetown Law]

* Do you think our lawmakers should reform the Senate filibuster procedure? I agree. Though Patton Oswalt gives an almost nine minute, improvised tour de force of how a filibuster could be awesome that will be — presumably edited down — and used in this week’s Parks and Recreation. Video after the jump. [Cinema Blend]

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  • 05 Apr 2013 at 11:04 AM
  • Sports

Amateur Athletics Is A Sham. Girlfriend Don’t Care.

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My dear sweet girlfriend Stephanie doesn’t understand sports. To nothing and no one in particular, she will say “How can anyone get upset over the results of a game?” I mentally catalog my responses. That it’s a shared culture and every result arrives like a cascade of memories, connecting fathers and sons and entire families. Place and time all wrapped up and held within a blowout victory or a narrow loss. I get frustrated. I realize that she could never understand this compulsion. I would have better luck explaining what the color blue is. Words fail me as this column attests to on a semi-weekly basis. And my mind instinctively reaches for every illogical thing she does, from the interminably long morning routine to the row of bras, neatly displayed on a table in her living room. Explain the bras, Stephanie! If you’re such a cold, calculating machine, explain the terrifyingly ordered row of bras on the table!

This all happens in the span of fifteen seconds. And at the end of the psychic meltdown, I look over and see Stephanie staring off into space, not caring about sports or even those who care about sports. She doesn’t care about the question or the answer, I realize.

My dear sweet girlfriend Stephanie trolls me on a regular basis.

Let’s talk sports…

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The Extrajudicial Proclivities Of The NFL And NCAA

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Son, my turn. I’ve been sitting here for ten minutes now lookin’ over this… rap sheet of yours. I just can’t believe it. June ’93, Assault. September ’93, Assault. Grand theft auto, February ’94. Where apparently you defended yourself and had the case thrown out by citing Free Property Rights of Horse and Carriage from 1798. January ’95, impersonating an officer. Mayhem. Theft. Resisting. All overturned. I’m also aware that you’ve been through several foster homes. The state removed you from three because of serious physical abuse. You know, another judge might care, but you hit a cop. You’re going in. Motion to dismiss is denied. Fifty thousand dollar bail.

But you hit a cop. In perhaps the most riveting courtroom scene ever committed to celluloid, the judge with the push broom mustache threatens to derail Will Hunting’s promising career as a midget boxer with those five words. Luckily — and, I don’t think I have to remind any of you — Professor Gerald Lambeau (yes, the Gerald Lambeau) sees promise in the young bobby boxer and gets him out of jail.

Another Boston-area legend saw similar promise in a troubled youth who hit a cop. The legend’s name is Bill Belichick and the troubled youth’s name is Alfonzo Dennard. Just this week, Dennard was found guilty of hitting a cop. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that he has any idea how to solve advanced Fourier Systems.

Instead of continuing this strained Good Will Hunting analogy, let’s talk sports….

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Morning Docket: 02.21.13

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Sorry, no free entry, not even for prosecutors.

* Even though Obama wants to “make sure that [he's] not interjecting [himself] too much into this process,” the DOJ may still suggest that the Supreme Court overturn Proposition 8, California’s ban on gay marriage. [Associated Press]

* Anheuser-Busch InBev and the Department of Justice are cracking open a couple of cold ones to settle their differences over antitrust concerns with regard to the company’s planned purchase of Grupo Modelo. [DealBook / New York Times]

* It looks like Steve DiCarmine is being forced to take a break from his rigorous class schedule at Parsons to testify at a Dewey bankruptcy hearing next week. He’ll be happy to hear orange is in this spring. [Am Law Daily]

* Represented by Steptoe & Johnson, Jesse Jackson Jr. pleaded guilty to misusing $750,000 of his campaign funds for personal use. Most interesting purchase: Michael Jackson memorabilia. [Blog of Legal Times]

* When it comes to recruiting new talent, the ability to maintain a “collegial culture” is apparently a selling point for midsize law firms. And here we thought douchebaggery was the way to go. Sigh. [National Law Journal]

* Protip: do not flash your prosecutor’s badge to bypass cover charges and lap dance surcharges at the local strip club. You’re going to get fired. We’ll probably have more on this later. [Riptide 2.0 / Miami New Times]

* Don’t worry ladies, if you’re about to be raped, just pee or puke all over your attacker — or better yet, tell him that you’re on your period. Yeah, that’ll work. These tips are almost as good as “don’t dress like a slut.” [CNN]

* “[T]his is a ridiculous sideshow that’s horribly unbecoming to the parties involved.” The NCAA is now suing over a new Pennsylvania law designed to keep PSU’s Sandusky fines in the state. [San Francisco Chronicle]

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Morning Docket: 02.08.13

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* President Barack Obama recently nominated two attorneys for the Federal Circuit who are being referred to as “noteworthy” because of their ethnicity (Asian American) and sexual orientation (openly gay). Let’s hear three cheers for diversity! [Blog of Legal Times]

* Dewey & LeBoeuf and Howrey have something in common aside from going down in a gigantic ball of flames that rocked Biglaw as we know it. Both firms’ fine art collections will soon be auctioned off by Adam A. Weschler & Son Inc. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* There’s nothing like acting like the product you’re selling: MGA, the maker of Bratz dolls, would like to have Orrick’s $23 million arbitration award vacated because paying your legal bills is so passé. [The Recorder]

* We briefly noted California’s new bar passage mandate for state-accredited schools here, but now a law school is suing over it, claiming the bar examiners are “waging a vendetta” against it. [National Law Journal]

* The NCAA wants to get Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett’s suit over PSU’s Sandusky-related penalties tossed, with a harsh reminder that hurt feelings have absolutely nothing to do with antitrust law. [Bloomberg]

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Ed O’Bannon Might Kill the NCAA But Not The System

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I don’t particularly like the NCAA and I enjoy their legal difficulties as much as the next guy. As a devout college sports fan, the usually arbitrary and always backward business side of the NCAA (including the affiliated schools and “non-profit” bowl associations) causes me great consternation.

