The statistics about women equity partners are bad. There is no shortage of “experts” opining on how to improve the statistics. The solutions often involve a cardigan (apparently the successful woman’s secret weapon), full-time nannies (the successful woman’s not-so-secret weapon), and a miracle.
There are some who offer more specific solutions. I personally love Skadden’s idea of hiring a “den mother” to mentor and guide their young female associates. Indeed, Sheli Rosenberg is correct when she channeled Madeleine Albright’s famous saying that “[t]here’s a place in hell for women who don’t support other women.”
I have had many conversations with small-firm attorneys about whether or not small firms may offer the solution to the gender gap among partners. Unfortunately, there is little to no research regarding the statistics of female partners in small law firms, so the discussions are based on personal experience as opposed to objective facts. Given the sources of the data, the results are, not surprisingly, mixed. Some say that small firms are better for women because the women have direct access to the decision-makers and clients, and there is less politics when it comes to promotion decisions in small firms. Some say that small firms are worse because the firms, unlike Biglaw, often do not disclose demographic information and so feel insulated — and because firm managers, who tend to be male, promotes their own….
Continue reading “Size Matters: Small Firms and (Hopefully) Strong Women”
The worst thing about being betrayed is the loss of innocence and optimism that forever changes the victim of the betrayal. The reality is so stark you can literally see it on people’s faces as they realize the extent to which an ally has turned on them. Robert the Bruce saw it on William Wallace’s face in Braveheart. My wife saw it on my face when Obama agreed to the debt ceiling deal. And you are going to see it on the faces of the young and educated when they realize that, once again, the president has sold them down the river for the cause of electoral expediency, even as Obama’s numbers drop so low that his heat can only be measured in Kelvin degrees.
In the total debt ceiling cave-in that will mark Barack Obama as the most successful Republican president since Ronald Reagan, there was one cut that really illustrates how little the president cares for his young, college-educated constituents. To save about $26.3 billion dollars, the debt ceiling deal eliminates the graduate student loan subsidy. That means that law students (and other grad students) will continue accruing interest on their non-dischargeable educational loans throughout their graduate studies.
I can see why they call education the “silver bullet,” because education certainly seems like a surefire way to kill one’s economic future….
Continue reading “Debt Ceiling Deal Includes Last-Second Screwing Of Graduate Students”
Ebony and ivory, billing together in perfect harmony.
We’ve talked a lot in these pages about the value of diversity. It’s important to clients, it’s important to law firms, and it’s important to the legal profession as a whole.
Given the significance of diversity, it’s not surprising that several organizations and news outlets focus on it, especially with respect to large law firms. In the past few weeks, we’ve discussed diversity data from Building A Better Legal Profession and from the American Lawyer, for example.
Today brings news of more diversity rankings, this time from the ranking gurus over at Vault. They’ve compiled a list of 25 best law firms for diversity.
Which firms made the cut? Is your firm on the list?
Continue reading “The Best Law Firms for Diversity”
It has been almost six years since the ESI parts of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure became effective on December 1, 2006. In this new age of technology, judges have a lot to say about the level of technical competence of the lawyers appearing before them.
The Legal Technology Leadership Summit at Amelia Island, Florida, from September 6 – 8, will feature a panel of distinguished judges who will offer thoughts on what steps can be taken to have technology-assisted review be deemed defensible. If you attend, you’ll have the chance to hear from these panelists:
- U.S. Magistrate Judge Lorenzo F. Garcia, D. New Mexico
- U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig M. Kellison, E.D. California
- U.S. Magistrate Judge G.R. Smith, M.D. Georgia
- U.S. Magistrate Judge David J. Waxse, D. Kansas
You can take a look at the full agenda here. Feedback from federal judges isn’t all that you will receive if you attend the Legal Technology Leadership Summit. We have been approved for CLE credits in the following states:
- Alabama
- Illinois
- New York
- North Carolina
- South Carolina
- Pennsylvania
Accreditation requests are pending in the following jurisdictions:
Please sign up to attend. We hope to see you there!
The bar exam has come and gone. Our esteemed Bar Review Diarists have lived to tell the tale, and thank goodness none of them fainted or had a baby during the test.
But as usual, Mike, Mariah and Christopher also had their fair share of adventures. Keep reading to see how a soggy sweater and lines to nowhere are just normal parts of taking the bar…
Continue reading “Bar Review Diaries: Basking in the Afterglow”
HBO should make a show about law school. It should be called "The Faculty," and in the final season the law school should get sued.
For the purposes of this post, I’m going to be playing Tommy Carcetti of The Wire. University of Baltimore President Robert L. Bogomolny has to be Clarence Royce. Outgoing U. Baltimore Law dean Philip Closius gets to be a disgruntled Cedric Daniels. All the UB Law students are the hoppers in Hamsterdam.
On Friday, Dean Closius blew the lid off the way the University of Baltimore has been making money off the backs of the UB Law School, despite the down legal economy. Evidently, the UB administration took the weekend to examine its motives. Then, on Monday, UB President Bogomolny struck back hard. He sent an open letter to the U. Baltimore community (and the media), disputing Closius’s claims.
