Michael Brown

* Bob McCulloch, the prosecutor who handled (mishandled?) the Michael Brown / Darren Wilson case in Ferguson, Missouri, was recently named as “Prosecutor of the Year” by the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys. This probably wasn’t a good idea. [Slate]

* American Apparel filed for bankruptcy, and rather than Biglaw firms representing the embattled clothier, they’re trying to snatch up fees. Skadden, White & Case, and Paul Hastings are each owed quite the pretty penny. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg]

* Which law school dean was just named as senior counsel at Dentons, the largest law firm in the world? That would be Nicholas Allard of Brooklyn Law School. Perhaps this law dean’s academic cash flow wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. [Brooklyn Daily Eagle]

* “Unless the industry cleans itself up, we can expect more lawsuits like this in the future.” In an interesting turn of events, the marijuana industry is now seeing its first product liability suit. A protip for growers: No one wants to smoke fungicide. [Los Angeles Times]

* Just when you thought patent trolls couldn’t get any worse, they started to harass members of the fashion industry. Copyright trolls (i.e., Stephen Doniger and Scott Alan Burroughs) are suing over textile prints left and right, and that’s so last season. [Fortune]

* Baker & McKenzie was dethroned by DLA Piper as the the Biglaw king of gross revenue. The firm is blaming its poor performance — a 4.3 percent drop — on “currency fluctuations.” Better luck on snatching back glory next year. [Am Law Daily; Big Law Business / Bloomberg]

* It’s hard out here for a pimp with an allegedly small peen: Terrence Howard’s divorce settlement was overturned by a judge after evidence was brought forward to suggest the actor was coerced into signing it. Apparently his ex was blackmailing him over the size of his manhood. [ABC News]

* There’s a new sheriff judge in town, and he’s cleaning up the Ferguson, Missouri, courts. His first order of business was to wipe out all arrest warrants issued before December 31, 2014, in the wake of the Michael Brown police shooting last August. [Reuters]

* Dean Philip Weiser of Colorado Law has announced that he’ll be stepping down from his position in July 2016. He’ll be remembered for keeping costs low and putting asses in seats during a time when it was difficult to do both concurrently. [Denver Business Journal]

* “On one level I give them kudos for playing hide the ball.” Gibson Dunn is fighting a subpoena issued by defense attorneys for computer metadata related to its Bridgegate report that cleared New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie of all wrongdoing. [Bergen Record]

* Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh likes hanging out with the Supreme Court. Harbaugh characterizes Justice Thomas as very enthusiastic. Seriously. This guy thinks someone else is enthusiastic. [Wall Street Journal Law Blog]

* Darren Wilson isn’t racist, everybody. I mean, he thinks black people have bad upbringings and prefers to eat out “Where it’s not a mixing pot,” but he really wants you to know he’s not racist. [Gawker]

* Whatever happened to the SCOTUS clerks of ten years ago? [Excess of Democracy]

* How terrifying is Heien v. North Carolina? Cops are now stopping people for air fresheners and using it as a pretext to search the car… and courts are approving it. [The Marshall Project]

* A Shearman & Sterling partner arrested in a DWI sweep. [The East Hampton Star]

* Do you use LinkedIn Pulse to grow your brand? You probably should. [Law and More]

* The true story of a prosecutor who went undercover and strapped on a wire for over 3 years to root out corruption in the judicial system. His new book is titled Operation Greylord (affiliate link). [My Fox Chicago]

* Health care discrimination against the mentally ill is illegal. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. [Vox]

* If you missed Lat’s events at the ABA meeting over the weekend, here’s a recap of one. [American Bar Association]

* Getting a SCOTUS justice to attend your wedding is tough, but maybe invite one for dinner? [Washington Post]

* A DOJ investigation concludes that the Ferguson Police Department and courts engaged in a “pattern and practice” of discrimination against African Americans. The investigation was conducted by the DOJ’s division of obvious things. [CNN]

* When police didn’t respond to his call fast enough, this guy tried to rob a convenience store to get the cops out there faster. And then they still didn’t come… [Legal Juice]

* King v. Burwell argument is almost here! Conservatives are really eager to take the law down. But would hurting Obamacare really hurt conservatives more in the end? [Bloomberg View]

* A California lawyer is proposing a new law to address homosexuality with “bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.” I don’t think that’ll pass. [Huffington Post]

* Authorities still harassing family who trusted a 10-year-old to walk outside without a parent hovering over them. It’s hard to criticize helicopter parents when they’re only following the law. [Washington Post]

