In preparing for this august occasion, I asked one of my colleagues, a veteran of these events, ‘What is one supposed to say at the Midway Dinner?’ This colleague proposed three main themes: first, encourage the students to enjoy the rest of law school; second, encourage the students to take classes ‘across the midway,’ in other units of this great university; and third, encourage the students NOT to forward e-mails from the Law School to the ‘Above the Law’ blog.
– Professor Brian Leiter, delivering the Annual Midway Dinner Speech at the University of Chicago Law School last Friday evening.
Ah, yes. I am familiar with this internet of which you speak.
The first month of 2012 was a crazy one for internet law. The Stop Online Piracy Act gloriously crashed and burned, Apple is getting sued in China for naming rights to the iPad, and in America someone is suing to show that porn doesn’t deserve copyright protection. In the wake of all the hot debate and hot tempers, it seems some people highly invested in internet freedom and content protection have begun looking to gain support for their causes outside of the legislature.
This week, we learned from a couple news stories that advocates from both sides of the internet aisle have turned to lawyers and the court system to defend their causes. Earlier this week, some OG internet pioneers testified to a jury, and a major media company executive has begun courting law professors for support.
I’m not sure whether I think the fact that people have decided the legal system is a good place to argue high-level, fundamental internet freedom questions is impressive (give yourselves a pat on the back, attorneys, you are hip to the tech set now), or a little bit scary (do these people realize how technophobic lawyers can be?).
You will have to decide for yourself…
Continue reading “Are Lawyers Officially No Longer Technophobic?”
[A]mong the world’s democracies … constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall. Over the 1960s and 1970s, democratic constitutions as a whole became more similar to the U.S. constitution, only to reverse course in the 1980s and 1990s. The turn of the twenty-first century, however, saw the beginning of a steep plunge that continues through the most recent years for which we have data, to the point that the constitutions of the world’s democracies are, on average, less similar to the U.S. Constitution now than they were at the end of World War II.
– Professors David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia, in a forthcoming article that will be published in the New York University Law Review. They conducted a study that was discussed in a very interesting article by Adam Liptak, ‘We the People’ Loses Appeal With People Around the World.
And perhaps with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Which constitutions does she prefer over our own founding document?
Continue reading “Quote of the Day: Why Do You Hate America, Justice Ginsburg?”
The last time we wrote about somebody on the Emory Law faculty trying to “help out” struggling, jobless Emory Law students, we were covering the train wreck of a commencement speech by professor Sara Stadler. She told graduating law students, many of whom didn’t have a job, to “get over” their sense of entitlement.
You’d think that the Emory faculty wouldn’t risk condescending to their students again, even in the name of trying to help them. But sitting in my inbox is a series of emails from Sarah Shalf, the director of the Emory field placement program, offering students the opportunity to babysit kids and “network” at her Super Bowl party.
Condescending? For a certain point of view, absolutely. But Shalf is honestly trying to help, and she’s using her party to do more for students than Emory Law career services is really doing right now. It’s not her fault that Emory Law students are so desperate for job opportunities that babysitting at a Super Bowl party where judges and lawyers will be represents a good deal.
Such a good deal that Shalf had to devise an application process for the babysitting gig….
Continue reading “Emory Law Students Rush to Apply for Babysitting ‘Opportunity’”
As we noted yesterday, it seems like law schools are eager to sell off the naming rights to, well, just about anything that exists within their hallowed hallways. At top-tier schools like Harvard Law, they name their men’s bathrooms after notable alumni. At lower ranked law schools, however, it seems that notable law professors aren’t even worthy of a urinal cake.
Instead, they’re being treated like yesterday’s garbage. That’s right, folks, BYU Law has outdone Harvard by slapping a former professor’s name on an itsy-bitsy trash can….
Continue reading “Move Over, Harvard: BYU Law Has Got Memorial Trash Cans”
Professor Philip Bobbitt
In 2008, we profiled celebrity law professor Philip Bobbitt. Professor Bobbitt has a breathtaking résumé, featuring degrees from Princeton (A.B.), Yale (J.D.), and Oxford (Ph.D.); distinguished government service, for both Democratic and Republican administrations; and numerous acclaimed books, including Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution (1982), The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (2002), and Terror and Consent: the Wars for the Twenty-first Century (2008) (affiliate links). For a very thorough enumeration of his amazing accomplishments, read his excellent Wikipedia page.
