Every year we have a law revue video contest, in which there are winners, there are losers, and then there are sore losers. This year, we saw some pretty wild accusations being tossed around (including “idea plagiarism,” which is apparently a thing in the minds of industrious law students).
No matter how hard our finalists tried to game the system with their various campaigns, one of them surpassed all the rest. Congratulations go out to the students at West Virginia University College of Law, the winners of our Fifth Annual Law Revue Video Contest.
Let this post serve as a reminder to vote for your favorites in our annual Law Revue Video Contest. Voting closes tomorrow night.
In fact, tomorrow is going to be kind of a big day here on Above the Law. You are definitely going to want to check in with us tomorrow.
In the meantime, let’s take a look at some of the law revue videos that didn’t make our cut for finalists, but were still interesting enough to be seen by the ATL audience…
You’ve seen the worst of the worst, and now it’s time to feast your eyes upon the best of the best. We thought that the 2013 law revue season was going to be a dud, but these schools totally brought it.
And by “it,” we mean they were able to carry a tune, had excellent comedic timing, and provided us with some pretty drool-worthy student bodies. Our finalists’ videos were a joy to watch when compared to many of the other submissions, some of which were absolutely cringe-worthy.
This year, your reviewers will be David Lat, Elie Mystal, and Staci Zaretsky. But we issue only advisory opinions; you hold all the power in this competition. Do the right thing: vote early, and vote often (unless you’re a bot).
Who will follow the winners of years past into the annals of Law Revue history? It’s up to you….
As law students gear up for finals, it’s finally time for us to grade the videos we received for our Fifth Annual Law Revue Video Contest.
As usual, we’ll start with the dishonorable mentions. We like setting the bar low so that when you see our finalists later this week, you can see how far they rose above the rest. Our dishonorable mentions weren’t necessarily the worst videos that were submitted; instead, they were bad in a somewhat interesting and cringe-worthy way. Their badness lent itself to discussion and analysis.
Still, we want to thank everybody who took the time to produce and submit a video. Even the bad ones were good for the ATL editorial team and the community. The trauma brings us closer together….
* Lat’s turning his serialized web fiction into a real live book, scheduled for publication in 2014. Congrats, Lat! [Supreme Ambitions]
* REMINDER: If you’re looking to enter the annual ATL Law Revue Video Contest, send us that submission by THURSDAY, APRIL 18, at 5:00 PM (Eastern time). That’s not a soft, law school deadline; it’s a hard, law firm deadline. [Above the Law]
* A reminder that yesterday’s events may be more aptly compared to the Atlanta Olympics bombing than 9/11, at least with regard to the targeting of a public event, regardless of the media’s inclinations. [Balloon-Juice]
* Employees around the country are wildly abusing Twitter’s new app, Vine, exposing themselves to retribution and disclosing confidential information. And I’m highly looking forward to the first “Biglaw associate abuses Vine” tip showing up in my inbox. [Connecticut Employment Law Blog]
* Bear Lawyer comments on the Bitcoin debacle. [Bear Lawyer]
* Congratulations to NYU Law for winning its 5th Straight Deans’ Cup over Columbia on a last second play. I’ve been waiting for video of this ever since I learned that the game ended on a buzzer beating three-pointer when an unknown NYU student informed me of it on the subway platform that night. Well, now we have our video and it is highlight worthy….
Spring is in the air this week, and you know what that means: we’re now seeking submissions for our annual law revue video contest. Last year, 23 law schools submitted 31 videos for the contest. Some of them were funny, some of them were “meh,” and some of them made us want to close our heads inside of our laptops. You do NOT want to be in the last category.
But if you think you can carry a tune or tell a joke, we ask that you send us your very best law revue videos so that we — and the Above the Law audience — may pass judgment upon them. Get out the soothing lotion now, folks, because you might need it after we’re done with you.
Those responsible for the winning video will get Above the Law t-shirts and the pleasure of knowing they’re the envy of all their law school brethren. As for the losers, well… how embarrassing for you.
Before you start sending us your videos (and some of you have already tried), we’ve got some rules. As future members of the legal profession, you should be able to follow the rules….
It’s the last day of December, so it’s a good time to look back on the year that was. We’ll do what we’ve done for the past three years (wrap-up posts from 2009, 2010, and 2011 can be found here, here, and here) and identify the ten biggest stories of the past year as decided by you, our readers. With the help of Google Analytics, we’ve compiled a list of our top ten posts for 2012, based on traffic (as represented by pageviews).
By the way, for the third year in a row, the most popular category page on Above the Law was Law Schools. People have now been intensely focused on the declining value proposition of going to law school for as long as it takes to earn a Juris Doctor degree. Isn’t it time that we graduate from the current educational model?
The second and third most-popular categories on ATL in 2012 were Biglaw and Bonuses. Although this year brought us the largest law firm failure ever, nearly all other firms indiscriminately doled out offers to summer associates, and bonus season looked better for the first time in years. While the legal profession is still in transition, things are certainly looking up, and through the highs and the lows, we’ve been there to cover it all.
So what were the ten most popular individual posts at Above the Law in 2012? Let’s find out….
Sometimes, to win, you have to hurt some feelings. You have to step on some toes. You have to sell yourself to get what you want.
The students of Columbia Law School know the truth of this. And that is why today, they stand as winners in our Fourth Annual Law Revue Video Contest. Their raunchy (and I mean raunchy, watch it again below) video bested George Washington’s Palsgraf effort.
But not without a lot of intrigue. We’ve seen some hard campaigning before in these contests, but Columbia’s efforts went to the mattresses….
While the voting battle rages on, we wanted to feed your YouTube addiction just a little bit more. You’ve already seen the worst of the worst. These next few videos weren’t quite good enough to make it to the finals, but I haven’t started drinking yet today, and they still gave me some chuckles.
Without further ado, check out our “Honorable Mentions” for this year…
* An accused inside trader used his ill-gotten gains to buy a jet, four houses, and an island help the homeless. The government is still prosecuting him. Sir, with all due respect, you are doing it wrong. [Dealbreaker]
* The Vatican is going to crack down on radical nuns. I can’t even think of a good joke because radical and nun so obviously don’t belong in the same sentence. Unless you’re having some sort of nun surfing contest and the Mother Superior catches a really sick wave. [BBC News]
* I frequently get upset with schools that punish students too quickly and harshly for relative nonissues. But hacking into the school attendance system and “selling” absences — yeah, that’s probably not okay. [Bay Citizen]
* Let me explain to you how this works: you see, the corporations finance the law firms, and then the law schools go out… and the corporations sit there in their… in their corporation buildings, and… and, and see, they’re all corporation-y… and they make money… Matt Damon! [Centre Daily]
* Don’t forget to vote for your favorite ATL Law Revue entry. Also, tune in tomorrow to see our picks for honorable mention. [Above the Law]
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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.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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Every year we have a law revue video contest, in which there are winners, there are losers, and then there are sore losers. This year, we saw some pretty wild accusations being tossed around (including “idea plagiarism,” which is apparently a thing in the minds of industrious law students).
