Welcome to the latest installment of Law Professor Pay Watch. After visiting Texas and Michigan, we’re back on the coasts, this time in sunny southern California.
Los Angeles is home to many celebrities — and we’re not just talking about Hollywood stars. The superb faculty of UCLA School of Law boasts several prominent pundits and public intellectuals.
How much do star bloggers like Eugene Volokh and Stephen Bainbridge earn from their day jobs? What about such academic adversaries as Kimberlé Crenshaw, the critical-race queen, and Richard Sander, a leading opponent of affirmative action?
Forget horse heads — this is what you wake up to if you try to unionize at Burger King.
* Burger King sells burgers by celebrating that they are built with fictional union labor while actively interfering with workers forming real unions. This would be too much hypocrisy for some, but Burger King gets to have it its way. [Buzzfeed]
* I cannot top the subject line from the tipster: “Obama calls the nation to arms on trade secret theft, but the nation is at the mall.” [Orrick]
* Step One: Collect cash from government for doing business in downtown Manhattan. Step Two: “Close” the firm and move all the partners and cases to Blank Rome. Step Three: Refuse to pay back the money. [Thompson Reuters News & Insight]
* This Craigslist job posting under “Legal/Paralegal Jobs” in San Diego: Accidental listing or sadly prophetic commentary on the legal job market? Just in case someone removes the listing, I’ll post a screenshot after the jump…
The ABA agrees that exploitation of law students and other interns is unacceptable; however, the FLSA uncertainty inhibits law firms from offering students the opportunity to work on pro bono matters in a real-life practice setting. …
Furthermore, in the current economic climate with shrunken employment opportunities for law school graduates, hindering the ability of law students and recent graduates to work side-by-side with experienced lawyers who could provide both strong mentoring and favorable substantive references unnecessarily reduces access for future employment prospects.
The appellate court facing the most complex workload in the country is also tiny and overworked. Only the First Circuit has fewer active slots, and with three vacancies, the D.C. Circuit has fewer judges than its sibling courts with 11 active judges.
So it should come as no surprise that some senators are actively trying to shrink the D.C. Circuit.
The crux of their beef is that actually filling the three vacancies on the court would constitute court packing, because no one on the Hill has bothered to pick up an AP U.S. History textbook and figure out what “court packing” means.
But when you strip away the partisan stupidity and actually look at the numbers, there’s a really good argument in favor of “court packing” because this Circuit could use an extra judge or two…
The vast majority of our readers are members of the legal profession in some way — and whether you’re a prospective law student, a current law student, a young associate, or a partner, chances are you’ve all had similar worries about the future and its many uncertainties. Will you be able to find a job? Will you be able to pay off your loans? Will you even enjoy being a lawyer? One thing, however, is for sure: you’d prefer that your children not suffer the same vocational fate as you.
But when it comes to the other members of society, well, they’d just love it if their sons or daughters were to become a lawyer (or marry one). Despite what we know to be true in most cases, it seems that the people who pick up their phones to respond to survey questions have been left in the dark when it comes to the current state of lawyers and their livelihoods.
Take a wild guess at who thinks this career path is still the road to riches….
Republicans can’t make moderate white people afraid of Barack Obama just because he’s black. They’ve tried. And it works on the fringe birther/nutjob element that is already suspicious of people who use polysyllabic words, much less multiculturalism. But with moderate “I can’t watch Fox because the game is on” white folks, all the dog-whistle calls in the world don’t cause racial animosity towards the likeable Barack Obama.
But his black friends are a different story. Or maybe Obama just thinks that voters will be more racist towards blacks without his personal likability? But for whatever reason, Obama has shown no stomach for standing up and defending the black people in his life when the Republican scandal brigade comes for their blood sacrifice.
Remember Jeremiah Wright? If he had been a white preacher to a Republican candidate, he would have gone unnoticed. Instead, he sounded a bit like an angry black man. Obama put that brother on ice. Remember Susan Rice? She did… nothing? She’s not Secretary of State because Obama didn’t want a fight. Hell, Obama didn’t even go to the mattresses for Desiree Rogers, his social secretary who got punked and was replaced by a white woman.
