How Much Legal Research Should Hunsaker Have Done?

As in-house counsel, I would routinely encounter “problems” that, if construed with the most negative inferences and splashed on the New York Times, would be embarrassing to the company (and me) at best and life-threatening to the company (and possibly…

Squirrel Attack

It seems like there were 1,001 disclosures made in our disclosure package when we bought our house, and yet not one of them mentioned the risk of squirrel attacks. (Cuesta Park is less than a mile from our house). UPDATE:…

Website Publishes Professors’ Past Grades

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Pick-A-Prof, one of the numerous websites providing student reviews of professors, publishes the grading histories/practices of professors for many of the 170 schools it covers. Obviously, many schools do not provide this data willingly,…

AmLaw on IP Associate Satisfaction

Congratulations to Finnegan Henderson for ranking second in American Lawyer’s midlevel associate satisfaction survey. In discussing Finnegan Henderson’s success, the article talks a little about the relevant satisfaction of IP associates compared with other associates: Throughout our survey, IP midlevels…

“I shouldn’t have asked….” = Wrong Answer

Another email exchange has emerged in the HP pretexting investigation, this time between HP’s “Chief Ethics Officer” (CEthO) and a line manager from January 30: CEthO: “How does [the PI] get cell and home phone records? Is it all above…

AALS Panel on “the Ratings Game”

How much do law professors hate the USNWR law school rankings? So much that at the big annual meeting for law professors, an entire day-long workshop has been organized on the “ratings game,” including panels with descriptions like: “In this…

Professor Sells Podcasts of Lectures; Is Asked to Stop

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Robert L. Schrag, a communications professor at North Carolina State University, recorded his classroom lectures and offered them for sale on a website for $2.50 each. There wasn’t a great market for them (only…

WaPo on Silicon Valley Ethics

By Eric Goldman The Washington Post runs an article entitled Silicon Valley’s Golden Past Tarnished by Latest Probes, a retrospective/catch-up on the evolution of Silicon Valley ethics, with quick stops in round-tripping, stock option backdating and the HP scandal. As…

Betting Against the Packers Pays Off Big

From an AP story: The Green Bay Packers haven’t been shut out in 233 games. Brett Favre hasn’t been shut out in his 16 year career. So it seems like a safe bet that the (sometimes hapless) Chicago Bears aren’t…

Sonsini/Perkins Email

As academics, it’s not often that we get our hands on a real email exchange between attorney and client that we can use for pedagogical purposes. Fortunately, the WSJ has republished the email exchange between Larry Sonsini and Tom Perkins…