Last week, the New York Post published a list of the New York men it considers to be the city’s twelve most eligible bachelors. As always, the Post keeps it classy with its criteria: “young. hot. rich.”

The list includes Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, comedian Andy Samberg, and Knicks forward Danilo Gallinari. It also includes a Cardozo 2L.

How did a second year student at Cardozo Law School make the list? It helps that he’s a bajillionaire…

If you attend or graduated from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, you most likely knew this post was coming. For the rest of you, let me bring you up to speed.

Cardozo Law is trying to connect students who want extra tutoring with students who are willing to help. Cardozo’s office of student services asked willing tutors to submit the following information.

1) Your name and class year
2) What course(s) you are interested in tutoring
3) What semester you took the course(s) in
4) What professor you had for the course(s)
5) What grade you received for the course(s)
6) How you wish to be contacted by other students

Hey, from the administration’s perspective, they’re all in the “employed upon graduation” hunt together. If some of the high-achieving students are willing to help some of the stragglers avoid a life of poverty and sadness, why not?

The information requested is appropriate for the position sought. You can’t offer yourself up as a tutor with crappy grades. In fact, the only way there would really be a “story” here is if some amazingly careless gunner submitted his qualifications and accidentally hit “reply all” to the school-wide email.

And really, who’d be stupid enough to do that?

Yesterday, we reported on a meeting at Cardozo Law School between the law school administration, student leaders, and MTV producers regarding the possible filming of a reality TV show at the school. It would focus on the “true life” of New York law school students.

We polled our readers. Almost 60% of the 2,000 who voted said a reality TV show at Cardozo would be a bad idea.

The folks at Cardozo agree. Tipsters report that word spread on campus and that most students were strongly opposed. Today, the dean of the law school sent out an email telling students not to worry.

The drama of law is captured daily here at Above The Law, and has been serialized in various television shows (See ‘Law and Order,’ ‘Ally McBeal,’ and ‘The Practice’). Now a reality TV producer wants to get in on the magic. From the Hollywood Reporter:

Scott Sternberg Prods. is partnering with Weinberger Media to produce “Legal Ease,” featuring the New York law firm of Tacopina Seigel & Turano.

The daily reality show will revolve around lawyers giving advice to everyday people. Stories will be shot on location, and advice will be dished out in-studio by Joseph Tacopina, head of the firm, and a panel of legal eagles.

“Legal Ease” could attract a serious audience — it would have free legal advice after all. We imagine it as the legal version of the show, The Doctors, where four real-life doctors get together and talk medicine. That “medical dream team” is anchored by Dr. Hottie, Travis Stork, former star of The Bachelor.

Unfortunately, Joseph Tacopina is not as hot as Stork. To develop a loyal audience, we think the “Legal Ease” creators should consider recruiting a hot Biglaw reality TV star. They might benefit from a look at our archives. Might we suggest Bachelorette star Jeremy Anderson, Survivor star Charlie Herschel, or Amazing Race siblings Victor and Tammy Jih?

Meanwhile, a law school in New York is mulling a star turn on an MTV reality TV show. See which law school is under consideration after the jump, and find out why its law students are opposed to the idea.

Warning: The penis-to-vagina ratio in this week’s column is quite high. If you’re already on the mailing list for Rick Santorum 2012, you may want to avert your eyes — or go make fun of sissy-boy John Kerry for helping plan his daughter’s wedding.

Our fabulous finalist couples:

1. Sebastian Dungan and Lavi Soloway

2. Adam Levine and Janson Wu

3. Alisha Bhagat and Mark Egerman

Read more about these newlyweds, after the jump.

This summer, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law 3L Dave Johnston won $50,000 on the online game show, “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” He had a little help from the TruTV (formerly Court TV) anchor, Ashleigh Banfield. When we interviewed him back in July, we asked what his plans were for his 50Gs.

He said he wanted to use them for a “good cause”: fighting back against Cardozo’s kosher policy. Since Cardozo Law is part of Torah-embracing Yeshiva University, the stated policy is that no school money can be spent on unkosher food, according to Johnston. In his words:

That meant student groups could only purchase their food from certain ultra-Orthodox kosher restaurants that had agreements with the administration. In the interest of cost, most orgs would opt for kosher pizza, made without the meat enzyme found in regular cheese but with the rich flavor of oily cardboard. It’s also more expensive than most pies. Meanwhile, one block west of Cardozo is Famous Original Ray’s (the real one) and one block east is Patsy’s Pizzeria. Where I grew up in California, my pizza options were usually Domino’s and Papa John’s. Maybe that’s why this policy boggles my mind. Here you have the world’s finest pizza in pizza-crazy New York so close, and the majority of Cardozo students do not keep kosher, so it just seems criminal to force us to pay more for less.

