Women’s Issues

Non-Sequiturs: 04.09.13

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Judge Patty Shwartz

* Congratulations to Judge Patty Shwartz on her confirmation to the Third Circuit. She will be sorely missed in the District Court — especially by Judge Hochberg. [People for the American Way]

* And congrats to another alum of my former office, Michael Martinez, who just joined Mayer Brown as a litigation partner. [Mayer Brown]

* “Sometimes the women partners make jokes about men. He forces himself to laugh at the jokes like he doesn’t care, and in the beginning he didn’t care….” [Ms. JD]

* Speaking of objectification, you’ve waited years for this: “The Cast of 12 Angry Men in Order of Hotness.” [The Awl]

* Uganda hates gays, and now they hate miniskirts. God only knows what they’d do to gays in miniskirts. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Two things our readers love: compensation porn and rankings. Which universities pay the highest faculty salaries? [TaxProf Blog]

* Another Yale Law School graduate turned writer: congrats to Steph Cha, whose new novel, Follow Her Home (affiliate link), just got a favorable review in the Los Angeles Times. [Los Angeles Times]

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Work/Life Balance? LOL, You Think That’s a Thing?

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No. It’s not. The answer is so easy. Not achievable. I think it’s actually a misrepresentation. Talking about work-life balance is fraud.

– Laurel Bellows, President of the American Bar Association, responding to interviewer Julia Williams’s question about whether it’s possible to achieve work/life balance as a female lawyer.

(Keep reading to see additional thoughts from Bellows on women and the law.)

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Non-Sequiturs: 04.05.13

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* The Kardashians are suing their father’s widow for allegedly trying to exploit his diary — because the Kardashians object to anything exploitative. [Courthouse News Service]

* Judge Edward Korman ruled that the FDA must stop requiring those under 17 years old to present a prescription for the morning after pill. MTV’s programming executives plan to appeal. [Huffington Post]

* Wow. A partner at Alston & Bird decided to take to Facebook to troll a solo practitioner. Because that’s not douchey at all. [Rowland Legal]

* Do litigators really need instruction not to scream at witnesses? [Roll on Friday]

* A school in Massachusetts privatized school lunches, and then that company told its workers to dump the food of students who were in default on their lunch tickets. America! F**k Yeah! [Lawyers, Guns and Money]

* Illegalities sums up the malaise of being a Biglaw associate with this reblog. [Illegalities]

* Target learns the value of editing after labeling plus-sized dresses with the word “Manatee.” [Forbes]

* After the jump, watch Elie discuss his take on Democrats just coming around to supporting gay rights. Maybe McKayla Maroney rubbed off on Elie during their interview, because in this segment, he’s not impressed….

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Morning Docket: 04.03.13

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* Some Supreme Court analysts are speculating that Justice Clarence Thomas could cast a vote to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, but at this point, that’s just about as likely as him speaking during oral arguments. [Talking Points Memo]

* When a practice group laterals out of a firm en masse, you know things were probably going on behind the scenes for a while. Apparently Bingham’s securities enforcement crew was in very high demand by other Biglaw firms. [Am Law Daily]

* Hot on the heels of a merger ménage à trois, Dentons (fka SNR Denton) is already eyeing new growth possibilities across the globe. Guess they’re down with orgies now… [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* “Clients don’t hire us because of our sex. They hire us because we win.” This, from Hillary Richard, one of the female name partners of a largely all-female firm. You go girl! [DealBook / New York Times]

* Silly Cooley, a “second-tier” law school by any other name would smell as stank. Our nation’s second-best law school is considering a union with Western Michigan University. [National Law Journal]

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Lawsuit of the Day: Nobody Puts Faruqi in the Corner

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Star-crossed lawyers: Juan Monteverde and Alexandra Marchuk.

If you want to sue a defense-side Biglaw firm for employment-related claims, go for it. Unless your lawsuit is bats**t insane, chances are the firm will settle with you. See, e.g., Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell; Schoenfeld v. Allen & Overy. Heck, you don’t even need to file an actual case; even threatened litigation can yield a six-figure payday.

Biglaw firms are busy — busy making money, of course — and very reputation-conscious. They don’t want to be distracted by litigation, and they don’t want their white shoes sullied by grime. They will pay good money to make headaches go away.

But suing a scrappy plaintiff-side firm is an entirely different story. They will hit back — and hard.

Last month, Alexandra Marchuk sued her former firm, Faruqi & Faruqi, making a host of salacious allegations. The most incendiary: that a partner of the firm, Juan Monteverde, forcibly had sex with her in his office after the firm holiday party.

Now the Faruqis and Monteverde are turning it around on Alexandra Marchuk. They’re suing her back, filing counterclaims and seeking an eight-figure sum….

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Does Ropes & Gray Hate the Old and Gray?

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Patricia A. Martone

“You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away — a man is not a piece of fruit.”

– Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (affiliate link)

Take this famous line and replace “man” with “law firm partner,” and you’ve captured the gist of the lawsuit against Ropes & Gray brought by Patricia Martone, who alleges age and sex discrimination by her former firm. (Martone, a former IP litigation partner at Ropes, is now a Morrison & Foerster partner.)

