We told you yesterday that Michigan Law has decided to invite Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) to speak to its 3L class for senior day. We told you that many Michigan Law students have objected to the choice of Senator Portman, because of his strong anti-gay rhetoric on the issue of gay marriage.
We told you that Michigan Law Dean Evan Caminker — the hottest law school dean in America, by the way — didn’t respond to our request for comment. We wondered, though, if he would dig in his heels against the LGBT community at his school, or if he would try to be sensitive to the concerns of minorities at his school who would like to enjoy basic civil rights.
Well, Dean Caminker decided to dig in, and in so doing kind of totally missed the point…
Continue reading “Dean Caminker Digs In To Support Anti-Gay-Marriage Commencement Speaker At Michigan Law”
* Members of the commentariat may soon be flocking to Plenty of Fish if Match.com has to install a sexual predator screening system. [NBC Los Angeles]
* This lawsuit against Arianna Huffington may be without merit, but I’m more concerned about this HD picture of her. With $315M sitting around, you can afford some filler, girl! [Technology / Los Angeles Times]
* You know, I’d probably lose my ability to enjoy life, too, if I got bitch slapped by Lebron’s mom. She can probably palm a basketball. [Riptide 2.0 / Miami New Times]
* Guys at my great-great-grandparents’ high school used to lock black men in cages all the time. It was no big deal. [Courier-Post Online]
* Maryland is apparently “a Disneyland for illegal immigrants.” Is it a place where dreams come true? Sure, if people can now afford to go to college. It’s a small world after all. [Washington Post]
* This year’s constitutional PrayerFest is taking place on May 5, 2011, and will be led by Barack Obama. Will you be praying for more hope and change, or just hoping that it changes? [Reuters]
It’s always been a dream of mine to interrupt a Supreme Court justice.
– Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), a lawyer, after interrupting Justice Anthony Kennedy during Justice Kennedy’s testimony before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.
What’s going on over at Orrick? Spring bonuses, that’s what — but with a twist.
As we’ve noted before, Orrick remains committed to merit-based compensation, even though some other firms that started moving away from lockstep have returned to it. Orrick’s approach to spring bonuses reflects the meritocratic orientation of its compensation.
Let’s have a look at what Orrick is doing here….
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Orrick Springs Forward”
* David and Elie are available to come speak at your graduation too. We only need travel and accommodation expenses, and we won’t spew haterade all over your campus — at least not towards gay people. [Facebook]
* There are more people sick of Lester Munson’s disingenuous games than I could have possibly imagined. I now challenge Lester Munson to a live debate. Munson for the prosecution, Elie for “the world is gray.” [Hardball Talk/NBC Sports]
* 50% of business people claim they would turn down a “dream job” if it involved going to strip clubs to entertain clients. Lawyers, I think we’re a little more self-aware and honest, aren’t we? [Dealbreaker]
* Wisconsin judges are a bulwark against the anti-union desires of the state legislature. Maybe the law makers should learn how to compromise? [Huffington Post]
* Venable’s billing practices are being scrutinized by TARP officials. [Washingtonian]
* Motion practice fail. [Legal Skills Prof Blog]
* There is growing political support around the idea that binational same-sex couples shouldn’t face deportation due to the DOMA. [Stop the Deportations]
* The problem with this article is that Scalia would never endorse such a TTT, non-peer company. [Onion]
Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Size Matters, one of Above the Law’s new columns for small-firm lawyers.
It is not easy staying abreast of all of the important issues affecting small firms, but I do it because my words impact our nation’s policy. Do you think it was a coincidence that less than a week after I instituted the Small Firm Pro Bono Push, the Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee suggested that private-sector employees need to do more pro bono work? Obviously not.
But sometimes even I need guidance. So I enlisted the help of Susan Cartier Liebel, the guru of solo practice.
Liebel founded Solo Practice University (“SPU”) in order to provide the resources for people to start their own firms that she found to be utterly lacking when she first decided to hang a shingle. SPU offers a wide variety of educational programs and networking opportunities. As Liebel stated, SPU provides the 360-degree experience to learn how to open a law firm in a simple-to-use and cost-effective online platform.
Above the Law covered SPU back in 2009, but much has changed over the past two years. Learn more about SPU after the break….
Continue reading “Size Matters: I Get Schooled By The Dean Of Solo Practice University”
What’s more strange about that headline? That Michigan Law would invite a guy who stands against the civil rights of certain members of the Michigan Law community, or that Michigan Law would invite a representative from Ohio to speak to its outgoing students?
I’m going with the latter. Rob Portman graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1984, but he has gone on to become the junior senator from Ohio. Ohio! In related news, Bo Schembechler was born in Ohio and went to college at Miami of Ohio, but I don’t think he was ever the keynote speaker during an Ohio athletics Hall of Fame ceremony.
Sadly, the fact that Michigan invited a guy who has taken a strong stance against the civil rights of gay people probably isn’t that out of the ordinary. Sure, at some point these anti-gay-marriage people will look as tolerant as pre-conversion George Wallace in front of a desegregated schoolhouse. But right now these enemies of love get to walk among us as regular people.