“Criminal” seems like a bit of a stretch. But Johnston says the kosher policy caught him by surprise when he first arrived at Cardozo:

This kosher situation caught me off guard when I came to Cardozo as a secular Jew. The kosher policy is not mentioned in Cardozo brochures. Cardozo had been described as a secular law school (see [“Cardozo Law School is secular, but as a result of its heritage many of its students are Jewish.”]). I knew Cardozo was affiliated with Yeshiva University, but they seemed separate and distinct. For example, if you refresh the Yeshiva University homepage, you’ll see yarmulkes in most of the photos. I haven’t found a single one on the Cardozo website. To me, that was telling.

Judging potential law schools based on the photos on their websites is probably not the best way to go about the selection process. But at least it tells you more about the attractiveness of the student body than the U.S. News and World Report rankings.

After Johnston won his Millionaire jackpot, he met with Cardozo Special Events about holding an unkosher feast to celebrate his winnings and thank his fellow students for their support. “I wanted to do it by giving them the mouthwatering pizza that no one else would,” said Johnston.

Find out whether pig products found their way into Cardozo conference rooms, after the jump.

On the media website Mediaite, we are erroneously listed as having an affiliation with the Late Show with David Letterman. We wish! If that were the case, then maybe we’d have inside dirt on one of the juiciest media scandals to come along in a while.

And it’s a media scandal with a legal angle — several, in fact. Last Friday, we named the woman at the eye of the storm, Stephanie Birkitt, our Lawyer of the Day. Birkitt — the former Letterman paramour whose ex-boyfriend, Robert “Joe” Halderman, stands accused of trying to extort David Letterman — is a lawyer. The blonde hottie is a graduate of Cardozo Law School, and she passed the bar exam twice — in New York and Connecticut. Very impressive, Ms. Birkitt!

Alas, Stephanie Birkitt may be a two-timer in more than one sense of the word. We previously stated, relying on other sources, that Birkitt’s sexual relationship with her former boss ended in 2003. Now we’re hearing otherwise, from the New York Post:

Pretty former “Late Show” staffer Stephanie Birkitt revealed in her diary that she continued having sex with boss David Letterman even after moving in with her CBS-producer boyfriend, who later allegedly tried to extort him over the affair, sources told The Post yesterday.

Letterman and Birkitt enjoyed romantic hikes last fall at his sprawling ranch in eastern Montana — where he was married in March — while her boyfriend, “48 Hours Mystery” producer Robert “Joe” Halderman, stayed home in Connecticut, the sources said.

At the time, Birkitt, 34, insisted to Halderman that she and the 62-year-old Letterman had just “a platonic relationship,” a source said.

“I’m his best friend,” Birkitt told the worried 51-year-old Halderman, the source said.

A friend with benefits? Like free law school tuition? Speaking of which, according to our reader poll, almost two-thirds of ATL readers would sleep with David Letterman in exchange for free law school tuition.

UPDATE: According to Maureen Dowd (gavel bang: commenter), Letterman’s company loaned Birkitt the money for law school, which she paid back. If true, this is disappointing. What’s the point of sleeping with the boss if you can’t get paid for it?

More law-related Letterman links, after the jump.

To paraphrase this video, inspired by an Avenue Q song and submitted to Above the Law’s first-ever Law Revue Contest, “What can you do with a JD from Cardozo?”

Um…. David Letterman? From Bitten & Bound:

David Letterman was the victim of a $2 million extortion plot and we have now discovered that according to New York public records, Stephanie Birkitt, 34, a former intern on The Late Show, lived with the accused extortionist Robert Joe Halderman, a CBS 48 Hours producer, and may have unwittingly fed him the information through the pages of her diary, photos and personal correspondence….

According to TMZ, Birkitt is one of the women who engaged in an affair with her boss, but ended it in 2003, prior to the birth of Letterman’s son….

Birkitt began working as a page for CBS New, 48 Hours, and The Late Show while still in college [at Wake Forest] in 1996. She spent a short time as an associate producer on segments for correspondent Erin Moriarty but soon decided that she wasn’t a news hound. That was when Letterman hired her as a personal assistant. She was initially brought on to handle his charities and his Indy car racing team, but her duties expanded over time.

Apparently so. Anyway, here’s the legal connection:

Birkett went on to the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City beginning in 2005 and passed the Connecticut bar exam in February 2009.

UPDATE: As noted in the comments, Birkitt also passed the New York bar exam in February. Congrats on passing two state bars, Steph!

FURTHER UPDATE: Actually, Birkitt’s relationship with Letterman may have lasted much longer. See here.

Now, before the elitists among you start ranking on Cardozo Law, there’s something you should know.

Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law 3L Dave Johnston recently made a good showing on the online game show, “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”

He’s not a millionaire, but thanks to his performance, and a little help from TruTV (formerly Court TV) anchor, Ashleigh Banfield, he is $50,000 richer. She was the celeb expert the show offered him for his “ask the expert” lifeline. He used it when he didn’t know the answer to “‘One woman writes a novel, another reads it, and the third lives it’ is the premise of what movie?”

