Arthur Gonzalez, Chief Judge of New York's bankruptcy court will be stepping down from his post next February and joining the faculty at NYU School of Law full time.

Gonzalez was a judge in three of the largest bankruptcies of all time, Enron, WorldCom, and Chrysler.  He was appointed to the bankruptcy court in 1995, but made chief judge only last year.

Gonzales won't be joining the faculty as a professor though.  Apparently a JD from Fordham, tax LLM from NYU, and 16 years on the bench only earn you the title of "senior fellow."  Maybe we just don't understand the academic hierarchy, but this seems like a bit of a demotion.  Gonzalez has previously taught at NYU as an adjunct professor.

[NYU Press Release]

Ever get a craving for a nice, smooth Pinot from Howard Country, Maryland?

Tough luck.

For the second year, the Howard County Council has tabled legislation that would allow wineries to open in the county. Members of the council who sought to delay the legislation cited concern about "preservation parcels in cluster subdivisions," land kept open when residential units were clustered.

Opponents of the bill want those pieces of land isolated and regulated differently over concern that wineries in those spaces would draw too large of a crowd and create traffic problems.

Howard County must be rolling in money if it can turn away businesses over the concern that they would draw too much tourist traffic.

[Baltimore Sun]

LawMaster's iBench software has allowed Australian attorney Amanda Given to keep her practice open, despite her Brisbane office being destroyed by floods.

Flooding late last year caused A$1 billion in property damage in Queensland, and an estimated A$30 billion (US$31 billion) in lost GDP.

But, thanks to the glory that is the Apple App store, Given Law remained open.  The iBench application, which is available for iPad and iPhone, allows lawyers to digitally access all of their memos, research, correspondence, and other essentials for making sure you never get a moment's peace away from office.

Given said thanks to iBench, the only real impact to her practice was finding a place to meet clients. Upwards of half of Queensland was underwater during the floods.

[Computer World]

Want to get out of your CLE requirement? Become a judge!

Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ronald Castille recently shot down a proposal that would require state judges to undergo judicial training.  Chief Justice Castille argued that it doesn't take much training "to know not to commit a crime."

While knowing the difference between right and wrong may not take much training, putting that knowledge into practice does. Numerous experiments have shown that people behave more ethically and honestly when reminded that they're supposed to. Our egos don't enjoy feeling like we're bad people or hypocrites. So, when our ethical obligations are out of sight and out of mind, it's easy to let ourselves slip.

Judge Castille also noted the practical limitations of requiring judicial training:

"The proposed training would have been a four day program.

"You would lose a judge for four days. There's 1,000 judges, by the way, so that'd be 4,000 days of lost judicial time."

That's four days every year, not a one-shot deal, and we agree that may be a bit excessive. Four day training the first time, and some continuing legal education however, that's a bit more manageable.

The state's attorneys are of course required to do continuing legal education training, as are the state's magisterial judges and traffic court judges.

Let's assume that each state requires 12 hours of CLE training by attorneys, and there are about 1 million attorneys in the United States, that's 12 million hours a year, 2 million days of lost legal services, hundreds of millions in lost revenue, tens of millions in lost taxes, and exactly 11.995 million hours spent in abject boredom.

[Legal Intelligencer via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]