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Morning Docket: 04.01.13

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* Can you DIG it?! Well, SCOTUS can’t, at least when it comes to the Prop 8 case, but perhaps that’s what the conservative justices planned all along. You can probably expect a judicial punt on this one. [New York Times]

* The case for cameras at the high court became even more compelling last week, because people just now realized that having to “spend money to see a public institution do public business is offensive.” Damn straight. [National Law Journal]

* Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s new book, Out of Order (affiliate link), didn’t exactly get a glowing review from the NYT’s Supreme Court correspondent, Adam Liptak. It’s a “gift shop bauble”? Ouch. [New York Times]

* Oh, Lanny Breuer, you tried to be all coy by saying you were interviewing elsewhere, but we knew you’d return to Covington. That “vice-chairman” title is a pretty sweet new perk, too. [Legal Times]

* DLA Piper’s bills may “know no limits,” but in-house counsel claim that while the firm’s emails were “flippant,” they won’t have an impact their already meticulous billing review. [New York Law Journal]

* The true love’s kiss of litigation: Bingham McCutchen’s Sleeping Beauty may have found her prince in Judge Vincent O’Neill Jr., because he ruled that the firm won’t be able to compel arbitration. [Recorder]

* It’s really not a good time to be a prosecutor in Texas. Two months after the murder of ADA Mark Hasse, DA Mike McLelland and his wife were gunned down in their home. RIP. [Dallas Morning News]

* Good news, everyone! The class of 2012 — the largest on record, according to the ABA — was only slightly more unemployed than its predecessors. Cherish the little things, people. [National Law Journal]

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In Defense of Law Schools Hiring Their Own Graduates

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When wearing a tie, don’t pop the collar.

Legal education is a hot-button topic these days. Elie Mystal and I have taken our debate on the future of legal education to UNLV and Cardozo Law, in appearances co-sponsored by the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society, and our roadshow hit Georgetown Law earlier today. (If you’d like to invite us to your school, most likely for the fall semester at this point, drop us a line.)

Despite disagreements over proposed solutions, folks generally agree on what needs to be improved. In an ideal world, law school would be less expensive, and legal jobs would be more plentiful. In an ideal world, more than 55 percent of recent law school graduates would wind up with full-time, long-term legal jobs.

But we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in the real world, which is imperfect and messy and depressing. Law schools and their graduates have to make the best of a challenging situation.

Which takes me to the practice of law schools employing their own graduates. In an ideal world, law schools wouldn’t have to resort to this. But in the real world, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, at least when it’s done right.

So pop your collars in celebration. UVA, I’m looking at you….

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Which Law Schools Employed the Most Grads in ‘Elite’ Jobs?

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Yesterday, we brought you some news you can use when it comes to law schools and the employment data that went into the 2014 U.S. News law school rankings. The Top 10 lists we provided you with contained some pretty vital information, including which law schools best know how to put the “bar” in “barista.” (N.B. As we noted, the sample size here was small, but still, perhaps you should’ve considered enrolling at ITT Tech.)

We thought that our readers had gotten enough of their rankings crack, but it seems like you’re addicted to it. Don’t worry, you’ll be okay, because we’re here to give you another much-needed hit.

Would you like to know which law schools are the most likely to lead to “elite” employment outcomes?

Let’s get ready to dig into the details….

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Unhappiest Job in America? Take a Guess

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Workplace satisfaction isn’t quite the hot topic it used to be. In the 90s, everyone got all touchy-feely because an unhappy employee could pick up stakes and move at a moment’s notice. Today, the primary axis of worker satisfaction is, “Am I working?”

But satisfaction surveys still fascinate, and Jacquelyn Smith of Forbes recently posted a new survey from a firm known as CareerBliss that used a multi-factor survey to determine the happiest and unhappiest jobs in America.

Wonder what came in the top spot? Well, OK obviously it was an associate. I’m not going to hide the ball here. If it was anyone else, we wouldn’t be writing about it. But what’s more interesting is who came in the rest of the top 10, because that really puts in terrifying perspective how terrible a job in Biglaw really is….

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Which Law Schools Employed the Most Graduates as Real Lawyers Versus Real Baristas?

