|
Erdricks posted:Got an appeal before Posner coming up soon. Argued plenty of appeals to date. Never been afraid before. Am afraid now. Pray for me, lawgoons. How could you know that? The composition of panels is one of the most closely guarded secrets the Seventh Circuit has. Unless it's en banc, or the case was previously heard by the same panel... e: I guess this could have changed since I stopped paying attention a year or two ago. But it was definitely true a couple of years ago.
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2011 04:02
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 09:15 |
|
|
sigmachiev posted:ATTN Tax Goons: Anyone here work for the IRS? Anyone here know when the hiring freeze ends? Any tips on getting that gig (assume the person has an LLM from NYU). I don't think there's any reason to think the hiring freeze is going to end any time in the near future. What division are you looking at?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2011 04:05
|
|
|
MoFauxHawk posted:Oh drat, my Contracts professor is talking about the article now, including the part about contracts. He also wrote an angry comment. You should ask him why you're paying $35,000 a year to hear him justify his existence instead of teach you contracts.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2011 23:29
|
|
|
Cyrezar posted:Alright, I want some feedback from the tax guys in this thread. Counsel only goes to GS-15 for management, senior counsel, or special trial attorney positions. There aren't that many of those out there. So don't assume you'd ever get above 14. I also think the advice that where you went to law school doesn't matter depending on who the actual Chief Counsel is is naive at best. It smacks of "it used to be this way and it might go back to being that way." It's probably not going to. Everyone who's hiring lawyers can afford to be far more choosey about who they hire these days, and Counsel is no exception. When you say "Outside hires are going to be few and far between," I'm not sure if you mean that this gives you a leg up or not. If you do, I think you might not be right. Counsel has its own staffing levels it's supposed to adhere to independent of the larger IRS. Right now, my understanding is we're above them. And given that people are scared to retire right now, we don't have a lot of attrition either. It's not exactly uncommon for revenue agents, revenue officers, and paralegals in Counsel to go to law school and hope to get hired as attorneys. I can think of two who successfully pulled that off. Both did it a long time ago, when the rules of the game were different. The one I know who did it far more recently has pretty bleak prospects. I will also add that on a personal level I don't think Counsel should be hiring former client-side employees as attorneys (though nobody's asking me). A lot of the time our job is to tell the client a) no, b) you're doing (or did) your job wrong, or c) read the loving manual. I find the attorneys I know who used to work for the client seem awfully chummy with the client and I think it makes it harder to do that. e: Thank you for posting that case, 10-8. I thought about doing it and thought better of it.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2011 04:04
|
|
|
Cyrezar posted:That's straight from the mouth of someone who literally interviews and hires lawyers for Counsel, by the way. She said that the previous Chief of Counsel would only hire Ivy League, whereas now there are several working there from what you would call TTT. As you said, this could change depending the preference of the next Chief. I'm sure the AAC you're talking about knows what she's talking about, but my perception is that, on average, the people who have been hired in the last few years have far better "paper" credentials than the people who were hired more than, say, five years ago. 10-8 may have a different perception. Are there a lot of entry-level attorney positions posted for internal hires? There could be - I don't peruse the openings very closely. But again, just speaking from my experience, every attorney I can think of us hiring in the last couple of years has been an external hire, either through the honors program or hiring someone with experience in the private sector. MaximumBob fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Dec 2, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2011 04:43
|
|
|
MayakovskyMarmite posted:I need some anonymous relief/advice. The basic gist of the story is that the partner I pretty much exclusively worked for at a very successful litigation boutique jumped ship for a biglaw partnership. I was a little miffed that he left without even telling me he was thinking about leaving, but whatever. The problem is he also left an absolute mess in terms of files and has been unbelievably unprofessional about the transition. Not only was he too much of a free agent to actually follow firm policy and submit co-counsel agreements and retainers, but he also didn't really understand the privacy controls on our electronic filing system. Here's a happy thought. If he violated rules of professional conduct you're almost certainly obligated to report him.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2011 05:02
|
|
|
crankdatbatman posted:I realize that if I go through with this there is a good loving chance I'll be an alcoholic with clinical depression, and I may just end it all by the time I'm 32, but could someone please be objective about these few questions I have. Every law school I've come across has told me they have really high employment rates, above 80 and usually above 90%. After reading this I'm pretty sure you're trolling, but you realize there are at least fifteen schools being sued right now because students are accusing them of inflating these numbers, right?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2012 19:49
|
|
|
