Staci Zaretsky

Staci Zaretsky became an editor for ATL in June 2011. Before becoming an editor, she helped write ATL’s Morning Docket under the pseudonym Morning Dockette. Her writing has been featured on other legal blogs, such as Lawyerist and Ms. JD. Staci graduated from Lehigh University, and Western New England University School of Law, where her writing was published in the Western New England Law Review. In her spare time, Staci enjoys watching reality television, shopping for clothes she doesn't need with money she doesn't have, and singing along to Lady Gaga's latest hits.

Posts by Staci Zaretsky

Morning Docket: 04.10.13

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* The National Labor Relations Board, now with fewer recess appointments! Partners from Arent Fox and Morgan Lewis were nominated to fill seats necessary for the board’s quorum. [National Law Journal]

* Shearman & Sterling seems to be bucking the Biglaw system. The firm is cutting pay for high earners and increasing it for lower-ranking attorneys. We’ll probably have more on this later today. [Reuters]

* Dentons (formerly known as SNR Denton) recently poached a six-partner team led by Stephen Hill from Husch Blackwell to bolster its white collar practice. Welkom too teh furm, guise! [Am Law Daily]

* “It is technically more legal to screw a walrus than to get gay married.” You know you live in a very sad place when not only do article headlines like this exist, but they’re also CORRECT. [Death and Taxes]

* An American Eagle pilot is facing attempted drunk flying charges. Yes, that’s a thing, but come on now, anyone who’s seen the movie Flight knows you can fly a plane while you’re wasted. [Bloomberg]

* Lindsay Lohan blew off a deposition in Los Angeles yesterday. Cut the girl some slack; she had to appear on the Late Show with David Letterman, which was way more important. [Contra Costa Times]

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The Best Law Schools for Government and Public Interest Career Placement

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Here at Above the Law, we try to pay attention to every sector of legal employment. We often find ourselves skewed rather heavily toward Biglaw, but as we all know, not everyone wants to work in Biglaw — including some of the people who are ensconced in high-paying Biglaw jobs themselves.

Imagine a place where you won’t be shackled to the billable hour. Imagine a place where you’ll get all government holidays off without having to worry about showing up just for the sake of appearances. Imagine a place where your clients are people, not corporate entities. If that seems nice to you, it’s because it is.

Today, we’re going to open the floodgates for the members of our audience, prospective law students in particular, who aspire to some day work in government and public interest jobs. Which law schools should you be considering if you’d like to have the best odds of reaching your goal?

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Need a Rural Lawyer? Why Not Use a Quasi-Indentured Servitude Plan?

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Amid a jobs and loan debt crisis, the push for legal education to reinvent and remodel itself upon the medical school paradigm continues to grow. From a reduction in years of schooling to legal residency programs, these and a slew of other ideas are looking better and better.

Next up to the plate: monetary incentives to practice in no man’s land. Doctors have been getting loan repayment incentives for four decades in exchange for practicing in underserved rural areas.

Why can’t lawyers do the same thing?

In recent weeks, South Dakota’s innovative plan to keep lawyers in the state and practicing in rural areas has gotten a great deal of media attention. If you’d consider hanging a shingle in a small town for five years in exchange for a yearly sum of $12,000 to pay off your debts, then this is a great idea.

There’s free money waiting for you in flyover country….

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A Federal Judge Opines on a Handsome Prosecutor’s Dateability

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AUSA Mike Garofola

He’s smart, witty, compassionate, good-looking, nice. He’s a great lawyer. He was a great clerk. And he’s a great prosecutor.

– Federico Moreno, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, offering comments in praise of Mike Garofola, the handsome assistant U.S. attorney who will be seen as a contestant on the upcoming season of The Bachelorette.

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Caption Contest Winner: Baby, Baby, Baby, Law

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Last week, we asked readers to submit possible captions for this photo:

You then voted on the finalists. Now it’s time to announce the winner of our caption contest….

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Red-lined Realism: A Corporate Job Ad You Need to See

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The job scene for entry-level attorneys is rough. As we’ve discussed, only 56 percent of the class of 2012 were employed in full-time, long-term positions where bar passage was required. If you strip out school-funded jobs, that employment figure slips back down to where the class of 2011 was, with just 55 percent of them employed as real attorneys.

Recent law graduates are understandably pissed off. They want to put their law degrees to good use, but the constricted job market is forcing them to apply for positions as baristas. They are seething with rage, and they can’t even contain it anymore.

