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You'll bump into more black people at the Indiana State Fair than you will at the Indy Law atrium.
If you had told me at the beginning of the week that something happening at Indiana School of Law – Indianapolis would turn into a three-day Above the Law story, I would have said, “No dude, I’m not going to race-bait the Jews during Passover.”
But it turns out that my powers of racial inflammation were not needed for this Indy Law story. A student writing as “Invisible Man” managed to stoke racial passions at the school simply by finding reverse racism where few others could: in the banners hanging in the law school’s atrium. Indy Law Dean Gary Roberts found the student’s objection essentially incomprehensible, but we haven’t actually seen the law school atrium, to judge for ourselves just how oppressive these banners of black people might be to the white students that make up 80% of the Indy Law student body.
Until now. Finally, tipsters send us photos of the atrium banners, to put this whole controversy into perspective. I hope you brought your magnifying glasses to work today…
Continue reading “Finally! Pictures of the Unwelcoming African-Americans at Indy Law”
[Lawyer Dennis] Gingold claims to have billed an astonishing 48,772 hours on this case—which works out to almost 9.5 hours a day, every day without a single day off, between November 4, 1995, and December 7, 2009. This includes a seven-year stretch where Mr. Gingold billed 28,230 hours—an average of eleven hours a day, every day seven days a week without a single day off.
As anyone who has had to keep billing records knows, it is rare for ten hours of billing to take only ten hours: there are bathroom breaks, coffee breaks, meal breaks, interruptions, and so forth. There are legendary accounts of tireless attorneys who forgo family and leisure; work on little sleep; and are able to regularly bill 3000 hours a year, but they are few and far between. Perhaps Mr. Gingold is one of these exceptional individuals, so far above average that he can routinely bill 4000 hours a year without loss of productivity or health, but this proposition merits scrutiny.
– Ted Frank, founder of the Center for Class Action Fairness, in a brief objecting to the proposed $3.4 billion, taxpayer-funded Cobell Indian trust settlement. The settlement includes a fee request in which solo practitioner Dennis Gingold claims to have billed over 28,000 hours in seven years — at his hourly rate of $925 an hour.
Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Small Firms, Big Lawyers, one of Above the Law’s new columns for small-firm lawyers.
Funny story: One day during my third year of law school, I overslept and missed an important session of my Sales class. The problem is, when I tried to get the notes for the class, the only one who had … pardon me? Yes, Sales. No, not UCC Sales. “Sales.” As in “How to Market and Sell Your Legal Services.” … So, anyway, the only one who had the notes … what’s that? You didn’t? Seriously? So how were you supposed to learn how to sell your services as a lawyer?
Turns out my story, which was going to be hysterical, was also completely fabricated. Like you, I didn’t learn a damned thing about sales in law school. But at the time (the early nineties), that seemed OK. It’s a profession, you see. Sales is for commerce. Lawyers aren’t in commerce; we’re in a vocation.
Yeah, right.
As the practice of law careens away from its eighteenth-century traditions, where clients just find you, lawyers today (and especially small-firm lawyers) need to rely on sales skills to bring in business. Since we didn’t learn these in law school, we have to rely on our natural sales ability. Unfortunately, lawyers tend not to have any.
In fact, as a group, we suck at sales. But the reason we suck will probably surprise you.…
Continue reading “Small Firms, Big Lawyers: Why Lawyers Suck at Sales”
Tyler Clementi (left) and Dharun Ravi (right)
They really threw the book at this kid.
Last September, Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi jumped off of the George Washington Bridge after his roommate, Dharun Ravi, surreptitiously recorded and then broadcast footage of Clementi hooking up in his room with another man.
Clementi’s death touched off an important national conversation about the bullying of gay teens and the need to reach out to them so they don’t feel so isolated. If anything good can come from Clementi’s suicide, it will be to make people commit to helping gays and lesbians as they struggle through adolescence and young adulthood in sometimes hostile communities.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear Tyler Clementi will be the only martyr for this cause. No, there are some people hellbent on making sure that another young life is effectively ruined, and some of those people work for the state of New Jersey.
