The typical law student will have about two dozen professors in his or her law school career. Many of them will be fine, some will be meh, a few will be bad, and one or two will be truly great – the kind of professor you’ll remember fondly years down the road. Maybe they turned you on to a new area of the law or a new way of thinking about the legal system....
Sometimes, when you draw enough fine lines, you box yourself in. If the Supreme Court hasn’t done that yet with their co-tenant consent to search jurisprudence, they very well could do so after Fernandez. We covered the Fernandez case, and the California Court of Appeals’ decision in depth when certiorari was granted back in May. With oral arguments set for mid-November, we’ll preview the case which should finally determine the limits of co-tenant consent under Georgia v....
Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers tells the tales of extraordinary people. More interesting than their success stories, however, is his analysis of what circumstances pushed them to greatness. One story in particular always resonated with me, especially once I began law school. Herbert Wachtell, Martin Lipton, Leonard Rosen, and George Katz, the founders of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, graduated into a bad economy in the 1960s. They couldn’t land positions with the “white shoe” firms, in part because they were from working-class Jewish families....
So what are you charging for a billable hour? No matter what your answer is, compared to the top rates, you might be selling yourself short. According to the Wall Street Journal, the following attorneys are all charging well above $1,000 an hour: Kirk Radke of Kirkland & Ellis - $1,250 an hour. Ian Taplin of Kirkland & Ellis - $1,220 an hour. Gerhard Schmidt of Weil Gotshal & Manges, - $1,165 an hour....
And then there was “HTGAWM” Episode 5. Is anyone still watching this show? We are, though my editor is nearing his breaking point. Shondaland, where everything works out perfectly for unethical lawyers and their clients, and where everyone is having lots of sex, isn’t for everyone. Anyway, if you’re just now tuning in, we have recaps and reviews of all of the episodes. Now, back to Episode 5 – SPOILERS FOLLOW....
Let’s be real – law school classes are not as scintillating as TV and movies make them seem. In fact, sometimes they’re the exact opposite and have the wonderful effect of, well, putting you to sleep. Long gone are the days when you feared cold-calling, eh? While many choose to treat class time as an occasion to g-chat and window shop (to the girl in the second row, at least move to the back of the room) in an effort to stay awake and make the time go by faster, there is also the option of paying attention and trying to learn – even if it is an area of law you know you’ll never practice in....
In plaintiff’s action against her employer under the state Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), trial court’s judgment in favor of plaintiff and award of $200,000 in damages is affirmed where: 1)the court properly denied defendant’s motion for nonsuit as it failed to provide reasonable accommodation for plaintiff and this failure was substantial; 2) trial court properly refused to give proposed jury instructions that were consistent with defendant’s flawed interpretation of the underlying law; 3) trial court’s comment on plaintiff’s burden of proof is unlikely to have changed the outcome of the trial and no prejudice resulted, assuming there was error....
Ahead of Super Bowl XLVIII, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Thursday announced a major prostitution and sex-trafficking bust. The sting operation, called “Operation Out of Bounds,” began 11 months ago, but the arrests were strategically timed to raise awareness of the issue of sex trafficking before the Super Bowl, reports The New York Times. The sporting event is reportedly a notorious magnet for the sex trade. But is it true?...
Dear Future Law Students: Here’s your first (obvious) lesson in the law: always check the fine print. American University’s Washington College of Law offers a scholarship, ahem, “tuition discount” to incoming 1Ls who are focused on public interest. But, as Prof. Paul Campos points out, there are some pretty significant strings attached, strings that could leave you owning six figures to the American Washington Bald Eagle Patriotic Adjectives School of Law....
California’s 16 specialty bar sections may be leaving the California Bar Association in the near future. Those specialty groups, which California attorneys may join as part of their membership in the bar, cover everything from antitrust law, to environmental law, to workers’ comp. But they’ve been struggling under new bar rules meant to balance the state bar’s role as both a regulator and a trade group, according to Courthouse News Service....
