My wife bought me a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue to celebrate the birth of our child. I had a glass; dear God it was delicious. It tasted smokey.
Anyway, later my boys came over and we had a party and… all the whiskey disappeared. That’s how it felt. Not like we drank it and had a good time… Just that the alcohol evaporated. Along with my shoes. And my boy’s pipe.
Saying that the alcohol “evaporated” is a reasonable explanation of the feeling you get from drinking through an expensive bottle of happiness. It seems like a less good defense to a charge of theft…
‘If they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire…’
* “It’s very hard to copyright a story about an individual growing up in the ghetto and getting involved in crime.” Go Third Circuit, it’s your birthday, we gon’ affirm that like it’s your birthday. [New Jersey Law Journal (reg. req.)]
* I believe you have my stapler? A former Fried Frank staffer has been accused of stealing more than $376K worth of copy machine ink from the firm and selling it on the black market for office supplies. [Am Law Daily]
* Governor Andrew Cuomo nominated Jenny Rivera, a CUNY School of Law professor, to fill a vacant New York Court of Appeals seat. If confirmed, she’ll be the second Hispanic to sit on the court. [New York Law Journal]
* This’ll please the gun nuts: Governor Cuomo’s gun-control bill was passed by the legislature and signed into law, officially making New York the state with the toughest gun restrictions in the nation. [New York Times]
* And this right here is the lawsuit equivalent of half-court heave. A lawyer is suing the San Antonio Spurs because the team’s coach sent all of its best players home to rest without the fans’ prior knowledge. [ESPN]
This week brought unfortunate news for an unambiguously gay duo. A former employee of Vanderbilt Law and his boyfriend pleaded guilty to stealing more than $500,000 from the law school — as well as to charges of aggravated statutory rape. Both men then got hit with some pretty heavy sentences.
How much time are they getting? How did they perpetrate their fraudulent scheme? And what did they blow the money on?
Keep reading for more details of their crimes, some color commentary from local correspondents, and photographs of some beautiful youths who used to hang out with the defendants….
* In case you’ve been sleeping under a rock, Mitt Romney picked Rep. Paul Ryan as his Vice Presidential running mate. Putting politics aside, this is a great pick, if only because Ryan is so handsome. Seriously, he’s a total stud. [Wall Street Journal]
* “How can I be the one guy with a good degree who is going to be chronically unemployed?” Sadly, many lawyers are still looking for jobs after (multiple) layoffs, but thanks to a lack of positions, employment is just “not in the cards” for them. [New York Times]
* Deadliest clerkship? The Washington, D.C. judge who presided over one of the most violent mass shooting cases in the nation’s capital was reportedly held up at gunpoint last week, with her law clerk in tow. [Fox DC]
* Something is rotten in the state of Denmark Texas. Judge Sam Sparks “know[s] the smell of bad fish,” and now wants to know why the USADA waited so long to bring charges against Lance Armstrong. [Bloomberg]
* After reversing a bankruptcy court’s decision that loan repayment would be an “undue hardship” for a law school debtor, a judge took the time to rip law schools a new one over escalating tuition. [Oregonian]
* Match.com class-action plaintiffs found no love in court after a federal judge ruled that the dating website hadn’t breached its user agreement. Much like their love lives, their claims aren’t getting any action. [Reuters]
* A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client: 23% of all cases filed in the federal court for the S.D.N.Y. are brought by pro se litigants, and the vast majority of them seem to have lost their minds. [New York Post]
Why should you let bad grades get in the way of a good job?
Last year, we reported on the strange arrest of Joshua Gomes. Gomes was charged with breaking into the registrar’s office at UVA Law School and trying to steal a ream of transcript paper.
If you think that there’s only one reason that a person would want to steal transcript paper, you’re not going to be disappointed by Josh Gomes’s guilty plea. It’s that familiar story of a person popping his collar while wearing no pants….
