We have an app. Above the Law now has an app, exclusively sponsored by Westlaw. Turn up my symphony, turn up my symphony. Let’s drop the app link!
You can take a look at the Above the Law app in the iTunes store here. And if you have an Android, we’ve got an app for that, too.
You can now check Above the Law anywhere you want. On the beach. In the club. On a donkey in Mexico you are riding to get away from the bar exam. Obviously, we just want people to be able to access Above the Law from anywhere they want.
And if this helps you read Above the Law without your employer noticing, so much the better.
Thanks to all of our readers for your continued support.
All across the country, law students and law firms are gearing up for on-campus interviewing. If you are seeking to advance your legal career or trying to figure out where to work, check out Above the Law’s new Career Center, which contains a wealth of resources to help you with your job search.
On Friday, we pointed you to our brand-new ATL Law Firm Directory. The Directory contains ratings for over 70 law firms, based on responses from over 6,000 attorneys. Our individual firm profiles break down the employers using a number of metrics, and based on your surveys we’ve been able to give each of the firms a letter grade (curved around a “B,” which should be familiar to most law grads). The profiles are dynamic, reflecting both publicly available information and user responses, so if you feel like your firm is getting an unwarranted grade, the profile page will lead you right to the survey, where you can tell us what you think.
We’re also interested in hearing about how the summer associate experience has been this year. We invite you to take our summer associate survey.
Our effort to expand the career-related resources for our readers is just getting started. We’ll soon be launching a page dedicated to lawyers in the lateral market, as well as resources for those in other career paths outside of Biglaw. As more people fill out surveys, we’ll be able to construct profiles for more firms. And yes, eventually we will have letter grades for law schools as well as law firms — and that won’t be controversial at all!
The Career Center will grow and evolve over time, and we welcome your suggestions for adding to and improving it. If you have recommendations, questions, or concerns, you can reach the Career Center team by email: careers@abovethelaw.com.
It’s an exciting time here at Above the Law, and we hope you’ll take advantage of these new offerings. In today’s fast-moving and challenging world, information is king — and we want you to have access to all of it.
As we continue to expand our coverage of law firm partners and in-house counsel here at Above the Law, we are looking for talented individuals who have experience with these constituencies in a marketing and/or editorial capacity and who wish to join a fast-paced, growing media company. The market experts will work closely with the ATL editorial, research, and business teams to develop new products and services targeting in-house lawyers and partners at large law firms.
If you are interested, please send your résumé and a cover letter explaining how you are perfect for this job — a full-time position, with benefits — to jobs@abovethelaw.com. We welcome your ideas on how we can engage with these audiences even more, and we look forward to hearing from you.
As we continue to expand our coverage of law firm partners and in-house counsel here at Above the Law, we are looking for talented individuals who have experience with these constituencies in a marketing capacity and who wish to join a fast-paced, growing media company. The marketing managers will work closely with the ATL editorial, research, and business teams to develop new products and services targeting in-house lawyers and partners at large law firms.
If you are interested, please send your résumé and a cover letter explaining how you are perfect for this job to jobs@abovethelaw.com. We welcome your ideas on how we can engage with these audiences even more, and we look forward to hearing from you.
Ed. note: A sizable chunk of the Above the Law readership consists of partners at large law firms. Please welcome our newest writer, Anonymous Partner, who will write a candid column speaking to this demographic.
It’s about time. Time for someone like me to offer some perspective on what being a partner is, can, and should be all about. Time to leverage Above the Law’s bully pulpit to give a voice to current and future senior-level legal industry players (in addition to the valuable but inherently distanced insights of former partners, consultants, and law professors). Where a managing partner, or a general counsel, or even a newly-minted partner can let me, and by extension you, know what is really going on in this centaur-like hybrid of a business/profession. Where we can discuss what works, what is broken, and whether buying in to Biglaw is something to celebrate or to pity.
Now, Biglaw has signed all my paychecks, and it is where I have cast my lot until now, so Biglaw is what this column will discuss. And because my name does not stare back at me in gold-plated glory when I step off the elevator in the morning, this column will have to be anonymous, at least for the initial stages. Being anonymous will allow me to be as candid as possible when sharing my thoughts with you.
That said, you deserve to know at least a little about me….
This is my first column for Above the Law on the Supreme Court. In an effort to help me generate effective linkbait, the Supreme Court issued an opinion yesterday at the intersection of bankruptcy and tax law for farmers — Hall v. United States.
Basically, Hall means that, if you’re a farmer and you declare bankruptcy on your farm under Chapter 12 (“the one just for farmers”), and, while in bankruptcy, you sell your farm, you will still have to pay capital gains tax on the sale of your farm — any liability to the IRS is not dischargeable.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the opinion is that Ninth Circuit was affirmed. Though, in fairness, the Ninth Circuit opinion was written by Judge O’Scannlain, so it’s not as though the Supreme Court affirmed Judge Reinhardt.
