Look — I want all of you to apply to law school (and to Yale), but I also want you to think about what you’re getting into. These are tough times out there, and while law school might be a great place to hide out for three years, those three years will end.
– Asha Rangappa, Associate Dean for Admissions at Yale Law School (and a winner of our law school dean hotties contest), on the (203) Admissions blog.
When the UC Irvine School of Law first burst onto the scene, the school offered free tuition to everyone in its inaugural class. Then, in its second year, UC Irvine offered a 50% discount to all students admitted to the class of 2013.
And now, UC Irvine will knock 33% off its tuition, for members of its third entering class (the class of 2014).
Students considering UC Irvine will certainly appreciate the money. The National Law Journal reports that, not counting the discount, in-state tuition is $40,000 a year and out-of-state tuition is $50,000 a year. Welcome to public law school in the 21st century.
Despite being a public law school, UC Irvine will fund this tuition reduction through private donations. So you have to wonder: how long can they keep that up?
Continue reading “UC Irvine School of Law: Now Offering 33% Scholarships to the Class of 2014″
A posting on Raleigh’s Craigslist board has been flagged for abuse and taken down three times. This post doesn’t use profanity, it doesn’t offer illicit services, there’s really nothing offensive about it.
The Craigslist moderators must just think that it’s a joke. But we’ve seen these type of ads before. A disgruntled law graduate goes onto Craigslist, looking for someone to buy his law degree. It happens.
In the past, as in the case with this Georgetown Law graduate, the J.D. holder has been looking for a little bit of money to offset the massive cost of a degree which cannot be turned into a job. But this new fellow seems to have an even more reasonable request. He just wants to get some lunch out of the deal…
Continue reading “The Barter Deal From a Law Graduate Craigslist Doesn’t Want You To See”
Yesterday I was busy trying to keep bullies out of jail. Check out my editorial in the New York Daily News for a full discussion on how I would handle mean children. But while I was away, news broke that the Syracuse College of Law is conducting its very own witch hunt, which could lead to the expulsion and deportation of a kid accused of saying mean things on the internet.
I’m telling you guys, this country is going to hell, one ridiculous overreaction at a time.
If you missed the story, the ABA Journal has a nice summary of what’s going on at Syracuse. The facts are pretty straightforward: student writes a satirical blog which attributes funny, Onion-style quotes to real people. The real people get their panties in a bunch. Syracuse launches an investigation into whether or not the blog constituted libelous bullying of other students, and whether the student author should be expelled for a “code of conduct” violation.
Now, to be clear, if we are going to hold people accountable for being mean to others, expulsion (and not jail) is a far more appropriate response. But, to my mind, this isn’t libel. This is clear parody, and satire should be protected, not punished…
Continue reading “Syracuse College of Law Tries to Learn the Difference Between Satire and Libel”
I just bought 4 bottles of wine in sweats at 530 on a monday night. F**k law school.
– a poster at Texts From Last Night
1Ls are getting settled into their routine at Columbia Law School. Apparently, that routine includes receiving super positive messages from Columbia Law Dean, David Schizer. The dean emailed all of the new 1Ls and communicated some very positive stats about the law school.
It’s never too early for law students to think about their employment prospects. And so Dean Schizer decided to tell 1Ls the employments stats of their colleagues in the class of 2010.
But can the stats be trusted? Columbia has not signed up for the Law School Transparency Project, so Dean Schizer’s numbers should be looked at with inherent skepticism. But he wouldn’t mislead current students, right?
Continue reading “Quick Question: Does Almost Every 2010 Columbia Student Have a Job?”
Last week, we asked you to vote on this question: Who is the most disgraceful graduate of Yale Law School? Our post was inspired by a spat between two YLS alums, former president Bill Clinton ’73 and Alaska senate candidate Joe Miller ’95, over who had done more to tarnish Yale’s good name.
We offered up seven candidates: Bill Clinton, who did have sexual relations with that woman; Joe Miller, who’s experiencing a rocky road to the Senate; loony televangelist Pat Robertson; Justice Clarence Thomas, alleged harasser of Anita Hill turned Supreme Court sphinx; Elizabeth Wurtzel, drug-addicted writer turned bar-failing lawyer; John Yoo, internationally infamous author of the torture memos; and yours truly, scandal-prone blogger (and this was before the Above the Law boycott).
That’s an impressive field — even without Arlen Specter — so you’d expect the competition to be fierce. But the winner won in a landslide….
Continue reading “Congratulations to Yale Law School’s Most Disgraceful Graduate!”
Ed. Note: Will the Lost Generation ever find its way back into Biglaw? If recent law school graduates can’t find a Biglaw job straight out of school, or if they were laid off from their initial Biglaw job, the chances of them having a Biglaw career seem unlikely.
But not impossible. This new column is written by a member of the Lost Generation who initially was thrown off of the Biglaw bandwagon but was able to get back on, and is now trying to hang on to his Biglaw second chance.
The first thing many of you must wonder when some new writer infiltrates your daily ATL intake is, “Who the hell is this girl or guy?” Thus, before I begin telling you how it is in my world, let me tell you who I am.
I am T-Fifty. I go by that name because I have learned the importance of law school rankings in the legal industry. I graduated from a T50 law school, and that ranking has now consumed my identity in the legal world. I could tell you all the things I’ve told Mark Zuckerberg and his business partners, but you wouldn’t care. Not when I’ve got T-Fifty emblazoned on my face. It is the way of things.
My journey begins the summer prior to my graduation from my T50 law school. I was no-offered by my Biglaw summer employer, and I soon learned that I was part of the Lost Generation, doomed to be excluded from Biglaw and the accompanying paychecks forever. I will admit that I was distraught. I faced a mountain of debt that I had no chance of paying off….
Continue reading “Introduction to the Legal Recovery (We Hope)”
For the second time in a month, the people at the American Bar Association are making noises about taking their role in regulating law schools more seriously. Earlier this month, the ABA’s “recession czar,” Allan Tanenbaum, criticized the new law school opening at Belmont.
Today the National Law Journal reports that new ABA President Steve Zach is telling law school deans he is considering requiring law school to disclose employment and cost statistics to admitted students.
A victory for law school transparency? Let’s not start sucking each other popsicles just yet. But it does look like the ABA is at least considering doing something to stop the blatant professional misrepresentation being engaged in by some of America’s law schools…
Continue reading “The ABA Is Slowly Coming Around on Law School Transparency”
So you want to go to law school....
It has been a while since we’ve had one of these cut-rate animation movies discouraging people from going to law school. There have been some great ones in the past: A Law School Carol springs to mind, as well as Don’t Go To Law School.
There was a time when I thought little video clips like the two above would actually help someone. I thought that if people won’t listen to the shrill voices of people like me, they might take advice from Lego-lookalikes speaking in a dull monotone.
But those were the heady days of 2009, when the craptastic state of the legal economy finally started to seep into the consciousness of prospective law students and lawyers. Now, thanks to the Great Recession, there’s less of a need to educate prospective law students about what they’re getting themselves into. Now, these little videos aren’t important teachable moments, they’re simply fun opportunities to make fun of people who fail to look out for themselves. They are opportunities for those who have been through the law school wringer to sit back and enjoy themselves — and exchange knowing glances among fellow colleagues.
The one we just came across today hits exactly the right note…
Continue reading “How Many Jaded Attorneys Does It Take to Discourage One Law Student?”
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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.
Keep reading »
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.
Keep reading »
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