Tobacco

* Come back when you’re older, spud: Bill to make tobacco purchasing age 21 passed Idaho’s Senate. [Daily News]

* Not enough of a good thing: a spike in need for legal help fighting evictions is hurting legal services. [The Real Deal]

* New Florida law makes panhandling a fineable offense. No clue how the state is gonna collect on that ticket. [FOX]

* Mask off: mask mandates got banned in Virginia schools. We’re like 5 minutes away from hand sanitizer being contraband. [WRIC]

* Deep rooted: Idaho wants to use contract to make sure that its Med students actually practice there once they earn their honorifics. [Idaho Capital Sun]

Tobacco cases -- it's the litigation that keeps giving.

* An odd order? Perhaps in an attempt to avoid yet another 4-4 split in a controversial case, SCOTUS justices have ordered parties on both sides of the contraceptive coverage battle in Zubik to file briefs describing how such coverage could be provided without religious groups having to put forth much effort to formally object. [Associated Press]

* “It’s mind bogglingly obvious, but often gets lost in the mix. Apart from checking there aren’t any conflicts, clients are rarely put at the heart of these mergers.” Go figure, but according to a new report by professional services consultancy Gulland Padfield, law firm mergers usually don’t benefit clients in any way, shape, or form. [Am Law Daily]

* It seems that Russian cybercriminal “Oleras” has hired hackers to break into the computer systems of 48 Biglaw firms so he can collect confidential client data and then trade on the stolen insider information. Thus far, he’s been unsuccessful. Has your law firm been targeted? If you’d like to know, check the list here. [Crain’s Chicago Business]

* The NFL is so pissed that the New York Times recently published a story linking the league to the tobacco industry that it not only wrote a two-part rebuttal that was more than 3000 words long, but it also sicced Paul Weiss attorneys on the paper of record in search of a retraction, claiming that the story was defamatory in nature. [Yahoo! Sports]

* “I will not go down. I want Bill Cosby in court.” A Los Angeles judge has ruled that model Janice Dickinson’s defamation case against Bill Cosby can move forward so that a jury can decide whether her allegations of rape are truthful, and further, whether a “liar” comment made by the comedian’s ex-lawyer, Marty Singer, was defamatory. [Telegram]

* “Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, if my client was the shooter, why would he have left the witness alive to testify? He’s a man who finishes the damn job.” [ABA Journal] * Who would pretend to be a lawyer who is not? Apparently this public figure. [Legal Cheek] * Jill Abramson is out at the New York Times. Could the reason be her decision to lawyer up? [Law and More] * If you’ve hung around ATL long enough, you’ve heard us speculate that it just doesn’t make economic sense to attend most law schools. Here’s proof — only about 50 are even worth it economically. Which is hard to believe because I thought law degrees were worth $1 million. [TaxProf Blog] * Lawyers get depressed, and not talking about it makes it worse. [Everyday Health] * Seven-year-old kids are developing health problems from picking tobacco, because we let children work on tobacco farms apparently. [Slate] * The Asian American Bar Association will be conducting a trial reenactment of 22 Lewd Chinese Women next Wednesday. Register here! [AABANY] * As the new movie comes out, lawyers are really worked up over the Godzilla intellectual property. They need to hire Jorge Rivers: Godzilla Lawyer, whose ad appears after the jump (starring Thomas Lennon)…. [The Columbus Dispatch]