When Professor Paul Caron of TaxProf Blog sent me a link to a story on his blog last night, all I could do is hit “reply all” and say, “Are you sh**ting me,” only without the bleeps.
I think, my friends, I have seen the most desperate and naked money grab by a law school in the modern era. They’re only asking for a thousand dollars, but if you know somebody willing to pay it, you should just steal $1,000 from them and punch them until they figure out why…
I think we all know that you can’t really trash a Las Vegas hotel room like they do in the first Hangover movie (and maybe the third, I haven’t seen it). It’s a movie. You also can’t dodge bullets or become a freed slave who kills white people and gets paid for it in the antebellum South.
Of course, most of us didn’t go to a place that’s been called the third-worst law school in America. One attorney’s high-roller birthday party in Vegas allegedly cost the Encore $96,270 in damages and labor costs, and you can’t get out of jail from that by letting a fat kid Taser you…
Today’s column draws, as always (except when I’m making stuff up), on true life.
A friend at a London law firm wanted to meet a senior executive at my company. I asked the executive if he cared to join my friend and me for lunch. I naturally placed no pressure on the exec: “I’m happy to have lunch with this guy alone, or I’m happy to set up something for the three of us. What do you prefer?”
Somewhat to my surprise, the exec accepted the lunch date. I told my friend. And my buddy promptly sent an invitation for the appointed date and time scheduling lunch in a conference room at his law firm, halfway across London from our corporate offices.
If you’re an avid watcher of reality television and you’re a fan of Gordon “F**king” Ramsay’s charm, then you probably saw the episode of Kitchen Nightmares that featured Amy’s Baking Company. You see, their food and service didn’t suck; all the Yelpers who gave them horrible reviews were liars. If you’re not familiar with what happened, Chef Ramsay walked out on owners Amy and Samy Bouzaglo — who were seen pilfering servers’ tips, physically fighting with and threatening customers, and acting in an otherwise delusional way — because they were “incapable of listening.”
But what happened after the show aired is every rabid social media addict’s dream: when they received an even greater amount of negative reviews on Yelp and Reddit, the Bouzaglos took to their Facebook page to settle the score as politely and as delicately as they could manage See e.g., “PISS OFF ALL OF YOU. F**K REDDITS, F**K YELP AND F**K ALL OF YOU.” They really are lovely people.
Apparently the couple behind the self-immolating restaurant were planning to host a news conference today to speak about their experience on the show and its aftermath (and to pimp their bistro’s reopening). More than 1,500 people tried to snag a reservation to watch the expected insanity unfold.
Enter the lawyers at Davis Wright Tremaine to wag their fingers in Mutombo-esque fashion with threats of liquidated damages…
A few weeks ago, we learned that when it comes to failed professional endeavors, hell hath no fury like a patent attorney scorned. Now we know the same sentiment applies to their failed romantic wranglings.
What would a patent partner do if a summer associate turned away his sexual advances? He’d do what any dork would: in the hopes of ruining her budding career, he’d obtain a movie clip of the girl in a state of undress and pass it around via email to more than 50 Biglaw attorneys.
Of course, this led to a disciplinary action in which the brokenhearted patent practitioner employed some pretty wild defenses, the most entertaining one being that his slut-shaming was beyond ethical reproach because it was constitutionally protected speech….
Now that law schools have been forced to be more transparent about the true employment opportunities for law school graduates, many prospective law students have changed their tunes and have decided not to pursue degrees that may come at a very high cost with very little chance of reward in the job market.
Other prospective law students, however, are diehards for the cause. They’ll go to law school no matter who advises them otherwise, and no matter how many warnings they’ve seen. Why? Because they, of course, being the very special snowflakes that they are, will be able to overcome the harsh realities of the job market. I think that’s just precious.
Even knowing that only 56% of the class of 2012 were able to get jobs as attorneys, these people aren’t worried about employment statistics like that, because they DON’T WANT TO BE LAWYERS. I’ll pause here for a second so you can digest that statement and try to comprehend it.
Now let’s try to figure out why the hell these people want to go to law school in the first place….
A while back, we wrote an article about Cody Wilson, the University of Texas law student on a quest to use the new technology of 3D printing to design assault weapons that can be constructed in the comfort of your own home, evading normal regulations.
Wilson has made major inroads since that article, as revealed in a short new documentary featuring his design project, his interaction with federal authorities, and a demonstration of his homemade, printed AR-15…
Did you know public drinking fountains were a Prohibition-era program to provide an alternative to liquor and beer? More factoids from Ken Burns’s Prohibition at 11:00.
It’s about to be law school “prom” season. This is a fun season for Above the Law. Law students go out, get drunk, and have adventures. Then we write stories about it.
Then the law schools get embarrassed and make rules and engage in hand-wringing over adults drinking like children. It’s the circle of life.
I think concern over rampant student binge drinking is a little overwrought, but then I heard about the school that will be rationing free water at the prom this year and thought, “Boy, way to not do the one thing that would really help….”
The Challenger looked pretty good when it launched.
Houston, we have a problem.
We’ve mentioned the new proposed law school in the Daytona Beach area before, but I don’t think we’ve devoted a whole post to this project. Florida already has 12 freaking law schools. Twelve. Can we really pretend that one more is going to significantly change the comically (or tragically) over-saturated legal market in one of the states hardest hit by the housing market collapse?
Plus, it’s Florida… since when do people down there listen to reason? They can’t run an election. They’re unleashing their rednecks to battle their snake problem. I just don’t think anybody cares if they further damage their legal economy or take advantage of additional dumbasses who don’t know any better.
I really wasn’t going to write another full thing about it. And then, this morning, I learned that they intend to call the thing “Florida Space Coast School of Law.”
My friends, today we have reached a singular height of self-serving hypocrisy. We’ve got a law professor out with the helpful suggestion that the way to deal with the vast oversupply of law school graduates who don’t have jobs is for law firms to collusively decide to pay the people they do hire less money.
According to this professor, law firms will magically hire more people if they just didn’t have to pay as much as $160,000 for new associates. Of course, the argument completely ignores the fact that Biglaw firms could find associates on the street willing to work for nine bucks an hour and a Metro card if they really wanted more people. It overlooks the reality that firms are more interested in hiring as many people as they need, not enough people to make sure law schools are happy. But what does this guy care? He’s a law professor, and as long as he’s shifting the blame away from law schools to somebody else, it’s a deflection mechanism worth putting on the internet.
So yeah, let’s all take a look at the latest bit of horrible logic coming from somebody who is happily profiteering off of the oversupply of young attorneys but is eager to blame somebody else for the crisis that pays his salary. It’ll be good fun…
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
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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.
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When Professor Paul Caron of TaxProf Blog sent me a link to a story on his blog last night, all I could do is hit “reply all” and say, “Are you sh**ting me,” only without the bleeps. 
