Why should you let bad grades get in the way of a good job?
Last year, we reported on the strange arrest of Joshua Gomes. Gomes was charged with breaking into the registrar’s office at UVA Law School and trying to steal a ream of transcript paper.
If you think that there’s only one reason that a person would want to steal transcript paper, you’re not going to be disappointed by Josh Gomes’s guilty plea. It’s that familiar story of a person popping his collar while wearing no pants….
Is the bar exam like a rat race? Well, when there are actual rats in the building....
If you just completed the 2012 bar exam, congratulations. For many of you, the bar exam will be the last test you ever take in your life. How good does that feel?
Special congratulations to those of you who just emerged from three days of bar exam misery, either because you took the bar in a state with a three-day test or because you took the bar in two different states. I took the New York and New Jersey bar exams back to back — and I had to take New York up in Albany, which meant hours of driving with a fried mind — so I feel your pain.
Pain and the bar exam go hand in hand. Earlier this week, we shared with you bar exam horror stories from Virginia and North Carolina.
Today we have many more bar exam dispatches. Read on for stories of horror and heroism, reports of rodents and other creepy critters, and claims of shady behavior….
UPDATE (7/27/2012, 11 AM): Please note the UPDATE appended below regarding the Virginia bar exam.
If you are going to use an excuse for failing the bar exam, it better involve one of these.
The bar exam, Eli my boy. You see, you have a bar exam that is full of sorrows, and I have an internet connection that’s like a straw. You see, are you watching? My internet connection straw reaches across the country and starts to drink your tears milkshake. I drink your tear-shake. I drink it up!
Sorry, I’m not sure why I feel like a traveling oilman today, but I have spent some time drilling in the ATL Inbox for fun stories about things that happened during the first day of state bar exams.
There are some good ones floating around… and by “good,” I mean the kind of crap that will undoubtedly affect the performances of some test takers.
But hey, last year a woman went into labor and delivered her baby after the test and still passed. So I don’t want to hear any excuses — not even from the guy I’m about to tell you about, who had a seizure and had to be carried out on a stretcher….
Continue reading “Bar Exam Horror Stories: There Will Be Blood (and Power Outages)”
Sexorcise the demon!
* You don’t necessarily have to agree with what Chief Justice John Roberts did with respect to his health care opinion, but you’ve got to admit that it was an act of statesmanship that will forever define his legacy on the Court. [New York Times]
* CNN, one of the world’s most reliable news networks, reports that no many legal scholars were surprised unsurprised by yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to strike down uphold the Individual Broccoli Mandate Affordable Care Act. [CNN]
* Word to the wise: don’t get cocky over in the Eighth Circuit, because apparently boosting the length of a prison term based on whether or not a defendant is smiling at sentencing is not considered an abuse of discretion. [National Law Journal]
* Dewey know why the number of law firm mergers and acquisitions in the United States dropped during the second quarter? Truth be told, they’re all scared, because “[n]obody wants to wind up with a lemon.” [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* George Zimmerman, the man charged in Trayvon Martin’s death, is returning to court today to try to get himself released on bond… again. Let’s give him some credit, because he sure is tenacious. [ABC News]
* Listen, it’s not an easy thing to perform an exorcism these days. Sometimes a priest really just needs to kiss and caress the demon out of your body — a sexorcism, if you will. Nothing to sue over, nothing at all. [MSNBC]
For a litigator, DLA Piper partner Laura L. Flippin didn’t do herself any favors on the stand.
As we mentioned in Non-Sequiturs last night, Judge Colleen K. Killilea of Virginia’s 9th Judicial District accused Flippin — an ATL fan favorite, and former lawyer of the month — of lying under oath. Judge Killilea then found Flippin guilty of public intoxication.
We first wrote about Laura Flippin back in October, when she was arrested for public intoxication after an event for her undergraduate alma mater, William and Mary. Police reports claimed that Flippin blew a .253 BAC and needed help standing up.
But when she was on the stand, here’s what she told the judge about how much she had to drink….
Continue reading “DLA Piper Partner Accused Of Lying Under Oath About How Much She Had To Drink”
I’m not sure if everyone has noticed, but right now in America gay people are the only people it’s okay to be openly bigoted against. Think about it, you can’t say that Obama can’t be president because he’s black. You have to dress it up and say crap like “he’s Kenyan,” or “he’s a communist,” or whatever. You can’t say that women’s health isn’t important. You have to say “birth control is for sluts,” or something that means the same thing, but allows you to say that “this isn’t a war on women.”
