June 2011

I want the record to show that I tried. In our Fictional Lawyer Madness contest, I really tried to find a lot of female legal characters to put into the bracket. Of the 32 lawyers in the bracket, eight were female. One fourth is not a lot, but given the preponderance of male lawyer characters […]

* Rhode Island jumped onto the gay marriage bandwagon, but New Jersey is hiding its dirty little head in the sand. Come on, we share a border with New York, can’t we share the same ideals? [WSJ Law Blog] * A credit check company is getting an FTC spanking for selling high-risk consumer info to […]

Last week, I received an email from a recent graduate who is in the midst of a small firm job search. She is having trouble focusing her search because there are so many small law firms and so few resources (or so she thought) about how to find all the various firms. She wrote: Every […]

The current lack of uniformity in state legislation dealing with a company’s obligations in the event of data breaches affecting personal data has made it more burdensome and more expensive for companies to meet their compliance requirements. Christina Ayiotis, an e-discovery and data privacy expert who is heading the Data Breaches and Cybersecurity Panel at […]

The law is a service industry. We serve clients. And if you work in Biglaw, you serve very wealthy clients. Uber-wealthy clients who find your legal fees annoying, but can pay them out of the petty cash lying around the office. Lawyer don’t make real money in this country. Businessmen do. Hedge fund managers really […]

It’s that time of the year again: American Lawyer magazine has just released its A-List for 2011. The Am Law rankings attempt to evaluate which law firms have got the right stuff to become elite: The A-List was created in 2003 in an effort to assess (and rank) the nation’s largest and most prominent law […]

This week’s Career Center Summer Associate Tips Series focuses on the importance of maintaining client confidentiality. Nothing is more sacred to the legal profession than the confidential relationship between lawyer and client. This goes far beyond what is required by the rules of professional conduct. Your personal rule should be very simple — do not […]

In this sobering post about an associate's death, we encourage lawyers to assess their lives, as well as their mental and physical well being. If as a result of this tragic death somebody else out there can find a moment to recalibrate his or her life, that can be a good thing.

Some tasks are meant to be delegated; others are not. Sometimes, whether the task is meant to be delegated depends on what the supervisor has in mind. Let’s think about three examples…

* Now that he’s been convicted, Rod Blagojevich is probably going to be disbarred. Keep an eye out on eBay for the sale of his law degree and bar card. [ABA Journal] * Yesterday, Jeffrey Sutton became the first Republican appointee on the federal bench to affirm Obamacare’s constitutionality. Scalia, you mad? [Los Angeles Times] […]

Last week, we asked for possible captions for this sad, strange photo: You must really want an Above the Law t-shirt, because you made it hard for us to pick the finalists. Elie and I were able to narrow it down to the Final 10. Vote for your favorite finalists after the jump.

* Things you can’t do on a plane. [Legal Blog Watch] * More from Legal Blog Watch today. Because between this and Planned Parenthood, Indiana is making a strong effort to become the most ass-backwards state in the union. [Legal Blog Watch] * Oh Governor Christie. Do you notice how Andrew Cuomo is being treated […]

Being a lawyer is like being a member of an elite club, but sounding like a lawyer is sometimes the same as sounding like a "tool." Small firm columnist Jay Shepherd has come up with 20 lawyerisms that do nothing to advance the message lawyers are trying to send, and do, in fact, make lawyers sound like complete tools in their writing.

Check out this week’s Sponsored Content: Lexis Nexis – Textmap: A New Day in Transcript Management Has Arrived! Silver Golub & Teitell Is Hiring! And please support Above the Law’s awesome advertisers: American Express Applied Discovery Best Buy Buy With Me Chivas Citibank Datacert Delta Effen Vodka Emirates FTI Consulting Guidance IMS Kinney Recruiting (sponsor […]

We've devoted a lot of coverage to Paul Ceglia's lawsuit claiming an ownership stake in Facebook because it's kind of funny. And we keep covering Ceglia because it just keeps getting funnier. Ceglia just replaced his counsel, again, so we can say farewell to Biglaw firm DLA Piper's involvement.

Above the Law's newest editor, Staci, thought that she could make readers and commenters see the sunnier side of things at lower-ranked law schools. But sometimes, lower-ranked schools can make even Staci cringe. Especially when they want to publish "coloring book" law journals.

Remember the attorney who filed a motion objecting to the breasts of a woman at opposing counsel's table. That lawyer has since dropped his motion and been admonished by a judge. This could all be over now, but the lawyer in question just keeps talking, and talking, and talking...

Growing up, we had something called the “coffee filter” in my house. It was my mom’s cutesy way of telling us that we always needed to think before speaking, but it worked (most of the time). The world would probably be a much better place if everyone bothered to use their coffee filters, but the […]

If you were aware of pending litigation, would you destroy backup tapes if you had no reason to believe that they contained data relevant to case? Would you need to retain such tapes in order to meet your litigation-related preservation obligations as an attorney? During the Legal Technology Leadership Summit, a mock hearing will be […]

Ed. Note: This is a guest post from the good people at RollOnFriday. In addition to covering all of the salacious news and gossip happening across the pond, RollOnFriday occasionally endeavors to explain England to us Yankees when we beg them. Check them out. Awards ceremonies feature large in the British legal landscape. For our […]