In June 2011, we brought you the story of Reema Bajaj, a lovely young lawyer in Illinois who was accused of prostitution. I expressed a belief in her innocence, although my faith was somewhat shaken by the nude photos of her that circulated on the web. And then, in June 2012, Bajaj pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of prostitution.
After covering her guilty plea, we thought we had seen the last of her. As I wrote, “The post you’re now reading could very well represent the final story we write about Reema Bajaj…. We will miss writing about this colorful young woman, but we wish her the best in getting on with her life and her law practice.”
I spoke too soon. Now Bajaj is back — with a vengeance….
Note the UPDATE at the end of this post, based on comments from Bajaj’s counsel.
* Pennsylvania prosecutors are “outraged” that the new Attorney General is investigating how the office dropped the ball in the Sandusky case. Their frustration is understandable… looking into obvious wrongdoing seems to be a new concept for them. [Legal Intelligencer]
* New charges brought in the Florida A&M Band hazing case. Twelve defendants will now face felony manslaughter charges. [Los Angeles Times]
* A plan is in the works for a new University of Texas system law school. On the one hand, the new school could improve the diversity of the Texas bar. On the other hand, no one in the state was saying, “Wow, we’re really suffering from a dearth of lawyers.” [The Daily Texan]
* A model depicted in the opening credits of Mad Men has filed suit, alleging that the show is using her image without permission. The show has used the same opening for six years. Looks like someone just got Netflix! [The Wrap]
* According to the escort who made the allegations, she was paid to falsely claim that she was hired by Senator Menendez. [Washington Post]
* Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg may be the oldest member of the high court, but she’s still one bad ass bitch. She broke two ribs in June, and still fulfilled all of her duties on the bench. We <3 RBG! [Reuters]
* While merchants will now be able to charge more when customers use credit cards, they might not get much else from this Visa / MasterCard settlement because of an American Express catch-22. [New York Times]
* The Garden State just got a little greener (in a sticky icky way): starting today, doctors in New Jersey will be able to register their patients for the Department of Health’s medical marijuana program. [Star-Ledger]
* After some highly questionable opposition from government officials, the city of Macon, Georgia, has approved the placement of a park bench in memory of slain Mercer Law grad Lauren Giddings. [Telegraph]
* Kansas Law received a $1M donation to support scholarships. The dean is thrilled, because the school will be able to compete to attract and retain students who will someday be unemployed. [Lawrence Journal-World]
* The verdict is in on who reigns as the highest paid TV personality. Even if you pee on her leg and tell her it’s raining, Judge Judy will be able to afford the dry-cleaning bill, because she’s loaded. [New York Daily News]
* Even if you’re a ho fo’ sho, that doesn’t mean you can’t do business in a ho-tel, mo-tel, or Holiday Inn. An Australian court ruled that denying prostitutes rooms was discriminatory. [International Business Times]
* Dear ABA: could you please at least LOOK at what’s going on at Rutgers-Camden. We’ve already looked at their arguably misleading ads. Now Paul Campos has figured that the school may have been massively under-reporting the amount of debt people graduate with to the ABA (scroll down to Upate III). Seriously ABA, do one small part of your freaking job JUST ONCE. [Inside the Law School Scam]
* Here’s a great way to lower the cost of education: make books free. I mean, it’ll never, ever happen, but it’s a good idea. [CALI via Tax Prof Blog]
* Law students might need a bit of a refresher on supply and demand before they hit up fall recruiting. [Adam Smith Esq.]
* Legacy LeBoeuf retirees have also been screwed by the D&L fiasco. Boy, Dewey know how they feel. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Should we care about the “scholarship” of law professors at all? [Adjunct Law Prof Blog]
* Wild strippers are a national problem in New Zealand. [The Telegraph]
* “Many organizations have people who do dumb things.” Members of the Secret Service aren’t the only suits getting secretly serviced. Apparently Treasury Department officials like hookers, too. [New York Daily News]
* The cool cats at WilmerHale arrived for their first day of work yesterday at their hip new downtown location. Their library has a Wii, but who are they kidding, it’s probably just for show. [Am Law Daily (sub. req.)]
