Well, it’s that time. This is the final installment of the 2012 Bar Review Diaries. It’s been a wild-ish ride.
But we’ve reached our last check-in with Andrew, Jeanette, and Nathan. And then we must set them free to the wilds of post-bar exam life, urban Chicago, and… South Dakota?
Continue reading “Bar Review Diaries: Into the Great Law Yonder”
It’s over! Do a little dance, make a little noise, get down tonight… etc. etc. As most of you probably know, the bar exam was last week. Duh. Our three Bar Review Diarists thankfully made it through the test without dealing with nightmares like rats or murdered cats, but they do have some interesting stories to tell.
Jeanette, Nathan, and Andrew, you just took the bar exam… how does it feel?
Continue reading “Bar Review Diaries: Thank God That’s Over!”
For all of you out there in soon-to-be lawyer land, good luck on the bar exam this week! You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you.
We have a few last-minute bar exam tips for you. And let’s see if some of our more seasoned readers have any advice of their own….
Continue reading “Bar Review Diaries: Good Luck on the Bar Exam!”
Well, here we are, just one week ago until those fateful days. How are Nathan, Jeanette, and Andrew doing? Well, understandably they feel a little under the gun.
Our Bar Review Diarists all seem to have their own last-minute procrastination tools: Nathan went to a music festival, Jeanette watches bad television, and Andrew continues making far-out pop culture references. All perfectly normal, perfectly healthy….
Continue reading “Bar Review Diaries: And Now We Come to the Payoff”
We only have two weeks left until the test. It’s about that time: our columnists’ brains are fried. They have been studying so long it seems they may have forgotten the most basic of non-lawyerly communication skills.
Let’s check in with Jeanette, Nathan, and Andrew as they compare their lives variously to Groundhog Day, feverishly come up with mnemonic devices, and transliterate show tunes into bar exam songs.
Paging Colonel Kurtz….
We’ve reached July, and there is less than a month until the test. Does this qualify as the home stretch? How are our esteemed Bar Review Diarists doing?
Well, they are working hard and doing what they can to not lose their minds (as bar review studiers are perhaps wont to do). Let’s check in with Jeanette, Nathan, and Andrew as they continue stumbling through the bar exam desert….
Continue reading “Bar Review Diaries: Tornadoes, Facebook Withdrawal, and Hibernation”
Are we there yet? Is it almost time to take the test yet? NO. There are still several week to go, and our Bar Review columnists are simultaneously working hard to stay motivated, and also straining to not get frustrated with the ridiculousness that the studying entails.
Let’s check in with Nathan, Jeanette, and Andrew, who are getting advice from strangers, navigating a never-ending parade of graduation parties, and starting to see hallucinations of bar exam questions in real life….
It seems the main lesson our Bar Review Diarists are learning — other than the crucial information for the bar exam itself, of course — is that studying for the bar sucks. There is so much information, it’s summertime, they just graduated, and studying is the last thing anyone wants to be doing, so it all seems so unfair.
We are learning each week about their myriad procrastination techniques, useful distractions, and mandatory morale boosters. So what do Andrew, Nathan, and Jeanette have for us this week?
Continue reading “Bar Review Diaries: Where Is My Motivation?”
Last time we checked in with our 2012 Bar Review Diarists, they were, how shall we say… BORED. That boredom has given way to further procrastination by way of parties, impromptu travel, and motion picture ideas. The midsummer frantic is still some ways off, but at least Nathan, Jeanette, and Andrew seem to be enjoying themselves this summer, despite bar review pressure.
Let’s see what they’re up to, shall we?
Continue reading “Bar Review Diaries: In Defense of Drinking or Playing Outside Instead of Studying”
We have entered June, and most recent law school graduates finished school a few weeks ago. The initial anxious adrenaline rush of receiving your fancy new bar exam study materials has faded, and summer tedium is setting in.
Our Bar Review Diarists are getting a little deeper into their studies. They’re beginning to realize studying for the test isn’t necessarily difficult. It’s largely boring. They are discovering how alluring a pointless shopping trip can be, and they are realizing how long it’s been since they have written anything by hand. In other words, it was kind of a bummer of a week.
Let’s see how Jeanette, Nathan, and Andrew are handling the summertime blues…
Continue reading “Bar Review Diaries: Boredom, Procrastination, and Poor Penmanship”
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.
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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:
• 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.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
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