Posted on 03 December 2008
The oldest living judge tells all.
Before judges Judy and Joe Brown, before Divorce Court and Moral Court and Power of Attorney, there was just . . . Joe Wapner.
Twenty years ago last month, the producers of a fledgling legal series tapped the retired Los Angeles County Superior Court judge to preside over their “People’s Court,” [...]
Posted on 01 December 2008
In the days following the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, We asked legal experts to assess the impact on lawyers, law firms, and law students.
Lawyers
Robert Hirshon, President, American Bar Association
Lawyers are going to be asked to help this country achieve the delicate balance between feeling secure on the one [...]
Posted on 25 October 2008
“Whenever the U.S. News & World Report rankings come out, people tend to piss and moan,” says Brian Leiter, a professor at the University of Texas Law School in Austin. The solution? Leiter and others have been cooking up their own ways to grade law schools.
Leiter began [...]
Posted on 25 September 2008
It’s often been said that law school teaches students to “think like lawyers,” but it is difficult to pinpoint what this actually means. In some [...]
Posted on 17 September 2008
The truth is, William Ginsburg has always had a nose for high-profile lawsuits (hell, Liberace was a client). But in January 1998, Ginsburg, a medical malpractice attorney by day, took on the case of one Monica S. Lewinsky, and high-profile took on new meaning. By that spring, Ginsburg was a staple on the nightly news [...]
Posted on 16 September 2008
It was Super Bowl Sunday 2000, and Christina Storm was having one of those just-crazy-enough-to-work epiphanies that everyone seemed to be having in the days before the bottom fell out of the Nasdaq. Only Storm’s idea was unusual in two ways—it wasn’t intended to make money, and it actually made sense.
At the time, Storm ran [...]
Posted on 15 September 2008
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The annual ABA convention begins one month ago today. Setting a new record, several featured speakers have actually finished talking.
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Happy 47th birthday to Corbin Bernsen, L.A. Law’s Arnie Becker.
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Forty-four years ago, the historic Civil Rights Act of 1957 is signed into law, establishing a civil rights division at the Department of Justice and authorizing the [...]
Posted on 14 September 2008
No, the sky isn’t falling. Drooping in spots, yes. But definitely not falling. That’s the consensus among hiring partners, legal headhunters, and law school placement officials when asked to assess the fall 2005 job market.
First, the bad news: A handful of firms have cut lawyers loose either through layoffs or through the performance-review process (firms [...]
Posted on 30 August 2008
Hollowpoint
By Rob Reuland (Random House, 288 pages; $24.95)
Hollowpoint is a dark and heartbreaking novel, a literary thriller with a kick-ass soul. First-time author Rob Reuland, a senior district attorney in the homicide bureau of the Brooklyn D.A.’s office, knows his terrain—the perps, the cops, the pross, and the grimy back rooms and backstreets of Brooklyn. [...]
Posted on 29 August 2008
It’s a Thursday evening in February, almost 7:30. The long wooden study tables are packed, the reference librarian in hot demand. “You watch,” whispers a 2L in the reading room of Harvard Law School’s Langdell library. “A lot of people will be leaving this building soon.”
Library flight isn’t the only sign of a new campus-wide [...]