I hope you all maxed and relaxed over the holiday weekend, because things are about to get serious. We have reached the final four stage in our Fictional Lawyers bracket. We started with 32 lawyer characters, but the top four shouldn’t really surprise anybody.
We’re giving you the rest of the week to vote on this one. We expect these match-ups to be close so it might be time to call on some friends to champion your favorites…
I want the record to show that I tried. In our Fictional Lawyer Madness contest, I really tried to find a lot of female legal characters to put into the bracket. Of the 32 lawyers in the bracket, eight were female. One fourth is not a lot, but given the preponderance of male lawyer characters this was a good representation.
But here we are, just in the Elite Eight, and we’re down to only one woman. Hey, we all know that if ladies voted as a bloc (like African-Americans or NRA members), they’d be the most powerful force in American politics. And therefore we all know that women don’t vote as a bloc.
But are we really living in a world where Elle Woods is one of the few things women will rally around?
Continue reading “Fictional Lawyer Madness: Regional Finals Part Two”
And now our Fictional Lawyers Tournament gets serious. We are into the regional finals. The Elite Eight. People have handicapped the tournament. I’ve bet on the tournament (at least I would have if gambling were legal). And now we are here. Powerhouse v. Powerhouse.
As usual today we’ll vote on the left side, Thursday we’ll vote on the right. But because of the upcoming holiday weekend, you’ll want to make sure to vote early…
Continue reading “Fictional Lawyer Madness: The Regional Finals, Part One”
At this stage in our Fictional Lawyer Madness bracket, the very, very young ATL summer intern has a perfect bracket so far, and mine is tanking. I picked based on who I thought you crazy readers would vote for. The fetus picked based on the lawyers he had actually heard of.
The lesson, as always, is that Millennials are really the worst generation ever and I can only hope to be dead before they take control of the government.
In case you missed it, here is part one of the sweet sixteen.
In any event, on to part two of the sweet sixteen.
Continue reading “Fictional Lawyer Madness: Sweet Sixteen Part Two”
We’re into the next round of the Fictional Lawyers Tournament. Most people here in the Breaking Media offices have filled out a bracket, and so far I’m getting crushed. I picked based on who I thought you guys would pick (not who I voted for myself), and I’ve been very wrong so far. It turns out the readers and I have more in common than I thought (which should probably scare the bejesus out of many of you readers).
But I’ve still got all of my final four lawyers alive. As we get started on the sweet sixteen, we should start to see which characters really have the juice to finish this thing.
Check out the full bracket below and then click through to vote on the match-ups from the left-hand side of the bracket. On Thursday, we’ll vote on the right side (CLICK HERE for part two of this round)….
Continue reading “Fictional Lawyer Madness: The Sweet Sixteen, Part One”
Yesterday we kicked off the Fictional Lawyer Madness by starting the voting on the left side of the bracket.
Today, we’re opening up the right side. On this side of the bracket we have more movie characters, and more female characters.
And there has been one big change from yesterday’s bracket. I forgot to add a fictional lawyer everybody loves.
Voting closes on Sunday, June 19 at 11:59 p.m. So don’t waste any time…
Continue reading “Fictional Lawyer Madness: Round 1, Part 2″
About a month ago, I asked for nominees for an epic bracket that would ask: Who is your favorite fictional lawyer. The suggestions flowed in. In the comments, over email, via Twitter, and even from people I met in bars. And the tips came from all kinds of people. Lawyers and law students, their parents, legal journalists and bloggers, and even television critics.
Everybody has a fictional legal character that they cherish and wanted to see represented. I had hoped that a 32 lawyer bracket would capture most of the worthy contenders, but it turns out we could have made a 128 lawyer bracket and still had notable snubs.
So we’ve had to make some tough cuts to bring it down to 32 lawyers. And we’ve had to create some arbitrary cut-offs, like limiting ourselves to lawyers who got their fictional start in the last 30 years — to keep things manageable and keep this from becoming an Atticus Finch coronation exercise. But with big apologies to Perry Mason, Tom Hagen, and the older readers who adore them, I think we’ve come up with 32 lawyers fictional lawyers worth arguing over…
Continue reading “Fictional Lawyer Madness: Your Favorite Fictional Lawyers of the Past 30 Years”
Casey Anthony
I knew the moment would come when I’d have to watch a full hour of Nancy Grace and I was not looking forward to it. The daytime anchors and hosts had been mere fluffers for Nancy Grace’s performance at night and there were multiple teases to her show throughout the day. For Nancy Grace is the shrieking televangelist of something called victims’ rights. In her worldview, there are saintly victims and black-hatted criminals who roam the earth, preying on the canonized. Previously, I knew she had been criticized for picking the wrong saints. While the Duke Lacrosse case had made fools of many, very few had been as brazen and unapologetic as Ms. Grace.
This, of course, made something like Caylee Anthony’s tragic death a sort of no-lose proposition for Nancy Grace. Caylee is dead and she’ll always be dead and all the wild conjecture in the world won’t change that heartbreaking fact. I planned to watch three solid hours of Headline News last night, starting with the full-frontal assault of Nancy Grace and giving myself two solid hours of cool down with Dr. Drew and Joy Behar.
So I sat up straight on my couch, turned the channel back to Headline News, and steadied myself for the onslaught….
On Sunday night, I was sitting on my couch eating Chicken McNuggets®, when Lat Skyped™ me. The following is a faithful transcript of our conversation.
Lat: Hey Juggs, I’ve got an assignment for you. Wait, why aren’t you wearing a shirt?
Me: Why are you wearing a top hat?
L: Touché. Listen, I have an idea for a pretty delicious story. Did you read that article in the Times about Headline News’s coverage of the Casey Anthony trial?
M: I only read Mad Magazine.
L: Okay, well, listen. Is there any way you can put on a shirt?
M: *mumbles angrily and stomps off camera to find a respectable shirt*
L: Okay, cool. Listen, that post you did about Jose Baez got some deliciously high page views. This trial is apparently through-the-roof popular and I think I know what you can do to cover it.
M: Go on.
L: I want you to… wait for it… spend a day watching Headline News. You watch the coverage, scribble down some thoughts and… presto! We’ve got ourselves a delicious post.
M: Do I have to wear a shirt?
L: Jesus, what the f**k is it with you and shirts? No. God, I don’t care. Wear whatever you want. Just watch TV and write down your thoughts. You think you can do that?
M: Sure. I’ll be like Marlow, exploring the Heart of Darkness.
L: That’s another thing. Your random literary references. They barely make sense and I’m pretty sure you haven’t read any books.
M: Your top hat’s stupid.
L: Okay, just do this. Ciao.
M: Seacrest out.
And so it begins….
The other day, I was watching television and I saw several commercials advertising divorce firms and personal injury firms. One ad featured a scene of nursing home neglect, followed by dramatic music and terms like “BEDSORES,” flashed across the screen in all-caps. Another ad featured William Shatner asking me if I needed legal help.
Two thoughts came to mind after watching these ads: (1) what shady television shows was I watching that would cause a legal marketer to decide that I was part of the target audience for people with issues relating to BEDSORES, and (2) does anyone actually decide to seek out a lawyer based on these seemingly ridiculous ads?
So I decided to investigate television advertising as a marketing technique for small and solo practitioners. Who, if anyone, stands to benefit from using television advertising?
Continue reading “Size Matters: Television Advertising — Is It Worth It?”
We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
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.
Keep reading »
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