Word has it that the Winston-Salem Warthogs are looking for a new team name. I think “Cancer Sticks” would fit the bill quite nicely, but no one I know in the area seems to agree.

Time to pay up. I knew Cali had gone loopy but did not know they’d gone that loopy. Oh well, at least this time it happened in a state that allows citizens to vote on stuff. Still, the best was on how the court would rule, not what the ultimate outcome would be, so if Mythago is reading this, I owe $100 to a charity of your choice.

Next time I’ll stick to betting Uncle a beer against outcomes I favor. That way I’m guaranteed to win.

I’m at the NRA convention, along with Uncle, Sebastian, Bitter, Sharp, Dave Kopel, and countless others. If I had planned better, I’d be attending the firearms law seminar today. Oh well. Originally the plan was to drag the whole family along, but ultimately the wife and kids decided to take a pass. Or at least one of the kids opted to take a pass. The other, I’m not so sure:

the L.A. Times has an interesting article on partial DNA searches, prompting three posts by Patterico (so far) and others by Eugene Volokh and Radley Balko. In a nutshell, John Puckett was convicted in 2004 of raping and murdering Diana Sylvester in 1972, mostly on account of a partial DNA match. Like many of the older DNA cases, it wasn’t possible to run a full DNA match, which is essentially failsafe, but just a partial one, which has roughly a 1 in 1.1 million chance of matching the wrong person.

Sounds pretty damning, doesn’t it? I mean really, if the odds of a false match are really 1.1 million to one, what are the chances they matched the wrong guy? Pretty high, actually, if you searched 1.1 million times. Buy enough lottery tickets, and you will win. In Puckett’s case, they didn’t search 1.1 million records but did search 338,000, resulting in roughly one-in-three odds that someone would get falsely matched, or about 1 in 4 that exactly one person would. The actual odds are a bit lower than that once you control for the uncertain odds that the killer was in fact in that database; presumably, if he was, he certainly would have gotten a hit, while the odds are only 1 in 3 that a second person also would have. Only one person was matched, so we can be certain that either Puckett was matched because he was the killer, or he got unlucky based on 1 in 4 odds, times whatever the odds were that the killer was not in the database. Without knowing the odds of the killer being in the database it’s tough to say how serious that error was in Puckett’s case, but easy to say exactly how serious it is in any case like Puckett’s where we don’t know for a fact that the defendant was the only match (or the only match to a person who doesn’t have a 100% airtight alibi): 1 in 3.

Some would argue that a partial DNA match that shows 1 in 1.1 million odds against a previously identified suspect, but only 1 in 3 odds against a suspect for whom the DNA semi-match was itself the basis of the suspicion, should not be admissible in court. I disagree. Anything that says you’re twice as likely to be guilty as innocent is highly probative of the charge. It is crucial, however, that such evidence be presented for what it is: enough to make you think he likely did it, but without other, unrelated corroborating evidence, not nearly enough to extinguish reasonable doubt.

I should note that the same math problem, known as the “prosecutor’s fallacy,” likely occurs every day even with full DNA matches. There, the error is equally lame in theory but harmless in practice. Without knowing exactly how long the odds have to be in order to surpass reasonable doubt, I am pretty confident that that number is somewhere north of 3 but south of 1 million. So if a prosecutor tells you that the odds of a false full match are 1 in 1 quintillion, but neglects to tell you that he found the guy by combing through a database of 1 million individuals, all that means is that the odds have fallen “all the way down” to 1 in 1 trillion. No big whoop.

OK, I’m finally breaking down and joining the other bloggers who post song lyrics they think are really cool but probably mean jack spit to 99% of their readers. This one is from one of my favorite rockers, Marius Müller-Westernhagen:

Ich bin der schwärzeste Neger,
ich bin der jüdischste Jud.
ich bin der deutscheste Deutsche
ich hab’ das roteste Blut.

Schweigen ist feige Reden ist Gold.
Schweigen ist feige Reden ist Gold.

Ich hab’ die weißeste Weste,
ich hab’ den größten Schwanz,
ich fress’ von Allem die Reste,
ich bin dein Rosenkranz.

Schweigen ist feige Reden ist Gold.
Schweigen ist feige Reden ist Gold.

Mir ist so kalt,
mir ist so kalt.
Mir ist so kalt,
so schrecklich kalt.

Wenn der Himmel
sich öffnet,
an jenem jüngsten Tag.
Wird die Liebe sich rächen,
an dem was wichtig war.

Schweigen ist feige Reden ist Gold.
Schweigen ist feige Reden ist Gold.

It’s recently come to my attention that Hillary Clinton and I have more things in common that either of us might have thought. A non-exhaustive, likely-to-be-updated-per-comments list is below the fold.

(more…)

The recent post about Paul, Hastings’s idiocy (made worse by rumors that two of the anonymized partners, and not the nice one, are fellow Boaltholes), got me to thinking about the other group of a-holes who pop up in the context of layoffs: headhunters. Don’t get me wrong; not all headhunters are a-holes. Headhunters have the same problem as lawyers, bankers, Palestinians and used car salesmen: 99% of them make the rest of them look bad. The headhunters who placed me (rather quickly, I might add) after I got shitcanned last year were great. So I’m not talking about them, just all the other guys.

Like, for example, Lawcrossing, who today sent me the follwing email under the subject line “Bad News: Law Firm Layoffs Increasing.” No shit. not sure why the spammed the message to me, as I don’t work for a firm, but that’s neit her here nor there. The email continues:

One of the most frightening things about any job

…including any job one might hope to obtain from Law Crossing, but never mind that…

is that you could potentially be let go at any moment. When the work inside law firms starts to slow down, when performance reviews get “weird,” and when you start hearing about people you know leaving under unusual circumstances, it is often a good reason to be nervous.

