I think the word “routine” should not be included in any sentence that includes the phrase “health inspection” and the word “failed.” Even if “routine” is an accurate description, nobody cares about that after the other words in the sentence.
In fact, “routine” kind of make it worse. Wouldn’t you rather eat at a place that failed a “super invasive, specialized, CSI-level inspection that most establishments likely wouldn’t pass under such scrutiny”? Failing a “routine” one sounds like, “This place is so gross that even a casual inspection revealed… dear God, what is that thing?”
Anyway, other phrases you don’t want to see in the same sentence include “Law School Café” and “mouse-droppings.”
The kind of person who pays full price for a degree without having any idea how much it’s worth.
I like to say that law school is a great idea if you want to be a lawyer. If you don’t know what to do, it’s a pretty bad idea.
If you know specifically that you don’t want to be a lawyer, going to law school is an atrocious idea. Jesus, you don’t see pacifists going to war college. But there are a couple of stories today about law schools targeting non-lawyer professionals who have no intention of practicing law.
The deal: you pay for a year of law school, and at the end you get an entirely meaningless degree. It’s good for the law schools because they make money. It’s good for the students because… ??? Because they don’t like money?
Honestly, it’s pretty obvious that the people signing up for these programs are not asked to take any kind of “logical reasoning” exam. They’d score pathetically, I’m sure….
Paging the next Aquagirl! Where are you? (Click for the image for the post.)
* Obama might have found out about the IRS scandal “when it came out in the news,” but the Office of White House Counsel knew what was going on weeks ago. Hooray, a new reason for people to lose their sh*t. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]
* Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness through ridiculously expensive litigation: making up almost two percent of our GDP, our legal system is the most costly on earth, which isn’t exactly something we should be bragging about. [Corporate Counsel]
* “It’s no surprise these lawyers would want to get off this sinking ship.” It looks like things are going just swimmingly for Steven Donziger now that John Keker’s out as his defense attorney in the Chevron fraud case. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* “Fantasy sports is usually the first and last thing I’ll do each day.” Here’s some proof that there’s such a thing as work/life balance in Biglaw… which is only applicable if you’re a partner. [Am Law Daily]
* Law school enrollment is down, and so is tuition revenue, so the legal academy is now selling new degrees. It’s only a matter of time before they market employment timeshares. [National Law Journal]
* On the bright side, if you’re still looking for a job, our own David Lat has some advice on how to get one (and how NOT to get one). We miss summer associates’ misbehavior. [U.S. News & World Report]
* Congrats are in order for this weekend’s graduates, including the first graduates of LMU’s embattled law school — they won’t let a lack of ABA accreditation rain on their parade. [Knoxville News Sentinel]
They would greenlight a mash-up of this movie and Legally Blonde now.
It appears that a lot of you would like to know which law professor authored the “Confessions of a Sociopath” summary and book that we discussed yesterday. I guess it’s news if it appears that one of your law professors has gone on television to say that she might murder someone. Sources have come forward about the author’s possible identity, so we’ll share with you what we’re being told while noting that the anonymous author hasn’t yet officially come forward.
It seems that donning a wig and going on Dr. Phil to talk about your sociopathic thoughts doesn’t protect your identity as much as one would think
So what got that Wake Forest law student mad enough that he started calling for Wake’s accreditation?
To briefly recap, a Wake law student, Daniel Skinner, filed a defamation suit against Wake and several Wake officials over a letter he received suggesting that he’s quick to accuse folks of fraud and deceit.
Underlying this dispute is Skinner’s claim that Wake failed to meet basic accreditation standards and therefore defrauded the ABA and the federal government.
The details of this claim weren’t clear from the complaint and Skinner’s personal blog. But thankfully some folks have stepped up and provided us with more material Skinner has sent around explaining his beef with Wake Forest. So in the interest of full disclosure, let’s take a look at Skinner’s side of this story…
The Socratic method is the bane of every law student. If executed through cold calling, it meant you sat there knowing that at any given moment you could be called upon to publicly humiliate yourself in front of your peers. Even if the process relied on voluntary participation, there was a sense of trepidation attached to both talking and remaining silent.
Some insufferable douches people enjoyed the “law school experience” of the Socratic method, either because they were academic superstars or otherwise possessed a massive ego and the misapprehension that anyone cared about their opinion.
Here’s how much the Socratic method sucks: it’s named after a guy that everyone thought was so much of a prick they made him kill himself for cold calling everyone in Athens.
There is an argument that the system itself disadvantages women. But “disadvantages women” at what? Being a law student or being a lawyer? Because those are two very different things…
As many of you know, I went straight through from college to law school without taking any time off. And many of you know that I count this as one of my many mistakes. The people I know who took time off between college and law school came back to law school with an appreciation of school and a focus on what skills they needed to succeed in the real world.
People like me who went straight through tended to start out with a “College II” mentality, got book-raped first semester, and muddled through law school kind of wondering why everything was so boring. In my anecdotal experience, these people disproportionately ended up in Biglaw, because people who get on only one train tend to end up at the same destination.
Given that experience, I think this new pilot program from Harvard Law School could be a very good idea. Harvard Law will now admit Harvard undergraduates after their junior year of college, provided they agree to an automatic, two-year, post-graduation deferment. That’s two years after college where you can work, earn money, and experience the real world outside the ivory tower, all the while knowing that you have Harvard Law to fall back on.
At least, that’s the positive view of the program. Our tipsters point out the cynical side….
Have you ever thought that your law professor was a sadistic bastard? Have you ever felt like the prosecutor across the table was an emotional black hole? Would it freak you out if you turned out to be clinically right?
We’ve talked a lot about mental health recently, from panic buttons to Asperger’s (or autism spectrum disorder, if you prefer). But today we’ve come across a truly chilling article from a law professor who admits that she’s a sociopath and writes about how law is the perfect field for people like her.
I’m turning the snark meter way down on this post because, well, I don’t want to be murdered…
Note the UPDATE at the end of this post concerning the professor’s possible identity.
Law schools have been sued before. Often, we here at ATL, applaud those efforts. It’s a David and Goliath undertaking to bring a school literally filled with lawyers to court.
But this lawsuit has a little less “heroic struggle” to it. Suing because a dean accused you of being too quick to accuse others of acting in bad faith? Maybe he hasn’t taken torts yet, because truth is a defense…
You never really get away with anything in this world. You can’t outrun life in a Bronco.
* Schools with the most racially diverse law school faculties didn’t do well in the U.S. News Rankings or the ATL one. [New York Law Journal]
* Jodi Arias news. Something about the death penalty. I didn’t really read the article. Remember, every time you click on something about Jodi Arias, God kills a kitten. [USAToday]
* Obama merely fired the acting IRS chief, Steve Miller. He didn’t execute him in Times Square with his bare hands, so cable news outlets will still have something to bitch about. [CNN]
* How happy is Bloomberg that between the IRS and the DOJ their ridiculous scandal is kind of flying under the radar? [Reuters]
* The Juice, is loose, on the witness stand. Not really loose, he’s in shackles and way too fat now to fit gloves of any kind. [ESPN]
* And now it’s time for the House Republicans to be confronted with their own hypocrisy. In response to the DOJ subpoenas Obama wants to pass “media shield” legislation which would protect reporters from this sort of thing. But will the House GOP pass something that actually limits the power of the government to spy on people? Will the House pass any legislation that the President will actually sign these next four years? Dilemmas, dilemmas. [Wall Street Journal]
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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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I think the word “routine” should not be included in any sentence that includes the phrase “health inspection” and the word “failed.” Even if “routine” is an accurate description, nobody cares about that after the other words in the sentence. 
