Harvard Law School

Grind up some brilliant legal theories, spice liberally with Bluebook-compliant citations, and voilà — law review articles!

Have you ever wondered how the law review sausage factory works? Perhaps you’re a law professor or practitioner who regularly submits pieces to law journals for possible publication. If you are, and if you’d like to know more about how the process works — or, more to the point, what law review editors say about you behind your back — you’ve come to the right place.

Thanks to the wonders of technology, collaborating with far-flung colleagues has never been easier. Here at Above the Law, for example, your four full-time editors — myself, Elie, Staci, and Chris — keep in touch throughout the day using Gchat.

But what if, due to inadequate security, your organization’s internal deliberations were accessible to the public? And, in some cases, even crawled by search engines?

What if you were, say, law students at a highly ranked law school, where you served as editors of a high-profile law review? And what if your, er, candid and colorful comments about the articles pending before you were to become publicly available?

What then? Let’s find out….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “A Look Inside the Law Review Sausage Factory — and Possible Evidence of Bias Against Conservatives”

All the people who got law degrees as a way of riding out the economic downturn are finding that, while they were in school, the job market for lawyers has only gotten worse.

Shauna Bryce, a career counselor and Harvard Law grad, explaining how messed up the employment market is for young lawyers.

Morning Docket: 08.28.12

* Patton Boggs partner Benjamin Ginsberg serves as the Mitt Romney campaign’s top lawyer, and he’s taking flak for GOP rules revisions that have been likened to “killing a fly with a sledgehammer.” [Am Law Daily]

* “I am still shocked that I did everything right and find myself on the brink of destitution.” This just in from the Things Everyone Already Knew Desk: even law firms have been hit hard by the recession. [Washington Times]

* The lead lawyer in the inquisition against Madam Justice Lori Douglas turned in a resignation letter. Perhaps he grew tired of being part of judicial farce that’s spread wider than Her Honor’s legs. [Canadian Press]

* Penn State Dickinson School of Law might not be losing its accreditation, but it will be reducing enrollment and consolidating all first-year classes at its University Park campus. [Central Penn Business Journal]

* A would-be law student wants to know if he has a good chance of getting into a top 20 school with a low 150s LSAT and an average GPA. You’ll get in everywhere you apply! [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]

* Roger Fisher, Harvard Law School professor and co-author of “Getting to Yes,” RIP. [WSJ Law Blog]

“In accepting the offer to join Ropes & Gray, Ray accepted Roscoe Trimmier’s assurances that Ropes ‘does not see black and white, only shades of Ropes & Gray.’”

That’s paragraph 75 from the latest complaint filed by John H. Ray III, a 2000 graduate of Harvard Law School and an African-American man, against his former employer, Ropes & Gray. According to Ray, the firm, after initially embracing him with open arms, turned on him. Ray claims that he was subjected to racial discrimination and retaliation, which made his time at the firm more painful than pleasurable. And, unlike Anastasia Steele of Fifty Shades of Grey (affiliate link), Ray did not enjoy the alleged abuse.

When we first wrote about Ray, he was proceeding pro se against Ropes & Gray. Now he has hired counsel — an experienced employment-discrimination litigator who has appeared before in these pages.

Let’s find out who’s representing John Ray, and take a closer look at the complaint — which features an Above the Law shout-out, interestingly enough….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Lawsuit of the Day: Fifty Shades of Ropes & Gray”

It seems like we’ve written about the general decline in LSAT administrations and law school applications ad nauseum. At this point, people know (or at least, they should know) that there is a problem with the legal education system in this country.

But according to U.S. News, that’s not stopping would-be law students from applying in substantial numbers. The leader in law school rankings recently compiled a list of the ten schools that received the most applications for full-time programs in 2011. At almost 75,000, the sheer number of applications remains astounding.

When looking at this list, we noticed a trend: all of the law schools are in the traditional first tier, and most of them are in major cities. But not everyone can get into these schools, and given the reported drop in admissions at Cooley, curiosity got the best of us.

So we created a top-ten list of the unranked schools that received the most applications last year — the cream of the crap, if you will. Is your school on either one of these lists?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Which Law Schools Received the Most Applications Last Year?”

Would that it were easy for women to dress professionally without being critiqued on every aspect of their ensemble. If that were the case, then we wouldn’t have so much to write about when it comes to the intersection of fashion and women’s issues. From hairstyle to hemline to heel height, women are constantly bombarded with differing opinions as to what’s acceptable to wear in the workplace.

