Search results for:bragging

Morning Docket: 05.20.13

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Paging the next Aquagirl! Where are you? (Click for the image for the post.)

* Obama might have found out about the IRS scandal “when it came out in the news,” but the Office of White House Counsel knew what was going on weeks ago. Hooray, a new reason for people to lose their sh*t. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness through ridiculously expensive litigation: making up almost two percent of our GDP, our legal system is the most costly on earth, which isn’t exactly something we should be bragging about. [Corporate Counsel]

* “It’s no surprise these lawyers would want to get off this sinking ship.” It looks like things are going just swimmingly for Steven Donziger now that John Keker’s out as his defense attorney in the Chevron fraud case. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* “Fantasy sports is usually the first and last thing I’ll do each day.” Here’s some proof that there’s such a thing as work/life balance in Biglaw… which is only applicable if you’re a partner. [Am Law Daily]

* Law school enrollment is down, and so is tuition revenue, so the legal academy is now selling new degrees. It’s only a matter of time before they market employment timeshares. [National Law Journal]

* On the bright side, if you’re still looking for a job, our own David Lat has some advice on how to get one (and how NOT to get one). We miss summer associates’ misbehavior. [U.S. News & World Report]

* Congrats are in order for this weekend’s graduates, including the first graduates of LMU’s embattled law school — they won’t let a lack of ABA accreditation rain on their parade. [Knoxville News Sentinel]

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Columbia Scholarship Scandal Shows How White People Are Still Helped By Institutional Racism

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Some of his best friends were ‘takers.’

In 1920, Lydia C. Chamberlain, a woman from Des Moines who moved to Manhattan, donated her $500,000 estate to create a fellowship at Columbia University. The fellowship had a few restrictions. Notably, recipients were not allowed to study “law, medicine, dentistry, veterinary surgery or theology.” Ha. Seems reasonable. Oh, and the recipients had to be from Iowa and had to move back to Iowa after completing their studies.

This kind of dead-hand control should really not be allowed in our modern, global society, but that’s not why the “Lydia C. Roberts graduate and traveling fellowships” is making news today. It’s making news because the other restriction is that recipients of the fellowship have to be white. “Of the Caucasian race” is the exact formulation.

This isn’t just a story about racism, it’s a story about institutional advantages white people have that some of them pretend to not even be aware of…

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Morning Docket: 03.26.13

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* Amanda Knox is free, but could be retried. Can’t wait to see her Craigslist roommate ad. [New York Times]

* The budget deal still screws over the courts. [National Law Journal]

* You know, in 20 years, Republicans are going to be telling us that the federal government’s pot taxes are too high. [Washington Post]

* DLA Piper might get in trouble from bragging about the size… of its bills. [Dealbook]

* Michele Bachmann is under investigation for being a demon spawn of the fifth circle from… oh, wait sorry, they’re just looking at her use of campaign funds. [ABC News]

* Is anybody else unreasonably excited to hear what offensive, homophobic remark Justice Scalia makes today? [National Review]

* With everybody looking at gays, I wonder if this will be the day for the Supreme Court to declare the end of racism against white people while doing nothing about racism against black people with a 5-3 (Kagan recusing) decision on Fisher. [SCOTUSblog]

* So, this BlackBerry thing doesn’t seem to be going very well. [Forbes]

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Morning Docket: 02.19.13

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A future law student?

* Save for an unintelligible joke made last month, it’s been seven years since Clarence Thomas has spoken during oral arguments, much less asked a question, but with no offense to his colleagues, he’d rather “allow the advocates to advocate.” [Washington Post]

* Sorry, members of the American public, but something like 95 percent of you are too stupid to understand what’s going on during Supreme Court hearings, so there’s no point in having cameras in the courtroom to film them. (Sotomayor, J.) [New York Times]

* “Having an empty bench means people don’t get their cases heard,” but it seems like Senate Republicans could not care less. Obama’s facelift for the federal judiciary is going to have to wait a little while longer. [San Francisco Chronicle]

* A lawgasm for prestige nerds: the Harvard Law Review received federal trademark protection, and with that, the number three law school in the country gained some bragging rights over Yale. [Daily Report (reg. req.)]

* Oh my God, you guys, law school applications are down, no one can find jobs, and recent graduates are in debt up to their eyeballs. This is totally new information that no one’s heard before. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

* Turning to your parents for law school advice is perhaps the worst idea in the world — after all, they’re the cause of your “special little snowflake” syndrome in the first place. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]

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Should You Brag About Your Law School Grades On Facebook?

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In a way, I’m surprised we don’t have more stories about people posting their grades on social media sites. The kids are already using Facebook and Twitter as a running diary of their lives, so you’d expect there to be more instances where people throw their law school transcripts up on the internet.

