Yesterday, we brought you some pretty gruesome news about the state of the legal hiring market: there isn’t one (which comes as no surprise to graduating 3Ls and the class of 2011). In fact, according to one former law school student who was profiled by Business Insider, almost everyone he knows from law school is unemployed. Another recent law school grad is on food stamps.
Lawyers can deal with unemployment and food stamps, but are any of them homeless?
Some people say that all’s fair in love and war. Regarding love, at least, I would have to disagree. Some behavior is neither fair, considerate, or legal.
Take stalking, for example. But love, especially when it’s unrequited or broken (that’s your cue, ATLCommentBot), leads people to do crazy things. This week, a Midwestern law professor and former high-ranking CIA lawyer, was on the receiving end of a restraining order based on allegations that he harassed a woman with whom he was reportedly having an affair.
Keep reading to learn more about our Law Professor of the Day and see what happens when Minnesota Nice turns into Minnesota-leave-me-the-hell alone….
I wanted to say I am sorry for the loss of your son. I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am. I did not know if he was armed or not.
A few years ago, at a conference hosted by Penn APALSA, I had the pleasure of meeting Dean Jim Chen of the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law. He gave a luncheon keynote address that was deeply thoughtful and inspiring. Attendees of the conference were quite impressed.
Students and staff at U of L have also praised Dean Chen. And he does have achievements to crow about (besides, of course, his glittering résumé and impressive record of scholarship). In the most recent U.S. News law school rankings, the Brandeis School of Law climbed 11 spots (from 100 to 89).
When law schools fall in the rankings, their deans often follow. But U of L fared well in the latest rankings. So why is Dean Chen departing?
What must it be like right now to be working at Dewey & LeBoeuf? One imagines a lot of whispered conversations, furrowed brows, and closed office doors. It’s a difficult and stressful time at D&L. To our friends at Dewey, keep your chins up (but, at the same time, do what you need to do to protect yourself and your career).
The anxiety at Dewey is increased by the firm’s cash crunch. Lawyers and staff at the firm are having a harder time doing their jobs because certain resources aren’t available to them.
Even in the digital age, with so many documents transmitted electronically rather than physically, FedEx is still a mainstay at major law firms — but not at Dewey. “We are restricted from using the account and now have to rely on UPS or express mail for overnights,” a source at Dewey told us. “Even if a package is labeled to go out via FedEx, when it goes down to mailroom it is relabeled for one of our new shipping methods. Do you know any other company that can stay afloat without FedEx?”
Will Dewey be staying afloat? Let’s hear the latest about other services that D&L lawyers and staff can’t use, some possible partner departures, and the firm’s ambitious plan for saving itself — via bankruptcy….
Welcome back to our series of open threads on the latest batch of U.S. News law school rankings. Last time, readers weighed in on the law schools that traditionally made up what used to be the alphabetically listed third tier. Last year, however, the law schools that once constituted the “third tier” received the gift that keeps on giving: numerical rankings.
Today, we’ll be talking about the law schools that used to comprise the fourth tier, but now have a new name. These days, this segment of the U.S. News list is referred to as the “second tier,” and although they are all ranked, those rankings are not published (presumably because no one wants to brag about going to the worst law school in the nation).
Let’s use this post to discuss these schools, collectively or individually, and to compare and contrast….
* George Zimmerman will appear before Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. today to request bail. What kind of evidence will the prosecutor have to present for bond to be denied? [Miami Herald]
* Should prostitution be legalized? 70% of our readers think it should be (and not just because it’d mean they’d be employed nine months after graduation). But let’s get some more input from others on this topic. [Room for Debate / New York Times]
* “Bring me Solo and the Wookiee. They will all suffer for this outrage.” Rajabba the Hut seems to have had a second Goldman Sachs tipper. Say hello to Rajat Gupta, who has pleaded not guilty. [Bloomberg]
* Counsel in the Gucci v. Guess trademark case wrapped up their closing arguments in court yesterday. It’s generally not a good thing when the judge interrupts you to question your late filing. [Businessweek]
* Uh, apparently there’s a legal battle concerning intellectual property having to do with a Three Stooges porn parody. I personally shudder to think of how Curly is portrayed. [Hollywood, Esq. / Hollywood Reporter]
* After taking a blow from that fake beef lawsuit, Taco Bell’s sales are up thanks to its Doritos taco. Because getting your fingers covered in orange crap totally makes up for the “taco meat filling.” [Washington Post]
Few things fill a junior associate with more dread than a partner beginning a sentence with the following words: “There must be a case that holds….” Much of the time, there is no such case (especially when the issue concerns some annoying e-discovery dispute that no judge would ever want to write about).
But if a partner says to you, “There must be a case addressing whether an insurance company is liable for accidental death benefits when the decedent accidentally kills himself while engaged in masturbation that involves intentional self-electrocution” — well, now there’s a case that’s on all fours. With an electric cattle prod.
Keep reading, to learn about an ERISA opinion that is very… stimulating….
* An accused inside trader used his ill-gotten gains to buy a jet, four houses, and an island help the homeless. The government is still prosecuting him. Sir, with all due respect, you are doing it wrong. [Dealbreaker]
* The Vatican is going to crack down on radical nuns. I can’t even think of a good joke because radical and nun so obviously don’t belong in the same sentence. Unless you’re having some sort of nun surfing contest and the Mother Superior catches a really sick wave. [BBC News]
* I frequently get upset with schools that punish students too quickly and harshly for relative nonissues. But hacking into the school attendance system and “selling” absences — yeah, that’s probably not okay. [Bay Citizen]
* Let me explain to you how this works: you see, the corporations finance the law firms, and then the law schools go out… and the corporations sit there in their… in their corporation buildings, and… and, and see, they’re all corporation-y… and they make money… Matt Damon! [Centre Daily]
* Don’t forget to vote for your favorite ATL Law Revue entry. Also, tune in tomorrow to see our picks for honorable mention. [Above the Law]
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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Yesterday, we brought you some pretty gruesome news about the state of the legal hiring market: there isn’t one (which comes as no surprise to graduating 3Ls and the class of 2011). In fact, according to one former law school student who was profiled by Business Insider, almost everyone he knows from law school is unemployed. Another recent law school grad is on food stamps.
