Alan Dershowitz

Socratic Method Linked To Female Underachievement in Law School

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The Socratic method is the bane of every law student. If executed through cold calling, it meant you sat there knowing that at any given moment you could be called upon to publicly humiliate yourself in front of your peers. Even if the process relied on voluntary participation, there was a sense of trepidation attached to both talking and remaining silent.

Some insufferable douches people enjoyed the “law school experience” of the Socratic method, either because they were academic superstars or otherwise possessed a massive ego and the misapprehension that anyone cared about their opinion.

Here’s how much the Socratic method sucks: it’s named after a guy that everyone thought was so much of a prick they made him kill himself for cold calling everyone in Athens.

There is an argument that the system itself disadvantages women. But “disadvantages women” at what? Being a law student or being a lawyer? Because those are two very different things…

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Non-Sequiturs: 05.07.13

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* A senior litigation associate at Paul Hastings, Ryan Nier, has decided to participate in something called the Death Race, and it has nothing to do with the drive for partnership. This Death Race is 50-mile mountain endurance/obstacle race that takes somewhere between 24 and 48 straight hours to finish. Only a handful complete the race every year, and Nier is determined to be one of them. From what we’re told, Paul Hastings has been entirely supportive of Nier, which is cool because he’s using it as an opportunity to raise money for charity. But who knows how supportive they’ll be when they realize he won’t have Blackberry access on top of the mountain for 48 hours. For more information about the Death Race, check out the website. [The Death Race]

* Law student golfing across the U.S. So, I take it summer associate gigs are still scarce? [Golf.com]

* “Guess What the Air Force’s Chief of Sexual Assault Prevention Was Just Arrested For…” Hard to top that headline. [Lowering the Bar]

* Harper Lee suing over “To Kill a Mockingbird” (affiliate link), alleging that the son-in-law of her literary agent botched the copyright. *Insert cheap Atticus Finch joke here* [Washington Post]

* Gigi Jordan case gets even uglier with misconduct charges flying around. [Thompson Reuters News & Insight]

* Dr. Phil is suing Gawker alleging that the website posted a video of the pop psychologist’s interview with Manti Te’o, stifling ratings. So Dr. Phil thinks his audience strongly overlaps with Gawker’s. I’m incredulous. [Yahoo! Sports]

* This is why an over-aggressive cease and desist letter can get you into more trouble. Enter the world of the “miniature war-gaming community.” [Popehat]

* A guide to the questions applicants need to be able to answer at OCI. The best? “Describe a situation when you had to think on your feet to extricate yourself from a difficult situation.” This provides insight into how the applicant will deal with virtually every situation that ever comes up in Biglaw. [Ms. JD]

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When a Law School Honors a Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Expect Protests!

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You wouldn’t think a Nobel Peace Prize winner would rile up a vocal minority, but you’d be wrong. Tomorrow, the Journal of Conflict Resolution at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law plans to honor former President Jimmy Carter with the International Advocate for Peace Award.

That seems fair, since the Nobel committee already decided he’s got the peace-y bona fides. And it’s not like they just give that award to people who blow up countries or launch drone wars or anything.

But some people are just not happy about it and they’ve taken their (largely anonymous) complaints to the Interwebs, and they found their way into the ATL inbox. I guess the Simpsons warned us that he was “history’s greatest monster.”

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Reversal of Fortune? Alan Dershowitz Loses in Las Vegas

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Marc Randazza

Without access to information, there is no free press. While it was a privilege to argue against Mr. Dershowitz, it was more of an honor to secure a First Amendment win for the press and public.

– First Amendment lawyer Marc Randazza, commenting on his recent win in a case regarding cameras in the courtroom — a win over Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who was representing the Las Vegas Sands Corp. (aka billionaire Sheldon Adelson). Randazza also represents Above the Law in various proceedings.

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Do You Want to Micromanage Your Lawyers? There’s an App for That!

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‘I’m excited because I can see my lawyer hasn’t slept in three days!’

Let the micromanagement begin! Clients always complained about bills, but over the last several years, clients elevated their complaints to outright micromanagement, objecting to “block billing” and refusing to pay for internal team meetings, even on massive projects.

I’ve said before that this billing regime saps lawyers of valuable efficiency. Not that lawyers are perfect, but constantly stopping to parse out billing for every individual task creates a bigger waste.

Now clients have a new technological tool to intrude upon the workday….

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Non-Sequiturs: 11.20.12

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* Better late than never: congratulations to everyone who passed the New Jersey bar exam. You’re just in time to get in on some Sandy class-action litigation. [New Jersey Board of Bar Examiners]

* Congratulations to all honorees from the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association conference in D.C. last weekend — including, but not limited to, the Best Lawyers Under 40. [NAPABA]

* And congrats to Professor Sherrilyn Ifill, incoming president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. [Concurring Opinions]

* Does every bra made in America have Gloria Allred’s phone number sewn into it? [WSJ Law Blog]

* Who is “Portfolio Manager A” in the latest major insider-trading scandal? [Dealbreaker]

* You don’t need to be a dog lover to find these allegations abhorrent. [Alabama Live]

* Want to avoid dating Democrats (or Republicans)? There’s an app — okay, two websites — for that. [Jezebel]

* After the jump, Jeffrey Toobin and Alan Dershowitz discuss Obamacare….