Let’s just say that if I were the first black attorney general, I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of help from the first black president right now…
Move over Prenda, there’s a new IP troll in town and it’s New York State.
Or at least the third-party agency assigned to protect New York’s trademark, and it’s harassing everyone it can find over an iconic image that few would recognize as a trademark.
But what elevates this trolling to a new level is that enforcing this trademark actually frustrates the mission of the holder. And isn’t promoting the business of the holder kind of the whole point of intellectual property protection?
And what really elevates this case is that the IP troll is literally sticking it to the Everyman…
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court released opinions in two habeas cases, McQuiggin v. Perkins and Trevino v. Thaler. The holdings reek of liberal judicial activism, however well-intentioned.
In Perkins, my least favorite of Tuesday’s cases, the Court held that a showing of “actual innocence” is sufficient to circumvent the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act’s (AEDPA) statute of limitations. In effect, a narrow majority decided to judicially amend a validly enacted statute, creating an exception that the majority admits that the statute itself does not contain. On top of that, this particular case may have been a pretty defective vehicle for addressing the limitations question anyway. There’s a pesky matter, discussed at oral argument, about the procedural posture of the case, making it pretty dubious whether the Court should have even gotten to the merits here.
(Cases like Perkins make me want to appropriate my own version of Dan Savage’s “DTMFA” — shorthand for “Dump the Mother-F*cker Already.” Too often, it would be useful to just be able to write “DTMFA” for “DIG the Mother-F*cker Already” for cases that I wish that SCOTUS would dismiss as improvidently granted. But, alas, you probably have to be a syndicated sex columnist for the privilege of coining long-but-useful acronyms.)
* Obama nominates a Bush Republican to head the FBI. James Comey was on all sorts of Bush short lists. Kumbaya. [New York Times]
* A nice summer reminder: this woman didn’t recover damages from Great Adventure water ride injury. Here’s another reminder: Six Flags destroys Disney. [New Jersey Law Journal]
Whenever we talk about the difficulty of being a woman in Biglaw, some guy (it’s almost always “some guy”) makes an unenlightened comment about how women “get” to leave early and go take care of domestic responsibilities while men “have to” stay and do work. People talk about how women will pump out children and have to take care of them while men will miss baseball games to service the client.
The obvious issue with work/life balance for women who are gunning for partner is that there are some weak-ass husbands out there. Men who want to make partner often have wives or partners at home who are happy to take care of the home front. Women who want to make partner are often on their own; their husbands have their own careers to focus on. Even if they marry men with “non-traditional” careers, few husbands want to be known as “just a house husband.”
But maybe career women don’t want house husbands? A new study suggests that a significant minority of women don’t want to work to support a man….
* America, you won’t have Michele Bachmann to kick around anymore! The political equivalent of comic relief announced that she will not seek another term. [CNN]
* Eric Holder testified that he would support reform of the ECPA. Apparently this newfound love of electronic privacy doesn’t extend to the Associated Press. [IT-Lex]
* Atlanta is soon to host its Battle of the (Lawyer) Bands. LawJam 2013 is set to rock Atlanta like a litigious hurricane on June 8. Last year featured bands like Mikey Mel & the JDs, so you have a sense of what you’re getting here. [Atlanta Bar Association]
* The CFTC had no idea how to do its job? Say it ain’t so! [Breaking Energy]
* So the sequester has an advantage! Cocaine is going to get cheaper! [Breaking Defense]
* Paul Caron has acquired a 100 percent ownership share of the Law Professor Blogs Network. Congrats! [TaxProf Blog]
* Woman acquitted of manslaughter responds in the best way ever. Video after the jump…
It’s just nice clothing. There’s nothing to be afraid of.
Are you afraid of fashion? You’re not alone.
Many male lawyers would rather not deal with picking clothes. These attorneys can negotiate billion-dollar deals or address juries without fear, but the concept of “business casual” fills them with terror.
If you count yourself among the fashion-impaired — or if you see yourself as stylish, but in need of a wardrobe expansion — here are two lawyers who can help….
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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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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