Parties

This Law School Mixer Had A Lot Of Alcohol In It

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Ah, going to law school in 2012

I hereby dub the class of 2015 the class of the drunks.

Yes, I know, it seems a bit unfair to nickname an entire class based on their first week of classes (and only at a few schools). But think about it this way: you already have to be kind of drunk to start law school in 2012 anyway.

Earlier this week, we did a story about kids drinking in the law school library. Now we’re getting word that a law school mixer, a freaking first week meet-and-greet, turned so drunken that people were passed out “half naked” in the bathrooms.

I’m telling you, we’re going to get stories like this throughout the 2012-2013 year. We’ve already pretty much established that people applying to law school now are dumber (at least by LSAT scores) than people in previous years. I think that as it sinks in for these 1Ls that all the information they ignored before showing up on campus was true, they will increasingly turn to the bottle….

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Law School Success Stories: He Loves the Nightlife

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With both law school and the law school application season about to resume, let’s return to our popular series of Law School Success Stories. While we believe it’s important to provide our readers with accurate information about the perils of law school, including data about high lawyer unemployment and crushing student debt, we like to balance out the doom and gloom with stories of successful lawyers who made winning bets on legal education.

Today’s success story comes to us via the august pages of the New York Times. Even though this young lawyer didn’t go to a top-tier law school, he’s enjoying a phenomenal legal career, marked by fame and fortune.

His story contains valuable lessons for people thinking about, or already enrolled in, law school. Let’s learn more about him, shall we?

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Sexy First Amendment Freedom Fighter Accused of Hosting an Underage Booze-a-Palooza

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Sydney Spies

Remember Sydney Spies, the teenage dream from Colorado who fought valiantly to get her provocative pictures featured in her high school yearbook, all in the name of free expression? Despite the threat of a lawsuit and national media coverage, all of Spies’s racy photos were rejected — but she was able to earn a spot in Americans’ hearts (and spankbanks) around the country.

The young Hollywood hopeful landed a small role in an upcoming SyFy movie, and her mother, Denise “Miki” Spies, was preparing to ship her daughter out to Los Angeles in the hopes of her making it big. Why not throw one last bash to celebrate Sydney’s single success in stardom? And that’s apparently where all the trouble began for this mother and daughter duo.

Little did Sydney and Miki know that their alleged exploits at the party would someday be able to serve as the basis for a Lifetime movie. The pair could face jail time for allegedly serving alcohol to minors — but at least they’re back in the headlines. (And this underage drinking drama could earn Sydney another line on her iMDB profile, so she’s probably patting herself on the back.)

Let’s discuss the charges that the Spies are currently facing, and all of the allegations that make them appear to be quite the hot messes….

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ATL Summer Associate Event Contest: The Winner!

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Thanks to everyone who participated in this year’s summer associate event contest. Many of you nominated events, and almost 1,500 of you voted in the reader poll to crown this year’s winner.

We had five fantastic finalists, coming from five leading law firms: Latham & Watkins, Quinn Emanuel, Ropes & Gray, Schulte Roth & Zabel, and Weil Gotshal & Manges. They covered a wide range of activities, from karting to karaoke and from hiking to Heat-watching (the Miami Heat, that is).

Which Biglaw firm took home the big prize?

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ATL Summer Associate Event Contest: The Finalists

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We recently requested entries for our summer associate event contest. Even if being a summer associate at a large law firm is more work than play these days, there is still fun to be had.

Here’s a comment on the post from “Dewey & LeBoeuf Summer Associate”:

It’s tough to choose just one event from my summer to nominate for The Best Biglaw Summer Associate Event of 2012. First, there was “Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day,” which was so successful the firm extended the event for the entire summer. Another one of my favorites was the cooking class I attended, “Upgrading Your Kitchen: 101 Ramen Recipes.”

Some of the firm’s events were also educational. I particularly enjoyed the invaluable seminar “Dodging Your Debts,” featuring guest speaker Elie Mystal. And each week I looked forward to the “Friday Bonfire,” where the other summer associates and I gathered to roast off-brand marshmallows in the tall fire we’d built with that week’s haul of rejection letters as we basked in the glow of the flames of our legal careers.

Fortunately, most summer associates are working at firms that aren’t in bankruptcy. Let’s take a look at our quintet of impressive entries for this year’s summer associate event contest….

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What Was The Best Biglaw Summer Associate Event Of 2012?

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Who had a ball this summer?

It’s August. The dog days. The beginning of the end of the summer. Summer associate programs at Biglaw firms are starting to wrap up. So it’s time for us to seek submissions for the best summer associate event of the season.

