David Lat & Elie Mystal

Posts by David Lat & Elie Mystal

Cut Your Losses, or Finish Law School? An ATL Debate

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Martin Luther dropped out of law school - and so can you.

At what point should you give up on your dream of becoming a lawyer? It’s a question on many people’s minds lately. Whether they were laid off during the recession and haven’t been able to get back in, or if they’ve just graduated law school to the triumphant sounds of crickets, people are wondering when it’s time to stop throwing good money (and effort) after bad.

It’s a question some people start asking before they even graduate from law school. With the school year getting underway, returning law students are once again wondering whether or not they made the right choice when they matriculated to law school in the first place.

Earlier this week, Lat received this question from a 2L at a top-eight law school:

Hi David. I’ve got a dilemma and it’s really eating me up and I was wondering if you could give me some advice. Here are the salient points:

* I’m at [redacted] — an awesome school.
* It’s a crappy economy and I don’t anticipate getting a job anytime soon.
* My 1L grades are A-, B+, B, B, B-, B-, B-, B-.
* I’m not sure I really want to spend my life being a lawyer. It seems like such a boring profession.
* I think I would be really happy being a public interest attorney, like working at the DA’s office or on Capitol Hill. I get excited about those jobs — but they pay nothing and are super-hard to get.
* I’m about $70K in debt — so I’ve invested so much!

People tell me that a JD is a great credential to get. I just don’t know if it’s worth it to finish the degree. It’s so darn expensive. Realistically, if I stay the course I’ll graduate with $170K in debt. If I don’t finish, I’ll never have the degree and the prospects that come with it.

I feel that long-term, over a 40-year career, it could be good to have the law degree — it’s from [redacted], not from a lower-ranked school.

Should I finish law school or walk away?

Mwahahaha — David isn’t here, Mrs. Torrance.

Just kidding. Lat is here, and he will answer your question in a second. But first, let Elie explain why you should run, now…

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Non-Sequiturs: 09.02.10

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* Wasn’t there a guy — black guy, big ears — who specifically tried to stop this kind of thing from happening? [AltTransport]

* Are you a Biglaw associate with a family? You should despair check out this advice. [Life's Work]

* Tiny crustaceans have been found in New York City tap water, possibly rendering it unfit for consumption under the dietary laws of kashrut (kosher). Elie’s take: “I refuse to believe in a God who cares about this s**t.” [OUkosher.org via Consumerist]

* The “Top 100 Women of Weed” features four fierce females: Jessica Corry, Allison Margolin, Jeralyn Merritt, and Marjorie Russell. [CelebStoner via TalkLeft]

* Barry Scheck — the DNA evidence expert who helped free O.J. Simpson, and who also founded the Innocence Project — talks about the 258 cases in which the Innocence Project has secured post-conviction DNA exonerations. [Big Think]

* Are you an aspiring law professor? Here’s a conference that might interest you. [Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law / Arizona State University]

Fall Recruiting Open Threads: Vault 81 – 100 (2011)

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Readers, we’ve reached the end of the road. After this post, we will have exhausted the Vault 100 law firms — the one hundred most prestigious large law firms in the country. We’ve been doing a series of open threads on these firms so that readers can discuss, in the comments, how these firms stack up against each other.

We were impressed by the quality, but not the quantity, of the comments on our last law firm open thread. Will the final 20 generate as much discussion? Here they are:

81. Arent Fox LLP
82. McGuireWoods LLP
83. Venable LLP
84. Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP
85. Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP
86. Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell LLP
87. Baker & Hostetler LLP
88. Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP
89. Seyfarth Shaw LLP
90. Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP
91. Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP
92. Blank Rome LLP
93. Bracewell & Giuliani LLP
94. Dorsey & Whitney LLP
95. Kilpatrick Stockton LLP
96. Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo P.C.
97. Dickstein Shapiro LLP
97. Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
98. Squire, Sanders & Dempsey L.L.P.
99. Troutman Sanders LLP
100. Fenwick & West LLP

Let’s kickstart the conversation by pulling out some tasty tidbits from their Vault write-ups….

