Berkeley is likely trying to get rid of the Boalt moniker slowly so that, in 10 or so years, no one will be upset when they sell the name to some other rich alum or law firm.

V V V V V V V enable -

fat but not jolly
short but not quick
rich but not generous
insufferable but not brief
overdone but not tender
ribald but not sexy
mean but not lean
TTT but not practical

and so on . . .
Nothing like a visual to change character

Well I suppose it's better than WGWAG Law (though that would be closer to the truth).

Now every day is "V" Day at Venable. Good for them. And for Eve Ensler.

I wonder as to the official movie of the Venable firm...

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.

...

The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.

...

Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

what about the Berkeley Academy of Law?

http://www.berkeleycollege.edu/

Who knew they had a law school?

I got the annual "State of the School" letter from Boalt's dean yesterday. In addition to an odd section devoted to the name, there was a paragraph discussing the USNWR rankings. Boalt climbed to #6 this year -- so there wasn't the usual "defensive" posture. Instead (and hilariously), Dean Edley described the rankings as "flawed but influential".

Bragging about a US News ranking is even lamer than the change of the school's name. Strike Two for Edley. Or is it Strike Three if we include the massive tuition hike?

Approved
Berkeley Law

Discouraged
Berkeley Law School

True story: cars are not given names that start with "V" because apparently that letter always makes men think of a certain part of the female anatomy.

Since the WGWAG thing isn't just at "Berkeley Law" we should change the entire UC system's name to WGWAG and then put the location after that. So we'd have WGWAG-Berkely, WGWAG-Los Angeles, WGWAG, San Diego and so forth. The only UC that wouldn't get changed is UCI since there are no WG to date the AG at that school, so they are forced to go to Newport Beach bar's to find them.

Has anyone ever selected Venable as a first-choice at OCI? Total TTT firm--doesn't even pay market.

The term is, and will always be, White GIRLS With Asian GUYS, no matter how much Kash and Lat screwed up the polling. Period.

WGWAG = white girls with asian guys

5:51.
Good point, but I must emphasize that Venable is a safety firm (sorta like an AU in DC-area; Baltimore in MD; or BU in Boston). You just don't select Venable unless you have a sexually transmitted disease.

Right, 5:46, like these?

V50 Volvo 08
V70 Volvo 08
Veracruz Hyundai 08
Versa Nissan 08
Vibe Pontiac 09 08
Viper Dodge 08
VUE Saturn 08

6:00
And vaginas.

Also discouraged:

The John Yoo School for Advanced Torture

"Mixed messages... "

That pretty much sums up the PRB.

Oh. Wait. Was that on the list?

V is for Vendetta, bitches.

When you need a Guy-Fawkes-masked anarchist to rescue you from the totalitarian government by blowing up buildings, just think of the letter V...

...and you'll know who to call.

its totally true, Venable would not represent me. Discrimination suit?

-R2D2

I vaguely remember my Venable OCI interview. I think the two interviewers mentioned the rooftop bocce ball court at least 6 times in 25 minutes. If bocce ever catches on again these guys are gonna be solid. Unfortunately it will remain the "AU of DC."

Venable is officially the shittiest firm in D.C. people might have heard of. You are better off going to a AmLaw1000 firm with a PPB in Boise. Even headhunters avoid this firm, and that says a lot.

It is the Lee Jeans of law firms

Sorry, AU is the AU of DC. Venable is the Catholic of DC.

This whole crap about "white guys with Asian girls" at Boalt is obnoxious and absolutely exaggerated!

As a Boalt alum, I can attest that the vast majority of Asian women students were with Asian men.

And yes, Asian men do date women of other races. Take Boalt's Professor Goodwin Liu, an all around academic all-star, who has a wife that happens to be white.

This post is borderline racist, I'd have expected it from auto admit, but not Above the Law. In a society where power and wealth is still heavily concentrated with white men, socio economic factors play a role in who we date and marry.

Asian girls are also heavily concentrated with white men('s semen)!!

Because Berkeley Law and Berkeley Law School are so very different?

Oooh, they're taking out the space in BerkeleyLaw. Edgy!

I disagree with most of the commenters here who know nothing about Venable.

To share my experience, I had Venable as a safety firm too. I did a callback with them and I was actually more impressed than I thought I would be. So much so that I had them second or third on my list of 9 offers behind only a V10 firm. The people working there were more down to earth than every single one of the other "better" firms. Sure, that was probably the product of only taking kids from Catholic and AU rather than Harvard, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes I like hanging around decent people rather than uptight, smug, socially-awkward assholes. Venable also seemed to have a lot more events/partying/sports going on than the other firms, and they also didn't seem to work the same ridiculous number of hours (albeit at lower pay).

With that said, I still sold out and took the V10 offer in the end. I knew Venable's reputation was tarnished and I didn't want to suffer the long-term consequences of that fact. However, I do think a lot of the criticism is unfair--it is definitely a good firm, with a lot of good people, and with a nice office in a sweet location in DC (right across from Verizon Center). I just couldn't get over the "prestige" and the lower salary...but that makes me more of a bad person than them, which is probably why I feel the need to support them here out of guilt.

