Publisher's Notebook

Whenever we have written a story on law school placement or new associate hiring, for the past 26 years, we’ve always called Rob Kaplan, dean of career services, at the William & Mary law school to find out the scoop there. He’s always returned our calls, given us straight info and been a pleasure to work with.

Kaplan has made a move, reports the school. As of May 10, he is now Associate Dean for Externships, Judicial Clerkships, and Public Service Initiatives and Legal Writing Instructor.

Dean Davison Douglas reported that Kaplan now will be a writing instructor W&M’s new Legal Skills program, which will be headed by Meredith Aden, a new member of the faculty. Kaplan also will work to place students in externships, clerkships and public service programs.

Let me say two things: Thanks, Rob, for all your help over the years. And best of luck in the new program. We’ll be calling sometime in the future to find out how it’s going.

The College of Knowledge down in Williamsburg has many traditions — the Yule Log ceremony at Christmas and Charter Day in February, among others.

But for sheer joy, you can’t match the day that William & Mary seniors get to ring the Wren Bell.

Here’s how it works: After completing the very last class on the last day of classes, seniors make their way to the Wren Building, the original, iconic building at the front of campus.

There is a little door in the wall on the second floor that looks like it serves a dumbwaiter. But no, it is historic (like most things at W&M) — it was used in days past by the little guy who rang the bell at the top of Wren. Each senior gets to give the rope a good yank and that joyful clanging up high is his or her statement that school’s out, forever. (Apologies to Alice Cooper).

Today is the day. It’s the last day of classes for the Class of 2012, so if you’re down in the ‘Burg, you’ll know why there are bells in the air.

Check out the YouTube video supplied by the school and you’ll get the idea.

Twitter allows you to share your life, 140 characters at a time. If you haven’t joined the social media service yet, take heart that there are tweeters on there who are waay behind you.

BuzzFeed, which calls itself the purveyor of “the hottest, most social content on the web,” has compiled a wickedly funny list of “The Top 10 Most Unforgivable Twitter Spelling Mistakes.”

Needless to say, some tweeters need to fight their auto-correct function or at least to proofread before posting. Or if this is how they really spell, maybe you’re not missing much by avoiding Twitter.

There are folks who call on angles for divine help and those who rail against the bad manors of others or against hippocrates (posers, not the Greek guy). Some high school tweeters can’t wait to go to collage. There is at least one entry I won’t repeat in a family blog.

And items #2 and #1 are guaranteed to give you a laugh you’ll want to share with others all day long. This stuff just writes itself.

A tri-corner hat tip to Thomas Jefferson on his birthday today, April 13.

In honor of TJ’s 269th, here is an item about a project at his favorite school, the University of Virginia.

(Note: That would NOT be the College of William & Mary, of which he was an alumnus. He referred to Williamsburg as “Devilsburg.” Ask any undergraduate around exam time and you’ll get a nod of agreement.)

Law school librarians at UVa have been working for 40 years on a project to reconstruct a collection of law books selected by Jefferson himself, according to the Associated Press.

In 1828, a librarian at the school had the foresight to compile the titles of 375 law books, relying on a manuscript prepared by Jefferson. Unfortunately, due to a fire at UVa in 1895, many of Jefferson’s books were destroyed.

The librarian’s list survived, and it is kept in the law library’s rare book room.

Book by book, UVa library officials have been obtaining the books, and 317 are on grounds at the law school. They are searching for the other 58, some of which date back to the 1500s.

The most recent acquisition was made last October, when a San Francisco-based dealer located a title worth $750.

[Note: Image borrowed from UVa -- the school's alumni association is serving free birthday cake on the lawn at UVa today from 11:30 to 1:00 to honor TJ.]

News item: Someone stole copies of the student newspaper at Christopher Newport University.

Naw, that’s old news. Happened last September.

Wait a minute. You mean it happened again?

Last fall, a student allegedly trashed 700 copies of the paper, The Captain’s Log, because she was angry about a story that the paper published.

The school administration’s response: They squelched their student journalists’ right to complain then buried the incident in a murky, secret, faculty-run discipline system (See editorial, “A Teaching Moment at CNU,” Oct. 24, 2011).

