Some of you apparentlyfeel that your law degrees aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. But there’s no denying that what you learned in first-year contracts class comes in handy — and not just for understanding the gobbledygook in your apartment lease.
Check out whathappens when laypeople try to do contract law….
Yesterday’s Lawyer of the Day was a public defender who could use a little defending himself — after he allegedly choked a prosecutor. Inside a courthouse, of all places.
The story is even better than we first reported. From the Chicago Sun-Times:
The men went downstairs to the first floor, where [public defender Henry] Hams allegedly lashed out at the prosecutor outside a snack shop, authorities said.
At some point, Hams got on top of the victim and was choking him with both hands around his neck, Patterson said. When two sheriff’s deputies tried to pull Hams off the victim, Hams continued choking him with one hand and attempted to resist the deputy’s efforts with his other hand, Patterson said.
Choking a prosecutor with one hand, while resisting a deputy with the other? Impressive! Welcome to Cook County.
So, where did Henry Hams get his gift for brawling? And who’s representing him in the criminal case he’s facing?
Apparently there was a choking in Chicago — and it didn’t involve the Cubs. From the Chicago Sun-Times:
A Cook County prosecutor was hospitalized this morning after being choked in a hallway of the 26th and California criminal courthouse, allegedly by an assistant public defender, police said.
The 50-year-old assistant state’s attorney “might be injured very badly,” an official could be heard telling prosecutors at the courthouse. But another source said the prosecutor was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital only for observation.
So what led to the alleged choking? It may have originated in a scheduling dispute….
Disclosure: I am not a fan of the burka, a garment that I find vaguely ridiculous, oppressive towards women, and worst of all, horribly unfashionable. The burqa’s highest and best use is in comedy. Remember the great Curb Your Enthusiasm episode in which Larry dry cleans a Muslim woman’s burqa and gives it to Cheryl as a Halloween costume?
So, given where I’m coming from, I was pleased not deeply troubled by this recent incident in France, reported in the London Telegraph:
A 60-year-old lawyer ripped a Muslim woman’s Islamic veil off in a row in a clothing shop in what police say is France’s first case of “burka rage.”
The astonishing scene unfolded during a weekend shopping trip after the woman lawyer took offence at the attire of a fellow shopper resulting in argument during which the pair came to blows before being arrested.
Gerald Ung, the Temple University law school student arrested in January for shooting another man five times in front of the Old City Fox TV studio, this morning was ordered to stand trial on attempted murder and aggravated assault charges.
Philadelphia Municipal Judge David Shuter dismissed two gun charges because Ung had a legal permit to carry a gun from his native state of Virginia.
The article contains some additional (and apparently new) details about the underlying incident….
If this tiger reminds you of your pet cat, you are an idiot.
There’s a Chris Rock joke about the Siegfried & Roy tiger attack: “That tiger didn’t go crazy, that tiger went tiger.” With that in mind, I bring you this latest decision from the Tenth Circuit, via the National Law Journal:
An insurance company does not have to pay a Kansas family $100,000 for an accident in which a Siberian tiger attacked and killed their daughter during her senior photo shoot, a federal appeals court ruled this week.
On Monday, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that Safeco Insurance Company of America does not have to pay damages in a wrongful death suit because the homeowners policy bought by the tiger’s owners excluded coverage for business pursuits.
I’ll admit, it took me a second to appreciate what was going on here. As it turns out, the only actor that behaved reasonably in this situation was the tiger (and the Tenth Circuit)….
Next month we’ll be speaking on a panel at a conference for Asian American law students and lawyers. It’s taking place at the University of Pennsylvania and being sponsored by the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA) at U. Penn. Details and registration info appear here.
Asian law students. In Philly. Will there be a metal detector at the door?
In the past three years, two Asian law students in Philadelphia have gotten into trouble with the law due to gun-related incidents. First there was Joseph Cho, at the time a 2L at U. Penn., who shot up the door of his neighbors’ apartment in January 2007. Earlier this month, Gerald Ung (pictured), in his final year at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, allegedly shot Edward DiDonato Jr., a recent college graduate and the son of a partner at Fox Rothschild. (See prior posts here and here.)
It’s a pretty sad time at Southwestern School of Law. The National Law Journal reports:
The recent murder of a 17-year-old girl who was abducted near the Los Angeles campus of Southwestern University School of Law has sent shockwaves through the law school.
The victim’s mother, Deborah Drooz, a partner at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, had just finished a summer course as an adjunct professor at the school.
The victim, Lily Burk, was leaving Southwestern’s campus when she was abducted. A suspect has been arrested for her murder:
Burk had just picked up some paperwork at the Southwestern Law School’s building for her mother when she was abducted on Friday afternoon, according to recent press reports. During the next hour, Burk called her parents, asking how to withdraw cash from an ATM using her credit card. Her beaten body was discovered in her car Saturday morning at a downtown parking lot. A 50-year-old transient, Charles Samuel, who had entered a drug treatment program near the law school’s campus, has been arrested for her murder.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to Ms. Drooz and her family.
When a Biglaw partner is accused of domestic violence, we can’t help but honor him as ATL’s Lawyer of the Day. But we must note that this article from the New York Daily News drips with lawyer hatred, in describing a case where the attorney was not convicted.
They didn’t even spell Cadwalader partner Ira Schacter’s name correctly. We’ve put the perceived lawyer hatin’ in bold:
A high-powered Manhattan lawyer was cleared of wife-beating charges Tuesday — even though cops said his estranged wife was hurt in a scuffle last fall at the couple’s East Side townhouse.
Ira Schachter, a partner at the white-shoe firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft, was freed despite dramatic photos that appear to show him causing a commotion outside the pricey brownstone on E. 78th St.
Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Larry Stephen also scrapped an order of protection against Ira Schachter, 48, after prosecutors said they couldn’t prove the case against him….
Ira Schachter walked out of court surrounded by an entourage of powerful lawyers, including divorce lawyer Raoul Felder and Ira Sorkin, former head of enforcement at the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.
Not to say that beating your wife is okay. His wife claims he choked her, and police photos showed bruises on her head and neck. Schacter claimed it was self-defense after his wife bit his finger “to the bone.”
This must be the most profanity-laced piece of transcript since Aaron Wider’s deposition. It’s the transcript of the sentencing hearing before Judge Frederic Block (E.D.N.Y.) at which Assistant U.S. Attorney Carolyn Pokorny was attacked by the defendant, before the court reporter and defense counsel tackled the assailant.
The transcript was prepared by Ron Tolkin, the court reporter involved in the incident, from an audio recording. Even the heroic Mr. Tolkin can’t simultaneously (1) kick the a** of a kid decades his junior and (2) transcribe the proceedings for posterity.
Excerpts appear below. For the full transcript, see the link at the end of this post.
UPDATE: Another choice excerpt, pointed out by several of you in the comments:
To read the full transcript, click here (PDF). If you do, the “press it in” discussion might be confusing (and sound completely filthy). An E.D.N.Y. source clarifies:
["Pressing it in" refers] to the CSO, Marshalls and Deputy discussing how to activate the panic button. In the old E.D.N.Y. courthouse, you push in, but in the new one, you pull out.
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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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