Diablo 3 release day is here, and given the number of "arrow to the knee" jokes we've seen in the ATL comments, we know there are a lot of gaming lawyers out there.

For people who want to play Diablo as a team, and who would prefer teammates who contribute something other than novel uses of the word "fag," we've set up the Sanctuary Bar Association.

It's nothing more than a simple subreddit, but should suffice for letting players coordinate their games. Put off work together, fail the bar exam together, make lame jokes about the causes of action arising from destructable scenery together.

[Sanctuary Bar Association]

Traditionally money laundering is conducted through businesses that deal in cash and have low inventory, such as a dry cleaner or nail salon. A law firm would be great, especially with the attorney-client privilege, but the prohibition on non-lawyer partners means the boss money gets sent to has to be a lawyer. Not like it's hard to buy a law degree these days, but CLEs are such a hassle.

Today though, with the launch of Diablo 3, there is a new way to launder money. Diablo 3 incorporates a Real Money Auction House which allows players to buy and sell virtual items for cold hard cash (there is a separate auction house for using the in-game currency).

Laundering money from a criminal associate to the boss is a pretty simple process using Diablo 3.

The big perk of laundering money through Diablo 3 is that the monetary transactions are all legitimate. The associate makes a real purchase and the boss makes a real sale. The laundering comes at step #2, handing something of value directly to the criminal boss. It can be explained with a simple graphic, but good luck to the copss trying to figure it out.

With millions of players, Blizzard will not be keeping track of every game that's played, who's playing with who, and what items are transferred in these games. If the scheme is discovered, the prosecution is going to be left with a scheme where the Boss is making a large number of small legitimate sales to a large number of people, none of whom are aware of the laundering process.

The second big perk of using Diablo 3 as opposed to traditional money laundering schemes is that it lets you transfer money across international borders. There are two auction houses, tied to region (America+Australia, and Europe, no Asian market), but who you play with in-game is not limited. The associate can make a purchase with Brazilian Reals, hand the goods off to the boss who then makes a sale in Russian Rubles.

The drawback to this scheme is the fees. But, every money laundering scheme has overhead. When selling commodities (the items used to create new items) there is a 15% transaction fee, with PayPal taking another 15% when you cash out. 27.75% fee to get your money clean. It's an operation that can be set up overnight though, and can be picked up and moved in an instant. You can carry around the operation in a backpack if you want.

There is one final perk to the scheme. While Blizzard won't be tracking the path of every item in the game, it does log how much time you are playing. To keep things from being suspicious, you'll need to actually play the game a lot. Better than pretending to run a car wash.

[If you're a D3 player, be sure to join the Sanctuary Bar Association]

What to do about students with learning (or other) disabilities when it comes to timed exams? There are a lot of different questions that have to be answered here.

Do they get extra time to accommodate their disability? Or do we tell them that in the legal world you get the same 24 hours a day to bill as everyone else and you won't be granted a continuance just because of your ADHD?

Should a student diagnosed with ADD in early childhood get more time than someone diagnosed 1L year? The latter seems more likely to be a bogus diagnosis, but the former has had more time to learn to cope with the disability. If you're taking medication to treat your ADHD, do you even still have a disability? Shouldn't we say you get the extra time or the Adderall, but not both?

What about the fact that boys develop language skills more slowly than girls? Should we treat this like a slight disability and give all the male law students an extra 18 minutes on a 3 hour exam?

So many questions. Fortunately, we're only going to answer one. We're going to start with two presumptions though. First, that the disability is genuine, and second that we want to accommodate it. (Obviously if we don't want to accommodate it, the answer of what to do is nothing.)

The tension in providing extra time to the disabled student is that other students will feel cheated. The exam is graded on a curve, there are limited spots at the top, and if the disabled student gets an A we have a sticky situation. Did he get the A because he's really a brilliant student, or because we over-compensated for his disability?

Our solution to this problem is to create a two stage grading process. First, all the exams are graded and the scale is worked out. The disabled student is given his score. Then, his grade is removed, the scale is recalculated, and the other students are assigned their grades.

The disabled student may still end up with a higher score than he deserved if overcompensated, but it would minimize the impact to other students.

If a disproportionate number of Law Review spots are going to students who have received disability accommodations, and their placement on Law Review is solely or mostly due to their grades, a similar policy could be enacted by opening up additional spots.

This policy may seem like it is isolating students with disabilities. It is. However, the request to be treated differently comes at the request of the student. Grades and Law Review placement are a competition.

If a student asks to be given a different set of rules for the competition, the other students ought not to have their results affected by this accommodation.

[See Sam Bagenstos's post on the same at Prawfs Blawg]

We were wrong to ever doubt the sense of humor of lawyers. Just check out this hilarious prank pulled by Michael Maslanka, writing an article for ALM's Texas Lawyer about how to spruce up your resume:

1. Use graphics. Let's say a new attorney's grades in the first year of law school put him in that half of the class that makes the top half possible. Years two and three were break-out years, and his GPA increased. The employee-hopeful could list the three years of law school, with his GPA noted by each year. Snooze. That makes the reader pull out the information. Such a technique tells, but doesn't show, and telling is not persuasive. What about using a chart, like one that shows rising stock prices, outperforming from previous years? Instant understanding. First rule of persuasion: Show, don't tell.

We can't wait to hear about some poor sap who falls for this and uses a tacky graphic to draw attention to just how bad his 1L grades were rather than just listing his decent cumulative GPA.

...Wait, what?

This advise was given in earnest? Come on.

The article starts with "As managing partner of my office," so you'd think the person writing it might be somewhat authoritative on hiring decisions, and thus in a good position to give advice. He's a partner at Constangy, Brooks, and Smith, a firm with 130 attorneys. Not exactly huge, but it's in the top 350.

He's not managing partner of the firm though. Just managing partner of his office. The Dallas office. An office with only 4 associates. Maybe he does see a lot of resumes, what with how many young lawyers are papering every firm with a mailing address. But you might not want to take your advice from someone who isn't actually doing much hiring.

Maslanka's intro to the article does at least make a good point:

As managing partner of my office, I see lots of resumes. And many reflect this fundamental fallacy: A good resume is one that communicates information. That is wrong. A good resume is one that persuades, not informs. Persuasion is what we do as lawyers, whatever our field. The resume is a new attorney's first shot at showing a prospective employer whether he has the DNA of persuasion.

A resume is not supposed to be an even-handed presentation of the facts. It's meant as a piece of advocacy. If someone can't make a strong argument on their resume, it goes towards their ability to make strong arguments in other contexts. Of course, a resume is also formal document, one with a fairly uniform format. Lawyers regularly create documents in a standardized format, be it a will, corporate bylaws, or a brief with a court. Deviating from resume conventions will suggest that you don't understand the importance of sticking to the proper form, and that you have a little to much tolerance for taking risks.

Maslanka's other points in his article were stronger, if less original. He starts off with the odd ball advice though, the advice that's most likely to elicit a "this guy is retarded" reaction and destroy any credibility he has with the audience. So much for the DNA of persuasion.

[Texas Lawyer]