Morning Docket: 01.23.08
* Jose Padilla gets 17 years. [New York Times; Washington Post]
* A merger between Anderson Kill and Reed Smith? Maybe not. But 55 of Anderson Kill’s 126 lawyers have decamped for Reed Smith. [WSJ Law Blog; WSJ Law Blog]
* Ted Frank on yesterday's Enron cert denial: Extortion, interrupted? [New York Sun]
* China shuts down "real-time" porn site, as part of its crackdown on online porn. [Reuters]
* Law tie (however tenuous) to Heath Ledger story: "Nicole Vaughan, 24, a law student at New York University, was in a seminar about Jesus when someone sent her a message about Mr. Ledger. She checked the Web, then walked to the apartment 'because of the way our generation is; we sort of feel we’re a part of each other’s lives.'” [New York Times]
* Apparently Bill Clinton enjoys the Yale Law / Harvard Law rivalry: "I kind of like to see Barack and Hillary fight." [NYDN via Drudge]
(14) Comments
Isn't Padilla more or less a mental vegetable these days? I think they did a Room 101 on him for a couple years and stripped away all his resistance and much of his higher cognitive functioning.
Seminar on Jesus. Really?
Our whole generation is part of each other's lives. Really?
I think if anything this has settled the long-running debate on the quality of NYU Law.
9:46 - I completely agree!
This ought to put an end to NYU students making disparaging comments about TTTs. An NYU student gave her name to the Times admitting that she was surfing the web in a seminar? YIKES!?! And I don't know where to start on the Jesus seminar.
1) Everyone surfs the web during class. Professors aren't so stupid that they think otherwise.
2) "Seminar on Jesus" is a very incomplete and misleading description of the class. Here is the actual course description:
"The Seminar will examine the historical context, the factual matrix and the legal issues concerning the trial(s) of Jesus by the Jewish and Roman authorities. Readings will include some of the principal primary sources and a selection from the vast seondary literature. For serious learners."
In other words, it is something of a legal history class that just happened to pick that famous "trial" as its focus of study. I wouldn't be surprised if other top law schools offered similar legal history classes.
Good thing I didn't go to NYU because I wouldn't have been able to take that class.
"1) Everyone surfs the web during class. Professors aren't so stupid that they think otherwise."
Thus illustrating the "law student as consumer mentality." Let's see: you pay your school $90,000+, the school hands you a degree. Who cares whether you learn anything?
Wonder if Anderson Kill will hire more clerks now that 1/3 of their firm left?
So no chance of there being a law firm named Kill Reed Smith?
10:50, some of us can multitask. Just because I'm surfing the web during some parts of class doesn't mean that I'm not learning anything.
I remember when ATL would've covered the Anderson Kill / Reed Smith thing with more than just a line in the Morning Docket ... sigh, those were simpler times.
Agree with 10:38, everyone looks on the internet, especially during gunner attacks or pointless tangents. Actually, one of the skills that it's crucial for law students to learn is when a professor's ramblings are on-topic or off-topic or unimportant for the learning experience.
Suggesting that our tuition obligates attendance or attention ignores the concept of sunk costs.
Oh you kids! During prehistory, ie before internet surfing was acceptable or even possible when attending class, you had to sit and listen to your gunning or brownnosing classmates. Some people played A$*h@le Bingo, others passed notes, others realized that there would be times in our professional lives that learning how to look interested and engaged, in the face of unspeakable boredom, would be really helpful.
12:34, I don't think anyone cares about the Anderson Kill / Reed Smith thing. The posts on the WSJ Law Blog have hardly any comments.
I never heard of those firms until I saw the WSJ posts.