Agesilaus posted:No, you're the one who is utterly confused; unless you think that public attorneys don't have the ability to perform quality work, then you don't have a point here. All you're indicating is that the public sector is not being funded well enough, not that the public sector is inefficient or that their attorneys are inferior and therefore not comparable. Public offices run in such a fashion that, pound for pound, they clearly out-perform large law firms. You're a prosecutor in a giant municipality. You have a police force to build cases for you, a system that punishes minor crimes committed by the poor and defenseless so severely that you're guaranteed to have average outcomes that look like impressive victories, and anyone with the means to mount a serious defense probably donates to your bosses or the bosses of the police and there's never a case to go anywhere in the first place. The bulk of your office's work is no more difficult or impressive than those foreclosure mills that handle thousands upon thousands of proceedings and occasionally make grave mistakes with no consequences. Just instead of kicking people out of their homes you're putting black men in jail. Congratulations, you're clearly more efficient than those overpaid civil litigators.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2012 05:58
|
|
|
Soothing Vapors posted:I will never understand why people still seriouspost at grumblefish I'm a weak, weak man, that's why. I can't help myself.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2012 15:36
|
|
|
Schitzo posted:What really makes me scratch my head is the logic that could lead to such a statement. It basically reduces down to majority rule = valid law. Thankfully, the Supreme Court seems pretty intent on protecting the right of the wealthy to watch the poor bankrupt themselves any time they need surgery.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2012 12:26
|
|
|
entris posted:You reveal your bias. So-called "tax cheats" are just ordinary folks patriotically defending their freedom against an over-reaching and unconstitutional governme- So when petitioners' attorneys call me up and give me sob stories and complain about the treatment which their clients suffered, they're trying to suppress their gag reflexes the whole time? That's a relief.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 9, 2012 02:00
|
|
|
dos4gw posted:As I have said all along, I am not averse to looking to academics for guidance on things like this. My problem with it is that it isn't really law and shouldn't masquerade as such, because it's sociology. Yes some people will argue that it should be fused but I just don't think it should be. And as far as the quality of the output, I had a look at the first few pages of the pdf that was posted and I just started laughing trying to imagine standing before a judge and saying, I think maybe taking the sort of classes where you actually need to argue policy might have done you some good because someone might have taught you about straw men.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2012 19:15
|
|
|
HolySwissCheese posted:A guy in a lobster costume barged into my wills and estates class and proposed to his girlfriend. Don't go, no jobs, die in the arms of a lobsterman Had you researched Thermic Lances before you encountered the Lobster Man? Or did you at least have a Thermal Tazer? Nothing worse than having to abort an early mission because of an unexpected lobster man you can't kill.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2012 01:04
|
|
|
sigmachiev posted:Any predictions on the healthcare ruling tomorrow? The media will vastly overstate its significance to the presidential election, which will be nil.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2012 05:33
|
|
|
sigmachiev posted:Any predictions on the healthcare ruling tomorrow? Oh, bonus, serious prediction: If the Court finds that it has jurisdiction and the Anti-Injunction Act does not apply to this penalty, I expect a slew of district court suits over the next year or so from the sovereign citizen crowd seeking to enjoin the collection of taxes and penalties as they take that holding vastly out of context.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2012 13:36
|
|
|
I'm in for fantasy football.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2012 01:31
|
|
|
Soothing Vapors posted:Thank you for this. God Posner owns Posner is also completely awesome in person. If I was in his position I'd probably be a total dick, but he's really cool.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 31, 2012 01:47
|
|
|
HolySwissCheese posted:Anyone rich enough to hire a bankruptcy lawyer isn't really a public interest sob story. The people who hire Chapter 13 mills are often in pretty bad shape.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2012 15:58
|
|
|
Ashcans posted:Out of curiosity, does the Sovereign Citizen stuff overlap entirely with people who are mentally ill/conspiracy bugs, or are there otherwise regular people who are just convinced courts are a sham? I don't think everyone who is espousing that crap is mentally ill, but to a certain extent you have to be kind of a conspiracy bug. If you believe there's no law requiring you to file a tax return* or that the income tax only applies to federal employees or only to people living in DC, but the IRS is defying the law and collecting it anyway (and that in fact Congress may be complicit)**, you believe, at best, that a 100,000-employee federal agency is completely wrong about its mission, but more likely you have to believe that some or all of the organization knows the truth and is just running a racket. For that matter, it basically requires you to accept that nearly everyone else in the country is a dupe and you're the smart one - which isn't a conspiracy theory, exactly, but seems related. *: Somehow if you say "It's 26 USC 6012(a)," nobody ever reads it and goes "Oh! Yeah, you're right! I guess I do have to file!" **: There are people who legitimately believe that the income tax is constitutional and that it applies to some people, but not the vast majority of American citizens. Some of them also believe that Congress is in on this scam. Why, if they believe all these things, they don't think Congress would have just gone ahead and made the tax applicable to everyone else, I have no idea.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2013 23:47
|
|
|