Indeed it is. However, if you’re insinuating that anyone should necessarily quit his job - as opposed to simply updating his resume and keeping abreast of what’s out there - all because other people have either gotten canned or quietly left of their own accord without giving proper notice (don’t laugh - that happens too, and a lot more often than you might think) then it bears noting that too many job hops also doesn’t look too hot in the eyes of prospective employers, especially if you can’t explain them better than saying “I thought they were going to can me so I canned them back first.”

If You Are Laid Off From a Legal Job, Your Chances of Finding a Job Just as Good Are More Difficult
Legal careers are fragile. If you are out of work for even a few weeks, it can be extremely difficult to find another job-the perception is that you must have been fired and with good reason (even if this is not true).

Really? My own experience does not bear that out. When I quit private practice to go in-house in 2002, I got no signing bonus, no relocation assistance, just a slight pay cut in exchange for an implicit (but, as it turned out, illusory) quasi-promise of working fewer hours. When I quit that job to get the hell out of California, I did get a healthy relo package, but the process of getting that job to begin with lasted a good four months. Then, when that employer turned around and canned my ass for no good reason (OK, from the perspective of the idiot I worked for and the complete moron that he works for, it’s probably a great reason) I ended up out of work for a whopping 7 weeks, or 6 if you go by the day I was offered the job as opposed to the day I started actually working there.

Ah, but you ask, is the new job “just as good” as the last? Actually, no, it’s better. The pay is identical, assuming I piss my employer off badly enough to preclude me from receiving any year-end bonus whatsoever. If I get a $1 bonus, the pay is better, despite the fact that I now work far saner hours, and despite the fact that the cost of living in Winston-Salem is about 10% below Richmond’s. That, plus the fact that everyone I work with is really cool, which is a lot more than I can say for my prior employer. As to the companies themselves, let’s just say I’m now working for a Fortune 100 company, while my prior employer barely made the Fortune 500 in my first year there, fell out of it in the second, and is nowhere near it now. Nor is my experience out of the ordinary; once I took that cursed job I soon learned that my predecessor had been canned under equally shady circumstances; he too quickly obtained employment from another, more prominent company in the same industry.

So no, I don’t think getting canned is a death knell to one’s career. The possibility that it might be once scared the crap out of me, as this email was intended to do. It doesn’t anymore.

If you are at a major firm, losing your job (even if you are laid off) may mean you never work for a major firm again.

Nice weasel word, “may.” Are firm jobs really that different from in-house? Maybe, but I rather doubt it, since the usual scare-stories from headhunters imply that if anything, in-house is worse.

At LawCrossing We Consolidate Every Legal Job in the United States and the UK and Are Exceptional at What We Do

Nicely tautological, that. Of course they’re very good at what they do. What they do is scare the crap out of you. The email didn’t scare me much, but probably would have if I’d gotten it as recently as a year ago. It probably did scare most other recipients. So yes, I concede that they are good at what they do, if only they would try applying that skill toward something more productive.

Remainder of email deleted for space.

Uncly-Wuncly asks “It’s true. In the event I actually run into him, anything you want me to ask? Should I ask about baseball or McCain-Feingold?” Since I’m going to the convention, too, I echo the question. In the highly unlikely event that I get a chance to ask him anything, what should the question be?

Paul Hastings is learning this lesson the hard way. A few words to the semi-wise^*, so hopefully your company won’t have to:

1. If you need to lay people off, lay people off, but admit that you’re doing it to cut costs. Unless something drastic has happened in the last three months, don’t simultaneously insult both the outgoing employee’s work product and his/her intelligence by throwing together a few obviously pretextual, eleventh-hour performance reviews that fly in the face of every regularly scheduled performance review you provided before.
2. Hell, even if you did can the employee because you weren’t happy with his/her work, ask yourself if you have a credible, face-saving way to spin this as a non-performance based, “sorry, your position was eliminated” downsizing. If such an opportunity exists, take it.
3. If the person you’re thinking of laying off / shitcanning / etc. is pregnant, and hasn’t anything just about anyone would consider a hanging offense, think twice and then a third time before doing anything that will make you look like a total shithead.
4. If that same person just miscarried, don’t even THINK about it.
5. If, after reviewing rules 1 through 4, you are still convinced that simultaneously terminating and insulting the employee is a smart thing to do, don’t try to bribe that employee into not talking smack about you.
6. Last and least, if you are a famous national employment law firm, and your particular branch is located in a state that prohibits noncompete and non-solicitation agreements, don’t try to bribe that same employee into signing an agreement that violates that law, as well.[See update.]

^*I’ve never really been comfortable with the phrase “a word to the wise.” After all, if the guy you’re talking to is so damned wise, why did you need to tell him this stuff? Then again, I’ll grant that any potentially good advice assumes some wisdom on the part of the hearer; if you thought he was too foolish to listen, you’d probably save your breath.

More here, here, here, here and here.

UPDATE: After re-reading the “non-compete” provision, I think it’s not a non-compete after all, but a promise not to re-apply for work there. Not a likely violation of B&P Code 16600, but a violation of common sense if nothing else. If they don’t want to re-hire her a year from now, two years from now, or whenever, that’s their prerogative, but what’s the point in contractually barring someone from even applying for a job?

Is Marci Milfs really upset over racy books being sold to teenagers, or does she just like irony?