Our profile drew heavily upon a New York Observer piece that dubbed him “the James Bond of Columbia Law School.” What did Professor Bobbitt do to earn that sobriquet?
“His mannerisms just kind of ooze a James Bondian kind of quality,” says Vishal Agraharkar, a former [Legal Methods] student and a teaching assistant for this year’s class. “Someone who acts like that in class and outside class we assumed must have just an incredible personal life. James Bond has a hell of a personal life, so he must as well.”
Well, it appears that Professor Bobbitt, 63, does have one heck of a personal life. Over the past few days, we’ve received some rather interesting information about the good professor’s love life. The reports go something like this: “Professor Bobbitt married one of his students! Over the Christmas holiday! She’s a 3L at Columbia Law! And a Turkish princess! They were married at the Supreme Court! By one of the justices!”
As is generally the case with juicy gossip, most of this is true — but some of it is not. Here’s the real story, based on my interview with Professor Bobbitt himself. And wedding photos, of course….
Continue reading “A Law School Love Story: Prominent Professor Marries Columbia 3L”
The new face of Harvard Law School has a funny side.
This week, Harvard Law School unveiled its brand new Wasserstein Hall — a behemoth of a law building that will serve the needs of Harvard law students for generations, maybe even centuries. I was not invited to any of the gala events; my invitation must have been lost in the mail. But I can’t wait to see the finished product. Rumor has it that there’s a state-of-the-art debtor’s prison carved into the building’s foundation.
Obviously, a project of this magnitude required a major fundraising effort. Harvard has never been shy about naming things after big donors. Remember, the university itself is named after a guy who made one of the wisest donations of books ever. Wasserstein Hall contains the Caspersen Student Center, and enough commemorative plaques to fill a plaque store.
The building also contains the Falik Men’s Room.
No, I didn’t make that up. I’m not that clever. I’ve got pictures. I’ve even talked to the benefactor who made the gift….
Continue reading “True Story: Harvard Law Sells Naming Rights to Its New Bathrooms, and a Berkeley Law Professor Couldn’t Be Happier”
Newt, you've made the tiger angry.
* “Members of Congress are not above the law,” and that’s why the Senate will likely approve a ban on insider trading of non-public information by the end of the week. Say hello to the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act. [Boston Globe]
* Eye of newt tiger, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog. You see, Newt, you screw up one part of the witches’ spell, and you get sued for unauthorized song use on the Election 2012 campaign trail. [Bloomberg]
* Which Biglaw firms have the strongest brands in the country according to high-revenue clients? You’d think that those in the top five would be the firms leading the bonus market, but like most things having to do with money, you’d be wrong. [Am Law Daily]
* As Rutgers Law students take to the streets to protest the school’s merger with Rowan, nontenured faculty members are doing their damnedest to GTFO before all hell breaks loose. [Burlington County Times]
* GW Law will be launching a health care law and policy program next fall for the low, low cost of $5M, but the hordes of law school grads willing to pay top dollar for a useless LL.M. is priceless. [National Law Journal]
Professors Richard Epstein (left) and John Yoo
* Are you still trying to make sense of the conflicting opinions in United States v. Jones, the GPS tracking case recently decided by the Supreme Court? Professor Barry Friedman has this helpful round-up. [New York Times]
* Elsewhere in law professors opining on SCOTUS, what do Professors Richard Epstein and John Yoo predict the Court will do regarding Obamacare? [National Review Online]
* A Spanish CFO, a Finnish tax lawyer, and a moody Hungarian CEO walk into an Amsterdam coffee shop…. [What About Clients?]
* Musical chairs: prosecutor Greg Andres is leaving DOJ for DPW. [DealBook]
* In case you missed this fun Friday story, it got picked up by MSNBC today. [Digital Life / MSNBC]
* Did your law firm give you an iPad? Are you wondering what to do with the darn thing? Here’s an idea, after the jump….
Continue reading “Non-Sequiturs: 01.30.12″
Yesterday we covered a controversy at Yale Law School over an Administrative Law class with an oversubscription problem. The course, taught by visiting Stanford law professor Daniel Ho, wound up with a waitlist of about 100 students.
Some 3Ls who were denied admission into the class were quite upset, since this represented their last chance to take Admin Law. The situation was described to us as a “near riot.” As a tipster noted, “Only at YLS could students get this bent out of shape about not being let into a black letter law class.”
This morning we bring you an update to this story — which has a happy ending, we’re pleased to report….
Continue reading “Administrative Law for All at Yale!”
