Amal Clooney

* Just because you showed up drunk for jury duty, it doesn’t mean you should have to go to jail for it — at least according to the Florida Supreme Court. [Daily Business Review]

* George Will on why Republicans may wind up wishing they’d confirmed Chief Judge Merrick Garland when they had the chance. [Washington Post]

* Amal Clooney, speaking at a government communications summit in the United Arab Emirates, urges governments to be vocal, consistent, principled, expedient, and transparent when dealing with human rights issues. [Yahoo News]

* High academic achievement now linked to… failure in the workplace? Well, that’s simultaneously depressing and comforting. [Law and More]

* A former U.S. State Department employee faces up to 8 years in jail for a massive phishing scheme aimed at getting young women to share nude photos. [CS Monitor]

* Check out The Merrick Garland Project by NYU Law Review. It’s a curation of select opinions written by Chief Judge Garland, organized by topic. [The Merrick Garland Project]

* The obstructed Supreme Court nomination process gets a children’s book treatment. [Slate]

* Let’s just call this flattery and be done with it — a UK brand of lingerie has launched a new design named after Amal Clooney. [Legal Cheek]

* A law professor dives into the most popular forms of tax evasion. [Huffington Post]

* A new, fast, and cheap way to sequence DNA has sparked a legal battle, because of course it did. [Science Magazine]

* What’s going to happen when solitary confinement is abolished? [Pacific Standard]

* Ah-mahzing. An intrepid New Yorker made their own license plate, but no, it is not legal. [Slate]

* Everything you ever wanted to know about the philosophical underpinnings of House of Cards. [Wisecrack]

* Color me surprised: Amal Clooney is redefining the power suit. [Huffington Post]

* If you haven’t watched Mike Huckabee’s take on the instant Adele classic, “Hello,” you really should. If for no other reason than to see the former governor weigh in on whether he thinks Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen. [Mother Jones]

* Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout is running for Congress. You’ll remember the politically minded professor previously ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor. [New York Daily News]

* An adorably old 102-year-old British lawyer became the oldest to have his master’s conferred by Cambridge. [Legal Cheek]

* It is easy to get mad when things are unfair, but like momma used to say, “life isn’t fair,” and there is a lesson to be learned there. [Katz Justice]

* Has NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio lived up to his campaign promises? A detailed look. [City and State]

* Yes, even lawyers — heck, especially lawyers — need to be responsible for their own marketing. [Reboot Your Law Practice]

* Has the dearth of law school applicants finally pinched Harvard Law? [Bloomberg Business]

* Meanwhile, New York Law School is doing just fine… thanks to its savvy real estate moves. [Crain’s New York Business]

* Amal Clooney sighting in D.C. [Washington Post]

* For those keeping score, only Scalia, Thomas, and Alito skipped the State of the Union last night, which was not really surprising. [CBS News]

* Former Cravath attorney Robert Miranne talks about the movie “Joy,” chronicling the life and times of his mother, Joy Mangano. [The Am Law Daily]

* In July, China arrested Wang Yu, a top women’s rights lawyer for creating a disturbance. They got around to notifying her mother of this… on Monday. In fairness, they’ve really been swamped over there with the sabotaging the global economy thing. [Reuters]

* FLSA class actions expected to hit record high this year. “I keep waiting — because I’ve been studying it for 15 years — for the number of wage-and-hour lawsuits to crest or go down” said Seyfarth’s Gerald Maatman Jr. And I keep waiting for companies to dutifully pay employees the money they actually owe them, yet here we are. [Law 360]

* In the aftermath of the Tamir Rice shooting, two Yale Law students, Marvin Brown and Olevia Boykin, have created a powerful visual project asking #isitreasonable. [Mic]

* What is Amal Clooney’s billing rate? Normal people may be shocked by it, but it seems well in line with Biglaw. [The Sun]

* Looks like Stanford Law student Paulina Slagter has “nabbed her man” — God, what a terrible phrase. Anyway, she reportedly got engaged to Ryan Phillippe over Christmas. [ET Online]

* Hope is in short supply in the legal profession. [Law and More]

* Which films were included as selections to be included in the National Film Registry? [Lawyers, Guns and Money]

* Are Harvard Law professors chilling the reporting of sexual assault on campus? [Huffington Post]

* Amal Clooney launches a scholarship to educate Lebanese women. [Los Angeles Times]

* Justices Scalia and Thomas just plain wrong on gun regulations. [The Atlantic]

* Baltimore reacts to the hung jury in the Freddie Gray case. [The Root]

* You know those late-night commercials for LifeLock, designed to convince elderly people to buy their product lest their identity be stolen? Yeah, the FTC announced the identity theft company would be paying $100 million to settle charges that it didn’t secure its customers’ info and misrepresented the strength of its product. [Washington Post]

* A motion for summary judgment has been filed in the case against Alan Dershowitz for defamation. [Palm Beach Daily News]

* Lowenstein Sandler Chair Gary Wingens comes out in favor of two-year law schools. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

* More concrete rumors are swirling that President Obama will teach at Columbia Law School once his term is up, with Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger seemingly confirming Obama would have some role at the school in 2017. [Quartz]

* We told you Amal Clooney just lost a big case, but did the AP lose even more when they tweeted about the case referring to the human rights lawyer as an “actor’s wife”? [Legal Cheek]

* Everyone knows the legal profession has a… problem when it comes to substance abuse. But do lawyers overshare their issues? Or does an open attitude about these problems create a culture where more are willing to seek help? [Law and More]

