Yesterday, federal judge Denny Chin sentenced Bernie Madoff to 150 years in prison — more than a life sentence. Though Madoff certainly wasn’t popular (as blogger Scott Greenfield notes, not a single person sent the judge a letter in support of Madoff during sentencing), a 150-year sentence is still highly unusual. Several law bloggers attempt [...]

From opposite U.S. coasts come disturbingly parallel stories of immigration lawyers allegedly resorting to fraud to win legal residency for untold numbers of undocumented immigrants. While one case just concluded, the other is just coming to light, leaving the legal status of dozens of the lawyer’s clients in limbo. The first case comes out of [...]

Who better to narrate a documentary about the First Amendment than Martin Garbus? Garbus, after all, is a lawyer who has defended such outspoken figures as Nelson Mandela and Lenny Bruce. Fortune Magazine called him "one of the nation’s premier First Amendment attorneys" and both Time and Business Week have called him "legendary" as a [...]

Lawyer haters and tort reformers, this is your lucky day. We have for you not one, but two separate lists of the most ridiculous lawsuits ever filed. Even better, there is surprisingly little overlap between them. Thus, from one top-10 list and another top-11 list, we net a grand total of the 18 most ridiculous [...]

With legal employment prospects on the decline, a new lawyer’s got to find a way to make a buck somehow. In the case of South Texas College of Law graduate Dustin Kolodziej, he decided to play detective. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Kolodiziej took up a challenge issued by Orlando attorney Cheney Mason on nation [...]

If you are in law school, you could probably use an extra $10,000 right about now. Well, if you have a video camera or know where to borrow one, here is your chance to win that much money or one of five $1,500 honorable mentions. All you have to do is make a brief video [...]

Patrick Lamb, who blogs at In Search of Perfect Client Service, reminds us that it was roughly two years ago when Sun Microsystems General Counsel Mike Dillon’s post, "The Way of the Mastodon," rocked the legal blogosphere. If you don’t recall, Dillon’s post cautioned law firms that: [T]he epoch of the current law firm model [...]

There is no federal constitutional right to post-conviction access to DNA evidence ruled the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote in Third Judicial District v. Osborne. Justice Kennedy delivered the swing vote, according to the Blog of the Legal Times. As discussed at The New York Times, the Court’s decision reverses a 9th Circuit ruling, [...]

The Washington Supreme Court has withdrawn a landmark ruling in a public records case in response to complaints that the opinion could benefit a separate lawsuit filed by one of the justices who decided the case. The court issued a one-page order withdrawing its earlier ruling and saying that the case will be scheduled for [...]

In a speech yesterday at the American Medical Association’s annual meeting, President Obama told doctors that his plan to reduce medical costs and increase coverage can’t succeed without tackling the problem of medical malpractice liability and out-of-control jury awards. But in truth, malpractice claims comprise only a small portion of overall healthcare costs and are [...]

Massachusetts gets a dubious distinction today — it becomes the new home of the first federal judge to go to prison since 1991. Samuel Kent, who sat as a federal district judge in Galveston, Texas, before pleading guilty to obstruction of justice, has been ordered to report by 2 p.m. today to the Devens Federal [...]

Even in the Internet Age, most courts require litigants in probate, foreclosure or other legal proceedings to provide notice in newspapers of "general circulation." So with commercial ad revenues on the decline, legal notices remain one of the few dependable sources of cash for newspapers — so much so that at least one newspaper is [...]

Harvard Law School announced today that it has named Martha Minow as dean to replace Elena Kagan, who left to join the Obama administration as solicitor general. A member of the Harvard Law faculty since 1981, Minow is described in the announcement as a "distinguished legal scholar with interests that range from international human rights [...]

Back in May, Kiwi Camara, Harvard Law School’s youngest admittee, and a relatively new grad with his own firm, Camara & Sibley, stepped in at the last hour to represent Jammie Thomas in the latest chapter of her epic battle with the Recording Industry Association of America. After the initial trial over Thomas’ alleged copyright [...]

Lawyers Harvey A. Silverglate (pictured) and Robert L. Freedman were unable to garner enough votes to win seats on Harvard University’s Board of Overseers, one of two bodies that govern the prestigious university. Both Silverglate, a Cambridge, Mass., civil liberties lawyer, and Freedman, a partner in the Philadelphia office of Dechert, had hoped to win [...]

News from around the blogosphere this Friday morning: Big spender spends more. In January, we described James Sokolove as legal advertising’s biggest spender. Well, he just got even bigger — to the tune of $25 million this year. Times really are tough. So much so that one U.S. lawyer is reported to be auctioning off [...]

Remember Flea? He was the Boston-area pediatrician who anonymously blogged his own medical-malpractice trial, only to be unmasked in open court. Well, now another M.D. is scratching the itch to blog his med-mal trial, as Erik Turkewitz notes at New…
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It’s too bad that now-defunct, San Francisco-based law firm Heller Erhman couldn’t have hired itself as counsel for its own bankruptcy. If it had, the firm could have collected $1.8 million in fees that is now going to other law…
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Continuing coverage. The National Law Journal has launched a new online section, The Choice, with continuing coverage of the confirmation process. Law clerk speaks. Former law clerk to Sotomayor, Jenny Rivera, now law professor at CUNY School of Law, and…
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