Law Schools

A Law Student’s Exam Time Meltdown?

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I prefer my final exam freak-out stories to be of this variety instead of a freaking remake of Quills.

You all know how much I appreciate a good final exam freak-out. Law students losing their minds under the crushing pressure of end-of-the-year exams is one of those things that makes my job fun.

But not today. Because I really don’t like fecal humor. If I’m going to talk about poo on the walls, I want to be making an elaborate, overwrought analogy about what I intend to do with the conservative opinion in Fisher. I don’t want to be talking about literal poop on an actual wall in a real law school.

Unfortunately, it looks like this semester’s top exam disassociative break involves: poop, walls, urinals, and a New York area law school…

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Law Student Arrested for Anti-Semitic, Racist, Threatening Comments

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Exam time can be stressful. Doesn’t it make you just want to go online and post a series of pictures of mutilated Barbie dolls with captions threatening to butcher your professors?

What?

That’s just one of the allegations against a law school student charged with second-degree harassment and breach of peace. The allegations also include racist emails and harassing professors with bogus complaints…

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Work/Life Balance Makes People Cry

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor is not a fan of the “having it all” concept. As she wrote in her recent (and excellent) memoir, My Beloved World (affiliate link), “having it all, career and family, with no sacrifice to either… is the myth we would do well to abandon, together with the pernicious notion that a woman who chooses one or the other is somehow deficient.”

Even though their panel had the phrase “Having It All” in the title, the participants in an interesting discussion on work/life balance at last week’s big NALP conference would probably agree. One theme that ran through the discussion was that sacrifices, on the work front or home front or both, are inevitable — and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Still, the panel’s emphasis on the need for working parents to rid themselves of guilt didn’t stop some people from shedding a few tears during the discussion….

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Does Your Law School Need A Panic Button?

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Banks need panic buttons. Jodie Foster needs a panic room. I only panic when it’s nine in the afternoon. But the thought that American law schools should have a panic button in their career services office didn’t occur to me until I attended the NALP panel on spotting mental health issue in the law school community.

The panel consisted of Hanna Stotland, a career and admissions consultant; Dr. Nada Stotland, Professor of Psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center; and William Chamberlain, Director of Career Services at DePaul Law School.

I thought I was in for a touchy-feely hour about how it’s wrong to exclude the awkward gunner in the front row from all the reindeer games. Instead it was a sobering medical breakdown of the mental illnesses that afflict 20 percent of law students — and what career services officers can do to help stop people from literally killing themselves, which happens at way more law schools than I realized.

And yeah, your CSO should probably get a panic button installed if it doesn’t have one already….

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Morning Docket: 04.30.13

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Just married civil unioned!

* Underneath this jurist’s robe you’ll find a sling. Justice Stephen Breyer had to have shoulder replacement surgery this weekend thanks to his latest bike accident, but he’s expected to make a full recovery. [Associated Press]

* A Ninth Circuit judge has ruled that an assistant federal public defender and her wife are entitled to federal health benefits. Take that, DOMA. [Courthouse News Service]

* Judy Clarke, one of the nation’s best capital defense lawyers, will be joining Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s legal team. She’s pretty good at keeping people alive, but we’ll see how this one goes for her. [Bloomberg]

* The ABA may do away with faculty tenure requirements for accreditation. No security of position? It looks like there’s a storm coming, law professors, so go get your bread and milk! [National Law Journal]

* Prospective law students are being counseled to take advantage of the smaller applicant pool, but it won’t look so small when they can’t get jobs. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News & World Report]

* “Gay marriage? Hell no, let’s make all marriages civil unions.” Minnesota senators want to put couples on an even playing field — one that isn’t recognized by the government. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

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Caption Contest Finalists: Following Instructions For Dummies

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Last week, we asked readers to submit possible captions for this photo, taken at a law school:

Let’s have a look at what our readers came up with, and then vote on the finalists….

