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Pay As You Earn. For graduates suffering under the crushing burden of student loan debt, those words sounded so sweet a few years ago when President Barack Obama first uttered them. And then came the details. And the restrictions. Ten years of payments … unless you work in the private sector, in which case you’ll pay for twenty years. Payments capped at ten percent of discretionary income … unless you took out loans before October 2007 or stopped borrowing before October 2011....

Black Friday is right around the corner. After that? Cyber Monday. And in between? A whole lot of offers, sales, and clearances. And, sadly, a lot of deception, scams, and identity theft. So here are some holiday shopping tips, to keep you safe (legally speaking) both online and in real life. We’ve all seen the videos of people being trampled stampeding for the latest TVs, smartphones, and other steals. So, should you just point and click rather than wait in line and run?...

California Courts could face a new budget structure if Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Whittier) has his way. Calderon is the author of AB 1208, a California court budget restructuring proposal that narrowly won approval in the legislature this week. The bill would strip the Judicial Council — and the court bureaucracy, the Administrative Office of Courts (AOC) — of its control over the court system’s $3 billion budget, and return control over the budget to the legislature, reports the Associated Press....

Updating yesterday’s tragic news on the death of L.A. Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart in a hit and run crash, it turns out that the driver of the minivan that ran a red light, 22-year-old Andrew Thomas Gallo, may have fled from the scene of the accident because he knew he was in a world of legal hurt. The AP reports that Gallo: 1) was driving on a suspended license (the result of a previous DUI conviction); and 2) was “substantially over” the legal limit at the time of the crash....

Boy, what a week for Lawyers (Allegedly) Behaving Badly. Today, police announced the Florida State University alum who shot three people at the FSU library early this morning was a lawyer too. Myron May, 31, graduated from FSU and then received his J.D. from Texas Tech University School of Law. According to WESH-TV in Orlando, May entered the FSU library just after midnight, opening fire with a semiautomatic handgun, wounding three students....

In plaintiff’s shareholder derivative suit against Apple, Inc., and its directors and officers challenging a cash performance bonus plan for non-directors that was approved by Apple shareholders after the dissemination of a proxy statement that plaintiff claimed was misleading, dismissal of plaintiff’s complaint is affirmed where: 1) plaintiff lacked standing to assert derivative claims on behalf of Apple because of her failure to make a presuit demand on the board and her failure to allege that the making of such a demand would have been futile; and 2) the claims plaintiff purported to assert in the complaint as direct claims on behalf of herself and all similarly situated shareholders are not maintainable because the gravamen of those claims is corporate in nature and may therefore be asserted only by the corporation....

In a recent study, University of Dayton law professor Susan Wawrose asked legal employers what they looked for in new graduates. The results were surprising, notes The Wall Street Journal. Rather than seeking graduates with great practical skills, employers were more interested in “the softer skills, like work ethic, collegiality and a sense of individual responsibility.” Based on these new findings, here are five ways that you can be a great associate....

400,000 volunteer members make the American Bar Association the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world, according to the ABA’s website. So, it’s no small matter when the ABA announces the captains that will stand at its helm in the coming years. D.C.-based attorney, Carolyn Lamm is up first. She began her one-year tenure as ABA President yesterday and will remain in the position until August 2010. Not her first time in the leadership ring, Lamm served as President of the District of Columbia Bar in 2007 and is a partner with White and Case....

Chicago Police were dispatched to the home of Dawn and Arturo Montesdeoca on Saturday after receiving a call about a cupcake attack. Mr. Montesdeoca was reportedly covered in frosting and crumbs when police arrived. He accused his wife of escalating a verbal disagreement into a full-blown food fight. She has since been charged with domestic battery. There is no word as to whether she will be punished for ruining such delicious treats....

The Federal Circuit decided two patent cases today, one involving whether a preamble statement of purpose limits the scope of the patentee’s claims, and the other involving Federal Circuit’s controversial holding that section 112, first paragraph, contains a written description requirement separate from enablement. In Marrin v. Griffin, No. 09-1031, the Federal Circuit faced a challenge to the district court’s grant of summary judgment finding plaintiff’s ‘448 patent, related to a scratch-off label to mark beverage containers and cups, invalid as anticipated, claiming that the district court erred in treating the “for permitting” language in the preamble as a claim limitation....

