One day, I’m going to law school. I think my years in the industry will make me a great lawyer. Porn has helped me there.
– Aurora Snow, an award-winning adult film actress and self-described “Porn MILF”
Law Schools
Dean David Levi of Duke Law School
Law schools — as Elie likes to remind readers on a frequent basis — are businesses. Like any good CEO should, Duke Law School dean David Levi has written an editorial defending his product: young lawyers.
In the National Law Journal, he starts off by acknowledging that the legal market for young lawyers is in worse shape than Duke’s reputation after the lacrosse scandal, and that this is “understandable” given the laws of supply and demand. (A subtle acknowledgment of there being too many law schools?) He then writes:
What is not understandable is the surprising amount of criticism heaped upon younger lawyers, offered as if to justify placing a disproportionate share of the economic downturn on their shoulders.
The criticism comes from law firm managers, in-house counsel and former lawyers who now comment on the legal profession…
Ahem. *Uncomfortable pause.*
They most likely represent a minority view, but they are vocal. They say that clients are no longer willing to pay for the work of young associates because their work is “worthless.” We might expect clients to make any argument that could lead to a lower bill, particularly during an economic downturn. But it is wrong and surprising for experienced lawyers inside and outside of firms to acquiesce in, even reinforce, this line of argument.
So how does Dean Levi undermine the argument?
Continue reading “Duke Law School Dean David Levi Comes Out Swinging for Young Lawyers”
- Attorney Misconduct, Law Schools, Legal Ethics, UC Irvine School of Law, White-Collar Crime, William Lerach
Is Teaching at Law School a Form of Community Service? Bill Lerach Thinks So
By David Lat
Victims of what anti-law-school bloggers have dubbed “the law school scam” might argue that working for a law school, or at least the kind of law school that saddles students with debt and can’t get them jobs, is closer to a crime than community service. There is certainly an argument that law professors who aren’t part of the solution are part of the problem.
But the notorious William Lerach, the securities plaintiffs’ lawyer turned convicted felon, believes that law teaching is a noble calling — and wants the community service credit to show for it….
Continue reading “Is Teaching at Law School a Form of Community Service? Bill Lerach Thinks So”
Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.
We’re at NYLS and I’m in an argument with my friends for resumes for interviews with law firms.
I’m a member of MENSA and I think it’s okay to put “Member, MENSA” under my interests on my resume. Some of my friends say it’s not okay. What do you think?
– Smarter Than the Average Bear
Dear Smarter Than the Average Bear,
Let’s just cut to the chase here: listing “Member, MENSA” on your résumé is incompatible with attending New York Law School. If you don’t have the IQ or EQ to realize that, somebody needs to revoke your MENSA membership immediately and slash your tires with a Phi Beta Kappa key pin…
As of this writing, Ethan Haines, writer of the UnemployedJD blog, has gone 32 hours without food. I think the kid might be joking, but Haines said he is going on a hunger strike — to convince law schools to be more transparent about the employment options of graduates, before the schools rope them into three years and six figures of debt.
He’s even served official notice of his hunger strike on five law schools, and he’ll put five more on notice today. From his self-styled media advisory:
On August 5, 2010, Ethan Haines, self-designated J.D. Class Representative, emailed an Official Notice of Hunger Strike to administrators of ten randomly selected law schools ranked in the Top 100 of the 2010 U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings. These schools were selected because they stand to gain the most from keeping the current rankings structure in place.
Ethan intends to bring awareness to the concerns of law students and recent law graduates by having them addressed by law school administrators. Their primary concerns are inaccurate employment statistics, ineffective career counseling, and rising tuition costs. The strike was motivated by a recent American Bar Association (ABA) investigate Report, which concluded that educational leaders are unable to timely combat the adverse affects of U.S. News’ rankings on legal education.
It’s a worthy cause, even if Haines’s methods seem a little tongue-in-cheek. At the very least, unemployed law graduates with mountains of debt don’t have a lot of spare money lying around for food. Might as well put all those hunger pains to good use.
And maybe he’s not joking? Like all legitimate hunger strikers, Haines has a list of demands…
Congratulations, New Law Review Editors!
(And a question about minorities on law review.)
By
David Lat
It’s early August. Law students are getting ready to go back to school. And some students — lucky or unlucky, you be the judge — are going back earlier than others, to work on their schools’ law reviews.
Over the summer, rising 2Ls around the country received the rather important news: whether they made it on to their school’s law review. Serving on the school’s official law review can involve a lot of work. But it’s generally regarded as worth it, in terms of the prestige / résumé boost, intrinsic value of the experience, and networking opportunities with current and former editors. If you’ve been selected, congratulations!
New editors of the Harvard Law Review — former home of President Obama and still the nation’s most prestigious law journal, despite various incidents of ridiculousness over the past few years (scroll through our past coverage) — were notified last month, around the week of July 19. The good news was delivered primarily by phone.