Charges flowed out of the grand jury today for Clementi’s roommate and “tormentor,” Ravi. Based on the allegations in the indictment, you’d think Ravi had been running for the Republican nomination for President instead of acting like an 18-year-old college freshman…
Continue reading “Tyler Clementi’s Roommate, Dharun Ravi, Indicted on 15 Counts”
The Jones Street townhouses. Number 20 has the purple door.
As small-firm columnist Valerie Katz previously discussed, some partners at small law firms are worth big bucks. The only practicing lawyer in the Forbes 400 is a small-firm attorney, in fact.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some partners at small firms have big and beautiful wives homes. The New York Times recently featured one such lawyerly lair: a magnificent townhouse in Manhattan’s coveted West Village neighborhood, now on the market for almost $7.5 million.
The owner of this house once worked at a large law firm and is now a partner in a small law firm. Which firms?
Find out — and ogle photos of the palatial spread — after the jump.
Continue reading “Lawyerly Lairs: An Attorney’s $7.5 Million Townhouse”
It’s been a while since I graduated from college, but isn’t there something special about this particular day on the calendar? I just can’t quite remember what’s so important about 4/20.
Well, according to this fun little headline, I’m not the only one with memory problems today: AFROMAN SUED ON 4/20: ‘Because I Got High’ Singer Sued For Forgetting About A Concert Date.
Ha ha. Let’s check out this “complaint” below. And if you don’t know who Afroman is, you’re in for a treat…
CORRECTION (1:30 PM): I initially thought this lawsuit was a joke. But according to Claudia Lyster, marketing manager for the two law firms bringing the action, “I want to assure you the lawsuit filed against Afroman this morning in Franklin County Municipal Court is very real. Here is a time-stamped copy of the Complaint.”
Continue reading “Fake Lawsuit of the Day: It’s 4.20!”
Ed. note: This post is by Will Meyerhofer, a former Sullivan & Cromwell attorney turned psychotherapist. He holds degrees from Harvard, NYU Law, and The Hunter College School of Social Work, and he blogs at The People’s Therapist. His new book, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy, is available on Amazon (affiliate link).
Every guy with a family feels the urge to pack a bag, get in the car, and drive. At least, sometimes.
A client told me that – a straight guy with kids. I don’t think it’s a straight thing, though. It might not be a guy thing, either. It can be a lawyer thing. Any lawyer with loans experiences the impulse to hit the highway.
When you’re “The Provider,” you do constant battle with the itch to hightail it out of town.
Who’s “The Provider”? It’s someone you morph into. A character from an Updike novel… or maybe it’s Cheever. Maybe it’s Mad Men. You become a cliché from 1950′s or early 60′s tv shows: Dad, who arrives home, pecks the wife on the cheek, tousles the kids’ hair, then collapses into a La-Z-Boy and reads the paper while the golden retriever fetches the bedroom slippers.
Except it sucks bad enough that you’re feeling the urge to pack a bag, get in the car and drive….
Continue reading “The Provider”
* The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a lawsuit asking courts to force major companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Sotomayor spent the entire oral argument asking attorneys how she could fit more Miami Sound Machine on her Zune. [New York Times]
* Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who can be seen every Thursday night on 30 Rock playing Kenneth the Page, shares none of Jan Brewer’s qualms about a “birther bill.” [Politico]
* The Ecuadorean Slapfight (also the name of my ska band in high school) between Patton Boggs, Gibson Dunn, and Chevron was squashed by a judge yesterday. [Reuters]
* Baker Hostetler is balling out of control on L’Affaire Madoff. [WSJ Law Blog]
Judge Vaughn Walker
* Tiger Blogger Vivia Chen wants white guys to be hunted like animals. [The Careerist]
* A copyright troll has found a way to exact a toll without actually owning any copyrights. No word yet on whether anyone has gained entrance into the boy’s hole. [Wired via ABA Journal]
* Alleged Wikileaker Bradley Manning is being transferred to another prison. Julian Assange celebrated the news by going dancing. [Fox News]
* Sponsors of Proposition 8 are mad that retired judge Vaughn Walker, who presided over Prop 8′s defeat in court, is giving lectures around the country that feature a three-minute clip of the trial. They say the video should remain in the closet. Or a desk drawer of some sort. [Los Angeles Times]
Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts, the dean of Indiana School of Law – Indianapolis, is a bad ass. We’ve mentioned him before: we featured him in a Quote of the Day, when he said, “If you’re a law student and think you’ll make $140,000 right out of law school, you’re an idiot.” At the time I thought the line was a rare moment of honesty from just another law dean.
