People going to bottom-tier law schools ought to know that they won’t go like hot cakes on the job market. But that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to exploit their vulnerability.
– Mark Gergen, a law professor at Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley), commenting on the lawsuits filed against law schools over allegedly misleading employment data.
(That’s just one professor’s opinion. What do other experts think?)
Continue reading “Quote of the Day: More Like Week-Old Muffins?”
As we noted in Morning Docket today, Law School Transparency (LST) wrote to all law schools accredited by the American Bar Association to request the NALP reports for the class of 2010. The NALP reports contain much more detail than that of the reports released by the ABA, such as information concerning part-time and temporary employment, as well as the number of graduates in jobs that do not require a law degree.
LST’s request was made on December 14, 2011. Two months later, LST has presented the results of that request, and the organization has made some significant strides since it first attempted to collect data back in July 2010. This time around, 34 law schools provided their NALP reports, either by sending them directly to LST, or posting them on their websites.
But which schools provided LST with the information? And which schools are still avoiding action?
Continue reading “Which Law Schools Are Trying to Be Honest About Their Employment Information?”
* Chris Christie, you’re making me ashamed to be a Jersey girl. Please allow our state be known for something besides the disgrace that is the Jersey Shore. Just sign the damn bill. [New York Times]
* A Biglaw firm that’s got some Seoul: Clifford Chance is the first firm from the United Kingdom — and the first foreign firm — to file a formal application to open an office in South Korea. [American Lawyer]
* Holland & Knight scored a half-million dollar contract to negotiate a deal for a new Massachusetts casino. Instead of giving out spring bonuses, the firm threw a big party to celebrate. [Boston Herald]
* “I am convinced that [he] was given an intentionally defective bomb . . . to stage a false terrorist attack.” This is what a Cooley Law grad said during the Underwear Bomber’s sentencing hearing. Figures. [ABC News]
* 32 law schools provided Law School Transparency with their NALP reports for the class of 2010. Remember when just one school was willing to provide data, and then reneged? [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
Back in October, we informed our readers that law school litigators Jesse Strauss and David Anziska intended to file class action lawsuits against 15 additional schools, on top of the two they’d already filed against Cooley Law and New York Law School. In mid-December, we brought you an update on the status of those potential filings after Anziska told us that at least three named plaintiffs had been secured for 11 out of the 15 law schools on October’s target list. And now, about a month and a half later, have we got some news for you.
Anziska quipped in an interview with us last year that he hoped to turn 2012 into the year of “law school litigation.” Well, the class action crusader is off to a great start, because today, Team Strauss/Anziska partnered up with six other law firms and filed lawsuits against 12 law schools around the country. According to Anziska, “these lawsuits will define a generation.”
Which law firms have joined in their mighty quest, and which law schools have been sued? Find out all of this information, plus additional details that we learned during today’s media conference call, after the jump….
Continue reading “Twelve More Law Schools Slapped with Class Action Lawsuits Over Employment Data”
Kyle McEntee (left) and Patrick Lynch (right), co-founders of Law School Transparency (LST).
Late last year, plaintiffs’ lawyer David Anziska pledged to make 2012 “the year of law school litigation.” Anziska, who’s currently spearheading efforts to sue law schools over allegedly misleading employment statistics, told my colleague Staci Zaretsky that he and his team members “want to sue as many law schools as we can to bring them into the fray.”
That’s all well and good — for plaintiffs’ lawyers, and for news outlets like ours seeking juicy stories to cover. But there are other ways to achieve reform. So here’s another thought: Could 2012 instead be the year of law school transparency? Transparency achieved voluntarily, by law schools coming forward on their own to share comprehensive data about how their graduates are faring in the job market?
In the weeks since we wrote about the University of Chicago Law School providing very detailed employment data about its recent graduating classes, based on our interview with Dean Michael Schill, we’ve heard from deans, professors, alumni and students of other law schools, all with similar messages. They believe that their schools, like Chicago, are also transparent about graduate employment outcomes — and they want to be recognized for it.
This chorus of “me too!” messages raises a promising possibility: Is law school transparency becoming, for lack of a better word, “cool”? Will honesty about employment data become the hot new trend for U.S. legal education?
Perhaps. But there’s still a long way to go, as shown by a report issued this week by Law School Transparency….
Continue reading “Law School Transparency: Who’s Naughty and Who’s Nice?”
