We present the inaugural ATL Top 50 Law School Rankings. Our rankings methodology is based purely on outcomes, especially on the schools’ success in placing its graduates into quality, real attorney jobs.
SCOTUS Clerks
- Biglaw, Bonuses, Jones Day, Layoffs, Money, Secretaries / Administrative Assistants, Staff Layoffs, Supreme Court Clerks
Nationwide Layoff Watch: Days Are Numbered for Some at Jones Day
By David Lat
For Supreme Court clerks from October Term 2011, the historic Term of NFIB v. Sebelius (aka “Obamacare”), the hot firm to go to was Jones Day. As Tony Mauro recently reported, the firm hired six SCOTUS clerks from the OT 2011 class, which “may be the most clerks signed up by a single firm from a single term” (although Ted Frank suggests that Kirkland & Ellis might have had seven clerks back in 1995).
UPDATE (3/17/2013, 1 p.m.): Per Mauro, K&E has never had six or seven clerks from a single Term.
Leading litigatrix Beth Heifetz — a former SCOTUS clerk herself (OT 1985 / Blackmun), and a Tina Fey doppelgänger — confirmed that Jones Day paid the going rate in terms of SCOTUS clerkship bonuses: $280,000 (on top of the usual base salary and year-end bonus). One of the new hires, Rachel Bloomekatz, is joining JD’s office in Columbus, Ohio. She should be able to survive out there on half a million (the SCOTUS clerkship bonus plus a fifth-year associate’s salary; she’s a 2008 UCLA Law grad).
But what if you’re in the Columbus office and not a SCOTUS clerk? Don’t expect to be shown the money; instead, you might be shown the door….
Continue reading “Nationwide Layoff Watch: Days Are Numbered for Some at Jones Day”
Merry Christmas! Yes, “Merry Christmas,” and not “Happy Holidays,” consistent with the late Chief Justice Rehnquist’s preference.
Look at what Santa Claus left underneath the Christmas tree: news of Supreme Court clerk hiring, wrapped up in a bow! Just in time for the holiday season.
Keep reading to find out the latest law clerks bound for One First Street, as well as their law schools and feeder judges. Some of the justices are already hiring for October Term 2014….
Continue reading “Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: OT 2013 and OT 2014″
- Columbia Law School, Elena Kagan, Federal Judges, Quote of the Day, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Supreme Court Clerks
Quote of the Day: Keep Waiting
(And: Justice Kagan Disses A Top Law School)
By
David Lat
There are four of us [on the Court] from New York City. We have every borough covered except for Staten Island; we’re waiting for that Staten Island judge.
– Justice Elena Kagan, speaking last night with Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic for the seventh annual Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Lecture, “Law and Justice,” at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C.
(Read more about Justice Kagan’s remarks, in which the former Harvard Law School dean called a certain T14 school a TTT, after the jump.)
Continue reading “Quote of the Day: Keep Waiting
(And: Justice Kagan Disses A Top Law School)“
- Asians, Books, Federal Judges, Jews, Judicial Nominations, Nancy Grace, New Jersey, Reed Smith, S.D.N.Y., State Judges, Tax Law, Videos, YouTube
Non-Sequiturs: 12.13.12
By David LatJudge Lorna Schofield (S.D.N.Y.) looks like my mom. Is she as divalicious? Let’s hope!
* How much could going over the fiscal cliff cost midlevel to senior associates whose bonuses get paid in January? Here’s an estimate. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Congratulations to the newest member of the S.D.N.Y. bench: former Debevoise partner Lorna Schofield, the first person of Filipino descent to be confirmed as an Article III judge. [AABANY]
* Judges in my home state of New Jersey are always so fair-minded. Here’s a great recusal motion, directed at Judge Carol Higbee in the New Jersey Accutane mass tort case. [Reed Smith via Drug and Device Law.]
* Make sure you don’t murder any babies before signing up to meet Nancy Grace. [Charity Buzz]
* Check out Advisable, an innovative new service for helping lawyers connect with clients; it’s free and easy to join. [Advisable (description); Advisable (application form)]
* If you’re looking for a stocking stuffer (affiliate link) for a young lawyer in your life, look no further; Dan Hull has a great recommendation. [What About Clients?]
If you’re interested in Judaism, Supreme Court clerks, or both, there’s a video for you after the jump….
- "Judge Judy" / Judith Sheindlin, Brooklyn Law School, Columbia Law School, Gibson Dunn, Guido Calabresi, NYU Law School, SCOTUS, Simpson Thacher, Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court, Weddings, Yale Law School
Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Don’t Pee on My Leg
By Laurie LinHey, did you guys know that Asian people sometimes marry Jewish people? No? Well, the New York Times has noticed, and they’re totally on it! Here’s the paper’s investigative masterpiece on Asian-Jewish intermixing, which manages a paragraph linking Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld to the Beastie Boys.
We await a hard-hitting NYT piece on the cultural implications of the WGWAG.
