Fordham School of Law

Elite Law Schools Are Suffering the Consequences From Their Lack of Credibility

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How has it come to this?

Most people and institutions jealously guard their credibility. It’s hard to get people to trust you, and nearly impossible to get people to believe you after you’ve abused their trust. Nearly everybody who throws their good name away lives to regret it.

I wonder if member institutions of the American Bar Association are starting to realize that throwing away their credibility for the sake of masking a few bad years of employment statistics is a bad idea. I wonder if they’re starting to get that the American Bar Association’s laissez-faire approach toward transparency is going to have consequences far beyond the yearly bloodsport of the U.S. News law school rankings.

As a couple of elite law schools are learning this week, right now their word and credibility carries significantly less weight than the New York Post’s….

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ATL Survey Update: Great Unmet Expectations

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... to take a survey.

Yesterday, David Lat took a detailed look at the National Law Journal’s newly released list of “go-to” law schools — the ones placing the highest percentage of their 2011 graduates in Biglaw. Of course congratulations are due to Penn and Northwestern and the other schools whose graduates are still landing associate positions. But the real news is how seriously discouraging the NLJ data is. We all know the legal job market is tough, yet Bruce MacEwen’s observation that 85% of law schools give students a worse than 10% chance of getting a job in Biglaw still manages to startle.

Our ongoing ATL School & Firm Insider Survey (take it here!), asks current law students, among other things, “What do you expect to do after you graduate?” A whopping 71% tell us that they expect to work for a firm. (This percentage was consistent across class years.) That this proportion is so high, and so at odds with the NLJ findings, can mean some combination of two things:

  • The ATL student readership skews heavily toward that minority of students who will actually snag Biglaw gigs.
  • Many (if not most) expectations of law firm employment will be dashed against the reality of a contracting job market. In other words, a majority of students think they are in the fortunate minority

After the jump, we’ll look at how wide the gap between student expectation and market reality is, even at the “go-to” schools:

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Which Law School Needs to Give Thanks for Birth Control?

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Word on the street is that people have been saying that I’m “anti-woman.” Apparently, I might as well get in touch with Al Bundy and join NO MA’AM. And while sitting around drinking booze and going to strip clubs would be fun, it’s just not my thing. I’m sorry to disappoint our readers, but I’m not anti-woman. I’m anti-stupidity.

Women in Biglaw: good. Women in Biglaw being nasty to others: bad. Breastfeeding in general: good. Breastfeeding in court: bad. The point is that I don’t have to be a knee-jerk feminist to be in favor of women’s rights.

And in the latest round of woman-related stupidity, it turns out that religion is still trumping women’s reproductive rights at a highly-ranked law school in the New York metropolitan area. So, which school is denying its women access to birth control?

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Caption Contest Winner: What Can You Do With a Fordham Law Degree?

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Two weeks ago, we asked our readers to submit possible captions for this photo:

Last week, you voted on the finalists, earlier today, Fordham made it harder for homeless people to eat, and now we have finally crowned a winner….

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Fordham University: Teaching Kids How to Ignore the Homeless, One Beet or Carrot at a Time

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A week or two ago, someone asked us why we use Fordham Law as our personal punching bag. We don’t. The school just provides us with great fodder to write about. Yeah, we might joke about graduates of Fordham being homeless, but some law students at the school are actually trying to help the less fortunate. You know, the thing that lawyers are supposed to do?

Take, for example, Michael Zimmerman. He’s a current 3L at Fordham Law who founded a farm-share program called Farm to Fordham. Amazingly, we’re not talking about a Facebook program. Zimmerman did this in real life. For a small fee each semester, students, faculty, and staff were able to purchase a share of fresh produce from a farm in central New York. Nearly 100 pounds of vegetables were donated to a local soup kitchen with every delivery. The program was so successful that even Michael Martin, the dean of Fordham Law, had enrolled as a member.

This sounds like a wonderful program, right? A future lawyer was supporting his community with a laudable service project. That’s probably why Fordham University decided to shut it down….

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Caption Contest Finalists: What Can You Do With a Fordham Law Degree?

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Last week, we asked readers to submit possible captions for this depressing photo:

For those of you who are just joining us, this homeless man’s hat reads “FORDHAM LAW.” Let’s have a look at what our readers were able to come up with, and then vote on finalists….

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Caption Contest: What Can You Do With a Fordham Law Degree?

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Week in, and week out, without fail, we write about the state of the legal economy. Sometimes we have good news about employment prospects for law school graduates, but the reality of the situation is that things are probably going to get worse before they get better.

And these days, apparently you can run into career trouble even if you go to a top-tier law school in a major city.

Here’s the photo for out latest caption contest….

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Quinn OCI Irks Fordham Law Kids, But Maybe They Should Blame Fordham

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It’s time for on-campus interviewing. All across the country, law students are stuffing themselves into business suits and prostrating themselves on the floors of some of the nation’s finest campus hotels.

It’s a stressful time. New law students might show up at law school having done no research into the legal job market, but after one short year the kids start to wise up. They realize, some for the first time, that 90% of them will not be in the top ten percent of the class. They realize that if they don’t get one of the handful of high-paying jobs, they’ll be relegated to gladiatorial combat for the low-paying leftovers. They realize, as rising 2Ls, that maybe they should have listened to everybody who warned them about law school in the first place.

But they know they can make it all go away if they are successful during OCI. If only they can wow the law-firm interviewers who show up on campus.

The problem is that for many law students, especially those at schools ranked outside the top national institutions, their OCI fate was decided long before they shook the hand of any interviewer.

One tipster is just now realizing that, and he is understandably pissed….

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Law Revue Video Contest: Dishonorable Mentions

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We started taking submissions for our third annual Law Revue Video Contest way back in March. It’s taken us so long to review the videos because we’ve had scheduling challenges with our special, returning, awesome guest judge. As you’d already know if you follow Above the Law on Twitter, editor emerita Kashmir Hill has returned to her ATL roots, to pass judgment on the funny videos submitted by our wonderful readers.

This year, 25 law schools submitted nearly 30 videos for the contest. Some of them were entertaining, others excruciating less so.

We’ll start with the latter. If we may paraphrase The Simpsons: other legal blogs reward knowledge, Above the Law punishes ignorance.

Aww… just kidding. We really just want to give shout-outs to as many law schools as we can. And we figure the students who submitted these clips are grown adults who won’t mind some gentle ribbing.

Of course, if you submitted a video we’ve singled out for dishonorable mention, you might want to whip out the Astroglide before you read the comments, just to make sure the ribbing feels gentle enough. Your three ATL editors aren’t that harsh, but we can’t speak for the commenters….

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How (Not) To Get Out of Jury Duty

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Honestly, I don’t understand why people hate jury duty so much. What’s the big deal? You don’t have to go to work. You can sit down and read stuff on your iPad or play Angry Birds. Then you go home. How is this a hardship to be avoided at all costs?

And if you are extremely lucky, you get to be a part of the justice system. What kind of fairweather citizen is too busy to participate in justice?

Well, not everybody appreciates the awesome responsibility of jury duty. Today we’ve got two stories of people trying to shirk their civic responsibilities — unsuccessfully…

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