After declaring the two winners of our hottest law school dean contest, Asha Rangappa of Yale and Evan Caminker of Michigan, we contacted them for comment.
Earlier this week, we shared with you Dean Caminker’s reaction. And now we’re happy to bring you this official statement from Dean Rangappa (who has been traveling):
I was surprised and flattered to hear that I was named America’s hottest female law school dean. It’s heartening to know that, despite the terrorists’ attempts to destroy our way of life, a healthy objectification of lawyers continues unabated on the pages of ATL. Keep up the good work!
Much thanks, Dean Rangappa!
And readers, please heed the dean’s wise words. If you fail to vote in our next hotties contest, then the terrorists have won. Earlier: Prior coverage of Law School Dean Hotties (scroll down)
We have contacted the two winners of our hottest law school dean contest, Asha Rangappa of Yale and Evan Caminker of Michigan, to obtain comment from them on their victories.
We haven’t heard back yet from Dean Rangappa. But Dean Caminker provided us with this short and sweet statement, via email:
It was a team effort; everyone gave 110% and just wouldn’t quit.
Brevity is the soul of wit. And Dean Caminker is gracious as well as gorgeous.
Congrats again, Dean Caminker! Earlier: Prior coverage of Law School Dean Hotties (scroll down)
Our Law School Dean hotties contests are over, and the winners have been crowned. As one of you suggested, we’ve contacted hotties Asha Rangappa and Evan Caminker for comment. We’ll report back to you after we hear from them.
We previously expressed our personal approval of your choices for hot dean. But this bit of photographic evidence, which we unfortunately did not receive earlier, raises a colorable claim that Dean Hiram Chodosh, of the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, was robbed:
Now, Dean Evan Caminker is pretty sizzling, and he won in a landslide; so maybe the ultimate result of the contest wouldn’t have changed. But if this shirtless photo of Hiram Chodosh had been posted earlier, we suspect he would have received way more than 7 percent of the vote. HOTT!!! Hiram Chodosh bio [University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law] Earlier: Prior coverage of Law School Dean Hotties (scroll down)
Seven gorgeous women. Seven mouthwatering men. But only two law school administrators could emerge victorious.
Voter turnout was tremendous. Harsh words were exchanged by partisans of the candidates. But in the end, cooler heads — and hotter bodies — prevailed.
With almost 10,000 votes recorded in both contests, congratulations to the two hottest law school deans in America:
For what it’s worth, we support the choices of the electorate. Asha Rangappa and Evan H. Caminker are worthy winners. Both are as hot as a fire in a crowded theater. YOWZA!
And both, it should be noted, are influential figures within legal academia. Rangappa, Assistant Dean of Admissions at Yale Law School, handpicks the legal leaders — and law professors — of tomorrow. Caminker, Dean of the University of Michigan Law School, heads one of the nation’s top law schools — as well as one of its top public educational institutions, in which hot-button issues like affirmative action are regularly raised. In addition, congratulations to WALTER DICKEY, who prevailed in the B-bracket of male hotties. Any man confident enough to wear a short-sleeved dress shirt is a hottie in our book.
(Yes, we know: The New York Times claims that short-sleeved dress shirts, previously associated in the popular imagination with Dilbert, are back in style. We respectfully dissent.)
For those of you who seek to challenge the hottie contest results in court, the final tallies are available for inspection. The complete women’s results are here, the men’s results are here, and the B-bracket men’s results are here. In our view, a challenge would be hard to mount; all the candidates won by comfortable margins.
Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed to this contest: the folks who nominated hot law school deans; the hot law school deans themselves; and, of course, all the readers and voters who participated so enthusiastically (perhaps too enthusiastically, at times).
Like it or not, this isn’t the last legal hotties contest we’ll be having here at Above the Law. Have an idea for a future competition? Please share it with us, by email (subject line: “Hotties Contest Idea”). Thanks in advance for your thoughts. Earlier: Prior coverage of Law School Dean Hotties (scroll down)
Only a few hours remain for voting in our Law School Dean Hotties contests. Click here to vote on the women, click here to vote on the men, and click here to vote on the male alternates.
