Every year we have a law revue video contest, in which there are winners, there are losers, and then there are sore losers. This year, we saw some pretty wild accusations being tossed around (including “idea plagiarism,” which is apparently a thing in the minds of industrious law students).
No matter how hard our finalists tried to game the system with their various campaigns, one of them surpassed all the rest. Congratulations go out to the students at West Virginia University College of Law, the winners of our Fifth Annual Law Revue Video Contest.
Back in March, we wrote about Steven Guynn, who at the time was a corporate partner at King & Spalding. Above the Law readers who work at K&S are happy campers, giving the firm a solid grade of B+ in our Career Center. Alas, the allegations against Guynn would seem to merit an F. As you may recall, Guynn was accused of assaulting his alleged mistress, Jeannette Schaefer.
Today we have some updates about Steve Guynn (all via Teri Buhl). First, Guynn is reportedly getting divorced from his wife, Kristie Guynn. Second, the criminal case against him no longer appears in the online docket for the Connecticut courts (perhaps because it has been moved to a domestic violence docket). Third, he is no longer at King & Spalding.
(We reached out to King & Spalding to confirm Guynn’s departure from the firm. They did not respond to our inquiry, but Guynn’s bio has been pulled from the firm website. Here is a cached version, which shows Guynn’s impressive educational and professional background, including the two other top firms where he was once a partner.)
The allegations against Steven Guynn have never been proven. But here is one thing established beyond a reasonable doubt: his multimillion-dollar mansion is fit for royalty. Shall we take a peek?
Back in the day, Ted Kennedy could cheat his ass off.
* ‘Unprecedented’ cheating at Harvard. Nice to know that Ted Kennedy’s spirit is alive and well in Cambridge. [Harvard Crimson]
* Court accidentally posts secret settlement. That’ll teach these courts from keeping secrets. [Boston Globe]
* Here is an appropriate response to a law firm brochure. [Lawprofblawg]
* Former News of the World lawyer arrested. You know, the problem with the News of the World scandal is that it’s one of those things that happens somewhere else and so Americans don’t care. Americans like me. [Wall Street Journal]
* Cincinnati law profs pass around the collection plate and come up with a scholarship for students. [Tax Prof Blawg]
* Citibank settled with its shareholders for being buying bad assets. In other news, Citibank bought a lot of bad assets. [Dealbreaker]
Cheating is never okay, right? That’s one central lesson all students are supposed to learn in elementary school (to say nothing of law school). It’s important to be honest. If a student lies or cheats on a test or homework, there are consequences. There’s nothing up for debate here, right?
Well, at least one northern California lawyer thinks it was unjust that his son was booted from an honors English class for plagiarizing. It appears the lesson he hopes to teach his son is: cheating is bad, but it’s more important that schools have crystal-clear academic honesty policies. He is suing his son’s school district, arguing that his son’s punishment does not fit his crime.
It’s finals period at many law schools around the country. Here at Above the Law, that means we can expect our inbox to get very entertaining. Pressure + law students + internet = loads of fun.
Well, it’s not just “pressure” that makes some law students wilt during finals period. There is no accounting for plumb stupid.
But today, we’ve got a story that is both stupid and unethical. A student at a top 14 law school reportedly posted a question from his Constitutional Law exam on a message board. He apparently posted it during the take home.
Yes, Virginia, it’s still cheating even if you do it online.
Corporate law partners are supposed to have kick ass deal books, but they’re definitely not supposed to kick their mistress’s ass. Unfortunately for one King & Spalding partner, this is the wild allegation that’s strewn across today’s issue of the New York Post.
After reportedly partnering with his side piece for years, according to police documents, K&S partner Steven Guynn allegedly flew into a rage and slapped his girlfriend four times in the head “in a punching manner.” Last May, Guynn reportedly beat his mistress and threatened to kill her.
Let’s learn some more about the charges that Guynn is facing….
A little while back, we asked how many of you had tried Adderall, the ADHD drug that some students use to get a boost around study time. A whopping 30% of you said you had tried the drug and 70% of you are lying.
It’s a figure that should make law school deans sit up and take notice. You know, if they weren’t busy figuring out how to charge the students more money for an education that isn’t getting more valuable in any way.
But now let’s ask the fun question. Is using Adderall that big of a deal?
When I was in school, Ritalin was the performance-enhancing drug of choice. You could smash it up and snort it and do amazing feats like read an entire Emanuel’s Outline on mergers and acquisitions in a single sitting. Or you could write a whole law review note without getting bored. Or you could repaint your room, or reupholster your desk chair, or… oh s**t the paper is due in an hour and I have NOTHING.
Adderall, as I understand it, is the same, but better. It’s easy to get your hands on — all you have to do is fake the ADHD exam and you have your very own prescription for an amphetamine for law school and beyond. Or you can bum one off of a friend as finals stress approaches.
You know, one of the biggest problems with law school is that it’s too much like high school. In college, you have a sense that people were sick to death of high school (I didn’t go to a state school) and are invested in actually growing up. College kids don’t handle things like adults, but at least there’s a sense that they’re trying.
By the time you get to law school, it’s like people have devolved or something. Law schools seem to be crawling with snide, backbiting saboteurs. Playground bullying is replaced by intellectual bullying, and all sense of collegiality falls prey to petty competition (I didn’t go to a state school).
You want to know how to cut through all of the pushing and shoving? Push back, hard. That’s what a Georgetown 1L did. He found himself the subject of a whispering campaign and decided to shout down the allegations against him — in an email to his entire section….
There’s nothing like cheating on the LSAT to start off your legal career. Sure, even if you manage to get into and graduate from law school, you’re going to have serious problems when it comes to the MPRE. Or the Character and Fitness interview. Or the “following the law” part of being a lawyer. But you know what they say: if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.
So it is for one would-be law student. The kid tried to give his career a jump start by hiring someone else to take the LSAT is his place. And, even more stupidly, he posted his request for an “LSAT Stand-In” on Craigslist.
Of course, now that we’ve contacted him about the “questionable ethics” of his Craigslist post, he claims that it was all a joke. We’ve heard that before.
Let’s take a look at the ad, and you can decide for yourself what to make of it.
What does it mean to be “newly admitted?” To us, it means endless possibilities!
We recognize that you already possess the ability and intelligence to succeed in a variety of legal professions. Our job is to expose you to various practice areas in a way that ensures those very attributes are successfully applied. Our seasoned and successful faculty present unique programs that provide an approachable and practical understanding of the avenues of achievement available as you launch a fruitful, enjoyable and promising career.
Our Live Bridge the Gap weekends satisfy the entire year of New York Newly-Admitted CLE Credits in only two days!
After physically attending a full weekend, you will receive:
• 3.0 Ethics CLE credits,
• 6.0 Skills CLE credits, and
• 7.0 Professional Practice and/or Law Practice Management CLE credits
Date: Saturday, June 8 and Sunday, June 9, 2013 Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:35 p.m. (EST) Location:
55 Exchange Place
5th Floor
New York, NY 10006
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.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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Every year we have a law revue video contest, in which there are winners, there are losers, and then there are sore losers. This year, we saw some pretty wild accusations being tossed around (including “idea plagiarism,” which is apparently a thing in the minds of industrious law students).
