A Few Good Links

As the weekend thankfully approaches, here are few posts worth checking out:

1) Professor Gregory Bowman at Law Career Blog helps law students compare law firms. A useful and engaging commentary for those students interested in working in law firms, and particularly those who value things like quality of life and firm culture:

[H]ow are associate compensation schemes and law firm culture related? Average salaries are only the tip of the informational iceberg, and compensation schemes vary widely . . . Compensation set by committee means that there are insiders and outsiders--and try as you might, someone gets shafted. And the process becomes enormously political. The "Eat What you Kill" approach lowers the infighting factor, but it leads some partners to hoard work if they can get paid more for doing work themselves instead of handing it off. That, of course, is bad for the associates.

2) Professor Mike Dimino at Concurring Opinions compares criticism of referees with criticism of judges. Earlier this week, John Powers (are referees too old?) and Greg Skidmore (did the NFL sandbag Pete Morelli?) both analyzed referees, and Professor Dimino provides another terrific analysis:

My question is predominantly a practical one: Do restrictions on criticism of sports officials add to their respect? Does a sports league, or do individual officials, gain anything when the league prohibits a coach from saying that a particular official blew a call when replay after replay makes that fact clear to everyone? Is the speech ban prophylactic, in that the real goal is to eliminate comments relating to potential bias or limit violence? What, then, explains the leagues' apparent acceptance of on-field criticisms of officials (e.g., Marv Levy: "You over-officious jerk!")?

3) Sports Law Blog reader Kirk LeCureux has just started US Rugby Blog, a blog dedicated to starting a professional rugby league in the United States. Would such a league work? Would American consumers find rugby "too foreign"?

Bonus Link: My friend Jennifer Yen is staring in a film called Stalemates. She doesn't appear to be using her law degree, though, as she plays an assassin. Anyway, it's nice to see attorneys who have other life skills (although some say all litigators are really actors, so who knows).

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