Lote posted:It sounds like some of the people you're talking about have either a schizotypal personality disorder or paranoid personality disorder. Schizotypal personality disorder is basically diet schizophrenia. They have, among an extensive list of possible symptoms, odd thought processes, but they can function relatively well in society. Paranoid personality disorder is exactly as it sounds. These don't preclude each other, and you can even mix and match multiple personality disorders. It's hard to just say that the people who believe crazy things are just some type of insane though because there are different types of not making sense: I've had to deal with people who clearly don't apprehend reality the way I do (and I assume I'm the sane one because I keep winning). They'll say "I know you have to do your job but I have to file this motion for judicial notice of twenty cases that are unrelated because I have to make my record, you understand?" And I don't understand. But I say sure because what the hell else am I supposed to do? And then I have the people who file requests for admissions demanding I admit that there's no law making them liable for income tax and I at least see where they're coming from because it's the right procedural vehicle and the right question if you just assume their initial premise is correct. Which it's not, but still. MaximumBob fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Apr 12, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Apr 12, 2013 04:31
|
|
|
10-8 posted:I had a realization today and it made me sad. I spent the day tearing apart a bathroom, redoing the plumbing, installing a new vanity, etc., and it was so much more fulfilling than when I shuffle papers around. Don't worry, you're doomed to hate whatever you do for a living: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2013 16:09
|
|
|
10-8 posted:Courier New is an institution where I work. It was only last year that the US Tax Court allowed pleadings to be filed in anything but Courier New. It was awful. But now you can use proportional fonts... As long as you make them 14-point!
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2013 14:11
|
|
|
Alright, admit it, this guy is someone in the thread: Lawyer offering $1,000 not to go to law school quote:Matthew Willens, a Chicago personal-injury attorney, announced this week that he's launching a $1,000 Anything But Law School Graduate Scholarship for one student a year who is planning to go to a nonlegal graduate school.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2013 05:50
|
|
|
ThirdPartyView posted:Welp, I finally read the Sovereign Citizens movement Wikipedia entry and learned about the so-called missing 13th Amendment and the whole thing on why they don't recognize attorneys/the court. The only remaining question I have left is: what the hell is the whole fringe on flag thing? It's dumb and has something to do with how the law defining the official U.S. flag doesn't provide for gold fringe and therefore if you're in a courtroom and there's gold fringe on the flag you're really in some sort of foreign enclave/admiralty court/under martial law.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2013 04:19
|
|
|
PatrickKilpatrick posted:I used to lurk in this thread a long, long time ago. Does Mookie still post here? Did he ever make partner? That dude used to be my favorite I don't think he does post here anymore, but I just looked him up and it looks like he hasn't made partner to this point. I'm not certain he's at the point where he should have or that's a problem for him.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2013 15:36
|
|
|
Phil Moscowitz posted:Based on my extrapolations from his posts, he's probably in the beginning of the typical 3-year lookback period many firms use to decide partnership. My read is that's where he is, but I've never worked at a firm, so I wasn't sure if that was the right period or not.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2013 00:48
|
|
|
mastershakeman posted:Ah yes, the poison lake filled with poison animals, the best place for lawyers to swim. Wikipedia tells me that you have to pay $100 for a ten day pass to swim in this lake, too. Somehow the fact that you have to pay to swim in the poisonous lake full of (only slightly!) poison animals - and that you run a nonzero risk of being eaten by a saltwater crocodile when you do - seems to fit.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2014 06:02
|
|
|
Mr. Nice! posted:I was at first taken aback, but there does indeed seem to be crocs in Palau. All the more reason Palau owns. I live in Chicago. I have a poison lake I can jump in for free any time I want. And internet. Seriously though, a guy I went to law school with works in the PD's office in Palau and the couple of pictures/videos he's posted on Facebook of the island are absolutely gorgeous.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2014 06:42
|
|
|
ThirdPartyView posted:Not sure if anyone here knows anything about it, but is taking the US Tax Court Practitioner (USTCP) exam worth it? Probably not, but why are you thinking it might be? If you're a CPA or an EA you can already represent your client in front of exam, appeals, and even chief counsel after the client's filed a petition. I don't have statistics on this, but the percentage of audits that end up requiring actual litigation in Tax Court has to be minuscule. And if a case requires real litigation, a taxpayer would likely be better served having someone who is in Tax Court a lot than someone who is almost never there but theoretically could - it's got some procedural quirks that are tricky for attorneys who are used to litigation in other courts, let alone someone who's rarely in court at all.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2014 07:27
|
|
|
ThirdPartyView posted:Eh, I've read cases where the Tax Court judge basically pulled a justification to back the IRS from their rear end, so I wouldn't say there's no bias at all, but it's heavily overrated due to sovereign citizen/tax protestor/other pro se cases. Do you have any examples?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2014 01:21
|
|
|
Zo posted:Google said a while back that gpa had zero (not low, zero) correlation with performance for their hires and I can't see that being different for law. This is the same Google that illegally conspired with other tech companies to keep wages low, so I'm not sure I'd take the public statements of one of their HR executives as gospel.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2014 02:44
|
|
|
Soothing Vapors posted:It's cool, we're all friends here. Let's talk about how Elotana is defnitely going to jail instead That's not true. He could just get fired!