In a few weeks, we’ll start hearing from prospective law students — i.e., 0Ls — who are already reading Above the Law (smart kids!), and who consult us for advice when choosing between law schools (not such smart kids). Last year, for example, we advised students choosing between such fine law schools as Illinois, Vanderbilt, Michigan, Northwestern, Columbia, Chicago, NYU, and Minnesota (with help from you, our readers; we hosted several reader polls pitting the schools against one another).
When I was a college senior choosing between law schools, I did not employ a very sophisticated approach. I simply picked the law school I got into that was highest in the U.S. News law school rankings.
Even though I have no regrets about my law school pick, my decisionmaking process wasn’t very sound. There are real differences between law schools, in terms of their educational programming, their cost to the student, their location (hai Stanford!), and a whole host of other factors.
Today’s story provides an illustration of the phenomenon. Right now, students at one top law school are in a “near riot” — our tipster’s words, not ours — because they feel they’re being denied the education they’re paying so dearly for….
Continue reading “On the Real Differences Between Law Schools”
In 2009, Professor Martin H. Redish of Northwestern Law School published a book arguing that class actions are in large part unconstitutional: Wholesale Justice: Constitutional Democracy and the Problem of the Class Action Lawsuit (Stanford Univ. Press 2009). Where is the practicing bar?
I understand that nobody reads law review articles or books published by an academic press. And I wouldn’t condemn any practicing lawyer to reading any issue of a law review from cover to cover. But I don’t think it’s asking too much to insist that lawyers remain gently abreast of the academic literature in their field and deploy new ideas aggressively when scholars propose them. Redish’s book shows why in-house counsel should demand more of their outside lawyers.
This post is a two-fer: I’m going both substantive — by summarizing Redish’s argument about why many class actions are unconstitutional — and pragmatic — by criticizing law firms that ignore ideas springing up in the academy that should be used in litigation. (For me, drafting that two-fer is an unusual trick. As regular readers know, it’s typically hard to find even a single thought tucked into one of my columns.)
What does Redish say about class actions, and how have most law firms been derelict?
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Torpedoing Class Actions”
* Being 15 minutes early to crucial meetings is not all that it’s cracked up to be. [The Ying-a-Ling]
* Law school fiction: possible comic gold, possible Shakespearean tragedy. Check out excerpts from Cameron Stracher’s work in progress. [The Socratic Method]
* The key for women getting ahead in 2012: working for companies that don’t discriminate against women. I mean, it’s underwhelming advice, but voting with their feet is a big thing women can do to improve gender equality in the legal marketplace. [The Glass Hammer]
* It’s a point worth emphasizing: working a full-time job while in law school and doing well at said law school are basically incompatible goals. At least in this day and age. Maybe law school was easier for the Boomers because there was less competition (from, I don’t know, women and minorities). [Constitutional Daily]
* Note that this decision in support of federalism, the subject of a new article by Professor Ilya Somin, came from a unanimous Supreme Court. It’d be nice if Republicans could remember that this election season, instead of calling every progressive a devotee of centralized authority. [The Volokh Conspiracy]
* Is anybody still using Google Plus? Any lawyers? Bueller? Frye? [Legal Blog Watch]
Is that a black rhino or a conservative law prof?
Conservative law professors need help. They don’t want to admit it because conservative orthodoxy holds that the only people who can ask for help in this country are small businessmen and the institution of marriage, but make no mistake, conservatives who want to get a tenure-track job in legal academia need a leg up. That’s because they’ve been discriminated against, both currently and historically. Law school faculties are thought to be a bastion of liberalism, and the problem has gotten so bad that conservative law profs probably need a “plus-factor” in order to overcome this ingrained systemic bias.
Diversity is important in law schools, and if we’re going to have an intellectually diverse faculty, we need to find a way to integrate more conservatives into teaching positions, even if that means a qualified, liberal law professor loses his or her “spot” on the tenure track for a colleague that leans a little harder to the right.
I’d be all for that. But conservatives can’t admit that they made need a diversity program to combat generations of systemic selection bias. So instead, they’re just going to bitch about the fundamental unfairness. Or fire off employment discrimination lawsuits….
Continue reading “Conservative Law Profs: Just Say You Need ‘Affirmative Action’ for Intellectual Diversity and We’ll End Hiring Discrimination Against You”
Outgoing NYLS Dean Rick Matasar
Even at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), the criticism of the legal education business just flowed. Everybody, it seems, has an opinion on what is wrong with law schools these days.
