A few weeks ago, we learned that when it comes to failed professional endeavors, hell hath no fury like a patent attorney scorned. Now we know the same sentiment applies to their failed romantic wranglings.
What would a patent partner do if a summer associate turned away his sexual advances? He’d do what any dork would: in the hopes of ruining her budding career, he’d obtain a movie clip of the girl in a state of undress and pass it around via email to more than 50 Biglaw attorneys.
Of course, this led to a disciplinary action in which the brokenhearted patent practitioner employed some pretty wild defenses, the most entertaining one being that his slut-shaming was beyond ethical reproach because it was constitutionally protected speech….
* The latest update on the law school litigation front represents good news for New York Law School. [National Law Journal]
* Should summarizing a one-day deposition transcript really cost $90,000? Even DLA Piper might blush at such a bill. [Point of Law]
* Ropes & Gray isn’t backing down in the discrimination lawsuit brought by former partner Patricia Martone. (We’ll have more on this later.) [Am Law Daily]
* No, silly polo mogul, you can’t adopt your 42-year-old girlfriend to shield your fortune from litigation. [ABA Journal]
* Replacing “barbers” with “beauty culturists”? This is Indiana and not California, right? [WSJ Law Blog]
* The revised transcript from the day Justice Thomas spoke during oral arguments has arrived, and it seems his record for not having asked a single question from the bench is still intact. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]
* The Seventh Circuit ruled on Indiana’s social media ban for sex offenders, and the internet’s filth will be pleased to know they can tweet about underage girls to their heart’s content. [National Law Journal]
* Propaganda from the dean of a state law school: lawyers from private schools are forcing taxpayers to bear the brunt of their higher debt loads with higher fees associated with their services. [Spokesman-Review]
* Rhode Island is now the only state in New England where same-sex couples can’t get married, but that may change as soon as the state Senate gets its act together, sooo… we may be waiting a while. [New York Times]
* It’ll be hard to document every suit filed against Lance Armstrong, but this one was amusing. Now people want their money back after buying his autobiography because they say it’s a work of fiction. [Bloomberg]
These days, passing or failing the bar exam can have a great impact on employability in what little remains of the entry-level job market for recent law school graduates. That’s probably why those who took the July exam have been so cranky lately — they want to know if they’ll even have a chance to launch their careers.
Not even a month has passed since our last open thread devoted to bar exam results, but it appears that we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. It’s not yet November, so New York and California test takers still have some time left to wait, but we do have confirmed news about results from other states.
Within the past week, including today, at least three states announced their bar exam results. In fact, test takers from one state were so desperate to find out whether they passed that a post about the state’s results from two years ago is one of our most heavily trafficked pages today.
Applying to an unranked law school ‘early decision’ is like playing musical chairs with one other person and three chairs.
Remember when you were applying to college how some schools had “early decision” programs? You’d apply to your first-choice school, and in exchange for them telling you early, you had to commit to go to that college and no other. As if applying to colleges was some kind of national game of musical chairs, and people who didn’t get a seat would end up being forced to pursue higher education in Mexico.
I didn’t apply to anywhere “early decision” because I value options and don’t scare easily. I applied to 11 colleges, got into ten (eff you, Stanford), and then visited four or five of them. Obviously, other kids did things differently. It’s not uncommon to see a lot of Ivy League caliber kids commit to a great school early in the process. People choose their colleges based on all kinds of factors, and when you know, you know.
Law schools are very different. Students usually go to the best law school they get into, unless a school that is slightly lower-ranked offers them a ton of money. The only places that should be running an “early decision” program that includes binding commitments are Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.
You could make a case for some other top-ranked programs doing early decision for law school. But when you see an unranked program getting in on the action, it feels like the school isn’t tempting students into “early” decisions so much as it is trying to rush people into “bad” decisions….
Last year, we made passing mention of Malori Wampler, the ex-Indianapolis Colts cheerleader who had been fired for posing in “risqué” photographs at a Playboy magazine-sponsored party — and by “risqué,” we mean clad only in body paint. For all intents and purposes, Wampler was basically naked. (And don’t worry, dear readers, we’ve got photos, if you’re interested in seeing that sort of thing.)
But rather than simply contesting the team’s decision to fire her (after all, these pictures had been taken before she became an NFL cheerleader, and the team was aware that Wampler had worked at these parties in the past), Wampler decided to sue, alleging that the Colts had terminated her because of her sex, race, and national origin. Wampler wasn’t fired because she had violated the team’s rule against cheerleaders appearing in nude photos; no, she was fired because she was Indonesian.
