SCOTUS
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SCOTUS, Supreme Court
This SCOTUS Justice Hasn't Written The Majority Opinion In A Major Case In 6 Years
Which justice could it be? -
Non-Sequiturs
Non-Sequiturs: 11.06.15
* The Supreme Court announced today it will take up yet another challenge to the Affordable Care Act, this time on the contraceptive compromise. [Wall Street Journal]
* You know all those Special Lawyer lists? Yeah, they’re silly and meaningless. [Attorney at Work]
* Rut-roh. Did Congress screw up and make the latest appropriations bill end a day sooner than they intended? I mean would Congress ever screw up?!?! [Notice & Comment]
* Oh no they didn’t! Law & Order: SVU takes on the Duggars and it is glorious. [Slate]
* When Mexican Donald Trump gets going he cannot be stopped. [Funny or Die]
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Biglaw, Books, Women's Issues
A Dispatch From D.C.: Powerful Women, Great Places To Work, And Lawyer Lit
Who are Washington's most powerful women lawyers, which D.C. firm made the "great places to work" list, and why do lawyers write novels?
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Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 11.03.15
* For the horde! If you thought Dentons was done gobbling up law firms to create its international legion of lawyers, then you were dead wrong. The firm will likely merge with 500-lawyer Australian firm Gadens and 200-lawyer Singaporean firm Rodyk & Davidson in 2016. [Reuters]
* Thanks to this ruling, lawyers for model Janice Dickinson may depose Bill Cosby in the defamation case she filed against him after he denied raping her. Cosby’s former lawyer, Martin Singer, who the comedian recently dumped for Quinn Emanuel, may be deposed as well. [Los Angeles Times]
* If daylight saving time has been messing with your head, you’ll feel better to know that even the Supreme Court was having trouble with the time. Both clocks in the SCOTUS courtroom were hours behind thanks to an electrical malfunction. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Law school graduates have been having a rough time when it comes to bar passage in recent years, but Biglaw firms likely have nothing to worry about — in fact, many partners didn’t even know a problem like this was happening. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]
* “[T]he Harvard crest . . . should be a source of shame for the whole school.” According to a student movement at Harvard Law that’s been dubbed “Royall Must Fall,” the school was endowed by a “brutal” slaveowner and yet still bears his family’s seal. [Harvard Crimson]
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Biglaw, Clerkships, Supreme Court, Supreme Court Clerks
Which Law Firm Won The SCOTUS Clerk Sweepstakes?
You can probably guess the firm, but can you guess the number of SCOTUS clerks it picked up? -
Racism, SCOTUS
How Much Evidence Do You Need To Call A Racist A Racist?
The Supreme Court is going to tell us how to prove racism. -
Trivia Question of the Day
Curbing The Power Of Banks Is Nothing New
Which Supreme Court justice wrote "Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It"? - Sponsored
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Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 10.30.15
* “Say you’ll remember me, getting groped in a nice dress…” Uh oh! This pop star seems pretty pissed! Taylor Swift has filed a countersuit against a radio DJ who sued her because he claims he was fired for inappropriately touching the singer backstage at a concert. [Rolling Stone]
* Charleston School of Law has a new president, and hopefully his tenure will be less wrought with disaster than that of his predecessors. He says he’ll be paid one whole dollar per year as his salary until he can turn things around. [Charleston Post and Courier]
* At a speaking engagement at Santa Clara Law earlier this week, Justice Antonin Scalia proclaimed that the Supreme Court has been “liberal” throughout the entirety of his 30-year tenure. We’d like to beg His Honor’s pardon; that can’t be true. [WSJ Law Blog]
* As this article so eloquently puts it, “[t]he Supreme Court is about to climb back into Americans’ bedrooms.” Today, the high court will review several petitions from non-profit groups that want to be exempted from ACA’s contraception mandate. [USA Today]
* Everything’s bigger in Texas, including the number of firms that are trying to enter the market. To establish a presence in the Lone Star State, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton is saying howdy to some new partners and merging with Crouch & Ramey. [ABA Journal]
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Non-Sequiturs
Non-Sequiturs: 10.29.15
* “Coming to SCOTUS: Battle of the dueling interpretive canons.” [LAWnLinguisitcs]
* Fun fact: the highest scorer on the July 2015 Florida bar exam didn’t even go to law school in Florida. [Daily Business Review]
* What is “Lean Law,” and how can it help you in your legal practice? [Law Reboot]
* Additional information from Bob Ambrogi about the big announcement by Harvard Law and Ravel Law today. [LawSites]
*” I felt kind of stupid.” A Georgia man fled the courtroom just minutes before being acquitted. [New York Daily News]
* Dahlia Lithwick on Dale Cox, the Louisiana prosecutor who wants to “cold cock” defense counsel. [Slate]
* Are you “a Yuppie, professional or other generic dweeb between the ages of 22 and 82”? Here’s an idea worth considering. [What About Paris?]