A dog is being blamed for setting its owner’s apartment on fire Friday, when rescue crews arrived just in time to save the dog’s life. According to Wenatchee, Washington’s KPQ-AM radio, the canine culprit was a black Labrador that was attempting to retrieve a bag of dog food from the stove top. Instead, the dog accidentally “turned the stove on with its paw.” Although the pyro pooch survived the blaze, what liability could its owner potentially face?...

An escort who allegedly bit a man’s genitals is facing attempted murder charges in Florida, reports The Huffington Post. The woman, Priscilla Vaughn, was heard growling in a hotel room near Orlando. She’d allegedly met her date through an escort website. According to the victim’s accounts to sheriff’s deputies, the pair had dinner at Applebee’s, shared some drinks and then smoked marijuana. She allegedly also bit other parts of the victim’s body, against his will....

The Declaration of Independence, as the ratification of the thirteen American colonies’ war against Great Britain, was seen as an act of treason at the time. And while the phrase “hate speech” wasn’t in common parlance in the late 1700s, the Declaration certainly employed some inflammatory language – that was the whole point. Almost 250 years later, the Declaration of Independence, hate speech, and treason all came together on the most likely place: Facebook, of course....

A Florida woman has filed a lawsuit against the Miami Beach Police Department after she was arrested wearing only a loose robe that kept coming off, allegedly exposing her naked body to officers. Police were called to a Miami Beach apartment building after a cab driver called to report that a woman had gone inside to get money to pay for her cab fare but never returned, reports Miami’s WTVJ. The woman, Candice Padavick, was arrested for petit theft, along with battery on a law enforcement officer, and resisting arrest after officers said she became combative....

Back in my day, if you had to interview when applying to a law school, it was usually with an admissions officer or one of the school’s alumni. Today, it’s with a webcam. Well, sometimes. Video interviews are still rare, but they are becoming increasingly common. Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago allow students to skype into live interviews, for example, while St. John’s University and Northwestern have started to use prerecorded video interviews....

A new accuser has filed the first civil lawsuit against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, accusing Sandusky of molesting him more than 100 times as a child. The accuser, now 29 and identified in the lawsuit as “John Doe A,” also asserts Sandusky threatened to hurt the accuser’s family to keep him quiet, USA Today reports. The lawsuit, filed recently in Philadelphia, is the first civil suit in the Sandusky molestation scandal....

Shamir L. Coll may have felt he had a fool for a client in his first case before the Ohio Supreme Court. Coll, representing himself in the case, faced tough questions from the justices about his failure to disclose traffic convictions on an application to take the bar exam. Coll said that his traffic record wasn’t material to his bar admission, and that the First Amendment protected his right to say the police who cited him were racially motivated....

Gary Winner’s penis pump scam was anything but a winner. In fact, it was a big fat loser, landing him in jail for a little over 3 years. The Illinois medical device salesman pleaded guilty to health care fraud, selling a misbranded medical device in interstate commerce and money laundering in November, but his sentencing date was earlier this week. Federal authorities had accused him of carrying out a $2.2 million Medicare fraud scheme....

California courts typically hear preservation cases asking the judiciary to intervene on behalf of endangered animals or vegetation. Lest anyone question the court’s commitment to topic diversity, the California Supreme Court issued an opinion on Thursday in Save the Plastic Bag Coalition v. City of Manhattan Beach (Save the Plastic Bag). The Save the Plastic Bag Coalition, a commercial group that highlights the environmental impact of bags, sued the city of Manhattan Beach in August 2008 to bar the city from enforcing a new “point-of-sale plastic carry-out bag” ban until the city commissioned a full environmental impact report (EIR) in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)....

Trial court’s judgment requiring mandatory lifetime sex offender registration for a defendant convicted of attempting to exhibit harmful matter to a minor by the Internet and other crimes is affirmed as there was no equal protection violation in this case. Read People v. Kennedy, No. H034021 [HTML] Read People v. Kennedy, No. H034021 [PDF] Appellate Information Filed December 18, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Bamattre-Manoukian CounselFor Appellant: Daniel L. Barton, Esq, Daniel Olmos, Esq....