Ed. note: Please welcome Above the Law’s new poet-in-residence, Qui Tam. You can read the rest of his law-related poetry over here.
First week, the subject was an infirm professor and second week, OCI. More or less chronological, so logically, you might expect summer associate stories next, but I’ll save those for some other post. A name came up at work today and I was reminded of some fun times, so this week the subject is partners, or a couple of them anyway…
Teresa and Joe Giudice
Teresa and Joe Giudice, famous for their roles on the Real Housewives of New Jersey, have entered guilty pleas in their federal bank fraud case. Media outlets are reporting that Teresa faces 21 to 27 months and Joe is facing 37 to 46 months. The plea agreement reached is not one with a sentence specified. In reality, the sentencing range is a suggested sentence under the guidelines; the court is free to sentence them up to the maximum of 50 years. Of course, it is highly unlikely that either Joe or Teresa would be sentenced to 50 years. My prediction is that Teresa gets probation and Joe gets two to three years…
Continue reading “‘Real Housewives’ Stars Teresa And Joe Giudice Take A Plea; Will Joe Be Deported?”
‘But we didn’t even have the biggest drop…’
2012 was a poor year for us with regard to our employment numbers and bar passage rates. We have begun to address these issues through stronger bar support and changes in our approach to the employment market, and have already seen improvements in both areas for the Class of 2013.
– Dean Nora Demleitner of Washington & Lee University School of Law, in comments made following news of the law school’s 17-spot decline in the U.S. News rankings, from No. 26 last year to No. 43 this year. Bob Morse, director of research at U.S. News, said W&L was “hit hard” by its lower employment rate.
Please join us at the Yale Club of New York City on March 14 for the inaugural ATL Attorney@Blog conference. Featuring opening remarks by preeminent First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams of Cahill Gordon & Reindel, Attorney@Blog will be a first-of-its-kind convocation of leading legal bloggers. Panelists will include Tim Wu of Columbia Law School, Karen Sloan of the National Law Journal, Kyle McEntee of Law School Transparency, Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog, Vivia Chen of The Careerist, and many more.
Still in search of those hard-to-find ethics credits? We’ve got a solution for you: CLE credit will be available at the conference, complimentary with your admission. We will be offering up to SIX ETHICS CREDITS, courtesy of Marino Legal, for our first three panels. Attendees will have to check in with the company before and after each panel to confirm their attendance. Has anything ever been easier?
wireLawyer will be hosting the official Attorney@Blog Conference after-party. Admission is free, but space is limited. Click here to reserve your spot. The password to RSVP is: wirelawyer.
Click here for more details and to buy tickets. Hurry up and get your tickets before it’s too late!
Attorney@Blog Conference [Above the Law]
Tags: Advertising, ATL events, Attorney@Blog, Blogging, Conferences / Symposia, Continuing Legal Education / CLE, Events, Floyd Abrams, Free Speech, Gender, Karen Sloan, Kevin O'Keefe, Kyle McEntee, Law School Transparency, Law Schools, Lexblog, Marino Legal, National Law Journal, Parties, Racism, Sexism, Shameless Plugs, Technology, The Careerist, This Is an Ad, Tim Wu, Trolls, Vivia Chen, wireLawyer, Women's Issues, Yale Club
Hello loyal ATL readers. I’m back! I’ve been on somewhat of a forced vacation during this past year. That is, of course, if by “forced vacation” we mean “involved in a tragic scenario where I barely made it out alive.” To put it lightly.
Almost exactly a year ago, I was cruising on the highway on a clear Sunday morning. I took a bite of my breakfast sandwich and started to place it down onto the area between the front car seats that’s intended to hold things. But as my hand descended, I felt the sandwich start to come out of the wrapper. I looked down and fumbled around with the thing to prevent it from becoming a big freaking mess all over the car. It was literally just a few seconds and I didn’t even realize that I was no longer looking out the front windshield.