While many of the law school deans and other administrators at the conference acknowledged problems with the system, most of the actual critiquing came from people with no power to change it. Media members (ahem) criticized law schools, judges criticized law schools, outgoing deans of law schools that shamelessly profiteered off of unwitting law students criticized — and the people who could actually change their systems dutifully listened.
But despite all of the critiques, there weren’t a lot of schools that seemed ready to institute sweeping change to the business of educating lawyers. And why should they? Change won’t come from above, and right now prospective law students are not demanding change from below…
Continue reading “Outsiders Criticize Law Schools, But Will Change Ever Come?”
* Is the Roberts court really as pro-First Amendment as we’ve been led to believe? Lawyers aren’t really that good at math, but they’ve done studies, you know. And 34.5% of the time, it works every time. [New York Times]
* The people at the ABA aren’t concerned that William Robinson’s remarks made him seem like a tactless tool. Instead, they’re concerned that his “quotes were used out of context.” [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Duncan Law wants the ABA to remove a memo denying the school’s provisional accreditation from its website. Why? So students will keep applying and paying them tuition money. At least they’re being honest. [Knoxville News Sentinel]
* Montgomery Sibley, whose license to practice is suspended, is running for president and suing “Barrack” Obama. Well, that’s a unique way to establish standing in a birther lawsuit. [Huffington Post]
Prof. Hans Smit
* Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy your way out of jail. Just ask Floyd Mayweather. Thanks to this judge, he’ll be fighting someone other than his ex on Cinco de Drinko. [Washington Post]
* Hans Smit, beloved Columbia Law professor (and owner of a $29 million mansion), RIP. [Columbia Law School]
* The actress suing IMDb has finally been unmasked. I’ve never heard of her, but she’s probably suing for more than she’s ever made in her B-movie Z-movie career. [New York Daily News]
Thomas D. Morgan
The jolt to the legal profession is real, and the world is not going back to the way it was.
– Thomas D. Morgan, professor of law at George Washington University Law School, commenting on the state of legal education during a plenary session at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. Morgan, author of The Vanishing American Lawyer (affiliate link), noted that more must be done to make legal education relevant in a post-recession world.
Above the Law’s 2011 Lawyer of the Year contest is now over. Thanks to everyone who nominated a lawyer; thanks to our finalists, for being such accomplished and interesting individuals; and thanks to all the voters, who picked our victor.
Here are ATL’s past Lawyers of the Year:
For 2011, who will join their distinguished ranks? Let’s find out….
Continue reading “ATL’s 2011 Lawyer of the Year: The Winner!”
It’s hard to believe that another year has passed, but here we are. It’s December 31st, New Year’s Eve. The weather is turning cold, the Republican presidential contest is heating up, and it’s time to review this year’s biggest stories on Above the Law.
Consistent with past practice, we will refrain from offering our subjective judgments on the most important stories of the year. Instead, just as we did back in 2010 and 2009, we’ll identify the ten biggest stories of the past year as decided by you, our readers. With the help of our friends at Google Analytics, we’ve compiled a list of our top ten posts for 2011, based on traffic.
In terms of overall topics, the most popular category page for the year was Law Schools, for the second year in a row. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the year was an eventful one for the legal academy. It would be fair to describe 2011 as an annus horribilis for the law school world, with various forces laying siege to the ivory tower. The attackers include not just unemployed lawyers turned scambloggers, but the mainstream media, led by David Segal of the New York Times; plaintiffs’ lawyers, who have already sued several law schools (and have announced plans to sue at least 15 more in 2012); and even a tenured law professor calling for reform (Paul Campos, currently in the lead for 2011 Lawyer of the Year).
The second most-popular category at ATL: Biglaw. Although we’ve expanded our small-firm and in-house coverage dramatically here at Above the Law, adding multiple columnists in each space, our coverage of large law firms still draws major traffic and drives discussions.
Now, on to the ten most popular individual posts on Above the Law in 2011….
Continue reading “Above The Law’s Top Ten Most Popular Stories of 2011″
Jeremy Paul
For Yale, it’s very economically feasible because almost nobody would do it.
– Jeremy Paul, dean of the University of Connecticut School of Law, commenting on the likelihood (or lack thereof) of law schools adopting the unconventional tuition reimbursement policy proposed by Yale Law professors Akhil Reed Amar and Ian Ayres in their thought-provoking essay, Paying Students to Quit Law School
