NYU

Sorry for your loss, John Doe.

Hey look, if you're gonna get accused of crimes you may or may have not committed, just be rich! /s

* You know you have to be doing something wrong as a state when a law school sues you. [NYU News]

* Things appear to be looking up for the Indian Child Welfare Act. [West Hawaii Today]

* Success doesn’t always make you safe in layoff season. [Law.com]

* The infighting among judges soft banning aspiring Yale clerks continues. [Daily Princetonian]

* Yup, this is STILL happening — rape victims being charged for he cost of their rape kits. [Slate]

* What happens to a university when its law school keeps dragging it down? [Lawyers, Guns and Money]

* Here come the legal scholars defending the constitutionality of Donald Trump’s dumb ideas. [NBC News]

* Are you going to get work dumped on you right before the holidays? You are going to get work dumped on you right before the holidays. [Daily Lawyer Tips]

* NYU is getting a new president — and a $1.1 million renovation to the president’s penthouse. [New York Times]

* NYPD officer is charged for arresting a man that tried to film him. [Gawker]

* Being convicted of a felony hasn’t made Dinesh D’Souza love Obama more. [Wonkette]

* The stigma of mental health issues when you are a lawyer. [Law and More]

* In a moving long-form piece, the Marshall Project details how the criminal justice system failed a rape victim. [The Marshall Project]

* “As a debater, a product of Jesuit schooling, a scholar of religion, and a legal scholar, I was taught that words matter. Rational discourse matters. Setting an example matters.” NYU President John Sexton makes a powerful statement on the rise of Islamaphobia. [NYU]

* Eric Schniederman is in the news for a reason unrelated to fantasy football — he’s banning the sale of realistic toy guns this Christmas. [Press Connects]

* David Lat pontificates on this year’s bonuses. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

* That judge who held 3 kids in contempt for refusing to visit their father now faces disciplinary action. [Jezebel]

* In economic terms, what do painkillers really cost? [Law and More]

* 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]

* Cheerios is claiming that “Liking” them on Facebook constitutes a waiver of the right to sue. Let’s take this moment to encourage everyone to Like Above the Law on Facebook. [NY Times] * New study determines that the United States is an oligarchy instead of a democracy. You're telling me a government explicitly founded on the principle that only a handful of wealthy men should have a voice grew into an oligarchy? Quelle surprise! * Oh look, John Edwards is back. [Slate] * In the continuing saga of NYU’s allegedly shady spending, there are now reports that former NYU Law Dean and current NYU President John Sexton used school funds to convert two apartments into a duplex for his son. His son was married to an NYU Law employee and as I’ve said before, a school located in housing-scarce Manhattan should be able to do something to house professors, but as they say, “the optics” aren’t good. [Chronicle of Higher Education] * Musings on what it’s like to clerk in the midst of “flyover country” (presumably like my early childhood home of Des Moines). It makes a valiant effort to redeem itself at the end, but this article is exactly why most parts of the country think New Yorkers are elitist dicks. Which, we kind of are, but you don’t want to broadcast that. [Ramblings on Appeal] * The government is profiting handsomely from law students. Is that really a bad thing? [Law & Economics Prof Blog] * A D.C. law professor is now a movie star. [Washington City Paper] * The judge in the New Orleans Affordable Housing case may know the real identity of one of the anonymous commenters in the case. And if one of the anonymous trolls was a federal prosecutor poisoning the well in the case — like everyone suspects — it could aid the defense. [Times-Picayune] * For those of you across the pond, there’s a one-day event for lawyers on the business case for Corporate Social Responsibility. It’s in England because American companies have already passed on the idea of corporate responsibility. [International Law Society]

Charles Grassley wants documents from NYU. Charles Grassley is not getting documents from NYU.

A professor at NYU thinks that your weight is an indication of how successful you'll be in your education.

Tales from the ATL Insider Survey: where can you find the law students with the biggest smiles on their faces in NYC?

ATL has a new assistant editor reporting for duty. He's our new Kreiger.

If you were picking a law dean who WASN'T like all the other law deans, who would you pick?

One university helps its medical students while continuing to fleece its law students...

* The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Obamacare over three days in March. Let’s fast forward to June so we can see how Election 2012 is going to turn out. [Blog of Legal Times] * The Grinch definitely stole AT&T’s Christmas this year, and even a team of Biglaw superstars couldn’t save the […]

You have to love it when law students are openly telling New York Magazine that they are stripping on the side. It's even better when it's a student at one of the best law schools in the nation. Or did the magazine just successfully troll its own readers?