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Los Angeles, a wealthy couple with ownership of a baseball team, an alleged affair, divorce, forged documents…it’s all in the McCourt case happening in Los Angeles. It looks like Tarnished Twenty is going to start off strong this week. Jamie and Frank McCourt met at Georgetown in 1979. Jamie practiced family law and Frank worked in real estate. The two eventually became extremely wealthy buying property in the Boston area. Eventually they became interested in buying a baseball team and purchased the Dodgers....

So Michael Vick got released from prison, according to The League at the Washington Post, and is going to home confinement to complete the last two months of his sentence while doing some construction work. At this point, the only thing there is for sure, is an abundance of speculation on where Vick’s football career is going to go, and whether it should even go anywhere for that matter. But here’s some of what Vick faces ahead on the road to getting back on the NFL playing field....

The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting… Okay. Let’s rephrase. The rich are getting richer off of themselves and the poor. At least in BigLaw, where partners and senior counsel are raking in an average of $661 per billable hour. It’s an abysmal rate when compared to the industry’s heavy hitters, but it’s up $22 from 2010. That’s worth a cocktail or two, no? As for associates, they’re worth an average of $445 an hour, according to Daily Report....

Snake-handling pastor Gregory Coots had his snakes confiscated by Tennessee wildlife agents. But he’s praying he’ll get them back for his Sunday services. Unfortunately for him and his congregation, it doesn’t seem like that’s ssssso likely at this point. Coots is a pastor in Middlesboro, Kentucky, known for using snakes in church services. He was driving through Tennessee on his way home from Alabama, where he’d just purchased five snakes....

Wizards Gilbert Arenas could be facing more gun charges. If so, this will be the second time in five years he has faced gun charges. In 2003, Arenas pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of carrying a concealed weapon in San Francisco. Now, according to the Washington Post,the latest gun incident involving NBA all-star happened on December 21. Arenas along with his Washington Wizards teammate Javaris Crittenton are accused of weapons violations in the team’s locker room during a reported dispute over a poker debt....

While being a competent lawyer is one thing, being competent with technology is another thing entirely. Tech is like a language of its own, and some people know how to speak it, while the rest are left to learn what they can through crude hand gestures, step-by-step guides, and seemingly endless, frustrating hours of point-and-click-trial-and-error. But the truly tech savvy don’t just know how to do everything, they know how to figure out how to do the things they don’t (and fast)....

Airbnb is already on thin ice in many cities, but New York City sex workers are turning these short-term rental apartments into brothels, according to a new report. The New York Post says at least one escort service has turned to Airbnb for a “more discreet” and cost-effective alternative to hotels. The rooms are rented by each individual escort who then pays the rent with a pre-paid debit card, leaving the owners unaware of the “business” that went down in their homes....

The attorney-client privilege is one of the most closely guarded layman-professional relationships, but California takes it to a whole new level. It even has codified the attorney-client privilege (unlike other states which rely on rules derived from the ABA rules) in Cal. Evid. Code section 900 et seq. It turns out that even when privilege has been used for abuse, California jurisdiction is highly unwilling to question the practice. In the case of Dp Pham, LLC v....

Things you thought you could count on in this world: the Easter Bunny, flowers in springtime, Grandma. Sad to say you should cross one item off the list, and it isn’t the mythological rabbit. Last week, a Florida granny was arrested and charged with the grandmother of all schemes: bilking more than $1 million from friends and her church pastor. This is a sorry case of victim on victim crime. Grandma Siegel was herself reportedly defrauded by one of the fine imported Nigerian lottery scams to which she lost more than $10,000....

A 65-year-old convicted serial bank robber is making headlines for asking the judge for the maximum sentence as well as to be sent to his favorite prison. As wacky as this sounds, the old-timer has his reasons. Fortunately for him, the judge agreed to hand out the maximum sentence, but did not comply with the request to send him to his preferred institution. Chris Peak was released from custody most recently last year....

A Berkeley law graduate was taken to “prison boot camp” on Wednesday as part of a guilty plea to felony charges for killing an exotic bird. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Justin Teixeira, 25, began his 190 days in “regimental discipline” with the Nevada Department of Corrections as punishment for beheading a bird at the Flamingo’s Wildlife Habitat in October 2012. Teixeira’s eligibility to practice law is already on the bubble, and things may get much worse if the bird de-brainer fails his prison boot camp program....

New Orleans city attorney, Jason Cantrell, may have committed the ultimate error in court. No, he didn’t forget a key piece of evidence or forget to address the judge as “your honor.” Instead, while chatting away with police officers in criminal court, a joint tumbled out of the attorney’s pockets. Cantrell was apparently lost in conversation with police and did not realize either that he was carrying marijuana or that it was on the verge of falling out....

In In re Damian M., No. D055552, the Fourth District faced a challenge to the juvenile court’s denial of minor-defendant’s request for deferred entry of judgment (DEJ), after admitting that he possessed the 10.1 pounds of marijuana for sale. In affirming the judgment, the court held that the juvenile court was well within its discretion in denying DEJ to the minor under the circumstances of the offense he committed and the criminal sophistication shown by his conduct....

United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims judgment denying a claim for service connection benefits for bilateral hearing loss is affirmed where the court did not misinterpret the benefit of the doubt doctrine under 38 U.S.C. sec. 5107(b), and properly decided that claimant could not benefit from the doctrine because the preponderance of evidence weighed against a nexus between his further hearing loss and his military service. Read Fagan v....

Scott Maasen was in love, but he was dealing with an occupational hazard. He had been a prosecutor, then turned to the dark side of criminal defense. Along his hazardous career path, he picked up some bad habits. Now he’s going to prison for bankruptcy fraud, but that’s not the worst part. His fiancée will not be getting the $90,000 engagement ring he bought for her, and that means hell....

For over two seasons, just about every new quarterback signing in the NFL has had one name attached to the story: Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick had accused the league and teams of colluding to blackball him from NFL rosters following his criminal justice system protests during the 2016 season. And every new mediocre, aged, or inexperienced QB added to team payrolls begged the question: Why not Kaepernick? That question might have a little more of an answer to it now....

As people died in the largest fire in California history, Verizon said firefighters would have to pay more if they wanted better internet service to battle the blaze. It’s an allegation almost too hard to believe, but there it is in a lawsuit joined by 22 states against the Federal Communications Commission. They are demanding the government restore net neutrality, a policy that kept companies like Verizon from throttling internet services....

It’s no secret that some people hate lawyers. Unfortunately, there are times when that enmity is actually justified. The majority of lawyers out there, it appears, bill their clients in a manner that is honest, above board, and in good faith. But then you get the lawyers who spoil it for everyone else, and the whole profession gets a black eye. Furs and Lingerie Webster Hubbell bilked his firm to the tune of about $480K in client billings so he could run off and buy lingerie and furs at Victoria’s Secret....

Authorities arrested 65-year-old attorney Judith Kenney after she brought a gun onto an American Airlines plane in Texas recently. Her attorney claims that it was all a simple error. Kenney carries a gun in her computer bag for her own protection. A disgruntled current client. A disgruntled former client. That guy you sent to jail for 10 years who just got out. The scary husband that you just helped your client divorce....

The Tewksbury Police Department paid $500 to regain access to its computer files after an anonymous hacker encrypted their data. The department received a pop-up ransom note that read, “Your personal files are encrypted. File decryption costs ~ $500.” After numerous attempts to unlock the data themselves, Tewksbury paid the ransom in bitcoin. Cuffed by Encryption Tewksbury Police Chief Timothy Sheehan initially thought the computer slowdown was a normal glitch or a virus....