Typography for Laywers. A basic introduction to typography in a clean, well-organized (and still growing) site. [more inside]
posted by camcgee on Sep 26, 2008 - 96 comments

Where's Lionel Hutz, Attorney at Law, when you need him? Circumcision is sexual abuse. CIA is Brainwashing. Don't wait, choose your class action today!
posted by yoyoceramic on Apr 16, 2008 - 33 comments

"Pet custody disputes have become an increasingly common fixture in divorce cases." Related: "Animal lawyers are careful to distinguish themselves from animal rights advocates... These lawyers are concerned primarily with getting the legal system to acknowledge that animals have an intrinsic value beyond mere property."
posted by amyms on Sep 17, 2007 - 15 comments

Lawyer rating site Avvo is getting sued by - well, lawyers. Hopefully nobody at Avvo is surprised by this! The lawsuit alleges that Avvo's rating system is unfair and results in bad ratings for some lawyers.
posted by etoile on Jun 18, 2007 - 23 comments

Today we learn that Enron's outside law firm, Vinson & Elkins, has escaped unscathed. The Enron debacle sucked in many people, but the lawyers have so far not been held liable. But many have asked: what about the lawyers [pdf]?
posted by Falconetti on Dec 11, 2006 - 23 comments

Two recent papers examine networks among Republicans: one among lawyers and the other among judges. Lawyers of the Right: Networks and Organization concludes that conservative lawyers, and particularly the Federalist Society, occupies a structurally important core bridging the gap between the religious and business constituencies on the right, which otherwise wouldn't interact. Meanwhile, Do Republican Judges Cite Other Republican Judges More? concludes that judges tend to base outside-circuit citation decisions on the political party of the cited judge, tend to cite judges of the opposite political party significantly less, are more likely to engage in biased citation practices in certain high stakes situations, and cite disproportionately more to those judges that cite back to them frequently. [via Professor Bainbridge and Empirical Legal Studies]
posted by monju_bosatsu on Jul 18, 2006 - 10 comments

The New York office was opened by the founders of the Firm in 1908, the same year women competed in the modern Olympics for the first time. While the Firm moved its headquarters to Los Angeles in 1972, the New York office remains a critical branch of the Firm today, paying tribute to the firm's deeply rooted traditions by undervaluing support staff, requiring formal business attire, and excluding Jews.
posted by grumblebee on Jun 3, 2006 - 19 comments

Kinderstart sues Google to get a higher page ranking. Why on earth should Google be obligated to give another search engine access to their proprietary page ranking methods, unless the goal is for Kinderstart to either steal or play games with Google's ranking methods... again?
posted by insomnia_lj on Mar 19, 2006 - 13 comments

waxy.org vows to fight Bill Cosby's lawyers and continue to provide hosting to House of Cosbys despite receiving a cease & desist letter [PDF]. Andy Baio, founder of waxy.org, discusses this in the NY Times and provides updates on his site. As previously posted, Bill Cosby's lawyers were successful in getting the creators of House of Cosbys to stop hosting and making new episodes of their parody series.

It appears that threatening letters and lawsuits will continue to be filed against internet parody sites as celebrities try to protect what they view as their copyright, according to the Wall Street Journal.
posted by Mijo Bijo on Mar 6, 2006 - 33 comments

"Thank you for the refresher course on contracts. This is not a bar exam question."
'bla bla bla."
posted by orthogonality on Feb 16, 2006 - 85 comments

Lawyers appear to missing out on the growth of the leisure class. Despite American's growing leisure time, and despite another round of pay increases for starting associates, lawyers seem to be working more hours than ever. As long as lawyers are tied the billable hour, it seems that greater salaries for associates inevitably means longer hours for associates. Law professor Pat Schiltz argues [pdf] that the longer hours for new associates combined with the high pressures of law practice means that those lawyers often suffer from depression, anxiety, alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide at very high rates, and are often forced into unethical practices just to meet the requirements of the law firm.
posted by monju_bosatsu on Feb 13, 2006 - 86 comments

Sympathy for a Lawyer ? His father sustains he should sell screwdrivers, he takes attention deficit disorder drugs, his ex probably keyed his Toyota Corolla and he takes pleasure in tormenting prosecutors while wondering if they like him. Not a reality tv show [Via Fark]
posted by elpapacito on Jan 23, 2006 - 48 comments

Phila Lawyer reads like fiction (awesome, Hunter S. Thompson -esque fiction -- Part 1, 2 ) to outsiders, but that might just be because it's so fucking good. The lawyers commiserating in the comments, at least, think it's real.
The navigation is cumbersome -- if you're not careful, you'll come into a story in the middle. For your perusal, then, I've laid a few out:
Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Part 1, 2
Part 1, 2, 3, 4
posted by Tlogmer on Mar 30, 2005 - 7 comments