Now the staff at The Captain’s Log has endured another paper-snatching episode, although this time the culprit was an employee of the administration. Really.

Here’s what went down on April 4 at the Newport News school, according to Emily Cole, the editor-in-chief of The Captain’s Log:

On Wednesdays, CNU gives tours to prospective students. Every college in America provides this service – it allows the prospect to get a sense of the place and the school gets to strut its stuff.

The Captain’s Log is published on Wednesday mornings and distributed free in racks throughout campus. The April 4 issue featured a page-one story about a suspected meth lab that had been discovered in a dorm on campus; two students were banned from school.

Drugs and crime on campus – not the kind of student life the administration might want to show high-school kids and their parents. So someone wanted to hide the story. Literally.

Emily Cole, the paper’s editor-in-chief, confronted a “University Fellow” who was seen carting off copies of the paper. “Fellows” are recent alums who work for the school. He said that he was “told by the administration” to remove the papers. That way, the embarrassing story wouldn’t be available to the would-be students.

“They told us to put them back after the tours,” he added.

Cole went to complain to the dean of admissions, who said he didn’t know anything about it. He said he’d make some calls. Papers miraculously reappeared in a rack. Back at the school welcome center, Cole discovered an admissions coordinator and another Fellow, each with 200 copies of the paper.

“I caught them black-handed, with ink on their hands,” Cole said. They offered to return the copies to the racks, but Cole did it herself.

The paper-snatching plan was “calculated and methodical,” Cole said. Papers were taken only from racks that were along the campus tour route.

Cole contacted the Student Press Resource Center in Arlington, which helped her draft a protest letter to CNU President Paul Trible. She called the Daily Press, where she interned last summer. The controversy wouldn’t go away. On April 10, Trible sent an email to all students in which he “expressly condemned” the taking of the papers.

“This action was taken by young employees who love CNU and were concerned that a newspaper article would create a bad impression for visiting prospective students,” Trible said.

He said there would be discipline but he said nothing more, since it was a personnel issue.

Trible added the statement the student journalists have been waiting to hear ever since the paper-trashing incident last fall: “The Captain’s Log is free to write anything it pleases and CNU fully respects the freedom of the press.”

Memo to the staff of The Captain’s Log: Hold Trible to that last statement. Etch it in stone somewhere. Remind him he said that when the next episode occurs.

But scapegoating nameless junior staffers or overzealous “young employees” for this incident? Sorry, President Trible, that rings hollow. You must not realize how bad this looks for your university.

It’s going to get worse, because this story, as they say in the news business, has legs. The day I talked to Cole, she already had been interviewed by the Daily Press, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and local TV stations. Right after our talk, she had an appointment with a Washington Post reporter.

Give Cole the last word: By trying to hide the papers, “they’ve done more damage [to CNU] than the meth lab story ever did.”

That headline may not be the catchiest of state nicknames, but it’s accurate.

The Maryland legislature has passed a bill that makes the Free State the first jurisdiction to prohibit employers from asking for the social media user names and passwords of prospective and current employees.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the bill protects Facebook and Twitter info, among others. The measure passed the Senate unanimously and by a wide margin in the House. It now goes to Gov. Marvin O’Malley.

Similar bills are pending in Illinois and California, the Sun reports.

Closer to home, the Virginia State Police made waves last month when it came to light it required trooper applicants to provide their social media user names and passwords as part of the application process. Officials called their practice a “virtual character check.”

The Virginia ACLU protested; for what it’s worth, the Maryland chapter of the ACLU was instrumental in pushing the just-passed measure in Maryland.

If you’re a fan of the TV show “Mad Men,” as I am, you’re glad that the 17-month wait for season five is over. Last Sunday, AMC aired two hours of the show, giving Mad Men-iacs a new dose of Don Draper and his advertising colleagues on Madison Avenue in the 1960s.

The opening scene was unusual – it was set in a different ad agency (we learn later, Young & Rubicam) and some young ad men dumped water and tossed water bags at civil rights picketers below.

Several black women storm up to the agency to protest. A boy with them had been drenched by the water. The receptionist sputters that the activity couldn’t be from their office: “This is the executive floor,” she said.

“And they call us savages,” mutters one of the protestors.

Some viewers thought the entire scene was a bit over the top. A New York Times critic called it “unfortunately ham-handed.”