Oh, the University still takes money from the law school. A lot of it. President Bogomolny just claims that the University retains less than Closius says it does.
Yes, these kinds of “juking the stats” discussions are usually handled behind closed doors, but now we all get to see it…
Continue reading “University of Baltimore Tries To Keep The Devil Way Down In The Hole”
It’s been almost a month since our last post on law-related vanity license plates. We got a great response to our call for photos, but we could always use some more. So, if you’re a fan of the Law License Plates series, please send in your photos via email (subject line: “Vanity License Plate”).
Both of these submissions came to us from my current home state: Massachusetts. In case you didn’t know, this will be my fifth year in the good old Commonwealth, land of some of the worst drivers in the world. And after seeing these vanity license plates, I am even more excited to leave.
Looking at these plates was a bit like looking into a crystal ball. Are you ready to see your future?
Continue reading “Law License Plates: Back to the Future”
* The DOJ is suing Alabama because of its immigration law, saying it interferes with federal law. To the extent that federal law won’t prosecute illegal aliens, they’re spot on. [Bloomberg]
* Floridians, grab your pitchforks, torches, and chloroform, because Casey Anthony has to return to Orlando for a year’s worth of probation on check fraud charges. [CNN]
* Like many a man before him, Charlie Sheen decided to pull out on his extortion lawsuit against porn star Capri Anderson. Winning? You be the judge. [New York Daily News]
* FYI: If a pretty design will make wiping your own ass easier, you probably can’t trademark it. Not even if you waste 675,000 pieces of paper to prove your case. [Mogulite]
* A photographer is suing over the use of her pictures on Project Runway. I bet if Tim Gunn told her to “make it work,” she’d drop it and offer up the rest of her photos on a platter. [Hollywood Reporter]
Summer offer rates are back and better than ever.
Last week, summer associate programs began to draw to a close. After a summer of fun extravagance work, summer associates are eager to find out if they’ll be getting offers of full-time employment.
We expect the answer to be yes at most places. Sure, during the height of the recession, no offer rates spiked. But Biglaw firms seem to have corrected that problem. As almost any jobless 3L can tell you, firms simply started hiring fewer people to be summer associates in the first place.
What’s bad news for many 3Ls is good news for those who were lucky enough to snag summer associate positions. You know what they say: getting in is the hardest part. Right?
Above the Law has received various reports from summer associates at Biglaw firms, crowing about 100 percent offer rates….
Continue reading “Summer Associate Offer Rates: Open Thread”
* A federal judge in Kansas has given Planned Parenthood’s Abortionplex a new lease on life. [WSJ Law Blog]
* What? A former Supreme Court clerk who got passed over for a job at a law school? Nicholas Spaeth, who’s also the former state attorney general for North Dakota, is suing the Michigan State University College of Law, for age discrimination. [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times via SBM Blog]
* Interesting thoughts from Scott Greenfield on making executions public. I certainly don’t oppose more-comprehensive coverage of the criminal justice system in general. [Simple Justice]
* Elsewhere in criminal justice news, should prisons be run on a voucher system? Dan Markel offers some thoughts on Sasha Volokh’s interesting proposal. [PrawfsBlawg]
* An interesting profile of Alan Gura, the celebrated Second Amendment litigator, by a fellow small-firm lawyer, Nicole Black. [The Xemplar]
* Hopefully this will all become moot after a deal gets done, but remember the Fourteenth Amendment argument for Obama unilaterally raising the debt ceiling? Jeffrey Rosen thinks a lawsuit against Obama would get kicked for lack of standing — or might even prevail. [New Republic]
* But Orin Kerr believes that a recent SCOTUS case might change the analysis. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Howrey going to pay all the creditors? A lot turns on how some contingency-fee cases turn out, according to Larry Ribstein. [Truth on the Market]
* From in-house to the big house: former general counsel Russell Mackert just got sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for his role in a fraud scheme. [Corporate Counsel]
* Keep It Simple: a commendable theme for Blawg Review #313. [Patent Baristas via Blawg Review]
Sad fact of the day: about fifty percent of marriages in America end in divorce. Of course, many of you already knew that, because you’re divorced yourself, the child of divorced parents, or a divorce attorney who is rolling around in money. But however you slice it, some of the best divorce train wreck stories are born of child custody battles.
Parents going through a divorce are willing to fight over anything when it comes to the custody of their children (“How dare you feed little Suzie pasta that isn’t organic and gluten-free?!”). Even when a divorce is finalized, sometimes parents are still willing to pull the trigger on any issues that arise. In some cases, though, custody modifications are warranted.
And in this case, an Oregon mother is actually fighting to keep another woman from pulling the trigger on her teenage sons, because she’s done it before….
Continue reading “A Killer Custody Arrangement, and Mom Isn’t Happy About It”
Who will help the injured Good Samaritan?
Before you’ve been through 1L Torts, this story is shocking. After you’ve been through 1Ls Torts, it’s not that surprising.