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Non-Sequiturs: 08.05.10

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Alleged shoplifter Shannon Marketic, in happier times.

* Congratulations to the best LGBT lawyers under 40! Check out the list — perhaps you know some of them? [National LGBT Bar Association]

* Speaking of gays in the law, if you’re obsessing over Judge Vaughn Walker’s sexual orientation, stop it. Just stop it. [Huffington Post]

* First Rudolph Giuliani’s daughter gets busted shoplifting beauty products, and now the same thing happens with a former Miss USA. The lesson: beauty products are way too expensive. [CBS / Crimesider]

* You think legal outsourcing is only going to affect the lives of junior associates? As Larry Ribstein explains, it’s very likely that outsourcing will lead to a fundamental change in the way we regulate lawyers and law firms. [Forbes]

* The only person who can get away with acting like Judge Judy is Judge Judy. [Bad Lawyer]

* Ann Althouse thinks peep-toe shoes are just fine — and has fabulous taste in shoes herself, by the way. [Althouse]

* How come all of the top philanderers are men? That’s just sexist. [Law and More]

Liberal Bias in Legal Education: Does it Exist? Does it Matter? An ATL Debate

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As we mentioned this morning, a report from researchers at Berkeley Law suggests that legal education is a field dominated by white, male, elite liberals. The National Law Journal reports:

Law schools hire more openly liberal professors than openly conservative ones, but the plum jobs at the most prestigious schools don’t appear to be going solely to the liberals.

That’s the conclusion reached by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law who analyzed the ideology of recently hired law professors. Their study, “Ideological Diversity and Law School Hiring,” is the first to focus specifically on the political leanings of law professors.

Previous research concluded that law professors skew white and male, and tend to have completed their legal studies at top law schools.

There might be a liberal bias among law school professors? Shocking! Why are we just being informed of this?

But is it really as bad as the study makes it out to be? While the researchers determined that 52 of 60 professors showed a liberal slant, the report goes on to explain that the researchers couldn’t get a clear read on 60% of the 149 entry-level professors sampled.

And even if we agree that there is some liberal bias among law school professors, does the distinction matter? Is there really a “liberal” or “conservative” way to educate people about the law?

This sounds like an appropriate moment for an Above the Law debate. Editors David Lat and Elie Mystal sound off about whether law schools need to be more welcoming to conservatives. As always, we welcome your opinions in the comments….

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Biglaw Employment Prospects for Graduates of Top Law Schools: A Cornell Case Study (and a Debate)

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Cornell Law School recently circulated to its students in the class of 2012 — i.e., rising 2Ls –a list of class of 2010 and 2011 members who landed jobs through the fall recruiting process. Most of these positions, not surprisingly, are at large law firms (aka “Biglaw”). The class of 2010 graduates will presumably be working for their firms in a few months (or in a year or so, if they’ve been deferred); the class of 2011 students are presumably summer associates at their firms right now.

Many law schools circulate such lists to their students. This gives rising 2Ls an opportunity to connect with graduates or fellow students and maybe learn a little bit more about law firms before fall recruiting really heats up.

The Cornell Law employment lists offer an interesting snapshot of the employment prospects for students and graduates of a top law school. The lists provide the name of the graduate or student, their law firm employer, the city they’ll be working in, and the graduate or student’s email address. We have reprinted the lists, but with names and email addresses redacted, after the jump.

Should Cornell Law students be pleased or pissed off by their school’s track record at Biglaw placement? We hear from one CLS student and then debate the question, also after the jump.

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Liveblogging the Kagan Confirmation Hearings: Opening Statements

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Here we go, yo: the confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan, currently the U.S. Solicitor General, to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Click on the boxes below to follow the liveblog….

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Non-Sequiturs: 06.24.10

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* Is “grade reform” leading to “excessive egalitarianism” at American law schools? [Minding the Campus]

* Biglaw website awards. [The Snark]

* It’s pretty awesome to get paid for nailing things. [Legal Blog Watch]

* Well, we could fix this with a large piece of federal legislation, or we could use something like a binder or a file cabinet. [BL1Y]

* Viacom can learn something now that Google has smacked them around. [Breaking Media]

* When more isn’t always better. [What About Clients?]

