BP Interns preparing to take over operations at Deepwater Horizon, April 19, 2010.
For the record, that was not the “royal ‘we’” in the title — here at Above the Law, we pay our interns. But a whole lot of folks don’t, because when no one else is hiring, companies can get away with offering to hire folks for the promise of experience and a cup of coffee (disclaimer: “Cup of Coffee” not provided).
Mercifully, law firms haven’t succumbed to the impulse to bring on interns for free. Oops, spoke too soon (fourth item).
But Judge William Pauley of the Southern District of New York delivered some big wins for unpaid interns yesterday…
* The first rule of Insider Trading Club is, you do not send discoverable e-mails about Insider Trading Club. [Dealbreaker]
* Arnold & Porter staged a mock Olympics last time around. Now we’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop and we learn that the antitrust group was doping. [Washington Post]
* Georgetown Law student Bindhu Parmathi crowned Miss District of Columbia! She will go on this September to participate in the Miss America pageant (aka “The pageant that Donald Trump doesn’t own). [The Examiner]
* Illinois passes some of the strictest fracking regulations in the country. That’s a reference to hydraulic fracturing. Not just dropping Battlestar Galactica references. [Breaking Energy]
* Indiana thinks it can discipline lawyers for criticizing a judge via private email. I would say that’s an insane misreading of the law, but I don’t want to get disciplined in Indiana, which sounds like the terrible prequel to Fifty Shades of Grey (affiliate link). [The Indiana Lawyer]
* Five businessmen take off their pants to protest taxes. This is a bad precedent. I don’t want to see any of these Tea Party folks take off their pants. [TaxProf Blog]
* Congrats to ATL reader Alicia Long, as well as co-author Jayne Jones, on publishing their new book Capitol Hell. [Amazon (affiliate links)]
* The Judge Edith Jones incident should raise the national concern to improve diversity on the bench. But it won’t. [Judicial Clerk Review]
* More follow-up on CBS’s improper campaign ad totally objective news documentary “Brooklyn D.A.” [New York Daily News]
* If fans in the front row of your concert start holding out papers for you to grab, DON’T DO IT! Unless you want to get sued. Video after the jump, courtesy of Gawker…
* If you checked out our story about the 3L seemingly taking over the admissions department at Indiana University, head on over again because there’s an update. [Above the Law]
* Two former professors have sued the Phoenix School of Law for valuing profits over students and faculty. If you can’t trust your local diploma mill, who can you trust? [Connecticut Law Tribune]
* On June 11, Atlas Obscura is hosting an interesting event called “Go Directly to Jail: Trespassing and the Law.” Ironically, the event requires advanced tickets. [Atlas Obscura]
* Top myths about law school and the legal profession… from the desk of the dean of Thomas M. Cooley Law School. “Thomas M. Cooley is the second-best law school in the country” is strangely not one of the myths they address. [Cooley Law School Blog]
* Legal blogging worlds collide when Law and the Multiverse guest posts on Volokh Conspiracy. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* And while we’re on the subject of Law and the Multiverse, they update their spoiler heavy piece from a few weeks ago about the criminal liability of the Mandarin in Iron Man 3. [Law and the Multiverse]
* Not much fallout yet, but Chris Christie just set the time for the special election to fill NJ Senator Frank Lautenberg’s seat. As far as I can tell, the date selected fulfills NEITHER of the statutes governing the issue, the relevant portions of which are provided after the jump…
The rest of world won’t weep over fewer people wanting to be lawyers, but for people like me who do admissions, it creates challenges.
– Andrew Cornblatt, dean of admissions at Georgetown University Law Center, lamenting the fact the school now has to fight over a smaller pool of applicants with other highly ranked institutions due to a drop in applicants.
(How much have applicants dropped this year overall? And how bad is the situation at Georgetown? Let’s find out.)
* Given the name and origins of the Tea Party movement, it actually makes perfect sense that their groups got grief from the IRS. [Washington Post]
* Wachtell Lipton weighs in against the practice of shareholder activists offering special compensation to director nominees. [Dealbook / New York Times]
* Facebook shareholders might not “like” this news, but Ted Ullyot plans to step down as general counsel after about five years. We’ll have more on this later. [Corporate Counsel]
* The Brooklyn DA’s office is reopening 50 murder cases that were worked on by retired detective Louis Scarcella (who looks oh-so-savory in the NYT’s photo of him). [New York Times]
* An analysis of Vijay Singh’s suit against the PGA. Any legal analysis that requires that much use of the phrase “deer antler spray” is worth it. [Sports Law Blog]
* The highest paid state employee by state. If you’re a lawyer, you want to live in Maine. [Deadspin]
* A visual representation of every Federalist Society event. [UChiLawGo]
* Cheez-Its are really, really good. [Legal Juice]
* “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a bear cub with a gun. Or something.” [Bear Lawyer]
* Professor Nick Rosenkranz wonders if a 50/50 quota is appropriate to generate intellectual diversity at law schools since Harvard Law seems to think that gender diversity merits a 50/50 quota. The answer is no. Thanks for playing. [Volokh Conspiracy]
With finals underway and graduation just a few weeks ahead, law students are left with only two things to bitch and moan about: their job/debt situations, and their commencement speakers. Law school graduation is supposed to be a day that will forever be etched in people’s memories; they don’t want to remember that they were seething with rage or slumping their shoulders in disappointment. They just want to be happy.
But apparently the lawyers of the future are incapable of that emotion. In the past, soon-to-be law grads have gotten so pissy about their law school’s selection of speaker that they’ve written open letters, donned protest buttons, and even organized commencement walkouts.
We’ve heard from several of our readers regarding their schools’ speaker picks, and students from a certain high-ranking law school (but not T14, at least in our own rankings) are REALLY unhappy….
Do you know the difference between a delicatessen and an appetizing shop?
No? Well, today’s stealth lawyer can tell you all about it. He’s a Georgetown Law grad who walked away from litigating to take over the family business, founded by his grandfather, and in the process kept a Lower East Side mainstay successfully rolling into the next generation….
* How to hire an effective expert — in the model of Han Solo. [The Expert Institute]
* Here are the 10 most annoying lawyer clichés. Punch yourself in the face for every one you’ve used (non-ironically, of course) in the past month. [The Careerist]
* The NCAA chooses revenue for their member schools over the welfare of students? Shut the front door! [Sports Law Blog]
* Poor plaintiff trying to get off the Internet keeps putting herself on the Internet. Hail Streisand Effect! [Lowering the Bar]
* Grammar fail. Lawyer inadvertently calls his wife a “bitch” with poor sentence structure. [Spadea, Lanard, & Lignana]
* Georgetown Law is holding its second Iron Tech Law Competition, challenging students to develop technology to improve the access to justice or increase the effectiveness of representation. Cool idea. Other schools should consider this kind of program. [Georgetown Law]
* Do you think our lawmakers should reform the Senate filibuster procedure? I agree. Though Patton Oswalt gives an almost nine minute, improvised tour de force of how a filibuster could be awesome that will be — presumably edited down — and used in this week’s Parks and Recreation. Video after the jump. [Cinema Blend]
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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