* Yes, that clerk in Kentucky, Kim Davis, is still refusing to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. Maybe we should blame her lawyers. [Slate]

* If you want to be the best, learn from the best — writing tips from none other than Justice Kagan. [Business Insider]

* Some tough words for lawyers that want the easy life: you shouldn’t get the clients. [It’s Not About The Lawyers, Teacups]

* How do we go about changing the public defense system, which serves ~80% of all defendants? [Fulling the Promise]

* Good news if you’ve made it to midlevel associate — survey says you’re happier than ever. [American Lawyer]

* Amal Clooney lost a case in Egypt, her client was one of three Al-Jazeera journalists sentenced to prison for their coverage of the 2013 uprising. Clooney warned the sentence sends a “dangerous message.” [People]

* More and more Pennsylvania firms are getting on-board with the $160k pay scale. [Legal Intelligencer]

* Chalk another victory up for the Amazing Schneiderman — that’s New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. This time, retail giant Gap Inc. has fallen in line. [Fashionista]

* A happy ending for David Powers, whose admission to St. John’s Law was revoked after officials there found out about a drug conviction. He’s starting at Pace Law today. [New York Times]

* When a client announces a new general counsel, law firms should consider that a wake-up call — or get fired. [Corporate Counsel]

* In truly horrific news, two Indian sisters were sentenced to be gang raped as punishment for their brother eloping with a woman of a different caste. The (hopefully) good news is the women have appealed to the Indian Supreme Court for protection. [Jezebel]

* What do in-house counsel need to know about the recent NLRB decision expanding the concept of joint-employers? [Law360]

* Amal Clooney of Doughty Street Chambers, who happens to be married to George Clooney, is being heralded as an “exotic, luxe-brand Princess Diana upgrade.” Lesson learned: marry a celebrity and your legal credentials look awesome. [New York Magazine]

* If you’re into fashion at the high court, this satirical news website managed to get an exclusive photo of all of the Supreme Court justices in their new spaghetti strap sun-robes. You know what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg must be thinking about her colleagues: “Do you even lift?” [The Onion]

* The William Mitchell Law professors who filed suit against the school to protect the tenure code after its merger with Hamline Law was announced have voluntarily dropped their case. Apparently no harm will come to the precious after all. [National Law Journal]

* Vicente Sederberg, a firm that focuses on marijuana law, will sponsor a three-year professorship for marijuana law and policy at Denver Law. Sam Kamin will be the first to hold the position. Come see him at ATL’s marijuana reception in June. [The Cannabist]

* Everyone in the legal community likes to complain about the fact that law reviews are useless because no one reads them. We dare you to complain about an entire law review issue dedicated to the legal problems presented in AMC’s Breaking Bad. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Amal Clooney, the attorney who tamed George Clooney’s heart and is now considered one of the most famous human rights lawyers in the world, will be teaching at a New York law school this spring. Which one? We’ll have more on this fun news later today. [USA Today]

* Talk about a Hail Mary play: The ACLU has decided to come to the defense of a very unlikely cause. Per a recently filed federal brief, the organization thinks that the USPTO’s cancellation of the Redskins trademark was unconstitutional. [WSJ Law Blog]

* According to a new BARBRI study, the vast majority of third-year law students think they’re ready to go when it comes to practicing law, but the lawyers who have had the (dis)pleasure to work with new graduates don’t seem to agree. [National Law Journal]

* “Those kinds of jobs are never going to be enough to absorb the number of people graduating from law school over the next five or 10 years.” Northeastern’s dean laughs in Biglaw’s face — his grads measure their success in other ways. [Boston Business Journal]

* Ellen Pao’s “racy” gender discrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins serves as a harsh criticism of the sexist culture of Silicon Valley. Luckily, jury members will be able to busy themselves with the case’s more lurid details. [The Upshot / New York Times]

* Kyle McEntee of Law School Transparency is working on a new podcast that will help prospective law students to see what working in the legal profession is really like. “I Am The Law” debuted in January 2015, and it’s worth a listen. [U.S. News & World Report]

* A representative for Amal and George Clooney has denied the rumors of an impending divorce plastered all over the newsstands this week. “This story is totally made up in order to sell their magazines.” Now we can go back to wondering when Amal is planning to sue President Obama. [Aceshowbiz]

* Roe v. Wade is 42 years old (or 126 trimesters) today. How much of the original holding is left? Not that much actually. [TBT Legal]

* Some 1st or 2nd year in D.C. is banging another associate and felt obliged to give us an anonymous blow-by-blow account. Think of it as a Penthouse Letter to the ABA Journal. [Reddit]

* Speaking of Penthouse, the affidavit from the Prince Andrew/Alan Dershowitz sex scandal is just bats**t amazeballs. Check out the full document on the next page. [South Florida Lawyers]

* “Jews in the U.K. never won a reported discrimination case against non-Jewish defendants.” I mean, who’d have thought the country that brought us The Merchant of Venice would have issues with Jews? [Tablet]

* Americans decry European laws prohibiting certain kinds of hate speech. But Professor Faisal Kutty explains that liberal societies have their own secular sacred cows even if they don’t want to admit it. [Al Jazeera]

* If you presume the clientele for litigation financing services are helpless, you’re selling them short. [LFC 360]

* The latest threat to unsuspecting Americans: zombie debt! [Public Justice]

* NYU admits it probably should have told the police when a student allegedly lit a classmate on fire and videotaped it. Ugh. NYU’s gone soft. In my day, we set each other on fire all the time and we liked it dammit! [Chronicle of Higher Education]