Mad Men

Ed. note: Due to the Labor Day holiday we will be on a reduced publication schedule today, and observing the holiday on Monday. Hope everyone has an enjoyable, restful and long weekend.

* Oh yay! An attorney hits something with his car, doesn’t stop, and uses the “I’m an attorney!” line, complete with F-bombs. And he was drinking, because of course he was. [Legal Profession Blog]

* You shoot for the stars Utah! Utah Law announced a new initiative to have 100 percent bar passage and 100 percent professional employment. [Tax Prof Blog]

* Burn! Not only did the Ninth Circuit overturn Judge Robert Jones’s decision, they reassigned the case. [Election Law Blog]

* A war between Harvard Law professors! Okay, it’s just a war of words, but Cass Sunstein really takes it to former Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren and law prof turned presidential candidate Larry Lessig. [American Thinker]

* Lessons on being a lawyer you can get from watching Peggy Olson. [Careerist]

* Here’s a horrifying fact: “Defendants who can’t make bail, regardless of their crime, are four times more likely to be sentenced to time in prison.” [Pacific Standard]

* This is fun! A 1947 anti-union propaganda comic put out by General Electric. [Lawyers, Guns and Money]

* Food in exchange for legal advice. Seems like a good deal. [Brooklyn Daily Eagle]

* Moving ever closer to the day when a marriage license for a same sex couple is just a matter of paperwork — even in Kentucky. [Huffington Post]

* “What Law Firms Can Learn From the Business Decisions of ‘Mad Men.'” I’m hoping the answer is “more drinking on the job.” [Legal Times]

* Hillary Clinton pledges to nominate SCOTUS justices who will overturn Citizens United. And if you agree with her, she’ll gladly accept your unlimited donations to her *wink* unaffiliated SuperPAC. [Jezebel]

* Seema Iyer talks about one of our favorite recent cases, Driskell v. Homosexuals. [MSNBC]

* Sometimes getting fired can be a positive. As they say the Chinese word for crisis contains the word “opportunity.” Crisitunity. [Wisconsin Lawyer]

* A great detailed piece on California’s recent decision to grant a law license to Hong Yen Chang, the Columbia Law grad denied his license over 100 years ago on the grounds of his “Mongolian nativity.” [Bloomberg BNA / Big Law Business]

* Bad: Being wrongfully convicted. Worse: The system strong-arming the wronged into signing away their right to compensation. [LFC 360]

* Should graduate students and adjuncts unionize? Depends. Do they want to be exploited by an unappreciative institution until their souls are sucked dry? Yes? Then no. [New York Times]

* Sen. Toomey wants Judge L. Felipe Restrepo on the Third Circuit. Maybe he should start talking to his obstructionist colleagues instead of whining to the paper. [Constitutional Accountability Center]

* PacerPro to automatically retrieve documents referenced in notices of electronic filing from PACER. That can help cut down on some mistakes… eh, Sidley Austin? [Law Sites]

* Thomson Reuters has a new social network for small law firms. For every post, users can push a little “thumbs up” icon to express, “I [and my successors, assigns, and heirs of my body, indicate my generally warm feelings, reserving all rights to reverse or withdraw this endorsement at any time for any reason whatsoever notwithstanding any prior representations] This!” [Legal Research & Writing Pro]

* The 2015 World Championship BBQ Cooking Contest in Memphis is this weekend. How does that relate to ATL? Bob Cornish, a D.C.-based attorney at Phillips Lytle LLP and a trained and certified expert in BBQ is a judge. [Memphis In May]

* For Mad Men fans: Have you wondered how the show is getting away with making real-life ad agency McCann Erickson sound like a hellhole? [The Legal Artist]

* The hell? An aide to California AG Kamala Harris was arrested for serving as “chief deputy director” of a rogue police department. That claims to be descended from the Knights Templar. And run by the Freemasons. The conspiracy is real, my friends. [Slate]

* Catholic priest dubbed “Monsignor Meth” sentenced to 5 years for running a drug ring. This may be an obvious point, but in the grand scheme of “crimes committed by Roman Catholic priests” this really isn’t so bad. Unless kids were paying for meth the way… well, they sometimes pay for meth. [NBC Connecticut]

