Now with more briefs, but fewer breasts.
Not much…. I guess one difference is that, in our society, lawyers are treated with a little bit more respect than porn magazine editors — but only a little.
– Dan Kapelovitz, commenting on his unique transition from being the Features Editor of Hustler magazine to attending the UCLA School of Law. Kapelovitz now practices criminal law.
Welcome back to our series of open threads on the latest batch of U.S. News law school rankings. Last time, readers weighed in on the law schools that ascended to the tippy-top of the rankings — the top 14 law schools. With the Harvard/Stanford tie, UC Berkeley’s dip, and the Georgetown v. Cornell switch-up, there was certainly a lot to talk about.
This time around, we’ll be taking a look at some additional top-tier law schools that sit just below the coveted “T14.” And much like the rousing game of musical chairs we saw play out among our nation’s most elite law schools, there were some pretty significant moves worth noting in this segment of the rankings as well….
Continue reading “Open Thread: 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings (15 – 31)”
Back in November, when we broke the news about the release of the California bar results from the July 2012 administration of the exam, after celebrating their success or bemoaning their failure, people immediately wanted to know about the pass rates by law school. Alas, the only information we had at the time was about the overall pass rate — 55.3 percent. The pass rate was 68 percent for all first-time takers.
We also knew about the overall pass rates for first-time takers who attended ABA-accredited law schools, both in-state (77 percent) and out-of-state (64 percent). But now, just a little more than a month later, we know all of the individual California bar exam pass rates for law schools nationwide.
Last year, we praised USC Law for its top performance on the exam. But this year, we’ve got a different victor. Which law school took home the glory this time around?
Continue reading “California Bar Exam Results By Law School: Open Thread”
* On the even of the Supreme Court’s conference that will determine whether a gay marriage case will be on the docket in 2013, a federal judge ruled that Nevada can ban the practice in the state. Not fab. [BuzzFeed]
* A bankruptcy judge gave Dewey & LeBoeuf’s unsecured creditors the go-ahead to sue the pants off Joel Sanders and the Steves (a moniker for what likely would’ve been an extremely orange band). [Am Law Daily]
* Hostess Brands received final approval to wind down its business and begin selling off its Twinkies to satisfy its creditors, but not before $1.8M in bonuses payouts were authorized. [DealBook / New York Times]
* Foul balls: as if his public tiff with Lance Armstrong and indecent exposure sentence weren’t enough, Clark Calvin Griffith is facing bar discipline over his pervy predilections. [Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal]
* UCLA School of Law recently announced its plans to offer an LL.M. in Law and Sexuality. Now, recall that just one month ago, Justice Scalia advised students not to take “law and _____” courses. [National Law Journal]
* Dominique Strauss-Kahn agreed to settle a suit brought against him by a hotel maid who accused him of rape. We still don’t know the dollar amount, but we bet he kept his aggravated pimp hand strong. [Bloomberg]
* A day in the life of Lindsay Lohan includes an arrest for assault in New York, followed by charges related to a car crash in California. Her legal drama is almost as bad as Liz & Dick. [Daily Dish / San Francisco Chronicle]
* Jerry Finkelstein, former publisher of the New York Law Journal, RIP. [New York Law Journal]
* George C. Kern Jr., Sullivan & Cromwell’s M&A maven, RIP. [New York Times]
Many women dream of having it all, but some find that it’s just not in the cards. That being said, sometimes when women lawyers get married and decide to start having children, they leave the law — but the law never leaves them. They’ll always hang on to that knowledge for safekeeping if the need ever arises.
Today, we’ve got a story out of California about how a former lawyer used her knowledge of the law to keep milking alimony and child support payments out of her ex-husband. She certainly figured out how to “have it all.”
Here’s a lesson for all of the men out there: just because your ex-wife wore a wedding dress does not mean she’s remarried in the eyes of the law….
Continue reading “Prominent Investor Gets ‘Screwed’ By Ex-Wife’s Lawyering Skills”
As Staci observed earlier this week, if law students took data into account, we’d be living in a different world. Today, in the interest of moving a bit closer to that sunnier, happier planet, we launch the latest component of our Career Center: The ATL Law School Directory.
