Congratulations to Videogum for their very first Cease & Desist letter! It's from BET. Editor Gabe Delahaye promises never to watch College Hill again, in penance. [Videogum]

Alan Schnurman, the lawyer representing Fox News bedbug victim Jane Clark, explains the origin of the infestation: "My position is that it comes from foreigners...Because it became so inexpensive for foreigners to travel here, I believe they brought it into our hotel system." God, we knew it was a bad sign he called his client "Joan" yesterday. Just show the pictures and keep your mouth shut, Schnurman! You'll ruin everything! [NYO]

Earlier this month, American Lawyer Media laid off 42 staffers across the board. The company is also "scaling back" plans to expand the scope of one magazine, and moving another to an all-digital format, according to an internal memo. One insider says all of the laid off people are gone, but a sense of nervousness still pervades the office. What, lawyers can't afford to buy magazines any more? Cheap bastards. The full memo from ALM CEO Bill Pollak is below.

Jonathan and Jenny Selbin—two people who deserve one another—are both attorneys and the worst neighbors you could possibly imagine. In February, they filed a lawsuit against their neighbor for smoking in her own apartment, taking her to court even after she bought air purifiers because her smoking was "endangering" their sensitive child. The note they slipped under her door at the time read "As you may not be aware, we are both lawyers and both litigators, for whom the usual barriers to litigation are minimal." That bit made them the runaway winners of our February ""Which snippet from the Times Real Estate section makes you most want to assault the person in the story?" contest. Now, the suit has been settled [NYT]—and the Selbins are concerned about their own reputation.

Want to install Safari on your Windows PC? Hope you don't mind violating Apple's Software License Agreement. Apple's lawyers messed up when they copied and pasted the license for using Safari for Windows. From the text of the SLA:"2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions. A. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time." Whoops! You could run Safari for Windows on an Apple, I suppose, using Boot Camp or virtualization software. But somehow I don't think that's why Steve Jobs had his programmers rewrite the browser software for PCs.

Only those of you with elephantine memories will recall the case of Charlene Richards, the nurse that was hired to watch over legendary television superproducer Aaron Spelling during his final, bedridden days. While under the employ of the Spellings, Richards found herself in hot water after she refused to ride the grumpy old man's baloney pony. She was quickly fired for insubordination, but she didn't go quietly. She filed a sexual harrassment lawsuit, during the process of which her team of legal eagles sent a questionnaire out to over 600 actresses (including Heather Locklear and Teri Hatcher) asking if they, too, had been forced to endure the come-ons of the doddering billionaire. Well, as you can assume, the Spelling estate was none too happy about the media attention this received (one headline read "Sex Scandal Rocks Hollywood"), and they consequently filed a countersuit charging Richards' lawyer with defamation. All of this preamble serves to set-up this note: earlier today, the California Appeals Court threw the suit out. And that concludes today's episode of L.A. Law. Now, if you'll excuse us, we must be going. We hear that Arnie Becker is throwing a raging kegger, and we want to get a few words in edgewise with Grace Van Owen before she gets sloppy. [THR, Esq.]

Divulging your corporation's proprietary information on your blog is generally a no-no, and now the bastards say you can't even hold a good virtual wet t-shirt contest starring your fellow employees. Prominent law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (phew) has heartily chastised two employees for an "inappropriate" poll on their blog Skadden Insider, rating the hottest female Skadden lawyer. Apparently it didn't jibe with Skadden's "values and standards of behavior." Luckily we are without such encumbrances, so after the jump, take our own informal poll of the steamiest female attorneys at Skadden. Naturally, the least-clad lady won the Skadden poll, but that might have been cheating. You be the judge and later today we'll see if Gawker readers have the same taste in women as do pent up white-show law associates.

Even with the recent dip in the credit market, lawyers show plenty of hedge fund and private equity envy. Who can blame them? Literally and figuratively, lawyers live in the shadows of those financial gods. They share the same upscale neighborhoods, eat at the same trendy restaurants and relax on the same stretches of white sand in the Hamptons. The difference is that Wall Streeters will buy three or four apartments and combine them, and pick up choice properties by the water. "Our place is on the poor side of town — north of the highway [away from the water]," says a lawyer, sipping a drink poolside at her East Hampton weekend retreat. "Only the bankers can afford the south side."

Gravel-voiced bulldog Joe Tacopina was a lawyer for corrupt former police commissioner Bernard Kerik—one that Kerik actually paid for services rendered. Because while the other guys were defending Kerik from pending indictments the old-fashioned "legal" way, Tacopina was, according to the U.S. Attorneys, passing on false information and obstructing justice—and that's the way you defend Bernie Kerik, dammit. (Back in April, Tacopina was praised to the heavens Page Six—and also used to represent former Page Sixer Jared Paul Stern and Foxy Brown.) Now Kerik's other lawyer may be tossed off the case for possessing non-privileged information about Tacopina's actions—and Tacopina will testify about Kerik's misdeeds. America is so cruel to its heroes.

When we informed you yesterday of the lawsuit against the New York Post brought by Maximilia Cordero—the woman who might have been born a man (but she says not!) and who might have been raped by "billionaire financier" Jeffrey Epstein when she was underage—we apparently made some mistakes, according to her lawyer and live-in ex-boyfriend, William Unroch. Unroch wrote us yesterday to request a clarification, and his letter is posted below.

