Dan Rodriguez

Things could be a whole lot better if lawyers weren't so obsessed with prestige.

* Hogan Lovells shows the love to its support staff — as long as they head for the exits — by offering voluntary retirement to 400 employees. [Legal Week]

* Another jailhouse pal of Sigfredo Garcia, one of the defendants in the Dan Markel murder case, claims that Garcia acknowledged participating in the killing. [Tallahassee Democrat]

* The Texas-sized drama over those open Fifth Circuit seats shows no signs of being resolved anytime soon. [BuzzFeed via How Appealing]

* One of outgoing dean Daniel Rodriguez’s biggest achievements at Northwestern Law: bringing down average student indebtedness by roughly a third. [Law.com]

* The gold that Donald Trump is showering upon his lawyers in the Russia probe reportedly comes from donations to his re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee. [Reuters via ABA Journal]

* Speaking of the Russia inquiry, can White House counsel Don McGahn claim attorney-client privilege to withhold information from special counsel Robert Mueller? [Reuters via How Appealing]

* Unintended consequences: the high cost of Biglaw associates is driving entry-level hiring of in-house lawyers. [Am Law Daily]

* What’s behind the trend of women leaving Biglaw to start their own boutiques? [Big Law Business]

Dean Daniel Rodriguez was an innovator and reformer in legal education.

* Northwestern Dean Dan Rodriguez perfectly sums up the California bar’s decision to punt on the cut score question. [PrawfsBlawg]

* The Equifax hack leaves 143 million people vulnerable. But the Equifax executives may end up the most vulnerable after they reacted to the breach by selling shares… fast. Oh, who are we kidding? This DOJ isn’t going to prosecute that! [Huffington Post]

* The Empire’s stormtrooper armor is really terrible. [The Legal Geeks]

* Professor Douglas Litowitz is on the law school job market, and he’s rejecting all rejection letters. “I wish them great success in placing their rejection letters with other candidates. I have simply received a sufficient number of excellent rejection letters already.” [Faculty Lounge]

* The University of Colorado faces a lawsuit over allegedly protecting a football coach over an a domestic abuse survivor. No one ever lost money betting against schools changing their cultures on a dime, but honestly we’re not far removed from the last round of lawsuits about the school’s hostile environment. [Rewire]

* How much do you know about “The Reid Method”? Wyatt Kozinski (Judge Kozinski’s son) calls for a new “Wickersham Commission” to investigate the method’s role in a spate of false confessions undermining the credibility of the criminal justice system. That said, the President’s first foray into politics was calling for executions based on false confessions, so maybe we shouldn’t hold our breaths for this commission. [The Crime Report]

* Irma threatens lives… and the return of an overused metaphor. [Law and More]

* Speaking of hurricanes, Harvey has spawned its first lawsuit. [The Atlantic]

* Another edition of “bad places to hide.” [Lowering the Bar]

* Congratulations to lawyer Anthony Franze, author of The Outsider (affiliate link), on the thriller getting picked up for possible television development! [Deadline]

* An interesting look at the life and career of Gloria Allred — who has litigated groundbreaking civil rights cases as well as TMZ fodder. [Coverage Opinions]

* Lawyer Jose Baez intends to investigate the death of his client Aaron Hernandez, who was found dead in his prison cell after apparently hanging himself. [Deadspin]

* Footnote of the day (gavel bang: Raffi Melkonian aka @RMFifth Circuit). [Twitter]

* Professor Jonathan Adler still has doubts about the Emoluments Clause lawsuit against President Trump (although it’s much stronger now, thanks to some additional plaintiffs). [Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post]

* Professor Glenn Reynolds has some doubts about diversity (although I suspect he strongly supports intellectual diversity). [Instapundit]

* Professor Ann Althouse has her doubts about… Democrats (even though she has voted for more Democrats than Republicans over the years). [Althouse]

* And Professor Eugene Volokh has his doubts about the constitutionality of this order. [Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post]

* In honor of national haiku poetry day, here are some verses from Dean Dan Rodriguez of Northwestern Law. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Congrats to the ACLU of Massachusetts, the national ACLU, the state public defender’s office, and Fick & Marx LLP on a huge and historic win! [ACLU]

How can law schools be less insular with regard to teaching? Here are three ideas from Dean Amar.

Northwestern's accelerated J.D. program quickly turns into history.

* 8 reasons that lawyers are like condoms. Not included: on the inside, they’re just dicks. [Legal Cheek] * A bunch of reporters that no one reads anymore take out their frustrations on SCOTUSblog for having the audacity to be good at its job. [ABA Journal] * Presented without commentary — a dean is not pleased with us. [PrawfsBlawg] * Jobs for law grads may be scarce, but WSJ wants you to know that Biglaw specifically is hiring again. So for a few of you, you’re set until you try to lateral. [Gawker] * Deluding yourself is a valuable career strategy. [Law and More] * Guy is suing an airline because he went to Grenada when he wanted to go to Granada. This gave me a great excuse to rematch the classic Newhart episode, Oh, THAT Morrocco. [Daily Mail] * A woman who tried to save some ducklings now faces life in prison. The moral of the story, as always, is screw animals. [USA Today] * The real winner in the protracted courtship of Patton Boggs was Akin Gump. [Washingtonian] * Teaching the law has suffered because of the influx of stupid “Law and…” courses. [TaxProf Blog] * But Oklahoma knows how to fix the problems with law school — give you an iPad! Video below… [YouTube]

* “The multimillion dollar question is: Is it going to happen and for how long?” Surprisingly, health care attorneys from large firms are being quite blasé about the Congressional battle over Obamacare. [Blog of Legal Times]

* The 2013 Global 100 is out, and with an 8.6 percent growth in revenue, DLA Piper was able to really show the world the benefits of churning that bill, baby! We’ll have more on this news later today. [American Lawyer]

* This is getting exhausting: Dentons, the three-way merger product of SNR Denton (a merger product itself), Salans, and Fraser Milner Casgrain, is in talks with McKenna Long & Aldridge for yet another merger. [Am Law Daily]

* The director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s enforcement unit will be stepping down to spend time more with family. The countdown until he returns to Skadden Arps starts now. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Ted Olson and David Boies, perhaps more commonly known these days as the gay marriage dream team, will be working together to challenge Virginia’s ban on marriage equality. [National Law Journal]

* Should law school be two years long? Kyle McEntee of Law School Transparency (3 points) is beating the pants off Northwestern’s dean (-4 points) in this debate. [Debate Club / U.S. News & World Report]

* If you’re still considering applying for law school despite all of the warnings seen here and elsewhere, then you’ll probably want to follow this advice. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News & World Report]

* The Italian Court of Appeal is retrying Amanda Knox of a crime she’s already been convicted and acquitted of, and the chances she’ll be extradited if convicted again are slim to none. Buon lavoro. [CNN]

On CNBC, we talked about the uselessness of the third year of law school.