Boston College Law School

Size Matters: Be the Guy That Writes the Book

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I like the phrase “pie in the sky.” I do not know where it comes from and I do not really understand what it means, but I like pie and I like the sky. Recently, I spoke to a lawyer who was able to turn my favorite catch-phrase into a niche practice area. Well, at least he deals with issues in the sky, and he has the largest slice of that pie.

Fred Hopengarten is an antenna zoning lawyer. What does that mean?

“I represent people who want to put an antenna high in the sky,” Hopengarten explained. “If you run an AM, FM or TV station, if you are a radio ham, or a land owner approached by cellular telephone company, and the neighbors are going to go berserk when they find out you are going to erect an antenna – call me.”

Can you turn that specialty into a twenty-one-year career?

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Quote of the Day: Not Everyone Can Be a Hottie With a Body

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Thank God!

– Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown commenting in response to opponent Elizabeth Warren’s recent jab that she “didn’t have to take her clothes off” to pay for college.

(Actually, Brown posed nude for Cosmopolitan in 1982, when he was studying for finals at Boston College Law School.)

Small Firms, Big Lawyers: Getting Your Name Out There

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Twenty years ago this September, I started law school not knowing anyone there. More importantly, no one there knew me.

Now, mind you, this was at Boston College Law School, where such things aren’t really emphasized. I mean, it’s not like at that school across the Charles, where people like the Winklevii both wear and file suits. At BC Law, which (at least back then) prided itself on being a kinder, gentler law school, it wasn’t really about who you knew, or who knew you. (Yes, one of those whos should really be a whom, but only someone at Harvard would actually say it that way.)

Still, it’s nice to have people know who are you are, and it’s a useful skill to develop for after school, when you need to know how to market your services as a lawyer.

So three weeks after school started, almost everyone knew my name. You see, I had a secret weapon.…

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Open Thread: 2012 U.S. News Law School Rankings (16 – 30)

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And now things get interesting. As we continue to run through the U.S. News 2012 law school rankings, we get to a crucial set of schools. The schools in this batch are certainly top tier, but they’re not “top 14″; for the most part, though, they charge like top 14 schools (especially the private ones).

So this is the batch of schools where we usually hear questions like: Should I go to this school at full price, or a much lower-ranked school for free? And our answer is usually, “How much lower-ranked are we talking about?”

The bottom line is that when people get into schools like Duke, or Penn, they are going to end up going to that school. But when people get into some of the schools on this list, they do seriously consider other options. Should I retake the LSAT, score better and apply again? How much financial aid am I getting? What’s the job market like in the [secondary market] this school is located in, just in case I get stuck there? Is it worth it to go into this much debt for a degree from that school?

These factors should come into play no matter which law school you get accepted to, but at this point on the U.S. News list, cost factors take on increased importance…

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Small Firms, Big Lawyers: How I Became a Small-Firm Lawyer

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Ed. note: This is the first installment of Small Firms, Big Lawyers, one of Above the Law’s new columns for small-firm lawyers.

I’ve been working in small law firms my whole career — nearly 17 years. I’d like to tell you that I chose this path for carefully considered and noble reasons, but I can’t. In truth, I ended up on the small-firm path for one simple reason:

A blonde.

Let me explain.

Now it’s not what you think. I didn’t turn my back on a BigLaw career to pursue a flaxen-haired beauty. That would almost be romantic, and this is a serious law blog. Ish. No, the story is a bit more prosaic.

I entered Boston College Law School in the fall of 1991. At the time, I had a serious girlfriend (the aforementioned blonde) who was not going to law school. And that became a problem. You see, like most 1Ls, I got caught up in everything that was new about law school: new friends, new challenges, new vocabulary (I mean really: how many jokes should there be with “res ipsa loquitur” in the punchline?). I didn’t realize it at the time, but I paid too much attention to my new law-school world, and not enough attention to my girlfriend.

So she left me….

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Firm Yet Supple

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October is typically a prime wedding month, yet we’ve seen a precipitous and unaccountable prestige drop-off in the NYT over the past couple of weeks. You know it’s lean times when the only Ivy in the batch is UPenn, which has a big-time football program and therefore can’t be academically serious.

Also, witness this rare occurrence: a groom so unprestigious that the NYT can’t even bring itself to befoul its pages with his educational credentials! (LEWW found them here.)

But never fear, we’ve managed to find some wheat among the chaff:

Marisa Katz and Adam Bellack

Peyton McNutt and Elizabeth Healey

Kuang Chiang and Adam Supple

More on these couples, plus our comprehensive list of all the legal-eagle weddings, after the jump.

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Boston College 3L Asks for His Money Back; Hilarity Ensues

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A third-year student at Boston College Law School made a very reasonable request of the law school’s interim dean, George D. Brown: Give me my money back.

I say it’s a reasonable request, because it is customary in this country to get a refund when you buy something that is defective in some fundamental way. And the people who won’t give you a refund are usually scam artists or a**holes.

Dean George Brown doesn’t want to pull a Mel Gibson, does he?

