Last Thursday somewhere over 800 associates and staff were laid off from Biglaw. Scott Greenfield thinks it’s inevitable that some number of them will be hanging shingles as criminal defense lawyers. I definitely agree. And while it’s unlikely that a very large number of them will want to become public defenders, the fact that they will be flooding the legal markets can only mean fewer jobs for all of us. If nothing else, with more competition in private practice, fewer current PDs are going to decide now is a good time to leave their jobs and strike out on their own, which means fewer PD positions for people like me.

This is just not good. Not good at all.

Following up on yesterday’s sadness: If you’re not sure why it’s so sad that the Obama Administration is doing exactly what the Bush Administration did with state secrets, here’s why it matters:

When the executive branch invokes the state secrets privilege to shut down lawsuits, hides its programs behind secret OLC opinions, over-classifies information to avoid public disclosure, and interprets the Freedom of
Information Act as an information withholding statute, it shuts down all of the means to detect and respond to its abuses of the rule of law – whether those abuses involve torture, domestic spying, or the firing of U.S. Attorneys for partisan gain.

(Quoting Russ Feingold.) Why why why would the Obama Administration want to do that? Is this a case where AG Holder just hasn’t had time to order a change in policy (Glenn Greenwald says there’s no way that’s possible—they knew this was coming and could have asked for more time if that’s what they wanted), or….? I just can’t see anything but bad here…

More from the NYT.

This makes me want to cry:

Obama Administration Maintains Bush Position on ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ Lawsuit

The Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.

A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn’t changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.

This is not going to please civil libertarians and human rights activists who had hoped the Obama administration would allow the lawsuit to proceed.

I just don’t understand. During the campaign I didn’t believe all the Obama critics who said he was all talk, preaching a gospel of “hope” without anything real behind it. Yet, evidence seems to be mounting that, to some extent, that was true. It’s hard not to agree w/Glenn Greenwald’s assessment: “There is no viable excuse, or even mitigation, for what they did here.”

Excuse me. I have some crying to do.

I know it doesn’t seem to readers of this blog as if anything is happening here. If you subscribe to the RSS feed you’ve gotten a few twitter updates recently, but that’s about it. The truth is, I’m kind of busy, but I’ve also been thinking about what to do w/the site. My initial thought was that I’d make the whole thing into a tumblelog, a single stream of pretty much everything I stumble across in my my web travels that seems interesting, funny, or otherwise worth sharing. For some, that would be fine — you’d be happy to skim through the twitter updates, the links to random articles, the quotes, whatever, and just pay attention to whatever you find interesting. I’m sure others would find that annoying — the signal-to-noise ratio would be too high.

The solution I’m considering at the moment would be to promote two feeds — one would be for substantive content and would be updated relatively infrequently, while the other would be more stream-of-consciousness and random. You could subscribe or pay attention to either, both, or neither. Thoughts? Suggestions?

A few resources that might be helpful in this project (mostly for my own benefit):
DIY Wordpress Tumblog
Wordpress plugins for tumbling
T1, a WP Tumbletheme
Tumble-hybrid Deuce theme

Two items about what counts as “justice” in our society:

First, at the age of 13 Joe Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison for the crime of rape. He is now 33 and is asking the SCOTUS to find his sentence cruel and unusual so he will have a chance at parole.

Second, Paul Kennedy reminds us that we live in a society where actual innocence is no bar to execution.

You couldn’t make this stuff up…

@Skellywright Good advice for attorneys, too. A juror once told me on a post-trial survey that she didn’t like the faces I made. We lost.

More great avice from BarBri: “WATCH OUT for fertile octogenarians.“

@mariamstripes He just said nonono.

Deeply trustworthy and valuable BarBri advice: “Impossibly complex and confused RAP question? Mark A.” WTF?

RT @jdickerson: Let your soul expand. http://tinyurl.com/bemm3s