– The introductory line to Chief Judge Alex Kozinski’s recent separate opinion in Garfias-Rodriguez v. Holder (9th Cir. Oct. 19, 2012). As noted by the WSJ Law Blog, the other opinions of the highly fragmented en banc court had more traditional designations, like “concurrence” and “dissent.” Howard Bashman was amused.
(Additional news out of the Ninth Circuit, of a serious and sad nature, after the jump.)
Occasionally, lawyers send us awesome music videos that they have created. Sadly, we get less appetizing ones much more frequently. It turns out being an attorney does not automatically turn you into the Lonely Island.
We’ve got two painfully funny / bad / uncomfortable lawyer-produced clips today. Normally, I wouldn’t seek out clips like this to write about, but both of these were submitted to us by their creators. So, I guess, be careful what you wish for.
After the jump, check out the mid-size California firm that hopes you’ll call them, maybe, and a war crimes lawyer turned comedienne who sings a love song to Mitt Romney — while wearing a bikini, of course…
F. Scott Fitzgerald once opined that there were “no second acts in American lives.” Similarly, Biz Markie once opined “’cause we all pick our boogers sometime every day.” If you’re already lost, allow me to explain. This is the story of a former Biglaw attorney and his second act. He and his friends started a website devoted to rap lyrics. The website annotates rap lyrics, and it’s this system of annotation that the founders of the website hope will take over the web (including legal research). The website was recently funded by venture capitalists, and the resulting hype has ping-ponged across the web at a pace so rapid that you’d be excused if you made like Steinski and wondered, “What does it all mean?” (affiliate link).
The interviews that have fed the myriad profiles of the site’s founders have been nothing short of entertaining. Just last week, Gawker was prompted to write a guide to the site, rapgenius.com, which managed to sound both condescending and wildly equivocating and which did nothing but illuminate the author’s squeamishness. This promises to not be like that. I don’t know if Rap Genius is going to be Wikipedia or Pets.com.
What I do know is that a Biglaw dropout just ganked $15 million from Marc Andreessen and wants to edge out Westlaw and Lexis (good luck with that).
Keep reading to find out where he went to law school and what firm he worked at. And if you want to see his shirtless YouTube diss track (no homo)….
You can feel it when the conversation is about to go there. Someone mentions a funny name. Maybe it’s a celebrity name, like Apple or Pilot Inspektor. And before you know it, you’re smack dab in the middle of one person’s tale of his brother or his cousin. Maybe it’s his cousin’s brother who worked in a hospital or who was a school teacher. Well, it’s this distant relative who encountered the Lemonjello. His brother Orangejello was the slow one, this lying jerk will say. And then the table will erupt into uncomfortable digressions on race and naming conventions. People care about baby names. A lot.
And so it is that we’re confronted with news out of Staten Island, where a judge ruled against a pastor’s attempt to change his family’s name.
Straight from the slums of Shaolin, the Wu-tang Clan strikes again. The Rza, the Gza, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Inspectah Deck, Raekwon the Chef, U-God, Ghostface Killah and …
The filing should be stricken. It’s absolute insanity. It’s bizarre beyond belief. It’s so unbelievable, I don’t know what to say. I’m speechless.
– Joel Brodsky, lead attorney for convicted murderer Drew Peterson, responding to attorney John Paul Carroll’s motion for a new trial. Carroll has not been involved in the case thus far, except as a consultant to advise Peterson about his pension rights.
When we posted video of Lil Wayne’s deposition earlier this week, we knew the epically rude (and vaguely threatening) clips would lead to comment gold.
Because nothing leads to jokes and jokes and jokes like one of the most absurd personalities in hip-hop culture thrown into a room with a buttoned-up lawyer.
The post had quite a few quality entries, like DoctorChimRichalds’s suggestion that Weezy should have pleaded “the Fizzifth.” Dr. Richalds was good, but not quite the best this week. What?
As our resident Juggalo columnist mentioned in August, the minions of crazed rednecks who worship at the altar of Violent J and Shaggy2Dope — otherwise known as the Insane Clown Posse — are not at all happy that the FBI has labelled them a gang. To defend their honor, as well as their right to get wasted and throw absurd parties in the middle of nowhere, the Juggalo nation has decided to launch a Faygo attack on the Pentagon sue the FBI.
Today we have news of another lawyer leaving the Chicago office of Sidley. But this departure reads more like a mystery novel than a memoir. Let’s find out who’s leaving, even if we don’t yet know why….
I’ll be honest, I didn’t really want to write this story because it hurts just to think about it (well, that and knowing all the BikeDude comments I’m going to get). It’s pretty straightforward, at least as far as stories about deaths allegedly caused by penis enlargement injections go.
According to law enforcement allegations, a dude wanted a penis implant, so he paid a woman — who had zero medical training — to inject silicone into his junk. It ended up in his bloodstream, and quicker than a bunny rabbit trying to make love to a balloon, he was dead. Now the woman is being prosecuted for manslaughter.
A few months ago, I wrote a post entitled “Welcome to Zombie Law 101″ about a professor’s law review article that dealt with zombies. It was a fun, quirky piece, but I figured that would be the start and end of zombie law. Well, I was wrong. A new Kickstarter project helmed by attorney Joshua Warren is raising funds to create a zombie law case book. Yep.
Part of me thinks this is pretty cool. Nerdy, but cool nonetheless.
Although, I’m a little worried that continuing to cover zombie law could eventually lead to zombie lawyers, and no one wants that. (I object, Your Honor! Counsel is eating the witness’s face.) I guess we’ll cross that bridge, and loot liquor stores for food and weapons, when we come to it. For now, let’s learn more about the project….
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.
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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Chief Judge KOZINSKI, disagreeing with everyone….
