Elie here. Did you know that New York-area law schools charge money for the use of their libraries during bar exam study time?
Did you know that people coming to New York to take the bar are willing to pay for the use of these libraries, thereby avoiding the homeless people masturbating at the New York Public Library?
Did you know that New York Law School, of all places, is probably offering the best library deal?
These are some of the things you’ll learn about in this week’s episode of Mr. Bar Exam….
The deadline for entering the 2012 bar review diaries contest passed on Friday. We received close to 200 submissions and will announce the winners early next week. To hold you over until then, we checked in with last year’s student columnists. And we have some updates!
Back in mid-March, we brought you a story about a law school in Michigan that had been flummoxed by the sun’s wrath. Now, almost like clockwork, just one month later, we’ve got another story about #firstworldproblems coming from a law school in Connecticut.
The school in question is well aware of its climate control problem, “but it has not yet risen to a level of importance to get funding.” You hear that, law students? Pit stains be damned! Your comfort is meaningless, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars that you collectively pay to attend law school are nothing more than an entry fee to an overpriced sauna.
But should we really be surprised? This school already suffered a major rankings fail in 2012, so asking them to turn off the heat on an 80+ degree day might be too much to handle….
I’ve never been a fan of U.S. News obsessing over how much money law schools spend on their facilities. I feel it artificially inflates the cost of going to law school in a digital age where so much of what you need can be found online.
But there are some things that you can’t do online. Not yet at least. Like going to the bathroom. Perhaps if Steve Jobs were still alive, the iPoop and the Waterless iPoop would be just around the corner. But we were robbed of that great man.
Maybe all you need to know about the difference between top law schools and not-so-hot law schools really does come down to toilets. At Harvard, they name them after rich alumni. At North Dakota Law School, they barely have them….
Every year at the end of finals, law students contemplate doing crazy things with their books. While some people want to set them on fire, others want to roll up a page or two and just blaze. These are creative options for creative people.
Others will settle for the simplest solution possible, tossing those babies straight into the nearest trash can. But what happens when a law school does it for you?
If you took the bar exam last month, you might be trying hard to forget the experience, or you might be flying far, far away on an exotic vacation. Maybe you are counting the days until results come out in November, or maybe you’re frantically searching for employment before those organ bill collectors startknocking.
This is the final installment of the Bar Review Diaries. We hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into the lives of three recent law school graduates as they prepared for the bar.
Let’s check in one last time with Mariah, Christopher and Mike, to see where they are headed next.
And if anyone has cool bar trips coming up or strange end-of-summer plans, please share them with us in the comments….
* The hotel maid behind DSK’s extended stay in New York has now sued her alleged attacker. Remember, this is all about the truth. It has nothing to do with money. [CNN]
* Should you be worried about the stock market’s seppuku yesterday? If you like money, then probably. If you like your job as an M&A attorney, then definitely. [The Recorder]
* Illinois is giving sex trafficking victims the chance to vacate their prostitution convictions. Even if Reema Bajaj gets convicted, she still couldn’t use this law to clear her name. [Chicago Sun-Times]
* Therapy dogs aren’t just for law school libraries anymore. Now they’re appearing in courtrooms. But is an adorable dog unfair to defendants? Only if you hate dogs… and justice. [New York Times]
* Frank McCourt is still on deck for his at bat with Bingham McCutchen. The good news is that the Dodgers can keep on sucking in the interim. [Los Angeles Times]
* We’re happy that the Breaking Media dress code doesn’t include “Tube-top Tuesday” and “Wet T-shirt Wednesday.” An employee in Utah claims she isn’t as lucky as us. [Salt Lake Tribune]
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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.
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Elie here. Did you know that New York-area law schools charge money for the use of their libraries during bar exam study time? 
