Here's the second half of the "head-to-head" round of ATL Idol. If you're not up to speed on what's going on, background information is available in this prior post (or just scroll down the front page to the post immediately below this one).
You can check out the second half of the head-to-head round, featuring the blogging of SOPHIST and FROLIC AND DETOUR, after the jump.
Welcome to the first half of this week's "head-to-head" round in ATL Idol, the reality-TV-style talent search for Above the Law's new editor. The second half of the head-to-head round will published later this afternoon.
To refresh your recollection, here's how this round will work:
The head-to-head round is designed to serve as a test of pure writing ability. We'll publish the contestants' different takes on two similar stories. Two ATL Idols were randomly assigned one story, and two were randomly assigned another.
The head-to-head round is designed to show how the bloggers write up the same or similar stories, to eliminate any advantage from story selection. Story selection is an important skill for bloggers, but it's one that the contestants have demonstrated in their features and freestyle posts.
This post over at our sister site, Dealbreaker, may remind you of some of your colleagues. It reminded us of a partner we once worked with -- a brilliant litigator, with a photographic memory, but not the easiest person to interact with socially. Writes Bess Levin:
I'm sure it doesn't come as a shock for me to point out that many of you are socially awkward, often fail to demonstrate empathy for your peers, and are prone to restricted patterns of behavior such as hitting the submit button over and over and over again when trying to comment.
Which is to say, you likely all have a mild to major form of Asperger syndrome. Or do you? Take this quiz and post your results.
The incidence of Asperger syndrome is probably higher among Dealbreaker's Wall Street readership than it is among the more well-adjusted ATL crowd. But if you'd like to see where you fall on the scale, visit Dealbreaker, and take the test.
(It's 50 questions long, so it takes a few minutes to complete, but it goes by faster than you'd expect. We scored a 6. Feel free to post your score in the comments.)
Here's some news of a rather odd move, from the WSJ Law Blog:
Bruce McLean, the head of Akin Gump, sent an e-mail to all the attorneys at the firm informing them of a "substantial reshaping and enhancement of several practices," and a "change" in the firm's "geographical footprint."
That change involves "withdrawing from Taipei and Silicon Valley," and moving the lawyers in those offices to Alston & Bird, an Atlanta-based firm. "In addition," McClean writes, "some of our lawyers in Austin will join Greenberg and Traurig in the coming weeks . . . We are very pleased to report that we have secured a license to practice law in Abu Dhabi and are in the process of opening an office there to serve our clients in the Middle East."
We agree with the WSJ's Dan Slater: this "lawyer-swapping arrangement" is a bit... strange.
[Ed. note: This post is by MARIN, one of the finalists in ATL Idol, the "reality blogging" competition that will determine ATL's next editor. It is marked with Marin's avatar (at right).]
Ever wonder what happened to Kory McFarren, the (literally) crappy boyfriend who stood by for a month while his girlfriend, Pam Babcock, grew overly attached to a toilet seat? The AP reported yesterday that McFarren was sentenced to six months probation after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor count of mistreatment of a dependent adult.
But don't break out the party hats just yet.
Also Tuesday, McFarren was sentenced to six months in jail for an unrelated charge of lewd and lascivious behavior for exposing himself to a teenage neighbor in March.
Apparently while Babcock convalesced in the hospital, McFarren sought solace by staring out his window. And masturbating.
"This has been going on for a long period of time," the neighbor said."While we were using our pool or hot tub, he would stand in his window and watch and play with himself. It has become much worse lately."
The resourceful neighbors tried to block McFarren's view by piling logs in front of the pool. But "[a]s winter wore on, the wood pile shrank," presumably leading to the expansion of McFarren's own wood pile.
In a cruel twist of fate, he has ended up exactly where Babcock did -- in the can.
A New Zealand judge has made a 9-year-old girl a ward of the court so that her name can be changed from Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii....
Family Court Judge Rob Murfitt listed a series of unusual names that New Zealand parents had given their children, and said he was concerned that such strange monikers would create hurdles for them as they grew up.
