It seems Gadens just can’t get enough of its own sense of humour. Yet another of the firm’s jovial emails has been reproduced by UK website RollOnFriday:

Date: Jun 26, 2007 11:16 AM

To: undisclosed-recipients

Hello, aspiring summer clerk!

Imagine a world without summer clerkships — you could spend fourth year doing something more constructive than obsessing about getting one of the few available jobs, and you wouldn’t have to deal with those annoying people who get all the interviews.

Sadly, that world hasn’t arrived yet, we in the law firms all still delude ourselves into thinking we’re doing you a favour by offering summer clerkships, instead of the truth which is that we’re torturing you for our own amusement.

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That being said, Gadens is a firm where honesty is still considered a virtue, and in that spirit we openly recognise that this is far more fun for us than it is for you.

But who is this “Gadens” firm whose name you didn’t see in the official program? In one sense, just another top-10 commercial law firm, but one that happens to be completely devoid of employees who enjoy reading summer clerkship applications. That’s one differentiating feature of Gadens. Another is that we throw out any applications that:

1. use the word “penultimate”;

2. use the words “your firm” (bit of a giveaway that one);

3. spell my name wrong;

4. address our HR director “Dear Sir”;

5. include the words “attention to detail” and a spelling error in the same sentence.

This year, we will interview anyone who has won a karaoke competition, once worked in the meat-packing industry, owns a pet called Doris or is related to a Spice Girl. To be fair, we’ll also interview anyone else whose application catches our eye.

As for the clerkship itself, well there’ll be six or seven of you, and you will find out whether you really want to be a commercial lawyer. And there are 330 people here just waiting for December to come around when the call “Fresh Summer Clerks!” rings out down the corridors.

To find out more about why Gadens was voted “Firm Most Likely to be Mentioned at a Royal Commission” at the 2006 Australian Law Awards, visit our website or email us.

Or come to one of our Interview Skills Workshops, where we teach you how to dress the part, say intelligent things, appear interesting and not blow it. And meet us, so you can try out your clever questions over a drink. The workshops are on 7 and 9 August 2007 at 6pm here at Gadens. To register email us and nominate which date you’d prefer.

Applications close 3 August 2007

Good luck with the interviews!

Michael Bradley

Managing Partner, Sydney

Poor tennis champs steal Wimbledon towels

A crime spree has been taking Wimbledon by storm, with news coming out of the UK that players have stolen “thousands of pounds” worth of official tournament towels.

According to the UK Telegraph, world number one Roger Federer has confessed to regularly stealing the towels, which mere mortals must purchase for £24 ($56) in the tournament shop. The All England Lawn Tennis Club, which provides the towels each year, estimated that 2,500 go missing annually at a cost of £60,000 ($141,223), the paper said.

Federer seemed to mock reporters when he admitted to taking a “few” towels: “I have a big collection stacked up back home — they make a good gift,” he said. “We only get them on court and not in the locker room. If they gave them away in the locker room too there would be none left very quickly.”

The paper went on to say that fellow world-beaters Bob and Mike Bryan — champion doubles players — “steal as many towels as they can”.

Bob Bryan, reportedly wrote on his blog that: “my tennis bag is stuffed. I brought home five big bottles of water and four official Wimbledon towels”.

“For every match there are two new towels on your chair. When the match finishes, the ball boys try to snatch them from you, but if you shove them deep in your bag and run, they’re yours.”

Man jailed for feeding puppy to pet snake

A US man has been jailed for 90 days, with two years’ probation, for basting a three-week-old puppy in cooking oil and feeding it to his pet boa constrictor.

Joseph Beadle, of Glendale, Arizona, pleaded guilty to the charge of animal cruelty, which carried with it a maximum jail term of one year, the Associated Press said.

According to police, the 40-year-old offered the puppy to the eight-foot-long snake in the presence of two boys, both aged 15, in June last year. The cooking oil was apparently used to make the meal more appetising.

When animal health workers came to find the snake, they found it was in a state of neglect, and seized it.

“The County Attorneys Office has made prosecuting animal cruelty cases a high priority,” Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas said according to the news service.