There’s been no small amount of discussion around here regarding the disconnect between the career and salary expectations of incoming law students and the majority of their post-graduation realities. Yet we are continually reminded that most 0L “research” consists of blind adherence to a single, arguably dubious data point, and nothing else.
However, there is reason to believe that some would-be law students are doing their due diligence and turning into won’t-be law students, but still, there continue to be of a hell of a lot of applicants at all levels, from “prestige whores” to “low hanging fruit.” Clearly, while we’ve no agenda aimed at discouraging folks from applying to law school per se, we do oppose uninformed and under-researched decisions to do so. The Law School Directory is an indispensable resource for aspiring law students willing to do their homework. (Which, based on some strong anecdotal evidence, we understand is a characteristic of successful actual law students.)
The ATL Law School Directory is to 0L-relevant data and information what the Ronco Veg-O-Matic is to vegetables (It Slices! It Dices!). You can sort law schools by a wide array of analyzing variables: employment outcomes, admissions criteria, top law firm employers, and much more, including the the results of our ongoing ATL Insider Survey, where current students and alumni rate the major aspects of the law school experience, from academics to social life.
So which are the best schools for Biglaw placement? Public interest placement? Clinical training? The Directory has the answers. After the jump, check out a sampling of our ratings tables, including the list of schools which are tops at losing track of their own alumni….
Continue reading “Behold! ATL Launches Definitive Law School Research Resource”
Back in June, we brought you a story about some mom-and-dad law grads who had been accused of planting a potpourri of pills and pot on a parent volunteer from their son’s school. Kent W. Easter, a UCLA Law graduate, is (or was) a partner at Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, a midsize California firm. His wife, Jillianne B. Easter, is a Boalt Hall grad and former lawyer who dabbles in crime fiction writing (and bad plastic surgery, from the looks of it).
Apparently the Easters thought that they could get away with the perfect crime, but alas, that only happens in books written by partner wives. Now, the Easters are looking at additional legal troubles: their alleged victim, Kelli Peters, has filed a civil suit against the couple that contains some interesting allegations. In fact, the page-turner of a complaint reads like it was written by a crime writer far more talented than Mrs. Easter (aka Ava Bjork).
Let’s check out the complaint, and see what the Easters are up against….
June wasn’t exactly hot in terms of bonus payouts, but the weather sure heated up quickly. And thanks to the lawyers we’ve singled out for Lawyer of the Month candidacy, June turned into a real scorcher in terms of humorous legal antics and allegations of attorney misconduct.
While some lawyers allegedly participated in scandalous aeronautical activities, others were literally condemned to crappy community service projects. But who will come out on top in our monthly contest?
Take a look at our nominees for June’s Lawyer of the Month and find out….
Parenting can be an extremely difficult task, but an even more difficult task is proper helicopter parenting. It’s got to be an intense job to keep an eye on your child’s every move, day and night, wherever he may roam. In fact, some people have started to call these people lawnmower parents — after all, why choose to hover overhead when you can destructively mow down all obstacles that you perceive to be in your child’s way on the road to success?
Today, we’ve got a story about an attractive California couple who stand accused of being textbook examples of the worst kind of lawnmower parents, and they just so happen to both be lawyers. Daddy is (or was) a securities litigation partner at a midsize firm, and Mommy is a graduate of top law school. Trust us when we say that you do not want to mess with their kid, because you may wind up facing drug charges….
Lat here. Not long ago, Elie and I debated the merits of Harvard Law versus Yale Law, in response to a request for advice from a prospective law student lucky enough to be choosing between HLS and YLS. Then we opened up a reader poll, in which about 60 percent of you urged the 0L in question to go to Yale.
As we move deeper into spring, more aspiring law students will have to make up their minds about matriculation destinations. Today we’ll look at the case of a student who’s choosing between a trio of very fine schools: Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Texas School of Law, and UCLA School of Law.
Let’s hear him out, weigh the competing factors, and vote….
Continue reading “The Decision: Georgetown v. Texas v. UCLA — An ATL Debate”
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:
Keep reading »
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.
Keep reading »
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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