The gig economy may never be the same after the California Supreme Court expanded the definition of employee to include workers who had been treated as independent contractors. In Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, the state supreme court resolved an issue that has been at the heart of litigation against companies like Uber and Lyft. Although every case is different, there is a new standard in California....
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. v. Alpine Elec. of Am., Inc., No. 09-1544, concerned a patent infringement suit by Encyclopedia Britannica against various defendants, involving patents relating to a multimedia database search system for retrieving textual and graphical information. In affirming the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants in declaring the patents invalid as anticipated by foreign patent application, the court held that section 120 requires each application in the chain of priority to refer to the prior applications, and here, the patents in suit cannot claim priority as the ‘955 application failed to specifically reference the earlier filed ‘917 application and did not claim priority to the ‘917 application....
Davis v. Superior Court, B216345, concerned a defendant’s petition for a writ of mandate challenging the trial court’s denial of his motion to obtain the name of the informant and percipient witness in the prosecution for attempted murder. In granting the petition, the court held that, although the disclosure of the confidential informant’s identity is not mandatory simply because the informant was also a percipient witness, an in camera hearing should be held....
In Odom’s Tennessee Pride Sausage, Inc. v. FF Acquisition, LLC, No. 09-1473, the Federal Circuit addressed plaintiff’s challenge to the decision of the U.S. P.T.O., Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, granting summary judgment in favor of the defendant in an opposition to a trademark application. Plaintiff, a producer of food items such as sausages and breakfast sandwiches, argued that defendant’s new mark depicting a farm boy, resembled its registered mark and would likely cause prospective consumers to be confused....
Jason Platt, a Sheriff’s deputy from Florida, is making the streets safe by launching criminal investigations into wrong Burger King orders. If you ever ordered a Whopper Jr. with cheese, but ended up with a disgusting Whopper Jr. without cheese, Platt is your man. Platt landed himself a police department suspension when he investigated servers at a local Florida Burger King establishment after they accidentally got his wife’s order wrong, reports The Ledger....
The Nationwide Hambone Award for most unusual American pet insurance claim went to a 5-year-old boxer who swallowed a barbeque skewer. Every year the award is given to a pet in the US who has survived a bizarre injury, Nationwide Insurance reported. Contestants are chosen by the insurance company’s employees every month, and once a year, the top twelve weirdest claims are voted on nationally. According to Nationwide, the awards began when the company noticed that pet insurance claims were unusually quirky....
Not all lawyers take the same path to getting licensed. Fortunately for those that take the road less travelled, a decision from Supreme Court for the state of Washington might help to provide some clarity as to when the road less travelled becomes the road from which there’s no coming back. In short, the court ruled that a former inmate, who is now a law grad and Skadden Fellow recipient, can actually sit for her state’s bar exam....
Authorities are scratching their heads this week in response to a bizarre attack at the Brooklyn Heights Library in New York. Ralph Neptune, a 46-year-old homeless man, is accused of attacking a fellow library patron for allegedly watching porn. Neptune walked up to Ransom Alton, 52, on Tuesday evening and accused him of watching a racy video on a library computer. He then whipped out a knife and stabbed Alton in the neck and chest....
Admit it, you feel a secret joy when the IRS was permanently enjoined from enforcing regulations on the little people. In Loving v. IRS, the D.C. Circuit held that the IRS lacked the authority to enforce the Treasury Department Circular 230, which imposed regulations on tax return preparers. This case demonstrates that minor nuances in statutory language can cost you the case. The Treasury Department Circular 230, issued by the IRS, was controversial because it created a new category of tax return preparers (“registered tax return preparers”) and subjected them to the ethical standards and rules....
The judicial nomination of Caitlin Halligan for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was blocked by Senate Republicans on Tuesday, reports the Associated Press. On one side of the aisle, Democrats praised Halligan’s outstanding qualifications for the seat left vacant by Chief Justice John Roberts. Halligan, a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, was a clerk for D.C. Circuit of Appeals Judge Patricia M. Wald and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer....
