Attorney Eloquently Describes All The Ways He Will Make You His Bitch

11 Aug 2014 at 11:02 AM New Jersey, Quote of the Day, Reality TV, Stupid Lawyer Tricks, Television Attorney Eloquently Describes All The Ways He Will Make You His Bitch By Staci Zaretsky Jim Marchese I don’t fight. I think it’s stupid. I’m trained as an attorney. If I want to hurt you, I’m going to sue you. I’m going to leverage your house. I’m gonna give you three years of hell in a courtroom. I’m going to bleed dry you financially, and I’m going to humiliate you as I depose you for eight hours and make you my bitch. – Jim Marchese, husband to Amber Marchese (one of the newest cast members of the Real Housewives of New Jersey), explaining why he chose to avoid a fight with Joe Gorga, another Real Housewives husband, on the latest episode. (Marchese is a graduate of Seton Hall Law and was a whistleblower in the Cell Therapeutics case, which earned him $1.6 million. Marchese recently claimed to be involved in the bankruptcy fraud prosecution of Joe and Teresa Giudice, but a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey said “[n]o one involved with the prosecution has any idea who that man is.”) 4 Comments Print Tags: James Marchese, Jim Marchese, Joe Giudice, Joe Gorga, New Jersey, Quote of the Day, Real Housewives of New Jersey, Reality TV, RHONJ, Seton Hall Law School, Stupid Lawyer Tricks, Television, Teresa Giudice

Editor's note: This Shark believes when referring to the inhabitants of the Probate Court of Cook County this play on words would be most appropriate, "Greatest Lawyer Ad Ever: ‘Trust me, I May Have A Law Degree, But I Am A Criminal!’"

06 Mar 2014 at 2:12 PM

Advertising, Crime, Lawyer Advertising, Reality TV

Greatest Lawyer Ad Ever: ‘Trust me, I May Have A Law Degree, But I Think Like A Criminal!’

By Joe Patrice

Just a day after genius legal impresario and sledgehammer enthusiast Jamie Casino reportedly landed a new reality show called Casino’s Law, a new lawyer has entered the hallowed halls of epic advertising.
The quote in the title is not paraphrasing. It is absolutely a line from the three minutes and 27 seconds of awesomeness that is this ad.
Check it out in all its glory….

This morning I saw a retweet from Spencer Hall of EDSBS:

Alright, I was intrigued. Then I watched it and my life was altered. Without further ado, meet Pittsburgh criminal defense attorney Daniel Muessig.

I’m on record defending lawyers who think outside the box with their commercials. But the roll call of criminals returning to a life of crime thanks to the intrepid Mr. Muessig is far afield of anything I could have imagined in my wildest dreams.
And probably far afield of what legal ethicists would have imagined a lawyer advertising in their wildest dreams.
UPDATE: It turns out this isn’t Daniel Muessig’s first foray into the pages of ATL. Under the name Dos-Noun, he wrote a rap while a student at Pitt Law.
Report: Georgia Lawyer Jamie Casino Is Getting A Reality Show [Deadspin]
Earlier: Jamie Casino’s Two-Minute Super Bowl Law Thingy
Hilarious Commercial Alert: Attorney Smashes Insurance Companies — With A Hammer!

31 Dec 2013 at 3:37 PM

Admin, Announcements, Asians, Bar Exams, Biglaw, Bonuses, Celebrities, Divorce Train Wrecks, Law Schools, Magic Circle, Money, Partner Issues, Pro Se Litigants, Racism, Rankings, Reality TV, Sexism, Small Law Firms, U.S. News, Videos, Women's Issues, YouTube

