Everyone knows that “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” But what about a free breakfast? That’s what one New York lawyer is insisting upon in a $730,000 lawsuit filed on Tuesday against his posh gym, the Setai Club & Spa Wall Street….
Continue reading “There’s No Such Thing as ‘Free Breakfast’ When You’re a Lawyer”
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski (in 2008 and today)
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit continues to provide us with awesome anecdotes. Back in July, for example, we related a fun story pertaining to his naturalization as an American citizen.
It was an inspiring immigrant story, but it was primarily of historical interest. Cool as it was, it did not have huge relevance to the day-to-day practice of law.
Our latest law-related tale about Chief Judge Kozinski has practical ramifications. California lawyers, you should keep reading; you never know when this knowledge might come in handy.
Also handy: diet tips from His Honor, who has dropped quite a bit of weight lately….
Continue reading “A Heartwarming Story — Plus Diet Tips! — From Judge Alex Kozinski”
As many might guess, I’m not a big fan of walking. I find the activity primitive in terms of travel, and I think people under the age of 70 who use walking for “exercise” should be hunted by wild animals for my amusement.
But as a form of meeting, walking makes a lot of sense. I’ve heard of people who have running meetings, and that seems stupid to me. One’s ability to make a decision should not be artificially limited by one’s physical fitness. But a walking meeting would seem to attract only those who really wanted/needed to be at the meeting, and the informal nature of the strolling activity would probably limit self-centered monologues.
It should go almost without saying that the person ready to implement this concept is an academic out in California. That’s right, a law school out west is ready to bring you the walking office hours….
Most lawyers suffer through at least a few years in Biglaw before deciding to find greener pastures, expensive education be damned. It is the rare few who abandon their legal careers before they even start.
While wannabe lawyers across the country are hunkered down this week in the torture session rite of passage that is the bar exam, one recent law grad is opting for a different kind of beat down. Gretchen Kittelberger, a 2011 graduate of UVA Law School, is foregoing the July bar exam in order to compete in the 2011 Reebok CrossFit Games and vie for the title of Fittest Woman on Earth.
After placing second at the 2011 Mid Atlantic Regional during her final semester of law school, Gretchen is headed to Carson, California, to compete against freakishly-in-shape people from around the world.
The CrossFit Finals, held July 29-31, are grueling enough that they make sitting for the bar exam almost seem like fun…
Continue reading “Career Alternatives: Becoming The ‘Fittest on Earth’”
Tyler Coulson's dog, Mabel.
Do you remember our Lawyer of the Month for March, Tyler Coulson? In case you don’t, he’s the former Sidley Austin Chicago associate who decided that he’d rather take his dog on a cross-country walk than do another day of lawyering. Before leaving, Coulson sent what was described by a fellow Sidley source as the “coolest ‘f**k you I quit’ email” ever:
Today is my last day at Sidley. You may keep in touch with me at gtcoulson@gmail.com, through Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/tyler.coulson, or via Twitter, @ibuildnosystem.
Beginning next week, I am walking from Delaware to California with a tent and my dog, Mabel. I will have limited access to email, but will check messages frequently.
On March 9, 2011, Coulson began his journey in Delaware with his pooch Mabel, in the hopes of making it to California by September. So, inquiring minds at Above the Law want to know: What the heck happened to Coulson and man’s best friend?
Did he have to pull any crazy Bear Grylls maneuvers, like creating his own “sheeping” bag for warmth? Did he have to hack off his own arm with a dull blade, like in 127 Hours? To find out if Coulson’s story turned out anything like Into the Wild, read on….
Continue reading “Into the Wild: Where In the World Is Tyler Coulson?”
Wake up, Mabel - it's time for your walk.
Reading law firm departure memos is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get.
Sometimes you taste bitterness. Sometimes the flavor is spicy hot. Sometimes you get a little Costa Rica crunch.
And sometimes you get… this, which was sent to everyone at Sidley Austin yesterday by an associate leaving the Chicago office:
Today is my last day at Sidley. You may keep in touch with me at gtcoulson@gmail.com, through Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/tyler.coulson, or via Twitter, @ibuildnosystem.
Beginning next week, I am walking from Delaware to California with a tent and my dog, Mabel. I will have limited access to email, but will check messages frequently.
The Forrest Gump translation: “Once was a time when me and Sidley was like peas and carrots — not anymore. I’m not a smart man, but I do know what quitting is.”