The car drifted toward the right and I jolted when the front right corner of my car hit the highway barrier. My first thought was, “Geez, I’m not gonna be able to hide that one from Michael.” The car then careened over toward the left side. I tried frantically to steer it in the opposite direction, but it had no impact on the leftward course of the car. It crashed mightily into the cement median and came to a dead stop.
Needless to say, it was not a good morning. I mean, I only had one bite of my sandwich and I did have a big mess all over the car…
Continue reading “Moonlighting: A Brief Moment That Took Me Out For A Year”
The U.S. News 2015 Law School Rankings are out, and you know what that means. It’s time to allow students and alumni to weigh in on their law schools and their brand new ranks.
As is customary, we’ll be posting a series of open threads, running through at least the top 100 law schools — but we’ll probably make it all the way through, right down to rank-not-published land. These posts offer you a chance to compare and contrast different schools, praise (or condemn) your alma mater, and talk trash about rival law schools.
Last year, we witnessed a rousing game of musical chairs among the nation’s top law schools, but this year, we’ve got a new #10 law school, and the Top 14 has been transformed into the Top 13 thanks to a tie at the bottom of the top.
Were there any other surprises this year? Let’s take a look…
Continue reading “Open Thread: 2015 U.S. News Law School Rankings (1 – 13)”
Watching other lawyers in action is fun. Much more fun than watching myself in action, as I have had the opportunity to do on a number of occasions. Such as during my trial training days, when the instructors decided that making us watch clips of ourselves try and conduct a direct examination was valuable. At least they got a kick out of it. But as edifying as watching video of yourself can be, you can learn a whole lot more by watching other lawyers. This lesson was ingrained in me as far back as my 1L “summer clerkship” in New Jersey state court. I remember the clerks gathering around on motion day to check out arguments in front of other judges, mostly to watch the lawyers in action. Ditto for trials.
Of course once you enter practice, especially in Biglaw where opportunities to even get out of the office are hard-earned, it becomes even more important to turn opportunities to watch other advocates into learning experiences. Because of the nature of the cases we were handling, many of which involved Biglaw firms of some repute on both sides, there were plenty of opportunities to watch great lawyers in action. Just as frequently, I was able to watch inexperienced lawyers from great firms struggle to get through routine litigation events. I am sure that many other lawyers were forced to endure my inexperienced attempts to handle those events along the way as well. Experienced lawyers just love sitting through a deposition where the questioner spends an hour getting through the educational background of the witness…
* The Coalition for Court Transparency sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts, pleading that he allow cameras in the courtroom. Not sure how well this will go over, thanks to last month’s oral arguments interruption by a protestor. [Legal Times]
* Hot on the heels of the news that the firm posted its worst financial performance in six years, Bingham McCutcheon is leaking laterals. Morgan Lewis just poached four lawyers across three cities right out from under the firm’s nose. [Am Law Daily]
* Now that the U.S. News 2015 Law School Rankings are out, here’s Kyle McEntee of Law School Transparency to tell you what’s wrong with them, particularly, that not every school is the “best.” [Law.com]
* If you were a law school dean, we sincerely hope you’d just live with the consequences of an enrollment decline instead of lowering your admission standards to put more asses in seats. [National Law Journal]
* Nancy Grace must defend herself against a defamation suit filed by Michael Skakel. It’s almost fitting that she’d get sued over talking about someone allegedly masturbating in a tree. [Hollywood Reporter]
Tags: Bingham McCutchen, Cameras in the courtroom, Coalition for Court Transparency, John Roberts, Kyle McEntee, Lateral Moves, Law School Enrollment, Law School Transparency, Law Schools, Michael Skakel, Morgan Lewis, Morgan Lewis & Bockius, Morning Docket, Nancy Grace, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, U.S. News, U.S. News 2015 Law School Rankings, U.S. News Law School Rankings
It’s the most important day of the year for law school deans. The U.S. News 2015 Law School Rankings are out, and absent salacious allegations about their behavior, law deans who do well according to U.S. News do well according to their bank accounts.
The big winner this year seems to be Duke Law School. As we mentioned earlier, they’ve cracked the top ten. Congratulations to the Harvard of the South.
