August 2010

Hunger Striker Revealed: Scambloggers Unimpressed

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Zenovia Evans

A couple of weeks ago, we reported on “Ethan Haines,” a law school grad who is allegedly on a hunger strike to support the cause of law school transparency. Today, Ethan has outed herself in USA Today, as Zenovia Evans (pictured).

Here’s the USA Today report about her hunger strike:

One recent grad even went on a hunger strike on Aug. 5. “We have a new crop starting, and no one’s telling them anything about this,” says Zenovia Evans, 28, of Denver, who uses the name “Ethan Haines” on her blog, UnemployedJD.com.

The first in her family to finish college, she says that “no one wants to say, ‘Hey, career office, you failed me,’ ” but “I couldn’t take this lying down.” She says she owes more than $150,000 in loans.

So she’s a girl! Well, that’s one twist.

At least one anti-law-school blogger (aka “law school scamblogger”) who initially supported Haines / Evans now feels like the whole thing is a publicity stunt, maybe even a hoax…

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Morning Docket: 08.24.10

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Ed. note: This post was compiled by one of our seven Morning Docket finalists. The finalists will be handling MD all week. As always, we welcome your thoughts in the comments.

* Free Willy? More like $75,000 Willy. SeaWorld gets slapped with major OSHA fines after the February 2010 death of a killer whale trainer. [CNN]

* A settlement has been reached in the Minnesota bridge collapse litigation. Is $48.6 million enough to compensate the families of the 13 killed and 145 injured in the disaster? [New York Times]

* Too fat for a manicure? A nail salon in Georgia overcharged a client because she allegedly maxed out the weight limit on the salon’s chairs. She hasn’t decided if she will sue. [ABC News]

* A federal judge has blocked Obama’s funding for embryonic stem cell research, citing the 1996 Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which prohibits the destruction of human embryos. [Wall Street Journal]

* The manslaughter hearing for Conrad Murray will moonwalk into 2011 due to witness availability issues. Dr. Murray is accused of killing the King of Pop. Who’s bad? [AP]

* Boobs? Definitely a Happy Meal for most men. Dozens of mothers staged a “nurse in” at an Arizona McDonald’s after one breastfeeding mom was thrown out of the fast food joint. [The Consumerist]

* The only egg safety I usually care about is whether mine are fertilized or not. But, for those of you who are concerned about salmonella, don’t worry, the Senate is interested now, too. [Washington Post]

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Open Thread: Bar Trips and Summer Vacations

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Hello? Anyone home? Right now it feels like everyone is on vacation, even though Labor Day is still two weeks away. C’mon, folks, this isn’t freakin’ Europe.

Maybe some people are still on their “bar trips” — multi-week (or even multi-month) post-bar-exam vacations, to some exotic destination (or destinations; I have friends who have traveled around the country, or even around the world, on their post-bar jaunts).

But wait. Do people still do bar trips? That’s the question we raised last August, when the Great Recession and pushed-back law firm start dates threw customary ways into chaos. Many of you answered in the negative last year, claiming that you were replacing Carmen Sandiego-esque globetrotting with more staid “staycations” — or even using the time to get an early start on the job search, for the many readers without employment already lined up.

This year, things seem to be returning to normal in law firm land, at least in part. Not as many lawyers are deferred, and some of the deferrals are shorter (or being ended early). Does this mean bar trips are back on? Let’s discuss — not just bar trips, but summer vacation more generally, since August is a big month for getting away.

Are you traveling this summer, or have you traveled already? If so, where? Do you have any travel tips or great destinations that you’d like to recommend to others? Or perhaps you’re in need of some advice and vacation ideas yourself?

Here’s an open thread for discussion. Bon voyage!

Earlier: Open Thread: Is the ‘Bar Trip’ Barred By the Recession?

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Non-Sequiturs: 08.23.10

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* What the hell can a zombie do with settlement money? [Legal Blog Watch]

* The city of Philadelphia is trying to get $300 out of people in order to purchase a private license to blog. Yeah, a blog license. I’m now accepting rewritten histories that place the Constitutional Convention somewhere other than Philadelphia. [The Examiner]

* Meanwhile, Cleveland is going to start fining people $100 if they don’t recycle — and the thing keeping track will be the trash cans themselves. Petty government continues to be much more scary than big government. [Cleveland Plain Dealer via Instapundit]

* Five questions lateral job seekers should be ready to answer.  [Going Concern]

*Courtroom artists don’t need to be inside the courtroom? That makes sense, since most lawyers don’t know what a courtroom looks like anyway. [New York Times]

* Which lies matter? [ACSBlog]

* Today is the day we’re supposed to reflect on the slave trade. You know what that means: analogies about how being a Biglaw associate is kind of like slavery. [Law is Cool via Blawg Review]

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Tweet of the Day: John Quinn on Trial
(And a bit about the Barbie / Bratz case.)

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It’s not clear why John Quinn — founding partner of litigation powerhouse Quinn Emanuel, and one of the country’s leading business litigators — doesn’t have more followers on Twitter. Right now he’s up to 475. He’s definitely worth following; you can follow him here.

You’ll be exposed to some interesting tweets — like this one, from over the weekend:

isaac larian, mga owner+adverse party in “bratz” case, showed up at my trial this week; claimed witness was being signaled from audience!

Bizarre — especially since the trial that Larian attended has nothing to do with the ongoing Barbie / Bratz litigation (in which Quinn represents Barbie maker Mattel against Isaac Larian’s company, Bratz maker MGA). The trial that Larian randomly appeared at is in the case of Bren v. Bren, a child support action brought against billionaire Donald Bren, Quinn’s client.

So what was this strange tweet about? We checked in with John Quinn, in between his weekend workout and witness-prep sessions….

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(And a bit about the Barbie / Bratz case.)”

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Breaking: Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren File for Divorce

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This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, given the acknowledged infidelity of golf superstar Tiger Woods, but now it’s official.

Woods and his wife of over five years, Elin Nordegren, filed for divorce today in Bay County Circuit Court, Florida. The terms of the settlement were undisclosed.

Their attorneys released a statement on behalf of the couple. ATL readers will recognize the name of at least one of the law firms involved….

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The Ladies of Law Review: Mostly Good News

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We’ve been doing a series of posts looking at whether women and minorities are adequately represented on the mastheads of the nation’s law reviews. The subject is definitely a contentious one, and our posts have generated a high number of comments.

Perhaps we should shift our focus to underrepresented minorities (URMs) — sayonara, Asians — since women are actually doing just fine for themselves. And you don’t have to take our word for it. This conclusion comes from a report (PDF) that was just released by Ms. JD, which conducted a study of law reviews at the 2009 U.S. News “Top 50″ law schools for the 2008-2010 academic years. Based on the study, Ms. JD made the following findings:

  • The overall percentage of women who are members of law reviews, 44.3 percent, correlates strongly with the number of women awarded law degrees during the same time period, 45.7 percent.
  • The percentage of women in leadership positions on law reviews, 46.2 percent, also correlates strongly with the number of women awarded law degrees during the same time period, 45.7 percent.

But there was one area where women remain underrepresented….

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Firms Now Looking for Unpaid Summer Associates

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It sounds like something firms would try to keep on the down low, through anonymous postings on Craigslist. But in the new economy, it’s apparently no big deal for law firms to ask career services offices to send over students who are so desperate they’re willing to work for free. The ABA Journal reports:

Law schools in Florida have gotten a flood of requests from small and midsize law firms seeking summer associates willing to work for free — but career officials are not pleased…

Robert Levine, assistant dean for career development at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad Law Center, tells the Daily Business Review that the U.S. Department of Labor encourages unpaid internships to be coordinated through the school’s clinical program.

“It’s a big problem because the students want the experience and the firms need the help,” Levine told the publication. “All of the law schools throughout the state are dealing with this issue.”

Please tell me this is some kind of weird Florida problem, and this kind of behavior will be limited to the Sunshine State…

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The Eyes of the Law: Justice Ginsburg in Chinatown

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Alas, Justice Ginsburg wasn’t spotted slurping down noodles at Tony Cheng’s. Rather, Her Honor was in D.C.’s Chinatown for a theater performance, which is more her speed. (She also loves the opera, of course.)

The Eyes of the Law celebrity sighting took place on Friday evening. Our eyewitness reports:

RBG spotted at the theater! It was opening night of the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s “Free for All” production of Twelfth Night at Sidney Harman Hall (yes, as in Rep. Jane Harman’s husband), across from the Verizon Center in D.C’s Chinatown.

The “Free for All” is an annual event in which the Company puts on a free Shakespeare show for Washington for a couple weeks in the summer.

Free theater is nice and all, but Justice Ginsburg doesn’t need handouts. She and her late husband, Martin Ginsburg, revealed assets worth as much as $45 million at the time of her most recent financial disclosure.

So, did our correspondent get to chat with Justice Ginsburg?

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Outsourcing: Is It Good for Associates?

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I Can Has Your Job? (I Don't Eat Cheeseburgers.)

There’s been a lot of negativity surrounding the first steps of Biglaw into the outsourcing market. For obvious reasons: the U.S. legal job market is soft, and recent graduates are terrified that their entry-level jobs will flow out of the country.

And they’re probably right. If outsourcing catches on, the structure of a law firm in 2020 could be wildly different from the structure of a law firm in 2010. But maybe that’s a good thing. Let’s face it: whether you’re being paid $145K, $160K, or even (dare to dream) $190K, spending 2,000 hours a year on menial document monkey tasks is no fun. If some of these rote, mind-numbing functions can be done by attorneys overseas, attorneys in the U.S. might have a reason to actually bring their brains to work, along with their mouse-clicking index fingers.

That’s the argument, at least. And it’s being made by former Kirkland & Ellis partner Stephen Harper in today’s Am Law Daily…

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