Different schools of thought exist when it comes to cover letters for job applications. Back when I applied for legal jobs, I took a “do no harm” approach, using the cover letter merely to transmit my résumé, transcript, and writing sample. But jobs were more plentiful back then.
In a tougher legal job market, employers expect more from cover letters. For cover letter advice from an in-house perspective, see David Mowry’s post. For cover letter advice from a small-firm perspective, see Jay Shepherd’s post.
And for an example of how not to write a cover letter, keep reading….
Law school is a good idea if you are incapable of doing basic math.
I feel like we could probably do a weekly feature entitled “It’s A Trap” that just focuses on which poor argument for going to law school somebody hopes 22-year-olds will fall for.
This week, we need to do a mash-up because all the stories about the dearth of law school applications have caused some deans to go out and say just the most ridiculous things online.
Just to make sure that a “counter-argument” comes up when uninformed prospective law students do Google searches for these schools, let’s take a whack at the latest, most absurd things to come out of a law school dean’s mouth, this time focusing on some smaller schools that not a lot of people have heard of….
* Twitter ordered to out anti-Semitic users by a French court. France wants to know the names of the anti-Semites so they can surrender to them. [Thomson Reuters News & Insights]
* How are you feeling, Vermont Law School? Right now, you don’t look so good. [Constitutional Daily]
* Now you too can see why AIG decided to not sue the government that bailed them out. [Dealbreaker]
* Seems like these Catholic hospitals aren’t so strident about when life begins when there’s a malpractice lawsuit on the line. [Raw Story]
* Though, according to some Republicans, fetuses might still be evidence — evidence that rape victims should not be allowed to “tamper” with (what a wonderful little party the GOP has going there). [Gawker]
* The Maryland State Police have to turn over racial profiling complaints to the NAACP. Man, wouldn’t that have made a good season of The Wire? “The Staties.” Carcetti would be Governor. McNulty would be getting away from it all by tending bar in the D.C. area, only to get sucked back in when he passes a state trooper arresting Bubs for driving while black through Takoma Park. [Baltimore Sun]
* “Given health care, I don’t care if he speaks in tongues.” Chief Justice John Roberts botched Barack Obama’s presidential oath at his first inauguration, but this time he managed to get it right. [New York Times]
* What was more important to Justice Sonia Sotomayor than swearing in Joe Biden as VP at noon on Sunday? Signing books at Barnes & Noble in New York City. Not-so wise Latina. [Los Angeles Times]
* D.C. Biglaw firms — like Holland & Knight, Covington, K&L Gates, and Jones Day — allowed others to bask in their prestige at their swanky inauguration parties. [Capital Business / Washington Post]
* It’s been 40 years since SCOTUS made its ruling in Roe v. Wade, and this is what we’ve got to show for it: a deep moral divide over women being able to do what they want with their own bodies. [Huffington Post]
* The latest weapon in the fight against terrorism is the legal system. The Second Circuit recently issued a major blow to those seeking to finance militant attacks in secret. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* “Firms don’t just hire a body anymore.” The 2012 BLS jobs data is in, and if you thought employment in the legal sector was going to magically bounce back to pre-recession levels, you were delusional. [Am Law Daily]
* Three months have come and gone since Hurricane Sandy rocked law firm life as we know it in Manhattan, but firms like Fragomen and Gordon & Rees are still stuck in temporary offices. [New York Law Journal]
* This seems like it may be too good to be true, but it looks like New York’s chief judge may be on board to grant law students bar eligibility after the completion of only two years of law school. [National Law Journal]
* Law professors may soon be in for a nasty surprise when it comes to their salaries if their schools follow Vermont Law’s lead and remove them as salaried employees, paying only on a part-time basis. [Valley News]
* Resorting to a life of crime to pay off your law school debt is never a good thing — unless you’re doing it while wearing a Bucky Badger hat. We’ll have more on these allegations later. [Wisconsin State Journal]
* In case you missed this yesterday during the Cravath bonus-mania-palooza, David Kappos, the director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, announced that he’d be stepping down from his position in January 2013. [Blog of Legal Times]
* And speaking of bonuses, somebody’s not probably getting one this year, because here come the lawsuits: Hewlett-Packard just got slapped with a securities class action suit as a result of the company’s allegedly fraudulent Autonomy acquisition. [Reuters]
* Will Penn State’s former general counsel be able to testify against Gary Schultz and Tim Curley in post-Sandusky criminal proceedings? Considering she’s “a key witness,” she better be. [Corporate Counsel]
* Of course Vermont Law School is considering offering voluntary staff buyouts, the school has a freakin’ $3.3M budget shortfall. In other news, they’ll be upping LL.M. programs to make up the cash. [National Law Journal]
* Paul Ceglia, the man who claims he owns half of Facebook, has been indicted on federal wire and mail fraud charges. He’ll appear in court this Wednesday, but who knows if he’ll have a lawyer by then. [Bloomberg]
* Jay Jaffe, law firm public relations pioneer, RIP. [PRWeek]
As we mentioned over Thanksgiving weekend, the number of people taking the October LSAT is at the lowest point since 1999.
It seems that people are finally, belatedly, getting the message. Going to law school is not a safe bet.
At least not for students. For faculty, teaching at a law school is one of the safest jobs you can have. The only people who lose their jobs at law schools are deans who anger the U.S. News gods, and even then those deans can usually still hang on as professors.
But the economics of running a law school might be turning. One law school has decided to downsize….
Johnny Appleseed was carefree -- and unsaddled with law school debt.
Over the past few weeks, it seems Above the Law has unleashed a torrent of populist rage against law school career services’ departments posting crummy job opportunities.
Yesterday, we heard about another unfortunate career services posting, this time from the Vermont Law School. What was almost more depressing than the job, though, is our tipster’s testimony of postgraduate life.
The other day, President Obama announced a “new” plan to help ease the burden of student debts, except it wasn’t really new, and it didn’t really help.
The mainstream media parroted the administration’s spin on the proposal, but it makes sense that the White House would want to find some students who were also excited about the plan to reduce the Income Based Repayment percentage to 10% in 2012.
Well, they found one. And he’s a law student.
President Obama is tweeting about this new support….
Ed. note: This is a guest post from our sister site, AltTransport. They recently interviewed Vermont Law grad Jack Jacobs, entrepreneurial founder of a firm specializing in green law.
Attorney Jack Jacobs started his career at a boutique environmental law firm in Boston, but grew frustrated that his work seemed to be about finding ways to avoid tackling environmental issues rather than protecting the environment. He went back to school to get an LLM from Portland’s Lewis and Clark Law School. (If you can’t decide whether Vermont Law School or L&C is the best law school for environmental law, you can be like Jacobs and just go to both.)
He then founded Cleantech Law Partners to deal with the specific challenges that face cleantech firms, biofuel startups, and electric vehicle makers — such as Tesla — in today’s regulatory and policy environment. With offices in California, New York, D.C., Oregon and Germany, Cleantech Law Partners works with clients engaged in renewable energy and cleantech projects — mainly incorporating new entities, finalizing contracts and lobbying for the passage of industry-specific legislation.
AltTransport spoke with Jacobs about the legal challenges facing today’s cleantech startups, and what the government can do to make life easier for them. Check out the Q and A with Jacobs, and comment, over at AltTransport.
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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.
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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!
Different schools of thought exist when it comes to cover letters for job applications. Back when I applied for legal jobs, I took a “do no harm” approach, using the cover letter merely to transmit my résumé, transcript, and writing sample. But jobs were more plentiful back then.