Apparently, the incomparable Charles P. Pierce shares my disdain for the lumbering excuse for a fair and credible sanctioning body that currently governs collegiate athletics.

In a sharp Grantland piece, Pierce revisits the Ed O’Bannon-led class-action case against the NCAA and video game manufacturer EA over their combined efforts to profit in perpetuity from the likenesses of unpaid “student ath-o-letes.” (Take it away Eric Cartman!) But I think Pierce is overselling the extent to which a possible O’Bannon victory would really change the college sports landscape….

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Sports Law, Spaw, Lorts: Dude Sounds Like A Lady Edition

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I don’t know what Gloria Allred does, exactly. I know she’s nominally an attorney because it says so on her Wikipedia page and also under her head when her head appears on my television screen. It says, “Attorney.” But, despite three years of law school, I have no idea what service she provides her clients. It’s always some weirdo at the periphery of a scandal she’s representing. A woman who bedded Tiger Woods, for instance. Or it’s a minor scandal that in years past would have been relegated to the Odd Stories column in your local newspaper. Like the time Roger McDowell got his gay slur on in front of some baseball fans. What connects these things is their apparent distance from anything resembling a legal issue.

Gloria Allred holds press conferences, as far as I can tell. And she talks sternly and forcefully, admonishing those bad actors who did her clients wrong. And after the microphones are turned off and the cameramen have all fled… well, I don’t know what it is she does. You can do anything with a law degree!

Which brings me to the latest in the Manti Te’o saga. The man behind Lennay has lawyered up, which thankfully allows me to write about Manti’s man in this here column.

Let’s talk Scandal Law. Scaw, Landal…

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Sports Law, Spaw, Lorts: Chad’s Johnson

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As I write this, some dating show called Baggage is playing out on my television screen. Northwestern Law alum Jerry Springer is hemming and hawing about some floozy’s hidden past. A drug counselor named Luke wearing a suede vest just introduced himself by saying he’s an “East Coast cat,” and then some fat boy opened his pitch by mentioning that he’s a gamer. This segued into a discursive bit on Luke’s love of gangster rap. Then the fat boy talked about how many online dates he’s gone on. All these men are dressed like amateur magicians.

This is all a way of saying that there’s a lot of terrible stuff on TV these days. Which is why it’s more important than ever that our nation’s celebrities fill the entertainment void with their sex tapes. It appears that this poverty of entertainment options is exactly what Chad Johnson had in mind when portions of his sex tape appeared online this past week.

The proud tradition that began with Pamela Anderson and then begat Kim Kardashian has now given us Chad Johnson. A football player who was last seen on a reality show has now given us real sex.

Let’s talk sports….

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If ATL Decided the BCS

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The end is in sight for our long national nightmare. Starting in 2014, the NCAA will institute a four-team playoff to crown the national college football champion. The 14-year reign of the BCS will be looked back upon as a time of national unity: everyone thought the system was horrible. Even President Obama decried the system on the campaign trail . The BCS has been described as anything from a “horrible Jenga tower of bad arguments” to a “broken, failed, even corrupt enterprise.” Oh wait, that second quote is from a blurb for Brian Tamanaha’s recent book Failing Law Schools. But of course there is an important parallel between the BCS and the legal education industry: they have few defenders outside their own walls. The soon-to-be obsolete BCS system is only considered successful by those with a financial stake in the status quo. As for our current model of legal education, efforts to defend its value from the inside have not been well received, to put it mildly. But there’s an important difference between the BCS and legal academia. The BCS has shown a willingness to adapt and transform itself in the face of widespread and well-founded criticism.

Anyway, as even casual football fans know, a college team’s prospects are highly correlated with how the students at its affiliated law school rate their experiences. (Ed. note: this is untrue). So, after the jump, let’s have a look at how the law schools for the BCS bowl schools match up.

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Non-Sequiturs: 11.21.12

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* I’m thankful every time an anti-gay lawyer gets arrested for child pornography. Lesbian child pornography. [Huffington Post]

* I’m thankful for people like the lawyer who rushed to the defense of Shabazz Muhammad. [L.A. Times]

* But I’m not thankful for the NCAA and the way it harms poor, young athletes with stupid, anachronistic rules. [Forbes]

* I’m thankful for the separation of church and state. [Slate]

* I’m thankful I don’t own Hewlett-Packard stock. [DealBook / New York Times]

* I’m thankful that threatening people with umbrellas is just as stupid in real life as it is in the Batman comics. [Legal Juice]

* Mainly, I’m just thankful it’s Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. [Atlantic Wire]

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