Over the weekend, a Northwestern 3L was hit and killed by an allegedly drunk driver in downtown Chicago.
The student was crossing the street to get a late-night snack when a woman hit him. She continued driving — at one point going the wrong way down a one-way street — until police noticed the extensive damage to the front of her car and pulled her over.
This is not the kind of story we like to write here at Above the Law. But keep reading for details on the student whose life was cut too short….
* A photoshopped image that liberals will love: John Yoo as Dirty Harry. [Ricochet]
* Lawyers are people too. They get scared, and sometimes they suffer bad car wrecks. Unfortunately, sometimes, to be able to see life from the client’s eyes, it takes understanding in a car crash. [Stephen Hoffman]
* Fix-it ticket, fixing a ticket. What’s the difference? I’m a judge. Whatever, whatever, I do what I want. [Winston-Salem Journal]
* With the impending arrival of spring also comes the ABA Journal’s annual peep diorama contest. I would be terrible at it, because all the candy chickens would be missing their heads. Because I ate them. [ABA Journal]
* A Wisconsin-based look at the new U.S. news rankings. [Althouse]
* Squeezing insider trading information from the person you are supposed to be sponsoring in Alcoholics Anonymous is probably not the best way to help them beat their addiction. [Dealbreaker]
Last night, a dramatic scene unfolded in the parking lot of a movie theater. A suspected drunk driver allegedly took off without his headlights on, hit two police cruisers, terrified several witnesses, and then slammed his car into a tree. The driver was killed.
“It was coming straight towards us and I didn’t know if he was going to stop or what he was doing,” said one witness. “He was going 70, 80 miles an hour. It was scary.”
The driver of the vehicle was a young lawyer, an associate at a law firm. He graduated not too long ago from a leading law school….
* Apparently attorneys at a “prestigious firm” in Washington, D.C. are fans of hobo hunting. What the hell does that mean? Well, there’s an app for that (one that Apple has rejected three times for its outrageous offensiveness). [VICE]
* “I want to (blank) Michelle Bachmann in her (blank) with a Vietnam era machete.” First of all: eww. Second of all: not a proper use of Twitter. Third of all: this is going before a grand jury. [Suits & Sentences / McClatchy]
* I don’t think “gunner” means what you think it means. A 1L from Osgoode Hall Law in Toronto is accused of shooting up a residence hall with a 12-gauge Remington 870 shotgun. O Canada! [CityNews]
* It’s been a while since we wrote about law license plates, but just in case you’re thinking of getting vanity plates that read “NO TAGS,” don’t do it. You could get $20K in tickets like this clever guy. [Legal Blog Watch]
* FYI: you can only sometimes get away with paying kids to slap you in the face and pee on you. The rest of the time, you’re going to jail. [Legal Juice]
Gainful employment nine months after graduation, FTW.
We cover the gloom-and-doom in the legal job market quite well here at Above the Law. But there are happy stories out there too — and not just for the top graduates of top law schools.
This is the story of Fred (not his real name; he asked to remain anonymous). Fred graduated in 2011 from a well-ranked but not super-elite law school — a top 50 school, but not a top three, top six, or even “T14″ school. He was not at the top of the class, nor was he on the law review. Many of Fred’s similarly situated classmates are unemployed or underemployed, drifting from one contract-attorney or paralegal-type job to another.
Fred is much better off than many of them. He has a job that he enjoys. He works for two weeks, followed by two weeks of vacation. He makes somewhere between $60,000 and $100,000 a year, with the exact amount depending on how much he wants to work. And if things go according to plan, in a few years he could be earning $250,000 a year (or more).
Right now some of you are dying to know: What does Fred do, and how can I get this job?
Just because you teach the law doesn’t mean that you’re above it. We’ve written in the past about prominent law professors accused of domestic violence and soliciting a prostitute, for example.
Today we bring you news of another law professor who could be in trouble with the law. He’s accused of reckless driving and leaving the scene of an accident. The allegations, if true, are surprising.
The professor in question teaches at a top law school. Who is he?
Yesterday, we brought you news of a job opportunity that is currently available on the University of Maryland School of Law’s Symplicity job bank. When we first wrote about the listing, we called it a “career services nightmare.” After all, the job had more to do with orange parking cones than the law.