Well, the Boston College 3L isn’t sure that Dean Brown will do the right thing. So the student wrote an impassioned open letter to the dean, which was published by EagleiOnline…

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Boston College Law Dean Seeks to Humble Us With His Newfound Piety — Becomes New President of Catholic University

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If Boston College Law Dean John Garvey was a J.R.R. Tolkien character, he’d be about to shadow fax in his letter of resignation to the BC administration. Eagleionline reports:

John H. Garvey, Dean of Boston College Law School, will be named the new President of Catholic University of America tomorrow…

The Catholic University of America (CUA), is the national university of the Catholic Church in the United States. Founded and sponsored by the bishops of the country with the approval of the Holy See, CUA states that it “is committed to being a comprehensive Catholic and American institution of higher learning, faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ as handed on by the Church.”

Regular ATL readers know that Dean Garvey has defended the Catholic interpretation of Jesus Christ before…

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Special Election in Massachusetts Redux

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matt maguire.jpgMassachusetts had another special election this week, though on a smaller scale than the Scott Brown — Martha Coakley Senate race of last month. A member of the Law Student Association (LSA) at Boston College Law School stepped down unexpectedly this month. Polls were open on Monday and Tuesday to elect a new member of the BC Law’s student government.
We hear that there were quite a few contenders for the seat, but one 2L stood out from the rest. From a BC Law tipster:

Normally, no one cares about LSA — they are seen as a group that gives us two free beers once a month at a bar. But for some reason, this kid has been on an all-out assault for the seat.

Matt Maguire was inspired by Scott Brown and ran a similar populist campaign:

He has mirrored Scott Brown’s Senate campaign — running against the “establishment” and using a lot of buzzwords (“I drive a truck,” “the peoples’ seat,” “cutting through the red tape” etc.).

It makes sense. Brown, after all, is a BC Law grad. While Brown was at BC Law, he posed naked in the pages of Cosmopolitan Magazine’s 1982 issue. This, too, provided inspiration for Maguire’s campaign. The scandalous campaign poster is barely SFW (Safe for Work), so we’re putting it below the fold…

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Hard-Hitting Term Paper Exposé Costs Appellate Law Clerk His Job

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Damian Bonazzoli.JPGIn November, we told you about Damian Bonazzoli, who was — at that time — a senior staff attorney for the Massachusetts Appeals Court. He decided to make some money on the side by responding to a Craigslist ad seeking someone to write a term paper.
The Boston College law grad sent along his résumé and said he was willing to write a paper on physician-assisted suicide for $300. The Craigslist poster though was not a lazy Harvard freshman. It was an investigative journalist for Commonwealth magazine, who wanted to expose the “shadowy underworld” of college papers for purchase.
When the journalist confronted him, Bonazzoli was surely embarrassed but said:

“I am aware of no state or federal statute that prohibits such a practice. This is not the equivalent of, say, lying on a federal employment or tax form,” he said. “Could your school take disciplinary action? Of course. But that’s quite different from a criminal prosecution.”

Bonazzoli should have done some research before making that statement, as there is such a statute, passed in 1972.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court was none too pleased to have one of its staff attorneys on the wrong side of the law…

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Boston College Law School Has A Plan For Its Jobless 1Ls and 2Ls

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Boston College Law School logo.jpgCareer service offices can be scary places these days, given the tough job-searching environment for law school students. The summer plans of many 1Ls and 2Ls are still up in the air this year, as firm offers are sparse.
Many law school students have given up hope of finding a job. One law school may be giving up hope too. Boston College Law School is considering an alternative to a summer gig: summer classes.
From an email sent out by BC Law Associate Dean Mike Cassidy:

We have heard from many students that the summer legal job market is very difficult, and that if there were an option to earn credit for summer study (while perhaps working in a non legal setting to pay the bills) some students might find this option very attractive, especially if it would help them accelerate their degrees.

So BC students may be able to spend the summer working as Starbucks baristas while taking classes. Are they really raring to finish up their degrees and get into the job market for real?

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Students Filed Complaints Against Professor Fitzgibbon Long Before His Anti-Gay Marriage Commercial

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BC Law logo.JPGWhen we first reported on Boston College Law professor Scott Fitzgibbon’s anti-gay marriage advertisement in Maine, we noted that the classes he taught were not germane to his views on gay marriage:

According to his bio, Professor Fitzgibbon teaches jurisprudence, corporations, securities regulation, and contracts. Are gay and lesbian BC Law students comfortable learning about these subjects from an anti-gay marriage professor?

But the Boston College Law School website Eagleonline has done some fantastic investigative journalism and revealed that Fitzgibbon teaches what he preaches:

In the Spring of 2008, a group of Boston College Law School students enrolled in Professor Scott T. Fitzgibbon’s “Marriage: Law and Theory” seminar formally approached Dean of Students Norah Wylie to express concern over Fitzgibbon’s allegedly improper conduct in class.

Can the law school claim that it is “welcoming” to gays and lesbians when it had an anti-gay marriage professor teaching its marriage and the law class?
Let’s look at the students’ complaints after the jump.

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