The following is the intro to the mini-essay I'm writing for next week's Las Vegas Weekly. You can read the rest of the essay on Thursday, at LasVegasWeekly.com

The following mini-essay is really boring. Unless you’re a stuck-up know-it-all who’s intent on following “the issues” and putting your friends to sleep at cocktail parties, you’ll probably want to skip over it, flip to this week’s club ads, and stare at all the pictures of the pretty girls in skimpy skirts.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten rid of the riffraff, let’s get down to business.

Every now and then the Supreme Court of the United States does something really stupid. Four years ago, in a comically blatant violation of the Fifth Amendment, the Court held that state and local governments could take land from private owners and give it to other private owners. So, yeah, I’d consider that a “really stupid” decision.

This girl in the bookstore was studying for the CA bar. She gave me a card and said that she's been doing personal injury law in NV for the past year.

I noticed she was studying torts, and I said, "Let's do a couple problems together."

We did three. I got all of them right; she got all of them wrong.

I mentioned she was a personal injury lawyer, right?

It probably wasn't too great for her ego, but it probably also put the fear of God in her. But she studied much harder that afternoon than she would have!

I didn't have the heart to tell her I hadn't done anything remotely legal in the past 9 months.

Which reminds me...it's probably time to check up on my MCLE requirements...

DePaul University’s Provost just fired the Dean of my law school, Glen Weissenberger, for blowing the whistle on a university accounting scheme. I feel bad for Dean G, but even worse for the current and future DePaul law students who won’t get to benefit from his leadership.

I wish I were in Chicago right now to protest Dean G’s firing (both the actual firing and the method by which it was carried out), but it sounds like there are plenty of students and professors who are quite angry right now, and I’m confident they’ll make sure their voices are heard.

This was a bad, bad decision, and once the law school’s ranking drops and its alumni donations dry up (along with its prospective applicant pool), I suspect the Provost will realize this much. It'll probably take 3 or 4 years for this to happen, but it'll happen. Just watch.

My dad is a tax attorney and he wanted me to pass this message onto you:

Everyone knows you file your Federal Income Tax Return on April 15th and you file it on Form 1040. It is usually the last day or two before they are due that many people realize they don't have all the information they need to actually complete the return. No Problem! The IRS allows taxpayers to obtain an automatic extension of time by filing Form 4868. While filing Form 4868 postpones your return it does not postpone the payment of your taxes.

A lot of people visit RickLax.com to learn how to tie a tie. Hopefully one of these diagrams will help: