Earlier this month, we presented you with a trademark law hypothetical. It was based on a dispute between Lawyerist and PeerViews Inc., parent company of TechnoLawyer, over the term “Small Law.” Lawyerist used the words “Small Law” in the title and text of this post — about Above the Law’s new offerings for small-firm readers, incidentally — and PeerViews objected.
In a letter by Kristen McCallion of Fish & Richardson, PeerViews expressed the concern that Lawyerist’s use of the words “Small Law” would diminish PeerViews’s goodwill in its “distinctive SmallLaw trademark.” PeerViews uses the mark for the TechnoLawyer newsletter on small firms.
We asked you, our readers, for your opinions on this matter. In the comments to our post, most of you sided with Lawyerist (but there were a handful of very vocal dissenters).
How will a judge or jury feel about this dispute? Because that’s who will get the next crack at this controversy. Lawyerist Media just filed a lawsuit against PeerViews in federal district court in Minnesota, seeking to invalidate the PeerViews trademarks on the terms “BigLaw” and “SmallLaw”….
Over the past few years, we’ve seen a number of novels focused on the clerkship, a professional rite of passage for many a prestige-obsessed young lawyer. In these books, plucky law-clerk protagonists have tried to do justice while also holding on to their jobs (and their sanity, and even their lives).
One of the first was The Tenth Justice (1998), a thriller by Brad Meltzer that went on to become a bestseller. More recent examples of “clerk lit” include The Law Clerk (2007), by Scott Douglas Gerber, and Chambermaid (2007), by Saira Rao. (Rao’s buzz-generating book, which generated controversy because it was seen as based heavily on her clerkship for the notoriously difficult Judge Dolores Sloviter (3d Cir.), was discussed extensively in Above the Law’s pages.)
Today we bring you news of a new novel featuring a law clerk protagonist: Tropical Depression, by Arin Greenwood. It tells the story of Nina Barker, a neurotic young lawyer toiling away at a large New York law firm, who decides — after losing her job and her boyfriend — to leave it all behind, by accepting a clerkship with the chief justice of a faraway tropical island.
Let’s learn more about Tropical Depression and its author, Arin Greenwood — who, like her protagonist, graduated from a top law school and worked at a leading law firm, before accepting a clerkship on a remote Pacific island….
In case you were too busy watching the End Times unfold in Japan last Monday, back in sunny L.A., music soared and angels cried as second-time-around Bachelor Brad Womackfinally selected a fiancée from a cumulative pool of 60 desperate women. As ABC production assistants stood just off camera with guns, Brad and his fiancée confirmed they would marry, and the network announced next season’s Bachelorette: second runner-up Ashley Hebert.
Though 26-year-old Ashley is probably best known to fans for her sperm-like eyebrows and for sexing Brad up in the Fantasy Suite, she’s also a fourth-year dental student at U. Penn. and, accordingly, the most respectable Bachelorette yet. So… does this mean ABC will nix the usual crew of medical sales/mall kiosk workers/”entrepreneurs,” up the ante, and give Ashley some real professional dudes to vie for her heart?
Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Size Matters, one of Above the Law’s new columns for small-firm lawyers.
We all know that sometimes relationships end. Take Renee Zellweger and Bradley Cooper. As my friend (who is a divorce attorney) always says, if things are not working out, end it and do not buy real estate together.
This is true not only with bad relationships, but with bad jobs. I have received emails and had conversations with several small-firm attorneys who are unhappy. One woman emailed me that she worked at a small firm where she had to work in a poorly heated office with roaches and screamers (I guess she worked on a pirate ship). One man told me that he was repeatedly forced to cancel his vacations for faux emergencies. I have heard many different tales of experiences that range from unpleasant to abusive.
The idea of quitting a job (even a bad one) in this economy seems heretical to many. But, it shouldn’t. A recent study suggests that working at a bad job may be more harmful than being unemployed….
The new proposals for regulating law schools coming out of the American Bar Association’s Law School Accreditation Committee are not perfect, but they represent a major step in the right direction.
Now if we could only get the entire ABA to see that allowing law schools to provide misinformation to potential students is bad for everybody.
The National Law Journal reports that there are three major changes being proposed by the Accreditation Committee: changes in the way law schools report employment information, dropping the LSAT requirement, and dropping the requirement that law schools retain a tenure system…
* Former New York assistant AG Simone Levine is attempting to reverse the assistantAGjinx, accepting a job with the police monitor’s office in New Orleans. I have nothing to add here other than to say Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans owned. [NOLA.com]
* Brooke Mueller is allowing the restraining order against Charlie Sheen to expire. Winning! That’s still cool to say, right? Very nice! [MSNBC.com]
* Barry Bonds’s jury will consist of 8 women and 4 men. Giants fans were disqualified for an inability to be impartial. Mets fans were disqualified as suicide risks. [Bloomberg]
Better than a book? Monty, the dog you can check out at the Yale Law library.
* Jared Lee Loughner will be sent to Missourah for a mental evaluation. [CNN]
If you see this sign, turn in the opposite direction and START RUNNING.
We’ve spent a lot time covering Wisconsin’s dysfunctional state legislature. But did you know the state’s judicial branch is just as messed up?
We’ve discussed this before, but now there’s more to report. You know any semblance of bipartisan civility has broken down when one justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court calls the chief justice a “bitch” and vows to “destroy” her.
That would be shocking language if it was bandied about in a courthouse in the Bronx, but it’s just another day of state politics in Wisconsin. I’m telling you, we’re going to have to station the USS Inside Voices Please in the Great Lakes to chill this state out…
* Sullivan & Cromwell is going before the Supreme Court — but not in a good way. SCOTUS grants cert to examine S&C’s mailroom of death. [ABA Journal]
* In happier news for S&C, they are working on AT&T’s $39 billion bid for T-Mobile — a deal that should generate massive fees for the many Am Law 100 firms involved. [Am Law Daily]
* Do you want to negotiate big-time deals? This Loyola law student has discovered the best way to land a big client. [Chicago Tribune]
* “When are knowingly false statements of fact constitutionally unprotected?” Professor Eugene Volokh tackles this interesting issue. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Wondering if Libya will get democratic presidential elections before Puerto Rico? [Blawg Review]
This wasn’t the first terrible job being offered to law students we’ve posted about. And sadly, it probably won’t be the last. But perhaps we’ve gotten to the point where these kinds of jobs are so pathetic that law school administrations are starting to feel bad about it.
We just received word that the Pitt Career Services Office has officially apologized to students for presenting them with such a terrible option…
Space is still available for our Above the Law Event: We Know What You Should Do This Summer. But we are filling seats, so sign uptoday if you would like to join us — and our co-sponsors, Practical Law Company and the ABA Law Student Division, Second Circuit — for a frank discussion about how to make the most of your summer experience. It’s taking place on April 6th at 6:30 p.m.
As we’ve said before, we’d like this panel to provide information attendees can actually apply towards their summer experiences. Whether you have a summer position locked down or not, there are things you can do with your summer that will make you more attractive to employers in the future. Towards that end, let’s meet another one of our panelists.
Anastasia Boyko is the Professional Development Manager at Practical Law Company (PLC). She specializes in professional development and training, and she’ll be there to add some insight into how people can use their summers to actually become better lawyers. Before joining PLC, Boyko was an attorney at Akin Gump and Katten. Prior to that she was an investment banker and has her Series 7, 63 and 79 licenses. She is also a founding member of a NYC women’s networking organization. Boyko received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 2005.
If you want to learn how to use all of the tools at your disposal this summer, we’re here to help. We hope to see you on April 6.
Maybe it’s time for us to have a national conversation about legalizing drugs. It’s interesting to see how many folks in charge of enforcing and administering our nation’s drug laws seem to have drug problems themselves.
We all recall the sad story of former federal judge Jack Camp. After years of sending offenders off to prison for narcotics offenses, ex-Judge Camp pleaded guilty to drug offenses of his own. He was sentenced to 30 days in prison — less time than what Paris Hilton got.
And speaking of Paris Hilton, it seems that one of her former prosecutors — a top drug-crime prosecutor in Las Vegas — was just arrested.
As you are all know, the University of Texas School of Law has moved into the “top 14″ in this year’s U.S. News law school rankings. It’s a bit of cheat for U.S. News: Texas is technically tied for 14th, which means that the magazine has actually managed to cram 15 schools into its top 14. I’d complain more, but I’m a fan of a Big (We Can’t Count To) Ten school.
While we all know that Texas is in the top 14, very few of you remember the significance of the top 14 in the first place. The top 14 isn’t as arbitrary as it sounds. Since U.S. News started publishing these law school rankings, no school that ranked in the inaugural top 14 has ever been ranked outside of the top 14, and no school that did not rank in the top 14 that first year has ever cracked that list. Until now.
The top 14 has been a way to distinguish elite institutions that are nearly interchangeable with one another from really good law schools that are just a cut below. When viewed that way, Texas’s inclusion was probably long overdue.
Let’s take a look at some of the other movement in this rarefied group of law schools….
As the owner of a small law firm, I’m always surprised at how many blind résumés I receive in the mail. First of all, who even uses mail anymore? Does anyone seriously think that I’m going take them more seriously because they used cream-colored, 100% cloth, 24-pound bond paper? I’m not.
But forget the résumés for a minute; for me, it’s the cover letter that tells me whether I want to interview this person. Over the years, I’ve received thousands of cover letters from lawyers and law students. I’ve gotten to the point where I really don’t need to read the résumé before I’ve made my decision.
So with that in mind, here are 11 tips for writing cover letters to potential employers.
1. Spell my frikkin’ name right. You’d be astounded at how many times candidates blow this one.…
This has not been a great weekend for the University of Pittsburgh community. As many of you know, the school’s college basketball team choked disappointed fans with an early round exit from the NCAA tournament.
You should always avoid comparing a school’s basketball team with its law school, but it appears that things aren’t going much better at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. While there is some evidence that the legal economy is recovering, the improving fortunes have not trickled all the way down to 3Ls searching for work….
[Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past four years. You can reach them by email: asia at kinneyrecruiting dot com.]
Alexis Lamb here, writing from my soon-to-be-old flat (err, apartment) in Hong Kong. Housing markets tend to be a barometer of more general market conditions, and nowhere is that more apparent than in more emerging economies. While China is more of an emerging superpower than an emerging economy, the grand fall and rise of the Hong Kong property markets are evidence of general economic strength and renewed optimism in this part of the world.
I moved into my current flat in April 2009, smack-dab in the depths of the economic dead zone. I was able to secure my 680 square-foot, high-floor, doorman building with pool and clubhouse for approximately US$1980 (HK$15,000) without the landlord putting up much of a fuss. If anything, the landlord seemed relieved that someone – anyone – was renting his flat!
Fast forward 2 years to mid-March 2011. Landlord decides to nearly double my rent to HK$25,000, or US$3,200! Before I launched into “Why you gotta break my balls”, I did some market research and found that other flats in my building on similar floors were being rented out for a similar price. Time to get a better deal.
Fortunately, a bit of digging and creativity yielded results. For some bargaining I was able to find apartments that fit my checklist. 500 square feet? Check. Doorman, luxury building? Check. Near the Robinson Road escalator stop? Check. Within my budget? What budget! Budgets are for the boring! Just kidding; check. Bigger and more tricked-out options were to be found in more farflung neighborhoods – which, in HK, means a 15-minute walk to the escalator instead of a 45-second walk to the escalator – such as Sheung Wan and NoHo (“North of Hollywood Road”).
The NoHo option was intriguing. I found a bright, airy, 800-square foot studio (asking price slightly over US$2,400) on Gage Street, right next to the Gage Street wet markets, a wholesale distributor of flash-frozen high-end meat products imported from places like New Zealand and South America, art galleries, and a cheerful spattering of unique jewelry and clothing boutiques run by local designers. The apartment was a stone’s throw from Gough (rhymes with “cough”) Street, which has surfaced as a grittier, cooler escape from the expat ghettoes of Soho and Lan Kwai Fong. To draw a comparison with the mean streets of New York, if SoHo is the Upper East Side, Gough Street is the Lower East Side (for my fellow Longhorns: if SoHo is 6th Street, Gough Street is South Congress).
I spoke on a panel with two other in-house lawyers at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law a little while ago, and I learned two interesting things about lateral mobility. I’m not one to keep secrets (other than client confidences, of course), so I figure I’ll share.
The first item came from a question a law student asked of Steve Beard, who’s the general counsel of Heidrick & Struggles, a recruiting firm. The student asked when the best times are during your legal career to make a lateral move. I didn’t have a clue, and Beard works for a headhunter, so I figured it was time to listen.
Beard said that headhunters will call you most aggressively at three times in your life. First, you’ll get calls when you’re roughly a third-year associate. At that point, the market perceives that you’ve been trained in the fundamentals of being a lawyer. If someone is looking for a competent person still early in a legal career, that’s more or less the time.
You’ll then apparently have to endure a few years of relative silence. The phone won’t start to ring regularly again until you’re six or seven years out of law school. The market will then perceive you as having become a fully formed lawyer, capable of performing most of the tasks in your niche. Corporations figure that they can hire a sixth-year associate, train the candidate about a particular business, and fit the person easily into a corporate structure….
* Sammy Alito and the roots of a compassionate constitutional conservatism. By Emily Bazelon. Foreblurb by Juggalo Law. [New York Times]
* A U.S. vulture fund is having problems collecting a certain debt from the Democratic Republic of Congo via certain chinamen. Yes, I know that’s not the preferred nomenclature. But these men actually do build railroads. [Bloomberg]
* This business professor thinks law firms should start acting like real businesses. Somewhere, a theater professor thinks law firms should just start acting. [Washington Post]
* This fascinating story’s many intimations about State Senator Carl Kruger make it difficult to discern who is doinking who. Sorry, doinking whom. Whom is doinking whom. [New York Times]
* It is spring, which means the New York Mets are feisty. Silly Mets. [New York Post]
* The FDA is weighing whether to ban menthol cigarettes. Good thing Elie already quit. What’s that? You didn’t smoke menthols, Elie? Wow, this is awkward… [Chicago Tribune]
* The Barry Bonds trial is going to be a heavyweight fight. However, most of that weight will be located in Bonds’s head. [San Francisco Chronicle]
* If you root for your law school alma mater over your undergrad alma mater, you are the kind of unprincipled betrayer who deserves the very worst of all that life has to offer. [PrawfsBlawg]
* Did you know that university professors could get fired for appearing in burlesque shows? [Siouxsie Law]
* Some thoughts on what black prospective law students should consider when choosing a law school, from Yolanda Young. [On Being a Black Lawyer]
* Best. Deposition transcript. Ever. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Please, please, please, let there be many character and fitness boards who will ding this law student who stomped a bird to death. [Huffington Post]
* Happy Purim, everybody. And if you are an Irish Jew, I wish your liver the best.
Sometimes you just have to whip it out and wait for somebody to bring over a ruler. That’s just a part of life.
But some lawyers seem to sit around all day just waiting for an opportunity to drop drawers and call for the chains.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at this guy from SNR Denton. He was reading the Middle East Practice Area ABA listserv and came across an innocent question and follow-up discussion. Instead of answering the question or providing any helpful information whatsoever, he shot off a quick little response about his firm’s own magnificence.
And to make matters worse (and hilarious), it turns out he didn’t even know what he was talking about in the first place…
In 2009, a small group of Harvard Law School students noticed an absurd monopoly in the bar prep space, held by an unchallenged leader with a non-evolving product. In response, these students teamed up with Harvard Law alumni to launch BarMax on January 14, 2010.
The mission: democratize bar prep by embracing new technologies to provide the very best bar exam review courses at a fraction of the cost normally associated with these courses.
Since then, with the encouragement of thousands of students and an unwavering commitment to their success, BarMax has established itself as a comprehensive alternative to the stagnant, over-priced status quo.
As we continue to expand, we do not want to lose sight of the basic premises that led us to create BarMax in the first place. If you are a law student who believes that there is something fundamentally wrong with being forced to take out yet another loan to pay for a $4,000 bar exam prep course, you are not alone.
Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past five years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com
Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December.
As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / China), please note that thus far in January ’12, we have already made seven US associate and counsel placements in Asia. This is an especially impressive number, considering the biglaw lateral hiring market in Asia is down right now (see state of the market brief overview below). These new placements are of new hires in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, who were interviewing with their new firm for a month or more and they are spread out among different practice areas, including project finance, litigation, fund formation, M&A and cap markets. We are close on four additional new associate placements, in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, that we expect to close soon. We do not discuss partner placements in these articles, but the pace of partner recruitment in Asia (a large part of our business) has continued.
Hedge Fund In-House Openings in Hong Kong
We are seeing a small run of new in-house openings in Hong Kong at hedge funds. We are currently filling three different in-house positions at three different hedge funds in Hong Kong, two of these searches we are handling on an exclusive basis. All three will most likely be filled by a US associate, with about 4 to 6 years of experience. Mandarin not required. Candidates from NYC and London will be considered, but at one of these funds the new hire will likely come from Hong Kong / China or Singapore (with HK being the strong preference).
Please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com if you are interested in these hedge fund openings. As you probably would expect, the competition for these spots will be fierce and the funds will be very selective when choosing which candidates to interview.
Earlier this month, we presented you with a trademark law hypothetical. It was based on a dispute between Lawyerist and PeerViews Inc., parent company of TechnoLawyer, over the term “Small Law.” Lawyerist used the words “Small Law” in the title and text of this post — about Above the Law’s new offerings for small-firm readers, incidentally — and PeerViews objected. 
Continue reading “Lawsuit of the Day: A Big Fight Over ‘Small Law’”