* If you’re looking for something fun to do in D.C. tonight, go to the Black Cat for Banding Together 2010: Battle of the Law Firm Bands. It’s a fun evening — and it’s for a good cause. [Gifts for the Homeless]

Non-Sequiturs: 06.02.10

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Sharon Eliza Nichols (a.k.a. SEN)

* For those of you who still remember days gone by here at ATL, former guest editor “SEN” just graduated from law school. Congratulations, Sharon! [Thank You Ma'am]

* Here are three strikes against the whole “judge-umpire” analogy — and a suggestion for a better baseball comparison to describe the role of Supreme Court justice. [Huffington Post]

* Geordi has a tax problem? Lay off the man, the brother can’t see right. [Going Concern]

* Roy Moore, best known as the Alabama judge who wanted the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, lost in the Republican gubernatorial primary. [BL1Y]

* An event at the NYC bar association tomorrow night will teach you practical skills that might actually help you get a job. [New York City Bar Association]

* Apparently the site you’re currently reading is a “gangsta-ass law blog.” [Rap Genius]

Non-Sequiturs: 05.14.10

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* Professor Orin Kerr wonders: Could Roe be indirectly responsible for the religious imbalance on the Court? [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Speaking of SCOTUS, Tom Goldstein suggested that an endorsement of Elena Kagan by Miguel Estrada (pictured) “has the potential to swing at least a half-dozen Republican votes.” Well, here you go. [PostPartisan / Washington Post]

* And speaking of SCOTUS and voting, how might the nomination of Lady Kaga affect the 2010 midterm elections? [Political Junkie / NPR]

* Could you reduce the law school experience to a six-word short story? [TaxProf Blog]

* Here are considerably more than six words about law school, in an open letter from a law school wife. [Lawyerist]

* Congratulations to lawyer-turned-writer Gregory Mose, whose novel Stunt Road was just honored by the Independent Publisher Book Awards. [Independent Publisher]

Non-Sequiturs: 05.05.10

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* What does Justice Sonia Sotomayor have in common with Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, and Rush Limbaugh? [The BLT: Blog of the Legal Times]

* Walter Olson is moving from the Manhattan Institute over to the Cato Institute. Good luck, Walter! [Overlawyered]

* A roundup of the past week of legal blogging that contains an interesting story about Harvard Law School — you might have heard something about it. Also, legal malpractice in Texas. [Infamy or Praise]

* Remember, she’ll always be Crimson DNA to us. [Breaking Media]

* The lawsuit filed by a woman against her daughter-in-law’s comedy act has been resolved, in favor of the young comedian. Let this be a lesson to all mothers-in-law out there. [ABA Journal]

* Nashville and the greater Middle Tennessee area were hit hard by flooding over the weekend. If you’d like to help, here’s how. [Young Lawyers Blog]

* Is there an epidemic of child pornography in the military? [Suits & Sentences]

* … If so, I’m sure some medical marijuana could clear that right up. It’s available in the nation’s capital, surely boys healing up at Landstuhl could use it too. [Underdog]

* Hooters, China style. [What About Clients]

* Happy Cinco de Mayo! And remember, if you want to change Arizona’s mind about something, contact your local sports franchise. The state got its act together on Martin Luther King Day once the NFL threatened to pull the Superbowl. [Fox News]

Non-Sequiturs: 05.03.10

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* I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to…. use Twitter. [Business Insider]

* The Supreme Court closes the courthouse doors — literally, not figuratively. Justices Breyer and Ginsburg dissent. [Washington Post via F1@1F]

* Speaking of SCOTUS…. Justice Stevens isn’t nearly as cute as Justin Bieber. [ABA Journal]

* If the jeans do fit, you must acquit? [The Legal Satyricon]

* Warren Buffet weighs in on Goldman. [Ideoblog]

* Joe versus the Volcano? [WSJ Law Blog]

* Calling someone a “dumb ass” is okay as far as defamation law is concerned. Learn all that and more, from Blawg Review #262. [Public Intellectual via Blawg Review]