When I broke the news of this lawsuit back in 2011, I expected a speedy settlement. Would Ropes really want to go toe to toe with a pair of high-powered litigatrices, namely, Martone and her formidable employment lawyer, Anne Vladeck?

But here we are, two years later, and the battle rages on. Ropes has hired a third leading litigatrix to defend itself. Let’s learn the latest news….

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Don’t You Hate It When Your Crazy Religious Views Come Back To Bite You During SBA Elections?

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Oh internet, ye keeper of all knowledge ever committed to your bosom. I do so love when you bring somebody’s crazy ramblings from one sphere crashing down on his basically normal-sounding relations in another.

Today we have a great story about a Law Student Bar Association election that received some holy ghost power… in the form of a student sending around one of the candidate’s religious views.

Freedom of speech, baby. You’re free to say it, everybody else is free to talk about it….

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Non-Sequiturs: 03.26.13

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* Illinois rules that young people’s tweets are not statements of fact. Are you suggesting people aren’t really rolling on the floor laughing? [IT-Lex]

* One Manhattan financial firm thinks Ally McBeal’s unisex bathroom is a good idea. Or they’re sexist dicks. One or the other. [Jezebel]

* The owner of the Boston Bruins is completely terrible, placing a small, but wealthy town in the middle of litigation costing hundreds of thousands of dollars… all so he can promote horse dancing. What is it with Massachusetts people and dressage? [SB Nation]

* Shoplifter busted with earrings swallows the evidence, but is ultimately foiled by Marie Curie. [Legal Juice]

* GULC students protest standards of review outside the Supreme Court, an important and overlooked issue. But it’s also throwing down the biggest legal dorks gauntlet to other law schools. [DCist]

* And as the legal world parses the transcripts of a big day for the Supreme Court, we also lament the loss of the man who basically created Supreme Court coverage. R.I.P. Anthony Lewis, sometimes called the “Tenth Justice.” [New Yorker]

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Non-Sequiturs: 03.25.13

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* Prosecutor charges America’s official groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, for failing to accurately predict the weather. Good to know Pennsylvania prosecutors are on top of the groundhog beat after messing up the “sexual predator coaching a football program” beat for about a decade. [Washington Times]

* UPDATE: Judge Easterbrook is getting hitched to former Anchorage City Clerk Barbara Gruenstein on May 12. [Anchorage Daily News]

* Tattoo convention discusses copyrights. As long as I don’t have to remove the giant butterfly tat on the small of my back I’m cool. [Washington Post]

* “Pope Francis changes Holy Thursday plans to celebrate Mass in prison.” OK, ready yourself for the Pope Francis “Man in Black” phase. [Catholic News Service]

* Defending yourself from solicitation charges counts as “Official Senate Business?” Actually, that sounds about right. [Lowering the Bar]

* UChiLawGo sums up the end of law school. [UChiLawGo]

* Sad news, “Mississippi State Rep. Jessica Upshaw (R), an attorney who had been a lawmaker since 2004, was found dead at the home of former state Rep. Clint Rotenberry (R) in Mendenhall, Mississippi…Mississippi Bureau of Investigation spokesman Warren Strain said it did not appear to be a natural death.” This is the fifth Mississippi lawmaker to die in five months. The other four all died of natural causes…so they say. [Jezebel]

* David and Elie will be showing up at Georgetown this Thursday afternoon. RSVP at the linked ACS site. [ACS]

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Morning Docket: 03.19.13

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‘They tried to make me go to rehab, and I said… sure, it’s better than going to jail!’

* President Obama nominated Thomas Perez, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, to be the next secretary of labor. Republicans, of course, are all butthurtt, calling this a “needlessly divisive nomination.” [New York Times]

* Let’s get ready to RUMBLE! Be prepared to see some legal heavyweights next week when the Prop 8 and DOMA cases are argued before the Supreme Court, including Paul Clement and Ted Olson. [National Law Journal]

* How appropriate that Justice Scalia should break out the Spanglish for an Arizona voter registration law that requires proof of U.S. citizenship. Our beloved Wise Latina probably wasn’t too thrilled by this. [New York Times]

* To promote pay equity in law firms, the ABA is encouraging bar groups to hold conferences on the topic. The question on everyone’s minds, of course, is whether those conferences are billable. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Law schools aren’t the only places where transparency is lacking. Jeh Johnson, the DOD’s former general counsel, thinks the secrecy swirling around drone strikes is bad for the government. [At War / New York Times]

* The members of Debevoise’s displaced trusts and estates practice team have been picked up by Loeb & Loeb. Enjoy your new home, and your new — presumably lower — compensation package. [Am Law Daily]

* Lindsay Lohan took a plea deal yesterday, and instead of going to jail, she’ll be going to rehab to be kept under lock and key for 90 days. I’d say this is bad for her career, but who are we kidding? [Los Angeles Times]

* Casey Anthony’s trustee just answered my prayers. He wants the ex-MILF to sell her story to pay off her debts. I demand that LiLo be cast in the role! She’s the only one broken enough to pull it off. [Washington Post]

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