It's only Tuesday morning, and we've already done several posts on the professional plight of non-elite law school graduates. So we're declaring this week Non-Top-Tier Law School Week at ATL. If you have a story idea that fits into this theme, please email us.

Here's our latest tale about the plight of "non-T14" law school grads. It suggests that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn't the only person making controversial appearances at New York area schools.

From a tipster at New York Law School (a Tier 3 school, not to be confused with fourth-ranked NYU; if you ever want to piss off an NYU grad, refer to their alma mater as "New York Law School"):

"New York Law School in Tribeca had David Boies speak at our graduation this past July. Yet his firm does not hire from New York Law School. The only NYLS alum there graduated in 1968."

Ouch. But for the record, our tipster later emailed us a correction: there's one more New York Law School grad at Boies Schiller. That makes for a grand total of two (2) NYLS alumni at the firm. But the point is still the same. As our source observes, "they still don't even do on campus at NYLS."

"Anyway, this is intended to be more damning of NYLS than it is of Boies Schiller, which has the right to follow any hiring practices they desire. However, NYLS should maybe be a little more selective in who they choose to speak to us third-tier graduates."

Do you agree with this tipster? Is NYLS degrading itself by, in the words of our tipster, "giving out honorary degrees to people who don't even hire its graduates"? Or would the tipster's approach unduly limit the universe of possible graduation speakers?

More discussion, including some email correspondence between an NYLS student and the school's dean, after the jump.

We're surprised that the firms in this latest group of Vault 100 law firms aren't ranked more highly. Some of them are quite profitable (Dechert),* prestigious (Munger), or high-profile (Boies Schiller, home of legendary litigator David Boies).

But who are we to argue? For communal discussion, here is this morning's batch of Biglaws:

46. Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP (6.026)
47. Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP (6.004)
48. Dechert LLP (5.973)
49. Irell & Manella LLP (5.952)
50. McDermott, Will & Emery (5.946)

Please trade thoughts on these firms in the comments. Thanks.

* Dechert's 2006 profits per partner clocked in at just under $2 million. But it should be noted that the firm has multiple partnership tiers and only 169 equity partners (out of 898 lawyers).

The Vault Top 100 Law Firms [Vault]

Earlier: Vault 1-5; Vault 6-10; Vault 11-15; Vault 16-20; Vault 21-25; Vault 26-30; Vault 31-35; Vault 36-40; Vault 41-45

In a recent post about Peter Barta, the Legal Aid lawyer who allegedly videotaped his female colleagues as they were getting undressed, we ranked on policy debaters.

Maybe we should take it back. From a highly informative reader email:

Not all former policy debaters are creeps. Here's a list of former policy debaters who are current or future legal rock stars:

Justice Samuel Alito, Judge Merrick Garland, Larry Tribe, Louis Kaplow, Erwin Chemerinsky, NYU President John Sexton, Jonathan Massey, David Boies, Tom Goldstein, Rebecca Tushnet, Annie Kastanek (OT 2007/Kennedy), and John Hughes (OT 2005/Thomas; pictured at right, captured in mid-debate).

Former policy debaters, please accept our apologies. We did extemp and L-D debate in high school, and we generally viewed C-X debaters with suspicion. They struck us as kids who talked reallyreallyfast, warning constantly of nuclear war. But maybe we were wrong.

To paraphrase the "ignorant tipster" from the Oona O'Connell story: "We feel kind of bad that we prejudged them. Sorry to sound like an afterschool special. But you know what? Perhaps we learned a lesson today. Good on you. 'The more you know.'"

Earlier: Reading the Bartameter (Part 3): What Is Up With Those Policy Debaters?

In about fifteen minutes, the Supreme Court will start hearing oral argument in two big-ticket cases about the use of race as a factor in assigning students to public schools. One case comes from Louisville, Kentucky, and the other from Seattle, Washington.

Expect a packed courtroom -- the cases are sexy enough to merit same-day audio -- and some less-than-stellar advocacy. From Tony Mauro of the Legal Times:

[T]he suspense will [also] focus on Teddy Gordon, the Louisville solo practitioner who will argue against using race. His nine-page merits brief was attacked as “extremely weak” by Columbia Law School professor Michael Dorf, a former clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy who wondered in a Findlaw column why Gordon should be allowed to “waste everybody’s time” at argument.

The Court may feel the same way. Solicitor General Paul Clement, who sides with Gordon, asked for 10 minutes of Gordon’s half-hour argument time. The Court gave Clement 15 instead, an unusual move. Top practitioners could not persuade Gordon, who has handled the case since 1999, to step aside.

Ouch. At that point, Gordon should have taken the hint. But then again, he can't be blamed for wanting to tell his grandkids that he once argued before the SCOTUS.

[A spokeswoman for Gordon] acknowledges that he “has never been inside the [Supreme Court] building,” but adds that he did buy a suit for the occasion “from the famous French designer Jacques Penney.”

If that was a joke, it wasn't funny.

(Yes, we know that David Boies used to wear Sears suits to court -- which is almost as bad as wearing J.C. Penney. But that's David Boies.)

Schoolyard Bullies: Landmark Race Cases Come Before High Court [Legal Times]
Chief Justice Roberts Advocates the Passive Virtues, Even as the Supreme Court's Docket Reveals their Subtle Vices [FindLaw]
Schools argument 12/4/06: Could this be "Brown III"? [SCOTUSblog]

Probably not, 'cause that's Westlaw. H. Donald Wilson, who passed away earlier this month, was the founder of Lexis-Nexis. Fittingly enough for a man responsible for placing thousands of lawyers in front of their computer screens, for thousands of hours a year, Wilson died in front of his computer.