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Non-Sequiturs: 04.29.13

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* The saddest thing about prisons getting rated on Yelp is owning the bar down the street with fewer stars. [Simple Justice]

* Sending “LOL totes glty” is a bad idea. [IT-Lex]

* The chief of the Brooklyn DA’s gang bureau probably should have spent more time with the civil rights bureau. [NY Post]

* People don’t really pay attention to the U.S. News Best Intellectual Property Program rankings — though it’d help if they did. [Science to Law]

* UNLV’s Nancy Rapoport thinks law schools are no better than Enron. That sounds about right. [TaxProf Blog]

* When it comes to the Boston bombings, Logan Beirne answers, “What would George Washington do?” [Reuters]

* Tenure has put a crimp in the ability of law schools to excel in the ranking system that considers publication. [Ramblings on Appeal]

* Kickstarter plug: A progressive Yale student took a year off to make a documentary about a conservative activist group, the Tennessee 9-12 Project, to show civility and respect. [Kickstarter]

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Afternoon Docket: 04.29.13

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A needed essential for Justice Breyer?

Ed. note: Apologies for the technical difficulties that have prevented us from posting until now. Thanks for your patience!

* Attention prospective law school applicants: affirmative action, at least as we currently know it, may not be long for this world. A decision in the Fisher v. University of Texas case is expected as early as this week. Stay tuned. [Reuters]

* Justice Stephen Breyer had to get shoulder replacement surgery after having yet another bike accident (his third, actually). Please — somebody, anybody — get this man some training wheels. Justice is at stake! [New York Times]

* “We’re not going to take it, goodbye.” That’s what retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wishes the high court would have said when it came to the controversial Bush v. Gore case. [Chicago Tribune]

* Thanks to the sequester, the Boston bombings case may turn into a “David and Goliath” situation. Sorry, Dzhokhar, but your defense team may be subject to 15 days of furlough. [National Law Journal]

* George Gallantz, the “founding father” of Proskauer’s sports law practice, RIP. [New York Law Journal]

* Leo Branton Jr., the defense attorney at the helm of the Angela Davis trial, RIP. [New York Times]

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Non-Sequiturs: 04.26.13

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* Yesterday, we shared Paul Caron’s plan to end the sequester by forcing government officials to experience delays due to air traffic control furloughs. Well, Congress voted to end the furloughs. We should have known that once the sequester inconvenienced a member of Congress this would end. [Reuters via Yahoo!]

* Ken Langone does not agree with Richard Farley of Paul Hastings. And tells him so. Loudly. [DealBreaker]

* If you’re looking for CLE credits in Houston, check out this event where you can win a semi-automatic 12-gauge shotgun for your trouble. And it counts for Ethics! [NRA Blog]

* “Izadi suggested she could pay her law school tuition by turning tricks.” Is a pimp really that much worse than Sallie Mae? [Las Vegas Review Journal]

* Overlawyered is now part of the CATO Institute. Enjoy working for the Koch brothers! I hear they’re really easy to work with over there. [Overlawyered]

* Getting tossed from a case for “bad behavior”? That’s the Chicago way! [Chicago Tribune]

* An interview with American Lawyer Editor-in-Chief Robin Sparkman about the newly released Am Law 100 law firm rankings, after the jump….

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Whiny Law Student Gets Publicly Excoriated By ‘Miss Manners’

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We get it: the job market is tough. You’ve sent out résumé after résumé after résumé, and you haven’t even gotten so much as a response. If a response ever comes, it’s too late for your liking. It’s rude. It’s offensive. It’s humiliating. It’s demeaning. It’s insulting. You DESERVE a job. You’ve EARNED it. You’re, dare I say, ENTITLED to a job.

Except you’re just a 1L. If you think you’re entitled to anything at this point, then you’re sorely mistaken. You’re just another whiny law student who thinks that people, even potential employers, should bow to your demands for respect and courtesy. But we don’t need to tell you that — thankfully, Miss Manners already did it for us.

This is what happens when you bring your “woe is me” complaints for civility in the job market to a seasoned etiquette professional….

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