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2014 02:36
|
|
|
Pook Good Mook posted:Didn't Illinois get caught inflating their numbers a few years ago? Yeah, they did, but I'm not really sure that matters much going forward. Their ranking is unlikely to go down further because of it. The 2011 rankings were the last ones that before the inflation issue came up. They were ranked 23rd that year. Since then, they've gone 35-47-40. I think as it fades into the rearview mirror they'll settle back in around 30 - either way the drop is probably over or at least has leveled off. It also doesn't matter because a guaranteed three year scholarship that feeds at least one of his target markets over a non-guaranteed one at a school that really doesn't feed either of them should be a no-brainer. MaximumBob fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Apr 10, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Apr 10, 2014 03:04
|
|
|
mastershakeman posted:Yep! And no working on the side either, just in case you wanted to have any money. What I like even more is that the term can go anywhere from 6 months to a year of no pay! I'm surprised the description doesn't say that they get to decide when you're free to leave.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2014 05:02
|
|
|
evilweasel posted:As an attorney he should also (and probably does also) know full well that just because a lawsuit is meritless does not mean it will be immediately dismissed and does not mean it will not cost him money and look bad professionally. Also that a parent willing to make that sort of threat may not follow through with it but may follow through with trying to hurt him professionally. I'm not sure if "Assistant Professor" means he has tenure or is trying to get it, but without already having tenure he should absolutely just write the terrible letter rather than risk professional retaliation. As an attorney he should probably also know that someone might very well file a meritless lawsuit over a letter like that, too, though.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2014 00:58
|
|
|
Tetrix posted:I'm suing you guys for having a legal discussion over the letter rather than laughing at this girl who demanded it. I have no more empathy for entitled JD/PhD adjuncts than I do for entitled prospective law students.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2014 23:19
|
|
|
I'm off work for the next six weeks for paternity leave. Two observations: 1) This is the longest stretch of not having to go to work or school I've had since I was sixteen, and is the longest I'll have until my mid-to-late sixties. 2) It's Saturday, so technically not even the first day of my leave, and I already feel like I should be checking up on my cases.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2014 14:38
|
|
|
Hot Dog Day #91 posted:My...god... I have no personal knowledge of my name. This is why every time a witness takes the stand, their name must be proven by a birth certificate, under FRE 803(9), baptismal record under FRE 803(11), or scrawling in a family bible under FRE 803(13). It's also why Barry "Barack Hussein Obama" Soetoro can't testify in court because he has no document to prove his name. (by the way, Rule 803(13), which includes "engraving on a ring, inscription on a portrait, or engraving on an urn or burial marker," basically reads like something out of a Dungeons and Dragons spell description)
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2014 00:06
|
|
|
GamingHyena posted:I would have shook all the witnesses' hands just to let the jury watch the prosecutor flip out. What would the objection even be? "Objection, opposing counsel is being polite to the witness."
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2014 14:13
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 09:15 |
|
|
Soothing Vapors posted:Mookie went quiet all of a sudden... I just checked, Mookie's still not an Article III judge. Looks like he's at an especially soulless kind of sweatshop for now.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 14, 2014 04:25
|
|