Google / Search Engines

* We have a new pope. Pope Francis I has no involvement with the sexual abuse scandals surrounding the Church, but has had other legal troubles in his past. [Los Angeles Times] * UNLV Law Dean Nancy Rapoport schools other deans on drafting press releases about the U.S. News rankings. [Nancy Rapoport's Blogspot] * Lend your support to this new project to create Oyez-style audio/video archives of state Supreme Court proceedings. This will be really helpful, but I’m holding out for audio/video of Wade McCree’s courtroom. [Knight News Challenge] * If you’re mad that your name comes up when people Google “erectile dysfunction,” filing a public lawsuit over that fact isn’t the answer. [IT-Lex] * Charter schools are lame because the crazy people running them teach whatever they want, like this one that teaches students that hippies were dirty. Well, okay, that’s not actually untrue, but the system’s textbooks have other faults, like explaining how the KKK was just misunderstood, y’all. [Lawyers, Guns & Money] * Man loses his memory after car crash-induced head trauma, decides to become a lawyer. I’ve always said would-be lawyers should have their heads examined. [BBC News via Legal Cheek]

Eric Turkewitz has some additional words of wisdom with regard to online marketing for law firms.

* The Department of Justice has reached yet another settlement in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill case, this time with Transocean Ltd. for $1.4 billion in civil and criminal penalties and fines. [National Law Journal]

* “[W]ith success comes regulatory scrutiny.” Google convinced the FTC to close its ongoing antitrust probe by promising to change its allegedly shady patent usage and purportedly skewed search terms. [Bloomberg]

* According to Littler Mendelson, federal contractors might want to consider sending out sequestration-related layoff notices to employees in order to comply with the WARN Act. America, f**k yeah! [Government Executive]

* Governor Andrew Cuomo will have a major impact on the New York Court of Appeals when appointing new judges. It could be a partisan decision, but his father, former Governor Mario Cuomo, insists his son will leave politics at home. [Capital New York]

* When you write in defense of the value proposition of law school, you wind up in the op-ed pages of the NYT. When you tell the truth about it, you wind up in the opinion pages of the WSJ. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* Remember Danae Couch, the Texas Tech law student who was crowned as Miss Texas? She’ll compete for the Miss America title next weekend. If you’d like to help her become a finalist, you can vote for her here! [KFYO]

Learn about how two lawyers built a nine-figure business.

* Billable hours in Biglaw are down 1.5 percent, and 15 percent of U.S. firms are planning to reduce their partnership ranks in early 2013. Thanks to Wells Fargo for bringing us the news of all this holiday cheer! [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Hostess may be winding down its business and liquidating its assets, but Biglaw will always be there to clean up the crumbs. Jones Day, Venable, and Stinson Morrison Hecker obviously think money tastes better than Twinkies. [Am Law Daily]

* How’s that “don’t be evil” thing working out for you? Google’s $22.5M proposed privacy settlement with the FTC over tracking cookies planted on Safari browsers was accepted by a federal judge. [Bloomberg]

* Greenberg Traurig and Hunton & Williams face a $7.2B suit from Allen Stanford’s receiver over a former attorney of both firms’ alleged involvement in the ex-knight’s Ponzi scheme. [Houston Business Journal]

* Perhaps the third time will be the charm: ex-Mayer Brown partner Joseph Collins was convicted, again, for helping Refco steal more than $2B from investors by concealing the company’s fraud. [New York Law Journal]

* H. Warren Knight, founder of alternative dispute resolution company JAMS, RIP. [National Law Journal]

* Google asked Gregory Sidak and Judge Robert Bork to write a report on its antitrust investigations. [Criterion Economics] * Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom just caught a tough break, courtesy of the government of… Gabon? [Threat Level / Wired] * Marco Delgado, lawyer and former trustee of Carnegie Mellon University, is accused of laundering half a billion dollars for a Mexican drug cartel. [Post-Gazette] * I’m very, very uninterested in getting tangled in racial debates after the election. But this stuff is messed up and scary. [Gawker] * And this too. Ick. [Jezebel] * Next time you plan a robbery, maybe plan on taking a nap before you reach the front door of your score. [Legal Juice]

Which law schools are the worst ones in all the land? Does your law school appear on this top (or bottom) ten list?

