OCI

Non-Sequiturs: 05.07.13

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* A senior litigation associate at Paul Hastings, Ryan Nier, has decided to participate in something called the Death Race, and it has nothing to do with the drive for partnership. This Death Race is 50-mile mountain endurance/obstacle race that takes somewhere between 24 and 48 straight hours to finish. Only a handful complete the race every year, and Nier is determined to be one of them. From what we’re told, Paul Hastings has been entirely supportive of Nier, which is cool because he’s using it as an opportunity to raise money for charity. But who knows how supportive they’ll be when they realize he won’t have Blackberry access on top of the mountain for 48 hours. For more information about the Death Race, check out the website. [The Death Race]

* Law student golfing across the U.S. So, I take it summer associate gigs are still scarce? [Golf.com]

* “Guess What the Air Force’s Chief of Sexual Assault Prevention Was Just Arrested For…” Hard to top that headline. [Lowering the Bar]

* Harper Lee suing over “To Kill a Mockingbird” (affiliate link), alleging that the son-in-law of her literary agent botched the copyright. *Insert cheap Atticus Finch joke here* [Washington Post]

* Gigi Jordan case gets even uglier with misconduct charges flying around. [Thompson Reuters News & Insight]

* Dr. Phil is suing Gawker alleging that the website posted a video of the pop psychologist’s interview with Manti Te’o, stifling ratings. So Dr. Phil thinks his audience strongly overlaps with Gawker’s. I’m incredulous. [Yahoo! Sports]

* This is why an over-aggressive cease and desist letter can get you into more trouble. Enter the world of the “miniature war-gaming community.” [Popehat]

* A guide to the questions applicants need to be able to answer at OCI. The best? “Describe a situation when you had to think on your feet to extricate yourself from a difficult situation.” This provides insight into how the applicant will deal with virtually every situation that ever comes up in Biglaw. [Ms. JD]

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Master Class Douchery: 3L Gunner Schools Classmates in Interviewing

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The divide between “being a nice guy” and “being an asshat” is often found in the willingness to share. The compulsion to bombard everyone’s inbox with advice just to be smug friendly can turn even the most well-meaning effort into an inspiration for eye rolls.

Like a 1600-word screed directed at one’s schoolmates, offering unsolicited interview advice.

That would cross that line…

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What The NFL Can Learn From OCI

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Manti, summer associates on our team are expected to have sex with real women.

I saw Magic Johnson yesterday. I was standing on the first floor of the building I work at. I won’t bore you with the details of my job, but it involves quite a bit of non-legal work. If you’re picturing a Spanish-speaking gentleman wearing a sandwich board that advertises cheap men’s suits, you wouldn’t be far off. I mean, I was technically hired as an attorney. And I do a fair amount of nominally legal work. Suffice to say, however, that the name tag I was wearing yesterday when I saw Magic Johnson does not… aver that I’m an attorney.

Anyway, I saw Magic Johnson yesterday. He strode like a behemoth across the marble floor and the first thing I thought was, “This man is enormous.” And I don’t mean that he’s fat. Although it’s clear he’s gained a good amount of weight since Showtime. I mean that he’s unbelievably tall. I would have pegged him at seven feet easy if I didn’t already know his listed playing height of 6’9″.

The second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth things I thought were “HIV virus.” The audio of that press conference can be recalled at a moment’s notice. Especially the way that he unnecessarily appended the extra “virus” onto the end of that seeming death sentence, thus joining the other 20th century sporting legend who had made a public announcement full of echo regarding his impending death.

Today, do I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth? For seeing Magic? No way. Nothing makes up for me having to wear a name tag.

Let’s talk sports….

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Morning Docket: 02.25.13

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* The horror! The horror! Sacrilege! Constitutional law nerds nationwide will weep at the very thought of someone suggesting that our country’s governing document be amended to abolish life tenure for Supreme Court justices. [Los Angeles Times]

* Quite frankly, it’s pretty amazing how quickly the preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act went from being seen by states as something that wasn’t “onerous” to being “arbitrary and burdensome.” That’s politics for you. [It's All Politics / NPR]

* Jim Woolery, an M&A superstar formerly of J.P. Morgan, has made the jump to Cadwalader after only two years at the bank. Upgrade or downgrade from his Cravath partnership? [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* Some law professors stop teaching classes to tend to their divorce proceedings, but other law professors teach classes from their hospital beds so their students aren’t thrown to the wolves. [Tex Parte / Texas Lawyer]

* It you want to be employed, make damn sure you nail your interview because “[t]he stakes are higher than ever” — fewer than 13 percent of permanent law jobs were obtained from OCI in 2011. [National Law Journal]

* Greenlight Capital’s case against Apple might have been perceived as a “silly sideshow” by some, but it looks like Judge Richard Sullivan of the S.D.N.Y. purchased front row tickets. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Speaking of silly sideshows, the DOJ recently joined the fray with Floyd Landis and his False Claims Act suit against Lance Armstrong. Perhaps it’s time for the disgraced biker to take his ball and go home. [Bloomberg]

* Alan Westin, privacy law scholar and professor emeritus of public law at Columbia, RIP. [New York Times]

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The Brave New World of Entry-Level Recruiting

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Greetings from San Francisco, home of the world champion Giants, surprisingly noisy trolley cars, and the faint smell of cannabis pretty much everywhere. We’re in town to attend Ark Group‘s conference on “The Brave New World of Entry-Level Recruiting,” which examines how the world of law student recruiting by firms has changed (and will continue to evolve) since the onset of the Great Recession. Moderated by Bruce MacEwen, who kicked off the proceedings by framing the day as an opportunity for “frank conversation” between schools and firms, the conference featured an absolute Murderers’ Row of industry thought leaders, including Orrick‘s Ralph Baxter, legal academia’s apostate Paul Campos, NALP’s Jim Leipold, Indiana/Maurer‘s Bill Henderson, three Biglaw hiring partners, and deans from Berkeley, Stanford, and Hastings.

