There is this automatic assumption in any legal environment that Asians will have a particular talent for bitter labor. There was this weird self-selection where the Asians would migrate toward the most brutal part of the labor…. White people have this instinct that is really important: to give off the impression that they’re only going to do the really important work. You’re a quarterback. It’s a kind of arrogance that Asians are trained not to have.
– Tim Wu, Columbia law professor and author of The Master Switch, quoted in a very interesting New York magazine piece by Wesley Yang, Paper Tigers: What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends?
I wonder what Sally Hemings would say to Johnathan Perkins.
UPDATE (4 PM): The dean of UVA Law School, Paul G. Mahoney, has issued a statement about the application of the University of Virginia’s Honor System to the Johnathan Perkins incident. We have reprinted it after the jump.
White law students lie all the time and nobody makes a big deal about it, but now there’s a black law student who lies about something, and people are throwing a fit? That hardly seems right.
Look, whether or not white people want to believe it, racism is an important issue. It’s an issue that they don’t think about nearly enough. While Johnathan Perkins might have fabricated some of the details of his late-night run-in with the law (or at least university police), his goal of bringing attention to on-campus racism was laudable — and should be advanced by any means necessary.
I’m just warming up. Let me tell you what I really think about the Johnathan Perkins controversy at UVA Law School….
Continue reading “What To Do With The UVA Law Student Who Cried Wolf?”
Did you watch Lost? I was a big fan of the show, which ran on ABC from 2004 to 2010. The series required quite a commitment from its viewers, since it had a large ensemble cast and was a true serial — you really couldn’t miss any episodes. After the third season, the producers made the unusual announcement that the series would definitely conclude at the end of the sixth season. Since so many elements of the show remained a mystery until the very end, it became a guessing game as to whether the writers would be able to tie everything together into a satisfying ending.
Toward the end of the final season, the show revealed a location that we’d never seen before that was crucial to explaining the Island’s secrets. (I’m not giving anything away here if you haven’t seen it.) But the location, a glowing cave, was rendered with cheesy special effects that looked like they’d been borrowed from the original 1960s “Star Trek” series. The bad effects were so jarring that they took the viewer out of the story, causing you to say, “What’s with the cheeseball special effects?”
What the heck does this have to do with improving your legal writing? Find out after the jump.…
Continue reading “Small Firms, Big Lawyers: The ‘Lost’ Art of Hyphens”
Breaking news: law school is expensive. Really, really expensive. Much more expensive than it used to be.
Are there still people out there who don’t know that? I mean, we’re certainly at the point where you don’t deserve sympathy if you go to law school without understanding the financial ramifications of your decision. The truth is out there, people.
And the truth hurts. The Hartford Business Journal (gavel bang: ABA Journal) reports that law school debt has reached a beyond ridiculous, all-time high…
Continue reading “Unbelievable Amount of Debt for Law Graduates”
Over time (and it doesn’t take long), law firm pitches all begin to sound the same.
“We save you money because we staff cases leanly. We send in the Navy SEALs, not the Fifth Fleet.”
Do you really think the guy in here last week was saying, “We waste your money hand over foot. We send in the Fifth Fleet where the Navy SEALs would do”?
Or: “You get big firm lawyers at small firm prices,” and then, the next day, “You get small firm attention combined with the advantages of our many offices.”
So my ears perked up recently when I heard two large firms make pitches based on fundamentally different world views. The first difference was on the need for international offices….
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Big-Firm Pitches”
Changing of the guard.
It’s the season for law school deans to step down. We never get to know exactly why deans step down, but when students relate stats like the one below, it certainly leaves an impression.
Our tipster reports: “When she took over, [our school] was ranked tier one, around 46 or 47. Now it hovers around the upper 70s…”
Yeah, not good times. And the dean isn’t the only one on the way out. The school is making a minor shake-up in its career services department too.
Which school?
Continue reading “Administrative Shake-Ups At A Law School Falling in the Rankings”
* Props to the hundred plus Michigan Law grads that walked out on Rob Portman’s commencement address. For additional fabulousity, they should’ve played Diana Ross in the background. [Ann Arbor Journal]
* A homeless child toucher got arrested for moving out of his dumpster without telling the police. No wonder Oscar’s always so grouchy. [ABA Journal]
* “Are you sure you’re not representing the Lollipop Guild?” If you’re tall enough to sit on a toilet, you’re probably tall enough to clean one, too. Just not in New York. [New York Post]
* Don’t drop the soap, Lenny. Mr. Dykstra is looking at 80 years in prison for bankruptcy fraud charges. Will the MLB star go from “Nails” to “Nailed” while in the slammer? [CNN Justice]
* I’m not sure why judges like quoting Bob Dylan in their opinions so often. Whitney Cummings was right: Bob Dylan does sound like what I look like in the mornings. [Los Angeles Times]
* UDel may have to delay its plans to build an elite law school — but that’s totally okay, because Delaware already has a prestigious, fourth tier second tier legal institution. [News Journal]
* “Floridians are going to have to start pulling up their pants and stop having sex with animals soon.” As TTTroll can surely attest to, that will never happen in Florida. [NBC Miami]
Johnathan Perkins
It’s time for more race-related drama from UVA Law School. Back in February, Elie wrote about a UVA Law party that featured Confederate flag decor. Now I will tell you about a 3L’s fabricated tale of racial harassment by university police.