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Another day, another post about the latest batch of U.S. News law school rankings. It’s been a while since we last wrote about them, and we figured you might be experiencing some sort of withdrawal, so we’re here to deliver you another much-needed dose of rankings crack. Perhaps you can consider this our Curtis Mayfield moment — we’re your pushers.

Given that our readers think employment outcomes are the most relevant factor for a law school ranking system, today we’re going to be delving into all of the employment statistics that were used in the most recent rankings, with the assistance of a Pepperdine law professor.

Which law schools had the most graduates employed as lawyers? How about the law schools where the closest graduates have come to being employed at the bar are working as baristas and bartenders?

We’re about to find out….

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What Would a More Relevant Law School Ranking Look Like? You Told Us

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Last week, we asked for your thoughts on what an improved, more relevant approach to law school rankings would look like. This request was of course prompted by U.S. News’s revisions to its rankings methodology, which now applies different weights to different employment outcomes, giving full credit only to full-time jobs where “bar passage is required or a J.D. gives them an advantage.” U.S. News is of course bowing to the realities of the horrific legal job market and the spreading realization that, for many if not most, pursuing a J.D. makes little economic sense.

Yet U.S. News’s revamped methodology feels like a half-measure at best, as employment outcomes make up less than 20% of the rankings formula. Compare this to the 40% of the score based on “quality assessment” surveys of practicing lawyers, judges, and law school faculty and administrators. Shouldn’t those numbers be reversed?

In any event, last week about 500 of you weighed in with your opinions on which criteria should matter and which should not when it comes to ranking law schools. The results are after the jump….

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Revamping Career Services: Two Modest Proposals

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There are two sides to law school career services. One side you meet at conferences and events. The CSO employees you meet in public are smart, earnest people. They care about their students, and they know better than their deans the challenges of the legal job market. They’re pleasing to look at and interested in meaningful reform. You end conversations with them feeling like they’re underpaid.

The other side of CSO is the side you only hear about from the disgruntled students who actually need them. If the student has a job, they say there is one good CSO person in an office beset by lazy morons. If the 3L doesn’t have a job, the whole office is a solitaire-playing, baby-making, incompetent den of secretaries who are contractually obligated to use the word “network” in every single sentence.

I think both sides are true. There are some real CSO gems who work hard, and the law schools like to show these people off. But the system of law school career services is based on legal jobs economy that is gone and never coming back. People are using 2003 skills to contend with the 2013 job market, and it’s failing students all across the country.

It’s failing even students at Ivy League schools, as this story will point out. But I have two simple solutions that law schools could implement for next fall that would significantly improve the performance of law school CSOs….

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Caption Contest Winner: Futures Made, Bank Accounts Crippled

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

On Wednesday, you voted on the finalists, and now it’s time to announce the winner of our caption contest….

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Legal Recruiter Fails To Understand Hiring Process, Basic Social Conventions

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Harrison Barnes

This is a humdinger of an article. Harrison Barnes, the Malibu-based CEO of BCG Attorney Search (and its various affiliated companies like LawCrossing and EmploymentCrossing), has penned what can only be described as a diatribe in which he viciously mocks various employees he’s hired for their rank incompetence and embarrassing foibles.

He also elects to exhibit a panoply of racist, sexist, ageist, and ethnophobic attitudes along the way. It’s a stunning degree of openness for someone involved in the human resources business.

But the unintentional comedy throughout the piece is the realization that a recruiter is functionally admitting that he has no idea how hiring works.

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Open Thread: 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings (The Second Tier)

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Welcome back to our series of open threads on the latest batch of U.S. News law school rankings. Last time, readers weighed in on the law schools that traditionally made up what used to be the alphabetically listed third tier. It was only very recently that the law schools that once constituted the “third tier” received the gift that keeps on giving (no, not herpes): numerical rankings.

Today, we’ll be talking about the schools that used to comprise the fourth tier, but now have a new name. These days, this segment of the U.S. News list is referred to as the “second tier,” and although they’re all ranked, those rankings aren’t published (presumably because no one wants to brag about going to the worst law school in the nation — as if being tied for 144th place is better).

Let’s use this post to discuss these schools, collectively or individually, and to compare and contrast….

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