* On the other side of the fence, we’ve got some signs of the impending lawpocalypse. Soon Biglaw veterans will be forced to say goodbye to the corner office and hello to the glass-walled cubicle. [WSJ Law Blog]
* George Zimmerman: alleged murderer, and now an alleged child toucher (though he was still a child himself). Witness 9 claims Zimmerman abused her for a decade while they were both underage. [CNN]
* “We want to have a bar pass standard that really works. And it’s clear it doesn’t work now.” Oh boy, would you look at that. The ABA is trying to make it look like it’s doing something to improve law schools! [ABA Journal]
* Emory Law received a record donation, and more than half will fund minority student scholarships. Little do these kids know that they’ll soon be condescendingly told to move to Nebraska. [National Law Journal]
* But then again, maybe Nebraska isn’t so bad, considering three law schools are shipping students to neighboring Iowa. The towns are tiny, and the surroundings are rural, but come on, the state’s got jobs. [NPR]
As we reported yesterday, the comely young Reema Bajaj, a 26-year-old Illinois solo practitioner charged with prostitution, has pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor prostitution count. I previously expressed my favorable opinions of Bajaj and my belief in her innocence (despite the existence of nude pictures of her floating around the internet). Alas, it seems that my confidence may have been misplaced.
As a matter of legal ethics and attorney discipline, what will happen to Bajaj’s law license in the wake of her conviction for prostitution? As a matter of human interest, how did a promising young lawyer wind up in such a compromising situation?
We have some answers. A law professor who teaches ethics addresses the first question, and a friend of Reema speaks to the second….
* Dewey have some novel issues for our bankruptcy lawyers, or what? As we noted last night, now that D&L has filed for Chapter 11, they’ll have to deal with bank debt, and bondholders, and possible criminal proceedings, oh my! [New York Law Journal]
* And did we mention that Dewey’s defectors and their new firms might get screwed out of millions thanks to the recent Coudert decision? You really should’ve tried to finish up your business before the firm flopped. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Our SCOTUS justices’ summer plans don’t include debating the results of their landmark health care and immigration cases. They’ll be off to fabulous destinations to teach by the first week of July. [Associated Press]
* A federal judge in Brooklyn doesn’t like what seems to be happening in the “game of grams” when it comes to mandatory minimum drug sentencing. Perhaps the DOJ will heed his call for reform. [New York Times]
* Facebook’s IPO was an epic fail, but it’s been great business for plaintiffs lawyers. Twelve securities class action firms are gathering leads and getting ready to sue, and two have already sued. [National Law Journal]
* This wasn’t exactly well planned: if you’re involved in state politics, it’s probably not a good idea to fake a legal internship with a state representative so that you can graduate from law school. [Concord Monitor]
* In happier news, a New York Law School graduate walked across the stage to receive her diploma with the help of her seeing-eye dog. The pooch hasn’t lifted a leg on her law degree… yet. [New York Daily News]
... and so do folks down under.
* “Brothels are never going to be a vote winner.” But even so, if you’re looking to get it in down under, a plan to build Australia’s largest cathouse may soon gain approval if lawyers are able to do their work quick and dirty. [Bloomberg]
* Thanks to this case, stupid teenagers in New Jersey who send texts to others that they know are driving can now revel in the fact that they can’t be held liable for injuries that may occur thanks to careless driving. [New Jersey Law Journal]
If you’ve ever wandered over to Backpage.com and spent a few minutes reviewing the classified ads there, you probably realized that you had just discovered the seedy underbelly of the internet. Rife with ads for adult services — which is arguably just an elegant way of saying prostitution — the website, owned by Village Voice Media, has come under fire for its association with human trafficking.
Leave it to the company’s general counsel, Elizabeth McDougall, to take a stand for these scandalous online ads. After all, it’s great business! Backpage reportedly has a 70% market share for prostitution ads in the United States, generating millions in revenue.
This week, McDougall is taking additional heat from state attorneys general for her statements in an off-color op-ed column published in the Seattle Times. What could she have said that was so controversial?
* Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan apologized before a Senate panel for his agency’s prostitution scandal. We bet that you’d be “deeply disappointed” too if your employees were caught stiffing a hooker on her bill. [Miami Herald]
* Day four of jury deliberations in the John Edwards campaign finance trial closed yesterday without a verdict. The former presidential candidate is probably just waiting to pack it in, get this jury declared hung, and call it a day. [CNN]
* “This case is maybe something like a near disaster for Oracle.” A jury ruled unanimously that Google didn’t infringe Oracle’s Java patents in developing its Android software. Maybe they weren’t evil after all. [Bloomberg]
* A record low of 41% of Americans call themselves “pro choice” when it comes to abortions, and only a little more than half think it should be legal under “certain circumstances.” What is this, Roe v. World? [Reuters]
* Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman put together a task force to make recommendations on how to implement New York’s new pro bono prerequisite. Please let them take law school clinic hours. [Corporate Counsel]
* Remember the lawyer who sued his posh fitness club over its failure to provide free breakfast? Not only is his suit now toast, but he also has to fork over some cash to the club’s lawyers. [New York Daily News]
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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.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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