Cornell Law

Morning Docket: 05.28.13

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Amanda Bynes

* Let’s get ready to rumble! Some of the Supreme Court’s most controversial opinions yet are expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks — and maybe even today. Stay tuned for news. [CNN]

* Let’s see what happens when Obama nominates three judges at once to the D.C. Circuit. How many of them will be confirmed as quickly as Sri Srinivasan? Probably not many. [New York Times]

* White House counsel and leading litigatrix Kathryn Ruemmler is best known for her fabulous shoes, but this week, she’s taking some flak for her involvement in the IRS scandal. [New York Times]

* “I don’t know whether the Lord Himself could get confirmed at this point.” It looks like poor Attorney General Eric Holder doesn’t have very many people left to turn to thanks to executive and congressional inaction. [Bloomberg]

* When it comes to recent diversity efforts in Biglaw there’s an ebb, but not really a flow, and it’s all being blamed on the recession. Also, “diversity fatigue” is apparently a thing now. [New York Times]

* The $200 million gender discrimination suit filed against Greenberg Traurig over the firm’s alleged “old boys club” has been settled for an undisclosed amount. You go girl! [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* According to Judge Murray Snow, Arizona’s most beloved sheriff, Joe Arpaio, has been violating the constitutional rights of all of the Latinos whom he supposedly “hadn’t” been racially profiling. [Reuters]

* My, how things change: David Blankenhorn, a man who once testified as an expert witness in support of Proposition 8 at trial, has come forward to condemn anti-marriage equality laws. [Los Angeles Times]

* Stewart Schwab, the dean of Cornell Law School, will step down in June 2014. Perhaps the next dean will crack down on the number of cam girls pleasuring themselves in the law library. [Cornell Chronicle]

* Law schools tend to be “bastions of liberalism,” which makes it hard for students to find intellectual diversity. It’s a good thing we’ve got the Federalist Society to balance things out. [Washington Times]

* People who think Washington needs another law school propose one for students “who can’t afford to … go into debt … to get their legal degree.” This won’t sit well with the legal academy. [News Tribune]

* With Lindsay Lohan stuck in rehab, Amanda Bynes decided it was her turn to go wild. The retired actress says she’s suing the NYPD for unlawful arrest and sexual harassment. [New York Daily News]

* Alton Lemon, the Supreme Court plaintiff behind the eponymous Lemon test, RIP. [New York Times]

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The Decision: Tempted By The ‘T14′

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Today, April 15, is Tax Day. But it’s an important day for another reason as well: it happens to be the day that some law schools want to hear back from applicants — and collect their deposit checks, of course.

Let’s close out our series of posts soliciting advice on picking a law school with three fact patterns. All of them involve at least two members of the so-called “T14,” the nation’s 14 leading law schools according to the U.S. News rankings….

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Which Law Schools Had the Most Clerkship Placements?

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Raise your hand if you like prestige. Alright, you can all put your hands down, because we’re about to drop some news on you about one of the most prestigious career paths available in the legal profession. Of course, we’re talking about federal clerkships, which are great opportunities to pursue if you’re lucky enough to be given the chance — not to mention the fact that if you happen to be clerking for a feeder judge, you might just have it made (the going rate for a SCOTUS clerkship bonus is $280K!!!).

In our coverage of career placement statistics from the most recent graduating law school class, we’ve tackled a wide range of career options, from professional couch-sitters to “elite” Biglaw associates. Today, we’re bringing you news on clerkships from the God of Rankings himself, Bob Morse of the U.S. News law school rankings.

So are you ready to see the law schools that had the highest percentages of graduates move on to become federal clerks? Let’s check out the list….

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Which Top Law School Has the Highest Percentage of Underemployed Graduates?

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We know that our readers simply cannot get enough of these employment rankings, so we decided to bring you some more. This time, we’ll be taking a look at the law schools that people dream of attending: the 14 most elite schools in the nation, more commonly known among the legal community as the T14. Everyone knows that graduates of these fine institutions are able to get jobs — in fact, many of these schools are able to boast “employed at graduation” rates of over 90 percent.