"It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap," the New Zealand Press Association quoted the judge as saying.
Among the names Murfitt cited: twins named Benson and Hedges -- after a brand of cigarettes; Violence; and Number 16 Bus Shelter.
Hopefully not where the child was conceived.
The Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages said in a statement that it had rejected names including Fish and Chips, Yeah Detroit, Stallion, Twisty Poi -- a staple food in Polynesian cuisine -- and Sex Fruit.
A lawyer for Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii said the girl is so embarrassed by her name that friends know her as "K."
Strange names are seen stateside, too:
Last month, a judge in the U.S. state of Illinois allowed a school bus driver to legally change his first name to "In God" and his last name to "We Trust."
But an appeals court in the state of New Mexico ruled against a man -- named Variable -- who wanted to change his name to a two-word phrase that contains a four-letter expletive and expresses opposition to censorship.
Feel free to mention other unfortunate names you've come across, in the comments.
Having just discussed Janet Jackson (or her breasts), we're going to remain on the subject of music. This installment in our continuing series of open threads on career alternatives for attorneys -- i.e., "things you can do with a law degree other than Biglaw (or contract attorney work)" -- is inspired by lawyer turned rapper Mekka Don.
There are many attorneys out there with musical side projects. When do you decide to take the leap and dive into your music career full-time? According to Mekka Don, the answer is "after one year at Weil." He wrote to us in March:
My name is Emeka Onyejekwe (aka Mekka Don) and in the spring I left my job at a top ten law firm in order to help save Hip Hop. I graduated from NYU in 2006 and worked at the firm for a little less than a year. Many people (probably including you, lol) think I'm crazy, but I believe it was a calling from God. I've begun to memorialize what I am doing through a reality show.
He may be too late. According to Nas, hip hop is dead! But good luck with that.
ABA Journal's July issue has a profile piece on the "legal hustler." Taking the struggling artist career route sounds challenging. To make ends meet, Onyejekwe is "modeling, event planning and sports marketing along with running a small legal practice with his sister."
Does a legal background help much in this career? Once you make it big, those contracts classes may come in handy. It also looks to be useful in the comments on the ABA piece. Someone questioned Mekka Don's use of "Law & Order" for the title of his mixtape, and he responds by citing the "fair use" doctrine.
Weil had a prom for their summers. The firm rented a monkey for the occasion.
Seriously. And it wasn't just a paralegal in a costume, but a real live monkey.
The swank summer event was held last night, at the Plaza. A Weil source confirms the simian presence on the premises:
We had a black-tie-optional event, with a circus theme. And yes, one of the features included a monkey.
Fabulous. Is this even cooler than the Simpson Thacher Batman screening? Is having monkeys at firm events the secret to Weil's strong fourth-place finish in the latest American Lawyer A-List rankings?
If you hear about odd or interesting summer associate events -- the standard-issue fancy dinners, sporting events, and theater outings don't count -- feel free to drop us a line.
A woman in Missouri says the scary-looking bonnet macaque (see specimen at right) helps her social anxiety disorder. Having that thing in our arms would increase our anxiety immensely, but to each their own.
Local health officials apparently share our anxiety. They allegedly banned the monkey from grocery stores and restaurants, including Wal-Mart. From the Kansas City Star:
A southwest Missouri woman has sued Wal-Mart, local health officials and Cox Health Systems, claiming they discriminated against her and her monkey named Richard.
Debby Rose of Springfield said in the lawsuit that the 10-year-old bonnet macaque helps curb a social anxiety disorder that can cause her to have panic attacks in public.
We're no experts in naming monkeys, but "Richard" seems like a horrible monkey name. We'd have a lot more respect for this woman and her suit if her monkey were named "Bananas" or "Bobo." But that's off-topic.
Rose's suit claims that the local health department decided that the monkey was not a legitimate service animal and told establishments not to admit her and her little monkey. Was the problem that the "service animal" is a monkey, or that social anxiety disorder is a questionable disability?