Earlier this week, Wampler’s case got some action in federal court. Let’s find out what happened….
* “I’ve been a restaurant waitress, a hotel hostess, a car parker, a nurse’s aide, a maid in a motel, a bookkeeper and a researcher.” This SCOTUS wife was well-prepared to give a graduation speech at New England Law. [Huffington Post]
* Sniffling over lost profits is the best way to get a court to take your side. Biglaw firms have asked the Second Circuit to consider reversing a decision in the Coudert Brothers “unfinished business” clawback case. [Legal Intelligencer]
* James Holmes, the alleged Aurora movie theater gunman, is being evicted from his apartment. Guess he didn’t know — or care — that booby-trapping the place with bombs would be against the terms of his lease. [Denver Post]
* The ABA has created a task force to study the future of legal education, and its work is expected to completed in 2014. ::rolleyes:: Oh, good thing they’re not in any kind of a hurry — there’s no need to rush. [ABA Journal]
* Indiana Tech, the little law school that nobody wants could, has hired its first faculty members. Thus far, the school has poached law professors from from West Virginia, Florida A&M, and Northern Illinois. [JD Journal]
* When divorces get weird: is this lawyer’s soon-to-be ex-wife hacking into his law firm email account and planning to publish privileged communications online? Yep, this is in Texas. [Unfair Park / Dallas Observer]
* Breast-feeding porn: yup, that’s a thing, so start Googling. A New Jersey mother is suing an Iowa production company after an instructional video she appeared in was spliced to create pornography. [Boston Globe]
* If someone from your school newspaper asks you for a quote about oral sex, and then you’re quoted in the subsequent article, you’re probably not going to win your invasion of privacy lawsuit. [National Law Journal]
Is the bar exam like a rat race? Well, when there are actual rats in the building....
If you just completed the 2012 bar exam, congratulations. For many of you, the bar exam will be the last test you ever take in your life. How good does that feel?
Special congratulations to those of you who just emerged from three days of bar exam misery, either because you took the bar in a state with a three-day test or because you took the bar in two different states. I took the New York and New Jersey bar exams back to back — and I had to take New York up in Albany, which meant hours of driving with a fried mind — so I feel your pain.
Pain and the bar exam go hand in hand. Earlier this week, we shared with you bar exam horror stories from Virginia and North Carolina.
Today we have many more bar exam dispatches. Read on for stories of horror and heroism, reports of rodents and other creepy critters, and claims of shady behavior….
UPDATE (7/27/2012, 11 AM): Please note the UPDATE appended below regarding the Virginia bar exam.
A truly bizarre story is coming out of the woods of Indiana. An attorney, Peter Raventos, has been accused of staging his own shooting.
Police now believe that Raventos rigged a shotgun to shoot him in the back on June 25 at McCormick’s Creek State Park.
Thing is, nobody really knows why. Police haven’t released a suspected motive, and Raventos hasn’t commented on the allegations. But police have found the materials to make an elaborate booby trap that they contend Raventos set for himself.
See, this is the kind of weird ass stuff that happens to Midwesterners with too much time on their hands. I’ve lived in Indy, and there’s only so much time you can spend in the Steak ‘n Shake before you start thinking about things you can do with shotguns….
* Dewey need to send them a wedding present? Because to be honest, we really can’t afford one. Fifty of the firm’s European lawyers jumped ship to tie the knot with Greenberg Traurig in Poland. [WSJ Law Blog]
* “I don’t think there’s enough space in the legal market to absorb all the Dewey lawyers that aren’t prepackaged in a group.” When Dewey get on the unemployment line in New York City? [New York Law Journal]
* Ropes & Gray is expanding its Chinese private equity practice with plans to double its Asian-based lawyers by the end of the year. For now, the firm’s just poaching partners from Norton Rose and Paul Weiss. [Bloomberg]
* John Edwards’s legal team began his defense, and they still don’t know if he’ll be taking the stand. Not to worry, because he’ll be torturing his daughter, Cate Edwards, instead. [CNN]
* Remember the Catholic school that fired someone for getting IVF? They’re asserting the “ministerial exception” against Emily Herx — an unordained woman who doesn’t teach religion. [Washington Post]
* Apparently this only matters when top-tier schools do it, but like UC Hastings, George Washington Law will be reducing its class size in the hope of keeping new student enrollment below 450. [National Law Journal]
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
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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.
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