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Harvard Law School Agrees To Start Accepting Harvard Students Early IF They Promise To Go Get A Life First

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As many of you know, I went straight through from college to law school without taking any time off. And many of you know that I count this as one of my many mistakes. The people I know who took time off between college and law school came back to law school with an appreciation of school and a focus on what skills they needed to succeed in the real world.

People like me who went straight through tended to start out with a “College II” mentality, got book-raped first semester, and muddled through law school kind of wondering why everything was so boring. In my anecdotal experience, these people disproportionately ended up in Biglaw, because people who get on only one train tend to end up at the same destination.

Given that experience, I think this new pilot program from Harvard Law School could be a very good idea. Harvard Law will now admit Harvard undergraduates after their junior year of college, provided they agree to an automatic, two-year, post-graduation deferment. That’s two years after college where you can work, earn money, and experience the real world outside the ivory tower, all the while knowing that you have Harvard Law to fall back on.

At least, that’s the positive view of the program. Our tipsters point out the cynical side….

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So We’re Not Proud of This, But…

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The settlement with Goldman Sachs was not a glorious episode in the history of the Revenue.

–UK High Court Judge Andrew Nicol, employing the spirit of British understatement in a written opinion dismissing a claim by activists that the tax settlement Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs made with Goldman Sachs in 2010 was an unlawful “sweetheart deal.”

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Survey Points To Managing Partners’ Malaise

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The first quarter of 2013 was not particularly kind to large law firms. There’s no crisis at hand, but things aren’t exactly great either, with demand registering as slightly sluggish.

Citi Private Bank’s Law Firm Group, which possesses great insight into the legal industry because of Citi’s role as a leading law firm lender, just released its quarterly survey of managing partners’ confidence. The results are consistent with the general sense of “meh” that we’ve been anecdotally picking up from partners we hear from….

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Sociopath Law Professor Admits To Being A Sociopath

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Have you ever thought that your law professor was a sadistic bastard? Have you ever felt like the prosecutor across the table was an emotional black hole? Would it freak you out if you turned out to be clinically right?

We’ve talked a lot about mental health recently, from panic buttons to Asperger’s (or autism spectrum disorder, if you prefer). But today we’ve come across a truly chilling article from a law professor who admits that she’s a sociopath and writes about how law is the perfect field for people like her.

I’m turning the snark meter way down on this post because, well, I don’t want to be murdered…

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Law Student Sues Law School For Implying He’s Litigious

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Law schools have been sued before. Often, we here at ATL, applaud those efforts. It’s a David and Goliath undertaking to bring a school literally filled with lawyers to court.

But this lawsuit has a little less “heroic struggle” to it. Suing because a dean accused you of being too quick to accuse others of acting in bad faith? Maybe he hasn’t taken torts yet, because truth is a defense…

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Righteous Indignation: On the IRS Abuses and the Banality of Bureaucratic Evil

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Righteous Indignation, our new column for conservative-minded lawyers.

You probably saw this week’s topic coming. Until the folks at One First Street start tossing Elie and me some fresh meat to tussle over, my indignation — righteous as it is — must be directed elsewhere. Unless EM wants to argue that, when SCOTUS decided that Pelkey’s claim was not preempted by federal law in Dan’s City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey, the Nine were, like, racist or something. (Query: what race is Dan? Where was the supplemental briefing?!)

So. The IRS’s targeting of conservative groups applying for 501(c)(4) status. I couldn’t not talk about this scandal, right?

Truly, I kept avoiding devoting this week’s column to the IRS abuses. Seriously.

For one thing, I was not initially so scandalized by this supposed scandal, though I was appropriately dismayed. Second, this story is still developing. So, I hereby reserve my right to be feverishly pissed off later….

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Know Your Rights, Take Your Shirt Off

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The weather is finally heating up here in New York City, so this seems like a good time to remind everybody of their rights to unburden themselves of oppressive upper body clothing.

It’s cool, it’s for charity.

It’s legal, and if the cops hassle you about it, you might be able to really cash in…

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Morning Docket: 05.16.13

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You never really get away with anything in this world. You can’t outrun life in a Bronco.

