Let this post serve as a reminder to vote for your favorites in our annual Law Revue Video Contest. Voting closes tomorrow night.
In fact, tomorrow is going to be kind of a big day here on Above the Law. You are definitely going to want to check in with us tomorrow.
In the meantime, let’s take a look at some of the law revue videos that didn’t make our cut for finalists, but were still interesting enough to be seen by the ATL audience…
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….
Dude, it’s the second day of classes. Get your act together.
Everybody knows that the legal profession attracts people with obsessive personalities — and that can also lead to substance abuse. Many people think that the legal profession itself creates alcoholics and addicts. And certainly the twin attacks of stress and unstructured time leads a lot of law students to drink more than they should.
But students started showing up to campus just two days ago. Surely new 1Ls could keep their drinking under control for two days?
Apparently not. Students at one law school have already had to be reminded about the school’s alcohol policy, because 1Ls were drinking in the library on the second day at school…
* Merry Christmas! House Republicans will get one less lump of coal in their stockings this year after accepting a two-month extension of unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts. [New York Times]
* Another birther lawsuit has been thrown out, but Orly Taitz won’t be stopped. She’s like the Energizer Bunny of questionable litigation. She’ll keep appealing, and appealing, and appealing… [Los Angeles Times]
* John Edwards is trying to delay his criminal trial, claiming to have a mystery medical diagnosis. What kind of disease does karma hand you for cheating on your sick wife? [New York Daily News]
Today, we have news that both Virginia and PennsyltuckyPennsylvania have released the results of the July 2011 bar exam. Our congratulations go out to everyone who passed. And for those who didn’t, better luck next time (but on the upside, it’s Friday, so it wouldn’t be completely inappropriate for you to drink yourself into a stupor today).
Here’s an open thread for discussion of July 2011 bar exam results from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and any other states that have already announced their results….
I was explaining to new Above the Law helper Natasha Lydon how things work in the ATL, and I said: “Basically, from now until finals, we’ll be able to run a ‘stupid law student story’ every day. The kids are stressed, and it’s starting to show.” On cue, I received an email from a law student tipster, with the following subject heading: “Bozo the Clown.” Hilarity ensued.
Above the Law has a long and proud history of documenting the thievery of law students. Who can forget the Tulane Law student who stole a piece of Americana, a shoe worn by Mr. Rogers, from the Louisiana Children’s Museum? Going even further back, there was the Michigan Law student who liked to go around stealing other people’s sandwiches.
Today we’re going to add to that tradition by telling you about the apparent theft — or liberation, depending on how you look at it — of Bozo the Law Library Clown…
And now things get interesting. As we continue to run through the U.S. News 2012 law school rankings, we get to a crucial set of schools. The schools in this batch are certainly top tier, but they’re not “top 14″; for the most part, though, they charge like top 14 schools (especially the private ones).
So this is the batch of schools where we usually hear questions like: Should I go to this school at full price, or a much lower-ranked school for free? And our answer is usually, “How much lower-ranked are we talking about?”
The bottom line is that when people get into schools like Duke, or Penn, they are going to end up going to that school. But when people get into some of the schools on this list, they do seriously consider other options. Should I retake the LSAT, score better and apply again? How much financial aid am I getting? What’s the job market like in the [secondary market] this school is located in, just in case I get stuck there? Is it worth it to go into this much debt for a degree from that school?
These factors should come into play no matter which law school you get accepted to, but at this point on the U.S. News list, cost factors take on increased importance…
* How did Howrey start to unravel? The trouble might have started in Europe. [Washington Post]
* Congratulations to Arvo Mikkanen, a Native American nominee to the federal bench in Oklahoma (and “an all-around great dude,” according to a tipster). [The Atlantic]
* Washington & Lee Law School, which we recently praised for its honesty to prospective law students, gets even more transparent — in an interview with Vault. [Vault's Law Blog]
* In a recent visit to USC, Justice Kennedy presided over a Shakespeare-inspired trial — something he has donebefore — and denied that the justices think about the news media when making their decisions. Methinks His Honor doth protest too much. [USC News]
'Please don't ship me in a box with no air holes.'
* Taxing alcohol to reduce crime? Sounds like that will lead to more muggings for alcohol money. [Going Concern]
* If you try to mail a puppy from Minnesota to Georgia in a box with no airholes, you don’t get your dog back. Also, you get shipped directly to hell. [Runnin' Scared / Village Voice]
Well, it’s a start. If you think it’s a good thing for law schools to be more transparent about the employment prospects of their students, then you have to applaud Washington & Lee Law School. The school had been building a bit of a reputation for taking an outside-the-box approach to legal education, but that momentum seemed to stall with the departure of Dean Rodney Smolla (to become the president of Furman University).
But one good way to distinguish yourself from other law schools is to tell the truth to prospective law students. Washington & Lee just dumped 17 pages of employment information on its admitted students. A lot of it is public information, such as general statistical data about legal employment, but still.
Having led the horses to water, we’ll see if any of these kids want to take a drink…
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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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?
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Let this post serve as a reminder to vote for your favorites in our annual Law Revue Video Contest. Voting closes tomorrow night. 