An interesting tidbit from the New York Times obituary:

A turning point for the acceptance of Lexis came in the early 1970s, when Mr. Wilson arranged for a skeptical audience at the Supreme Court to use the new system. The Lexis system found more cases than the court clerks found by using manual research methods.

Supreme Court clerks back in the seventies weren't as good as the ones around today. Current SCOTUS clerks don't need Lexis and Westlaw. They just commit all the cases to memory, down to the page numbers (a la David Boies).

The cause of death was a heart attack -- and we can empathize. Finding out that your key precedent just got overruled can be a pretty jarring experience.

Everyone who has ever used Lexis-Nexis for legal research owes Wilson a debt of gratitude. May he rest in peace.

Donald Wilson, 82, Pioneer of a Database, Dies [New York Times]
H. Donald Wilson, 82; Developed LexisNexis [Washington Post]
Founder of LexisNexis Dies in Front of His Computer [TaxProf Blog]

This past Saturday, October 21, Washington superlawyer Ted Olson and his fiancee, Lady Booth, were married. The wedding ceremony took place at the stunningly beautiful Meadowood resort, in Napa Valley, California.

Olson, a giant of the Supreme Court bar, served as Solicitor General -- the federal government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court -- from 2001 to 2004. He's currently a partner in the elite D.C. office of top-flight firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

Olson successfully litigated the landmark 2000 election case, Bush v. Gore, in the Supreme Court. On the losing side: renowned litigator David Boies. But presumably there were no hard feelings, since Boies showed up for the wedding festivities -- along with many other legal luminaries.

Some legal celebrity sightings, from the Washington Post's Reliable Source:

More than 300 guests attended the midafternoon ceremony on the golf course, including Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, former justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, legal commentators Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova, NPR's Nina Totenberg, legal names such as Robert Bork, Kenneth Starr, David Boise [sic], and Olson's law partner Bill Kilberg. U.S. Appeals Court Judge Laurence Silberman performed the ceremony, and Wall Street Journal Publisher Gordon Crovitz served as best man.

This is Booth's first marriage and Olson's fourth. The couple will honeymoon in Hawaii.

We hear through the grapevine that the wedding was, not surprisingly, "a great time. It seemed like half of Washington was there!"

Other notable guests: Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, of the Fourth Circuit; Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, of the Ninth Circuit, and his ever-stylish wife, Maura O'Scannlain; Frank Fahrenkopf, former RNC chairman and current gaming industry superlobbyist, with his wife, Mary; current Solicitor General Paul Clement; and conservative pundit Laura Ingraham.

Despite the tremendous collective brainpower of these august guests, we hear that several of them were left scratching their impressive craniums by one wedding detail: the request on the wedding invite for "Napa Casual" attire.

These leading minds of the bench and bar can slice, dice, define and parse the most complex legal terms known to man. But throw two innocent little words at them -- "Napa Casual" -- and watch them panic.

If only every day could be a court day. Who doesn't look good in black?

Update: You can check out photographs from the wedding by clicking here.

Napa Nuptials for Olson and His Lady [Washington Post]
Theodore B. Olson, Solicitor General bio [USDOJ.gov]
Theodore Olson [Wikipedia]

Celebrity sighting columns are a staple of gossip magazines and gossip blogs. E.g., Gawker Stalker, Wonk'd, Judicial Sightations. So, in this spirit, we proudly present The Eyes of the Law -- your source for all the legal celebrity sightings that are fit to print (and a few that aren't).

Since we don't get out that much -- we get an electrical shock if we stray ten feet from our keyboard -- we need your help. We'll need you to make the sightings and submit them to us, by email (subject line: "Sighting"). Then we'll publish them on the internet, for all the world to enjoy. (We've already received a few; keep 'em coming!)

A few tips and guidelines to help you in your celeb-spotting:

(1) When you make a sighting, please be as observant as possible. How was the person looking -- hot, or not? What were they wearing? What kind of mood were they in? Were they alone, or with others?

(2) On a related note, digital photographs to support your sighting are especially welcome. A thousand words, etc.

(3) A true "sighting" requires seeing the personality outside of their natural habitat -- and preferably doing something that one might not expect them to be doing. So sightings of federal judges in courthouses and law school deans in the halls of their schools don't count. But we welcome sightings of judges or deans at, say, a baseball game -- or, better yet, a nudie bar.

Here are the types of people who qualify as sighting subjects in our book:

(1) any federal judge (but we're talking Article III here -- no bankruptcy or magistrate judges, ick);

(2) any member of a state's highest court;

(3) a state court judge from a lower court, but only if they're notorious for doing the kinds of things that state court judges are known for doing (e.g., using a penis pump on the bench, facilitating the escape of a violent felon, etc.);

(4) famous practicing lawyers, like David Boies, Ted Olson, Mark Geragos, or Ben Brafman (if you have to explain who they are, they're not famous);

(5) prominent law school deans, like current Yale dean Harold Koh, current Harvard dean Elena Kagan, and former Stanford dean Kathleen Sullivan;

(6) well-known law professors, like Laurence Tribe, Lawrence Lessig, Lani Guinier, or Anita Hill (no, your first-year legal writing instructor doesn't count); and

(7) law-related television personalities, like Judge Judy Sheindlin, Nancy Grace, or Jeffrey Toobin.

This list is not exhaustive; we may have overlooked certain categories of legal eagles that we'd like you to spot. But it gives you a good idea of the kinds of people we're interested in.

So enough idle chatter; get to it. Rustle up some juicy sightings, and submit them to us forthwith, by email. Much thanks!