LLTC Trivia Game update

Thank you for making the 2011-2012 edition of the LLTC’s Trivia Game a great success. We had approximately 50 participants and awarded over $400 in cash and prizes.

Congratulations to Darla Grondin, the overall point leader for the 2011-2012 academic school year. She earned over 700 total points and will be awarded a $100 Visa Gift Card as a result of her efforts. Congratulations to Christina Lehm, who finished a close second, and is also the winner of the final trivia period, a feat for which she will receive a $25 Visa Gift Card. Finally, congratulations to Mike Leonard, who was this semester’s overall point leader, a feat for which he will receive a $50 Visa Gift Card.

This year’s five trivia topics were as follows:

1)      Name that Movie

2)      Name that Professor

3)      Name that Library/Legal Resource

4)      Name that Case

5)      Name that Pop Culture (Person/Place/Thing)

Each week (Mon-Fri) 5 clues are released daily, once every 24 hours regarding a particular movie, professor, resource, case or pop culture.

Sample Trivia Series:

Name that Case: Dad is a nonbeliever. #trivia

Name that Case: Dad wanted to force schools to quit long-time practice. #trivia

Name that Case: Mom does not mind the recitation of certain words. #trivia

Name that Case: Dad loses 8-0 in the SCOTUS. #trivia

Name that Case: “[U]nder God” stays; sorry pops. #trivia

Answer: Newdow v. United States Congress, Elk Grove Unified School District, et al., 542 U.S. 1 (2004) (or one of its other procedural incarnations).

Please remember to check the LLTC’s Twitter and Facebook accounts every Monday (during the academic school year) at 8:00 P.M. for the initial clue regarding that week’s trivia series. Clues are posted weekdays and correct responses are worth up to 50 points if submitted to owensw@nsu.law.nova.edu on the day of release; points awarded for correct submissions will decrease by 10 points daily e.g. Monday (from 8:00 P.M. until Tuesday at 7:59:59 P.M.) =50 points, Tuesday (from 8:00 P.M. until Wednesday at 7:59:59 PM)=40 points, etc… No points will be awarded for incorrect responses or for responses submitted after 7:59:59 P.M. on the Saturday following the release of that week’s final clue. All responses MUST be submitted to owensw@nsu.law.nova.edu.

Please DO NOT post your responses to the LLTC’s Twitter or Facebook accounts.

Each period (approximately 5 weeks), a $25 prize (gift certificate) will be awarded to the point leader.  Each semester, a $50 prize (gift certificate) will be awarded to the point leader.  At the end of the school year, the overall point leader will receive a $100 prize (gift certificate).  At all stages of play, tied players will be entered into a drawing to determine the final disposition of the prize.

Once again, thank you for your participation and please be sure to join us for the next installment of the LLTC’s Trivia Game!

Have a great summer!

Q: How many lawyer jokes are there?

A: One.  The rest are true stories (hat tip to Rosann Auchstetter for the joke).

As we move to the end of the semester and finals appear just over the horizon, I thought I would provide a list of websites which would offer comic relief when you need one and a brain break from studying.  For those who prefer to consume their media in printed form, the law library offers myriad books on legal humor. Below, I’ve summarized my favorite places for a legal humor fix.  If you just want a quick list of lawyer jokes though, allow me to recommend the Canonical List of Lawyer Jokes.

Q: Have you heard about the lawyers’ word processor?
A: No matter what font you select, everything comes out in fine print.

There are several lawyers, law professors, and law students who maintain funny legal blogs.  Here are some of my favorites:

•  Legal Humour specializes in funny stories with a law component.
• Bitter Lawyer offers light humor, dark humor, and career advice.
• Lowering the Bar has a lot of funny legal stories, occasional substantive posts, and the best disclaimer I’ve ever seen.
• Legal Antics is a photo blog of funny legalesque pictures.
• The Namby Pamby is a very funny blog about practicing medical malpractice and personal injury law in Chicago.

Q: What’s the problem with lawyer jokes?
A: Lawyer’s don’t think they’re funny, and no one else thinks they’re jokes.

There are many really fabulous legal comics on the web. Queen’s Counsel has lots of great legal comics from a UK perspective.  Law Comix aggregates law comic strips from blogs and other sources all around the internet.  I particularly recommend  the ones from Legal Pad Comix.  I also recommend  Legally Drawn which has great one panel comics, including one involving Angry Birds.

Q: What do you get when you cross a librarian with a lawyer?
A: All the information you need, but you can’t understand a word of it.