Above the Law’s Top 10 Most Popular Posts of 2013

By David Lat

As 2013 draws to a close, let’s look back at the 10 biggest stories in the legal profession over the past year. This is an annual tradition here at Above the Law, which we’ve done in 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009. We’ll fire up the old Google Analytics machine to get data on our most popular posts, based on pageviews, and share the results with you.
Before turning to specific stories, let’s look at the top general discussion topics here at ATL. For 2013, our most trafficked category page was Biglaw, which bumped Law Schools out of the top spot — a spot that Law Schools held from 2010 through 2012. Now that the word is out about the perils of getting a law degree, leading to plummeting applications, perhaps it’s time to move on from the “don’t go to law school” narrative.
After Biglaw and Law Schools, our third most-popular category page was, as usual, Bonuses. This wasn’t a terribly exciting year for bonuses — there were no spring bonuses, and Cravath and its many followers paid out the same bonuses as last year — but people still want to know the score.
Our fourth most-popular category page was small law firms. Small firms, including boutiques, are an area of increasing focus and readership for us — and also where many of the job opportunities are these days.
Moving on from the topic pages, what were the 10 most popular individual posts at Above the Law in 2013?

Here are our top 10 stories for 2013, in ascending order of popularity, measured in pageviews.^[1] Click on the title of each post to be taken to the original story.
10. The Racist Law Firm Ad Update — The Maligned Law Firm Speaks: After a racist law firm advertisement went viral, we played a role in clarifying the situation. We published a statement from the law firm in question — McCutcheon & Hamner, a small personal-injury firm in Alabama — denying its involvement in producing the highly offensive YouTube clip.
9. Did Lamar Odom Cheat On Khloe Kardashian With A Lawyer? Reality TV star Khloe Kardashian recently declared that she’s “excited for this year to be over” — just like her marriage to NBA player Lamar Odom, which ended in 2013. A contributing cause: Odom’s alleged affair with a gorgeous California lawyer, Polina Polonsky, who allegedly asked Odom to help her review client files. Oy!
8. Nationwide Layoff Watch: Major Cuts Come To Weil Gotshal: The Kardashian-Odom split wasn’t the only soap opera that generated headlines this past year. People tuned in for As The Weil Turns — upheaval at the high-powered law firm of Weil Gotshal, kicked off by large-scale layoffs in June. The following months witnessed a slew of partner defections, especially in Texas (although the firm maintains that this is strategic and intentional shrinkage). Can Weil stop the bleeding in 2014?
7. Breaking: Cravath Announces Year-End Bonuses; Let the 2013 Bonus Season Begin! The bonus announcement of Cravath, the extremely prestigious and profitable law firm that sets the market for Biglaw bonuses, always lands in the top 10 stories (last year it was #5). This year, Elie Mystal and I argued over whether the bonus glass was half-empty or half-full.
6. Which State Has the Most Difficult Bar Exam? Professor Robert Anderson of Pepperdine Law developed a methodology for ranking bar exams by toughness. Which state’s test took the top spot? Hint: it wasn’t New York (which didn’t even make the top 10).
5. Lawyer: Apple Should Protect Me From My Porn Addiction: Blocking web users from accessing porn: there’s an app for that? Well, if not, there should be — or so claims lawyer Chris Sevier, who filed a pro se lawsuit that, as Joe Patrice put it, “seeks damages and injunctive relief against Apple for making devices that can display porn, or as the rest of us call it, the Internet.” More recently, Sevier sued President Obama for alleged involvement in the Duck Dynasty debacle.
4. The 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings: Lawyers love rankings — and U.S. News’s closely watched law school rankings are the biggest game in town. As law schools fight over a shrinking pool of law students, a law school’s position on the prestige totem pole is more important than ever.
3. Biglaw Memo From Top Firm Advises That Women ‘Don’t Giggle,’ Don’t ‘Show Cleavage’: Clifford Chance, a member of the elite Magic Circle, is one of the world’s top law firms — not just in profits and prestige, but also in generating juicy memos. Last year, its famous Law Firm Mommy Memo took the #3 spot; this year, the firm holds on to third place, with a controversial collection of “Presentation Tips For Women” that Staci Zaretsky described as “one of the most sexist Biglaw memos we’ve ever seen.”
2. The ATL Top 50 Law School Rankings (2013): The U.S. News law school rankings might be the biggest game in town (for now), but they aren’t the only one. In our inaugural law school rankings, we stripped out dubious factors like library size or money wasted spent per student to focus on what really matters: employment outcomes, i.e., jobs for graduates. Based on the great traffic and reader feedback we received, our rankings were a huge hit, and we’ll be doing them again in 2014.
1. A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter: The cease-and-desist response heard round the world, this rip-roaring rebuttal — a delicious combination of snark and substance — went viral. What could be more satisfying than watching a bullying lawyer get a taste of his own medicine? The letter kicked off a trend of awesome C&D responses — see, e.g., here and here.
We hope you enjoyed this look back at the 10 most popular stories of 2013. If you have a favorite Above the Law story from the past year that didn’t crack the top ten, please feel free to give it a mention in the comments.
And now for a brief programming note: Since Wednesday is the federal holiday for New Year’s Day, we won’t be publishing much (if at all) between now and Thursday, January 2. Happy New Year, and we’ll see you in 2014!
[1] For purposes of this listing, intended to serve as a look back at 2013′s biggest stories, we did not count posts published in 2012 that racked up major traffic in 2013 — e.g., Cam Girl Pleasures Herself In A Top Law School’s Library.
Earlier: Above the Law’s Top 10 Most Popular Posts of 2012
Above The Law’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2011
Above The Law’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2010
Above The Law’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2009