What you’re about to see is the byproduct of what we presume to be a few months’ worth of a failed job search. This disgruntled job seeker took a corporate job advertisement for entry-level attorneys and red-lined the hell out of it — after all, this legal department is looking for red-liners.

Do you think this person should get the job? Check out his stunningly accurate work….

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Morning Docket: 04.09.13

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* Oh mon dieu, Justice Breyer was inducted as one of just 12 foreign members of France’s Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. C’est très chouette pour un Américain, non? [New York Times]

* Man, for a four-seeded firm that got knocked out of our March Madness competition after the Sweet Sixteen, Davis Polk is looking great in 2013′s first quarter as far as legal advising in M&A deals goes. [Am Law Daily]

* Brown Rudnick picked up a California boutique, and it’ll be doubled in size through lateral hiring. No layoffs are currently expected, but no one really advertises that as a merger selling point. [National Law Journal]

* The New York Times: bringing you last month’s news, today! South Dakota is offering a subsidy for law school tuition to keep lawyers in the state. Here’s our post from two weeks ago. [New York Times]

* Pace Law School’s “low bono” residency program was praised by New York’s Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, but if you’ve got other job offers, Dear Lord, take one of them. [New York Law Journal]

* AIG wants to prevent Hank Greenberg from suing in its name, probably because it’d prefer not to be known as “the poster company for corporate ingratitude and chutzpah.” [DealBook / New York Times]

* “[D]o I cover this really important story and maybe go to jail?” That’s the choice Jana Winter is facing after reporting on James Holmes’s massacre notebook and refusing to reveal her sources. [CNN]

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Work/Life Balance? LOL, You Think That’s a Thing?

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No. It’s not. The answer is so easy. Not achievable. I think it’s actually a misrepresentation. Talking about work-life balance is fraud.

– Laurel Bellows, President of the American Bar Association, responding to interviewer Julia Williams’s question about whether it’s possible to achieve work/life balance as a female lawyer.

(Keep reading to see additional thoughts from Bellows on women and the law.)

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The Law Schools With the Highest Unemployment Rates

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Over the past few weeks, we’ve brought you a few sets of rankings based on the class of 2011 employment statistics that were used in compiling the 2014 U.S. News law school rankings. These data points — in particular the one concerning full-time, long-term employment where bar passage was required — were the downfall of many a law school. If administrators weren’t looking out for their graduates before, now they’ll be forced to, unless they want to suffer even more in future rankings.

As for the 2015 U.S. News rankings, most law schools already have an idea of the fates they’ll be subjected to when Bob Morse gets his hands on the jobs data for the class of 2012. The fact that only 56 percent of the most recent graduating class were employed as lawyers nine months after graduation is already set in stone, so they’ll have to aim higher when it comes to the class of 2013.

But just because U.S. News hasn’t evaluated the most recent set of employment statistics doesn’t mean that we can’t. Today, the National Law Journal released a study on the latest employment outcomes from all 202 ABA-accredited law schools, ranging from the schools that sent the highest percentages of their class into Biglaw’s gaping maw to the schools with the highest percentage of Article III groupies.

The NLJ also has information on the law schools with the highest unemployment rates, and because we know that our readers are big fans of schadenfreude, we’re going to delve into that data. So which law schools had the highest percentage of graduates willing to review documents for food? Let’s find out….

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Morning Docket: 04.08.13

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J.D. = Just the Dark Roast?

* President Obama apologized to Kamala Harris after referring to her as the “best-looking attorney general in the country.” We’re guessing the First Lady was none too pleased with her husband’s behavior. [New York Times]

* If you’re unemployed (or were the victim of a recent layoff), try to keep your head up, because there’s still hope for you. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the legal sector added 2,000 jobs last month. [Am Law Daily]

* The 10 percent vacancy rate on the nation’s federal courts is unacceptable and the New York Times is ON IT. Perhaps D.C. Circuit hopeful Sri Srinivasan will have some luck at this week’s judicial confirmation hearing. [New York Times]

* Shine bright like A. Diamond: Howrey’s bankruptcy trustee is still trying to get “unfinished business” settlements from several Biglaw firms, but managed to secure funds from ALAS. [Capital Business / Washington Post]

* Contrary to what law deans tell you in the op-ed pages, if you want to work as a real lawyer, it actually matters where you go to law school. We’ll probably have more on this later today. [National Law Journal]

* Cooley Law took a hard hit in the appeal of its defamation case against Rockstar05, and now the disgruntled blogger may seek a dismissal. Score one for anonymous online speech! [Ars Technica]

* Margaret Thatcher, Great Britain’s first female Prime Minister, RIP. [CNN]

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