Greenfield/Belser should be ashamed of itself (although nothing new there). The Venable V? Remind anyone of the Orrick O? Way to really differentiate your client, team.

"Take Boalt's Professor Goodwin Liu, an all around academic all-star, who has a wife that happens to be white."

What does it mean to say that someone HAPPENS to be white? This is an odd phrase, especially under the circumstances. This turn of phrase seems to indicate that it is pure happenstance or at the least irrelevant. But race is never irrelevant. Race does matter, and it sounds like 9:44 would agree with me that racism pervades every aspect of our society, but to say that someone HAPPENS to be white or that a cross-racial romantic relationships HAPPENS to exist seems to undermine that reality and cross into the colorblind way of thinking about the world perhaps best illustrated by Justice Roberts' opinion in the Seattle and Louisville cases.

10:14, get off your nit-picking, race-baiting high horse. The whole point of the quote is that the race of the people in the relationship is a minor fact that does not need to be emphasized.

It's like if someone said that there aren't many good doctors who are black, and I respond that, actually, I have some good doctors and they happen to be black. I say they happen to be black because I think of them as doctors first, and blacks second.

Seems like you're the one who is racist and sees racism in every corner. Seattle and Louisville cases say that you can't put students in different schools purely because one is Hispanic and another one is white. That's called making race irrelevant. I have a dream that one day my high schoolchildren will be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their character.

4:09-
Your loyalty is admirable. But let's be honest. Venable will always be TTT because they refuse to pay market and absorb far too many Catholic, AU, etc trash. They have great offices and a semi-decent lobbying practice (I loved the bocci ball roofdeck on my CB), yet they don't get the high-profile work necessary for DC prestige. Also, a lot of the people I met there were douchy tools (with some notable exceptions)

9:07, did Orrick and Venable use the same marketing firm?

Branding..ah yes...that reminds of when PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting paid a taggering $150 million to a rebranding firm who came up with the great idea to call the firm "Monday."

And no that is not a joke

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2036998.stm

I remember interviewing with the Venable LA office. Huuuuge DBs. One of the guys spent the whole time bragging how cool he was because he "dissed" Carrot Top in an elevator. Then I asked them if the DC office guys with thh bocce court ever let the LA guys play with their balls. no callback.

6:21 - yes, although the o was a million years ago in legal marketing terms (they were one of the first firms to "brand") - but g/b still has them on their website under clients. For all I know they may still be a client.

http://greenfieldbelser.com/the_work/?TabID=3&ElementID=171

I'm an associate at Sutherland who wishes he took that Venable offer after all..

Venable is terrible. One fact says it all: they don't pay market. And the people there are weeeeeeird. Seriously. . . weirdos. Plus, have you ever litigated with/against them? They're not good lawyers.

how/why does Venable even get so much pub on this blog? I think they only reason their name ever comes up here is so that people at "real" law firms can enjoy a good laugh at their expense.

Also, because of bocce ball. And because Venable owns the "V" the way Orrick owns the "O"-face.

wow, venable is really taking it in the A in this comment thread

7:57, that's nuts. I'd be pissed if I was Venable. How about something original, like going by the SECOND letter of their name. vEnable: E is for excellent.

The next client in orgasm/vagina genre will be Pillsbury. "P, for pussies."

Then Dickstein Shapiro . . . .

I'm a Boalt alumnus. I usually look askance when university alumni start criticizing universities for paying hefty fees for professional services (e.g., the Harvard endowment fund manager scandal), but in this case, I agree with the anger over the $25,000 fee paid to the rebranding firm.

They've essentially come up with something so complicated you need a flow chart to understand it. People are going to continue calling it "Boalt" (both in and outside the "family"), just as people call the London Business School "LBS" despite tenacious efforts on the part of the dean's office to discourage the practice.

@5:57, "You just don't select Venable unless you have a sexually transmitted disease."

V is for VD.

We wanted our marketing to be Meaningless but not transparently so.

We wanted to say all of the empty things that other law firms with bad PR advice say, but we wanted to word those things differently.

We wanted people to know that we can identify other words that begin with the letter V, because knowing your letters is an important part of lawyering.

We wanted to suggest that having a law firm that starts with the same letter as some positive words means that somehow there is a greater association between us and those words.

We wanted a marketing campaign that, although moronically simple and devoid of real substance, still requires explanation.

The 25k to come up with Boalt's rebranding is nuts - you need a flowchart to figure it out.

But the whole WGWAG is total crap. I knew one Asian American girl with a white boyfriend . . . and that was it, in my entire class. The UCs are known for indulging in social segregation, and Boalt is no exception. Asian Americans tend to flock to the Asian American Law Journal, Muslims tend to hang out with the MSA (or whatever it was called at Boalt), and so on and so forth. There's some cross-racial socialization at law school events and such, but by and large, like tend to stick to like.

Venable has the hottest women. Too bad they won't look at me.

T3 3L

NEW SLOGAN FOR VENABLE:
"Venable... at least we're not Sutherland"

Boalt, er Berkeley Law, paid $25K to a marketing consulting firm for a variety of services, including issues related to the name change and to design the new logo. if anything $25K was a good deal.