* Former Wachtell Lipton lawyer Stephanie Lee and her Skybuds colleagues are 90 percent of the way to their Kickstarter goal — and they still have 20 days left in the campaign. [Kickstarter]
* I’ll be speaking next week at the Los Angeles LMA chapter’s Continuing Marketing Education Conference next week; I hope to see some of you there! [Legal Marketing Association]
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Trivia Question of the Day
Sometimes Being Vindicated Doesn't Help At All
Why did SCOTUS overturn this company's obstruction of justice conviction? -
Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 10.28.15
* Good news, everyone! Legally Blonde 3 is supposedly in the works, and Reese Witherspoon says that the movie may involve Elle Woods becoming a Supreme Court justice or some kind of an elected official. It’s really too bad that SCOTUS robes aren’t pink. [Washington Post]
* Biglaw firms aren’t the only ones that are downsizing when it comes to their headcount. Case in point, Lear Corporation’s in-house legal department has dropped from 20 attorneys to 11, but its GC Terry Larking says it’s working for the company. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]
* Cornell Law School will be teaming up with Cornell Tech to launch a new LL.M. degree in law, technology, and entrepreneurship. Like most LL.M. degrees, we imagine that it will cost a pretty penny, but that its overall value on the market will be low. [Cornell Chronicle]
* “Do we really need to protect people from trying to achieve their dreams?” Professor Noah Feldman of Harvard Law thinks we shouldn’t coddle law school applicants who are unlikely to pass a bar or try to “save” them from a lifetime of debt. [Bloomberg View]
* She shoots, she scores? An ex-cheerleader filed suit against the Milwaukee Bucks under the Fair Labor Standards Act because she alleges she was paid less than minimum wage to cheer for the team. The suit is the first of its kind filed against an NBA team. [ABC News]
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Trivia Question of the Day
When Scandals Become Precedent
Remember when Bill was the most famous Clinton?
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Gay Marriage, Quote of the Day
How One Woman And Her Lawyer Changed U.S. History
Where would the marriage equality movement be without Edie Windsor? -
Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 10.26.15
* “Cases swing. I don’t.” Justice Anthony Kennedy would really like it if folks would stop referring to him as the high court’s
swingerswing vote. In other news, the Supreme jurist thinks Legally Blonde is a “pretty good movie.” [Harvard Gazette]* Hey, everyone, it’s high time we did something about this law school debt crisis. Have you somehow never heard about or experienced this before (despite reading Above the Law for eons)? Not to worry, because the New York Times is on it! [New York Times]
* “She’ll still be fighting for the things she cares about. But this time, she’ll be asking us to join her.” Irin Camron, co-author of Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (affiliate link), thinks we’ll see more Badass Bader this Term. [New York Times]
* The Pennsylvania Senate is trying to kick embattled Attorney General Kathleen Kane out of office because she’s working with a suspended law license. Come on, it must be pretty embarrassing when your AG can’t even refer to herself as a lawyer. [Morning Call]
* According to Professor Paul Campos, the law school scam will keep on trucking thanks to the for-profit institutions — Arizona Summit Law, Charlotte Law, and Florida Coastal Law — that are run by InfiLaw. Well, at least they’re good at one thing, right? [The Atlantic]
* Toke the vote! The next states that will likely legalize recreational marijuana by ballot referendum come November 2016 include California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada. Vermont, on the other hand, may pass marijuana-friendly legislation. [Rolling Stone]
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Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 10.22.15
* Brush that dirt off your shoulder: Jay-Z may have 99 problems, but this copyright lawsuit about his song “Big Pimpin'” is no longer one of them. The suit filed against the rap mogul in 2007 was dismissed on standing grounds, but the plaintiff says he plans to appeal. [Los Angeles Times]
* When it comes to the death penalty, Justice Antonin Scalia says that it “wouldn’t surprise [him]” if the Supreme Court were to strike it down as unconstitutional. It seems that a capital punishment case could become the next SCOTUS blockbuster. [CBS Minnesota]
* No one is a fan of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s in-house court system, and legislation to give financial defendants the right to opt out will be introduced in Congress later this week. Would you rather face trial before a federal judge or jury? [WSJ Law Blog]
* Earlier this week, a state-court judge brought a live grenade to the courthouse, but only because he wanted to have it properly disposed of by police. The jurist currently remains unidentified, which is a good thing, because this is pretty embarrassing. [CBS Los Angeles]
* Jurors in New York are paid $40 per day for their service, so you may be wondering how the confused members of the jury in the Dewey & LeBoeuf (mis)trial were able to survive on only $2,920 after five months spent in the courtroom. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg]
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Trivia Question of the Day
The Life And Times Of A Supreme Court Justice
What do you know about the Supreme Court from 1985? -
Supreme Court
The First Supreme Court Was Not Like Today's Supreme Court
What was the highest court in the land like in its infancy? -
Non-Sequiturs
Non-Sequiturs: 10.16.15
* Lawsuit ahead for Rosie O’Donnell! The comedienne was sued by a former The View producer she was allegedly mean to. [Jezebel]
* The Amazing Schneiderman is at it again! This time he’s going after Martin Shkreli for antitrust violations. [Dealbreaker]
* So Justice Breyer heard a case about a company he holds stock in. The self-monitoring SCOTUS does for conflicts seems to be working out swimmingly. [Fix the Court]
* The IRS computers are still on Window XP. Good thing we don’t give them super sensitive information or anything. [TaxProf Blog]
* Looks like Clay County, Tennessee, schools will indeed stay open. Score one for litigation. [Slate]
* Sure to get Second Amendment enthusiasts fired up: let’s create a Mount Doom for guns! [Wonkette]
* $5 for some [possibly] unauthorized legal advice? Still sounds like a raw deal. [The Associate’s Mind]
* A judge limits the questions a doctor can ask patients — when they’re about guns, that is. [Harvard Law And Policy Review]
* Is it even possible to have non-lawyer friends? Don’t they all leave you once you’ve canceled plans for the 800th time? [Daily Lawyer Tips]
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SCOTUS
Court Hears Arguments On Whether Defendants Can Bribe Class Action Plaintiffs
Wherein I analogize class action attorneys to condoms.