Stanford Law School

At Stanford Law School, It’s a Whole New Game of Quarters

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Stanford_Law_School_Logo.pngStanford Law School is one of the best law schools in the country. SLS is ranked #3 in the latest U.S. News law school rankings. Stanford graduates are generally intelligent, capable, and employable individuals (with some exceptions).
But are they smart enough to miss the first few weeks of Bar/Bri? The law school has changed its academic calendar to a quarters system. Stanford University already followed a quarters system, but the law school had been on a semester-based academic calendar.
The change could result in some conflict between 3L classes and the beginning of bar review courses. One student explains:

Stanford Law School changed to the quarter system, leaving their students in very precarious position vis a vis the bar exam. Classes do not end until several weeks after the California bar review courses start. Aside from the fact that this puts an extra burden on all SLS 3Ls, who will have to study for the bar at the same time they are attending classes and studying for finals, it creates a real mess for those students who are not remaining, or cannot remain in the immediate area. to study for and take the California bar.

This is because the bar review curricula differ from location to location. Accordingly, a student who is planning to take the bar review course somewhere other than in the Bay Area cannot take the first few weeks of the bar review course in the Stanford area and then move to wherever it is they are planning to move and finish up the bar review course at that location. Moreover, many of the students have leases on their apartments that end before the bar exam; thus, even those students who have the flexibility and financial wherewithal to change their relocation plans and remain in the Stanford area through the bar exam may not have any place to live (and how many of those do you think there are?) Stanford Law School refuses to address this issue head on, attempting to placate their students with vague promises that they’re “looking into it.”

We spoke to officials at Stanford Law School, and it appears that the school has “look[ed] into it.” Overall, the school feels that the benefits outweigh the burdens, and the burdens can be mitigated.
Look at it from Stanford’s perspective, after the jump.

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Closing the Door Loop On Cristina Warthen

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Cristina Schultz.jpegFor those of you considering prostitution to pay off your law school debts (you know who you are), consider the cautionary tale of Cristina Warthen. As we have previously reported, Cristina graduated from Stanford Law School in 2001. But instead of going into Biglaw, Cristina adopted the porn name “Brazil” and turned herself into a high-priced escort.
Granted, if she graduated today, Cristina might have been able to get some public interest deferral money for her “service.” But this was a long time ago.
And for a while Cristina was a smashing success. She even landed a rich husband, AskJeeves founder David Warthen.
But the Warthens were hit hard by the recession, and the couple split. Meanwhile, the government came looking for $313,000 in back taxes from Cristina’s sultry side business.
The ABA Journal reports that there is a resolution in Cristina’s case. What sentence did she get?

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 8.17 and 8.24: Astrophysical

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champagne glasses small.jpgLEWW is fascinated by ATL’s Douchiest Law School contest. Official results haven’t been announced yet, but based on our preliminary read, Yale seems to have notched a decisive first-round victory over the University of Texas, and it looks like Harvard has trounced UCLA. Stanford Law School, however, appears to have been decisively out-douched by lowly Georgetown. Conclusion: The relationship between douchiness and prestige is not linear.
This week’s weddings feature two YLS grads and two SLS grads, so these lawyer newlyweds are undeniably prestigious. But are they also representative of their respective institutions’ reputations for d-baggery? We’ll let you make the call.
Here are the couples:

1. Wendy Katz and Matthew Waxman
2. Megan Wall-Wolff and Joshua Younger
3. Julia Kripke and Matthew Kellogg

Read all about these couples and vote for your favorite, after the jump.

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 7.12: French Kissing

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champagne glasses small.jpgRejoice, wedding fans! We have some compelling mid-summer material for you this week: Wachtell, SCOTUS, lesbians, French nobility — read on for the details on all of that and more, as reported in the New York Times and filtered by us.
Our finalist couples:

1. Rebecca Gutner and Rodman Forter Jr.
2. Laura Hammond and Christopher Hemphill
3. Laure de Vulpillières and Vanessa Dillen

Admire these couples’ achievements, after the jump.