But as the New York Times blog “City Room” reports, it’s all true, all the way down to the dialogue. A researcher for the show came across a clip from the Times from 1966 and shared it with creator Matthew Weiner, who decided to use the scene, and the exchange, which had been transcribed by a reporter who happened to be present.

As someone once said, journalism is the first draft of history. Or in this case, of a TV script.

When Alexandria lawyer Vic Glasberg filed suit last November on behalf of a man claiming he was wrongfully assaulted by a sheriff’s deputy, he did something unusual, perhaps even novel and first-impression.

He incorporated a YouTube video as part of his complaint, providing the link in his complaint.

His client, he said, was standing in a submissive posture while talking to another deputy. The video was taken by the camera on the defendant’s cruiser.

The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVN7s2pkkkI

The deputy, Terry Daniel, allegedly struck the plaintiff, Carlos Garcia, causing a mild traumatic brain injury.

Defense lawyer Alexander Francuzenko went after Glasberg’s use of YouTube in a pleading, filing a motion to dismiss.

He argued, among other things, that an Internet link is not stable enough and a posting is too tenuous a document to incorporate into a complaint.

Phooey, said Glasberg in response, although he used more legalistic language than that.

The court’s electronic filing system doesn’t allow parties to attach DVDs to pleadings, so he opted to post the video on YouTube, a widely accepted repository on the Internet.

He  noted that the video comes from the official dashboard camera on the defendant’s cruiser, and he said, “This case is rare in that liability in the matter is premised entirely on a video recording of the assault in question.”

After a hearing earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady denied the defense motion.

Rule 12(f) dictates the striking of any material that is “redundant, immaterial, impertinent or scandalous,” but none of those scenarios apply here, the judge wrote in an order. And the defendant admitted in his answer that the video is indeed a recording of the events that prompted the lawsuit.

O’Grady said he found no authority to strike the incorporation of a YouTube video from a complaint; he added that his ruling did not address admissibility of the video, a fight for another day.

There you have it: according to a federal judge, you can use a YouTube video as part of a lawsuit. Look for others to use this technique, Glasberg said.

“I expect that this issue will arise more often as we become more used to the interaction of technology and law,” he said.

Here’s a hat tip to our former colleague, Alan Cooper, who reports that he is enjoying his retirement and spends much of his time biking and hiking. Maybe he should start the Virginia Trail Lawyers Association.

**

Alan Cooper was honored at the recent meeting of the Virginia State Bar Council for his contributions as a journalist and a lawyer.

At its Feb. 25 gathering in Richmond, the council adopted a resolution that noted Cooper had served on several VSB committees, including the VSB Special Committee on Communications, in which he is currently a member.

Cooper, who joined the bar in 1977, “ably assisted the profession, the courts, and the public as a journalist of eminent regard” during his career, the resolution noted. He was a reporter at the Richmond News Leader and Richmond Times-Dispatch before joining Virginia Lawyers Weekly as News Editor in 2005. He retired last September.

“In each of these roles,” the resolution continued, Cooper exhibited “the highest degree of competence, integrity, dedication, and professionalism.”

The council concluded by thanking him “for his years as a volunteer in the Virginia State Bar, as a journalist covering the Virginia State Bar and legal issues with fairness and integrity and as a Virginia lawyer.”

Back in the mid-1990s, a book called, “Make It So: Leadership Lessons from Star Trek: The Next Generation,” was published.

This was when STNG was in its heyday, and the author took examples from episodes of the series to illustrate the leadership style and techniques of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Each chapter covered a different episode.

Alex Knapp, a writer for Forbes magazine, says that he covers “the future of science, technology and culture.” Makes sense that he’s a Trekker.

Knapp has applied this same approach to Picard’s predecessor as captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, James Tiberius Kirk (above, portrayed by William Shatner).

Instead writing of an entire book, though, Knapp has penned an article for Forbes enumerating “Five leadership lessons from James T. Kirk.”

These include:
• Never stop learning
• Have advisors with different worldviews
• Be part of the away team
• Play poker, not chess
• Blow up the Enterprise

Really good stuff and worth a look if you are in charge of an operation, whether it’s a law practice or a starship.

Live long and prosper.