In 2009, two Good Samaritans saw a Hummer crashed off the side of the road. The car was on fire. The two men sprang into action, ran down a snowy embankment, and pulled a woman from the burning wreckage.
They saved her life.
Which is interesting, considering that it turns out the woman was allegedly trying to kill herself.
The men suffered injuries, and now they are suing….
Continue reading “Lawsuit of the Day: Good Samaritans Sue Woman They Rescued”
Havoc on the Hill has an excellent visualization about how this debt ceiling thing went down. It’s funny.
It’s funnier if this thing gets passed. Check it out.
The Great Debt Ceiling Debate [Havoc on the Hill]
Meet the Cavers: the cutest ginger attorney family ever.
In this rough economy, a job offer can be really exciting, even for the most seasoned attorney. A job offer is even more exciting when you find out that your future employer has also decided to make your husband an offer. And last week, that is exactly what happened to a husband-and-wife legal team from Rockford, Illinois.
Eileen and Brendan Caver, both graduates of Loyola University Chicago School of Law, quickly began to pack up to move half-way across the country for their new jobs in New York at the City of Syracuse corporation counsel’s office. With August start dates and two adorable children in tow, the Cavers quit their jobs in Illinois, put their house on the market, and canceled their daycare contract.
So, you’d think that even a city government would realize that offering attorneys jobs 780 miles away from home and then revoking those offers a week and a half later would be life-ruining. But apparently, that’s not how things work in upstate New York….
Continue reading “Lawyers Are Out of Jobs Thanks to an Epic City Government Fail”
Yesterday was the last day of July, and baseball fans know that this day is important because it’s the trade deadline. (Seamheads and baseball lawyers understand that it’s actually only the nonwaiver-trade deadline, but why take the fun out of it?) So I spent some time this weekend following the interwebs to see whether the Red Sox would do anything to improve their league-leading team (and even better, thwart the Yankees from improving at the same time).
At one point, there were reports that the Red Sox had traded for A’s pitcher Rich Harden. But the Sox scuttled the deal once they learned that the oft-injured Harden had a hospital bracelet tattooed on his arm to save time. (They ended up acquiring left-handed pitcher Erik Bedard, who is injured slightly less often than Harden.)
But as I was watching the annual trade-deadline special on the New England Sports Network after Sunday’s game (apparently, I have no life), I saw a laptop commercial that only a law firm could appreciate.
Whose ad it was and why it made me think of the sorry state of law-firm marketing, after the jump.…
Continue reading “Small Firms, Big Lawyers: Marketing Like a Law Firm Would”
In a New York Times op-ed, mentioned previously in Morning Docket, Professor Zachary Shemtob and I argue that executions should be made public. More specifically, we argue that executions should be broadcast live or recorded for future release, on the web or on television.
Public execution has some unsavory connotations, perhaps dating back to the days when hangings took place before rowdy crowds in the public square. But when you stop and think about it, the idea really isn’t all that crazy….
Continue reading “Should Executions Be Televised?”
The American Bar Association is resistant to change and slow to act. But it appears that the ABA will finally start collecting enhanced employment information on law school graduates.
Starting with the class of 2011, the ABA will try to turn the tide on the inflated and misleading employment data put out by American law schools. The new data collection was proposed back in March. We reported on it here. But last week, the ABA Section of Legal Education adopted the measures….
Continue reading “ABA Will Collect More Detailed Information From Law Schools”
If you haven’t yet read the long piece in Fortune magazine about the rise and fall of Jeff Kindler as the CEO of Pfizer, you really should. The story may or may not be true — I have no idea — but it would be interesting reading even if it were a work of fiction about corporate political intrigue.
I’ve never met Jeff Kindler. I do know several people who are close friends of his, and I’ve watched his career from a distance as he moved from Williams & Connolly to GE to the general counsel of McDonald’s to the general counsel of Pfizer and then, startlingly, to the CEO of Pfizer. The Fortune piece traces this whole career in detail and then describes why and how Kindler resigned from the CEO spot after serving only very briefly.
Why mention that article here? First, I’m doing you a favor; if you hadn’t previously heard about the piece, now you have a link.
Second, the article said two things about in-house counsel that rang true with me — whether or not these things actually occurred at Pfizer….
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Pfortune On Pfizer”
* This whole debt crisis has been a little like Deal or No Deal, except that show had a much better host. Howie Mandel can get people to make a deal with the banker in under 60 minutes. Obama? Not so much. [POLITICO]
* Real life intellectual property matters be damned, because even virtual horses need to eat. If a PETA group doesn’t exist yet in Second Life, I have a feeling that one soon will. [Wall Street Journal]
* Reality shows rule, but I’m not sure if an execution can compete with Jersey Shore. The only thing I want to see die on TV is dignity, but our own David Lat has some other interesting ideas. [New York Times]
* New Mercer Law students are moving into the apartment complex where pieces of Lauren Giddings were found. Why would you sign a lease with a place that’s so stabby? [Macon Telegraph]
* B*tch has balls if she’s willing to go to war with Oprah over an acronym. Before you can OYP (Own Your Power), you might want to OYT (Own Your Trademark). [Daily Intel / New York Magazine]