The Legal Aid Society exists to help the poor, the downtrodden, and the unfortunate fight for their civil rights and to defend them against unjust charges. So how sad, how hypocritical it was of them not to come to the aid of Peter Barta, the Legal Aid Society lawyer whose only crime was secretly videotaping his female coworkers changing their clothes.

Elena Glatt, a Manhattan lawyer, is suing Posy Florists on East 72nd Street for substituting pastel pink and green hydrangeas for the rust and green ones she'd requested for her 22 wedding reception centerpieces. But she doesn't just want her $27,435.14 back—she wants damages for the "extreme disappointment, distress and embarrassment" she suffered, to the tune of more than $400,000. Florist Stamos Arakas told the AP,"My father used to tell me, 'Don't deal with the lawyers.' Maybe he was right, God bless his soul." Dad probably should have also mentioned that you should avoid dealing with insanely entitled people with borderline personality disorder and saved you the trouble of opening a flower shop on the Upper East Side in the first place, Stamos!

"We are asking that you pay Beth $150,000 for the image that you have been using to generate business. If you choose not to settle this bill now we will ask for $1,500,000 in damages." — Letter from a celeb photographer's lawyer to not-really-that-rich TechCrunch chief Mike Arrington. The lawyer, Arrington says, mistakenly believed TechCrunch had been acquired by Google. [TechCrunch]

Lawyers feigning cool are the latest YouTube phenomenon. Why? Recruiting. Apparently the only way law firms can attract young lawyers-to-be is to blatantly hype the fun level at the workplace through "Mac vs. PC" parodies and bouncing about, Google-style, on giant rubber balls. But what will clients think when they get a look at all the tomfoolery? Check out Choate Hall & Stewart's campaign. Two questions: Would you work here? And would you hire these people to represent you in court?

NICK DOUGLAS — After "radiosurgeon," "robot programmer," and other jobs, "Second Life lawyer" is one of Business 2.0's "new new careers." The occupation's poster boy is Stevan Lieberman, who (according to B2) made $7k in his first two weeks of meeting clients online. Of course, since Second Life only has so many members, this is a "new new career" with a tiny cap on its practitioners. What with this and "Twitter politicians," just thank God no one's written about "MySpace bail-bond firms."

Unfortunately, new Conde Nast bizporn title Portfoilio's Screed-O-Matic is not, as its name seems to suggest, a fun toy for generating the kind of Scary Hollywood Lawyer missives for which epistolary pit-bull Marty Singer is famous. as we can think of no more amusing way to fritter away an entire afternoon than by self-issuing cease-and-desist notices only marginally less petty than ones we've actually received. (I.e., "Your repeated assertion that my client Sanjaya Malakar is actually some kind of minor hellspawn sent to destroy American Idol is malicious and outrageous. He is, in fact, a major demon." etc etc.) Still, there's some entertainment value in taking the S-O-M's interactive quiz on actual letters authored by Singer, especially when one can discover fun facts about how WWD's $3,445 ostrich-skin Prada bag "peace offering" to an offended Sarah Michelle Gellar was ostensibly returned because of the actress's feelings about animal rights.

PAUL BOUTIN — The problem with Google's double-secret non-disclosure agreement isn't that it's evil, or that it's typical. The problem with NDAs is that they don't work. People forget them in the heat of a conversation. They kid themselves that when you said "confidential" you didn't mean, like, confidential. But one angel investor has found a magic oath that keeps confidantes quiet better than paperwork. Read on.

When Donald Trump decided to try and revive his flagging Apprentice franchise by relocating it to Los Angeles, it guaranteed that he'd have access to local talent pre-degraded by jobs in the entertainment industry, for whom a potential Trump Organization imprisonment in a supply closet on an unfinished golf course would seem an appealing career option. But since employers here might not be so eager to lend their personnel to a weeks-long, televised job interview, contestants like entertainment lawyers Derek Arteta (of New Line) and Kristine Lefebvre (fret not, "The Lawyer in Me" section of her personal site is just a professional bio, not work in some legal-themed pornography) had to sneak off under the cover of "personal time" to do the show. THR, Esq. reports that their "vacationing" co-workers learned of their reality TV activities only after the cast was announced, but were nonetheless supportive of their dreams of Trump-branded subjugation:

There are a few kinds of people who go to law school. Some go because they dream of being district attorneys, bringing bad guys to justice and making $45,000 a year for the privilege. Some go because they dream of being big-shot defense attorneys, hogging time on television while they profess their Mafia clients' innocence. Some go because they have nothing better to do. But most law students, let's face it, are simply in it for the money. They want that blue-chip firm salary right off the bat (currently hovering around $145,000 plus bonus for a first-year associate) and the potential huge riches that come with one day being named partner (somewhere in the $1 million range, minimum, per year).

The professional alcoholics at SorryIGotDrunk.com scanned this ad from today's Variety, in which South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone say thank you to long-suffering (but apparently good-humored) attorney Kevin Morris on his firm's 10th anniversary by posing in front of the creative aids that have enabled a decade of staggering billable hours. Cute ads in the trades are nice, but in the end, there's really no better way to reward friendship and loyalty than by making someone a shitload of money.