In fact, let me ask the question this way: why wouldn’t you post your grades on Facebook? They’re clearly important to you. If you did well, you can brag about them just as surely as one of your friends is bragging about the exploits of their kids or dogs. If you did poorly, you can seek the solace of friends who you don’t actually like well enough to have a beer with. Why wouldn’t you post them?

The obvious answers seem painfully old-timey. “It’s in poor taste to brag about your grades.” “Your transcript should be private.” “You got an ‘A’? Go f**k yourself.” These are the thoughts of a previous generation. For the Facebook generation… I mean, have you seen what people post? This is nothing.

A law student decided to post his solid grades on Facebook. I bet you can guess what school we’re talking about. Let’s just say that it’s a school that seems to admit students who like to draw attention to themselves when things are going well by subtly upturning their collars….

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Lawyers on the Forbes 400: A Closer Look

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Last week, we searched this year’s Forbes 400, the list of the 400 richest Americans, for lawyers and law school graduates. Lat pointed out the newcomers and the dropouts since last year’s roundup, but there are still more than thirty other lawyers on the list.

Let’s take a closer look at these affluent attorneys. Their stories will either inspire you with visions of vast wealth or afflict you with jealousy at how many times over they could pay off your loan debt….

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Moonlighting: Gangnam Style Promotion

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I assumed that pretty much everyone had seen the music video by now — multiple times. Scores of news sites, including CNN, ABC, and the Huffington Post have written it up. There have been tons of positive responses from significant players in the entertainment industry (including T-Pain, who tweeted, “Words cannot even describe how amazing this video is…”). As of writing this article, it has over 170 million YouTube views, and is currently the number one downloaded music video on iTunes. Heck, they even did a “dance cam” of the video at Dodger Stadium and non-Koreans watching the game broke into the dorky-becomes-cool horse dance!

But I kept finding that friends, even people active in social media, hadn’t yet experienced the greatest music video ever (did I mention flash mobs in Australia?). I had thought that just because there was promotion, you know — everywhere — for it, the video was more broadly known than it actually was.

Promoting yourself at work can be similar. No, not celebrities tweeting your awesomeness or dance cams in the office conference room. What I’m talking about is that you may think that you’ve made your contributions at work obvious to those around you. But you may be surprised to find that they’re clueless about your efforts, just as I’m surprised to find that people around me haven’t yet heard about the Gangnam Style music video, which is after the jump….

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From Biglaw to Boutique: Apples and Oranges

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Tom Wallerstein

I’ve been known to quip, “I thought I was wrong, once, but I was mistaken.” But I realize that my column here on Above the Law has often been “wrong” in at least one important way: I’ve compared apples to oranges.

For example, I authored a “top ten” list of differences between working in a big firm and working in a boutique. But many of the items focused on differences between employee and owner. I compared working where “you get paid either a salary or an hourly rate” with “running your own shop.” I compared “making all the decisions in my cases” with “waiting for a partner to act on my recommendations.” I compared doing the grunt work with making the important decisions.

That strikes me as comparing apples to oranges because all those comparisons actually contrasted being an employee with being an owner. That fundamental distinction accounts for many of the supposed differences between working in Biglaw and working in a small firm or boutique.

But what about associates who are considering becoming associates at a small firm or boutique? That’s the true apples to apples comparison. If you’re not starting your own business, but will instead remain an associate, what are the real differences when moving “From Biglaw to Boutique”?

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Bar Review Diaries: It’s Going to Be Fun Times, Fun Times

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When we last checked in with our Bar Review Diarists, they were just barely finishing exams and getting ready to walk down the graduation aisle. We checked in with them again this week, and weirdly, they all seem to… be enjoying themselves?

Nathan, Jeanette, and Andrew are all having fun so far this summer. They’re going to weddings, hanging out at coffee shops, and drinking at Disneyland. What the hell is going on here? Let’s hope the good times last, despite the test looming on the somewhat distant horizon…

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Did These Columbia Law Students and Their Professor Prove That Texas Executed An Innocent Man?

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According to new research from Columbia Law School, this man was executed for a murder he did not commit.

Earlier this week, a group of students at Columbia Law School, along with law professor James Liebman, released a 400-page report detailing the story of a Texas man who was, according to the report, executed for a murder he did not commit.

Released online in The Columbia Human Rights Law Review, the narrative has received massive press attention in the last two days. Many in the media have already described the terrible story as a potential answer to Justice Scalia’s famous quip that if the United States ever executed the wrong man, “the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.”

The details of Carlos DeLuna’s story are far too numerous to fit into a single post, but keep reading for the key plot points. We also spoke with Shawn Crowley, a 2011 Columbia Law graduate and a co-author of the paper. She talked with us about how the project shaped her law school experience, and she gave some suggestions for other students who are looking for a more personal, relationship-based time in law school.

Let’s dig in…

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