We'd try to sort it out, but we're still schoolgirl-giggling over "macaque named Dick."
If you asked people to name sexually liberated Greek islands, many might pick Lesbos. Over the objections of some Lesbos residents, who have even filed a lawsuit over the matter, the name of their beloved island is inextricably linked with lesbian romance (and girl-on-girl action).
But we think Zakynthos also deserves some love, in light of this bizarre crime story. From Reuters:
Nine British women were facing prostitution charges after being arrested at the weekend for taking part in an oral sex competition in the Greek holiday island of Zakynthos, police said on Monday.
Six British and six Greek men, including two bar owners, were also charged in the incident, which took place at Laganas beach in the south of the Ionian island, which lies off the west coast of mainland Greece, police said.
The women, who came to the popular resort on holiday, had been paid to take part in the competition, which was video recorded and was to be posted on the Internet, police said.
I've never understood why people don't offer prostitutes an oral contract (no pun intended) to appear in a porno movie and then throw a camera next the bed during whatever acts go down (pun intended). Technically, the john isn't paying for sex. Instead it's art!
Alas, based on the charges in this case, that defense probably wouldn't fly on Zakynthos. Paying women to have sex with you, then claiming when caught that you're just filming an X-rated version of Mamma Mia! -- by the way, the non-explicit version opens this weekend (yay Meryl!) -- is unlikely to get you off, literally or figuratively.
More mildly raunchy discussion -- if your sensibilities are delicate, stop reading here -- after the jump.
Today's Lawsuit of the Day isn't particularly funny or salacious. It's just... strange. From the New York Times (scroll down to final item):
Three taste testers say they were injured as they sampled an experimental sweetener while working for Cadbury, the British candy maker.
The three testers, all women, sampled the substance during a stint as $10-an-hour testers at the East Hanover, N.J., research center of the company's United States subsidiary, Cadbury Adams, according to three lawsuits filed in Morris County, N.J. Their reactions were different, but each said the sweetener left a burning sensation that changed her ability to taste or eat certain foods, the lawsuits contend.
Katharine Beyer, spokeswoman for Cadbury Adams, said she could not comment on the litigation, but said that the substance, which she declined to name, was not on the market.
Thank God for that. Moral of the story, ready for insertion into a fortune cookie: "Do not swallow sweet-tasting mystery substances."
Judge Deborah Riga has problems (in addition to the fact that she shares her last name with the capital of Latvia). From the AP:
A former Schererville town judge was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison Thursday for pocketing thousands of dollars from her court driving school program.
Judge Philip Simon also ordered during a hearing in U.S. District Court in Hammond that Deborah Riga pay the Town of Schererville and the state about $12,000 in restitution....
She said she took control of the court's Crossroads counseling program and driving school and set up a bank account in which she secretly had an interest.
Through that, she received about $12,000 in payments from the court's defendants. She also stopped paying rent to the town for her courtroom and made the town pay court employees who should have been paid out of the Crossroads program, Riga has said.
A court with an affiliated driving school? Judges who have to pay rent for their courtrooms? State and local courts can be so darn... weird.
Read more about Judge Riga at the Indiana Law Blog. Apparently her 15-month sentence was "substantially less time than she could have received for sending more than 1,000 of her defendants into programs from which she personally profited."
Here's a report on the disposition of an odd case we wrote about back in February. From David Oscar Markus:
Remember this case from Ft. Lauderdale? Well, the assault charges against Kathy Brewer Rentas for her "handshake" of AUSA Jennifer Keene have been dropped. Vanessa Blum covers the case here:
The case of an over-enthusiastic courtroom handshake that escalated into an assault charge against a local attorney was dropped Thursday by federal prosecutors who deemed it the "prudent" thing to do. Kathy Brewer Rentas, with the Hollywood firm of Becker & Poliakoff, spent the night in jail after her Feb. 7 arrest for assaulting a federal prosecutor by handshake in a Fort Lauderdale courtroom.
