We talk a lot about the value of a law degree, but one thing most people seem to agree about is that a law degree isn’t very useful unless you want to be a lawyer. The people who go to law school because they think it is the doorway to riches and wealth are often the ones most sorely disappointed.
Well, unless they go get a JD/MBA at Rutgers Camden. ‘Cause, you know, that’s where you go if you just want to make straight bank.
At least, that’s the impression you’d get if you had received this Rutgers Law sales pitch….
Much to the dismay of students, faculty, and alumni, the Camden campus of Rutgers University School of Law will soon be merging with Rowan University — and doing away with the Rutgers name. Up until now, our coverage of the pending merger has been limited to Morning Docket entries. But last night, during a town hall meeting held by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the debate got interesting.
In what is being referred to as “the most-heated town hall clash of the year,” Christie reportedly got into a shouting match with a current Rutgers Law – Camden student. Harsh words were exchanged, and the scene ended with the law student being escorted from the meeting by police.
Who is this law student, and what was said? Let’s delve into the details….
* “Members of Congress are not above the law,” and that’s why the Senate will likely approve a ban on insider trading of non-public information by the end of the week. Say hello to the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act. [Boston Globe]
* Eye of newt tiger, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog. You see, Newt, you screw up one part of the witches’ spell, and you get sued for unauthorized song use on the Election 2012 campaign trail. [Bloomberg]
* Which Biglaw firms have the strongest brands in the country according to high-revenue clients? You’d think that those in the top five would be the firms leading the bonus market, but like most things having to do with money, you’d be wrong. [Am Law Daily]
* As Rutgers Law students take to the streets to protest the school’s merger with Rowan, nontenured faculty members are doing their damnedest to GTFO before all hell breaks loose. [Burlington County Times]
* GW Law will be launching a health care law and policy program next fall for the low, low cost of $5M, but the hordes of law school grads willing to pay top dollar for a useless LL.M. is priceless. [National Law Journal]
* Rutgers Law: where things just got real. Real worse. [Courier Post Online]
* I’d like to think that law schools are better at giving bad news to faculty than they are at giving bad news to students. The way they tell students, “Congratulations, you’ve been admitted,” is so unprofessional and cold. [Faculty Lounge]
* Floyd Mayweather is above the law. He’s a rank coward who is going to get beat down by Manny Pacquiao if he ever develops the stones to face him. But Mayweather has good lawyers. Maybe he can hide behind them instead of fighting Pacquiao. [The Legal Blitz]
* Facebook and Washington State team up to stop clickjacking. [Corporate Counsel]
* I thought that magic mushrooms came from bizzarro Care Bears. [Underdog]
* I oppose the religion of the Sith, but I would defend their right to practice it. [College Humor]
* The Patent and Trademark Office says, “Leave Blue Ivy alone, leave her alone!” [Government Executive]
* Our own Chris Danzig will be covering LegalTech New York next week. Email him if you want him to check something out. Maybe he can figure out why social media use is up among in-house counsel. [Inside Counsel]
It’s time for celebration of a different sort — time to celebrate, and congratulate, the latest class of Skadden Fellows. The winners of these prestigious public interest fellowships were just announced, as they are every December.
As explained in the Skadden Fellowship Foundation’s press release, the 28 new fellows are graduating law students or judicial law clerks who are devoting their careers to public interest work. They’ll be working for organizations located in nine states and the District of Columbia, “focusing on issues ranging from the health and safety of low-wage immigrant workers in California to representing Russian-speaking victims of domestic violence and sex trafficking in New York.”
(Baby Jesus would be proud of what they do. Unless they work for the ACLU and try to ruin his birthday.)
Who are the Skadden fellows for 2012? Which law schools produced the most fellows? And what’s different about this year’s program compared to past years?
For most law students, finals start this week. For the class of 2014 1Ls, it’s their first finals period.
Good luck to all.
I had a very strict, almost superstitious, regimen to get myself in the mood to take a series of eight hour exams for 100% of my grade. Before finals period, I would watch the fight at the end of the first Rocky. Because the point of finals period isn’t necessarily to win, it’s to go the distance.
My motto was always, “you can learn a lot in eight hours.” My school generally had eight hour take-home exams for 100% of your grade.
The students at Rutgers Law about to encounter their first finals period have a different sort of motto. It’s a very good one….
We know how much our readers love rankings, so as we mentioned in Morning Docket, the National Jurist has released the fifth annual list of the 60 Best Value law schools in its preLaw magazine. As it stands, the list remains unranked, but the final grades for the honor roll are expected in October.
The Best Value ranking typically takes into account the following criteria: in-state tuition, average student debt, the percentage of graduates employed nine months after graduation, and bar passage rates.
But this year, the National Jurist made some adjustments to its rankings methodology to account for “fairness.” It now takes into account averages for bar passage rates and post-graduation employment over the past two years. And even if a law school didn’t meet one of these important standards, the school wasn’t automatically excluded from consideration. Everyone gets a trophy in this year’s Best Value rankings.
You may be surprised at some of the law schools that made this year’s Best Value honor roll. Check and see if your school made the list, after the jump….
Last week, we wrote about Villanova University School of Law running out of work-study funds. Over the weekend, we received several copies of an interesting follow-up email — one that went to every 1L and 2L at Villanova, as well as every dean.
Some background, from a tipster:
This email is sent as-is, with typos and random, misplaced sentence pieces intact (“ing we put on email . . .” ?).
From: Mark Sargent
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 3:01 PM
To: Wendy Barron; 2010dist; 2011dist
Cc: William James; Doris Brogan; Felicia Hamilton; Lori Bogish; Jennifer Nguyen; Christine Stango
Subject: RE: Work-Study funds for summer 2009
Wendy, we need to be careful with this kind of mass communication, helpful as it is. As I am sure you saw, this ended up on Above the Law. I did not get nearly as excited about it as Maule, and I know other schools will have the same problem, but readersnaturally (albeit idiotically) put a bas [sic] spin on it for us.
This is what we get for being transparent and helpful! The internet really is a type of hell!
________________________________
ing we put on email or elsewhere can go viral almost instantly.
Mark A. Sargent
Dean and Professor of Law
Villanova University School of Law
From a second tipster:
I had to forward this. It is the email equivalent of the scene in Billy Madison where Chris Farley gets on the school bus and yells, “NO YELLING ON THE BUS!”
Our observations:
1. Thanks for the shout-out, Dean Sargent! We’re glad to have you as a reader.
2. You’re right — other law schools arehaving the same problem. For example, there’s no more work-study money at Rutgers – Camden (email after the jump).
3. “[R]eaders naturally (albeit idiotically) put a bas [sic] spin on it for us.” Oh, Dean Sargent, don’t read the comments — they will only cause you grief. We’ve helpfully hidden them, so they don’t display by default; you have to affirmatively seek them out.
Finally, this is not the first time Dean Sargent has had problems with that pesky “reply all” button. Remember the saga of Peanut Girl? Back in the fall of 2007, Dean Sargent complained about having to deal with a student with a very severe peanut allergy — in an email he sent to the deans of all ABA-accredited law schools. In a subsequent apology to the listserv, he described his gaffe as “the oldest mistake in the history of email.”
We reached out to Dean Sargent for comment on his latest email error. Read more, after the jump.
We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
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.
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We talk a lot about the value of a law degree, but one thing most people seem to agree about is that a law degree isn’t very useful unless you want to be a lawyer. The people who go to law school because they think it is the doorway to riches and wealth are often the ones most sorely disappointed. 