With on-campus interviewing season right around the corner, you’ll need to look and act the part. The hour has drawn nigh for some tips that will allow our female readers to maintain a stylish appearance from a day in the office to a night out, all at the click of a button. Because fashion should be a piece of cake, even for lawyerly ladies who are too busy to shop….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “A Guide for Surviving On-Campus Interviewing With Style”

Andrew Shirvell

* Andrew Shirvell questioned himself for over an hour today in defense of himself from Chris Armstrong’s defamation lawsuit. I’m telling you, life is so much easier when you don’t care about a person’s sexual orientation. [Detroit Free Press]

* It looks like Boies Schiller somehow filled the spot left by Elizabeth Wurtzel. [Thomson Reuters News and Insight]

* Election Law professor Rick Hasen is disappointed with the Pennsylvania voter ID decision today. [Election Law Blog]

* Grumpy baby boomer blogs angrily about law and life, a.k.a. my future. [Grumpy Baby Boomer]

* How to dress like a female lawyer from a television show. Funny, I didn’t know “breast implants” were a fashion accessory now. [Levo League]

* The Daily Caller dug up an article Michelle Obama wrote about critical race theory while at Harvard. She makes some pretty good points, especially considering the perspective of a young black person trying to deal with Harvard Law School in 1988. But I suspect the context of the article, the theory, the history, the university, and everything else will be missed by most of the readers of the Daily Caller. [Daily Caller]

* Here’s a new social network for law students. [Indiana Lawyer]

* Buy Tyler Coulson’s book (affiliate link), save a dog. You don’t want to kill puppies, do you? [PR Web]

* Lat is on a proposed SXSW panel about haw law firms should (and should not) be using Twitter and other social media. I hope firms don’t listen to him, because it’ll make my job easier. [SXSW PanelPicker]

While many would-be lawyers were busy taking the bar exam in July, actual lawyers (and law students) were allegedly busy behaving badly. We’ve singled out a lucky few for our Lawyer of the Month honors.

Some of our nominees have adopted unusual career alternatives, and others have allegedly adopted unusual sexual relationships. But who will come out on top in our monthly contest?

Take a look at our nominees for July’s Lawyer of the Month and find out….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Lawyer of the Month: July Reader Poll”

* From the White House to the ivory tower: Cass Sunstein is leaving OIRA to return to Harvard Law. Perhaps his thoughts on behavioral economics and public policy will be appreciated in academia. [New York Times]

* It’s too late to apologize this time, Cesar. Greenberg Traurig has been sanctioned in the TD Bank to-do for the firm’s negligent failure to bring forth documents during discovery. [Tampa Bay Business Journal]

* Jared Loughner is reportedly set to plead guilty in the Arizona shooting attack that killed six people, including Judge John Roll, and injured 13, including former Representative Gabrielle Giffords. [Los Angeles Times]

* Lance Armstrong is going for the gold against the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, this time with a bid to Judge Sam Sparks for a restraining order blocking the USADA from forcing the cyclist into binding arbitration. [Bloomberg]

* “[T]his is not the time for us to become an international accrediting agency.” The ABA will remain a faulty U.S. accrediting agency, because the Legal Ed Section voted against accrediting foreign law schools. [ABA Journal]

* Apparently Texas Tech Law has more than beauty queens. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has appointed dean emeritus and current law professor Walter Huffman to the new Defense Legal Policy Board. [KCBD 11]

* Remember Joshua Gomes, the UVA Law student who allegedly broke into the school’s registrar office? As it turns out, there’s no more “allegedly” about it. We’ll likely have more on this news later today. [Daily Progress]

* Law school graduates’ tales of woe are still making headlines in newspapers. Please take heed, 0Ls, and remember that you decided to discount this info if you’re told that you “should have known better.” [Oregonian]

* If you want to eat mor chikin but the thought of supporting Chick-fil-A’s stance on gay marriage is giving you indigestion, now you can eat your fill with the assistance of Ted Frank’s chicken offsets. [Huffington Post]

The story of Dewey & LeBoeuf, the once-great law firm that now finds itself in bankruptcy, continues to unfold — slowly, painfully, and sucked of suspense. We’ve highlighted the latest developments in Morning Docket. They include the hefty compensation paid to Stephen Horvath and Janis Meyer, the two Dewey lawyers involved in wind-down efforts; the $50 million insurance policy that might spell good news to creditors; and the pending revisions to the less-than-popular proposed settlement being offered to former partners of the firm.

That’s the hard news. Today we bring you two bits of color. These anecdotes raise the following question: Would you accept a “gift” from Dewey & LeBoeuf?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Beware of Gifts from Dewey & LeBoeuf”

Page 6 of 221...2345678910...22