Also, farmers who are in bankruptcy and sell their farms now have to pay tax on the profits from those sales. I’m sure much of the Midwest is rioting in response.
For those who practice tax law, bankruptcy, or farming law, you will definitely want to read the opinion and some of the write-ups on it.
But the most exciting part of the morning involved new members of the Supreme Court bar….
With the assistance of Above the Law’s Research Corner, you’ll be able to access white papers from leading legal technology companies. From in-house e-discovery matters, to the latest news on predictive coding, you’ll be able to find solutions for all of your technological problems just by signing up.
We’ve recently added some new topics to our collection in the Research Corner, including:
Datacert: Customer Success Story – Walmart
Dell DX & Symantec Solution Brief: Store, Manage, and Discover Critical Business Information with a Complete Archiving Solution
FTI Consulting: Advice from Counsel 2011: An Inside Look at Streamlining E-Discovery Programs
Guidance Software: Choosing the Right In-House Electronic Discovery Solution for Your Organization
Mitratech: Technology Platform for Legal Department
Nuix: A Step-by-Step Guide to Early Case Assessment (ECA)
Recommind: Predictive Coding: The Next Phase of Electronic Discovery Process Automation
TCDI: Concept Technology for Streamlining Document Review
What are you waiting for? Sign up for the Research Corner today by clicking here.
This has turned into one of my favorite posts of the year. We’re calling for all creative law students. We’re calling for all law students who can carry a tune or time a joke to send forth the very best law revue videos to be judged — harshly — by the Above the Law audience.
The creative team behind the winning video will get Above the Law t-shirts and mad respect. The losers will provide entertainment for the masses. This is the time to show them everything. Make sure they remember you.
But, before you start sending us your videos, you should know that there are rules, RULES THAT YOU MUST FOLLOW….
As you might have noticed, Above the Law has gotten a little face-lift. We’ve been expanding our offerings over the past couple of months. We’ve added new full-time writers, and started new columns. With those changes, we’ve been bringing in a record number of readers who are interested in our diverse content. It was time to put the site under the knife, and get some Botox and a new smile up in here.
The new format will allow us to feature a main story we think most of you will want to see, while still scrolling through the real time news and opinions just to the right. We think this format will give our readers an overview of the content that is both relevant and new with just a quick glance.
Of course, if you like to get Above the Law just like you always have, you still can. If you like scrolling through ATL… just scroll down a little.
The changes on the website aren’t the only things that are happening here at Above the Law. With the proliferation of smart phones and tablets in the legal community, there are now more ways than ever to access ATL content beyond our website on your desktop browser. All ATL stories are available on the Flipboard, Google Currents, and Pulse readers, and we will be launching on more mobile readers shortly. If you have not yet accessed Above the Law through any of these readers, we encourage you to download the readers in the Apple App Store or Android Marketplace to access mobile ATL content.
Starting today, we will be changing our feeds so that you will receive an overview of each Above the Law story via the mobile readers listed above, or any RSS reader. You will then be able to link to the full story on AbovetheLaw.com, where you can interact with other readers through our comments, and access all of our current and archived articles for free. With so many options to view ATL content, we want to make sure you have access to breaking news and insights throughout the day in the way that suits you best; in fact, if you call right now, we’ll throw in a free set of steak knives.
Just kidding. The knives only come out in the comments. We of course want you to continue to come to AbovetheLaw.com directly to participate in the community and give us feedback on the stories that interest you.
Good times. We want to thank all of our readers for making 2011 the most successful year for Above the Law ever. We’ll try to do even better in 2012.
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
LexisNexis and OverDrive®, the digital library solutions provider chosen by 22,000+ libraries, schools and colleges worldwide, have joined forces to provide a library management solution that suits evolving legal research requirements mobility, simplified library management, and space and budget reductions.
Reduce your library costs and extend the budget.
With LexisNexis® Digital Library, overhead and administrative costs for maintaining a print library are reduced dramatically. Adopt an easy-to-use platform that requires minimal staff resources so your organization can make the most out of your library budget. Plus, multi-year purchase options let your library lock in savings.
Empower your librarians.
Your firm’s librarians will have more time to conduct value-added research. They’ll have greater insight into what resources the staff actually uses so they can make adjustments to the collection quickly using a single website. Librarians can gain greater control, which can lead to better library utilization and increased strategic value to the firm.
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.
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
We have an app. Above the Law now has an app, exclusively sponsored by Westlaw. Turn up my symphony, turn up my symphony. Let’s drop the app link!
