New Jersey

Real Bar Passers of New Jersey: Congratulations!

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A top New Jersey practice area: Snooki Defense.

There’s no denying it: New Jersey is sizzling hot right now. Jersey Shore is burning up the ratings, Boardwalk Empire is making critics swoon, and Governor Chris Christie, my former boss (when he was U.S Attorney for New Jersey), is being talked about as a possible presidential candidate.

The Garden State is popular among ATL readers too. Several of you contacted us to let us know that New Jersey bar results are now available. You can check them out here. They’re posted by candidate ID number rather than by name, so you’ll have to wait before indulging in schadenfreude toward enemies of yours who failed the test.

As always, congrats to the bar passers, and good luck to those who will need to take it again.

P.S. I took and passed the bar in New Jersey, my home state, way back when. But now I’m an NJ bar deadbeat; I keep my NY license active instead.

Bar Candidates Results: July 2010 Bar Examination

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of bar results

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Morning Docket: 09.30.10

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Judge Vaughn Walker is coming out -- of the federal judiciary, that is.

* Michigan AG candidate David Leyton demands that assistant AG Andrew Shirvell be faaaaaaaabuloussss fired. [Ann Arbor News]

* If at first you don’t succeed, ignore the judge’s ruling and try again. Lawyers for the Department of the Interior beg for a pass on the second deep-water drilling moratorium. [Bloomberg]

* “I’m black, I’m transsexual, and my name is Lord Jesus Christ.” Three strikes and you’re out at this Massachusetts library. [The Republican]

* New Jersey ethics laws have loopholes? Impossible –- New Jersey is a bastion of honesty and integrity! [Philadelphia Inquirer]

* Being the director of FernGully Avatar now qualifies you as an expert in federal Indian law. [Vancouver Sun]

* The Iranian Blogfather has been sentenced to 19 ½ years in prison for blogging. Yes, blogging. Good thing we ATL staffers don’t live in Iran… [CNN International]

* HTTP 404 – Net neutrality not found. Congress now looks to the FCC to reboot the internet. [Wall Street Journal]

* San Francisco judge Vaughn Walker (N.D. Cal.), of Prop 8 fame, is stepping down from the federal bench at the end of the year. Will this have an impact on the case going forward? [Los Angeles Times]

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Quote of the Day: They may take our jobs, but they’ll never take… our freedom!

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[S]tudents should embark upon a legal education with their eyes open; the job market is difficult, and likely to remain so. Legal education is not, as the comments of some would suggest, an entitlement program….

[T]he real value of legal education is not, and never has been, primarily economic. It’s not about money; it’s about freedom. Legal education gives students what 99.9 percent of humanity yearns for but is denied: control over one’s own life. It is a license to make of your life what you may, to live the American dream to its fullest.

– John Farmer Jr., Dean of the Rutgers School of Law-Newark, defending legal education in a guest column last Tuesday for the Newark Star-Ledger.

(Gavel bang: ABA Journal.)

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A Jersey Judge Benchslaps Paul Weiss and Lowenstein Sandler — Hard

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Back in June, we bestowed Lawyer of the Day honors upon two of the nation’s top litigators: Ted Wells and Martin Flumenbaum, the co-chair and former chair, respectively, of the renowned litigation department at Paul Weiss. Given the sterling reputations of the two lawyers and their firm, it was a surprising development.

We recognized Messrs. Wells and Flumenbaum after a New Jersey judge sanctioned Paul Weiss and its co-counsel — Lowenstein Sandler, one of the Garden State’s leading law firms, and Wells’s former home (before he jumped across the Hudson) — for pursuing a “frivolous” and “ridiculous” legal claim on behalf of billionaire Ronald Perelman against his ex-father-in-law, Robert Cohen.

In June, Judge Ellen Koblitz ordered Paul Weiss and Lowenstein Sandler to pay Cohen’s fees and costs for opposing the claim; she scheduled a hearing to determine the amount. The hearing took place last month, and now we know the amount.

It’s nothing to sneeze at, even for firms as well-heeled as Paul Weiss and Lowenstein. And to add insult to (financial) injury, Judge Koblitz got super-snarky in the opinion setting forth her reasoning….

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Fame Brief: Is the Giudices’ $60K Post-Bankruptcy Spree Legal?

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Ed. note: Welcome to ATL’s new column, Fame Brief. Since Kash has left the building, Marin, ATL’s other lady-in-waiting, will be picking up her celebrity beat and filling you in on the latest celebrity legal shenanigans. Before you fall over yourself to post an annoying comment about how this blog be sinking or how nobody cares about celebrities, consider that our celebrity posts are some of the most popular ones on here. So SOMEBODY out there cares about celebrities….