* Like a virgin, detained for the very first time: thanks to this court order, Egypt will be forced to come out of the dark ages and ban virginity tests for female detainees and military prisoners. [CNN]
* Oh, hell no. Judge Jed Rakoff issued an order 78 seconds after the Second Circuit decided to delay the SEC’s Citigroup case. His pimp hand is strong (which is impressive!). [WSJ Law Blog]
* As an attorney, you should know that the law stops for no one, not even Santa Claus. Major deals in Asian markets kept many Biglawyers working hard this holiday season. [Am Law Daily]
* Social media subpoena fail: “Haha. Boston PD submitted to Twitter for my information. Lololol? For what? Posting info pulled from public domains? #comeatmebro” [Boston Herald]
* A former stripper is suing a police officer for allegedly stealing money from her purse. This girl fit $714 in dollar bills in a small, Coach bag? That’s actually a real accomplishment. [ABC News]
* It’s been seven hours and fifteen sixteen days, since you took your love away. Nothing compares to a Vegas wedding, because Sinead O’Connor’s marriage is already over. [Los Angeles Times]
* Hey, Preet Bharara, even Lady Gaga can read your poker face when you’re going all in on an allegation of Full Tilt Ponzi. Maybe Lederer and Ferguson will finally fold. [Wall Street Journal]
* You know what this country really needs? More doctors who don’t believe in science. Another stem cell research case is going up to the D.C. Circuit. [Bloomberg]
* The last 9/11 wrongful death suit has been settled. Lessons learned: airport screeners might not know what Mace is, but they sure can lift and separate your balls. [New York Times]
* Cooley Law held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new campus. We’re good at surviving natural disasters, but a tsunami of unemployed lawyers might break this profession. [Miami Herald]
* A group of drag queens in Florida got busted for thieving the essentials — bras, boas, and butt pads. As RuPaul would say, you better work. Or steal. You know, whatever. [New York Daily News]
* Guys in my high school middle school used to have the ACLU file lawsuits over breathalyzer tests all the time. It was no big deal. [MSNBC]
We’ve done a lot of stories about alleged thievery at law schools and law firms, and we’ve posted many funny messages from the victims of these crimes looking to get their stuff back. But we haven’t seen anything this elegant before.
Law students tend to ask for their stuff back in an argumentative, logical way, as if they were asking for an order of replevin against the lost-and-found Gods. But at one top law school, a student made a prayer for relief that sounds a little bit more like a prayer, or at least a poem, than a legal argument.
Here at Above the Law, we like to know what’s going to happen, before it happens. We therefore pay special attention to Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. The firm is a trendsetter of sorts — at least for things that are bad. Few remember, but Cadwalader faced down a bed bug epidemic back in 2007, long before every New Yorker lived in fear of the critters.
More people know that Cadwalader was one of the early adopters of massive associate layoffs, with the first sizable round all the way back in January 2008 — well before the fall of Lehman and the true start of the financial crisis. CWT was kicking people to the curb before it was cool.
Nobody knows why Cadwalader seemingly has this mystical power to experience calamities before they happen elsewhere, but one doesn’t have to be able to explain every thing that happens to be true. So ignore the following email sent around the New York offices of Cadwalader at your own risk — but don’t say that CWT didn’t warn you…
When you think of Notre Dame Law School (ranked #22 in the latest U.S. News rankings), you generally don’t think of lies and deceit. But there have been some troubling campus security issues at the school. We previously reported on a creepy, fake 1L that was posing as a Notre Dame law student.
And we’ve heard rumors of the mysterious Notre Dame kleptomaniac. Some kid who has been stealing books around campus. Apparently this person has made the trip to London along with a number of Notre Dame students studying abroad.
The change of time zone hasn’t changed this person’s desire to steal. A tipster reports on “Petty Theft Law School: London”…
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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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.
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My wife bought me a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue to celebrate the birth of our child. I had a glass; dear God it was delicious. It tasted smokey.
