United Kingdom / Great Britain

I told careful readers six months ago that I would soon be moving to London. I made the move on September 1, and here’s the local news:

Senior partners at major London law firms can’t afford to live!

Well, not quite: But senior partners at many major London law firms can’t afford to live in London itself.

I recently had lunch with — prepare yourself — a senior partner at a major London law firm. When I told him where I was now living, he said that it was nice that my commute would be so short:

“Twenty years ago, the senior partners at most big law firms lived in London. But today, unless you have inherited wealth or bought your home long ago, most senior partners at London firms can’t afford to live anywhere near the City. Partner pay just won’t cover the cost.”

As an expatriate American, this startled me: I’m confident there’s no American city where senior partners at major law firms can’t afford local real estate. But in London, this has the ring of truth to it. From an American’s perspective, everything in London is nauseatingly expensive (or “quite dear,” as the locals so quaintly put it). But the cost of housing goes far beyond “nauseatingly expensive”; it’s eye-poppingly, grab-your-chest-and-drop-to-the-ground, out of sight. It leaves partner pay in the dust. Here’s what I mean . . . .

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Non-Sequiturs: 10.09.12

Talk about bad romance.

* Can we please fill this Facebook pay-for-posts rabbit hole with cement, ASAP? Then let’s grow a forest on top of the cement, and then napalm the whole thing for good measure. [Not-So Private Parts / Forbes]

* In America, law school dropouts turn to aggressive blogging. In Syria, they join the rebel army. [LA Times]

* A U.S. judge upholds the government’s indictment of Kim Dotcom and Megaupload, despite the whole “they’re based in another hemisphere” snag. The only tricky part is getting him here. [Ars Technica]

* This insane wedding ended with a dead uncle, a relative in jail, and several dozen cops on the scene. I”ll bet ten-to-one Zach Galifianakis was somewhere nearby. [Dealbreaker]

* Hello, Jimmy, welcome to the Pleasantville Middle School Scrapbooking Club! We’re so glad to have you. But, first, could you please pee in this cup? [Overlawyered]

* This is an amusing video of British law students sucking up to William and Kate. More importantly, a reminder that Kate is gorgeous, even when she is unpixelated and wearing clothes. [Legal Cheek]

Chief Justice Roberts: he ain’t evolving.

* In light of Chief Justice Roberts’s historic vote to uphold Obamacare, should we expect JGR to be more liberal going forward? According to Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Oath (affiliate link), “Do not expect a new John Roberts. Expect the conservative he has always been.” [Talking Points Memo via How Appealing]

* Law firm staff layoffs: they’re not just an American thing. Slaughter and May is dropping the ax on 28 secretaries. [Roll On Friday]

* “[A]ny robot or high school graduate can calculate numbers in a matrix to arrive at the highest possible sentence. But it takes a Judge — a man or woman tempered by experience in life and law — to properly judge another human being’s transgressions.” [Justice Building Blog]

* Professor Dershowitz’s $4 million Cambridge mansion? Robert Wenzel is not impressed: “if I lived in that house, I would want to attack Iran and most of the rest of the world, also.” [Economic Policy Journal]

* A man sues a strip club, alleging that a stripper ruptured his bladder when she slid down a pole and onto his abdomen. Ouch. [Legally Weird / Findlaw]

* Still on the subject of Torts, two attractive blonde sisters walk into a bar — and discuss who can be held liable if a man suffers a heart attack during a threesome. Video after the jump….

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One of the best and worst things about modern social media is the ability to know exactly how many followers or Facebook “likes” you, your friends, your competitors, and your enemies have. It’s useful to be able to rank yourself among other people, but it’s not hard to get overly concerned with boosting your stats. But metrics quickly become muddled when one realizes the mere “following” numbers are not totally transparent.

Case in point: a midsize law firm was publicly called out for some sketchy Tweetness, now the firm is learning the hard way that not all Twitter followers are created equal…

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Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us together todaaay.

Today we have news about the marriage of a lawyerly power couple, or at least news about the charred, tattered remnants of what the marriage once was. This extraordinarily dysfunctional ex-couple got chastised by a judge for nuking not only their sacred union but most of their considerable wealth in the process.