His answer options were “A: Cold Mountain, B: The Hours, C: Memoirs of a Geisha, D: Atonement.” From the New York Post:

Banfield correctly told Johnston it was “The Hours,” which won him $16,000. He went on to win $50,000 and promised to take Banfield to lunch. Banfield told us, “He took me to Gus’ Place in the Village today and brought along friends from the office where he’s a summer intern. But since he’s using his winnings to pay the nearly $40,000 tuition for next semester, I picked up the check.”

We’re not impressed by Johnston’s lack of familiarity with chick flicks, but we are impressed by his finagling a celebrity lunch out of the experience. The moment was captured by his BlackBerry in the photo at right.

Johnston notes that Banfield was slightly off. His 3L tuition will be $44,000, not “nearly $40,000.” So he appreciated the free lunch even more. He tells us about it, after the jump.

We’ve been bringing you a number of stories about law students melting down as the recession, finals, swine flu, and a spate of year-end elections takes its toll on America’s next generation of lawyers.

The latest missive comes from a female Cardozo student who accuses the Cardozo law review board of gender bias. It turns out that this student lost an election to be Editor-in-Chief of the Cardozo law review.

But it also turns out that the executive board of the Cardozo law review has no female members.

The situation is so surprising that school officials have organized a meeting of all the law review 2Ls to discuss this matter. Unfortunately, the student who lost the Editor-in-Chief election will not be able to attend. Fortunately (for Above the Law readers), she decided to commit her thoughts to email:

I believe the journal does have a problem with gender bias in elections that we should address. It was striking that, for the second year in a row, the executive board does not have a single female member. It also stands out that, of all the editorial board positions with input into the article selection process for both the Law Review and de novo, not a single position is held by a woman.

The all-male composition of the most influential positions on the editorial board is at odds with the composition of the journal. It is also at odds with the objective performance of the female members of the staff. Of the thirty-seven Vol. 30 staffers, sixteen (43%) are women and twenty-one (57%) are men. The results of the blind Note-selection process mirror these statistics: of the sixteen Notes selected for publication in Vol. 31, seven (44%) were authored by female staffers and nine (56%) were authored by male staffers. Statistics are not available by which I could objectively assess the quality of staffers’ C&Sing work. However, the Note publication rates suggest that, when blind judging is applied, female staffers perform as well as male staffers. This objective fact regarding the quality of female staffers’ Notes is not reflected by the results of the past election. I believe there were well-qualified female candidates for the executive board and other editorial board positions who were overlooked.

Are law reviews still just an elaborate old boy network? You’d think not, you’d hope not, but this student provides other compelling stats after the jump.

It’s NCAA Tournament time, which means that if you get married this weekend or the next two, your guests will be cursing you as they surreptitiously refresh their BlackBerries. We therefore applaud this week’s brides, who planned their weddings for this past weekend, before the madness struck. They are — if we may say so — our Cinderellas.

Here are this week’s finalists:

1. Sara Schacter and Aram Erenburg

2. Melissa Weiss and Kenneth Mazer

3. Rebecca Kirszner and James Katz

Read more about this week’s legal lovebirds, after the jump.

Yesterday, we reported that 2Ls at Cardozo were going to have to miss a week of their firm summers because of the school’s late final exams.

Today, the school has responded, offering students the flexibility to reschedule their finals if their firms have a mandatory summer start date. Cardozo Dean David Rudenstine emailed the students today:

In addition, and more to the point, Dean Arthur Fama, Dean Judith Mender, and Vice Dean Michael Herz, who have been in consultation since becoming aware of the potential for conflict, recommend, given the constraints, that the law school this year permit a student with a summer legal position with a mandatory start date that conflicts with an examination late in the schedule to apply to reschedule the examination. The details of this policy will be set forth in the exam memorandum that will be posted on Angel in due course.

We think this is excellent news. In this market schools and students need to be as flexible as possible, and it seems like Cardozo’s administration responded quickly to a novel problem.

Read the dean’s full letter after the jump.

As you might have heard, the job market is a little bit tight for 2Ls just at the moment. Even 2Ls that have been able to secure a summer associate position know that they will have to compete hard over the summer to get an offer to return after graduation.

Given those difficulties, it’s frankly amazing that Cardozo students will have to sacrifice a week of summer work because of a scheduling oversight:

[My] summer programs start on May 18th. When does Cardozo’s finals end????……May 22nd. So the few of us that actually have jobs are not only screwed out of a week of pay, a week of working, and a week of experience.