(Yes, Lat’s writing this story. So you can relax, UVA folks — at least for now. Maybe Elie will take a crack at it on Monday.)
In late April, Johnathan Perkins, a third-year law student at UVA, wrote a letter to the editor that was published in Virginia Law Weekly, the law school’s student newspaper. In his letter, Perkins claimed that he was harassed by UVA university police while walking home from a party, purportedly on account of his race (he’s African-American). Perkins said he was moved to share the story “because it is important for my classmates to hear a real-life anecdote illustrating the myth of equal protection under the law.”
The trouble is, it was anything but a “real-life anecdote,” as Perkins himself recently confessed….
Continue reading “A Law Student Plays the Race Card — and Gets Busted, Big Time”
Molly Wei, the pretty ex-Rutgers student who was charged with two counts of invasion of privacy in the Tyler Clementi case, has reached a deal with the prosecution. Wei, 19, has been admitted to a pre-trial intervention program that could result in the charges against her being dismissed.
What does Wei have to do as part of the PTI program?
Continue reading “Wei To Go (and Testify Against Dharun Ravi)”
Burka in the court?
* The three defendants in the civil wrongful-death action brought by Robert Wone’s widow are keeping their mouths shut. [National Law Journal]
* But their former house is open — and once again on the market, for the tidy sum of $1.6 million. [Who Murdered Robert Wone?]
* Professor Eugene Volokh wants to know, with respect to wearing religious head coverings to court, can’t we all just get along? [Volokh Conspiracy]
Lavi Soloway
* Congratulations to Lavi Soloway and his client, Henry Velandia, whose deportation proceedings have been adjourned — due in part to a recent decision by Attorney General Eric Holder, vacating a BIA decision in another case involving a same-sex couple. [Poliglot / Metro Weekly]
* Speaking of judges and gay marriage, maybe Justice Kennedy should trade Salzburg for São Paulo this summer. [ABA Journal]
* What is behind the spring bonus phenomenon? One big factor: the boom in the lateral hiring market. [Vault's Law Blog]
* Speaking of the state of the legal economy, we’ve already linked to the big Economist article on the legal profession — but check out this great photo, in case you missed it. [The Economist / Tumblr]
* Are harsh sanctions for discovery violations a good thing? Ben Kerschberg thinks so. [Law & Technology / Forbes]
* Don’t forget to wish your mom a Happy Mother’s Day! (Unless your mom is Vivia Chen.) [The Careerist]
* Litigators: Do you know about the usefulness of Rule 56(f) 56(d)? [What About Clients?]
* When Glenn Reynolds is away, Ann Althouse will play. [Althouse via Instapundit]
* Were your law school classmates this attractive? Probably not. [YouTube]
'GTL + BR'? Or, for the uninitiated, 'Gym Tan Laundry + Bar Review.' (Photo courtesy of a New Jersey tipster.)
Let’s call this “Bar Exam Open Thread: The Much-Maligned States Edition.” Since our last bar exam open thread, we know of two major states that have announced: Texas, on May 5, and New Jersey, on May 3.
These two states sometimes get bad raps — unjustifiably so, in my opinion….
Continue reading “Recent Bar Exam Results: Open Thread
Texas, New Jersey — who else?“
Here at Above the Law, we try to offer practical tips for how to succeed in the legal profession. See, e.g., our recent posts about how to take vacation in Biglaw, or the best time for starting your own law firm.
Together with another company that provides useful advice and insight to lawyers, the Practical Law Company, we produced a webcast, We Know What You Should Do This Summer. A panel of career experts tackled topics of interest to law students who want to succeed over the summer — and beyond.
Prior installments of the webcast appeared here and here. Now let’s look at the latest segment….
Continue reading “ATL Webcast: Career Advice for This Summer (Part 3)
Government jobs; balancing work and play in Biglaw.“
It might interest you to know that if I were still an active justice, I would have joined [Justice Alito's] powerful dissent in the recent case holding that the intentional infliction of severe emotional harm is constitutionally protected speech. The case… involved a verbal assault on the private citizens attending the funeral of their son — a Marine corporal killed in Iraq. To borrow Sam’s phrase, the First Amendment does not transform solemn occasions like funerals into ‘free-fire zones.’
– Justice John Paul Stevens, in a recent speech to the Federal Bar Council in New York City, explaining how he would have voted with Justice Samuel Alito in Snyder v. Phelps (aka the Westboro Baptist Church case).