But some graduates from these hallowed halls experience the same problems as those of their brethren from the lower echelons of law schools. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to find full-time, long-term employment as lawyers, not even graduates from the best-ranked law schools in country.

Wouldn’t you like to see which top law school has the highest percentage of underemployed graduates? Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled T14ers….

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The Harlem Shake Takes Law Schools By Storm

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When videos go viral online, sometimes law students decide to let their freak flags fly and have some fun on film. Such is the case with the recent Harlem Shake phenomenon. If you’ve ever seen our Law Revue Video Contest, these videos are kind of like that, only shorter (and seemingly taped while all of the participants are tweaking out of their minds).

Don’t know what the Harlem Shake is? You’re about to find out….

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Above the Law’s Top Ten Most Popular Posts of 2012

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It’s the last day of December, so it’s a good time to look back on the year that was. We’ll do what we’ve done for the past three years (wrap-up posts from 2009, 2010, and 2011 can be found here, here, and here) and identify the ten biggest stories of the past year as decided by you, our readers. With the help of Google Analytics, we’ve compiled a list of our top ten posts for 2012, based on traffic (as represented by pageviews).

By the way, for the third year in a row, the most popular category page on Above the Law was Law Schools. People have now been intensely focused on the declining value proposition of going to law school for as long as it takes to earn a Juris Doctor degree. Isn’t it time that we graduate from the current educational model?

The second and third most-popular categories on ATL in 2012 were Biglaw and Bonuses. Although this year brought us the largest law firm failure ever, nearly all other firms indiscriminately doled out offers to summer associates, and bonus season looked better for the first time in years. While the legal profession is still in transition, things are certainly looking up, and through the highs and the lows, we’ve been there to cover it all.

So what were the ten most popular individual posts at Above the Law in 2012? Let’s find out….

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Cam Girl Pleasures Herself In A Top Law School’s Library

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Back in 2010, we brought you some news about a photo shoot that took place in a highly sexualized law library, with models getting hot and heavy between the stacks. That sexy shoot came courtesy of the No. 67 law school in the nation.

Today, we’ve got even hotter news from an even more prestigious law school. It looks like an internet cam girl decided to film herself masturbating with a variety of sex toys inside a leading law school’s library. Poor girl must’ve had a really bad case of Blue(book) Balls.

Which T14 law school library did this activity take place in? And what does this woman look like?

WARNING: The pictures after the jump should be safe for work — there’s no nudity, we’ve redacted it — but they are mildly risqué. Read on at your own risk.

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Quote of the Day: Will a T14 Law Degree Ward Off Unemployment?

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I would read these horror stories in The New York Times and The Washington Post about how law firms were no longer guaranteeing jobs. But I always knew I was going to go to one of the top 14 law schools, where employment statistics have remained pretty strong. Most of the bad numbers are coming from the worse-ranked schools.

– Emily Cusick, a senior at Cornell University and president of the pre-law fraternity Kappa Alpha Pi, commenting to the Cornell Daily Sun on doom-and-gloom stories about the legal job market.

(Additional interesting tidbits from the Sun article, including statistics about the declining number of law school applications, after the jump.)

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Morning Docket: 11.23.11

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* The American Bar Association can’t handle law schools, yet Obama trusts them to vet potential judicial nominees. Well, seems like they’re doing a bang-up job with that, too. [New York Times]

* First the New Jersey bar exam results, and now more MF Global drama. Angry investors want to know if a lawsuit will help Jon Corzine remember where he put the missing $600M. [Bloomberg]

* Law school debt increased by $475M between 2008 and 2010. Grab a raincoat, because this bubble’s going to burst soon, and it’s not going to be pretty (except for Cooley Law; they’ll be rich). [Am Law Daily]

* And on that note, what on earth was Cornell Law thinking? Did they fail to realize that their Cooley rankings would plummet if they decimated their library square footage? [Cornell Daily Sun]

* UC Berkeley: “We never like to hurt our students.” Yeah, apparently that’s what the police are for. Occupy Berkeley protesters are suing the school over police brutality allegations. [Huffington Post]

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