* A prickly question: should you buy your assistant a wedding gift even if you’re not invited? Assuming you still have your own assistant — looking in your direction, Proskauer. [Corporette]

* Nobody wants to throw children to the wolves, but current child support laws are less about helping kids and more about throwing poor parents in jail when they can’t afford to pay money they don’t have. [LFC 360]

* The Goebbels estate is seeking royalties for biographies about the Nazi propagandist, giving new meaning to the term “IP Troll.” [Inside Higher Ed]

* Fascinating. All the cool stuff you can do now that the U.S. Code is published as structured data. If you like your statutes in cool graphs, this is for you. [Concurring Opinions]

* RIP Richard Bartlett, who helped bring the New York courts into unity. He was 89. [New York Law Journal]

* Texas law student/international small-arms dealer Cody Wilson got shot down (pun!) days after revealing a fully security-proof 3D printable gun. The State Department pointed out that Wilson seems to be violating all manner of international arms agreements, which was pretty obvious when he went on video boasting about how his weapons were being used in hotbeds of civil strife. [Foreign Policy: Passport] * The Juice may soon be loose! But probably not. O.J. Simpson has a hearing seeking a new trial in Vegas and blaming his former lawyer, Yale Galanter. Best part? Simpson claims Galanter approved the whole “armed, threatening confrontation” plan beforehand. Oops. [FOX News] * Michael Arrington, a lawyer and "one of the most powerful people on the Internet," is suing his ex-girlfriend for defamation. The complaint compiles some pretty salacious claims that she made via social media. [Valleywag] * Just when you thought being an unpaid intern couldn’t be sadder, Judge Baer makes it sadder. [Fashionista] * The “Thug’s Lawyer” got a reprieve when a judge tossed his indictment for conspiracy, obstruction of justice, theft, and perjury. [The Advocate] * The EEOC filed suit against a Miami company that required its employees to become Scientologists. In other news, someone actually thought they could get away with making all their employees join the Church of Scientology. [Lowering the Bar] * The history of the Madison Avenue IPOs alluded to in last week’s Mad Men. [DealBook]

* Dear readers, legal pundits, regular pundits, and the public at large: Please stop with this nonsense of how Sandra Fluke should sue Rush Limbaugh. Because I swear to God, if you guys make me indirectly defend Limbaugh, I will wear you guys out like the dirty little sluts you are. [Politico] * Which founding partner of a major law firm has abs of steel? [Dealbreaker] * A ranking of top moot court programs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the schools that are best at moot court are the schools that spend the most time lying to their students about how there’s a single goddamn employer out there who cares about moot court. [TaxProf Blog] * People think I hate cops, but I have nothing on Republicans in the Indiana House of Representatives. Those guys are such cop haters that they want to pass a law to make it okay to kill them if they enter your house. All I want is to be able to get away with saying “yo’ mama” if they try to falsely arrest you in your own home. [Recess Appointments] * This legal assistant reminds me of what Lane Pryce might have said if he had been sacked for a job as a legal assistant. [Roll on Friday] * Really, it’s the pro-death penalty crowd that wants us to be more like Communist China. [A Public Defender] * Congratulations to the new leaders at Ms. JD. [Ms. JD] * Michigan man sues movie theater for overpriced snacks. He’s not suing for amount they charge to see movies over the past atrocious season, he just wants to spend less while he’s sucking down Goobers and watching them. (One quick side note on the Oscars ’cause I was sick last week: F*** you, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Maybe they should re-release Margin Call with Zach Quinto replaced by a French mime so you guys might notice something at least 1% of this country cares about.) [Huffington Post]

Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Small Firms, Big Lawyers, one of Above the Law’s new columns for small-firm lawyers. As with love affairs, all lawyer-client relationships must eventually end. If you’re lucky, they won’t end until retirement or death (not the untimely kind; that would be unlucky). More often though, they will […]

Don’t worry, I’m not going to ruin the season finale of Mad Men for those who still have it sitting in their DVRs. Instead, I’m here to remind people that Mad Men is a television show set in a time long since past. Much to the disappointment of white males everywhere, those days are gone […]