They say that money isn’t everything, but that’s not what law school students say. Just walk around any law school and listen to the chatter. It doesn’t take a formal survey to know that for most law students it’s (at least in part) about the money. But to make it official, a recent report says that Cornell Law School graduates get the top salaries. Now listen to that sucking sound coming from the top 10 law schools....
A woman in her 60’s pulled off a two year scam that came to an end on April 20 when she was sentenced to five years probation by Federal District Court Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco, Ca. The clever sexagenarian managed to convince the owners of the Inn Marin in Novato Ca., that she was an IRS agent and was able to continue her stay rent free from 2008, until the jig was up in February of this year....
ADEA Lawsuit In Ford v. Mabus, No. 09-5041, an action by a federal government employee, alleging discrimination on the basis of age in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the court reversed judgment for defendant where, because of what the court had called ADEA section 633a’s “sweeping” language –“all [federal government] personnel actions . . . shall be made free from any discrimination based on age”– plaintiffs may establish liability, though not necessarily entitlement to such remedies as reinstatement and backpay, by showing that consideration of age was a factor in the challenged personnel action....
It’s like a real life crossover episode between the casts of two very different television dramas. One involving the chaotic fight over an oil baron’s vast billion dollar estate, and the other being the life and times of a fast talking, high paid, and damn good lawyer who tows the line and once called a donkey named Buddy to the witness stand (this last part is actually true and got the case settled)....
Judge Rodolfo ‘Rudy’ Delgado said it was a campaign contribution. Sure, he took $5,500 in cash from a criminal defense lawyer. But they had worked together for years, and all the attorney wanted from the judge was a little help on a case. “In America we have the presumption of innocence and I intend to let the judicial process take its course,” Delgado told reporters after his arraignment on bribery charges....
Federal Judge Gail Standish recently dismissed a $42 million lawsuit against mega-pop star Taylor Swift in which plaintiff Jesse Braham alleged that Swift ripped off his lyrics. Just any old dismissal wouldn’t fit the occasion, however. The judge decided to have some fun and wrote, “[a]t present, the Court is not saying that Braham can never, ever, ever get his case back in court,” but that Braham had “bullet holes” in his case....
It’s bar review time, and there’s no easy way to say this: your life sucks. For the next few months, you’ll be studying incessantly, neglecting relationships, and nervously pull at your hair, hoping and praying that you don’t fail because if you do … actually … for the majority of you, it makes no difference: you’re unemployed anyway. Welcome to 2008-2013. Been there. It gets better. We promise. Even still, it’s an expensive test, and no one wants to suffer through bar review more than once....
Have you ever heard of North Carolina Central University? Eh, whether you’ve heard of it isn’t that important. What is important is that the school’s graduating law students were recently treated to a commencement speech written by a student at Binghamton University in New York. Their classmate had stolen it from YouTube. Preston Mitchum, who is apparently some sort of student leader at NCCU’s law school, was designated to give this year’s commencement speech at the school-wide professional and graduate student celebration, reports the News Observer....
When it comes to gay rights, the legal industry tends to be pretty supportive. Indeed, when gay marriage came before the Supreme Court last year, no major firms were willing to argue against gay equality. But there are still places where the gay rights orthodoxy has not spread, and Brigham Young University is one of them, according to a former BYU law student. Brad Levin claims that, after writing a book on gay marriage and Mormonism during his 3L year, the school threatened him with expulsion if he didn’t change his position....
The federal regulatory environment is primed for some significant changes. With a new Congress beginning its first session today, and a new presidential administration beginning in just a few weeks, there’s a lot of regulatory shifts coming – even if those changes don’t come immediately. Yet, if change is certain, the shape that it will come in isn’t. We don’t know, for example, how Dodd-Frank will mutate in the new political climate, or what a company’s legal obligations will be under a post-Obamacare regime....