We know all’s fair in love and war. I guess that includes seppuku, but I’m not sure it’s really the most effective strategy…

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Well, that didn’t take long. Those topless sunbathing pics of Kate Middleton only went up a few days ago, and a French court has already slapped the offending tabloid around a little. A judge has sided with the royals and ordered Closer to fork over the pics and a little bit of cash for causing everyone the trouble.

Thank goodness privacy and a sense of old-world decorum have been restored. Except not quite, owing to this little thing called the internet…

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Kate Middleton

* Come on, people, Dewey really think that it’s fair that these proposed partnership clawback settlements blame only us for the firm’s implosion? The Steves and ex-CFO Joel Sanders don’t think so. [Bloomberg]

* “[E]ven if partners’ capital contributions were used to repay Dewey’s indebtedness—so what?” Well, that’s certainly one way to defend a suit alleging Citibank’s participation in a Ponzi-like scheme. [Am Law Daily]

* A $280K bonus sure seems nice, but do all Supreme Court clerks choose life in Biglaw once they’ve completed their stints at the high court? As it turns out, the answer is no — some view the money as “golden handcuffs.” [Wall Street Journal]

* Because nobody can ogle these crown jewels except Prince William: the royals’ potential suit against Closer magazine over topless pics of Kate Middleton has turned into full-blown privacy proceeding. [New York Times]

* If you’re struggling in law school, it may be wise to take some advice from those who’ve been there before you, like SullCrom’s Rodge Cohen, or the Ninth Circuit’s Chief Judge Alex Kozinski. [National Law Journal]

Ever since the royal wedding last April, the male population writ large has been obsessed with Pippa Middleton’s greatest asset. (Seriously, there’s an entire website dedicated to it.) How dare she steal the spotlight from her sister, Kate Middleton, the blushing bride. But now, more than a year later, it seems that the Duchess of Cambridge herself has given British blokes something to inspire late night thoughts in their bachelor pads, albeit inadvertently: topless pictures.

A French magazine, Closer, took the photos while Kate was vacationing with Prince William, and published them in its latest issue for all the world to see. Needless to say, the royals are positively pissed, because this is the third instance of noble nudity in less than a month. Palace officials took a break from their tea and crumpets to threaten legal action for what they’re calling a “grotesque” invasion of privacy.

But given their celebrity status, are the royals really deserving of the same privacy rights as we commoners?

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Kids will be kids, right? And sometimes the exuberance of youth (and copious amounts of booze) leads lovestruck young folks to make unwise decisions — like having sex in the street.

In the old days, a beat cop would throw you in the drunk tank and let you cool off… but, oh, how things have changed in the 21st century.

After watching a soccer match at a pub this summer, one of England’s 17 zillion security cameras caught a British couple doin’ the nasty in the street. An officer was sent to break up the party of two.

But that wasn’t the end of it. A randy police employee allegedly downloaded the file, and now he’s in trouble…

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Ed. note: This column will be about sports. And the law. And the intersection of those two things. And whatever the hell else Juggalo Law can come up with.

One summer during my childhood, I wanted nothing more than five copies of X-Force number one. I must have spent a solid two months harassing my mother and, when she finally had had enough, she relented, saying she’d buy the comic book for me if I hit a home run in my next little league game. She could have just said no. Because I didn’t stand a chance that summer. I was afraid of the ball and would flinch ever-so-gently as soon as the ball was pitched towards the plate. I’d try to catch up to its trajectory, but I was toast every single time. When the next game arrived, I had forgotten about my mom’s promise. And, in my last at-bat, I flinched, closed my eyes, and then swung at what I could only hope was the ball. Home run. My only home run. My sweetest accomplishment ever in baseball. My only accomplishment, really. As we walked into the house after the game, I loudly reminded my mom of her promise. She shrugged and continued inside. And that’s when my sister asked me one seemingly innocuous question. “What’s that on your pants?” Do I have to tell you, dear readers? Do I have to confess to you that there was urine on my otherwise clean and unfortunately bright white pants, a memento left in loving memory of my fear or my relief or my pride?

Fact is, I can’t really remember why I peed a little. LET’S TALK SPORTS!

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