* Dewey know when Judge Martin Glenn will issue his ruling on the failed firm’s proposed partner contribution plan? If all goes according to plan, we can expect to learn if the PCP’s been approved or rejected as early as next week. [Am Law Daily]

* Hot on the heels of Google’s digital-book settlement, the company announced that it would be appealing its copyright infringement jury verdict in the Oracle trial. One thing’s for sure: Judge Alsup will be angered terribly by this. [Bloomberg]

* David Askew, formerly the director of Edwards Wildman’s pro bono program, will now lead the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms as CEO and general counsel. [Corporate Counsel]

* The American Bar Association submitted an amicus brief in support of using race as a factor in college admissions, because diversity in college education is a must for diversity in law schools, duh. [ABA Journal]

* Remember the family law judge who got caught beating his daughter in a video that went viral? Now he wants the Texas Supreme Court to reinstate him, over his ex-wife’s objections. Good luck with that. [CNN]

Which Biglaw firm faces more competition in the race to represent exciting new startups?

* Bank robber tuned jailhouse lawyer turned successful author, Shon Hopwood, is now in law school — on scholarship. Second chances FTW. [Seattle Times] * As Hopwood transitions from inmate to law student, another would-be lawyer’s career is going the other direction. One of Reema Bajaj’s classmates is headed to the slammer. [Daily Herald] * Damon Thibodeaux is the 300th person in the U.S. to be exonerated on DNA evidence. The Louisiana death row inmate was exonerated after 15 years behind bars. Oy. [Washington Post] * Apparently this is the jailhouse edition of Non-Sequiturs, so here’s Judge Richard Posner expounding upon prison rats, damp, dark cells, and the concept of the Bubonic Plague in jail. Heavy s**t, man. [How Appealing] * Lionel Hutz is a wonderfully terrible cartoon lawyer, but God help the client who ends up with a real-life version. [RocketLawyer] * A trip down the substantially creepy rabbit hole wherein Chevron’s Ecuador litigation, Google, and concerns about electronic privacy all converge. [Opinio Juris] * Add Maryland to the list of states sending gay marriage to the ballot box. [Daily Beast]

Google is in some legal trouble down in Brazil. What are the allegations?

* Someone was finally able to liken the Scalia v. Posner debate to a suitable situation: bitchy mean girls fighting each other in a middle school cafeteria. Seriously, only the inclusion of “like” throughout the entirety of the dialogue could’ve made it better. [lawprofblawg] * Who pays your law professors’ salary? The obvious answer is law students, since professorial wallets are padded by tuition dollars. But what happens when IBR comes into play and loan debts are forgiven? Then the answer shifts to the taxpayers. [PrawfsBlawg] * When Derek Boogaard of the New York Rangers died, everyone was expecting that a lawsuit would be filed, but no one really thought that it would be one based on contract law. [New York Law and Legal Analysis Blog] * What kind of case “really turn[s] on” everyone’s favorite First Amendment lawyer? Free speech cases that are riddled with challenges, of course, and questions about what does and doesn’t constitute porn. [Vegas Inc] * You must be wondering where Above the Law fell on this ranking of the 15 Most Influential Law Blogs. We won’t give it away, but let’s just say that we now share something in common with Cooley. [Business Insider] * “[S]ome dude with the munchies is getting a little legal education.” That’s what we thought when one of our top searches last week was “pictures of tacos” — and not even “duck tacos,” but regular ones. [Search Party]

A new collaboration between Google, the USPTO, and Stack Exchange hopes to use crowd-sourcing to end America's patent wars...

In the wake of Apple v. Samsung, Google is learning a valuable (and dare we say obvious) lesson.

Craigslist doesn't want to update its site, and it doesn't want anyone else to try, either.