Smoking can be an expensive habit. It can be really expensive when you have to pay an extra $2,000 every time you light up. But that’s just what Harry Lysons, 70, of Manhattan, New York has been ordered to do, the New York Post reports. The Post obtained papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court which state that he must pay his neighbors, Russell and Amanda Poses, $2,000 every time he smokes a cigar in his apartment, and if he doesn’t pay within 15 days, he will have to pay another $1,500....
Trial court judgment finding that defendant was a sexually violent predator and committing him to the Department of Mental Health for an indeterminate term is affirmed where trial court did not err in preventing defense counsel from cross-examining the state’s experts about the extent to which they considered results of a polygraph examination that was administered to defendant, as there was no reasonable probability that the jury would have reached a different result if the court had permitted defense counsel to inquire further of the experts about the polygraph examination report....
Defendant’s child molestation conviction is affirmed where: 1) when a defendant is charged with felony child annoyance or molestation as a recidivist, the appropriate statute of limitations is the three-year felony statute of limitations; and 2) there was sufficient evidence to support a conclusion that defendant touched the victim with the specific intent to arouse or gratify himself and/or the victim. Read People v. Shaw, No. F054698 Appellate Information Filed August 28, 2009...
If you haven’t been following the saga of the Prenda Law porn copyright trolling extortion scheme, the following might be a bit a shocking. For those of you that have been following the utterly unbelievable story, it just got better. This week, one of the principals in the scheme just plead guilty. For those who don’t know: Lawyers at the law firm Prenda Law were accused of making pornography in order to have that pornography “illegally” distributed online so that they (the lawyers) could sue (or shakedown, or extort, or blackmail, settlements from) the pornography downloaders....
What would you do for a fake sun tan? According to the Associated Press, a Connecticut mother was charged with leaving her two young children in her car in freezing temperatures while she went to a sun tanning salon. Now, Candy Ann Rock, a 28-year-old mom faces charges of first-degree reckless endangerment and two counts of leaving a child under the age of 12 unattended in a motor vehicle. Weather reports showed it was 28° at the time of the incident and the wind chill was 19 degrees at the time....
You can use a law degree for anything, they say, and they’re not entirely wrong. Lawyers have gone on to become movie stars, dictators, even ice cream makers. But you don’t need to become a rock star to have an interesting career, as this week’s cool jobs attest. As part of our affiliate relationship with Indeed, this week we’re bringing you jobs touching on everything from space exploration, to a charming town in Arizona, to, well, rubber shoes....
Between juice cleanses and smoothie bars, liquid diets seem to be all the rage. They’re also really expensive, so some people prefer to make their own smoothies instead of paying the markup on a pre-packaged juice cleanse. That frugality had created an increased demand for fancy blenders. The two big winners in the high-end blender wars have been Vita-Mix and Blendtec. That posed a problem for Blendtec, because it claimed that Vita-Mix had ripped off its design....
What do Tiffany Trump and Kourtney Kardashian have in common, besides being members of reality television families? Alright, so the Trumps are not technically a reality TV family. But they are definitely on Trump TV enough. In any case, have your figured out the connection? Tiffany and Kourtney both want to go to law school, but they don’t really need to. They have enough money, fame, and leisure to last a lifetime....
Last month, AT&T announced plans to acquire Time Warner for over $85 billion. The merger, if allowed, would give birth to a massive new telecom and media Goliath, combining one of the nation’s biggest content creators with one of its biggest content distributors. But, like all mergers, AT&T and Time Warner will have to survive the scrutiny of antitrust authorities at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission first....
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley’s college editorials are coming back to haunt her. Bradley, who was appointed by Governor Scott Walker last year, has always been considered a conservative. But her student op-eds show what form her college-aged conservatism took: full-on, hardcore homophobia. Bradley’s writings will make your drunk, Trump-loving uncle look like a master of good taste. College students and future lawyers, this is why you don’t put your crazy rantings down in writing....
