Yale Law School

Which Law Schools Received the Most Applications Last Year?

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It seems like we’ve written about the general decline in LSAT administrations and law school applications ad nauseum. At this point, people know (or at least, they should know) that there is a problem with the legal education system in this country.

But according to U.S. News, that’s not stopping would-be law students from applying in substantial numbers. The leader in law school rankings recently compiled a list of the ten schools that received the most applications for full-time programs in 2011. At almost 75,000, the sheer number of applications remains astounding.

When looking at this list, we noticed a trend: all of the law schools are in the traditional first tier, and most of them are in major cities. But not everyone can get into these schools, and given the reported drop in admissions at Cooley, curiosity got the best of us.

So we created a top-ten list of the unranked schools that received the most applications last year — the cream of the crap, if you will. Is your school on either one of these lists?

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New York’s New Pro Bono Requirement Succeeds in Pissing Off Law Schools Nationwide

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... a damn about law students.

Back in May, we noted that New York would be implementing a new prerequisite for admission to the state’s bar: all would-be attorneys must complete 50 hours of pro bono work before being allowed to practice in the Empire State.

This initiative was Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman’s latest attempt to mete out justice for all, but it was not well received by all sides. Some have likened the pro bono requirement to indentured servitude; others have thrown up their hands in frustration and called the move “utterly wrongheaded.”

At first, it seemed like only in-state bar examinees and law schools had reason to worry. Now, out-of-state law schools are stepping up to the plate to complain about Lippman’s requirement. Details for the rule’s implementation still haven’t been drafted — in fact, out-of-state schools weren’t even invited when the Chief Judge’s advisory committee last met in July. Law schools and law graduates alike have been kept in an uneasy waiting period while all of the minutiae get worked out.

But for out-of-state law schools, the worst part of this waiting period is the uncertainty about whether this pro bono requirement will come at a cost to students….

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Lawyerly Lairs: Your Own Private Mountaintop — for $18 Million

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If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain. Or Muhammad will just buy the mountain — for $18 million.

Check out our latest Lawyerly Lair. It features a 10,000-square-foot mansion, a 2,500-square-foot guesthouse, 48 acres of land, 13 formal gardens, a one-acre pond (with bridge), a swimming pool and spa….

And its own mountaintop. Did we mention the mountaintop?

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Elizabeth Wurtzel Bids Bye-Bye to Boies Schiller

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Elizabeth Wurtzel

Last week, Elizabeth Wurtzel left Boies Schiller & Flexner. The bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Prozac Nation and other books, and a contributor to such publications as the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal, Wurtzel started working at the formidable firm in 2008. She was personally hired by legendary litigator David Boies, after she graduated from Yale Law School.

We heard some interesting rumors about what led to La Wurtzel’s departure from BSF. On Friday afternoon, one tipster breathlessly told us the following: “Wurtzel was fired from Boies Schiller after she demanded a window office (she had been working in an internal office similar to what staff use). The partners looked at her hours — which are so minimal that it’s amazing she is still employed at all — and gave her the boot. She is also still not licensed. She passed the bar — but what about character and fitness?”

(The potential character and fitness issues arise out of Wurtzel’s wild pre-law life. As the New York Times put it, Wurtzel is someone “whose attempted suicide, drug use, self-mutilation and indiscriminate sex have made her famous” — thanks to her turning these experiences into the books Prozac Nation and More, Now, Again. To learn more, read her nomination blurb in our contest for Yale Law’s most disgraceful graduate.)

The notion of Wurtzel getting fired over a dispute about office space struck me as a little… well, like Office Space. Did she demand a red Swingline stapler too?

I reached out to Liz Wurtzel and Boies Schiller to find out what actually went down. Here’s what I learned….

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Morning Docket: 07.26.12

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* “There’s no future in working for Dewey & LeBoeuf,” but maybe if the firm’s few remaining employees can hold on for a little while longer, then perhaps they’ll be able to take home some bonus cash. [Am Law Daily]

* Doctors in Arizona are trying to block part of a new law that makes it a crime for physicians to perform abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Well, somebody wasn’t paying attention in Con Law. [Bloomberg]

* All it took was an investigation by the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission to get this judge to change his tune and apologize for throwing a lawyer in jail for the crime of representing his client. [WZZM]

* What do recent law school grads think about Yale Law’s new Ph.D. program? Most aren’t willing to spend the time or money to “resolve [their] next career crisis by going back to school.” [U.S. News & World Report]

* Come on, you’re not the 99 percent. Clinic members from NYU Law and Fordham Law wrote a report criticizing the NYPD’s response to the Occupy Wall Street movement. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Wait, law schools are slow to adopt something that may benefit their students? What else is new? Corporate compliance classes are few and far between, even though they could get you a job. [WSJ Law Blog]

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Don’t Pee on My Leg

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Hey, did you guys know that Asian people sometimes marry Jewish people? No? Well, the New York Times has noticed, and they’re totally on it! Here’s the paper’s investigative masterpiece on Asian-Jewish intermixing, which manages a paragraph linking Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld to the Beastie Boys.

