Law in Popular Culture

The Confession: Excerpt from John Grisham’s Winning Entry for Harper Lee Prize

John Grisham’s novel The Confession, chronicling the gut-wrenching politics of a last-ditch death penalty appeal in Texas, is the winner of the inaugural Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. The prize, created by the University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal, honors Lee—a native of Alabama who…

Oct 1, 2011 10:00 AM CDT

Letters: Readers’ Reading Lists

Whenever someone tells me they are thinking about going to law school, I give them a reading list. Every book I recommend is represented in “30/30,” August, save one: Bleak House by Charles Dickens. The story of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce shows prospective lawyers the worst of the law. In the interest…

Oct 1, 2011 9:50 AM CDT

Chutzpah: Yiddish Term Makes a Showing at the Supreme Court

Spencer Platt (Scalia), Brendan Smialowski (Kagan) / Getty Images So this guy walks into a lawyer’s office and asks how much he charges. “A thousand dollars for three questions,” the lawyer says. “Wow,” the guy says, “isn’t that kind of expensive?” “Yes, it is,” says the lawyer. “What’s your third…

Oct 1, 2011 9:30 AM CDT

US News Won’t Recalibrate Law School Rankings Despite Word of More U of Illinois Data Errors

News of additional errors in some Law School Admission Test and grade point average data published in recent years by the University of Illinois isn’t going to make any difference in U.S. News & World Report’s annual law school rankings for those years. For one thing, it appears that the…

Sep 29, 2011 11:12 PM CDT

A Stabbing and a ‘Kooky’ Speech Put National Constitution Center in the News

The National Constitution Center has gotten a couple mentions in the media lately, and neither has been favorable. In the latest incident, a man working for a catering company at the center is accused of stabbing a co-worker in the leg during a fight around 3:30 a.m. Sunday, report MyFoxPhilly.com…

Sep 26, 2011 2:42 PM CDT

Drug Court Group Blasts New ‘Last Shot with Judge Gunn’ Reality TV Program

A trade group is blasting a new reality television program set to premiere in national syndication Monday on Fox. The program Last Shot With Judge Gunn, which is distributed by Trifecta Entertainment, is misleading and potentially detrimental to real drug courts, the National Association of Drug Court Professionals contends in…

Sep 23, 2011 9:37 PM CDT

Around the Blawgosphere: Pruning Phony Web Client Reviews; What Does It Mean to Be a Virtual Lawyer?

Spotting Fakes At Small Firm Innovation, Washington, D.C., solo Carolyn Elefant notes a New York Times article about researchers at Cornell University who have developed an algorithm to distinguish fake reviews from real ones on websites like TripAdvisor. They ran the algorithm through 400 real hotel reviews and 400 hotels…

Sep 23, 2011 1:30 PM CDT

John Grisham on Grappling with Race, the Death Penalty; and Lawyers ‘Polluting Their Own Profession’

John Grisham isn’t certain what’s happened to the image of lawyers in the five decades since To Kill A Mockingbird was published. But he’s fairly sure that his readers might not want to read about a lawyer who closely resembles the book’s iconic hero, Atticus Finch. “Here’s the truth,” says…

Sep 23, 2011 12:04 AM CDT

Harvard Law Student Who Wrote Prizewinning Class Paper About ‘Survivor’ Is Now On the Show

A Harvard law student who’s a huge fan of Survivor has already parlayed his love of the reality television program into a prizewinning paper for a class on the American jury system. Now John Cochran, 24, will have a chance to try out his theories about how such groups work…

Sep 21, 2011 9:49 PM CDT

First One @ One First Blogger Is Now Reporting on the US Supreme Court for the Huffington Post

It will be a year before Mike Sacks celebrates his 30th birthday. But the Georgetown University law graduate has landed what many, including Sacks himself, consider a plum job, covering the U.S. Supreme Court. Guest-blogging for the ABA Journal and posting at First One @ One First, the third-year law…

Sep 20, 2011 10:00 AM CDT

Brooke Shields to Star in TV Movie Chronicling Kelo Eminent Domain Case

Brooke Shields will play Susette Kelo in a Lifetime TV movie about the woman’s unsuccessful quest to block the use of eminent domain in her New London, Conn., neighborhood. Kelo lost her case in the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 when the justices ruled 5-4 that the use of eminent…

Sep 14, 2011 10:30 AM CDT

How Can Attorneys Use Google+ to Generate Business?

Just when you mastered Twitter and Facebook, Google+ joins the mix. ABA Journal Podcast moderator Stephanie Francis Ward talks with lawyers and a social media expert about the free marketing opportunities the new site offers, and the tradeoffs for privacy concerns.

Sep 12, 2011 8:56 PM CDT

Proposition 8 Play Features Morgan Freeman and John Lithgow as Litigators Boies and Olson

Morgan Freeman will play David Boies while John Lithgow has the part of Ted Olson in a one-night reading of a new play about California’s Proposition 8 referendum banning gay marriage. The new play about the legal fight, titled 8, is by Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, the Am Law…

Sep 12, 2011 2:04 PM CDT

Twitter Is Helping More UK Law Firms and Attorneys Enjoy Tweet Taste of Success

Even in the conservative London legal market, a growing number of attorneys are starting to use Twitter to gain a higher professional profile by talking about themselves, their views on legal issues of import and their careers. That includes young lawyers such as Ashley Connick, who used his Twitter account…

Sep 9, 2011 5:42 PM CDT

‘Bait Car’ Malfunction Allowed Thieves to Steal Vehicle Intended to Capture Them in the Act

A multi-jurisdictional law enforcement task force in the Los Angeles area has been using a specially equipped vehicle not only to entrap would-be car thieves but as a stage for filming some of the alleged crimes in progress for a truTV reality television program, Bait Car. But unfortunately a mechanical…

Sep 8, 2011 8:07 PM CDT