One of the female candidates, Associate Dean Leah Jackson of Baylor Law School, has commented on the contest. When contacted by the Baylor school newspaper, the Baylor Lariat, she offered these thoughts:
“I was truly shocked to show up on such a list,” Jackson said via e-mail Tuesday.
Jackson noted that the contest was “a cute little piece,” but said she would “enjoy it more if the comments focused on how bright, accomplished and respected each of the women on the page are.”
Similar sentiments have been voiced by some commenters over at Feministing (a blog name that, truth be told, makes us uncomfortable every time we read it).
We take issue with these comments. Obviously a number of reader testimonials focused on the looks of the nominees — because this is, after all, a beauty contest. But many other comments focused on other attributes. Here are just a few examples:
“[Leah Jackson] teaches Tax: Federal Income Taxation, Corporate Taxation, and Partnership Taxation. And what’s more sexy than tax law?”
“How could any contest for hot law school deans NOT include Elena Kagan, Dean of Harvard Law School? Any woman who can climb to the top of an institution as stodgy and male-dominated as HLS is a hottie per se.”
“[Elena Kagan is] (1) among the Elect (clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Marshall), (2) former Associate Counsel to President Clinton, and (3) a one-time nominee to the D.C. Circuit — which, as we all know, is the sexiest court in the country (even more sexy than the SCOTUS). How can you say no to all that?”
“Not only is Dean Toni Massaro brilliant, attractive, and self-assured, she’s also a cancer survivor AND a lesbian. It’s easy to make Advanced Con Law sexy, but how many Deans could get 3rd year students out of bed every morning for an 8 am class and have a packed classroom?”
“One couldn’t ask for a better dean than Toni Massaro. In addition to her fantastic fundraising, she brought Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to be the Distinguished Jurist in Residence here. She also convinced Iranian Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi to come aboard as a Distinguished Visiting Faculty in Human Rights.”
“[Maureen O'Rourke's] fiery exterior is complemented by her brilliant intellect. She graduated at the top of her college class and with Honors in all her classes at Yale Law School. Dean O’Rourke has it all.”
“I write to nominate Asha Rangappa in your beautiful law school dean contest. First, she’s a genius: Princeton, Yale Law, a Fulbright, a First Circuit clerk. Second, she’s totally badass: from 2002 to 2005, she worked in the FBI as a Special Agent, focusing on counterintelligence investigations in New York City. How cool is that?”
“Dean Mary Jo Wiggins is hot inside and out. By far, she is one of my favorite people at USD Law. She is beautiful, elegant, and carries herself with dignity and class. She is brilliant and accomplished (see here and here), yet she’s never condescending or arrogant (unlike certain other professors).”
If these comments are sexist, then call us sexist.*
It seems to us that feminists in the 21st century — as opposed to, say, the 1970′s — should not object to being praised for their brains AND their beauty. Being recognized for one’s accomplishments AND attractiveness are not mutually exclusive.
To be a feminist in good standing, you don’t need to look like the late Andrea Dworkin. There is nothing wrong with looking like, say, Gloria Steinem. And feminists who happen to look more like Steinem than Dworkin shouldn’t have to apologize or feel guilty for doing so.
* Did a certain number of Fark readers have sexist comments to offer, both on Fark and ATL? Sure. But what do you expect from a bunch of acne-ridden adolescents who spend all day playing video games in their parents’ basements? Assistant Dean More Than Pretty Face [Baylor Lariat] Female Law School Dean ‘Hotties’ Contest [Feministing] Take the Bait? Or Not? [Feminist Law Professors]
You may be wondering how the number of votes tallied in our Law School Dean hotties contest, on the women’s side, went from about 1,000 to over 7,000 — basically over the weekend. The answer, in a word: Fark.
Fark is a hugely popular website, started by a fellow named Drew Curtis, that collects weird news and humor. It can be very funny, as long as you don’t mind juvenile jokes, and a little — or a lot of — vulgarity.
(Yes, Fark is even more juvenile and vulgar than ATL. Think of it as the xoxohth message board, but without the ambition.)
Anyway, Fark linked to the Law School Hotties contest, and the rest is history.
Fark has a large and active community of commenters. A number of them had some, er, interesting things to say about the candidates.