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 6.7: Matched

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champagne glasses small.jpg
Another week, another NYT Vows column comparing the bride to a giant coniferous tree (“The bride stood stately and erect, echoing the Redwoods that surrounded them . . . “). Seriously, could they maybe assign Vows once a month to a real writer, just to make it a little less chirpy and insipid? What about Maureen Dowd? What about Paul Krugman?
Here are this week’s finalists, including the tree-like bride:

1. Alizah Diamond and Itai Maytal
2. Stefanie Schneider and David Alpert
3. Anya Emerson and Jonah Staw

After the jump, our non-chirpy analysis of these couples.

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Disbarred Stanford Grad Trades Counsel for Coitus
And is now trying to set up shop in South Carolina?

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Stanford_Law_School_Logo.pngWhen we first got a tip that a Florida lawyer had been disbarred for making a client pay her fees with sexual favors, we thought, “Ho hum. Another crazy Florida lawyer.” Then we Googled the pro boner attorney, James Harvey Tipler, and found out that the low-life lawyer has a sterling Stanford degree.
According to his Justia profile and his listing on the California Bar Association website, Tipler is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Law School. We hope this doesn’t make Stanford fall even lower in the U.S. News rankings.
Tipler is not the first Stanford Law graduate to get mixed up in sex work. But making an 18-year-old client pay for legal work on her parental custody case with sexual favors is a new low.
From the Florida Supreme Court order disbarring Tipler:

Tipler charged his client a fee of $2,300 and entered into a fee agreement with her that allowed a “credit of $200 for each time she engaged in sex with Respondent” and a “$400 credit if she arranged for other females to have sex with him.” For his misdeeds, Tipler was charged with racketeering and four counts of prostitution. He ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of solicitation of prostitution.

Fellatio in exchange for filings was not Tipler’s only offense. He’s gotten into trouble in many other ways, and not just in Florida. He’s got a record in California and Alabama, and we suspect he may be trying to set up shop in South Carolina now. More after the jump.

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And is now trying to set up shop in South Carolina?“

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Musical Chairs: Judge Michael McConnell to step down and go to Stanford

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michael mcconnell.jpgStanford Law School just issued a press release announcing that Judge Michael McConnell of the 10th Circuit will be joining the school’s faculty in the fall. McConnell hails from Utah and was on Bush’s Supremes short list in 2005. From the press release:

McConnell will step down from his role on the bench to rejoin the legal academy and direct the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.
McConnell is widely regarded as one of the nation’s top judges and most distinguished constitutional law scholars. He has written broadly on many aspects of the Constitution but is best known for his work on freedom of religion–a critical area of constitutional law that he effectively redefined before ascending the bench. McConnell was appointed to the Denver-based Tenth Circuit in 2002 by President George W. Bush.

This is great news for Stanford, but surprising news from McConnell, who had already lined up his clerks for 2009-2010. McConnell is a highly-regarded judge who is reputed to be great to work for and has been known to feed clerks to SCOTUS in the past. This must come as a big disappointment for the four clerks who had been slated to work with him. David Tighe, the 10th Circuit’s spokesman, says he’s unsure of the would-have-been clerks’ plans. Well, it’s easy to get a job nowadays, right?
In a press release [PDF] from the 10th Circuit, McConnell says:

“The opportunity to serve on the Tenth Circuit has been a great privilege and one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I will especially miss working with my colleagues on the court, whose friendship, collegiality, and commitment to upholding law and justice are a model and an inspiration. But my first love remains in teaching and scholarship. Especially at this time of grave international and domestic challenges and transformation, I want to contribute more openly to debate, scholarly analysis, and public understanding of the governing principles of the American Republic.”

Unsaid is that a Stanford salary trumps that from the 10th Circuit. And that McConnell’s SCOTUS dreams died along with Obama’s winning the election.
After the jump, we’ve got McConnell’s resignation letter to President Obama.

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Larry Lessig Defends Pirates

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Copyright_night_ripper_illegal_art.jpgStanford law professor Larry Lessig had an editorial in the Wall Street Journal’s weekend edition, “In defense of piracy.” Lessig starts off hating on the lawyers who went after the mother in the dancing baby/YouTube/Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” case. (Background here.)