Meanwhile, it’s high wedding season for couples of all races and creeds. Here are three of the most outstanding:
More on these couples, plus other lawyer weddings, after the jump….
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Don’t Pee on My Leg”
- Ann Althouse, Bar Exams, Health Care / Medicine, Law Professors, Law Schools, Non-Sequiturs, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Supreme Court Clerks, Tax Law
Non-Sequiturs: 06.25.12
By Elie MystalIt's their world and we're all just playing in it.
* This is a great article on why the Supreme Court doesn’t leak, while more important institutions, like our national security apparatus, leak like a freaking sieve. [New Republic]
* Most law professors think the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. Most law professors think the Supreme Court will overturn the ACA anyway. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? [Bloomberg]
* And now for some SCOTUS thoughts from the amazingly amorphous Mitt Romney. Look at his works in equivocation, ye mighty, and despair. [Washington Post]
* You know, I don’t know how they afford this stuff, but having an inalienable right to “paid vacation” really feels like the kind of European invention we should be emulating. Good ideas can come from anywhere, folks. [Legal Blog Watch]
* Letting students sit for the bar exam after their second year but then making them come back to school for an even more obviously useless third year is a great way to make somebody have a total mental dissociative break. Just imagine calculating how much money you’re being forced to waste while you sit there in a 3L seminar called “Law and Ceramics.” [Faculty Lounge]
* Oh, I like this. The little Democrat in me can’t help but like this: a “global” financial transaction tax. Mmm… there’s nothing like the smell of global redistributive fairness. [Overlawyered]
* Jonathan Turley seems hurt that Ann Althouse and other conservative academics acted in a way that shows “we have lost the tradition of civil discourse in this country.” Yeah, umm, Professor Turley, perhaps you didn’t read the footnotes, but here on the internet we don’t have a tradition of civil discourse. We do have a tradition of ad hominem attacks, hyperbole, and pictures of cats. [Jonathan Turley]
- Billable Hours, Eric Holder, Google / Search Engines, Health Care / Medicine, Non-Sequiturs, Politics, YouTube
Non-Sequiturs: 06.20.12
By Elie Mystal
* Hyper-competitive weekend warrior kills himself racing down a mountain path and his family is suing the internet start-up that makes an app that allows you to track your time against other users. Is anybody making an app to track really stupid lawsuits filed by bereaved family members who receive terrible legal advice during times of crisis? [Not-So Private Parts / Forbes]
* The Fast and the Furious Legal Edition: Executive of Privilege. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Bringing the billable hour to social media seems likely to make me cry. [Legal Cheek]
* Former SCOTUS clerks think the individual mandate is done for. [Wonkblog / Washington Post]
* Google threatens to bring the hammer down on YouTube to mp3 converter. [Torrent Freak]
* Maybe this is the kind of alcohol you can buy with prestige points. [Urban Daddy]
* The companies who will own the president if Romney wins. [USAToday]
- American Bar Association / ABA, Antonin Scalia, Biglaw, Clerkships, Money, Quote of the Day, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Supreme Court Clerks
Quotes of the Day: Mo’ Superior Legal Minds, Mo’ Problems!
By Staci ZaretskyAntonin Scalia
Society cannot afford to have such a huge proportion of its best minds going into the law.
– Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, commenting on the state of the legal profession at the 2012 Midyear Meeting of the American Bar Association in New Orleans.
(Justice Scalia comments on Biglaw’s flawed compensation system, after the jump.)
Continue reading “Quotes of the Day: Mo’ Superior Legal Minds, Mo’ Problems!”
- Barack Obama, Holidays and Seasons, LLMs, Morning Docket, Pornography, Supreme Court Clerks, Tax Law, USC Gould School, USC Gould School of Law
Morning Docket: 11.18.11
By Staci Zaretsky* John Wilkes Booth. Lee Harvey Oswald. Oscar Ortega-Hernandez. Sorry, Oscar, you have three names, but you didn’t actually kill the president, so you don’t get to join the club. [New York Times]
* Former SCOTUS clerk Roy McLeese III has been nominated for a seat on the D.C. Court of Appeals. I don’t have an opinion on this yet because I can’t tell if he’s cute. [Blog of Legal Times]
* Do you really think that the .XXX domain is going to have any remarkable effect on the online porn industry? Besides more men with sticky keyboards and angry girlfriends, what’s the problem? [CNET]
* USC Law won’t be adding a tax LL.M. program. Because just dying is more advisable than adding additional debt to your name under the school’s debt solution plan. [National Law Journal]
* Wishing a very happy holiday season to you and yours with this top-of-the-line molotov snow globe. Hallmark: When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best. [New York Daily News]
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The Asia Chronicles – ASSOCIATE AND IN-HOUSE OPENINGS IN HONG KONG / CHINA, JAPAN AND SINGAPORE
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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:
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Digital Canary in the Virtual Mine #2: What’s In Your Apps? Prying Eyes Are Ready To Discover . . .
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