Sarah’s view of America is primitive. You’re either a pointy-headed graduate of Harvard Law School or you’re eviscerating animals for fun, which she presents as somehow more authentic.
— Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, discussing Sarah Palin.
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Hopefully you paid attention during middle school sex-ed, because you’re unlikely to learn about the birds and bees at law school.
According a recently released survey by Law Students for Reproductive Justice, only 18 percent of U.S. law schools have offered reproductive rights law courses over the last seven years. More specifically: there have been 37 separate courses and instructor-led reading groups taught at least once, offered at 32 schools located in 17 different states.
Is that good? As future legislators, jurors, advocates or defenders of reproductive rights, do you think you need formal training in the subject? Or is study of the overarching foundations of our legal system sufficient to allow you to take the next Planned Parenthood case that comes into town — or at least talk intelligently about it at parties?
* SCOTUS could be prepared to uphold Arizona immigration law. Apparently federal law has about the same preemptive effect as the Cravath bonus. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Dahlia Lithwick will be teaching a class at the University of Georgia School of Law. Emory must feel a little bit like Cravath right now; I bet they didn’t see this good fortune going to a competitor.[Atlanta Journal Constitution]
* New York City is not one of America’s most obscene cities, those sounds coming out of the corner offices in your non-Cahill firms notwithstanding. [Business Insider]
* Law professors protest over the plight of unskilled hotel workers. Finding a place that doesn’t exploit its labor force is like trying to find a Cahill in a haystack. [National Law Journal]
* Wikileaks reveals some disturbing “boy parties.” Wish we had some Wikileaks about the cables Evan Chesler is sending right now. [The Legal Satyricon]
* Depositions are a time to man up, not shrink back like Cravath during bonus season. [What About Clients?]
Hey now, this is just coming into our tips box, but we’ve now got two sources reporting that Cahill Gordon will be giving between $15,000 and $20,000 in bonuses to all associate classes this month.
And then giving bonuses according to the standard 2010 Cravath scale in January — “at least” the Cravath scale, according to our tipsters.
UPDATE: We’re up to more sources than I can count. This is solid; Cahill is blowing up the bonus market.
So, some Cahill Gordon associates are going to take home total bonus money that’s $20,000 $35,000 (see the UPDATES after the jump) more than Cravath associates and associates at firms that blindly followed Cravath.
Cahill Gordon, the new definition of competitive market salary in New York City!
But wait, there’s more. Because of the mid-year bonuses that Cahill associates already received, they’re actually making even more money than most of their Biglaw peers (there are UPDATES after the jump)…
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Cahill Gordon DESTROYS the Cravath Bonus”
Does Polly wanna cracker -- or to be a witness to a crime?
I overuse the words “horrifying” and “terrifying.” Most people do, but I blog, so I probably do it more than most.
But this right here, this is truly horrifying. This is something out of the movie Seven. I’m going to have nightmares over this. And now, so will you.
Let’s check out the allegations….
Biglaw isn’t all about high-stakes mergers and bet-the-company litigation. Many Biglaw firms take their commitment to pro bono very seriously. Obviously, these firms need to pay the bills, first and foremost. But when they can, many firms do try to give back.
As many of you already know, Skadden takes that commitment quite a bit further, with its Skadden Fellows program. We highlight this worthy program every year. The Skadden Fellowships are for law school graduates who want to devote their lives to public service, and the firm makes a major financial commitment to its fellows. From the Skadden Fellows website:
Fellowships are awarded for two years. Skadden provides each Fellow with a salary and pays all fringe benefits to which an employee of the sponsoring organization would be entitled. For those Fellows not covered by a law school low income protection plan, the firm will pay a Fellow’s law school debt service for the tuition part of the loan for the duration of the fellowship. The 2011 class of Fellows brings to 620 the number of academically outstanding law school graduates and judicial clerks the firm has funded to work full-time for legal and advocacy organizations.
It’s a sweet gig if you can get it.
And if you take a look at the list of Fellows — perhaps you know some of them? — you’ll notice that quite a few of them attend the top law schools in the country….
Continue reading “Congratulations to the 2011 Skadden Fellows”
What should a law student do when somebody steals his lunch? Lunch thieves are notoriously hungry; they have no shame when it comes to satisfying their need for other people’s food. And they are sneaky little people, always ready to take your well-prepared sandwich within minutes (or, you know, hours and hours) after you leave it in a communal refrigerator.