When I got my first credit card, my dad was afraid I’d go hog wild and buy a suit of armor, sconces, breast implants, decorative fireplace accessories, a foosball table, IVF treatments, a boat and a monstrous “Tuscan villa” McMansion in Towaco, NJ. But at least I’m making payments on these purchases, unlike Joe and Teresa Giudice of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, who filed for Chapter 7 back in October 2009….

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Quote of the Day: Nailbiters Need Not Apply?

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Looking for confidential minded person that is a people person and well manicured. We do some work with the adult entertainment business so it is not for everyone. Looking for the classic super manicured secretary at a younger progressive firm.

– a Craigslist ad for a legal secretary in northern New Jersey

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New Jersey Court Rules Against the Parents of Adolf Hitler

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But not because they brought a megalomaniacal murderer into the world. We’re not talking about Adolf Hitler, the deceased German dictator, but about Adolf Hitler Campbell, a little boy living in New Jersey.

The idea of some poor kid running around with the name “Adolf Hitler” might be amusing on its own, but the story here is also serious and sad. The AP reports:

A New Jersey couple who gave their children Nazi-inspired names should not regain custody of them, a state appeals court ruled Thursday, citing the parents’ own disabilities and the risk of serious injury to their children.

The state removed Heath and Deborah Campbell’s three small children from their home in January 2009. A month earlier, the family drew attention when a supermarket refused to decorate a birthday cake for their son, Adolf Hitler Campbell.

First they won’t let him have Leningrad; now he can’t get a birthday cake. Poor Adolf Hitler just can’t catch a break.

So what did the New Jersey appellate court decide?

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Real Ex-Law Student of New Jersey: Albie Manzo

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New Jersey is taking over the world of reality television programming. Though it would surely be sheer torture to be locked in a room with a bunch of Jersey folk, their ridiculous antics and outsized attitudes make for great entertainment when confined to the small screen.

The Real Housewives of New Jersey is by far the most popular of the Housewives series. It’s now in its second season, and it appears that many of our Above the Law readers are fans. We received a landfill’s worth of emails about the legal hook in last night’s episode. One of the Real Sons of the Housewives of New Jerseys — Albie Manzo, son of Caroline Manzo — was in law school. As he said in an interview on the Bravo website, in response to a question about his love life: “School makes the likelihood of any relationship working slim. I always tell my friends, sometimes I feel like I’m dating law school.”

Alas, Albie just got dumped by Lady Justice — he failed out of law school after only one semester, as viewers learned last night. Here’s a clip of Albie breaking the news to his mom. The reality TV hottie claims to have a learning disability that causes him to take three times as long as normal people to absorb information, resulting in a shameful GPA in his fall semester.

While the LD sounds like it could help Albie rack up some serious billable hours, the school wasn’t supportive. A tipster reports:

Albie said the administration told him that if he couldn’t cut it with his learning disability, lawyering probably isn’t for him.

Which law school had such harsh words for the learning-impaired Jersey boy?

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Lawyers of the Day: Ted Wells and Marty Flumenbaum?

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Our typical Lawyer of the Day is an attorney you’ve never heard of, from a firm you’ve never heard of. It’s highly unusual for LOTD honors to go to a pair of legal titans, two of the nation’s leading litigators: Ted Wells (pictured) and Marty Flumenbaum, the co-chair and former chair, respectively, of the celebrated litigation department at Paul Weiss.

It appears, however, that the honors are deserved. The New York Law Journal reports:

A New Jersey judge has sanctioned two firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Lowenstein Sandler, for pursuing a “frivolous” and “ridiculous” legal claim on behalf of billionaire Ronald Perelman against his 85-year-old ex-father-in-law [Robert Cohen]….

Superior Court Judge Ellen L. Koblitz ruled that Perelman’s attorneys should have known that the claim was unsupportable. “No competent attorney could have missed the frivolous nature of this promise claim once the unhelpful testamentary documents were received,” Koblitz said in ordering the sanctions last Wednesday. “There was no legal or factual basis for the plaintiffs to proceed with their amended complaint given the evidence they had and the state of the law in New Jersey.”

Ouch — quite the stinging benchslap. The Garden State hasn’t seen such a slugging since the first season of Jersey Shore.

And other marquee names got dragged into this mess — a pair of high-powered lady lawyers, in fact….

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Is Vinny of ‘The Jersey Shore’ Smarter Than You Are?

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Vinny Guadagnino Vinnie Guadagnino law student law school lawyer.jpgAre you one of the 21 percent of law school students who, due to the changing legal job market, regret going to law school? If going to law school was a stupid decision decision for you, then congratulations — Vinny Guadagnino, the “self-confessed mama’s boy” of Jersey Shore fame, is smarter than you are.

We mentioned his recent interview with Us Magazine before, but in case you missed it — and, judging from all the emails we’ve been getting about it, it seems many of you did — let’s go over the highlights.

Like his undergraduate GPA — which is probably higher than yours….

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