It would appear now that I was wrong. This is maybe just how Dean Roberts rolls, having the guts to tell the truth as he sees it to his own students.
Yesterday, we told you about the controversial email that someone calling himself “Invisible Man” sent to his fellow IndyLaw students. In the message, he claims he feels unwelcome at his law school because of three banners that prominently feature African-American law students. After our publication, the story made it around the internet, getting picked up by Jezebel and focusing people on a law school many were unfamiliar with.
Well, today Dean Roberts responded, and his message is pretty brilliant. And the copy is clean, so you can’t say I wrote it…
Continue reading “Indianapolis Dean Shows How Indy’s ‘Invisible Man’ Was Merely Blind”
* Even family-friendly Easter treats have been molested by the TSA.* [ABA Journal]
* The woman who falsely accused the Duke Lacrosse players has been charged with murdering her boyfriend. And so Karma has provided the perfect opportunity to show this lady what a “rush to judgment” actually feels like.* [Huffington Post]
* How much should you spend on Administrative Assistants’ Day? It depends, how much does it cost to tell your secretary “nice rack” without getting in trouble these days?* [Corporette]
* DieHard (the battery) sues DieHard (the male desensitizing spray to stave off ejaculations) over use of the name “DieHard.” Apparently, some men were confused and tried to jump start their cars after using the spray.* [Legal Blog Watch]
* New York State quickly backed off its plan to “legislate fun” by regulating games like kickball and tag when a solider stepped through a time portal and warned legislators that in the future we all turn into pussies who get our asses kicked by the French.* [Fox News]
* A law firm was sued for prematurely revealing the winners of a reality TV show, but I expect the suit to be thrown out because everybody knows there are no winners when it comes to reality TV.* [ABA Journal]
* [FN1] These are not intended to be factual statements.
Paul Clement (left) and John Boehner (right)
They say that everyone is entitled to a lawyer. [FN1] But is everyone entitled to the services of former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, one of our nation’s finest appellate advocates? At a discounted rate, no less?
As we mentioned in yesterday’s Non-Sequiturs, the U.S. House of Representatives has hired Paul Clement and Clement’s law firm, the venerable King & Spalding, to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA, which essentially bars recognition of same-sex marriages for purposes of federal law, has been struck down in part by various federal courts, and the Obama Administration has decided to stop defending the 1996 law in constitutional challenges.
So the House Republicans have stepped up to the plate to defend DOMA. And they’ve hired some high-powered counsel for the task, namely, Clement and King & Spalding.
The contract between the House and King & Spalding was made public today by the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (after Speaker John Boehner declined to release it). The agreement contains some interesting tidbits, including the hourly rate the House will be paying, as well as a cap (although an adjustable one) on the fees to be paid to K&S.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
Continue reading “Paul Clement and King & Spalding Defend DOMA — at a Discount”
In the first four parts of our Career Center “Tip of the Day” series, focused on how to evaluate a counteroffer, we covered the importance of re-evaluating your current employment situation, assessing what the new firm is offering, analyzing the counteroffer of your current firm, and considering the ramifications (both tangible and intangible) of accepting the counteroffer and reneging on the new firm. Our final tip focuses on recognizing buyer’s remorse for what it actually is: fear of the unknown.
On to tip #5….
Continue reading “Career Center Tip of the Day: Evaluating the Counteroffer — Should You Stay or Should You Go? (Part 5)”
It’s been a while since we have had a good ol’ Flori-duh story. I mean, that Miami kid came up with a ridiculous student bill of rights ages ago. We’re all overdue for some Everglades antics.
We’ll need to do a Florida potpourri here, but together these two stories have everything we’ve come to expect from the Sunshine State. We’ve got randomness, violence, crime, and circumstances that would seem improbable anywhere else.