Check out some selected excerpts from their comments, after the jump.
Turnout has been great in our three Law School Dean Hotties contests. In the women’s race — currently led by Asha Rangappa and Leah Jackson, with 39 and 31 percent of the vote, respectively — almost 7,000 votes have been cast. (Thanks, Fark!)
Things have also been busy on the men’s side. In the main contest, in which over 1,000 votes have been cast, Dean Evan Caminker of the University of Michigan enjoys a commanding lead (40 percent). The B-bracket race is the closest of all three contests: Walter Dickey (29 percent) has a small lead over Bryant Garth (26 percent). But pretty much all five contestants are in the running.
Now it’s time for us to announce when the polls will close. Voting will conclude on Wednesday, October 18, at 3 PM (Eastern time). This means that two more full days remain in which the candidates (and their supporters) can campaign.
As in our ERISA Hotties Contest, we will gladly accept and disseminate any campaign messages from the candidates. Just send them to us by email, and we will publish them in ATL. Thanks, and good luck!
* Our Law School Dean hotties contest is now underway. Vote on the women here, the men here, and the alternate male candidates here.
* Do you know anyone who is currently clerking for Justice Alito? If so, we’d like to hear from you.
* If you’re in law for the money, we recommend Korean transactional practice, at a big firm. You’ll probably make more than you would as a solo practioner or small firm lawyer.
* If money is your top priority, then don’t bother with the law; go work for Goldman Sachs . Partners there take home an average of $7 million a year. And still find time to beat up on small businessmen.
* ATL readers: Not as rich as Goldman Sachs partners. But pretty damn smart.
* Creative ways to get yourself criminally charged: (1) walk around your office buck naked; or (2) walk out of a restaurant without paying (after concluding that your seafood pasta dish was short on the seafood).
* But protesting while topless, that’s okay.
* Lori Alvino and Matthew McGill: We are not worthy. The happy couple tied the knot earlier this month. Their wedding guests included two sitting Supreme Court justices, the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, and two SCOTUS short-listers. (Yes, we’ve categorized this under Nauseating Things.)
* Some dispatches from the New Yorker Festival: Justice Breyer, with Jeffrey Toobin; legendary criminal defense lawyer Gerald Shargel, along with other experts on the Mafia; and some guy named Jon Stewart.
* There’s a new kid on the ATL block: Meet Stella Q. Welcome, Stella!
In case you haven’t checked in here lately, we’d like to inform you that our Law School Dean hotties contests are well underway. There are three separate races going on:
1. Female nominees: Vote on them by clicking here.
3. Male nominees (B-bracket / alternates): Vote on them by clicking here.
Please note one change in the third poll, the “B bracket” of male nominees. We’ve added Saul Levmore, Dean of the University of Chicago Law School, as a choice.
Dean Levmore was supposed to have been included in the original poll, but was accidentally omitted. Unfortunately, because of the way that Pollhost operates, adding Dean Levmore required us to redo the entire poll — and discard the votes already cast.
Thankfully, relatively few ballots had been cast in that poll (unlike the other two races, in which hundreds of votes have been recorded, and where the nominee lists are absolutely final). But if you were one of the few people who voted in the original version of the “male alternates” race, we apologize for the inconvenience of making you vote again.
We haven’t figured out when we’ll end the contest, but we’ll keep the polls open at least through the weekend. So if you have particular deans that you’re rooting for, there’s ample time for a “get out the vote” operation. Good luck!
Earlier today, we announced the nominated men for our Law School Dean Hotties Contest. As we mentioned, because we limited ourselves to seven nominees, a number of worthy contenders had to be excluded on the male side.
But hey, guess what? Because there were a number of them, we’re going to share with you the nominated men who didn’t make the final cut — and allow you to vote on who’s the hottest among them. Think of it as “LSD Hotties: The B Bracket.”
Check ‘em out, and cast your ballot, after the jump.
(Teaser: Guess what? Forty percent of them are named Walter!)
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.
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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;
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After declaring the two winners of our hottest law school dean contest, Asha Rangappa of Yale and Evan Caminker of Michigan, we contacted them for comment.
