Archive for March, 2008

How NOT to Interview

Published
by
Christopher Meredith
on Mar 19, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

The goal of practically every law student is to eventually land a job. To that end, many of us begin interviewing for clerkship and internships after our very first semester. There is a detailed etiquette when it comes to how to handle oneself in interviews and afterwards, an etiquette that apparently escaped Dianna Abdala, a recent law school graduate who participated in the following e-mail exchange while turning down a job offer she found to be beneath her:

Abdala:

Dear Attorney Korman,

At this time, I am writing to inform you that I will not be accepting your offer.

After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the pay you are offering would neither fulfill me nor support the lifestyle I am living in light of the work I would be doing for you. I have decided instead to work for myself, and reap 100% of the benefits that I sow.

Thank you for the interviews.

Korman:

Dianna –

Given that you had two interviews, were offered and accepted the job (indeed, you had a definite start date), I am surprised that you chose an e-mail and a 9:30 PM voicemail message to convey this information to me. It smacks of immaturity and is quite unprofessional. Indeed, I did rely upon your acceptance by ordering stationary [sic] and business cards with your name, reformatting a computer and setting up both internal and external e-mails for you here at the office. While I do not quarrel with your reasoning, I am extremely disappointed in the way this played out. I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Abdala:

A real lawyer would have put the contract into writing and not exercised any such reliance until he did so.

Again, thank you.

Korman:

Thank you for the refresher course on contracts. This is not a bar exam question. You need to realize that this is a very small legal community, especially the criminal defense bar. Do you really want to start pissing off more experienced lawyers at this early stage of your career?

Abdala:

bla bla bla

So the moral of the story is to think twice before you press the “send” button. A little humility could save you a lot of humiliation.

That being said, in some cases flying off the handle may not be so bad after all. In the infamous “monkey scribe” voicemail, then-associate Ankur Gupta left an expletive-laced message for opposing counsel, a voicemail which quickly circulated and can be heard here (WARNING: Contains offensive matieral!). Mr. Gupta has since made partner at the firm, suggesting that there may in fact be a place in the legal community for certain contributors to this blog.

Spring Break

Published
by
Christopher Meredith
on Mar 14, 2008
in Fun and Law School
. 2 Comments

Since Spring Break is now upon us, and upon many other law students around the country, I’d like to share some wise words from our Director of Placement:

Do NOT, and I repeat, do NOT do anything stupid that you will have to report to the Board of Bar Admissions. Need I remind you that you a spending a great deal of money for your education…..don’t blow it all by doing something that will make all your hard work be for naught!

Can We Get That Nobel Prize Back, Too?

Published
by
Christopher Meredith
on Mar 11, 2008
in Current Events, Politics and Torts
. 6 Comments

There is vindication for those of us who have refused to buy into the liberal hype of global warming over the past several years. It used to be that suggesting global warming was a myth was a virtual invitation to ridicule. But my father tells stories of being in high school and being shown videos depicting mock news reports in the year 2000 which would feature segments on where you could go to obtain breathable oxygen. These sorts of government hypes have been around for a while.

So it was realtively big news last November when Weather Channel founder John Coleman called global warming “the greatest scam in history.” Then, just months later, came a report that all four major global temperature tracking stations recorded sufficient temperature drop over 2007 alone to erase the past 100 years of global warming.

Now John Coleman is calling on people to sue the global warming alarmists, including Al Gore, for fraud. This strikes me as a rather interesting idea. Al Gore and the creators of the carbon credit scheme have made big money off of the global warming hysteria and scientific evidence has been around for a long time that the earth is on a regular cycle of minuscule temperature variance to which human activity does not contribute. There might be merit to a suit alleging that Gore and his cohorts knew or should have known that global warming was false, but misrepresented the truth to induce people to buy his sham credits for his own personal gain.

It should be interesting to see if anyone takes Mr. Coleman up on his suggestion.

HT: The Legal Scoop

Take a Hit of This

Published
by
Greg Spore
on Mar 5, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 10 Comments

The war on drugs is over. Drugs win.

If heroin and cocaine were legalized, would this counrty realize a new wave of addicts? If the United States government sponsored the sale of methamphetamine would rehabilitation centers and county jails experience an impossible demand? Would crack pipe sales bitch-slap the tobacco industry? No.

Endemic to the debate is the concern that an entire generation of addicts is patiently awaiting legalization. How many potential heroin addicts refuse the syringe simply because it is illegal? This concern is without merit considering that an addict, heroin or otherwise, will go to any lengths to acquire his drug of choice, including robbery and prostitution. This concern is further flawed because it assumes there is nothing unique about an addicted person. addiction is realized organically, not by legality. There is no such thing as a recreational crack user, tempted by the occasional family reunion. That is ludicrous.

Legalization will decimate the illegal drug trade (yes, I realize decimate means one in ten, I’m writing figuratively dammit). This in turn will establish an indefinite cash flow for rehabilitation, education and community outreach. This country has been reacting to the drug problem in a cowboy fashion for too long. Solutions exist not from top to bottom, but rather within local communities nationwide.

I realize this is a sweeping condemnation of our country’s failed efforts to maintain even a sliver of sanity during a tireless crusade. Much debate is needed.

Big Brother Lives

Published
by
Christopher Meredith
on Mar 5, 2008
in Constitutional Law and Current Events
. 3 Comments

There is a principle in internet discussion called “Godwin’s Law.” It states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” Sometimes, however, it doesn’t even take that long.

The 2nd Appellate Court in Los Angeles recently handed down a decision that required the home-schooled children in at least one family to be enrolled in a government school or a government-approved private school. Of course, the reasons are fairly transparent. The only reason for government to become this involved in education is to have a say in what children are taught. WorldNetDaily points out that the court’s ruling sounds similar to education officials in Germany, whose mandatory government education laws have been on the books since Hitler put them there in 1938 in order to indoctrinate Germany’s children with Nazi ideals.

In this case, the indoctrination taking place isn’t as simple as Nazism; it’s the new liberal fascism. California Senate Bill 777 was passed by the legislature several months ago and it requires government schools to offer only positive portrayals of homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality, and whatever else is found in that particular pot. This makes California the most “progressive” state to date, mandating that in government schools, any opinion is acceptable as long as it isn’t biblical Christianity.

Against this backdrop, the court’s ruling that homeschool children must be subjected to this sort of this is particularly startling:

[K]eeping the children at home deprived them of situations where (1) they could interact with people outside the family, (2) there are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children’s lives, and (3) they could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents’ ‘cloistered’ setting.

Point #1 is clearly a red herring since it is well established that homeschool children generally are more socially mature than their government schooled counterparts. Point #2 is also curious and I would like to see the full opinion to see what the court was talking about. But point #3 really strikes at the heart of the issue.

“[T]hey could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents’ ‘cloistered’ setting.” The language implies that children should develop emotionally in a setting other than what their parents are providing. Given the backdrop of SB777, the fact that the children’s father said, “I don’t want to put my children in a public school system that teaches ideologies I don’t believe in,” and the fact that the court held that “sincerely held religious beliefs” don’t extend the 1st Amendment to cover the education of children, it’s pretty clear what the court wants the children to learn.