State Bar of California

Access-to-justice expert Rebecca Sandefur also encourages panel to consider loosening unauthorized practice restrictions.

The State Bar of California is examining more than 2,000 lawyer convictions it did not previously know about.

Test takers who took advantage of the program performed much better on the bar exam than those who did not participate.

There could be a negative impact on access to justice if lawyers statewide had to raise their fees to cover the costly insurance.

They'd like you to believe this about the school's students and graduates -- not the money its investors will lose if the school can no longer operate.

'The hits just keep on coming' for the State Bar.

* As the Obama administration pushes for recognition of transgender rights, the transgender community may have found an unlikely ally: the late Justice Antonin Scalia. His opinion in the 1998 Oncale decision on sex discrimination was cited in the administration’s letter to public school officials warning them that gender-identity discrimination was prohibited by civil rights laws. A former Scalia clerk has called it an “absurd misreading of Title IX.” [Los Angeles Times]

* We’re now in the home stretch of the Supreme Court’s term, and with upcoming rulings on affirmative action, abortion, contraceptive coverage, immigration, and Puerto Rico’s debt, it’s going to get harder and harder for the justices to avoid 4-4 splits. In the majority of these cases, they’ll have to stop agreeing to disagree so it doesn’t look like we’ve got a Court in controversy with many deadlocks. [Bloomberg Politics]

* The State Bar of California has been criticized over a lack of transparency as to its finances, and in particular, its “rampant spending” on executive salaries. In fact, those at the top of the food chain at the California Bar earn salaries which exceed that of the state’s governor, who earns nearly $180,000 per year. That’s a lot of cash to fail more than half of the state’s bar-exam takers (more on that later today)! [WSJ Law Blog]

* “She has single-handedly stuck a knife in the back of every Uber driver in the country. The entire class was thrown under the bus and backed over.” Shannon Liss-Riordan, the lawyer who arranged a $100 million settlement deal in the Uber class-action over drivers’ employment status, is being attacked by her own clients, and now other lawyers are trying to have her removed as lead attorney on the case. [Chicago Tribune]

* “They give their young workers Ping-Pong tables and take away their constitutional rights.” That’s not a work perk companies are willing to brag about. More and more technology startups are embracing arbitration agreements to prevent their employees from filing lawsuits over workplace disputes that could have potentially ruinous financial effects on their bottom lines if they were litigated in court. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Hot on the heels of the news that the majority of students enrolled in California’s “failure factories” unaccredited law schools drop out before graduation, legislators are pushing for the state bar to do something about it before even more prospective students are conned. [Los Angeles Times]

* Robots will be coming for your jobs more quickly now thanks to the largest law firm in the world. Dentons invested an untold sum in Ross, an app that will inevitably replace first-year lawyers by utilizing super computer Watson’s artificial intelligence to perform legal research. [Globe and Mail]

* Slowly but surely, the legal industry is making a comeback in terms of headcount. Sure, the entire profession is only employing 3,500 more people now than it was at this time last year (sorry about that, law school grads), but it’s still an improvement. [Am Law Daily]

* Just because it doesn’t look like the Securities and Exchange Commission has been doing anything doesn’t mean that lawyers at the agency have been twiddling their thumbs. They’ve got some major things in the works, they swear. [DealBook / New York Times]

* “I wonder how it feels to save the life of a mass murderer? Good job.” In a shocking verdict, convicted Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes was sentenced to life in prison. All it took was one holdout juror to take the death penalty off the table. [Reuters]

* According to the Second Circuit, the long arm of the law doesn’t extend to the middle finger. You can’t just go around arresting dudes for flipping you the bird. [U.S. Second Circuit / FindLaw] * President Obama jetted off to Hawaii before he could sign the fiscal cliff bill, so he ordered it be signed by autopen. Of course, people are losing their minds over it. [Volokh Conspiracy] * Should we scrap the Constitution? Georgetown Law professor Louis Seidman continues to advocate for constitutional disobedience in this epic ConLaw throwdown. [HuffPost Live] * Don’t celebrate your increase in California bar passage points yet. The state bar changed its tune, and a 40% pass rate is the new standard. That shouldn’t be hard, eh TJSL? [California Bar Journal] * One of our former columnists, Jay Shepherd, has a great way to calculate what your actual hourly rate should be, if you don’t mind working for just pennies a day. Most lawyers would mind. [jayshep] * For the love of God, even Gawker knows that going to law school these days is a fool’s errand, or in their own words: “IT’S A SUCKER’S BET. A CLEAR SUCKER’S BET.” Come on, stop being suckers. :( [Gawker] * If you’d like to hear Dean Lawrence Mitchell of NYT op-ed fame sound off on why there isn’t a lawyer oversupply problem, and why it isn’t his job to get law students jobs, we’ve got a video for you to watch….

Ed. note: Your Above the Law editors are busy celebrating their freedom today (and we hope that you are, too). We will return to our regular publication schedule on Thursday, July 5.

* At this point, the Supreme Court’s dramatic deliberations on the Affordable Care Act are like a leaking sieve. Now we’ve got dueling narratives on Chief Justice Roberts’s behind-the-scenes flip-flopping. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Life, liberty, and the pursuit of fabulosity! The Department of Justice has asked the Supreme Court to grant cert on two DOMA cases, contending that Section 3 of the statute is unconstitutional. [Poliglot / Metro Weekly]

* A famous fabulist: according to California’s State Bar, disgraced journalist Stephen Glass is a “pervasive and documented liar,” but that’s not stopping him from trying to get his license to practice law. [Los Angeles Times]

* Clayton Osbon, the JetBlue pilot who had an epic mid-flight nutty and started ranting about religion and terrorists, was found not guilty by reason of insanity by a federal judge during a bench trial. [New York Post]

* After a month of bizarre legal filings, Charles Carreon has dropped his lawsuit against Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal. We’re hoping that there will be an awesome victory cartoon drawn up soon. [Digital Life / Today]

* Northwestern Law is the only American law school to have joined a 17-member global justice league geared toward legal teaching and research collaborations. But do they get cool costumes? [National Law Journal]

* UNC Law received two charitable gifts totaling $2.7M that will be used to fund tuition scholarships for current and future students. Maybe their students won’t have to create tuition donation sites anymore. [Herald-Sun]

* This law is for the birds (literally and figuratively). California’s ban on the sale of foie gras had only been in effect for one day before the first lawsuit was filed to overturn it as unconstitutional. [San Francisco Chronicle]

* The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the Department of Commerce recently announced that mermaids do not exist. Not to worry — it’s still legal to believe that Ariel is a babe. [New York Daily News]

Should undocumented immigrants be allowed to practice law if they've passed the bar exam?