Twittering

If You Don’t ‘Like’ Your Student Loan Servicer on Facebook, You Will Default

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With graduation fast approaching, maybe people are coming to the startling realization (what took you so long?) that they’re going to have to figure out a way to pay off their student loans. Sure, it was fun to have government monopoly money to play with while you were in law school — maybe you had a weekly shoegasm at DSW; maybe you repeatedly blew your wad at Game Stop — but now it’s time to face the music.

Unfortunately, when it comes to debt repayment, the soundtrack that’s playing on an infinite loop in your mind is from the shower scene in Psycho.

Whether or not you’ve got a job lined up, you know for sure that your starting salary is nowhere near high enough to allow you to both live indoors and make monthly payments to your loan servicer. You’re scared that you’re going to have to moonlight in retail, or worse yet, move back in with your parents.

All you know is that you really, really don’t want to default on your loans. Your credit will be shot. Your phone number will be scrawled on the bathroom walls at collections agencies. Your life’s work will be all for naught. What the hell are you going to do?

Don’t worry, friends. Your loan servicer has a secret to share on how to avoid the disaster of default….

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See Dumb Jock Read SCOTUS Opinions. Read, Jose Canseco, Read.

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Jose Canseco

hey buddy I also think waterboard and shoot but scalia was clear in hamdi dissent that citizens get due process.

– Former MLB player and self-confessed juice head Jose Canseco, explaining to Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, via Twitter the reason why Dzhokhar Tsarnaev shouldn’t be treated as an enemy combatant.

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Is Suspect #2 in the Boston Bombings a Law Student?

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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Since last night, much has been discovered about the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, including their names: Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Suspect #1) and Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev (Suspect #2). While Tamerlan died overnight in a police firefight, Dzhokhar remains at large. On his Vkontakte page, which is essentially the Russian version of Facebook, Dzhokhar notes that his personal priorities are “career and money.”

Now, everyone who hasn’t been following the news about the employment/debt crisis for recent law school grads knows that if those are your aspirations in life, you should head to law school.

So, is Suspect #2 a law student?

(Now with important UPDATES after the jump.)

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  • 12 Apr 2013 at 2:15 PM

Did Stephen Colbert And President Bill Clinton Violate The CFAA?

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Ed. note: This post appears courtesy of our friends at Techdirt. We’ll be sharing law-related posts from Techdirt from time to time in these pages.

Last night, former President Bill Clinton joined Stephen Colbert on his TV show, The Colbert Report. As many people have noted, at the very end of the program, Colbert told Clinton that he had taken the liberty of signing him up for a Twitter account, since Clinton does not currently use Twitter (he joked that he was afraid no one would reply to his tweets). The Twitter account is @PrezBillyJeff, and Colbert sent Clinton’s first tweet live while on the air. If you’re in the US or the one or two other places that Hulu actually works, you can see the exchange below (if you’re elsewhere, blame Viacom for being stupid):

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The Practice: Unverified Stats and the Future — It’s Marketeer Season!

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This is my favorite time of year. The ABA TechShow and the Legal Marketing Association Conference will headline a slew of multi-day conferences for very successful lawyers, some with clients, to mix with very successful, genius, game-changing marketeers and tech hacks, some who don’t work from their dining room tables or live at home, while hanging out in vendor halls looking for free coffee and a sponsored meal in between listening to the next law futurist spew stats on how clients they don’t represent want to receive legal services or hire lawyers.

If you’re on Twitter (which I am, even though I say in my bio here that no client has ever asked me if I’m on Twitter — because I enjoy the genius commenters saying, “But you’re ON Twitter dude?”), you can follow the dribble enlightening thoughts by searching #ABATECHSHOW. (That’s a hashtag. See, I’m one with the future.) In the coming weeks, you’ll find #LMA13, or just look for a bunch of people predicting the future of law and crying about “why lawyers don’t listen” to them.

When you look through the tweets, disregarding the vendors begging you to “come visit” their booth for a free Tootsie Roll and a chance to win the most important tool for any lawyer, the iPad, and the requests from very successful professionals to “share a cab” from the airport, you’ll come to something like this….

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But the ‘Worst Attorney’ Wouldn’t Have Offered a Defense!

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One of our writers thought Billy Joel was saying, “We didn’t start the fire. It was always burning, said the worst attorney.”

– Comedian and television host Jimmy Fallon, commenting via Twitter on some of the world’s worst misheard lyrics.

(Do you know of any other entertaining, law-related misheard lyrics? Feel free to post them in the comments.)

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A Sure Way to Unfriend Someone — Serve Them Through Facebook

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‘What do you mean I’ve been sued?’

Facebook has an important role in modern society, specifically sharing baby/cat pictures and facilitating high school reunion planning. Oh, and disappointing amateur investors.

Now, in at least one case, the government will use Facebook to serve defendants.

The decision reflects the growing faith in the reliability of electronic messaging, taking jurisprudence further down the path started when courts began recognizing email service. On the other hand, Facebook’s messaging kind of blows. I constantly find messages in my inbox days after they were sent.

I assume service is effected by uploading a picture of the filing and tagging it “You”….

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Teen Charged With Harassment Over Racist Tweet

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I’m all for holding people accountable for their racist behavior.

But I also love children. I love allowing children to behave like children — nasty, violent children. Adults can be expected to behave with appropriate decorum, but you have to cut kids a little slack.

So what happens when an alleged racist I’m prone to hate happens to also be an alleged bully that I usually defend (from criminal prosecution)?

I’m not sure, but I’m not at all surprised that the state of New Jersey is where we find today’s moral quandary….

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Quote of the Day: Trump’s Lawyers May Be ‘FIRED!’ Over This

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– Donald Trump, commenting on the Biglaw firm he chose to represent him in his absurd contractual suit filed against comedian Bill Maher.

(More information on the suit, and why Trump is likely to lose, after the jump.)

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The Practice: Blogging And Other Social Media, Like A Search Engine Whore

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This is a post about the internet, and yes, it’s about small law firms.

You’re still in the race to page one of Google. Nothing is more important. It’s tiring. Your marketeer tells you that blogging is king. You don’t have time to blog, you need clients now — you aren’t interested in waiting for some client to think you had something interesting to say in your blog, and in turn, call your office, or some lawyer to read what you wrote and refer you a case.

Not a problem, says the marketeer. It doesn’t matter what you write, as long as your website is linked throughout the posts, like this:

Recently, this Craptown family lawyer read about a father being held in contempt for failing to pay child support. This case was not in Craptown and did not involve a Craptown family lawyer. As a Craptown family lawyer, it is important that anyone in Craptown who has a problem with Craptown family law call a Craptown family lawyer. It is unclear whether the father sought the services of a Craptown family lawyer, but contempt is a bad thing and is a reason to seek out a Craptown family lawyer. So for those of you fathers that are broke, it may be time to call a Craptown family lawyer.

These blogs all suck, say nothing, and exist only based on the marketeer’s promise of clients finding you via Google and dropping off a pile of cash at your office. The authors are very very very proud of their prose, as the marketeers cheer on their attempts to game Google. “Hey man, that last post was great, you had 27 links to your website.”

Obviously, this doesn’t apply to the vast amounts of Biglaw associates who read every single word of this column under duress every single week while waiting for their next assignment, but for those small firm and solo practitioners, I have a question: Does it work?

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