“Experience and empirical evidence have shown that people who commit cruelty to animals are more likely to commit crimes against people.”

McDonald’s employees recoil from customer

A woman from Illinois with a rare medical condition that has left her with underdeveloped arms and hands is suing McDonalds’ with a claim that some of the restaurant’s employees discriminated against her.

Dawn Larson was born with Holt-Oram Syndrome, resulting in small hands that don’t extend much past her shoulders. To overcome this disability, she has grown very adept in the use of her feet, for tasks such as driving, swimming and bicycle riding, the Associated Presssaid.

But when ordering food at two separate McDonald’s fry-houses in Rockford, and passing her bank card with her foot to the attendant without any trouble, Larson said employees recoiled from her when she held out her foot to accept her food.

“I felt discriminated against, harassed, embarrassed,” Larson said. “All I wanted was the food I had paid for with my money card. I just wanted to feed my kids.”

Larson said that the employees eventually delivered the food to one of the passengers in her car, rather than passing the bag to her foot, the news service said.

“I drank my baby bottle with my feet. Nobody ever taught me how to do it, I just did it.” Larson said. “I can ride a regular 10-speed bike. I can swim. It has not been a problem in my life at all. It didn’t stop me from having four boys. I’ve never dropped one of them.”

NY women legally entitled to go topless

A lady in New York has won a $29,000 settlement from the city for wrongful arrest after police found her strolling down the street topless.

Jill Coccaro, 27, now known by the alias Phoenix Feeley, was arrested and kept in custody for 12 hours before she learnt that the charges against her would not be pursued. This decision was no doubt aided by a 1992 ruling from the state appeals court that found women are just as entitled as men to roam about in public without a shirt on, CNN.com reported.

“We hope the police learn a lesson and respect the rights of women to go topless,” Feeley’s lawyer Jeffrey Rothman said.

Feeley defended her behaviour as a matter of convenience. “I’ve always just felt that was something natural,” she said. “I’ve kind of always done it out of practicality.”

Child goddess fired for visiting US

A 10-year-old girl has been unceremoniously dumped from her role as Kumari Devi after making an unapproved visit to the US.

The girl, Sajani Shakya, became a living goddess at the ripe old age of two in the town of Bhaktapur, near Kathmandu. This gave her divine status and ranked her among Nepal’s most revered goddesses, beloved by Hindus and Buddhists alike, Reuters reported.

But when she travelled overseas without permission to promote a documentary about Nepal, religious leaders in her hometown stripped her of her status.

“It is wrong and against the tradition for her to go on a foreign tour without permission,” Bhaktapur temple official Jai Prasad Regmi said, the news service reported. “This is impure in our tradition. We will search for a new Kumari and install her as the living goddess.”

Shakya’s fall from grace doesn’t sound all that bad though. According to Reuters, the goddess lives an isolated life in a temple until puberty, at which point she is permitted to rejoin her family.

“So Sue Me!”— the board game

With plenty of time before Christmas, lawyers the nation over will welcome the chance to order new board game “So Sue Me!” for their children.

With the tagline of “Sue your friends, take their stuff”, this game promises to be the greatest example of corporate bastardry since Monopoly took the world by storm in 1935. As the game’s website says: “it’s a sue-or-be-sued world, so why hold back. ‘So Sue Me!’ is the new board game where you enjoy the wackiness of today’s lawsuits.”

Players move around the board with the combination of dice and a spinning wheel, which are apparently used to acquire property, while you try to avoid the threat of bankruptcy.

But if you go bust, don’t despair. According to the game’s makers, “the best way to get out of bankruptcy is to work as a lawyer”.

There is even a helpful FAQ section on the website to address your every concern, the reading of which might even count as continuing legal education for members of the profession.

For instance, to the question: “If I have a lawyer and lose a frivolous lawsuit, does the lawyer have to help me pay the frivolous lawsuit penalty?”

The answer was a firm: “Are you kidding? They collect if you win, and pay nothing if you lose. Nice racket, huh?”

And in the game, as in life, the “last player standing, when everyone else is bankrupt or out of the game, wins”.