yale law

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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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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Morning Docket: 06.04.12

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* Dewey know how deep in the red D&L’s international operations were? Enough to make you shout bloody hell and sacré bleu: the U.K. and Paris offices had liabilities of at least $175M. [Financial Times (reg. req.)]

* “To the extent that we the estate have claims, we would like to settle those claims sooner rather than later.” The joke’s on you if you thought you’d be able to keep your Dewey defector money. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* According to the allegations in former Cravath associate Ellen Pao’s sex discrimination suit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, the “Mad Men” culture seems to be alive and well in Silicon Valley. [New York Times]

* Who will be the first to puff, puff, pass the vote — Obama or Romney? It looks like the path to the White House in Election 2012 might depend upon the legalization of marijuana in key states like Colorado. [Reuters]

* Apparently you can’t take the “duh” out of “Flori-duh” when it comes to voting laws without a fight in the courts. A federal judge has blocked portions of the Sunshine State’s “onerous” voter registration law. [Bloomberg]

* “People want to go to our school, and why should we say no?” Because they can’t get jobs? Northwestern Law is considering shrinking its class sizes; John Marshall Law, not so much. [Crain's Chicago Business]

* Stop crying about coming in second in the U.S. News rankings, Harvard, because you can still brag about beating Yale in having the most-cited law review articles of all time… for now. [National Law Journal (reg. req.)]

* Gloria Allred is representing one of the Miami “zombie’s” girlfriends for reasons unknown. Maybe the zombie apocalypse is truly upon is and she saw an opportunity to stand up for undead women’s rights. [CBS Miami]

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Morning Docket: 05.31.12

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'F**k this f**king sh*tty bonus!'

* “Our assets went home every night, until one night, they went home and never came back.” Aww, Dewey shed a tear for this bankrupt law firm? Nah. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* It looks like SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas decided to kiss and make up with his alma mater, Yale Law School. He’ll be the keynote speaker at an alumni dinner in D.C. this summer. [Reuters]

* And the marriage equality battle has finally arrived in Obama’s former stomping grounds. Lambda Legal and the ACLU are challenging the ban on gay marriage in Illinois. [Associated Press]

* The biggest news out of the John Edwards trial yesterday was that Judge Eagles told the alternate jurors they didn’t have to show up anymore. OMG, boring. Give us a verdict already. [ABC News]

* Kim Dotcom and his company’s defense against the DOJ’s charges is coming together piece by piece. If only Megaupload were a torrent site, this would be a much better nerd joke. [Media Decoder / New York Times]

* The ABA Journal wants to know if you curse in the workplace, and if so, in what situations. We bet that a fair share of Biglaw associates were dropping f-bombs left and right over this year’s bonuses. [ABA Journal]

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Quote of the Day: Who Run the World? Girls! (Well, Kind Of…)

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If we continue at the same rate, the gender gap won’t close until 2083.

– Fran Faircloth, a Yale Law student, commenting on the results of a study conducted by Yale Law Women on gender imbalances in the law school classroom.

(What else did the study reveal? Find out, after the jump.)

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Law Revue Video Contest: Dishonorable Mentions

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We started taking submissions for our fourth annual Law Revue Video Contest at the end of March, and now, just two weeks later, we’re ready to pass judgment upon the funny videos submitted by our wonderful readers.

This year, 23 law schools submitted 31 videos for the contest. Some of them were funny, some of them were “meh,” and some of them made us want to cry.

As usual, we’re going to be starting with the videos that made us want to close our heads inside of our laptops. And because I am one bad-ass bitch, I’ve been selected to critique them. Aww, don’t worry, I’ll try to be gentle.

The commenters, on the other hand… Let’s face it, your submission earned you a spot in the dishonorable mentions category. You kind of brought this upon yourselves, so get out the lube, because this might hurt….

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Yale Law School Makes It Slightly Harder to Get Loan Forgiveness

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Yale is making a slight change to its low-income loan forgiveness program, and it’s going to make it a little harder for people who leave Yale Law School and take low-paying jobs.

Now, this isn’t anything to yell and scream about. Yale is still committed to making loan repayment feasible for people who don’t take the Biglaw money and run. And they still have one of the most generous programs in the country.

But the program is getting a little less generous. Which isn’t a great sign about the long-term ability of lawyers who have the financial flexibility to service poor or working-class clients….

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Some Random Friday Fun: A Law Professor Turned Songwriter

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Some people — for example, Chief Justice John Roberts — are not fans of contemporary legal scholarship. These critics might say, “You’d have to pay me to read the writings of a law professor!”

Well, what if a law professor were willing to pay you to check out his writings? And what if the writings in question were not, say, 150-page law review articles on “the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th-century Bulgaria,” but fun stuff — like song lyrics?

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Top Ten Family Friendly Firms According to Yale Law Women

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Family friendly firms are fun!

At the begining of 2011, there were a bunch of stories about Biglaw women and their struggles to have (or produce) a family while hanging onto their jobs. We saw some important information about the rampant sexism in the legal profession. And there were the familiar cries from women who professed to “have it all” (because there always have to be some women who make all the other women feel bad).

But yeah, from the prospective of January 2011, it looked like Biglaw women were really ready to think critically about what they wanted both professionally and domestically, and how they were going to force some change onto the system.

Then, ostensibly the holiday hangover wore off and everybody got back to work grinding away the hours. Spring bonuses showed up, the masses were placated and the machine kept rolling on.

Well today, the day before spring bonuses actually hit the bank accounts of most of the people lucky enough to get them, the Yale Law Women are out with their annual list of top family-friendly firms. You’ll note that most of the firms on this year’s list are not exactly “market leaders” when it comes to total compensation. In fact, most of the firms on this list had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the spring bonus party, if they are paying bonuses at all.

And so ladies (and gentlemen who want children that have the ability to spot “daddy” in a lineup), here’s a pretty interesting choice. Do you have a preference for these family friendly firms? Or do you just want to go to whatever place pays you the most amount of money at all times?

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