* Schools with the most racially diverse law school faculties didn’t do well in the U.S. News Rankings or the ATL one. [New York Law Journal]

* Jodi Arias news. Something about the death penalty. I didn’t really read the article. Remember, every time you click on something about Jodi Arias, God kills a kitten. [USAToday]

* Obama merely fired the acting IRS chief, Steve Miller. He didn’t execute him in Times Square with his bare hands, so cable news outlets will still have something to bitch about. [CNN]

* How happy is Bloomberg that between the IRS and the DOJ their ridiculous scandal is kind of flying under the radar? [Reuters]

* The Juice, is loose, on the witness stand. Not really loose, he’s in shackles and way too fat now to fit gloves of any kind. [ESPN]

* And now it’s time for the House Republicans to be confronted with their own hypocrisy. In response to the DOJ subpoenas Obama wants to pass “media shield” legislation which would protect reporters from this sort of thing. But will the House GOP pass something that actually limits the power of the government to spy on people? Will the House pass any legislation that the President will actually sign these next four years? Dilemmas, dilemmas. [Wall Street Journal]

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How To Handle A Final Exam Screw-Up: Law Professors Take Note

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Look, we can’t have a final exam screw-up season without something happening at NYU Law School. For some reason NYU is like the ground zero of exam mishaps.

But not all screw-ups are created equally. Today we have a story of a professor who didn’t screw-up his final exams out of laziness or carelessness. Instead there was an honest clerical mistake. One that the professor took responsibility for and moved to correct as quickly and as equitably as he could.

Mistakes are going to happen, but law professors need to take this guy’s class in how to handle them…

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Non-Sequiturs: 05.15.13

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* New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg commissioned a report on SDNY Judge Shira Scheindlin in advance of her ruling on the NYPD’s controversial “hey, you’re black, come get a pat down” “stop-and-frisk” policy. According to the report, Judge Scheindlin is biased because she ruled against the NYPD in search and seizure cases 60% of the time. An alternative read is that the NYPD is really bad at following the Constitution. Occam’s Razor strikes again. [New York Daily News]

* STRIKE!: Legal Services NYC walked off the job this morning after rejecting new contract offers. [New York Law Journal]

* Pentagon Papers lawyer James C. Goodale thinks President Obama, whose administration seized phone records of journos, is worse than President Nixon, who tried to charge the New York Times for conspiracy to commit espionage. Because hyperbole is the awesomest thing in the world! [New York Observer]

* A surplus of lawyers over law jobs exists in every state, and for most states the surplus has grown. I’m sure third-party litigation financing will solve all of this though. [Am Law Daily]

* Tennessee law grad and judicial affairs director fired amid allegations she hooked up with Tennessee basketball player Trae Golden. [MStars News]

* After revelations earlier that Arkansas wasn’t “buying American” and instead getting its death penalty drugs from the UK, the pharmaceutical company announced it would cut off the supply, joining a number of drug companies that are practically slowing executions around the country by limiting supply. [YubaNet]

* After the post, check out the Biglaw firm using 4square way too much…

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Career Alternatives for Attorneys: Rock Star

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Rock concerts are more fun than closings.

A fair number of lawyers or law school graduates work in creative fields. Over the years, “recovering lawyers” have worked as writers, actors, and even painters (such as Henri Matisse and Wassily Kandinsky).

But you won’t find many lawyers who are rock stars — and I’m not talking about tax or securities law “rock stars,” but actual, literal rock stars. The free-association creativity needed to make music goes against the inside-the-box thinking prized in the legal profession. Music also involves math, and we all know that lawyers — even lawyers for the IRS — are “not good at math.”

There are, however, exceptions to every rule. A few folks with legal training have entered the music world — including Julio Iglesias, Rubén Blades, and today’s “stealth lawyer,” an attorney turned rock star….

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House Rules: Franz Would Be Proud…

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Imagine that you are an associate at a law firm who is taken out for the “last drink.” And you are forced to deplete your savings, and now you can’t pay your bills, and your credit score suffers — greatly.

Now, imagine that you land an interview. And the potential job has a box on its application that you check — allowing them to check your credit. Ding! So, essentially you can’t get a job because you lost a job, and now you need a job to cover your bills that have accrued since you lost the first job.

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