Guys at my high school used to have ignorant and flawed views about gay people all the time. It was no big deal.
But some students at Michigan Law are trying to make it a big deal. And that’s pretty exciting….
Continue reading “Michigan Law School Invites Ohio Senator With ‘Anti-Gay Politics’ To Speak At Senior Day”
In the first, second and third 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, and analyzing the counteroffer of your current firm. It is now time for you to consider the ramifications, both tangible and intangible, of accepting the counteroffer and reneging on the new firm.
On to tip #4….
Continue reading “Career Center Tip of the Day: Evaluating the Counteroffer — Should You Stay or Should You Go? (Part 4)”
Our buddy, the Honorable Alex Kozinski, is on a roll. On Monday, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit benchslapped a pair of wealthy, persistently annoying and mildly famous identical twins.
The same day, he gave a lecture at San Francisco’s Golden Gate University School of Law, where he declared the Internet has killed the First Amendment, or at least made it an anachronism. Heavy stuff.
More on what the judge said about the web’s effect on unsuppressable free speech, journalism and scumbag bloggers, after the jump.
Continue reading “Did Blogging Kill the First Amendment?”
What do you get when you cross Top Chef with Mark Cuban’s The Benefactor (anybody remember that? HA), steal half the name of America’s Next Top Model, and throw in inexplicably famous “chef” Curtis Stone? Only the single greatest reality show on NBC during the 8 p.m. time slot on Sundays: America’s Next Great Restaurant.
This groundbreaking pilot’s premise is that people who did boring things with their lives because they were too poor or risk-averse pitch restaurant franchise ideas to Curtis, Bobby Flay, and two other judges that nobody recognizes, who then back the winner with money from NBC’s budget their own wallets to open three identical restaurants so they can fail in three different cities at the same time.
As you may have guessed, America is not watching, the show is not Great, and I somehow doubt that The Spice Coast (or whichever proposed restaurant wins) will threaten the national hegemony of McDonald’s, although I might order it from Seamless Web. If I liked Indian food. Which I do not.
In any event, competing in “ANGR” is one of our own…
Continue reading “Fame Brief: Former Paul Hastings Associate May Be America’s Next Great Restaurateur”
Did Lester Munson get his law degree by staying at a Holiday Inn Express?
Last night, Barry Bonds was found guilty of obstruction of justice, while the jury hung on all other counts, resulting in a mistrial as to those counts. We posted about it.
Now, I don’t expect non-lawyers to really understand what “obstruction of justice” means. I certainly don’t expect them to understand what a “mistrial” is. But I do expect anybody who has been through 1L year at an American law school to understand these concepts. I certainly expect law professors to understand these terms. And I freaking demand that legal analysts charged with making sense of this issue for ESPN — the WORLDWIDE LEADER IN SPORTS — have a basic grasp on what the hell is going on.
ESPN legal analyst Lester Munson, you, sir, have failed. Failed at your job. Failed at being a thought leader. Failed at failing in a funny, non-offensive way.
Even 1Ls won’t believe the kind of tripe Muson has been spewing on ESPN…
Continue reading “ESPN Legal Analyst Does Disservice to All Mankind”
Whenever it feels like things are getting better in the legal economy, Craigslist shows up to remind everybody just how crappy things still are. If you want to know why there is a higher education bubble (and there is a higher education bubble), you need only look at the kind of pathetic salaries offered to people with years of higher education.
Now, if you were exploring the Above the Law jobs board, you wouldn’t be peppered with offers like the ones we’re seeing on Craigslist. But we can’t beat Craigslist for comedic value.
After the jump, check out two “jobs,” which you need years of expensive education and experience to even be in the running for…
Continue reading “Pathetic Job Potpourri”
* Pay for play pay for an “A” attorney Damian Bonazzoli got suspended from practice for six months. At $300 a pop and without a job, it may be time to get back into pushing papers on Craigslist. [Worcester Telegram & Gazette]
* “I cannot explain why men do what they do.” Sorry, Lynette Taylor, but it looks like you also can’t explain why your husband pleaded guilty to having sex with an underage prosti-tot. [CNN Justice]
* An interesting piece about the drug trade behind prison walls — because even the Department of Corrections needs a drug mule sometimes. [New York Times]
* Howrey going to come up with $36,608.89? Bob Ruyak better buy some of those liquidation sale signs a la Circuit City. [San Jose Business Journal]
* Breaking up is hard to do, especially when it’ll cost taxpayers more than $14 million. Florida, you got some ‘splainin’ to do! [Miami Herald]
* Bolivia is trying to give Mother Earth human rights. I hope that means humans can file suit against “her.” I’d love to have someone to sue every time a flock of birds decides that my car is their toilet. [Huffington Post]
People think that I believe that nobody should go to law school ever, and that anybody who is currently in law school should drop out immediately. And, to be fair, I do think that many people in law school today have made terrible personal and financial decisions and have entered a world of pain that they will dwell in for much of the rest of their lives.
But I don’t think that every person in law school is there idiotically. I don’t think everybody who is there should drop out of school at the earliest available opportunity. I don’t even think you need a special “love of the law” to justify three years of legal education. The internet is not a great medium for nuance, but on a case-by-case basis there are a lot of situations where a person might be smart to go to law school and/or smart to stay in law school.