Meanwhile, this seems to be the year U.S. News has fully committed to “ties.” Ties are great for law schools. How else can you have 60 schools claim to be “top 50 institutions”? U.S. News makes ties like kissing your sister… your really hot, adopted sister that your Dad would be all over if your Dad were Woody Allen.
So, who is #1? If you have to ask that question, you’ve clearly come to the wrong website and might want to rethink this whole “going to law school” thing until you’ve researched enough to get a freaking clue…
Please note the multiple UPDATES below.
Continue reading “The U.S. News 2015 Law School Rankings Are Here: Smell The Prestige”
People can be so unreliable. Especially if those people are Biglaw litigators in a high-stakes intellectual property dispute. With a scheduling order set months in advance, with no warning as to the volume of disagreement, these lawyers dumped “joint” pretrial filings “so rife with disputes that the documents amount to two separate proposals” and a metric tonne of motions on the court to resolve in two weeks.
Scratch that. With less than two weeks, because they filed all this late. Oh, and they filed a bunch of them redacted and under seal without permission, just for good measure.
If that would make you a very angry judge willing to rip both sides for posterity, you wouldn’t be alone….
Continue reading “Untimely ‘Joint’ Filings Result In Very Timely ‘Joint’ Benchslap”
* Spring break is here for many students, and I know what they’re all thinking: what are the tax implications? [TaxProf Blog]
* Man files suit because his adult son is addicted to video games. Well, with games like South Park: Stick of Truth coming out, who can blame him? [IT-Lex]
* Former Sandusky attorney under investigation for misappropriation of client funds. At least he’s only alleged to have showered himself with money. [The Patriot-News]
* Here’s a lesson in the value of knowing the law: DUI charges against a Chicago judge dismissed. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say, “the value of knowing the law needed to beat the rap after you’ve been arrested for totally forgetting the law.”[Checkpoints]
* Business development needs to be everyone’s responsibility in a law firm. Well, at the very least, it needs to be somebody’s responsibility. [The RelSci Web]
* Harvard Law professor seeks help writing regulations for the legalization of marijuana in Jamaica. Wait? It’s illegal in Jamaica? [HLS Administrative Updates]
Hey, have you read Above the Law for like one single minute in the past month? If so, you probably know that we’re having this big blogger conference on March 14th at the Yale Club. Yeah, the Yale Club. You’ll be able to recognize me: I’ll be the only big… blogger guy surreptitiously holding a can of crimson spray-paint.
Speaking of coming, you should come. We’ve got CLE and all that. Click here to buy tickets to get CLE credit for listening to bloggers scream about stuff on the internet.
To refresh your memory, details on the panel that I’m moderating — almost entirely sober, mind you — follow.
My panel is called Blogs as Agents of Change, and we’re going to talk about whether all of these spilled pixels are actually making a difference. You know my view… just ask Lawrence Mitchell, but here are the panelists:
Keep reading »
So you spent a considerable amount of time courting, selling and maybe even doing some friendly stalking of that attractive lateral partner candidate with a sizable book. After he or she ignored your emails and didn’t return your calls, a few weeks go by and you read a press release in the legal media announcing the recent move to a competing firm.
Rats. Another one got away from you. You cringe when you consider how much time was spent in meetings that did not bear fruit. Your heart aches when recall how you were led to believe this was a marriage made in heaven.
You have been rejected.
The sting of rejection is painful, even for fancy law firms. But you need to find a way that you can turn this disappointment into a legitimate learning experience.
Keep reading »
No, this isn’t a pre-party before we come back next fall for the real thing. This IS the real thing. Quinn Emanuel is pushing the envelope on recruiting. The party is now. This is when you meet the partners and associates face to face. This is when we begin the dance that could land you an offer for your second summer BEFORE school starts in the fall.
First: You come to the party.
Second: If you like us, you send your resume after June 1, 2014.
Third: If we like each other, you get an offer.
We’re not waiting for fall. We’re not doing the twenty minute thing. This party is the real thing!
We hope you’ll join us, and look forward to meeting you.
RSVP: [email protected]
Click to see full schedule »
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