In another market, missing a week wouldn’t be a big deal. In this one:

Now I have to tell the firm that has delivered me with a coveted offer that my LAW school was unaware of when the LAW industry would start their summer LAW jobs and actually could care less. God forbid they limit the offers to the summers, I’m one of the “didn’t work the whole time” kids that had “something better to do then show up.” To say I’m pissed off at the morons in the administration is an understatement, but this is what happens when you go to a crappy law school.

This, of course, is probably not a problem specific to Cardozo. There are lots of schools with late finals who have students going to firms with early start dates. Over 12 or 14 weeks, these things get sorted out. But over 10 weeks, or 8, or 6?

There is probably not a lot that can be done about this situation for this year. But just like many law schools have moved up the start of their on campus interviewing programs, the end of the semester might be something schools need to think about as they help their students compete in the new economy.

Earlier: Open Thread: Cravath & Co. to Shorter Summers

We interrupt today’s blood-letting to bring you the latest from the NYT weddings page. In keeping with the dark mood around here, all of this week’s contestants are brunettes. Here they are:

1. Sophie Jensen and Robert Lalley

2. Vicky Hallett and Jeffrey Miller

3. Gillian Deutch and Daniel Solinsky

See which of these newlyweds still have jobs, after the jump.

Remember Lisa Loeb? She got married last week. She’s 40 and still wearing those funky glasses.

Unfortunately, she didn’t marry a lawyer, so she isn’t eligible to be one of finalists. Here they are (only two this week):

1. Emily Rubin and Daniel Feldman

2. Leah Yoon and Cyrus Frelinghuysen

Read more about these couples, after the jump.

Twenty-seven-year-old hottie marries much older non-hottie: Normally a match like this would be explained by the groom’s (1) job at Goldman, (2) trust fund, or (3) peerage. But no, this groom is (drumroll) the associate dean for finance and administration at Yeshiva’s Cardozo School of Law. This is how bad the economy is, folks: Attractive women are marrying associate deans of non-T14 law schools.

Here are this week’s finalists:

1. Adrienne Lockie and Adav Noti

2. Inna Dexter and Benjamin Nussdorf

3. Arlene Hong and Darren Duffy

For our analysis of these couples, click on the link below.

The winter wedding announcements are often a prestige wasteland, but we’re actually quite pleased with the caliber of the couples we’ve been able to round up for the first 2009 edition of Legal Eagle Wedding Watch (which admittedly includes some entries from late 2008).

Here are your contestant couples:

1. Bella Sewall and David Wolitz

2. Daniela Jampel and Matthew Schneid

3. Jaime Teitelman and Howard Wachtel

Click on the link below to read more about these newlyweds.

In response to the many queries we receive from couples hoping to be selected for LEWW (yes, we do get them — mostly from grooms, oddly enough), we’d been thinking about drawing up some submission guidelines (sort of like the NYT’s).

But we’ve got a better idea. Three words: pay to play. See, we’ve got this thing, and it’s f****** golden. You don’t just give it away for nothing. Call us; we’ll talk.

Here are this week’s candidates (only two again, because it’s December and the pickings are getting slim):

1. Nancy Kuhn and Bernard Nussbaum

2. Shira Tolins and Benjamin Roth

More on the newlyweds, after the jump.

In the 2009 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law fell from #52 to #55. See here.

It’s a little surprising, since the past year has been good for Cardozo. Their bar passage rate is now the third-highest among New York law schools. One of their graduates is currently clerking for Justice Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court.

And, most importantly, their Law Revue is turning out delightful videos. If you share our love of Project Runway, you’ll enjoy this good-natured spoof (film by Ryan B. Finkel). It’s a little long, and somewhat uneven — but on the whole, it’s well-done and quite fun. The film is expertly put together, with the actual Project Runway footage elegantly interspersed into the fake footage, and the performances — especially those by the Heidi Klum and Chris March impersonators — are hilarious and compelling. Check it out below (plus links to two videos from last year’s show).

So what’s responsible for Cardozo’s USNW&R decline? The booting of littering-and-loitering law students from the fifth-floor faculty lounge? Rampant “expensive umbrella” and iPod theft? Your guesses are welcome.

project law school - cardozo law revue 2008 [YouTube]
Joe in a Book Cardozo Law Revue 2007 [YouTube]
Cardozo Law Revue 2007 Beavis and Butt-for [YouTube]

Our favorite bride this week is one we don’t get to write about. Rachel Berkowitz is a professional organizer who “helps individuals and businesses to organize closets, filing systems and offices and to move and pack.” And if you’re not a little bit turned on by that, we want to see your underwear drawer.

On the legal-eagle front, three Fordham JDs (at least) and a Sunday school teacher make this our first Catholic-themed week here at LEWW.

The contenders:

1. Sandra Zucker and Joshua Bennett

2. Mari-Claudia Jiménez and Steven Coffey

3. Laura Brown and Brian Vogt

More about these couples, after the jump.