But with gay people, you can openly discriminate against them, and find a bunch of lawmakers who will applaud you. It’s not going to cost you a job. Nobody is going to pull your funding. Hell, North Carolina just put it in their constitution that it’s okay to deny gay people a basic civil right. How sick is that? A constitutional amendment that one group of people doesn’t have the same rights as other groups of people. Even the president basically said that while he personally didn’t hate gay people, it was still cool for each state to determine its own level of antipathy toward gay people, and legislate accordingly.
In that world, it’s not a huge surprise that the Commonwealth of Virginia just voted against a judicial appointment for an openly gay prosecutor because he is gay. That’s it. Not “he’s gay and also a terrible prosecutor,” not even “he’s gay and nobody likes him.” Just being gay was enough for the Virginia House to deny this man an appointment everybody agreed he was qualified for.
We’re living in a society where “f*** them queers” is an entirely valid political, social, and legal argument….
Continue reading “Openly Gay Judicial Nominee Defeated For… Being Gay, And That’s It”
Future partner nobody wants to work for.
You know how they say that if a kid tortures animals, then it’s a pretty good bet that the kid will grow to be a danger to people? I feel like a similar thing can be said of law students. If you see a law student who picks on law librarians, administrative staff, and others in the law school community who don’t have the power and respect of the academic faculty, it’s a pretty good bet that you’re looking at a future lawyer who is going to yell and scream and bully his secretary and people who are junior to him.
It’s. Really. Pathetic. Throwing a hissy fit at those who have no power is the mark of a coward.
Of course, the ultimate law school pressure-cooker is final exams. And when the pressure is on, you can find out who keeps their cool, and who is a d-bag…
Continue reading “PSA: Don’t Take Out Your Frustrations On Support Staff”
Oopsie, it’s been quite a while since we last discussed law-related vanity license plates. We haven’t updated the series in a while, but that doesn’t mean we’re not looking for more photos. So if you’re a fan of our Law License Plates posts, please send some in via email (subject line: “Vanity License Plate”).
Today, we’ll be writing about lawyers who really, really love their law schools. Because hey, let’s face it, with six figures of student loan debt, these educational institutions basically own you. Why not brand your car with your law school’s name and let the world know who you’re enslaved to?
But loan debt and all, we really thought that graduates of the so-called “T14″ could afford to drive nicer cars….
Continue reading “Law License Plates: First-Tier Degrees on Second-Tier Cars”
Ah, the Bluebook. Some people love it, but even more people despise it. If you ask my colleague Elie Mystal about the Bluebook, he’ll tell you that it’s the only book in the world he’d actually consider burning in public. Even federal judges hate the Bluebook. In fact, when we held a poll about whether use of the Bluebook should be abolished, 51% of our readers agreed that it should be banished.
All that being said, is it any wonder that a student from a law school in Virginia is raging against the law review’s upcoming Bluebook exam? Several law students have written to us about this student’s “guerilla campaign” against the school’s annual exercise in “academic hazing,” and they have even provided us with copies of this kid’s manifesto. (Yeah, he’s got one.)
Who is this revolutionary, and why does he think the school’s Bluebook exam needs to go?
Continue reading “Law Student Revolts Against Law Review’s Bluebook Exam”
Where's our spring bonus?
* Lawyers at this Biglaw firm may learn a thing or two about respecting their elders later this week. Kelley Drye is close to settling an age discrimination suit filed by Eugene D’Ablemont, one of its many de-equitized partners. [Wall Street Journal]
* Well, this could definitely be one of the reasons why Cravath hasn’t given out any spring bonuses to associates yet this year. They probably had to spend all of their money to clean up their allegedly fly-infested cafeteria. [Am Law Daily]
* Women in Virginia will now be able to politely decline their pre-abortion transvaginal ultrasounds in favor of abdominal ones. Oh, how nice! Look at that, girls, we totally won the war on women. [CBS News]
* Things Dharun Ravi texted to Tyler Clementi on the night the latter committed suicide? “I’ve known you were gay and I have no problem with it.” Of course you knew, you watched his sexual encounters via webcam. [CNN]
* According to the Massachusetts Appeals Court, this equation makes sense: donor sperm + donor eggs + an estranged wife + consent to post-separation IVF = a child support obligation. [Boston Globe]
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney
Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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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.
Keep reading »
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