22 Aug 2013 at 11:11 AM

"Judge Judy" / Judith Sheindlin, Jon Stewart, Money, Rankings, Reality TV, Television

The $47 Million Dollar Law Degree: Judge Judy Is America’s Highest-Paid TV Star

By Joe Patrice

TV Guide released its annual list of television salaries and, once again, the top spot belongs to Judge Judy.
Someone needs to resolve the nation’s disputes over dogs taking dumps in the neighbor’s lawn. We need her on that wall.
America’s most trusted jurist has the highest-rated show in syndication, so a hefty salary isn’t really surprising.
What is surprising is just how much Judge Judy blows away the competition in the salary market. A-List TV personalities on flagship network programs are begging for table scraps compared to her haul.
Meanwhile, another TV jurist has slipped off the highest paid list…

According to TV Guide, Judge Judy is pulling down a whopping $47 million for her services, up from $45 million last year. Speaking of “whopping,” these figures are probably giving Judge Joseph Wapner, who minces no words in explaining how much damage Judge Judy does to the judicial system, conniptions. Also, Judge Wapner is still alive? Really?
In any event, $47 million can buy a new lawyerly lair to replace the one she just sold. Meanwhile, the million-dollar law degree folks are preparing to send around a press release explaining how Judge Judy proves everyone should go to law school immediately.
Just how much more is Judge Judy making than her fellow TV stars? Jon Stewart comes in second on the list, earning an estimated $25 to $30 million as the host who consistently seizes the 18-49 demographic. America’s most hated TV host, Matt Lauer, is making $22 to $25 million after throwing Ann Curry under a moving train to take over NBC’s flagship news program.
Sadly, it’s not all happy news for courtroom TV. Last year, Judge Joe Brown ranked fifth on the list, with an estimated $20 million a year (though he publicly disputes this, claiming he made a mere $5 million). But he got canceled, so Judge Judy is now the only court on the list.
The Judge Judy show is certainly worth the investment in its star. CNN Money reports:

Stephen Battaglio, TV Guide’s business editor and author of the list, said Judge Judy generates about $200 million in ad revenue for CBS, but costs just $10 million per year to produce, before factoring in Sheindlin’s salary. The show is aired internationally, and some stations air it several times a day.

That’s a terrific profit margin. Given Judge Joe Brown’s departure, there’s an opening for a new courtroom program for a bombastic lawyer to berate the denizens of America’s trailer parks.
Why hasn’t someone approached us about Judge Elie yet?
TV’s Highest Paid Stars: What They Earn [TV Guide]
Judge Judy rules! TV court jurist is the highest paid television star [New York Daily News]
Judge Judy is highest-paid TV star [CNN Money]
Earlier: Is Anybody Shocked That Americans Trust TV Judges More Than Supreme Court Justices?
Lawyerly Lairs: Judge Judy Parts With Pricey Pied-à-Terre

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