As it turns out, the powers that be at Maryland Law weren’t very happy that Above the Law called them out. Instead of hanging their heads in shame for trying to sell a job as a parking garage manager to its students, the career development office issued a vigorous defense of this exciting opportunity in vehicular supervision and coordination.
The email was written by the assistant dean for career development herself. What did she have to say?
Back in December 2010, we reported that tuition at the University of Maryland School of Law (now known as the Francis King Carey School of Law) would not be subject to the four percent hike for the 2011-2012 academic year that was thrust upon the rest of the programs doing business at the university’s Baltimore campus.
It was rumored that the law school’s dean, Phoebe Haddon, fought valiantly to keep tuition from rising due to students’ hefty debt loads and the “impact of the economic downturn on the legal employment market.” At the time, we gave Maryland Law major kudos for protecting its students from tuition increases. Now, we wonder if a just little more tuition money would have prevented this career services nightmare.
As it turns out, even students who attend a top 50 law school are in danger of landing awful jobs, especially when the career development office is offering up gems like this one….
Instead of hiring a new professor to teach Cross-Cultural Comparison of Masturbatory Prohibitions, I want law schools to start paying six-figure salaries to the people they hire to work in their career services offices. I want U.S. News to include the number of CSO professionals and money spent on CSOs as data points in their law school rankings. I want deans to start asking rich alumni if they would like to donate to help fight mental disability and extreme laziness in career services offices.
Because honestly, the lack of effort put in by career services professionals at the nation’s law schools really seems to be out of hand. Maybe they’ve just been collectively beaten down by the years of terrible job prospects and the throngs of students in need of help. Maybe they believe that there really is nothing they can do, and they are significantly more worried about protecting their own jobs than finding jobs for eager law students. Maybe the lack of institutional support and respect for their efforts makes them feel like second-class citizens whenever the Professor of Impractical Studies That Serve No Clients walks into the room.
I don’t know why we’re here, but when you can’t even trust your CSO to effectively cull Symplicity to remove stupid and insulting job prospects like the ones below, it’s time to change the entire approach to law school career services….
* New York is considering allowing nonlawyer ownership of equity in law firms. If that somehow means we’ll see less Jacoby & Meyers commercials on television, then I’m definitely all for it. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Football’s labor lockout legal fees: which Biglaw firms scored huge touchdowns thanks to their collective bargaining work? The three top billers included Latham, Dewey & LeBoeuf, and Patton Boggs. [Am Law Daily]
* The sanctions for filing a 9/11 conspiracy claim cost $15K, but forever being remembered as the lawyers who got benchslapped for drafting “a product of cynical delusion and fantasy” is priceless. [Reuters]
* Jared Loughner is still incompetent to stand trial, and he’ll remain in the loony bin for another four months. You know what that means? Time to make this kid swallow some more pills. [Arizona Republic]
* A panel of law professors over at Harvard thinks that while law schools have problems, but they’re certainly not in crisis mode yet. Not yet? You hear that Team Strauss/Anziska? Needs moar lawsuits! [Harvard Crimson]
* Well, that was a short-lived victory. Heather Peters, the former lawyer who beat Honda in small claims court, is preparing to do battle with the car company in Superior Court. [Los Angeles Times]
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
LexisNexis and OverDrive®, the digital library solutions provider chosen by 22,000+ libraries, schools and colleges worldwide, have joined forces to provide a library management solution that suits evolving legal research requirements mobility, simplified library management, and space and budget reductions.
Reduce your library costs and extend the budget.
With LexisNexis® Digital Library, overhead and administrative costs for maintaining a print library are reduced dramatically. Adopt an easy-to-use platform that requires minimal staff resources so your organization can make the most out of your library budget. Plus, multi-year purchase options let your library lock in savings.
Empower your librarians.
Your firm’s librarians will have more time to conduct value-added research. They’ll have greater insight into what resources the staff actually uses so they can make adjustments to the collection quickly using a single website. Librarians can gain greater control, which can lead to better library utilization and increased strategic value to the firm.
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.
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
Over the weekend, a Northwestern 3L was hit and killed by an allegedly drunk driver in downtown Chicago.
Continue reading “Northwestern Law Student Killed in Hit-and-Run Accident”