How is it that sensible people, people no doubt educated at some of the best universities and law schools in the country, would come to think it a sane use of corporate resources to threaten the mother of a dancing 13-month-old? What is it that allows these lawyers and executives to take a case like this seriously, to believe there’s some important social or corporate reason to deploy the federal scheme of regulation called copyright to stop the spread of these images and music?

The answer: Crazy copyright law.

Lessig goes on to defend others whose creativity is derived from others’ creativity, like Danger Mouse and mash-up artist Girl Talk, whose latest album samples from 300 different songs. No rights acquired.

Midway through, the editorial goes into “Braveheart” mode. There’s a war going on, says Lessig– the “copyright wars.” Kids these days are sharing copyrighted material through peer-to-peer networks, while the art world is embracing a rampant remix culture.

This war must end. It is time we recognize that we can’t kill this creativity. We can only criminalize it. We can’t stop our kids from using these tools to create, or make them passive. We can only drive it underground, or make them “pirates.” And the question we as a society must focus on is whether this is any good. Our kids live in an age of prohibition, where more and more of what seems to them to be ordinary behavior is against the law. They recognize it as against the law. They see themselves as “criminals.” They begin to get used to the idea.

That recognition is corrosive. It is corrupting of the very idea of the rule of law. And when we reckon the cost of this corruption, any losses of the content industry pale in comparison.

That’s heavy. Lessig’s suggestions for ending the war, saving our lawless kids, and encouraging creativity, after the jump.

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Ask Jeeves: Why Was Your Wife (Stanford Law ’01) Indicted for Tax Evasion on Prostitution Proceeds?

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Cristina Schultz.jpegWe recently reported on Stanford Law School’s new grading system. Does it involve dollar bills? Or leaving book prizes on bedside tables?

Cristina Warthen (née Cristina Schultz) — aka the Stanford Law Escort, now married to David Warthen, the filthy rich co-founder of Ask Jeeves — is back in the news. From the San Jose Mercury News (via TaxProf Blog):

A Stanford law school graduate suspected of paying off her costly student loans by running a high-priced escort service has now been hit with federal tax evasion charges.

In court papers filed Tuesday in San Jose federal court, prosecutors allege that Cristina Warthen failed to pay taxes on more than $133,000 she earned as a prostitute in 2003, jetting off as a call girl for clients in Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York and other cities. The government has charged her with felony tax evasion for failing to pay about $25,000 in federal income taxes.

Warthen’s business as a reputed high-priced hooker was first revealed several years ago, when the federal government searched her then-home in Oakland and seized more than $61,000 in cash suspected to be linked to her escort business. Court papers allege that starting in 2001, Warthen, then Cristina Schultz, used the name “Brazil” and advertised her escort services on a Web site, TouchofBrazil.net.

Brazil. Great beaches. And waxing.

A little bit more, after the jump.

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Grade Reform Reaction Roundup

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Harvard Law School seal logo.jpgLast week we told you that Harvard and Stanford law schools were enacting sweeping grade reform. Reactions came in from students and alumni from many top schools. One close friend emailed:

If Harvard had this when we were in school, I’d be emailing you from DPW right now.

Suffice it to say, the friend emailed from a little further down the Vault list.

But to be clear, HLS doesn’t have anything just yet. Dean Kagan announced, “the new classifications, much as at Yale and Stanford, will be Honors-Pass-Low Pass-Fail.” She did not speak on the crucial question of how honors would be determined.

On the other hand, Stanford did announce precisely how their honors would be determined (“book prizes”). Some commenters criticized the decision because it could not be mapped onto a traditional four-point system:

The important issue with any grading system is whether the grades can be aggregated into one number–the GPA–and the students ranked on that basis. The A-F system is mapped onto the 0-4.0 scale (or 0-8, at HLS, until now). The HP-F system is not mapped onto any numerical scale. This makes it impossible to precisely rank students (without developing your own formula).

HLS could still end up with a four-point system of some description. As one reader pointed out:

Honors = A

Pass = B

Low Pass = C

Fail = Elie

Unless you believe the deans’ quest for “pedagogical excellence,” there is an open question as to why two top institutions would radically change how law students are judged.

Possible answers after the jump.

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