Brewer Rentas was charged with assaulting a federal officer, a misdemeanor that carried a maximum penalty of a year in prison. To avoid any conflict of interest, the case was transferred to the Orlando U.S. Attorney's Office, where Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Carolyn Adams filed notice Thursday that she was dropping the charge.
"We conducted numerous interviews with witnesses, we reviewed the evidence and we just felt after taking a look at everything that the prudent thing to do was just drop the charges," said Steve Cole, spokesman for the Orlando U.S. Attorney's Office. "We don't have any comment beyond that."
So Kathy Rentas is in the clear. But we still wouldn't shake her hand in congratulations.
The title of this post reflects the majority view of the BAR/BRI bar review course. We actually enjoyed studying for the bar. Our overall reaction: "Wow. We're learning so much.... LAW!"
But most of you don't seem to be fans of Bar/Bri. You find it rather unpleasant -- or maybe weird. Here's one email we received:
Longtime fan, first-time writer. I was wondering if you could do a discussion thread on the Barbri course we are taking?
Would especially like to start with a mention of the Property I lecture today by Seton Hall law professor Paula Franzese. While pretty excellent, it certainly had its totally surreal moments -- especially her long divergence about a fundraiser involving N-Sync and her (then) five-year-old daughter.
Also, the singing. She sings a lot -- it's totally something to behold!
Indeed. We recall Professor Franzese's property coverage as one of the highlights of bar review. She managed to make a potentially dry subject at least somewhat entertaining.
Here is the requested open thread. While we're on the subject of BarBri blonde beauties with musical talents, here is "Bar/Bri Girl," a music video parody set to the tune of "Barbie Girl." It was our favorite number from this year's NYU Law Review Revue, which we had the pleasure of attending this spring:
We heard through the grapevine that Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the D.C. Circuit gave ATL a shout out during a Federalist Society lunch earlier this month. According to our tipsters, "his biggest advice to any summer associates in the audience was 'don't show up on David Lat's blog, Above the Law.'"
Well, the first summer associate tale of 2008 has made its way into our tips inbox from Atlanta. A summer associate at Alston & Bird decided to share his quirky sense of humor and alter ego with the rest of his summer class. Our tipster explains:
[This e-mail] was sent by an Alston & Bird summer... (as his cross-dressing alter-ego Divljan Shatterhand Steele) to the entire Atlanta summer class. The email, besides being super weird, is pretty innocuous. However, the pictures on his Facebook account could give him some serious trouble -- besides the multiple pictures of him dressed in drag as his alter-ego, there is a picture of a pie with a gummy-bear swastika...
Needless to say, the email has already been widely circulated. A&B has a progressive reputation, but this might be a bit much. Given the current state of the market, Alston might be regretting hiring such a huge summer class (look at the recipient list, which likely only includes the summers who are working the first half) in Atlanta. This guy isn't doing himself any favors.
The bizarre e-mail, involving tarot cards and multiple personalities, is available after the jump. If you've been wondering about the history of neckties, you'll definitely want to check it out.
We have redacted the SA's name and ask that you not identify the person in the comments. Feel free to refer to him as "Divljan" only. Thanks.
Word about Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe's rather odd commencement address at New York University is spreading rapidly throughout the blogosphere. It's already been picked up by Gawker and Instapundit. Here's an eyewitness account from an NYU alum:
Larry Tribe just gave a seriously weird commencement address at NYU -- especially the end, where he turns an amalgam of cosmologist / 60s love child, and tells all the grads to thank their mom and dad for screwing instead of watching TV, and thereby conceiving them....
Not to be too tough on Tribe, but I think the basic theme of the speech was that he's really, really smart and well read, and knows how to turn creative, even strange, phrases. (I thought we already knew that.)
How did Tribe get picked? Some speculation from our source:
I really think the only reason Tribe was honored, and got to speak, is that he was a key mentor to John Sexton, the president of NYU. Tribe probably recommended Sexton to be the NYU law dean, and then the NYU president, so this looks like payback.