It’s that time of year. The never-ending winter is finally retreating and we’re getting the few weeks that pass for spring in New York, before the city turns into a humid swamp for four months. The lucky ones who pocketed spring bonuses want an excuse to spend them. Minds drift to thoughts of vacation — a temporary escape from billable hours and fleeting chance to remember what sunlight feels like. If only it were that simple.
Fact: Americans on average get far fewer paid vacation days than workers in other developed countries, including Japan, which invented the concept of karōshi (death by overwork). Sadder fact: most Americans don’t use the precious few vacation days that they have.
Lawyers are particularly bad about this. Biglaw attorneys are lucky enough to get four weeks of vacation each year, but most don’t use them. These 20 paid, get-out-of-jail-free days are part of your compensation package. Refusing to use them is essentially giving your firm 20 days of free labor. I don’t know anyone who negotiates a lower salary or feels guilty about taking advantage of the firm health plan. Why should vacation be different? The Firm has no qualms about taking up all 24 hours of every one of the other 345 days of your year. Why wouldn’t you use your vacation days?
Associates whine that taking vacation from Biglaw is impossible. No it isn’t. Sure, it may be difficult, but it’s certainly not impossible.
All it takes is little common sense….
Continue reading “Should I Stay or Should I Go? How to Take Vacation from Biglaw Without Being Sent Packing”
Although I’m no longer an editor here at Above the Law (*tear*), you know my byline occasionally still pops up to bring you news of lonely lawyers and goings-on in the world of privacy. This week, I asked Elie and Lat if they were interested in a lawsuit against a computer rental store accused of spying on its customers via webcam. (Most shocking aspect to me: People actually rent laptops?) Or the recent reminder from the Seventh Circuit that looking at porn at work — even if just for 67 seconds — can get you fired (at least he got the job done quickly).
Instead, Elie saw that I’d recently written about WikiLeaks founder (and dancer extraordinaire) Julian Assange — who’s still kicking it in England — calling Facebook “the most appalling spying machine ever invented.” Elie asked, how is that guy not in a jail in Sweden by now? And why have no major banks bitten the WikiLeaks bullet since we last heard from the white-haired wonder?
An update on the Julian Assange – WikiLeaks saga, after the jump…
Continue reading “An Update on WikiLeaks and Its International Man of Mischief, Julian Assange”
Are tickets to law school commencement like organs? Or babies?
They’re not as necessary as organs, and they’re not as adorable as babies. But are graduation tickets, like organs and babies, so sacred that we should not allow them to be distributed through the free market?
(Some folks, like certain Chicago School law-and-economics types, think that we should be allowed to sell organs and/or babies. For better or worse, however, the rest of society hasn’t gone along with them.)
Let’s take a look at the commencement controversy brewing at one noteworthy law school….
Continue reading “Should There Be a Market in Law School Commencement Tickets?”
While performing here at the ATL Cabaret on Wednesday night, the celebrated drag queen of Biglaw, Kaye Scholer, was pelted with rotten fruit — by her own associates. If you haven’t done so already, do check out their rage-filled rants. (If nothing else, they’ll make you feel better about your own firm.)
As we’ve stated before, we’re committed to presenting both sides of a given story here at Above the Law. Sometimes we don’t hear the other side of a story because the sources on that side don’t care to contact us. But when we do have both sides available to us, we present them.
In the case of the People v. Kaye Scholer, we did hear from a character witness on behalf of the defendant. What did this individual have to say?
Continue reading “In Defense of Kaye Scholer”
* A bunch of kids are suing the federal government and state governments over greenhouse gas emissions. Frankie says relax, nerds. [New York Times]
* Challenges to Obamacare will get their first appellate hearing in Richmond, Virginia, next Tuesday. Classic states rights location. Classic. [USA Today]
* For the second time, jurors in the Raj Rajaratnam case have asked to hear phone calls recorded by the government. On them, Rajabba can be heard breathing heavily. Wheezing, really. [WSJ Law Blog]
Phoebe Prince
* Both Bryan Cave and Holland & Knight are being hit with lawsuits. Both bemoan the litigiousness of modern American society. [Am Law Daily]
* Elly May Clampett is suing Mattel over their “Elly May Barbie.” Bratz has filed an amicus brief. [CNN via ABA Journal]
* The Phoebe Prince bullying case ended not with a bang, but a whimper. [Boston Globe]
You have seen our dishonorable mentions; now it’s time to take a look at the very best videos law students were able to come up with. It’s time to meet the finalists in this year’s Law Revue Video Contest.
Some of these videos you have seen before. Others will be new to you. All of them will provide a modicum of fun and a welcome break from the drudgery of finals or whatever post-graduate job you’ve gotten yourself into.
So check them out and prepare to vote. It will work like American Idol: expert judges Kashmir Hill, David Lat, and Elie Mystal will share their thoughts, but the voting is up to you, the viewers.
Who will follow in the footsteps of UVA and Northwestern and bring the funny all across the land? Did your law school or alma mater make the cut?
Let’s find out…
Continue reading “Law Revue Video Contest 2011: The Finalists”