* In the Apple-Samsung trial yesterday, Apple’s attorneys accused Samsung of intentionally copying the iPhone. Samsung’s attorney was like, Bro, step off. And then Judge Lucy Koh and all the members of the gallery and the jury crowded around in a circle and started yelling Techno-fight! Techno fight! [Wall Street Journal]

* Matthew Kluger, formerly of Wilson Sonsini and more recently convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison for insider trading, gives an interview about what motivated him to commit his crimes. [Bloomberg]

* France is not happy that Google did not delete all its Street View information from the country after it promised to. Shockingly, some parts of the world apparently still value data privacy. How quaint! [New York Times]

* Former Perkins Coie partner Harold DeGraff must arbitrate his compensation battle with his former law firm. But the process will not have to be kept confidential. [Thomson Reuters]

* I’m pretty sure at this point the DOJ is just consulting a Ouija board in its increasingly feeble attempts to prosecute Megaupload. [Wired /Threat Level]

* UBS is not happy that it lost $356 million on the Facebook IPO. Now it’s suing NASDAQ over the snafu. [CNNMoney]

* It’s official: “law school grads face worst job market in more than 30 years.” Put that in your TTT pipe and smoke it. [Chicago Tribune]

* Not sure how good of a “cyber spy” you can be if you’re getting sued in federal court for things like cybersquatting and trademark infringement. [MarketWatch]

* Jerry Sandusky was convicted — oh Lord, he was convicted — Friday evening, and now his attorneys say they weren’t allowed to resign right before the trial. [CBS News]

* The New York Times has caught Linsanity, or at least it has caught an interest in the trademark case for Jeremy Lin’s popular catchphrase. [New York Times]

* It was Gay Pride weekend across the country. Practically speaking, for most people this meant lots of unexpected traffic jams and random glitter bombings. Evan Wolfson, a prominent attorney, was the Grand Marshal of the Chicago Pride Parade. [Chicago Sun-Times]

* Will today be the day we get the Obamacare decision? Who knows. In the meantime, here’s an interview with the folks behind the wonderful SCOTUSblog. [Forbes]

* The judge accused of elder abuse, in Alameda County, California, is still on the bench, but he has been relegated to handling small claims court. [Mercury News]

* An owner of the Miami Heat has sued Google and a blogger over an “unflattering” photo. I guess once you win an NBA championship, it leaves you with a lot of free time for other important pursuits. [CNN]

* Hyper-competitive weekend warrior kills himself racing down a mountain path and his family is suing the internet start-up that makes an app that allows you to track your time against other users. Is anybody making an app to track really stupid lawsuits filed by bereaved family members who receive terrible legal advice during times of crisis? [Not-So Private Parts / Forbes] * The Fast and the Furious Legal Edition: Executive of Privilege. [WSJ Law Blog] * Bringing the billable hour to social media seems likely to make me cry. [Legal Cheek] * Former SCOTUS clerks think the individual mandate is done for. [Wonkblog / Washington Post] * Google threatens to bring the hammer down on YouTube to mp3 converter. [Torrent Freak] * Maybe this is the kind of alcohol you can buy with prestige points. [Urban Daddy] * The companies who will own the president if Romney wins. [USAToday]

Google Street View is under fire again for, if not being evil necessarily, being significantly creepy.

* Only 44% of Americans approve of how the Supreme Court is doing its job, but that’s probably because the other 56% wouldn’t know what the Supreme Court was unless the justices were contestants on a reality show. [New York Times]

* Having nothing to do with the outcome of this Tenth Circuit appeal, apparently a juror in the underlying case had no idea when the First Amendment was adopted. As Bush II would say, is our children learning? [U.S. Tenth Circuit / FindLaw]

* Who’s going to win the “Super Bowl” of Android patent trials? Nobody. Judge Richard Posner has issued a “tentative” order which noted that both sides of the Apple/Google case ought to be dismissed. [Reuters]

* You should’ve “known better”: in case we didn’t make it abundantly clear when we spoke about NALP’s data for the class of 2011, the job market for new law grads is being classified as “brutal.” [National Law Journal]

* U. Chicago Law revolutionized the field of law and economics, but much to their school’s, everyone else copied them. Now they’re thinking up new ways to do the same things. Gunners gotta gun. [Businessweek]

* Say hello to Mary Lu Bilek, the woman who’s been appointed as the new dean of UMass Law. Hopefully she’s not keen on using school credit cards for personal spending like the last dean. [Wall Street Journal]

* Occupy Wall Street protesters can’t sue NYC, its mayor, or its police commissioner, but they can sue the police. And with that news, “F**k tha Police” was sung in drum circles across the tri-state area. [Bloomberg]