* Well, well, well. Now that they’ve sent out a harassing C&D letter, Katy Perry’s people have thrown some Left Shark merchandise up on their site. [Katy Perry]

* Fascinating use of the Internet: a crowdfunding campaign to help refugee mothers and children secure release from government detention. [Go Fund Me]

* In this preview of Professor Nancy Leong’s latest videocast, she talks with Professor Jessica Clarke about how courts treat sexual harassment cases in same- vs. opposite-sex harassment. [TheRightsCast]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVqYDrYNV0Y&utm_content=bufferd2ca9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

* “The reality is, the university has done a lot to be a part of the solution. This undoes a lot of that work.” Students and professors at St. Louis University School of Law are up in arms because Bob McCulloch, the prosecutor in the Ferguson case, is coming to speak at an event on police practices. [ABC News]

* “Travel by coach will make it impossible for the attorneys to work and or sleep effectively upon our arrival.” Defense lawyers for three suspected terrorists motioned for a judge to give them business-class seats on a plane while federal prosecutors bum it back in coach. [New York Daily News]

* SCOTUSblog has been denied a Supreme Court press pass, yet again. Lyle Denniston, the site’s main reporter, had to go to great lengths in an attempt to circumvent the high court’s new journalist credentialing process. [Associated Press]

* “I would really think long and hard before defying a federal court order.” SCOTUS declined to issue a stay that would keep gay marriage at bay in Alabama, but some judges are still refusing to marry gay couples. Thanks Roy Moore. [Los Angeles Times]

* Paul Weiss: lookin’ nice! In a look at some of the early numbers from the latest Am Law 100 rankings, the firm increased its gross revenue year over year by 10.9 percent, allowing Paul Weiss to finally break the billion-dollar mark in revenue. [Am Law Daily]

* Law firm suffers Viagra hack. If it persists for more than four hours… [Legal Cheek]

* An in-depth and frightening look at “Witness 40” in the Ferguson Grand Jury proceedings: a bipolar woman with a long history of making racist comments who lived nowhere near Ferguson and testified only after Officer Wilson’s story was revealed — which she parroted back. Bob McCulloch thought this was a stellar witness. Bob McCulloch is also bad at his job. [The Smoking Gun]

* Charleston local government wants InfiLaw out of town. Is there anyone left who wants InfiLaw to take over Charleston? [TaxProf Blog]

* Congratulations to U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldaña on her confirmation as head of ICE. [International Business Times]

* Pet piercing will soon be illegal in New York, so get that dope nose ring for your dog today! [Lowering the Bar]

* Canadian “band” Skinny Puppy demands $660,000 from the U.S. government for using their music as torture material without permission. As a compromise can we just pledge to strap Dick Cheney down and force him to listen to 15 consecutive hours of Skinny Puppy and call it a day? [Gawker]

* Cleveland WR Andrew Hawkins pens a thorough, even-handed takedown of butthurt police union leaders demanding he apologize for taking the stance that police should try not to kill unarmed 12-year-olds. So apparently this is what the Browns are good at. [Talking Points Memo]

* David chats about the backstory behind Supreme Ambitions (affiliate link).

* Thanks to a former Skadden attorney’s failed attempt to kill himself, police were able to retrieve a suicide note — entitled “A Sad Ending to My Life” — that revealed the lawyer’s $5M Ponzi scheme. We may have more on this later. [Am Law Daily]

* “I’m not one who believes there are too many lawyers in the country,” says Dean Thomas Guernsey of Thomas Jefferson Law. Conveniently, only 29% of TJSL’s ’13 grads are working in full-time, long-term jobs as lawyers. Kudos! [U-T San Diego]

* The government just paid the least amount of money to legal services contractors since 2008. As far as Biglaw firms are concerned, Curtis Mallet-Prevost posted “significant losses,” receiving $2M less than it did in 2013. [National Law Journal]

* Because not everyone wears gas masks, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to keep police from using tear gas on peaceful protestors in Ferguson without first issuing “clear and unambiguous warnings.” [WSJ Law Blog]

* Ladies and gentlemen, this is the main event of the evening! IT’S TIME! FIGHTING out of the blue corner, angry UFC combatants who are planning to use “renowned” antitrust firms to secure “hundreds of millions of dollars”! [Bloody Elbow / SB Nation]

* The NAACP Legal Defense Fund took to Twitter to name every unarmed person of color killed by the police since 1999. Gawker compiled short bios on each. [Gawker]

* Texas planning to ban the “affluenza” defense. [Lowering the Bar]

* Pillsbury just moved into a cozy little office. Emphasis on “little.” [The National Law Journal]