As we mentioned today in Morning Docket, William Robinson, the newly appointed president of the American Bar Association, is taking a stand on the status quo of legal education in our country.
But instead of combating 2011′s annus horribilis for law schools by calling for reform, Robinson is defending the ABA’s role, stating that young lawyers “should have known what they were getting into.”
Isn’t it wonderful to know that the man in charge of the ABA is essentially playing the “blame the victim” card when it comes to debt-saddled and unemployed law school graduates?
Continue reading “The ABA Thinks It’s Your Own Fault If You’re Poor and Unemployed”
It's pronounced 'Mystal' like 'Cristal,' not to be confused with Elie's crystal ball.
Welcome back to work. I’m not going to act like a flight attendant and “welcome” you to a place we all got to at the exact same time, but I do hope your 2012 is starting off well.
In case you missed it on New Year’s Eve, we took a look back at our biggest stories of 2011. Now, let’s turn our gaze to the future. What do you think will happen in 2012?
I’ll get us started: The world will not end, nor be impacted in any special way on December 21, 2012….
Continue reading “2012 Predictions: ATL’s Calendar Goes All the Way to 2013″
Justice Kavanaugh has a nice ring to it.
* Searching for the perfect holiday present? Via Professor Glenn Reynolds: “As A Christmas Gift, Tell Your Friends and Relatives They’re Fat.” [Instapundit]
* If a Republican wins the White House in 2012, who might get nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court? Mike Sacks offers up a star-studded SCOTUS short list: the brilliant and genial Brett Kavanaugh, the fabulous Diane Sykes, certified superhottie Jeffrey Sutton, emerging feeder judge Neil Gorsuch, and star litigator Paul Clement. [Huffington Post]
* Another proposal on law school transparency. What is this “gainful employment” of which you speak? [Law School Transparency]
* If you can’t find gainful employment, well, maybe you can score a $500 reward from a concerned parent. [The Legal Satyricon]
* Speaking of Marc Randazza, here’s an interview in which he discusses “putting the nail in copyright holding company Righthaven’s coffin.” [WebmasterRadio.FM]
* A riddle from Eric Turkewitz: How is Indiana just like the old Soviet Union? [New York Personal Injury Law Blog]
* An interesting profile (by Peter Lattman) of Albert Foer — father of the three famous Foer brothers, and a celebrated and successful antitrust law crusader. [DealBook / New York Times]
* A man on trial for sex crimes at a Minnesota courthouse allegedly shot three people yesterday, including prosecutor Timothy Scannell. Guess it’s time to get a metal detector. [Duluth News Tribune]
* Instead of trying to force Citigroup’s hand on a tougher settlement, the SEC is appealing Judge Rakoff’s rejection of the original. Don’t want to make the SEC do more work now, judge. [Bloomberg]
* You’d think that by now, law schools facing scrutiny over employment data would be willing to turn over some information to Law School Transparency, but you’d be wrong. [National Law Journal]
* China’s King & Wood and Australia’s Mallesons Stephen Jaques are combining to form a happy family this March. If this were in Japan, they’d be the Godzilla of law firms. [Wall Street Journal]
* Obvious news alert: Foxy Knoxy was acquitted of murder because there wasn’t enough evidence to prove she was guilty of murder. Thanks for this brilliant observation, Judge Hellman. [CNN]
* The Toy & Action Figure Museum will be opening a lawyerly superhero exhibit. This generation of lawyers has no superheroes, because unemployment isn’t a super power. [ABA Journal]
* Now that Chicago has bared it all, isn’t it time for other law schools to fall in line? Show us the stats for the class of 2010 already. [Law School Transparency]
* And this is why your mother told you not to talk to strangers. [Legal Juice]
* If you’re going to send out a survey asking who your bros would like to rape, at least be classy about it. “Surprise sex” just sounds better. [Yahoo!]
* Five useful tips on how to be a better law prof, written by a law prof. Sleeping with students didn’t make the list. [PrawfsBlawg]
* In America, we make television shows about women and their witchy ways. In Saudia Arabia, they just kill them. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Martin Klotz, outside counsel for SAC Capital’s Steve Cohen, demands that you respect his client. [Dealbreaker]
* Ryan Gosling’s hotness put to good use for law school finals. [Law School Ryan Gosling]
* We should start preparing for the first Skyrim-based lawsuit. [Slate]
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
Keep reading »
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