Little Timmy's fallen off the parking garage? Forget Lassie, call the lawyers! He didn't choose to jump between the eight-story buildings. The inanimate object made him.
posted by schroedinger on Mar 3, 2005 - 54 comments

How many lawmakers does it take to declare war? Used to be 218 of the 435. Now, in a time of crisis, it's potentially less than 12. This is something that has been looked at before. Is this the best possible solution?
posted by rocket_skates on Jan 10, 2005 - 30 comments

A call for Christian lawyers who have worked for the ACLU. The ACLU tries to be balanced , but considering the amount of effort they have put forth to inhibit Christian influence from/to the government, should a Christian lawyer work for them?
posted by urlnotfound on Dec 27, 2004 - 65 comments

Let's face it: lawyers don't have a great reputation for being nice people. For example, an associate at Winston & Strawn leaves a somewhat abusive message [wav] for another associate at Latham & Watkins. Along those lines, here's a message [wav], with increasingly frustrated obscenities, purportedly left by a trademark applicant/appellant with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB); resulting Final Order [pdf] concerning disclipinary action of the attorney. Most recently: the Grinch who almost stole Christmas [pdf].
posted by monju_bosatsu on Dec 23, 2004 - 13 comments

Doctors refuse laywers. So your last client managed to get restitution from that quack who left the clamp in her abdomen, just in time to pay for your daughter's delivery. Good luck finding an OB. Or perhaps your husband works for a law firm. Good luck with that nursing job. Maybe you're a neurosurgeon making less take-home than your insurance premiums. What are you going to say to the next ambulance chaser with migrane trouble? The war between the two solitudes could start racking up a real body-count.
posted by bonehead on Jun 17, 2004 - 60 comments

Hiring a private criminal defense lawyer --the legal implications and ramifications of our President's (and veep's) move--by John Dean
posted by amberglow on Jun 5, 2004 - 16 comments

How Not To Be A Summer Law Clerk, Or: the guy who sent the incredibly stupid and self-incriminating e-mail to all the associates in his firm. (I find this especially amusing since I am writing this from the law firm where I am a summer clerk. Now I'll probably get busted too!)
posted by adrober on Jun 27, 2003 - 19 comments

Streets strewn with glass and gold. In the nation's capitol, freelance 'runners' dash from police station to police station, grabbing auto accident reports the moment they appear and phoning the victims, trying to convince them to file suit. If they succeed, "personal injury cases can be sold to a lawyer for $300 to $600, sometimes more if the victim broke some bones or died. Not bad money." Whatever you may think of the social policy wisdom of D.C. allowing this, this tiny subculture of high-energy hustlers living on the ragged fringe of law and mainstream ethics is colorful as hell, and would make a great context for a novel or film.
WaPo link. [via Overlawyered.com]
posted by Slithy_Tove on May 6, 2003 - 6 comments

"You, Walter, are indeed like a miracle that God has made."
African National Congress veteran Walter Sisulu, born in 1912, the year the ANC was founded, has died, the ANC said on Monday. He's the guy who practiced law with Nelson Mandela and spent a lot of time in jail with him. I saw his cell, the prison courtyard and the quarry in which they toiled and laboured on Robben Island just a couple of weeks ago.
posted by tomcosgrave on May 5, 2003 - 4 comments

Lynne Stewart, a New York human-rights lawyer was arrested and had her files searched, on charges relating to her work as defence counsel for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman who is serving a life sentence in connection with the bombing of the WTC in 1993. A law school's graduate students seeking to honour her with an award at their graduating ceremony has been stopped from doing so by the dean afraid of bad publicity.
posted by fvw on Apr 29, 2003 - 10 comments

A "Disappearance" In America - Arrested without charge. Secret warrants and subpoenas. No arrest record. No accusation of a crime. Solitary confinement. No access to a lawyer. No comment from the authorities. No court appearance. In other countries, this would be a "disappearance". Here in America, it's just the Patriot Act at work. Read the story of Mike Hawash, and ponder where this country is headed.
posted by laz-e-boy on Apr 7, 2003 - 44 comments

The lawyers for the victims of the Rhode Island nightclub disaster are planning to sue a radio station that broadcast commercials for the concert. Wistow said that while he still needs to nail down the precise nature of Clear Channel's responsibility, he's all but certain to name the company [in the suit].
posted by Pretty_Generic on Mar 10, 2003 - 34 comments

Benjamin Stein, host of the show Win Ben Stein's Money fears that the United States is squelching what gives it an edge.
posted by jaden on Dec 14, 2002 - 63 comments