Take this one kid who emailed Above the Law asking for advice on whether or not he should drop out after his 1L year. I bet he’s going to be surprised that I’m of the opinion that he should stay in school…
Continue reading “A 1L Who Should Stay In Law School”
* It looks like Jonathan Lee Riches has some competition. Check out this crazy lawsuit filed against Apple (and many other defendants), by one David Louis Whitehead. Why do the wackos always have three names? [Apple Insider]
* Check out Professor Glenn Reynolds’s interesting argument against a federally-mandated drinking age of 21. “If you get shot at, you can have a shot.” [Wall Street Journal via Instapundit]
* The FTC is holding Google’s balls feet to the fire over its privacy practices. Want to turn up the heat a few degrees? [EPIC]
Do you heart boobies? I do -- for aesthetic reasons, and as symbols of female seductive power.
* Speaking of body parts, would this lawsuit have turned out differently if the bracelets, instead of promoting breast cancer awareness by declaring “I ♥ Boobies,” promoted testicular cancer awareness and read “I ♥ Balls”? [Philadelphia Inquirer via WSJ Law Blog]
* And speaking of free speech and schools, Congress should proceed with caution when passing anti-harassment legislation. [Chronicle of Higher Education]
* Biglaw partners team up with a former federal prosecutor to launch a new litigation boutique. Say hello to Levine Lee LLP. [Am Law Daily]
* But how does the bulldog feel about being used in an advertisement for a law firm? Cf. this controversy. [Ross Fishman's Law Marketing Blog]
After four days of deliberating over whether or not former baseball great Barry Bonds lied about his use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, the jury could not reach agreement on a number of charges the government made against Bonds.
But the feds nailed him on the obstruction of justice count. From ESPN:
The guilty verdict on obstruction of justice means the jury believed Bonds hindered a grand jury’s 2003 sports doping investigation by lying.
The judge, after speaking to the jury foreman, said she believes the mistrial is the proper decision given that the jury believes it has reached a crossroads.
Below are some instant reactions….
Continue reading “Breaking: Barry Bonds Found Guilty of Obstructing Justice; Mistrial Declared On Other Counts”
We’ve seen it in California; we’ve seen it in New York. Now it looks like Puff the Magic Grade-Inflating Dragon is heading for Washington, D.C.
Yes sir, a school in the D.C. market has decided that the reason its students can’t get jobs has nothing to do with the quality of education or services the school provides, and everything to do with how the school itself calculates student GPAs. And so we have another institution of legal education that is poised to randomly make its curve a third of a grade easier. And the school will also introduce the dreaded A+ — which is worth 4.33 points and should be written on construction paper in glitter, to emphasize how absurdly weak it is for a person over the age of 14 to receive an A+ on anything.
CORRECTION: As pointed out in the comments, the new grade is an A+*; the A+ already exists. I’m sorry, but my little brain could not comprehend such a thing as an A+*; I thought it was a typo.
And the school’s students — who should be embarrassed by this blatant inflation of their grades, in the same way that governments cringe when they are forced to devalue their currencies — are so hopeful that this little gimmick will work that all they can do is ask if the inflation will be applied retroactively to their previous grades.
So really, the only question left is whether this trend will catch on with other D.C.-area schools, rendering the efforts of the first inflator functionally moot….
Continue reading “How Many Inflated ‘A-pluses’ Do You Need To Get A Job In D.C.?”
Judge Eric Melgren (D. Kansas)
A trial was scheduled to start in Kansas federal court on June 14, 2011. Defendants moved for a short continuance because one of their lawyers is expecting his first child on July 3. (The lawyer in question, Bryan Erman, is quite cute — check out that chin dimple.)
Plaintiffs’ counsel objected to the continuance — strenuously. This took Judge Eric Melgren by surprise. And not in a good way.
Judge Melgren granted the continuance — and took the opportunity to benchslap the lawyers who refused to consent….
Continue reading “Federal Judge Benchslaps Plaintiffs’ Counsel: Stop Being Tools”
Check out the latest offerings in Sponsored Content:
And now, thanks to this week’s advertisers on Above the Law….
Continue reading “Gracias a Nuestros Anunciantes”
You know associates are pissed when they end their emails to Above the Law with lines like this one, from a message we received last night:
NO ONE SHOULD COME HERE. EVERYONE HERE SHOULD LEAVE.
Jacob Riis photographs associates at one Biglaw firm
That’s what happens when you tell your associates that they’re going to get paid significantly below market and like it.
Several firms have not yet announced spring bonuses, and associates at these firms are annoyed. But there are only a handful of Biglaw firms that cut associate salaries back during the recession and have not yet brought their people back to market-level base compensation.
One of the firms that is lagging behind the rest of the market had an “all associates” conference call yesterday, during which management tried to explain why associates were being underpaid and undervalued by the firm.
Let’s just say that not everyone felt like a winner…
Continue reading “Biglaw Firm Warns Associates They’ll Be ‘Disappointed’ With Comp”
