Author: TSA Press

Is my argument as strong as it can be? Are there better cases out there? And did I find every weakness in my opponent’s argument?

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If it seems like Highland Capital Management is always in court, that’s because it is. The hedge fund and founder Jim Dondero are always suing or getting sued by some party or other: Dondero’s wife, not one but two former employees, its idiot investors, its creditors, us. Oh, and its bankers, who have just won a really nice-looking judgment against Highland.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marcy Friedman ordered two funds affiliated with Dallas-based Highland to pay $520 million in damages and another $520 million in statutory interest resulting from their refusal to cover UBS’s losses under a failed agreement to securitize collateralized loan obligations and credit-default swaps in 2008…. According to the amended complaint, UBS was owed more than $686 million by the time Highland’s affiliates defaulted on their obligations and UBS terminated the deal in December 2008….

UBS is seeking punitive damages on those claims, potentially exposing Highland to billions more in further liability if the case goes to trial.

The Senate appears ready to reject witnesses and new evidence today in the impeachment of President Donald Trump, but lawyers who swore to “protect and defend the Constitution” when they were admitted to the bar stand at the ready to demand that senators uphold their oaths to “do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws” that they swore to in connection with this trial.

Today, Lawyers for Good Government, along with Lawyers Defending American Democracy, Lawyer Moms of America, and Demand Justice will join together in solidarity to protest on the steps of the Supreme Court in an effort to demand that every United States Senator fulfill their duties and obligations to our country.

Hundreds of lawyers will walk to the steps of the Supreme Court where they will symbolically “file” this 95-page document — an open letter to the U.S. Senate and all Americans, accompanied by assorted materials on impeachment and the Constitution — by stacking one on top of the other, to eventually form a towering pillar. They will then hold a press conference next to the stack of documents to explain why it’s so important for each and every senator to “do impartial justice.”

Here’s an excerpt from the open letter:

Senators: Your duty to “do impartial justice” as judges and jurors in trying the impeachment of the President of the United States is a grave responsibility. Of all 330 million Americans, this duty rests only on the 100 of you.  

The American people are depending on you to uphold your oaths and “do impartial justice” as you swore to do. Your actions as jurors in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump will be judged by the American people. The impact of your actions will be felt not only by those alive today, but by future generations of Americans.

We implore you to act not in the best interests of one political party or another, but in the best interests of the people of the United States of America.  

If you’re unable to attend the protest event today but would like to add yourself as a signatory to the open letter, you may do so here.

The protest will be livestreamed from the Lawyers for Good Government Facebook page, starting at around 12 p.m. We will provide an update here with video if possible.’

Join your fellow lawyers today — in any way possible — to demand “impartial justice” in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The nation is counting on you.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Ed. note: Please welcome Lorelei Laird to the pages of Above the Law. She’ll be writing about the current state of immigration law in America.

From the moment Donald Trump descended that gilded escalator in 2015, he’s made it clear that he believes Latin American immigrants are criminals.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” said the least racist person you’ve ever met. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

So if the crime is “immigrating while Latino,” perhaps it’s fitting that the punishment is a burrito. According to the Phoenix New Times, a packaged burrito given to immigrants in Customs and Border Protection holding cells around Tucson is making a disproportionate number of people sick. (These are not the longer-term ICE jails that people arrested within the U.S. go to, but the concrete and chain-link cells that you’re probably familiar with from the summer of family separation.)

According to Dr. Timothy Dorner, who sees recently released immigrant families at the Catholic Community Services shelter Casa Alitas, about 80 percent of people who eat the burrito report abdominal pain. “Luckily,” however, a significant number of immigrants say they couldn’t eat in CBP custody because the food was so bad. The problem is so widespread that Casa Alitas director Teresa Cavendish says her clients regularly declare, “No more burritos!”

The burritos come from a local company, but doctors who work with the just-released migrants believe the problem is not the source so much as the fact that CBP doesn’t bother reheating them. Dr. Stephen Thompson told the Phoenix New Times that migrants tell him the burritos are “still frozen or cold.” His colleague, Dr. Susan Thompson, added, “And who knows where they’re storing them once they’re thawed?” (Very few people, because CBP rarely permits lawyers, volunteers, or the press inside.)

As the alt-weekly notes, the burritos are just the latest in a long line of accusations that CBP holds immigrants in subhuman conditions. This is not the first allegation that the food provided is frequently half-frozen, and the immigrants themselves are also frequently half-frozen because of a CBP policy of air-conditioning the cells to frigid temperatures. To ensure that this is as punitive as possible, CBP takes away any outerwear they may have, along with their medications, money, identification, and any other personal property they’re not actually wearing.

According to a 2015 lawsuit from the ACLU of Arizona, CBP also keeps the lights on 24 hours a day and does not consistently provide medical care or diapers. There are no showers, no soap, and sometimes no running water; a woman in a Texas CBP holding cell told lawmakers last summer that a CBP officer told her to drink from the toilet.

CBP spokesperson Meredith Mingledorff told the Phoenix New Times that if the agency is not heating food properly — she appears to have much more doubt than the people who have directly experienced it — “we will work to make things better.” Fortunately, trial in the ACLU lawsuit wrapped up this week, suggesting that immigrants may eventually have something more substantial to enforce their rights.

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Lorelei Laird is a freelance writer specializing in the law, and the only person you know who still has an “I Believe Anita Hill” bumper sticker. Find her at wordofthelaird.com.