On July 8, watch your newspaper for a picture of a little girl sleeping under a blanket imprinted with an image of the U.S. Constitution, with the caption: "Security Blanket." It's the first installment in a 13-month, $2.5 million advertising campaign by the American Bar Association to promote the Constitution in a time of terror and get people talking about security and democracy. After all, ads sell. And why shouldn't the lawyers pay for a bit of Constitutional image rebuilding? Without that stained, dog-eared, pissed on, misread, half-shredded little 'ol document, they'd be out of jobs.
posted by jellybuzz on Jul 2, 2002 - 26 comments

Not your average law firm website. Powers Phillips, P.C., is a small law firm located in downtown Denver, Colorado within convenient walking distance of over fifty bars and a couple of doughnut shops. Powers Phillips is somewhat peculiar in that six of its lawyers are, to put it most politely, uppity women, who through various shenanigans and underhanded schemes control the firm. Found on Overlawyered.
posted by internal on Jun 12, 2002 - 9 comments

Your quote of the day: "She said harm should not be presumed just because the lawyer 'intermittently dozed and actually fell asleep.'" Because, y'know, the inmate's only on Death Row in Texas.
posted by solistrato on Jun 3, 2002 - 24 comments

Woman prisoner hangs self, then sues prison Suicide note found near body tells her lawyer to sue the prison for not preventing her suicide.
posted by Lanternjmk on Apr 4, 2002 - 16 comments

"It's really like rape" say lawyers for a college student who sued Arco Media (makers of "Wild Party Girls Video") and won 5 million dollars. From what I was able to find, alcohol was not forced down her throat (she used intoxication as part of her defense) so I am having a difficult time seeing where the "rape" part comes in.
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Feb 28, 2002 - 53 comments

It's easy to think of lawyers as greedy, overpaid blood-sucking pigs. But do we have any clue what lawyers earn? Yes we do, thanks to American Lawyer Media's (via law.com) annual roundup of lawyer compensation. Not all of which is surprising. For example, partners at the top corporate firms like Wachtell Lipton, or Cravath, Swaine & Moore or Davis Polk each averaged millions in 2001 ($3,285,000, $2,245,000 and $1,740,000, respectively). Even piddly little first year associates at those firms got $125,000 to start. (We're talking 24-year-old law school grads with precisely zero professional experience and know-how. Zero.) But most newbie lawyers don't win those jobs. Also difficult to land are entry-level positions at district attorneys' offices, but they're not nearly as lucrative. A junior Manhattan D.A. earned $45,000 last year (up from $42,000 in 2000). But locking up criminals beats toiling for civil rights at a not-for-profit like the New York Civil Liberties Union, which paid entry-level lawyers only $35,000 last year. Over all, best off are lawyers who work for big companies. Top counsel at IBM last year earned a measly $506,000 in cash (salary & bonus), but throw in stocks & options and his compensation totaled $7,795,613. Compared to that, you have to worry about the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court whose family in 2001 had to struggle along on $192,600.
posted by jellybuzz on Feb 28, 2002 - 36 comments

Former President Bill Clinton has been suspended from practicing law before the Supreme Court Although I'm certainly not a member of the Clinton Fan Club, there doesn't seem to be any purpose served by this action. Does anyone really think Clinton is going to go back into a law practice?
posted by revbrian on Oct 1, 2001 - 22 comments

Lawyer Joseph Gersten fled to Australia after uncovering official corruption in Florida. He is trying to restart his career, but the FBI wants its pound of flesh.
posted by flowerdale on Sep 11, 2001 - 5 comments

This Mastercard parody has been on-line for two years, and Mastercard only recently requested its removal. Here is the hilarious response to the cease and desist. What I find amusing is that the MC lawyers never mention that they find the parody tasteless or offensive. Just that it violates their trademarks.
posted by goto11 on Apr 11, 2001 - 13 comments

Lawyers fail to fulfill social duties Thank the good lord we do not have a similar problem in the United States!
posted by Postroad on Feb 28, 2001 - 1 comment

Whenever anyone colonizes a new territory (e.g. cyberspace) it's inevitable that three groups follow: prostitutes, lawyers and undertakers. The romance is over -- welcome to the (virtual) real world.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Feb 23, 2001 - 2 comments

There will always be a lawyer. "Internet intoxication"? This is worse than twinkies.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Jan 28, 2001 - 7 comments

Yes, Virginia, there really is a Grinch. (This guy's choice of recipients for his charitable giving is lawyers. You'd think he could find someone more needy.)
posted by Steven Den Beste on Dec 22, 2000 - 7 comments

Greg does it again, in an extremely well-written piece on lawyers slapping geeks with a good ol' Cold Fish of Reality. (thoughts inside)
posted by cCranium on Sep 8, 2000 - 8 comments

The Clinton Legacy Grows The state of Arkansas began disbarment proceedings today. I've already blogged it but figured everyone else would want to know.
posted by mikewas on May 22, 2000 - 1 comment