[S]chools don’t have to go so far as to declare such specifics to the world as having a sheep farmer and a professional poker player in their graduating class to make some salubrious steps toward being a bit more forthcoming.
– Sarah Zearfoss, Michigan Law’s Senior Assistant Dean for Admissions, Financial Aid, and Career Planning, commenting on the need for increased transparency in the employment statistics law schools present to prospective students who peruse their websites.
It’s been quite some time since we’ve had the opportunity to openly mock Michigan law students. Well, actually, that’s not entirely true — after all, we did pass judgment on their so-so performance on their own state’s bar exam. But thankfully, these kids have given us another chance to chuckle at their expense.
Remember that not-so secret society they had? You know, the one that tried to prank the campus community by putting sheets with sloppy penmanship up on the roofs of the residential dorms? That was a total fake fraternity fail. But now we’ve got a “real” fraternity fail for you to feast your eyes upon.
It appears that students at Michigan Law are trying to re-live their college glory days of coolness (or pretend that those days existed in the first place) via one of their law fraternities. It’s actually kind of cute, because they think it should be like a real fraternity, complete with insane initiation rituals….
(Plus, check our our update with some relevant information from a current member.)
Was one of the essay questions “design an American truck that runs on candy and rainbows but still has enough power to make a Texan feel better about his small penis”? Because that would be a hard question. And it would explain the abysmal bar passage rate achieved by test takers on the July 2012 Michigan bar exam.
The people who took the Michigan bar exam passed at a rate as if all of them went to Cooley. Okay, it wasn’t that bad, but it was still pretty bad. The bar passage rate for the state was 55 percent. Tipsters and commenters contend that those ridiculous numbers are due to a change in scoring the essays, but the Michigan Bar hasn’t released an official reason for the low rates.
Hell, maybe they want it this way. One way of slowing the saturation of the legal market is to make it a harder market to enter.
Let’s take a look at a school-by-school breakdown…
Continue reading “Test Takers Tank On The July 2012 Michigan Bar Exam”
Justice Elena Kagan
There is not a single member of this Court, at a single time, who has made a decision, who has cast a vote, based on do I like this president, do I not like this president … will this help the Democrats, will this help the Republicans? It is just not the way any member of the Court thinks.
– Justice Elena Kagan, discussing what she believes to be a misplaced public perception that members of the Supreme Court allow their political leanings to guide their judicial decision-making, in remarks delivered at the University of Michigan Law School.
‘This herpes thing is less embarrassing than my 72-day marriage to Kim Kardashian.’
* Want to know what they call the Supreme Court attorney who deals with requests for stays of execution? The death clerk. Paging John Grisham, because this guy’s nickname would make a great book title. [New York Times]
* “If you’re going to sue, it’s better to sue earlier rather than later.” Probably why battleground states like Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are in a tizzy over their election laws. [Washington Post]
* WikiLeaks or it didn’t happen: Bradley Manning’s lawyer has demanded that seven years be cut from his client’s prospective sentence due to allegations of improper treatment while in military custody. [The Guardian]
* Michigan Law’s Sarah Zearfoss, she of Wolverine Scholars fame, finds media coverage about the awful job market for recent law grads “really frustrating.” Try being unemployed. [Crain's Detroit Business (reg. req.)]
* Kris Humphries is being sued for allegedly giving a girl herpes. But alas, the plaintiff seems to have no idea who actually gave her the herp — four John Doe defendants are identified in the complaint, too. [Star Tribune]
* “Given the police idiocy, one wonders where the boobs really are.” A nude model who was arrested during a body-painting exhibition in Times Square won a $15K false-arrest settlement from the cops. [New York Post]
Pay attention to the game when you go to the ballpark.
* If anything, baseball stadiums need less netting to prevent fans from catching foul balls. And if your six-year-old gets clocked in the head by a batted ball, it should be a lesson to wealthy fans in great seats to pay attention to the goddamn national pastime instead talking on your cell phone or watching the scoreboard or doing whatever non-baseball activity that distracted you from the 2-2 count with the lefty up at bat. [Legal Blog Watch]
* Pop quiz, law professors. What do you do? [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Here’s a great review of Mark Hermann’s book: Inside Straight, that focuses on Hermann’s use of the commenters in his material. This will provide excellent research for my own project: How I Became An Affirmative Action Walrus. [Simple Justice]
* Don’t you love how the Michigan Law walk-out on Rob Portman is now actually a bit of a thing in the VEEPstakes? [Gawker]
* It’s been a while since I studied commercial paper, but I’m pretty sure SpongeBob Squarepants coins aren’t going to pass muster. [Dealbreaker]
* Ohio tries to further regulate fracking, but efforts to frustrate fracking f**k-ups feel futile. [Fulbright Fracking Blog]
* Morrison & Foerster elects new firm leadership. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
This $10 million house is owned by a lawyer at a top law firm. Which one?
What can we say? We can’t get enough of Washington real estate. And neither can you, judging from the traffic generated by our recent look at some million-dollar homes in the D.C. area. So let’s return to that well.
Our last story was about homes in the $1 million to $3 million range. Let’s class it up a bit and look at Lawyerly Lairs ranging in value from $7 million to $10 million….
Continue reading “Lawyerly Lairs: The Five Most Expensive Attorney Abodes in Washington, D.C.”
So far this year, we haven’t had any huge commencement kerfuffles over graduation speakers at law schools. Last year, you’ll remember that Michigan Law was in a tizzy over Dean Evan Caminker’s pick of Ohio Senator Rob Portman as a commencement speaker. Portman is one of those anti-marriage equality types, and Michigan Law students actually organized a walkout to protest his divisive views.
This year, Michigan has gone with a much more conservative choice.
Paul Caron at Tax Prof Blog has published his annual list of law school commencement speakers. Michigan Law’s choice is boring, but let’s see if we can’t find somebody else on this list to get excited about…
Continue reading “Commencement Speakers: Coming To A Law School Near You”
When we crowned the University of Michigan Law School as our Most Honest Law School, my colleague Elie Mystal chalked it up to their good, old Midwestern values. But just a few weeks after winning our March Madness competition, Michigan Law actually did something really honest — the school released all of its employer statistics for the classes of 2009 – 2011 (not to mention that it was the first elite law school to release its 2010 NALP report to Law School Transparency). Now if that’s not transparent, then we really don’t know what is.
While you ponder when the rest of the T14 is going to step up to the plate and reveal all of its employment information, we’ll help you analyze the data, and tell you what it could mean for you….
Some people believe that attending a “top 14″ law school will magically guarantee you a job. If that’s the case, why are so many “T14″ law students trying to force their way into law offices?
Or, to be more precise, law school offices. A few months ago, we wrote about a UVA law student who was charged with breaking and entering. The space in question: the registrar’s office. The police alleged that the student might have been trying to steal transcript paper.
Could that have been the beginning of a trend? Over the holiday weekend, two students at another leading law school were arrested after an alleged break-in….
Continue reading “Another Alleged Break-In at a Top-Tier Law School”
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.
Keep reading »
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