Those of you that know me know that I’m a wrestling fan and have been ever since I can remember. Sure, it’s not the same as it was in the days of Hulk Hogan, but I still do my best to catch Raw most every week. This past Monday night, there was a storyline where Vince McMahon announced he had sold the show Raw to Donald Trump. Not the greatest story in the world, but WWE always likes to pretend real when they think they can get some publicity out of it.

So the next day, USA Network issued a press release about the show being sold to Trump. In turn, the WWE stock fell 7%. The question: Did WWE and GE (owner of USA) violate securities law?

Both attorneys think WWE investors that sold the stock at a loss could have legal grounds to collect damages, potentially from both WWE and GE, since USA Network issued the release, but he couldn’t think of any legal precedent that could be used.

“Off top of my head, this is a unique set of facts,” Meissner said. “It sounds like poor judgment on their part for them to do this—for either company of that size to undertake something like this…it seems silly.”

You can read the full story at http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/media/ge-wwe-violation-securities-law/.

37 Days until the Bar Exam

This is uncharted water for me. To this point, I’ve made it through my academic pursuits with live instruction, pseudo-Socratic method, and nothing more on the line than a letter grade. BarBri provides one of that as lectures are presented on videotape, no one is there to call on you, and at the end of the run is an exam to determine if you are able to do the profession you’ve spent three years of your life preparing for. No pressure, though.

I’m already off to a rocky start. I signed up back in February so that I could get the free MPRE course, but through some sort of paperwork error, BarBri never had my application on file. Because of that, I just registered on May 8. This probably wouldn’t be too bad except that meant my books (all 24 pounds of them) weren’t shipped until May 14. Needless to say, they haven’t arrived yet. Not only that, the location of my class hasn’t been announced yet as far as I can tell.

Nevertheless, I’ll be at Nunn Hall tomorrow morning at 9am, looking for the room and hoping I don’t need a book until Tuesday.

Another unfortunate thing I learned about tonight is that there was a multi-state primer available online for free to jump start my bar review. There are two hour videos for the multi-state topics that you can watch in advance. I didn’t discover this until tonight. I wish I had watched them this past week, but I hope to catch up in the evenings after class this week.

I’m nervous, but excited. It’s a new phase. Most of my law school friends are taking the Ohio bar exam and so their class is in Cincinnati. And the only person I know that I’ve found so far is taking the classes in the morning session. I signed up for the evenings because I think that will leave less chance that I’ll put off some evening studying to go out with friends or family.

May 17, 2009
72 Days until the Bar Exam

The HBO series “Hard Knocks” is set to feature the Cincinnati Bengals training camp this season.

Wow. There is plenty of drama out of the Bengals every year, be it from Chad Johnson Ochocinco or a random player getting arrested, the Bengals never fail to create quality news. If one team can possibly live up to the “get your popcorn ready” fun factor of last year’s Cowboys and Terrell Owens, it’s the Cincinnati Bengals.

That’s probably because the Bengals have lacked maturity in recent years:

[Marvin] Lewis said he had been approached in seasons past, but didn’t think the Bengals were mature enough. He’s not worried about the camera giving an artificial hue to the most important part of the season.

At any rate, I’m excited. The Bengals are getting some national exposure and for once it’s not undeniably negative. I’ve been to Georgetown, KY for training camp before (and to Wilmington, OH in the old days). With “Hard Knocks” in town, I may have to make another trip down this offseason.

In related news:

• James Walker ominously discusses the “Hard Knocks” curse.
• In Bengals news, former Bengal great Willie Anderson has retired.
• Cincinnati is one of the top ten cities for new grads.
• Remember Chris Benoit (a wrestler/murder with an autobiographical DVD titled “Hard Knocks”)? His former doctor, Phil Astin, was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Along with the rest of the Class of 2009 of the University of Cincinnati College of Law, I finished law school just a couple of weeks ago. Since then, a lot of family and friends have asked me what it’s like to finish law school. It’s not quite as epic as David versus Goliath, but it’s close. I think this video captures the feeling.

For Rhett’s posting, head here.

My review of “The Legal Writer” is coming shortly. I’m mostly just enjoying a free week right now.

The website Technorati pegged bloggers’ median annual costs at $80 and the median average revenue at $200. Bloggers with advertising spent a mean of $1,800 on their sites and harvested bigger bucks, about $6,000 a year. Enough to feed a family of four. Mice.

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve added a couple of Google AdSense blocks to the sidebar on the right. I get a few cents when you view the page or a few more when people click through the links. It’s not a lot, but it’s something.

While I would love to earn some dough like the blogs in the article do, I want to make sure everyone knows that’s not the goal of this website. After all, the cost to run this site is only in the double digits each year. My true goal is merely to market myself and let everyone else have a small peek into my thoughts an interests.

But I’m not one to turn down some spare change.

The last thing I have to do before leaving is finish a paper on nuclear power for an energy policy class. The assignment is as follows:

Climate Change and Nuclear Power
Recently, there has been renewed discussion of nuclear power because concerns about greenhouse gas emissions. Much of the discussion in the literature comes under the heading “nuclear renaissance.” There are currently about 30 nuclear units planned for the future. This section should discuss the anticipated contribution of nuclear power because of its carbo-free electricity generation and it should also discuss other possible environmental and safety concerns.

I still have a bit of work to do, but right now I feel like I have a good start. If things turn out well, I plan to upload it here for you to read.

For those interested in the topic nuclear power, here are a few links to check out:

• Nuclear Energy Institute
• Union of Concerned Scientists
• MIT: The Future of Nuclear Power
• Nuclear Street
• Scientific American: The Future Of Nuclear Power

9 days and counting.

Anyway, I’ve been working on modifying a lot of the code behind the scenes to keep the site running as smoothly as possible. I feel web design fever building back up to me. If you’ve read RhettLemmel.com, you’ve seen that he recently added a book to his wish list. I had the first edition of the book in undergrad and strongly recommend it to anyone interested in web design. In fact, I may have to update to the newly released “Programming the World Wide Web 2009 (5th Edition).”

Finally, I received my copy of “Me 2.0” by Dan Schawbel in the mail today. This book and his site at http://personalbrandingblog.com/ were two of the inspirations behind this site. I can’t wait to delve into his book. If it’s half as good as his blog and his Twitter posts, I’m in for a treat.

Looking back, it’s odd to find myself in the position I am in today. I am the product of two attorneys. Yet all my life one of the last things that I ever expected to be doing is graduating from law school. And the very last thing that I ever expected to be doing was looking forward to being a lawyer. But I’m doing both. In fact, I can’t wait to be a lawyer. It’s funny how things work out sometimes.

It was no more than a month after receiving my B.S. from Northern Kentucky University that I found myself a salaried employee for a multi-national corporation. I was in my zone, making money, and working with computers. It was everything I ever envisioned for my life.

But I suppose I was always bound to follow in my parents’ footsteps. My life soon moved from people asking me if I was going to law school to taking the LSAT on a whim. And then the scores came in and I began to think, “Hey. Maybe I should go to law school.” My applications were in the mail and after a whirlwind I found myself at the University of Cincinnati.

What I found in law school was not exactly what I had expected. I had sort of viewed it as something to do for a few years before moving on to an MBA and back to the corporate world. Instead, I found that the legal profession could offer me something that the corporate world never could. I finally saw an opportunity to do something good that could actually impact peoples’ lives.

I never understood why my parents became lawyers, but it has become clearer over the last three years. It is one thing to help yourself, but I look forward to being able to help others with my J.D.

J. Bryant Dean
April 26, 2009