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Non-Sequiturs: 10.08.12

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Chief Justice Roberts: he ain’t evolving.

* In light of Chief Justice Roberts’s historic vote to uphold Obamacare, should we expect JGR to be more liberal going forward? According to Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Oath (affiliate link), “Do not expect a new John Roberts. Expect the conservative he has always been.” [Talking Points Memo via How Appealing]

* Law firm staff layoffs: they’re not just an American thing. Slaughter and May is dropping the ax on 28 secretaries. [Roll On Friday]

* “[A]ny robot or high school graduate can calculate numbers in a matrix to arrive at the highest possible sentence. But it takes a Judge — a man or woman tempered by experience in life and law — to properly judge another human being’s transgressions.” [Justice Building Blog]

* Professor Dershowitz’s $4 million Cambridge mansion? Robert Wenzel is not impressed: “if I lived in that house, I would want to attack Iran and most of the rest of the world, also.” [Economic Policy Journal]

* A man sues a strip club, alleging that a stripper ruptured his bladder when she slid down a pole and onto his abdomen. Ouch. [Legally Weird / Findlaw]

* Still on the subject of Torts, two attractive blonde sisters walk into a bar — and discuss who can be held liable if a man suffers a heart attack during a threesome. Video after the jump….

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Lawyerly Lairs: Alan Dershowitz Takes Manhattan

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Professor Alan Dershowitz

Finding a decent apartment in New York City can be a challenge. But compared to getting Claus von Bülow and O.J. Simpson off the hook — or, for that matter, shaping the brilliant minds of Harvard Law School students — it’s a walk in Central Park.

Alan Dershowitz — distinguished public intellectual, celebrated criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer, and Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard — just purchased an apartment in NYC. It’s a homecoming of sorts for Dershowitz, 74. Although he has lived for years in Cambridge, the home of HLS, he was born in the Big Apple.

Dershowitz was born in Brooklyn, but the prominent professor isn’t going back to the borough that GQ dubbed “the coolest city on the planet.” Instead, he’s moving to Manhattan. (C’mon, do you think Dersh put up with thousands of HLS brats over the years so he could wind up right back where he started?)

Which neighborhood is Dershowitz moving to? How fabulous is his apartment? How much did he pay for it? We have answers to all of these questions, plus comments from the good professor about his move….

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Museum Law: It’s Law That All Relic Hunters Need To Know

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Like you wouldn't go to court over the ownership of this toy!

If Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz is involved, you know we’re talking about an exciting aspect of jurisprudence.

We’ve been following the case of the Mongolian dinosaur bones, but really that’s just a small window into the world of antiquities law. It’s a field of law that should fire the imagination of any lawyer who was a liberal arts major in college but ended up in law. We’re talking about a field of law which will reward the art history majors of the world. The romance language majors. The random anthropology majors who didn’t have the stones to take Orgo, but spiked a 170 on the LSAT. This is a field of law for you.

The New York Times ran a long and fascinating article last week about the emerging law surrounding the provenance of antique goods sold at auction. After centuries of private collectors being able to simply steal and resell the history of poor countries, it seems like reputable auction houses and museums are finally refusing to legitimize the black market through their purchase of questionably-obtained artifacts.

But the new rules mean that some antique collectors now can’t unload treasures they believed they acquired legitimately. Even Professor Dershowitz is having some difficulty establishing the proper documentation of an item he wanted to auction….

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Non-Sequiturs: 07.11.12

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You know you're getting old when this is the Spock you're referring to.

* Canadian comes to America, goes into $100,000 worth of law school debt, and has no job. Mwahahaha, Canada, let’s see your superior health care system find a cure for that! [Globe and Mail]

* Wait, you’re not supposed to take your baby along when you go to see a prostitute? Okay. Got it. See, that’s the kind of tip that isn’t in any of the Dr. Spock books. [Wave3]

* Ben Bernanke can time travel… [Dealbreaker]

* … While John Mara, owner of the WORLD CHAMPION New York Giants, simply revises history. [Forbes]

* Alan Dershowitz received a “D” on his first legal writing assignment. Apparently, his Yale Law School professor, the great Guido Calebresi, told him, “You write like you’re having a conversation with your friends in Brooklyn,” and then helped him work on his technique. Little did Calebresi or Dershowitz know that writing like you’re having a conversation with friends could lead to a successful life as a legal blogger. Boy, did they miss out! [Yale Alumni Magazine]

* Kenny Heitz, an Irell & Manella partner and former UCLA basketball champion, passed away. [Daily News]

Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe foresaw the Obamacare Tax Holding, and we’ve got video evidence to prove it….

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