While many would-be lawyers were busy taking the bar exam in July, actual lawyers (and law students) were allegedly busy behaving badly. We’ve singled out a lucky few for our Lawyer of the Month honors.
Some of our nominees have adopted unusual career alternatives, and others have allegedly adopted unusual sexual relationships. But who will come out on top in our monthly contest?
Take a look at our nominees for July’s Lawyer of the Month and find out….
Lawyers tend to overindulge in the finer things in life — things like designer clothes, fast cars, and luxurious lawyerly lairs. Unfortunately, lawyers also tend to overindulge in alcohol. In fact, according to the ABA, about 13 percent of lawyers qualify as alcoholics. Keeping that in mind, practicing law may be fine preparation for a new career in the wine bar business.
Meet Elizabeth Banker. This former in-house lawyer for Yahoo! and current counsel at ZwillGen is putting her legal career aside to follow something she’s been passionate about since her college days: wine. (Despite sharing a surname, apparently she’s not a fan of Banker’s Club vodka.)
Back in the day, Banker drank gallon-sized jugs of Chablis. Since then, her “tastes have evolved,” and now she’s more of a high-class sommelier. Let’s learn more about Banker’s new business, and find out when opening day will be….
Continue reading “D.C. Attorney Gives Up Law for Her True Passion: Booze”
Erika Awakening
Sometimes attorneys are desperate to find a way out of the legal profession. Sometimes that desperation will lead them down a strange road to an entirely new career — and not just a new career, but a new way of life.
Meet Erika Frick, a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School. After graduating from HLS, Frick worked for the antitrust division of the Department of Justice and for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. But if you’re a member of the pickup artist community, you know Frick better as Erika Awakening, a New Age life coach and self-proclaimed guru of the seduction community. How frickin’ fabulous is that?
What would cause a Harvard-educated attorney on a rather prestigious career track to turn her focus to the Law of Attraction? Let’s find out….
Yesterday, we brought you a story about Thomas M. Cooley Law School’s lack of interest in reducing its class sizes based on a “perceived benefit to society.” If you haven’t been paying attention, that “perceived benefit” could mean improved employment opportunities for Cooley Law graduates in a challenging legal job market. But perhaps the school’s administration could be convinced to change course when they catch wind of this purported graduate’s entrepreneurial employment situation.
We recently received a tip from a fellow who claims that he graduated from Cooley Law in 1993. It would seem that even as a graduate of the second-best law school in the nation, the job market was so tough that when someone told him to get his shine box, he took the phrase literally. He says he’s been working as a shoeshiner ever since.
We know that this seems absolutely wild, but to be honest, we couldn’t tell if we were being legitimately trolled, if only because he claimed to be a graduate of Cooley Law. We’ve provided our correspondence with this fellow after the jump….
Here at Above the Law, we frequently write about lawyers and law students who have put their legal careers on hold to compete on reality television shows. In the past year or so, we’ve profiled two former Bachelor contestants whose hearts were broken (one from Illinois Law, and one from Houston Law Center); a Harvard Law student who tried to win over his tribe on Survivor; a Northwestern Law student who attempted to weasel his way out of getting fired on The Apprentice; and a former Biglaw attorney whose health-food dishes made the judges want to choke on America’s Next Great Restaurant.
That being said, imagine our surprise when we found out that yet another attorney had decided to make a foray into the wonderful world of reality TV. If you recall, back in May, we brought your attention to a job advertisement for an attorney chef. We thought that was a unique career alternative, but apparently someone had already beaten us to the punch. The latest lawyer turned reality competitor actually is an attorney chef — one who will appear on the new season of MasterChef, which is set to premiere tonight on Fox.
So who is this attorney chef? Was he able to roast the competition like he would have during oral arguments?
We get a lot of emails about bad attorney jobs posted on Craigslist. Most of them are sad, but in a dull, non-newsworthy, way. Occasionally something particularly outrageous comes our way, like the Legal Baller or an ad possibly written by a doomsday cult.
But rarely do we see the Craigslist posting that appears fairly absurd on first glance, but then, the longer you look at it, makes you start to wonder, “Hey, that might just be pretty awesome.” Keep reading for a job posting from earlier this week that might interest attorneys who like their justice served hot, with a side of sweet potato fries…
Continue reading “Career Alternatives: An Attorney Chef? That’s So Crazy It Just Might Work”
What did we do in a world before we could find out if Tree Wardens had their own logo in fewer than two seconds?
Usually only people who run for president like Mitt Romney are allowed to run for office despite not having a job. Down ticket, you usually have to be “a something” before voters will take you seriously. This morning, there was a nice story on Am Law Daily about an associate, Justin Wagner, who is taking a leave of absence from Weil to run for New York State Senate.
That’s how it’s supposed to work: have job, pause job, ask the people to elect you to another job.
Well, one Massachusetts woman is turning that on its head, and I’m not talking about Elizabeth Warren….
Last week, we asked our readers to submit possible captions for this photo:
Over the weekend, you voted on the finalists, and now it’s time to announce the winner of our most recent caption contest….
Continue reading “Caption Contest Winner: You Have to Sing for Your Supper”
Earlier this week, we asked readers to submit possible captions for this photo:
Let’s have a look at what our readers came up with, and then vote on the finalists….
Continue reading “Caption Contest Finalists: You Have To Sing for Your Supper”
We admit it. We have a certain fondness for poking fun at organizations like the Law School Admission Council, the folks who help run the law school show. Because, as you all know, it has been getting harder and harder to make a successful living with a law degree. That’s why we are excited, courtesy of a Chicago tipster, to have visual evidence of a new and innovative money-making use for the Law School Admission Council, or at least some of the organization’s giveaway swag.
The subject of this photo is not necessarily a lawyer, but let’s just say he is music to our ears.
Here’s the photo for our latest caption contest….
Continue reading “Caption Contest: You Have To Sing for Your Supper”
We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
Keep reading »
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
The proper hair styling product might just be the only thing standing between you and your dream job. And the best way to find what works for you is to try the best stuff on the market. Join Birchbox Man for $20 a month and you’ll get customized shipments of the best grooming and lifestyle gear on the market every month—everything from haircare and shaving supplies to style accessories and tech gadgets.
As the leading discovery commerce platform, Birchbox is redefining the retail process by offering consumers a unique and personalized way to discover, learn about, and shop the best grooming and lifestyle products out there. It’s a full 360-degree process: try, learn, buy. Once you sign up and fill out your profile, head over to Birchbox Man’s online magazine to find article and video tutorials on how to get the most out your monthly box products. Pick up full-size versions of anything you like in the Birchbox Shop and earn points for every purchase.
Gift with Purchase: Use code TRYFECTA1 at checkout when you spend $40+ in the Birchbox Man Shop. Includes a stylish Areaware bottle opener, a sample of TOWELDRY’s Paste Styler, and a sample vial of Atelier Mistral Patchouli cologne.
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