How can you measure a law school’s worth, aside from the employment statistics of its graduates? Another telling sign of its success may be its acceptance rate. Generally speaking, law schools with low acceptance rates — that is, law schools that were selective when it came to choosing their entering classes — masterfully weathered the storm over the past decade, keeping their standards high during a time when applications plummeted and entering students’ qualifications sank.

But which law schools were the most selective of them all?

Thanks to 24/7 Wall St., there’s a new ranking for that. Here’s their methodology:

Using data from the ABA, 24/7 Wall St. created an index of three measures of selectivity to identify the 50 hardest law schools to get into.

The first index measure is the acceptance rate, or the number of offer letters a school sent in 2019 as a share of the number of applications. The second is the median LSAT score of newly enrolled students in fall 2019, and the third measure is the median undergraduate GPA of newly enrolled students. We also reviewed the share of students in the class of 2018 who took the bar exam and passed on their first attempt.

Without further ado, here are the top 10 law schools that are the hardest to get into:

10. University of Southern California Gould School of Law
• Acceptance rate: 17.7%
• Applications for fall 2019: 5,648
• Median undergrad GPA of new enrollees: 3.80
• Median LSAT score of new enrollees: 166 out of 180
• Bar exam passage rate: 81.0%

9. Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
• Acceptance rate: 18.0%
• Applications for fall 2019: 5,441
• Median undergrad GPA of new enrollees: 3.85
• Median LSAT score of new enrollees: 169 out of 180
• Bar exam passage rate: 92.0%

8. University of Chicago Law School
• Acceptance rate: 18.6%
• Applications for fall 2019: 4,933
• Median undergrad GPA of new enrollees: 3.90
• Median LSAT score of new enrollees: 170 out of 180
• Bar exam passage rate: 90.3%

7. University of Michigan Law School
• Acceptance rate: 16.6%
• Applications for fall 2019: 5,629
• Median undergrad GPA of new enrollees: 3.81
• Median LSAT score of new enrollees: 169 out of 180
• Bar exam passage rate: 93.8%

6. Columbia Law School
• Acceptance rate: 15.9%
• Applications for fall 2019: 7,193
• Median undergrad GPA of new enrollees: 3.80
• Median LSAT score of new enrollees: 172 out of 180
• Bar exam passage rate: 97.3%

5. University of Virginia School of Law
• Acceptance rate: 14.7%
• Applications for fall 2019: 5,645
• Median undergrad GPA of new enrollees: 3.90
• Median LSAT score of new enrollees: 170 out of 180
• Bar exam passage rate: 95.3%

4. University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
• Acceptance rate: 14.5%
• Applications for fall 2019: 6,483
• Median undergrad GPA of new enrollees: 3.89
• Median LSAT score of new enrollees: 170 out of 180
• Bar exam passage rate: 92.1%

3. Harvard Law School
• Acceptance rate: 12.5%
• Applications for fall 2019: 7,333
• Median undergrad GPA of new enrollees: 3.89
• Median LSAT score of new enrollees: 173 out of 180
• Bar exam passage rate: 96.5%

2. Stanford Law School
• Acceptance rate: 9.7%
• Applications for fall 2019: 3,908
• Median undergrad GPA of new enrollees: 3.91
• Median LSAT score of new enrollees: 171 out of 180
• Bar exam passage rate: 94.7%

1. Yale Law School
• Acceptance rate: 8.2%
• Applications for fall 2019: 3,198
• Median undergrad GPA of new enrollees: 3.93
• Median LSAT score of new enrollees: 173 out of 180
• Bar exam passage rate: 96.8%

Click here to see the rest of the Top 50.

As you may have guessed, the law schools that are the most difficult to get into are some of the usual suspects, perhaps better described as the elite schools found at the tippy top of the U.S. News rankings (although they’re out of order here). Absent from the list are NYU and Duke, but look at which law school managed to sneak into the top 10 — it’s USC, which is currently ranked No. 17 by U.S. News. Way to go!

Where does your law school stand when it comes to its selectivity? Based on the new 24/7 Wall St. ranking, you may be surprised.

Degree of difficulty: These are 50 of the toughest US law schools to get into [USA Today via 24/7 Wall St.]

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

31.1.2020
12:38

by paul bogaert

Zimbabwe Situation not appealing

At a time when large majorities of Americans have lost faith in government, does the fact that the chief justice is presiding over an impeachment trial in which Republican senators have thus far refused to allow witnesses or evidence contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution?

— Chief Justice John Roberts, reading aloud a question for the House managers asked by Senator Elizabeth Warren that put him in an uncomfortable position on day two of the Senate’s question-and-answer session in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Lead House manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) responded diplomatically, noting, “I would not say that it contributes to a loss of confidence in the chief justice. I think the chief justice has presided admirably.”

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

* Apparently, Justice Brett Kavanaugh introduced really bad pizza to the Supreme Court cafeteria. Maybe Sbarro is the justice’s favorite New York pizza joint… [Washington Post]

* Hillary Clinton’s lawyer finally accepted service of Tulsi Gabbard’s defamation lawsuit, allowing the case to move forward. [Fox News]

* Nancy Pelosi has suggested that President Trump’s lawyers should face discipline over their handling of the impeachment trial. [Hill]

* Undocumented “Dreamers” can now become attorneys in Utah. [Salt Lake Tribune]

* Several state attorneys general have sued for recognition of the Equal Rights Amendment.[USA Today]

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

In Strawbridge v. Curtiss, the Supreme Court tossed the matter for lacking complete diversity. What states were Strawbridge and Curtiss (the diverse parties) from?

Hint: Well… it wasn’t Alaska and Hawaii. You’re welcome for the hint.

See the answer on the next page.