I mean, probably not, but when you are primarily responsible for losing millions and millions of dollars, I suppose anything is possible. And remember Jon Corzine does have a documented case of test-taking anxiety. For all we know, MF Global’s money and the New Jerseybar exams are sitting in a basement somewhere being guarded by Real Housewives who can kill you with the piercing sound of their voices.
It sounds farcical, but something is going on with the New Jersey Bar Exam. The New York results came out weeks ago. Yet we’ve heard nothing from Jersey about their bar results, which generally come out around the same time.
And now New Jersey has gone radio silent. There are no results on their website. We left voicemails with two officials at the New Jersey Board of Law Examiners this afternoon, but they have not returned our calls.
My Corzine theory might be off the wall, but others have some more credible thoughts on why there’s been a delay from the Garden State….
I was never a huge fan of firm mentoring programs. In the days after firms started cracking down on using mentoring funds for hookers and blow, mentoring became distinctly less exciting. For the male associates, it seemed to revolve around mass quantities of red meat and booze. For the female associates, it was a lot of talk about “feelings,” and “glass ceilings,” and figuring out how to get a manicure on the firm’s dime. And while pretty nails are always nice, it was just one more billable hour that I’d have to make up at night.
But perhaps creative mentoring isn’t dead after all. It seems as though the Minnesota Hispanic Bar Association might be trying to bring some fun back to its mentorship program. The MHBA recently distributed fliers on the University of Minnesota Law School campus that bear images of some pretty questionable-looking foliage.
Was this just an innocent mistake, or are Minnesota Law students being offered a chance to expand their horizons in more ways than one? You be the judge, after the jump….
UPDATE (6:30 PM): We’ve added statements from a board member of the MHBA and from the president of the Latino Law Student Association at the University of Minnesota, also after the jump.
Nobody ever seems to believe me when I say this, but San Francisco gets chilly. It is cold most of the time. And foggy. The warmest time of year is right now, in late October. If you come to visit in July, and you stay in the city, and you will get cold.
That’s why every San Francisco tourist ever buys those cheesy sweatshirts with “San Francisco” written on them in a font that strangely resembles one of the main logos for our hugely disappointing championship-winning major-league baseball team, the Giants. Actually, it might be exactly the same logo. The baseball team is currently in a trademark dispute with the clothing company from Hayward (Oakland’s smaller, crappier neighbor to the south) over rights to the logo.
But hold on, the Giants have been using it for almost 20 years. They must have gotten the rights locked down years ago, right? Oopsies….
* According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 100 new jobs were added to the legal industry last month. About 40,000 students graduated from law school this spring. You do the math. [Am Law Daily]
* This Maryland law school dean thinks that the U.S. News rankings “generalize about things that are not generalizable.” Come on, lady, don’t bite the hand that feeds you. [College Inc. / Washington Post]
* Did you get an email from Paul Ceglia about enlarging your penis? If so, it’s because lawyers at Gibson Dunn exposed the fraudster’s passwords in a court filing last week. Oops. [Bloomberg]
* A computer hacker in California got six years for sextortion and cyberterrorism. Ladies, this is just another reason to save your nude pictures on your flash drive, not your hard drive. [CNN Justice]
* An Ohio man who stopped paying into the office lottery pool is suing for a share of his co-workers’ $99M jackpot. You get what you pay for, and in this case, it should be nothing. [Fox News]
We have the makings of a trend: inappropriate contacts between participants in jury trials. These contacts can be problematic because a jury trial constitutes a delicate ecosystem, in which contacts and communications between actors are regulated strictly to ensure the fairness of the proceedings.
We recently mentioned a case where a juror got sentenced to community service after trying to friend the defendant on Facebook. Well, at least he didn’t try to “poke” her (although perhaps a desire to poke her is what prompted the problematic friend request).
Now we bring you news of, er, more intimate contact between a witness and a lawyer — which culminated in a mistrial….
UPDATE (11:00 AM): Photo of massage therapist Liudmyla Ksenych, a petite and pretty brunette, added after the jump.
A partner at Morrison & Foerster accidentally “replied all” to an email on which “List/Attorney/All” was cc’d. Emails sent to “List/Attorney/All” go out to all 1,000-plus MoFo lawyers around the world.
What the partner wrote in the email was probably not something that should have been shared with the rest of the firm….
Meet the Cavers: the cutest ginger attorney family ever.
In this rough economy, a job offer can be really exciting, even for the most seasoned attorney. A job offer is even more exciting when you find out that your future employer has also decided to make your husband an offer. And last week, that is exactly what happened to a husband-and-wife legal team from Rockford, Illinois.
Eileen and Brendan Caver, both graduates of Loyola University Chicago School of Law, quickly began to pack up to move half-way across the country for their new jobs in New York at the City of Syracuse corporation counsel’s office. With August start dates and two adorable children in tow, the Cavers quit their jobs in Illinois, put their house on the market, and canceled their daycare contract.
So, you’d think that even a city government would realize that offering attorneys jobs 780 miles away from home and then revoking those offers a week and a half later would be life-ruining. But apparently, that’s not how things work in upstate New York….
If you are finishing up the bar exam today… are you reading this on your lunch break? What the hell is wrong with you? Focus!
If you finished the bar exam yesterday, congratulations. Time to relax and have some fun, if you have a job lined up for the fall. If you don’t have a job lined up, well, umm, lemme tell you these funny stories about other crazy things that happened during the administration of the July 2011 bar exam!
It seems that today in New Jersey — where Governor Chris Christie has just been hospitalized, by the way — they forgot to turn on the power at one testing site….
A slew of bar exams started yesterday, and the rest got underway today. And yet we already have stories about “crazy things” happening during the administration of the tests.
When things go wrong during the bar exam, most people will overcome the adversity and still pass the test. But those who end up failing the bar will remember these events forever.
So let’s take a brief stroll around the bar exams to look at the stories some test takers will be telling from now until February…
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.
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