Tennessee

This may come as a shock, but professional sports just may be exploiting labor.

* Virginia is for lovers — gay and straight alike. Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen (E.D. Va.) just struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage (but stayed her ruling pending appeal). Happy Valentine’s Day! [Washington Post]

* The Ninth Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, issued a major Second Amendment ruling. Is it correct, and what will happen next? Professor Eugene Volokh shares his thoughts. [Volokh Conspiracy; Volokh Conspiracy]

* Which leading law firms are trying to make the Comcast/Time Warner Cable monstrosity into reality? [American Lawyer]

* Did a Biglaw firm make a big-time mistake by blowing a deadline to appeal a $40 million verdict? [Law360 (sub. req.)]

* Speaking of screw-ups, making them in the e-discovery realm can be costly — a lesson that California is learning the hard way, to the tune of $32 million. [ACEDS]

* Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin thought he’d be acquitted; he thought wrong. [ABA Journal]

* George Washington wasn’t a member of the one of the 8 magic groups — but his story still illustrates the truth of The Triple Package (affiliate link), according to Washington biographer Logan Beirne. [Fox News]

* Authorities have made an arrest for the package bombing that killed a retired Tennessee lawyer and his wife. [CNN]

* This guessing game is over, even though we’d guessed this from the start. After decamping from the Securities and Exchange Commission, George Canellos will return to his old stomping grounds at Milbank Tweed. [DealBook / New York Times]

* You can’t insult Duke and get away with it. Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton secured a one-year no-contact order against Addison Chance, the e-cig retailer who sent “menacing and harassing” emails and voicemails to a partner. [Winston-Salem Journal]

* Heenan Blaikie’s talks may have fallen through with DLA Piper, but another Biglaw firm swooped in to rescue more than 20 of the failed Canadian firm’s survivors. You can call Dentons their knight in shining billable hours. [Globe and Mail]

* You can’t always get what you want. Accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsaernaev’s trial is scheduled for November 2014, despite his lawyers asking for a September 2015 start date. [Bloomberg]

* A Tennessee lawmaker just introduced the “Turn the Gays Away” bill, which would allow businesses to refuse goods and services to gay people. If this isn’t ‘MURICA, we don’t know what is. [MyFOX Memphis]

* “We have offered generous buyouts—generous by anyone’s standards—and we are now waiting for volunteers.” Yeah, good luck with that. Things don’t look great for profs at Albany Law. [WSJ Law Blog]

Religious zealotry shows up in chancery court, ordering a name change based on a complete lack of legal and religious understanding.

An attorney brings a federal suit against Apple for failing to block him from naked ladies.

When temperatures soar, so do women's hemlines. When cold fronts drop, women's necklines do too. But be wary of following these trends if you're an attorney...

The ABA's casual use of its authority comes from a higher power that also barely cares.

In the wake of last week’s election, citizens from all 50 states have signed petitions calling for secession from the United States. Do they have any legal standing?

Scalia now has Kagan hunting defenseless animals. Great. His victory is nearly complete...

It’s that time of year again: bar exam results season! Which states have already released their results? And in which state can you sit for the exam under a pseudonym?

A former administrator at Vanderbilt Law School just got a hefty sentence after pleading guilty to theft and statutory rape. His boyfriend got sentenced too. How much time did they get, and what are some of the salacious allegations?

What should happen when a professor doesn't even write her own exam -- and just takes it straight from a widely available outline?

* Arizona’s immigration law is heading to the Supreme Court today. Meanwhile, former Senator Dennis DeConcini lobbed the worst insult ever against his state. How embarrassing for you, Arizona. [New York Times]

* Will Wal-Mart regret not disclosing its bribery investigation sooner? Not when the delay saved millions in criminal fines. What Wal-Mart will regret is being forced into disclosure by the NYT narcs. [Corporate Counsel]

* Delete all the oil from ocean, and then maybe we’ll care about this. A former BP employee was charged with obstruction of justice for deleting texts having to do with the Deepwater Horizon disaster. [Bloomberg]

* The Tennessee Board of Law Examiners has granted Duncan Law an extension on its bid for ABA accreditation. Woohoo, five more years of allowing students to “negligently enroll.” [Knoxville News Sentinel]

* “Once you cross the six-figure mark, you think, what’s a few thousand dollars more?” You’re doing it wrong: you’re supposed to be bragging about a six-figure salary, not a six-figure debt obligation. [Baltimore Sun]

* New Jersey residents don’t always have the great pleasure of nearly being killed by two high-speed Lamborghinis, but when they do, they prefer that police officers be suspended and sue over it. [ABC News]

Man goes on epic crime rampage...

We’ve previously written about all of the problems that have befallen Duncan School of Law’s hopes for provisional accreditation by the American Bar Association. With motions pending in Duncan Law’s antitrust lawsuit against the ABA, perhaps the school thought that it could enjoy a momentary respite from all of the negative media attention it’s been […]

Over the weekend, the New York Times unleashed a feature article about the role of the American Bar Association in keeping the cost of legal education absurdly high. The school profiled in that article was Duncan Law School, which was seeking provisional accreditation from the ABA. The article came out in print on Sunday. Everybody talked about it on Monday. And today, on Tuesday, the ABA denied Duncan its provisional accreditation....

I’m really enjoying the newfound interest from the New York Times about the state of legal education. Times reporter David Segal seems genuinely interested in recording the growing tragedy of American law schools. Concern from mainstream media is great, but the proposed solutions are a little bit scary. Last month, Segal Slate explored the possibility […]

Here at Above the Law, we sometimes write about career alternatives for attorneys. But what about attorneys who are living double lives in seemingly conflicting professions — attorneys like Alisha Smith, district attorney-cum-dominatrix extraordinaire? Today, we bring you a story about an attorney coming straight outta Compton Knoxville. Enter Lawyer Mike, a man who claims […]

I’ve said from the beginning that while the goals of the Occupy Wall Street crowd were not wrong, their tactics have been lacking. The denizens of “Wall Street” (at least not in its geographic form) didn’t cause the collapse of the American economy; they’re just trying to figure out how to profit from it. There’s […]

One of our tipsters alerted us to an episode of TLC's What Not to Wear -- the world's greatest guilty pleasure television show -- that we seem to have missed when it aired last year. The show featured a 2L from a southern law school, but this girl dressed more like a prostitute facing arraignment (sorry, Reema) than the lawyer representing her. So who is she, was she hot, what law school did she attend, and were Stacy and Clinton able to change this girl from a hooker to a looker?