So what can law students do against such reckless hate? At Michigan Law, two years ago, the victim of this dastardly crime took to the student listserve and proceeded to excoriate the anonymous person who stole his lunch.
At Boston University Law School, the victim decided against hiding behind a computer screen. Instead he left a note, a really angry note, promising immediate punishment to the lunch thief — by his hand or the hands of fate…
Continue reading “BU Law Student Threatens Beatings and Death to (Non-Existent) Lunch Thief”
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This morning the United States Senate voted to convict Judge G. Thomas Porteous of Louisiana on all four articles of impeachment he faced. These convictions will remove him from his lifetime seat on the federal bench, making him only the eighth federal judge in U.S. history to suffer this fate, and strip him of the $174,000 pension he would have otherwise enjoyed.
Article I accused Judge Porteous, 63, of bringing the federal judiciary “into scandal and disrepute,” as a result of his “corrupt financial relationship” with attorneys appearing before him (who gave him “gifts”). The vote was unanimous: 96-0. Ouch.
Apparently the senators were not persuaded by Professor Jonathan Turley’s argument that Judge Porteous (E.D. La.) wasn’t guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, but simply “something of a moocher.” Think Kato Kaelin, but in a black robe.
Judge Porteous fared a bit better on the other three articles of impeachment….
Continue reading “Senate Votes to Remove Judge Porteous from the Bench”
Yesterday, University of Delaware President Patrick Harker announced that the university is thinking about founding a law school. It would be Delaware’s first public law school — Widener Law School is a private institution.
It will be some time before the proposed law school is ready for approval by the Delaware Board of Trustees. Law school advocates need to do a feasibility study and submit a business plan to see if the state can afford the new school. Nobody requires the law school to submit any kind of “business plan” for how graduates of the proposed law school will get jobs that pay enough to cover their debt burdens. Once again, graduate outcomes are completely ancillary to the discussion of whether or not a new law school makes sense.
If they jump through all of the hoops, the president hopes the new law school will be up and running by the fall of 2015. Harker’s letter to the University of Delaware community makes it sound like he hopes the new law school will be one of the legacies of his administration.
The legacy of future graduates from Delaware Law is not something anybody seems to give a damn about…
Continue reading “University of Delaware Starts the New Law School Process”
Lawrence Taylor
* Lawrence Taylor’s lawyers accuse cops of false start in their arrest of Taylor for statutory rape. [New York Daily News]
* Listen, we know Julian Assange did something illegal. We just need to do a helluva lot of research to figure out what it is! And your constant, y’know, questions and stuff aren’t going to help us any. So why don’t you make like Onyx and Bacdafucup?! [New York Times]
* Joe Miller’s like the Energizer Bunny, he keeps sucking and sucking and… [Los Angeles Times]
* Is Allen Stanford too hopped up on goofballs to stand trial? [WSJ Law Blog]
* Cybernews, iNerds! The FDA isn’t allowed to block the import of e-cigarettes! Totally Macintosh! [Reuters]
* Today is the first of many days in which Arizona must put up or ¡CALLATE LA BOCA! in front of The Supremes. [USA Today]
Embarcadero Center (at right): Skadden's soon-to-be-former S.F. home.
Late last week, word started to leak out that Skadden Arps plans to close its San Francisco office, by the end of June 2011. A meeting was held on Friday where the closure was announced to the office. The S.F. office is essentially being folded into the firm’s Silicon Valley outpost.
Some of the initial reactions expressed concern. “Unclear with respect to job security,” said one source. “My cynical side wonders if this isn’t layoffs in disguise,” said another.
But further examination of the situation suggests that this is, as some might say, no big deal….
Continue reading “Skadden Takes Its Heart from San Francisco — and Closes Its S.F. Office”
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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 seven years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
It’s that time of year again when JDs are starting to apply for 2L summer jobs and 2L summers are deciding which practice area to focus on.
For those JDs with an interest in potentially lateraling to or transferring to Asia in the future, please feel free to reach out to Kinney for advice on firm choices, interviewing and practice choices, relating to future marketability in Asia, or for a general discussion on your particular Asia markets of interest. This is of course a free of cost service for those who some years in the future may be our future industry contacts or perhaps even clients.
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The choices a JD makes during their IL and 2L summers and 2L falls can have an enormous affect on their future marketability in Asia, should they be interested in such a move.
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