We await a hard-hitting NYT piece on the cultural implications of the WGWAG.

Meanwhile, it’s high wedding season for couples of all races and creeds. Here are three of the most outstanding:

Debra Elias and Seth Grossman

Ebonie Hazle and David Rochelson

Laurie Pila and Gregory Sheindlin

More on these couples, plus other lawyer weddings, after the jump….

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Calling Dr. Law: Yale Will Offer a Ph.D. in Law for Would-Be Legal Academics

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Last year, my colleague Elie Mystal opined as follows: “Any lawyer who calls himself ‘doctor,’ like a Ph.D., should get punched in the mouth.” Given the self-aggrandizing nature of a lawyer taking on the additional title of “doctor,” I can’t say I disagree with him (with all due respect to the efforts on Facebook to get lawyers referred to as doctors).

But what if lawyers — more specifically, aspiring law professors — actually got Ph.D. degrees in law? That’s what will soon be happening at Yale Law School. The school just announced a new “Ph.D. in Law” program, aimed at aspiring law professors.

How will this program work? And is it a good idea? I reached out to a number of prominent law professors, all graduates of YLS themselves, for thoughts on their alma mater’s plan to grant a new degree….

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Non-Sequiturs: 07.11.12

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You know you're getting old when this is the Spock you're referring to.

* Canadian comes to America, goes into $100,000 worth of law school debt, and has no job. Mwahahaha, Canada, let’s see your superior health care system find a cure for that! [Globe and Mail]

* Wait, you’re not supposed to take your baby along when you go to see a prostitute? Okay. Got it. See, that’s the kind of tip that isn’t in any of the Dr. Spock books. [Wave3]

* Ben Bernanke can time travel… [Dealbreaker]

* … While John Mara, owner of the WORLD CHAMPION New York Giants, simply revises history. [Forbes]

* Alan Dershowitz received a “D” on his first legal writing assignment. Apparently, his Yale Law School professor, the great Guido Calebresi, told him, “You write like you’re having a conversation with your friends in Brooklyn,” and then helped him work on his technique. Little did Calebresi or Dershowitz know that writing like you’re having a conversation with friends could lead to a successful life as a legal blogger. Boy, did they miss out! [Yale Alumni Magazine]

* Kenny Heitz, an Irell & Manella partner and former UCLA basketball champion, passed away. [Daily News]

Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe foresaw the Obamacare Tax Holding, and we’ve got video evidence to prove it….

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Morning Docket: 07.03.12

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Alec Baldwin was such a stud.

* Obama’s win for health care reform didn’t result in a polling bump for him, but it did result in an even higher disapproval rating for SCOTUS, at least as far as Republicans are concerned… [POLITCO; CBS News]

* … which may be why Chief Justice John Roberts escaped to “an impregnable island fortress” to avoid the Right’s fury, criticism, and scorn as soon as he could after the ACA opinion dropped. [New York Times]

* “[W]e have learned from the mistakes that were made.” That lesson only cost a few billion dollars. GlaxoSmithKline will pay $3B in the largest health-care fraud settlement in U.S. history. [Wall Street Journal]

* After losing a bid to quash a subpoena, Twitter has to turn over info about an #OWS protester’s tweets. OMG, please respond to that thing in 140 characters or less. [Bloomberg]

* Unlike most recent law school grads, Yale Law’s Vanessa Selbst hasn’t been hedging her bets in bar prep classes. Instead, she went all in, played her cards right, and won $244K at the World Series of Poker. [ESPN]

* Divorce really does bring out the best in people. Alec Baldwin says that if given the chance, he would murder his ex-wife Kim Basinger’s lawyer “with a baseball bat.” Gee, tell us how you really feel. [New York Post]

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Yale Law Grad Takes Poison Pill, Effectively

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A surreal scene took place in an Arizona courtroom yesterday. A defendant was convicted of arson and collapsed with convulsions in the courtroom. Witnesses and investigators say they believe they saw the man poison himself before collapsing.

Add in the facts that this man was a graduate of Yale Law School, a former Wall Street banker, and a local celebrity who once climbed Mount Everest, and you’ve just got a very strange and ultimately tragic story….

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