Bryan Garner
How old is “bench slap”? Should I put it in Black’s Law Dictionary? How would you define it?
– Legal writing guru Bryan Garner, editor of Black’s Law Dictionary and co-author (with Justice Scalia) of Reading Law (affiliate links), asking on Twitter about a possible addition to Black’s.
(Information about the origins of “benchslap,” after the jump.)
I was not aware that see-through shirts and cleavage was the trademark of a good lawyer in New Zealand. Apparently I have a lot to learn about their judicial system.
– a comment left on Facebook in response to a picture used by LEX magazine to entice people to “like” the New Zealand Law Students Association (NZLSA) page on the social networking site.
(Read on to see the picture that’s being slammed as sexist by women lawyers the world over.)
Continue reading “There’s Much More to Female Law Students Than Just Their Cleavage”
Charlotte Devlin
What do we want to say to our daughters? That law is a great profession until you have children?
– Charlotte Devlin, co-founder of Obelisk Legal Support, commenting on the legal profession’s loss of female attorneys in the United Kingdom due to the overwhelming process of balancing long hours with child rearing.
Wise Latina?
[F]ederal judges are not just politicians in robes, though that is part of what they are.
– Professor Lee Epstein, Professor William M. Landes, and Judge Richard Posner, writing about judges and politics in their forthcoming book, The Behavior of Federal Judges (affiliate link).
(Additional highlights from Adam Liptak’s article about their research, after the jump.)
Continue reading “Quote of the Day: Partisan Hearts Beating Underneath Their Robes?”
Randall Gay
I didn’t have to really study for football. It’s just something you know. Now, I’m starting from scratch writing briefs. I don’t know what a brief is. I’m taking a tort class. I don’t know what a tort is. In football, we have seven days to prepare. Now I have to do assignments and have them done by the next day. But I’ve learned to adapt quickly.
– Randall Gay, a retired football player formerly of the New England Patriots and the New Orleans Saints, commenting on what it’s like to make the difficult transition from playbooks to law books in his new career as a law student.
(So where is the ex-cornerback going to law school? Let’s find out!)
Robert Barnett
I have no comment. Hope you will understand.
– Robert Barnett, longtime Williams & Connolly partner and D.C. power broker, declining to comment to the New York Times about his representation of General David Petraeus, the former CIA Director who stepped down amid a sex scandal. Our jokey headline notwithstanding, “no comment” was probably the best comment here.
(Additional tidbits about who is representing whom in this messy affair, after the jump.)
Judge Mike Norman
I told my preacher I thought I led more people to Jesus than he had but, then again, more of my people have amnesia. They soon forget once they get out of jail.
– Judge Mike Norman, commenting on the rather unusual sentences he hands down in his courtroom. Last week, Judge Norman gave a 17-year-old who pleaded guilty to manslaughter a deferred sentence, provided that the teen goes to church each week (among other conditions).
Justice Antonin Scalia
Congress has its job and we have ours…. They can’t tell us to set aside rules of logic!
– Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking over the weekend at the National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society. He was responding to a question as to whether Congress could pass laws dictating how judges interpret the law.
(Additional highlights from Justice Scalia’s speech, after the jump.)
Continue reading “Quote of the Day: Actually, They Do It All the Time; It’s Called ‘Legislation’”
Justice Samuel Alito
Where did we go wrong?
– Justice Samuel A. Alito, imagining the reaction of Yale Law School professors to the fact that he and Justice Clarence Thomas were, for a time, the two YLS graduates on the Supreme Court. Justice Alito delivered the keynote address last night at the annual dinner of the Federalist Society.
(Additional highlights from Justice Alito’s speech, after the jump.)
Continue reading “Quote of the Day: Justice Alito on Yale Law School”
Dean Don LeDuc
I cannot speak for the other Michigan law school deans, but for myself I cannot accept that the 2012 results validly assessed our graduates. In short, these results are not for real.
– Don LeDuc, president and dean of Thomas M. Cooley Law School, commenting on his school’s abysmal results on the July 2012 administration of the Michigan bar examination.
(If you recall, we previously discussed this summer’s Michigan bar exam results, but what other amusing things does Dean LeDuc have to say about them?)
Continue reading “Quote of the Day: Sorry, Dean, Those Bar Results Are ‘For Real’”
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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