There are actually, believe it or not, people who research legal humor.  They have funny websites too.  My two favorites are McClurg’s Legal Humor and the Green Bag.  McClurg is a law professor at the University of Memphis who maintains a very active law blog that contains strange judicial opinions, law school humor, a column from the Green Bag, and what he calls “legal oddities.”  We have McClurg’s book 1L of a Ride in the law library (highly recommended) and his new book, The “Companion Text” to Law School: Understanding and Surviving Life with a Law Student, is arriving early next week. Green Bag is a law journal that continues a combination of legal humor and “short, readable, useful, and sometimes entertaining law scholarship.”

Q. Why won’t sharks attack lawyers?
A. Professional courtesy.

If you’re a fake news fan, you may want to check out Turnip News, which is the Onion for lawyers or LoLawyer, which reads like a news magazine.  Magazine fans may prefer Big Legal Brain, which reads like Cosmopolitan or Esquire for lawyers. TV fans may want to watch Mr. Law School, who is graduating this year.

There are also some great websites that use real life (or TV) to add some humor to their discussions of the law.  The Texas Bar maintains a list of short bouts of true courtroom stories.  Those of you studying for Employment law exams may appreciate “That’s what she said” where Ford & Harrison talk about how the employees in the TV show “the Office” could best sue their employer.  Anticipate This!^TM blogs about amusing and bizarre patent applications.

Finally, if none of the above give you sufficient stress relief, I recommend the virtual  bubble wrap website.  It’s almost as satisfying as popping the real thing.

Letters and Law Practice: A Cautionary Tale

ThinkGeek, http://www.thinkgeek.com, is an
Internet-order company for, well, geeks. ThinkGeek carries…
interesting(?) products for geeks: lightsabers, titanium sporks, no end
of bacon products (they seem to think that bacon is cool), and The
Big Bang Theory t-shirts (Bazinga!). At the beginning of April, they
introduced a new product: Canned unicorn meat. The ad said "Pâté is passé. Unicorn -
the new white meat." (http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/unicorn-meat.shtml).

Unicorn.
"The new white meat," huh? Sounds like someone else's slogan, doesn't
it–"a cease and desist letter from
lawyers from the National Pork Board (even though the
Board is thinking of retiring the slogan). As ThinkGeek wrote of the
letter, "First, it's 12 pages long and very well-researched
(except on one point); it even includes screengrabs of the offending
item from our site. And we know they're not messing around because they
invested in the best and brightest legal minds." (The letter was from Faegre
& Benson, a well-known and -respected international firm.)

See
that "on one point" parenthetical in the ThinkGeek post? Faegre &
Benson missed out on one thing: This alleged infringement of the National
Pork Board's trademark is (probably) protected by fair use… as parody.

Remember
when the product was introduced? Early April. April 1st, in fact. The
new product was an April Fool's joke. As ThinkGeek's webpage for the new
"product" said, "Not yet approved by the USDA or FDA, but the nuns have
eaten it for centuries and they're healthy as horses."

Moral of
the story: Think before you draft documents or bill clients.

For those 1Ls just learning to use Wexis

Valuable instruction in constructing a subject search from David E. Mills at Courtoons

- By: Deborah McGovern

Colbert’s Take on Corporate Political Speech

The Colbert Report	Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word – Let Freedom Ka-Ching
www.colbertnation.com
http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:249055
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Protests

 

- By: Deborah McGovern

Spell Checker Poem

I have a spelling checker,
It came with my pea see;
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I cannot sea.
I’ve run this poem threw it,
I’m sure your please too no,
It’s letter perfect in its weight,
My checker tolled me sew.
-Author Unknown-

 

- By: Robert Hudson

That Explains a Lot!

Thanks to David E. Mills, at Courtoons

- By: Deborah McGovern

How to be a Monster in the Law Library

Hat tip to Law Librarian Blog

- By: Deborah McGovern

A rare Sunday Funny…

http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/onion/radionews/player/player.swf?soundFile=http%3A%2F%2Ftrack%2Etheonion%2Ecom%2Fpodcast%5Fredirect%2Emp3%3Ffile%3Dfiles%2Fradionews%2F09%2D151%5FCruel%5FOwner%5FF%2Emp3%26title%3DCruel%20Owner%20Deprives%20Laptop%20Of%20Sleep%26issue%3D4535%26prefix%3DORN&title=Cruel%20Owner%20Deprives%20Laptop%20Of%20Sleep&date=Thu%2C%20Aug%2027%202009&slug=cruel%5Fowner%5Fdeprives%5Flaptop&autostart=no

- By: Robert Hudson

For Those of You Concerned About the Effects of Swine Flu

We offer for your consideration The Eye of the Beholder.

- By: Deborah McGovern