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.
We all know by now just how many atrocious lawyer websites there are out there. Whenever I see a tip show up in my inbox about legal advertising, I prepare myself for yet another round of “What Were They Thinking?” But every once in a rare while, someone comes along who has mastered the advertising game. It takes a special talent to know what is just the right amount of crazy to be awesome.
It occurs to me that before today I never stopped to ask myself the important question, “What might Shaft’s website look like if he were a lawyer?” Which is unfortunate, because now I know the answer. And it is good.
So who is the man that would risk his neck for his brother man? Carl B. Grant. Right on.
Kids, it’s time to turn up your speakers, sit back, and enjoy the greatness that is Carl B. Grant, if you can handle it.
A few weeks ago, I blew your collective mind with a post about marijuana cigarettes and the lawyers who love them. Everyone agreed that it was a true revelation and a rare insight into the human condition. Lawyers stopped each other on the Subway, put down their five-dollar foot longs, and talked about pot use and what it means for lawyers who are still struggling to find jobs in an economy that deems them superfluous and sometimes even magnanimous about their superfluity. The words. They just pile up sometimes, one after another.
You know what else takes the edge off?
Good old ‘bating. Partner drops a big ol’ pile of suck on your desk at 5 p.m.? Might as well ‘bate. Judge says your motion is denied? ‘Bate. Your client is found guilty of ‘bating? Well, we’ll get to that.
When it comes to lowering stress, there’s not a single thing better than masturbation. It’s sex with someone you love, as Woody Allen once said (before he impeached himself on issues of appropriate objects of love).
Yesterday, New York Magazine highlighted a movement to deny oneself… oneself. And if you or David Lat or anyone else not named you or David Lat thinks I can’t stretch the connections between that New York Magazine article and the legal community into something approaching an entire post, you’re sorely mistaken.
Because we’re about to talk about the most Learned of Hands….
Authorities suspect that a family law attorney practicing in suburban Denver was murdered, and her body was found by cleaning staff in her office building.
Okay, we can all stop worrying. Lindsay Lohan’s new attorney Mark Heller is pretty sure he knows how to “fix” the actress and he’s written a letter to the prosecutors extolling his power to succeed where all others have failed. And it involves establishing the “Lindsay Lohan Foundation.” I’m eagerly awaiting the mission statement for that organization.
The judge is not pleased with Heller’s letter. The exact term used in reports of the judge’s reaction is “pissed.” Pissing off the judge within the first month on the case. Hey, Lindsay, maybe Heller isn’t the best choice for representation. I mean, who is this guy?
Mark Heller’s decades-long legal career is described by observers as publicity-seeking and erratic.
Oh, wait. So maybe this is actually a match made in Heaven to work with LiLo….
Last year, we introduced you to San Diego’s self-proclaimed Legal Baller, the upstanding criminal attorney offering to pay “attractive hip females” $10 an hour to be his legal assistant.
While some thought that the previous ad seemed like a joke and questioned whether the Legal Baller truly existed, it turns out he is very much real. Meet Raymundo Pacello, Jr., the “Multi-Dimensional Trial Attorney” and former muscle man whose interests include ancient rhetoric and “Causing a Riff in the Tide of Power!” Because we all know the tide of power could stand to be musically spiced up a little.
So who is the man behind the Legal Baller legend and who is he looking to hire now? Keep reading to find out….
Some attorneys think they are unable to transition from Biglaw to opening a solo or small firm boutique because they lack the ability to generate business. They might think, “If I can’t generate business at my current firm, with all of its vast resources, goodwill, and prestige behind me, then how could I ever hope to generate business on my own?”
This kind of negative thinking is pernicious, and based on a number of fallacies….
A correspondent recently posed this question: I’m a litigation partner at a big firm. If I go solo, will my corporate clients continue to use me for their smaller matters?
I’ll use this column to do two things. First, I’ll offer the customary answer to all legal questions: It depends.
Second, I’ll ask my in-house readers at large corporations to let me know (either by posting in the comments or sending an e-mail to the link in the shirttail below) whether their corporations use sole practitioners.
Will big corporate clients follow an individual lawyer who jumps ship and goes solo?
Elections have consequences, and right now I’m waiting for Republicans to start paying the piper. I’m looking at you, Ted Nugent. You declared, nay promised, that if Obama was reelected, you’d either be dead or in jail within a year. Well, tick tock buddy, we’re all waiting.
In fact, there were many Republicans who promised to do all sorts of horrible things should Barack Obama win. And apparently some of them are following through. Nothing makes a political statement about the vibrancy of our democracy than petulantly firing people when democracy doesn’t go your way.
And heck, we don’t even know how many people will be “not hired” because, “Grrr… we have to pay for our employees’ health care because we were too partisan or stupid to support a single-payer system that would have shifted the burden of health insurance away from private employers.”
At least, we won’t know unless they tell us. Which, incredibly, one solo practitioner apparently did, in a rejection letter to somebody who applied in response to her Craigslist ad. It’s easily the best post-election rejection letter we’ve seen….
* Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which is the fairest firm of them all? According to the 2012 Acritas Brand Index survey, the current leader of the Global 100 is the most powerful Biglaw brand for the fifth year in a row. [American Lawyer]
* But that might not last for long, considering the dilemma Baker & McKenzie is facing when it comes to joining the Shanghai Bar Association in China. The firm is one of the first to indicate that it’ll take the plunge. [Wall Street Journal]
* Thanks to the Second Circuit, Rajat Gupta will be a free man on bail pending the appeal of his insider trading conviction. We wonder what Benula Bensam would have to say about this new twist. [DealBook / New York Times]
* Jason Smiekel, the lawyer who pleaded guilty in a murder-for-hire plot involving a former client, was sentenced to eight and a half years in federal prison. The things men will do for HHHBs. [Chicago Tribune]
* Student loan payments: coming to a paycheck deduction near you! Congress is considering an overhaul of the country’s student debt collection practices, and Rep. Tom Petri has some interesting ideas. [Bloomberg]
* The Cleveland-Marshall College of Law is the latest school to hop aboard the solo practice incubator train, but graduates will have to rent their office space from the school. Nice. /sarcasm [National Law Journal]
* “We didn’t file this complaint lightly.” Sorry, Judge Norman, but as it turns out, you can’t just sentence a teenager to attend church for 10 years as a condition of parole without pissing off the ACLU. [Tulsa World]
* When your alterations cost more than your wedding gown, it’s pretty much a given that you’ll have some problems — ones worth suing over, if you’re a true bridezilla (like moi). [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
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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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