* Georgetown Law students of color raise similar concerns as Columbia students. Again, I don’t understand emotional trauma and I definitely think extensions should be measured in days and not weeks, but it strikes me all the people complaining about the extensions are just exposing themselves as bad students. If you think your neighbor getting 2 more days will hurt your grade, you’re the one with the studying problem. [Georgetown Law Coalition]

* And now Harvard. [Harvard Law Coalition]

* If you rent a refrigerator, you consent to an arbitrator hearing your case after a repairman robs and beats you. Sounds about right. [Public Justice]

* Uber ban after rape allegations. [Redline]

* The Supreme Court told BP that no matter how much it tried, it can’t slip out of its settlement agreement like an oil-soaked seagull. [Think Progress]

* Finally, in the wake of the Eric Garner case, it’s worth looking back at what Justice Marshall told us about police chokeholds. [Mother Jones]

* Everyone’s “BFF” Anthony Elonis, of the Elonis v. U.S. case that’s currently before the Supreme Court, is facing additional scrutiny over a snarky note he sent to an ADA last year about burning a cross on the prosecutor’s lawn. Wow, he sounds like really a “fun” guy. [WSJ Law Blog]

* I was gonna go to class, but then I got high: DU Law is teaching a class about how to sell lots and lots of weed. Just kidding. According to the professor, the class is actually about the legal issues that come up when selling lots and lots of weed. [Cannabist]

* The HRC’s 2015 Corporate Equality Index is out, and noticeably absent from the list of Biglaw honorees is Boies Schiller. We suppose the firm forgot one of its name partners is helping to overturn gay-marriage bans across the country. [Am Law Daily]

* The University of Iowa College of Law is asking — nay, begging — the Supreme Court to block a retrial of Teresa Wagner’s claims of political bias discrimination. This is just one of the things law schools will do to keep their faculties liberal. [Associated Press]

* From Yale to Wayne State, law students are getting involved in protests to spread the word about social injustice in Ferguson in the wake of Michael Brown’s death. If you have a problem with this, someone from NYU might too. [National Law Journal]

* Winter break is the perfect time for undergraduate students to start working on their law school applications, but we’re more than willing to bet the future gunners out there have already sent all of theirs in. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]

* Some think SCOTUS should be the biggest issue of Election 2016. Why? Because most of the justices are old as hell, and they’ll only be older, more decrepit — and potentially more likely to retire — before or come voting time. [Washington Post]

* Deans from “middle-ranked” schools continue to question the results of the July 2014 bar examination. Sure, recent grads were part of the law school brain drain, but there’s no way they were “less able” than their older (and wiser) classmates. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Darren Wilson resigned this weekend, but it wasn’t because he killed an unarmed teenager in August. Wilson’s lawyer says his client quit because other Ferguson officers could’ve been harmed if Wilson remained on the police force. [Reuters]

* There’s only one thing that’s worse than a gunner, and that’s a septuagenarian gunner. At 73 years old, Jim Edwards is the oldest student at the Nashville School of Law, and he “view[s] what [he’s] doing as a calling from God.” Aww. [USA Today]

* This recent law school graduate may not have a job, but she figured out a creative way to make a small dent in her debt. She makes custom string art and sells it on Etsy. We’re willing to bet Texas Tech Law counts her as employed. [Dallas Morning News]

Ed. note: Above the Law will be dark on Thanksgiving and on a reduced publishing schedule on Friday, November 28, while we recover from turkey-induced comas.

* Holy backfire Batman! Florida desperately wanted to display a nativity scene in the State Capitol because it’s more important than making real laws. Now they’re probably going to be forced to display a scene from the Satanic Temple. [Slate]

* Researchers assert that college prestige has no bearing on the quality of the teaching. Would this carry over to law schools? [TaxProf Blog]

* The National Bar Association, representing predominantly African-American attorneys and judges, has issued a response to the grand jury’s decision in the Michael Brown shooting. [The National Bar Association]

* Speaking of Ferguson, apparently the investigator listed Darren Wilson as the “victim.” If you needed any more evidence of the power of semantics. [Lowering the Bar]

* The CATO Institute talks about the First Amendment and One, Inc. v. Olesen. It’s an hour-and-a-half panel discussion. Pretty impressive for a 24-word (plus one citation) decision. [C-SPAN]

* Is it a lie? Well, that depends on what your definition of “lie” is? [Dorf on Law]

* Are over the knee boots appropriate office attire? [Corporette]

* 8 women who left the law to follow their passions. [One 400]

* Yesterday, we suggested you should write more thank you notes. Well, here are some reasons why you shouldn’t. [The Muse ]