Read on for some highlights and takeaways from yesterday’s conference.

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A Guide for Surviving On-Campus Interviewing With Style

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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….

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The ATL Career Center: Your New Source For Advice And Information About Getting Jobs At America’s Top Law Firms

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All across the country, law students and law firms are gearing up for on-campus interviewing. If you are seeking to advance your legal career or trying to figure out where to work, check out Above the Law’s new Career Center, which contains a wealth of resources to help you with your job search.

On Friday, we pointed you to our brand-new ATL Law Firm Directory. The Directory contains ratings for over 70 law firms, based on responses from over 6,000 attorneys. Our individual firm profiles break down the employers using a number of metrics, and based on your surveys we’ve been able to give each of the firms a letter grade (curved around a “B,” which should be familiar to most law grads). The profiles are dynamic, reflecting both publicly available information and user responses, so if you feel like your firm is getting an unwarranted grade, the profile page will lead you right to the survey, where you can tell us what you think.

We’re also interested in hearing about how the summer associate experience has been this year. We invite you to take our summer associate survey.

Over the weeks and months ahead, we will be adding new components and resources to the Career Center. Today we are going live with our Law Students section. This page provides advice and articles about job hunting, academics, and clerkships, as well as access to our law firm profiles. Some of the content provided by our five partners — The Girl’s Guide to Law School, Legal Writing Pro, Lateral Link, JD Match, and Leopard Solutions — is available only on the Career Center, so check it out.

Our effort to expand the career-related resources for our readers is just getting started. We’ll soon be launching a page dedicated to lawyers in the lateral market, as well as resources for those in other career paths outside of Biglaw. As more people fill out surveys, we’ll be able to construct profiles for more firms. And yes, eventually we will have letter grades for law schools as well as law firms — and that won’t be controversial at all!

The Career Center will grow and evolve over time, and we welcome your suggestions for adding to and improving it. If you have recommendations, questions, or concerns, you can reach the Career Center team by email: careers@abovethelaw.com.

It’s an exciting time here at Above the Law, and we hope you’ll take advantage of these new offerings. In today’s fast-moving and challenging world, information is king — and we want you to have access to all of it.

Law Student Career Center [Above the Law Career Center]
Law Firm Directory [Above the Law Career Center]

ATL Career Center: We’re Here to Help You Prepare for OCI

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OCI’s coming, and it’s a buyer’s market. Law students who do their research will have a distinct advantage. And we want to help Above the Law readers out-compete their peers.

Check out the ATL Law Firm Directory, our new resource to help you compare among potential law firm employers and prepare for the crucial interview season. See what insiders have to say about where they work and review our new law firm ratings, based on our ongoing survey of the massive ATL audience. Stay tuned for more updates from the ATL Research Team.

There’s information in the Career Center that won’t just help you for your interviews, it will also help you choose the law firm that is right for you. For instance one up-and-coming-firm, dubbed the “Most Feared & Loathed Firm in Silicon Valley,” owns a ping-pong table that converts into their conference board room. They know exactly what they’re looking for; are you looking for them?

Our friends at JD Match provided 14 key interview tips. Again we want to help you get a job this OCI season, so check out the tips…

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Non-Sequiturs: 07.18.12

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* Dear ABA: could you please at least LOOK at what’s going on at Rutgers-Camden. We’ve already looked at their arguably misleading ads. Now Paul Campos has figured that the school may have been massively under-reporting the amount of debt people graduate with to the ABA (scroll down to Upate III). Seriously ABA, do one small part of your freaking job JUST ONCE. [Inside the Law School Scam]

* Here’s a great way to lower the cost of education: make books free. I mean, it’ll never, ever happen, but it’s a good idea. [CALI via Tax Prof Blog]

* Law students might need a bit of a refresher on supply and demand before they hit up fall recruiting. [Adam Smith Esq.]

* Legacy LeBoeuf retirees have also been screwed by the D&L fiasco. Boy, Dewey know how they feel. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Should we care about the “scholarship” of law professors at all? [Adjunct Law Prof Blog]

* Wild strippers are a national problem in New Zealand. [The Telegraph]

* Congratulations to the latest class of Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40! [National LGBT Bar Association]

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Are You Ready For The Summer? Do You Know How To Pronounce The Names Of All The Firms?

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I used to work at Debevoise & Plimpton. Before I interviewed with them, I learned that the firm was called Debevoise (rhymes with “noise”) and not Debevoise (rhymes with voire “boudoir”).

Not everybody who showed for interviews had that level of commitment. How embarrassing for them. At Debevoise, they’re a little touchy about the proper pronunciation of the firm’s name — and not just with potential recruits. Do you know how stupid you sound when you are sitting with a bunch of Biglaw New York lawyers and your roll out with “Debevoir” or “Curtis Mallet” (as in hammer)? You sound like an idiot. People will make fun of you when you go to the bathroom. I once heard a person pronounce Cravath like “cravat,” and it was so jarring that I swear that’s the only thing I remember about the person. If I saw him again, our mutual friend would have to pull me aside and say, “That’s the ‘cravat’ guy.”

There are services out there to help you avoid these embarrassing mistakes. You should put in a little bit of time before you head to New York, or D.C., or L.A., or anywhere where top lawyers are likely to be….

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