One Sidley tipster had this reaction: “[T]he greatest reason to leave big law ever. Please keep my name and email anonymous, as I have no ambitions to leave my firm to walk across the nation.”
Said a second Sidley source: “Coolest ‘f**k you I quit’ email…. Note the ‘High’ importance.”
But is it really a total “f**k you” message? We reached out to Tyler Coulson, and he had a perfectly reasonable explanation….
How's the job hunt going?
Are you a female law student? Have you put on a few pounds during your time in law school? Would you like to be reminded that fit, attractive women have better employment opportunities?
Then maybe you should consider transferring to Cardozo Law School. The Cardozo Health and Fitness Club is holding a networking lunch, but the flier makes it sound like they’re staging an intervention for fat chicks.
The Health and Fitness Club is forcing me to ask: Are Cardozo women really ready to whore themselves out to potential employers?
Continue reading “Law School Group Urges Female Students To Get in Better Shape”
Last time we checked in with Columbia law student Julia Neyman, she was sweating her way through a year-long exercise regimen. Her new year’s resolutions were similar to many: she resolved to exercise more and spend less money. Her unique inspiration, though, was to combine these two resolutions into one: she spent 2010 working out at gyms around Manhattan — gyms that usually charge a pretty penny — for free, taking advantage of promotions and trial memberships. She then blogged about her adventures on Buns of Steal.
We thought it was a brilliant idea. (If nothing else, it seemed like a clever campaign to shame Columbia into upgrading its “dark and dank” student gym.) Others were more critical, calling her a “mooching” “gym grifter.” Neyman says, though, that gyms were “actually really on board with the project.”
Other potential grifters, we advise you start blogs. Neyman says: “I’ve consistently gotten emails and offers from gyms offering for me to come in and work out for free. It was a win-win because for the gyms, my blog was like free advertising.”
Well, now the year is up. Neyman had planned to buy a membership to her favorite gym — revealed after the jump — but instead she has fled to Paris for the semester, where she is helping to turn Frenchmen against lawyers…
Continue reading “Columbia 3L Julia Neyman Brings Her ‘Buns of Steal’ to an End”
Quinn Emanuel lawyers at summit of Mt. St. Helens on Friday, June 25th
One of the perks of working at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan is an annual hiking trip to an exotic location. Quinnies have hiked in Zion National Park, Havasupai, Durango, and Interlaken, Switzerland, among other places. Last month, the firm went on its fifteenth trip, to Mount St. Helens in the Pacific Northwest, and did a day hike to the top of the crater.
Someone nominated the trip for our Best Summer Associate Event of 2010 contest. At right is the nice happy photo of lawyers on the summit (which John Quinn tweeted). Quinn told us:
we had 70 plus lawyers on this hike. all but one summitted. it was beautiful–and a challenge.
It was truly challenging: on the way back down the mountain, a couple of summers lost their way. The rest of the partners, associates and summers returned to their hotel by nightfall, but these two, whom we’ll call Hansel & Gretel, wound up shivering in the woods until 3 a.m. CORRECTION: A tipster tells us: “A group of four partners and associates hiked back up the mountain to look for them. Two of them, including a partner, stayed at the mountain until they were located, and the rest of the people were asked to leave by the sheriff.”
If the summer associate experience really were like an episode of Survivor, these two law students would not make the cut…
It’s one of life’s great unanswered questions: Is cheerleading a sport? Soon a federal judge in Connecticut will make a ruling in a Title IX case that may help solve this age-old mystery. From the New Haven Register:
It is unclear whether federal judge Stefan R. Underhill will offer an opinion on whether competitive cheerleading is a viable varsity sport or not. But, Underhill will have to decide whether Quinnipiac University can truly count it as one in his decision in the case of the women’s volleyball team against the school.
The two sides of the lawsuit brought before the U.S. District Court by the American Civil Liberties Union to determine if Quinnipiac violated Title IX parameters debated the merits of competitive cheerleading for much of Tuesday’s session, the second day of testimony.
Says the (male) tipster who sent this along:
I’d love to work on this trial… the exhibits could be great.
One of the cheerleading experts for the volleyball plaintiffs offered a spirited argument against cheerleading as a sport, comparing it to chess.
Please. Could Bobby Fischer do what those women above are doing for the Indians?
Continue reading “Three Cheers for Designating Cheerleading a Sport?”
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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;
• 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 »
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
Keep reading »
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