The school is dropping in the U.S. News law school rankings. The school didn’t even make the Above the Law rankings. The school’s dean quit on them a few weeks before classes started. The new dean recently sued the people who built the school’s law library because it suffers from “water damage.” A student recently got arrested, accused of making racist, anti-Semitic, and threatening comments.
Does this sound like a law school with… issues? Does this law school need to rethink how it provides legal education?
Probably. But they are not going to do that. Instead, they’re going to get a new marketing campaign.
Come, let’s see how much lipstick they can find for this pig…
* Eugene Volokh analyzes the free-speech issues raised by the prosecution of Anya Bargh, the UConn law student accused of sending anti-Semitic and racist emails. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Lawyerist thinks you suck, not the gunners. Discuss. [Lawyerist]
* Law and the Multiverse now has CLE courses about comic books. Maintaining this license just got that much easier. [Law and the Multiverse]
* Some new developments in the Ed O’Bannon case against the NCAA. Basically, discovery has not been kind to the NCAA. [Bloomberg]
* All the editors-in-chief at Michigan Law are women. Now, if another 90 or so journals follow suit, Staci’s article will seem outdated. [Michigan Law]
* Ruh-roh. Did David Boies blow the lid off campaign spending limits last cycle? [Huffington Post]
* No, Mike Bloomberg was not denied a slice of pizza yesterday. [Gawker]
* WARNING: If you understand math, the latest from NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly will annoy the hell out of you. [PrawfsBlawg]
* Man injured in a drunken fight sues the bar that he says should have cut him off. [Overlawyered]
Exam time can be stressful. Doesn’t it make you just want to go online and post a series of pictures of mutilated Barbie dolls with captions threatening to butcher your professors?
What?
That’s just one of the allegations against a law school student charged with second-degree harassment and breach of peace. The allegations also include racist emails and harassing professors with bogus complaints…
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….
* What do Tiger Woods’s sexts, Anthony Weiner’s wiener, and the newsworthiness exception to copyright infringement have in common? They’re all in this colorful Ninth Circuit dissent. [National Law Journal]
* Dewey have any idea when this “clawback” deadline will stop being extended? Partners have again been granted another extension to sign on the dotted line, but this time for only 48 hours. [WSJ Law Blog]
* If your reason for resigning from your position as a congressman has to do with “increasing parenting challenges,” becoming the managing director of Biglaw practice group likely isn’t a wise choice. [POLITICO]
* A shareholder suit filed against Goldman Sachs over mortgage-backed securities and early TARP repayment was dismissed. I didn’t watch the Daily Show last night, but I’m sure Jon Stewart had a great joke. [Reuters]
* Musical deans? Hot on the heels of Jeremy Paul’s announcement that he was leaving for Northeastern, Professor Willajeanne McLean has been appointed as interim dean at UConn Law. [Connecticut Law Tribune]
* Law school didn’t build that: as it turns out, a juris doctor isn’t as versatile a degree as it’s made out to be. Just because you managed to get a good non-law job, it doesn’t mean a J.D. helped you. [Am Law Daily]
* Jaynie Mae Baker, the Millionaire Madam’s sidekick, has struck a plea deal with the DA. She won’t be going to jail for her adventures in high-class hooking, and might walk away without a criminal record. [New York Post]
Back in mid-March, we brought you a story about a law school in Michigan that had been flummoxed by the sun’s wrath. Now, almost like clockwork, just one month later, we’ve got another story about #firstworldproblems coming from a law school in Connecticut.
The school in question is well aware of its climate control problem, “but it has not yet risen to a level of importance to get funding.” You hear that, law students? Pit stains be damned! Your comfort is meaningless, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars that you collectively pay to attend law school are nothing more than an entry fee to an overpriced sauna.
But should we really be surprised? This school already suffered a major rankings fail in 2012, so asking them to turn off the heat on an 80+ degree day might be too much to handle….
What does it mean to be “newly admitted?” To us, it means endless possibilities!
We recognize that you already possess the ability and intelligence to succeed in a variety of legal professions. Our job is to expose you to various practice areas in a way that ensures those very attributes are successfully applied. Our seasoned and successful faculty present unique programs that provide an approachable and practical understanding of the avenues of achievement available as you launch a fruitful, enjoyable and promising career.
Our Live Bridge the Gap weekends satisfy the entire year of New York Newly-Admitted CLE Credits in only two days!
After physically attending a full weekend, you will receive:
• 3.0 Ethics CLE credits,
• 6.0 Skills CLE credits, and
• 7.0 Professional Practice and/or Law Practice Management CLE credits
Date: Saturday, June 8 and Sunday, June 9, 2013 Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:35 p.m. (EST) Location:
55 Exchange Place
5th Floor
New York, NY 10006
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.
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.
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
The school is dropping in the U.S. News law school rankings. The school didn’t even make the Above the Law rankings. The school’s dean quit on them a few weeks before classes started. The new dean recently sued the people who built the school’s law library because it suffers from “water damage.” A student recently got arrested, accused of making racist, anti-Semitic, and threatening comments.
