Is The Roommate Agreement In The Big Bang Theory Valid?

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The Big Bang Theory gets a lot of hate and I have to confess I don’t really understand why. Sure it’s no Mad Men (what is?), and it relies too frequently on dumb blonde and fat jokes, but I just can’t muster a strong feeling about it either way. My wife and I used to watch, mostly in syndication, but I just couldn’t get enough of a foothold to stick with it. Despite my ambivalence to the show, one thing has nagged at me for several years. So in honor of TBBT’s return tonight for its ninth season, I’d like to discuss whether Sheldon and Leonard’s roommate agreement is legally valid.

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When Politicians Use Music Without Permission It’s Not a Copyright Issue, It’s a Trademark Issue (But It Doesn’t Matter Anyway)

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Do you remember the time Donald Trump played “It’s The End of the World as We Know It” at a campaign rally and REM told him not to use their music "for your moronic charade of a campaign?" Or that time John McCain used “Running on Empty” in a TV ad bashing Obama and Jackson Browne sued him? Or that time Rand Paul used “Tom Sawyer” during his Senate run and Rush said that it was obvious Paul “hates women and brown people?"* It seems like every time there’s an election, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a band upset at a politician for using its music. And with a year left before the general election, it’ll happen a few more times at least.

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Merger Clauses And You

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Unless you’re a witch (you’re not), your contracts don’t manifest fully formed out of thin air. They're the product of a negotiation, and whether long or short, the process will consist of you and the other party generating ideas about what the deal will look like. Sometimes during the negotiation, one of you may make a promise that for whatever reason doesn’t end up in the final written agreement. But when the other party assumes it’s still part of the deal, that’s when things can get FUBAR.

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Reality vs. Perfection: Why I'm Okay With Sesame Street's Move To HBO Even Though I'm Not Happy About It

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Reality will place limits on you... and that's okay. Perfection is an illusion anyway. Real world pragmatism - that is, taking the world as it is, not how you'd like it to be - isn't something to rebel against, it's to be embraced. I think a lot of people - lawyers included - think that if you can't get everything you want, you've failed, and that means you're weak. You haven't represented your client to the best of your ability; you haven't bent the world to your will. But that's a lie because that's not how the world works. What were my instructors really saying? Get used to imperfection. We lawyers can stand to internalize that a bit more and pass that knowledge on to our clients.

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Boldly Going Where I Haven’t Gone Before… The [Legal] Artist Turns Three!

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When I started this blog three years ago, it was a lark. I had just taken the bar exam and had months to wait before the results would come out, so I needed something to do. Even at my most optimistic, I didn’t see myself sticking with the blog for more than six months. But here we are, three years later and it’s going as strong as ever. That’s in large part due to your readership and encouragement. Even in hard times this has been safe space for me to discuss topics that I felt were important, or address issues that I wish I’d known about when I was a struggling filmmaker. So I thank you from the bottom of my heart for that. 

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