Pop Quiz, hotshot: You’re a law school dean with a graduating class of 3Ls who aren’t able to find jobs upon completion of the expensive education you’ve provided. U.S. News is breathing down your neck, asking for “employed upon graduation” statistics. You’re terrified of plummeting in the rankings and losing your job, and you know better than anybody how difficult it is to find a job with a J.D. on your resume right now.
What do you do? What do you do?
Well, if you’re an actor that now isn’t even as accomplished as Sandra freaking Bullock, you probably start popping caps at your unemployed 3Ls. Anything to reduce that denominator.
But if you’re Rebecca H. White, dean of the University of Georgia Law School, a smart move is to start openly begging your alumni to help you out.
That’s precisely what Dean White did …
A few months back, the Student Bar Association at Northwestern University School of Law got its panties in a bunch over inappropriate language and the “unthinking use of stereotypes.” Saying that you were “raped” by an exam, for example, was offensive to some on campus, said the SBA. (They preferred that Northwestern students engage only in consensual test-taking.)
At the time, we asked:
Is there an epidemic of vulgarity at Northwestern that the SBA is desperately trying to stop?
Apparently so. The school is gearing up for its Barristers’ Ball, and students are offended by language all over again.
The vulgar words this time?
Dean Van Zandt’s presentation was thoughtful and thought-provoking. He analyzed a number of recent reforms made by leading law schools. He also explained the changes that Northwestern Law School has made to its academic program.
One of his most interesting tidbits was the starting salary that would constitute a “break-even point” for going to law school. In other words, what salary would you have to earn upon graduation in order to make going to law school an economically rational decision?
If you have friends at Northwestern Law School, there’s no need to worry about them. This morning’s situation with a gunman — er, man with a gun — has been resolved, without incident or injury.
Here’s the latest update from the Northwestern University website (at 1:30 p.m. Chicago time):
Chicago campus buildings open
All buildings on Northwestern’s Chicago campus, including all Law School buildings — Rubloff, Levy-Mayer and McCormick — are now open. An intensive search of the buildings on the Chicago campus was conducted but no one matching the description of the man reported with a gun was found. The investigation into the incident is continuing.
A recap of events, a description of the man, and commentary from Northwestern law students, after the jump.
Developing; we’ll bring you more as we get it. From a source on the scene (as of 11:57 a.m. Eastern time):
You’ve probably heard by now, but the place is on lockdown, no one is allowed to leave. The place is swarming with fuzz. A good portion of the classes are under their desks.
Yet through it all, the teachers keep teaching and the gunners keep gunning. In these economic times, the choice between a bullet and a B-minus is certainly a tough one.
Sometimes I find myself recycling my own material. I’ll make a joke in front of one group of friends, they’ll laugh, and I’ll use the same joke in front of a different group of friends. The second audience can’t know that I’ve already used the joke with a different audience, lest I be exposed as uninteresting and comedically lazy. One time I told the same joke at the same person’s birthday party two years in a row. Not good.
But I learned an important lesson, one I’m sure that an NYU visiting professor is also about to learn. While at Northwestern, this professor gave out practice contracts questions to his class there. This year at NYU, the professor decided to use some of the exact same practice questions, but this time on the actual exam.
Obviously, the students who had seen the practice questions had a huge advantage over the students who did not. That’s probably why the NYU administration got involved.
The email from Vice Dean Liam Murphy, after the jump.
On Friday, we told you that the Northwestern Law School Student Bar Association wanted people to watch their language come exam time. In a letter to all students, the SBA told the student body about the kind of language that would not be tolerated:
Therefore, to be clear, saying things like “that’s so gay”, “that exam raped me”, or any racial or sexual epithet, are inappropriate and unacceptable. Accordingly, we ask that every student be cognizant of the critical role you play in maintaining NUSL’s vibrant diverse, collegial and supportive student culture and refrain from using such language.
The response to the SBA’s email has been overwhelming. Over the weekend, Above the Law readers offered every version of “This [protected class] exam [violated me sexually] in my [orifice of choice]” known to man. If the SBA’s letter was meant to inspire civility and tolerance, it was an epic fail.
Which Northwestern SBA members have taken responsibility for the letter? Which students want to stand by the opinions the board disseminated school-wide?
So far, none of the Northwestern SBA members claim responsibility for the message. In fact, finding a Northwestern student representative is more difficult than finding a job in this depressed economy. Above the Law reached out to the SBA president, but he has not responded to our request for comment.
It’s a bit surprising that after so publicly asking the student body to keep it clean, the SBA is suddenly keeping very quiet. Shouldn’t they use this as an opportunity to disseminate their message to a larger audience?
Others at Northwestern are talking, however. And tipsters tell us that this isn’t the first time that the current SBA has sent around a plea for civility in speech. Details after the jump.
It’s exam time. As we all know, stressed out law students tend to have colorful phrases about difficult exams. There’s a common, sometimes sexually charged vernacular. “That exam raped me,” or “I made property my bitch,” are things you’re likely to hear on campus around this time.
Well, the Student Bar Association at Northwestern University School of Law wants students to watch their language this exam period.
After the jump, check out the warning Northwestern students received from their student representatives.
A couple of days ago, we mentioned the new Super Lawyers Law School Rankings. The list ranks law schools by their number of Super Lawyer alumni. At the time, we noted that a potential flaw with the magazine’s methodology was that it is just looking at raw numbers. The rankings aren’t adjusted for class size. Northwestern Law placed #18 on the list. That’s not too bad if you care about things like rankings. The school placed higher than other traditional Top-14 law schools like Stanford, Duke, and Cornell.
But Northwestern Law Dean David E. Van Zandt does care about rankings. He cares about them a great deal. And while #18 is certainly respectable, it wasn’t quite enough for Dean Van Zandt. Here’s part of his email to Northwestern law students:
As you know, I am a proponent of rankings in general and believe they provide a useful source of consumer information for applicants as well as employers. While their methodology needs improving, I applaud Super Lawyers Magazine for developing a ranking that is based on career performance outputs.
So — in a brilliant exercise of Descartian rationale — Dean Van Zandt changed the list. He (or somebody that works for him) went and changed the methodology to make Northwestern look even more awesome.
Let’s check out Super Lawyers according to Van Zandt after the jump.
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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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Pop Quiz, hotshot: You’re a law school dean with a graduating class of 3Ls who aren’t able to find jobs upon completion of the expensive education you’ve provided. U.S. News is breathing down your neck, asking for “employed upon graduation” statistics. You’re terrified of plummeting in the rankings and losing your job, and you know better than anybody how difficult it is to find a job with a J.D. on your resume right now.
Continue reading “Law Schools Take Remedial Measures to Hire Students”