Biglaw summer programs are smaller and less opulent than they used to be. But they’re not as bad as they were during the darkest days of the recession. Summer associates are getting offers. And having lesbian sex. It’s not all bad.

There have to be some summer events worth nominating this year. Hell, at this point we’d settle for a summer event that didn’t require medical attention after it finished….

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Non-Sequiturs: 06.18.12

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* Roger Clemens was found not guilty on charges of lying to Congress about using steroids. [New York Times]

* Why did the ABA Journal kill a feature story on mentoring by Dan Hull and Scott Greenfield? The world may never know, and the world may never see the story. [Simple Justice]

* Q: What does a male lawyer do when his female secretary gives him a nice little Father’s Day gift? A: Freak out because random acts of kindness are so unusual, and then write a letter to a New York Times advice columnist. [New York Times]

* If you’ll be in D.C. this Thursday, June 21, check out this battle of the law firm bands — a fun event that we’ve covered before, as well as a fundraiser for a worthy cause. [Banding Together 2012]

* ATL readers are awesome. You guys have already been a huge help to this court reporter who almost died when he fell into the Chicago River. The family is still taking donations, and now there’s a PayPal link, so it’s even easier to lend a hand to Andrew Pitts and his family. [Kruse Reporters Blog]

* A closer look at the continuing rapid progress of predictive coding (or, as skeptics would say, our new computer overlords) in legal discovery. [WSJ Law Blog]

* New York’s “hot dog hooker,” Ms. Catherine Scalia (no, not that Scalia), was sentenced to jail. Maybe she should have deigned to sell chocolate milkshakes instead. [Gothamist]

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Should You Wear a Bikini to the Firm Pool Party?

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It’s that time again: it’s getting hot in herre [sic], and people at your firm have decided to take Nelly’s advice. While everyone’s gearing up for the big summer bash, you’ve got to deal with your next fashion headache. You’ve already been told that you should be wearing skirt suits and showing some leg on a day-to-day basis. And now that the weather is nice, lawyerly ladies want to know: can you, or rather, should you wear a bikini to your firm’s pool party?

We covered this issue last summer, where the be-all and end-all question was to boob or not to boob. At that point in time, I adopted an “if you’ve got it, why not flaunt it” stance. But now that I’m a year older, and (arguably) a year wiser, I’m here to offer our female readers some more mature advice to be used in this “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation with assistance from Kat Griffin of Corporette.

Keep reading for some Biglaw bathing suit etiquette that you shouldn’t have too much trouble following….

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Friendly Biglaw Partner Accused Of Helping Minors Get Drunk — Like That’s A Bad Thing

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UPDATE (1/10/2013): Please note the update at the end of this post concerning the dismissal of the charge in this case.

This is going to go down as one of those “partners behaving badly” stories, but I don’t think it should. Underage drinking is a problem because kids don’t know how to handle alcohol and they drink too much and die. Or they drink too much and then do something stupid and die. Dead teenagers are not a good thing.

Many people think the solution is to somehow “ban” teenage drinking. Note that currently people under 21 aren’t allowed to buy alcohol. Note also that teens almost always still find a way to drink.

Instead of only focusing on ways to prevent teens from drinking, can’t we also at least think about ways to allow teens to drink in a safe environment? I think every high school should have at least one “cool” parent. One parent whose house you can go over to and have a couple of beers without everybody freaking out. Then, if you get too drunk or stupid or whatever, the “cool” parent can drive you home, or keep an eye on you, or tell the attending physician exactly how much you had to drink before you lapsed into a pansy-boy “alcohol poisoning” coma.

So yeah, to the rest of society, this Biglaw partner has been accused of something really bad. To me, he’s just been accused of providing a vital public service….

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Barrister’s Ball Blowout: A Night of Booze, Barf, and Blood (and B*tching About the Budget)

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It’s springtime, and you know what that means: the Above the Law tips inbox has started overflowing with lurid tales of Barrister’s Ball debauchery. To start the season off on the right foot, we’ve got story for you from a law school that’s been on our watch list before for alcohol-related offenses.

Apparently students at this Massachusetts law school don’t know how to hold their liquor, much less how to properly budget for a such boozy extravaganza. This event is rumored to have cost the Student Bar Association more than $20,000, with overbudget expenses alleged to have reached the $8,000 mark.

Not too shabby for an affair where various bodily fluids were spilled. The ensuing drama all played out on the school’s online forum, where the following message appeared:

Can we all make a pact not to post this to ATL like someone did with those crazy booze swilling alcoholic 1Ls (now 2Ls)?

Alas, it seems that the kids at this school aren’t good at holding their secrets, either….

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