Tribe has accomplished enough to have gotten the degree on his own merits, and I don't begrudge him it, but I'm sure the audience would have loved to have his co-recipient, Michael J. Fox, speak instead of Tribe -- Fox is vastly better known, and liked. On this point, see here.
Posted below is the "thank mom and dad for bonking" clip. A more detailed write-up from our tipster, after the jump.
If we hadn't already bestowed our Lawsuit of the Day prize, this bizarre tale might have taken the cake.
Meet Donna Campbell (pictured; she looks like a non-green Princess Fiona). When the ex-beauty queen married Arnim Ramdass, she didn't take his name -- and one can hardly blame her.
But she's happy to take his money (which may really be "their" money; more on that below). From the Miami Herald:
Some husbands shower their wives with gifts when they win the Lotto. Arnim Ramdass kept the good news to himself. And when Donna Campbell found out on her own, her husband went AWOL, leaving the former beauty queen emotionally drained and financially desperate.
So she sued.
Campbell v. Ramdass, the lawsuit, comes to a Miami-Dade courtroom this week. It's a tale of luck and betrayal, a case study in how a financial windfall can make a seemingly stable marriage go sour in a hurry. At stake: $600,000 in winnings, Ramdass' cut of a $19 million jackpot he split with 16 other mechanics at Miami International Airport.
Sexual abuse cases don't usually make their way on to ATL. But given the nature of the motion, we couldn't help ourselves:
It was a bizarre scene that unfolded last week in Waterbury Superior Court as New Haven attorney Rob Serafinowicz opened his civil case against former Middlebury First Selectman Edward B. St. John by asking Judge Jane S. Scholl to force St. John to submit to a photograph of his penis, fully aroused.
The jaw-dropping request, made forcefully but without dramatic flourish by the 29-year-old Serafinowicz, came nearly three years after his client, Westport firefighter Neil Perrotti, filed a lawsuit against St. John for allegedly sexually assaulting him in a cottage in Charlestown, R.I. when Perrotti was 17 years old in 1987.
Serafinowicz explained that the photograph was crucial to his case because Perrotti, in a statement he gave to State Police about the alleged incident, claimed that St. John's penis bent to the left when aroused.
Not surprisingly, the defendant did not want to comment on which way he bends, nor submit to a photo session.
Veteran defense attorney Hugh Keefe of Lynch, Traub, Keefe & Errante, also in New Haven, began his response by noting that when he attended law school he never dreamed he would find himself in this position. Questioning whether Judge Scholl even had the authority to enforce such an "unbelievably preposterous motion," Keefe said things had only gotten worse in the last 10 minutes, thanks to Serafinowicz's remarks that his client could "use porn" to get aroused.
"There is not a single case not only in the state of Connecticut but in the world that a court has ordered a defendant to get in a state of arousal," said Keefe. The precedents Serafinowicz offered were in criminal cases, and therefore not applicable in this case, according to Keefe.
The judge agreed with the defense, saying the exam would be "overly intrusive."
Too bad. It could have offered the opportunity for a new take on "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
Here's a bit of follow-up on last week's post about Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. We heard from a number of tipsters, and their reports are consistent with the rumors previously reported:
1. Sonnenschein is rescinding offers of summer employment to incoming summer associates in the Charlotte office.
2. Sonnenschein is rescinding offers to full-time associates who were set to start work in the Charlotte office in the fall.
We have not heard from the firm since our initial inquiries last week -- despite repeated efforts, including some made yesterday. We are inclined to agree with this commenter:
Their lack of response must mean it's true. Rescinding offers is about the worst thing a firm can do for its rep. There's no way they're going to confirm it if it is true, and they would've immediately disputed it if it is false.
Read what our tipsters had to say, after the jump.
Here's the second half of the "head-to-head" round of ATL Idol. If you're not up to speed on what's going on, background information is available in this prior post (or just scroll down the front page to the post immediately below this one).
Continue reading "ATL Idol: Week 2, Head-to-Head Round (Part 2)"
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Here's a report on the disposition of an 
The title of this post reflects the majority view of the 
Word about Harvard law professor 
a tipster in the London office of 