And the fact that this is happening at arguably the top law school in Florida just makes everything so much better. Pass the Tropicana and strap in, for a look at life down in Gatorville…
Continue reading “A Real Life ‘Blue’ and a Pushy Prof Spice Up Life at a Top 50 Law School”
Elie was arrested on Friday in Las Vegas, married a former Playboy Playmate on Saturday, and is scheduled to appear in a federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday.
– an Am Law Daily report on Chad Elie, one of the people caught up in the federal government crackdown on my massive Full Tilt bankroll they have no right to seize the online poker industry. (Gavel bang: commenters, who noticed the line in a story linked in Morning Docket.)
Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Size Matters, one of Above the Law’s new columns for small-firm lawyers.
They say that to be competitive in today’s market, branding is key. To do that, one needs a snappy marketing campaign. I mean, think about the marketing genius behind the Shake Weight, or that truly awesome FreeCreditReport.com song!
According to an article in the Martindale.com Blog entitled Small Law Firms Take the Lead in Marketing, small firms have, well, taken the lead in marketing. Martindale-Hubbell commissioned a survey to look into the issue of small-firm marketing and concluded that the smallest firms are increasing their spending on marketing, with a focus on internet advertising.
Given this premise, I decided to search the worldwide web for some of the best (or most entertaining) small-firm websites. I found one website that stuck out to me: the home page of a boutique law firm, Edelson McGuire. (ATL previously covered the firm when it gave out free iPads to all employees, both attorneys and staff.)
How do I love the Edelson McGuire site? Let me count the ways….
Continue reading “Size Matters: Anatomy Of A Small-Firm Website”
It’s a familiar refrain around these parts: it’s tough to find legal employment, unless you got into one of the top law schools. The prevailing wisdom is that students at the “best” (i.e., highest-ranked) law schools have been protected from the recession-dampened job market facing recent graduates of most American law schools. “HYS” (Harvard, Yale, Stanford), “CCN” (Columbia, Chicago, NYU) — these law schools are thought to be safe bets for people who would like to be employed upon graduation.
But are they?
We know that things aren’t as bad for students at top schools as they are for people attending schools that are not ranked as highly by U.S. News. But that doesn’t mean a degree from a “T6″ school parts the jobless sea and leads graduates to the promised land of gainful employment.
In fact, at this late date in the law school calendar, we know that there are 3Ls at great schools staring into the abyss of post-graduate unemployment. The proof comes from the charity that employed students are trying to extend to their unemployed brethren…
Continue reading “Evidence That Students At Top Schools Are Also Getting Crunched By The Weak Job Market”
Consider the evidence, from the website of Cravath. We’re guessing this change was made a while ago, perhaps when Cravath overhauled its home page last June, but we didn’t notice it until a Cravath alum pointed it out to us just now.
Let’s take a look….
Continue reading “Is Cravath Getting Soft?”
* Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer tapped the brakes on the Insane Train yesterday, vetoing one measure that would allow guns at schools and another that would require presidential candidates to prove they weren’t Kenyan immigrants hellbent on the destruction of Lee Greenwood. [TucsonSentinel.com]
* Microsoft went before the Supreme Court yesterday to argue that patents should be easier to challenge. Sotomayor spent the entire oral argument asking the Microsoft attorney how she could fit more Miami Sound Machine on her Zune. [Reuters]
* Customer accounts have been frozen following the indictment of online poker companies. Bloomberg decided this was the perfect time to upload their stock poker photo, featuring the caption “A royal flush, circa 1950.” [Bloomberg]
* And here’s a rundown of the potential attorneys and firms who will work the defense side in said p-p-p-poker case. [Am Law Daily]
* The Taco Bell soylent beef lawsuit was dropped yesterday. Posting will be light today while Elie makes a run for the border. [NPR]
* Yo, Mr. Dopeman, you think you’re slick. You sold crack to my sister and now she’s sick. But if she happens to die because of your drug, federal judges will have a difficult time sentencing you. Oof, that N.W.A. lyric took a weird turn, didn’t it? [New York Times]
* The Supreme Court rejected an appeal by five Uyghurs being detained in Guantanamo Bay. On a related note, I just wasted a good ten minutes listening to this pronunciation of Uyghur. [CNN]
* Match.com will begin cross-checking users against sex offender registries after being sued. Whatever, juggalove.com is more my speed anyway. [WSJ Law Blog]