The Yale Law Journal also welcomed its new editors last month, after selecting them through a Bluebook and editing competition. At a mixer I attended here in New York, for YLJ alumni and newly accepted editors, one joyous new recruit told me that he celebrated his acceptance by going out to Hugo Boss and buying shiny silver pants dress shoes. (“I went to Prada at first, but they did not treat me the way I should be treated!”)
Silver pants New shoes from Hugo Boss? Making law review is clearly a big deal.
But is the prize of law journal membership being distributed fairly? This year, at certain law journals, controversy appears to be brewing about the new editors….
This week seems to be Cardozo Law School week here at Above the Law. Yesterday we wrote about Jeremy Weg, a studious rising 2L who posed a question to The Ethicist. Today we bring you the story of Catherine Haldy Jarman, a 2010 Cardozo Law graduate who just bought a fabulous piece of real estate: the Manhattan condo formerly owned by television pundit Alan Colmes, ex-sidekick of Sean Hannity on Hannity & Colmes. The sale price: a cool $1.725 million (marked down from an original $1.99 million).
The triplex penthouse loft boasts two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and over 1,500 square feet of (gut-renovated) living space. It includes one of the most coveted commodities in Manhattan real estate: outdoor space, in the form of a private roof deck, accessed through a solarium. Fourteen-foot ceilings, a wood-burning fireplace — this is not a typical apartment for a law student, which Catherine Jarman was a few short weeks ago.
How could Jarman afford such an expensive place? And what other celebrities — Alan Colmes is admittedly C-list — have lived in the building?
Continue reading “Lawyerly Lairs: Recent Cardozo Grad Buys $1.7 Million Condo — from Alan Colmes!”
I don’t know how I missed this last week, but a study reported in the WSJ Law Blog claims that law school prestige is overrated. Significantly overrated. The ABA Journal — which picked up the story this morning — summarizes the work of a professor from UCLA and a professor from Brooklyn Law:
[UCLA law professor Richard Sander and Brooklyn Law School visiting professor Jane Yakowitz] studied data from more than 40 public law schools across the country, and found that applicants tend to go to the most elite law school that will have them. But is that a good idea?
Not according to data collected in the American Bar Foundation’s After the JD study of lawyers who entered the bar in 2000, they write. It indicates that the salary boost for achieving high grades more than makes up for the salary depreciation associated with attending a lower‐ranked school. The study also found that lawyers who left law school with the lowest grades felt the least secure about their jobs.
I’m sorry, did anybody’s worldview just get blown up?
Christopher Stone
On Southwestern Law School’s Web page for prospective students, the dean writes: “A remarkable number of major figures in the legal and business sides of the entertainment industry also come from Southwestern — as do many leaders of more traditional legal careers in both private and public sectors… We encourage you also to remember that the essence of an educational institution is the people associated with it.”
We previously associated Southwestern with then-washed-up actor Jerry O’Connell. The ex-Slider was a 1L there last year, and his experience demonstrates that you can still have good job prospects coming out of a third-tier law school. He didn’t even have to finish law school to nail down a job as a lawyer. SLS to CBS legal dramas!
Now, though, the school is about to be associated with a far less attractive student. We reported last week that rumors suggesting that Christopher Stone — purveyor of teen gossip and allegedly underage nude photos on his websites StickyDrama and Sticky-Noodz — would be attending USC Law School were false. A reliable source tells us that Stone and his Sonic the Hedgehog hair are actually enrolled to start classes at Southwestern this fall.
Due to his alleged posting of child pornography, Stone might have some problems with character and fitness down the road — but hey, that’s over three years away. Stone told us that he actually wrote about his site’s legal troubles in his application essays, and they let him in. We reached out to Southwestern to find out more about this incoming student of theirs…
Continue reading “Sticky Drama’s Christopher Stone Is Stuck on Southwestern Law School”
For lawyers — who concern ourselves with rules, and how to navigate within them without breaking them — one of the most interesting features in the New York Times magazine is The Ethicist. Columnist Randy Cohen fields ethical questions from readers and provides insight and advice. (Earlier this year, he smacked me down for an ethical transgression involving Oreos and a hotel minibar.)
This past weekend, The Ethicist once again entertained a query from a member of the legal community. Jeremy Weg, a rising second-year at Cardozo Law School, asked the following:
When I study in my law-school library, I generally choose a cubicle near a heavily used photocopier that doubles as a printer connected to the school’s computer network. This machine often breaks down — paper jams and the like. If I know it’s not working, must I tell the student about to use it, which means constantly interrupting my own work? Every page printed costs the student eight cents, but she can ask the librarian for a refund.
One response might have been “de minimis non curat lex” (translation: “you have got to be kidding, please get a life”). But that wouldn’t have been very fun.
What did The Ethicist advise?
Continue reading “Thinking Like a Lawyer: The Case of the Broken Copier”
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Virtual Canary in the Digital Mine #3: Total Pre-Cull (Part 1 of 3), Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Predictive Coding
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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.
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