Today, April 15, is Tax Day. But it’s an important day for another reason as well: it happens to be the day that some law schools want to hear back from applicants — and collect their deposit checks, of course.
Let’s close out our series of posts soliciting advice on picking a law school with three fact patterns. All of them involve at least two members of the so-called “T14,” the nation’s 14 leading law schools according to the U.S. News rankings….
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 traditionally made up what used to be the alphabetically listed third tier. It was only very recently that the law schools that once constituted the “third tier” received the gift that keeps on giving (no, not herpes): numerical rankings.
Today, we’ll be talking about the schools that used to comprise the fourth tier, but now have a new name. These days, this segment of the U.S. News list is referred to as the “second tier,” and although they’re all ranked, those rankings aren’t published (presumably because no one wants to brag about going to the worst law school in the nation — as if being tied for 144th place is better).
Let’s use this post to discuss these schools, collectively or individually, and to compare and contrast….
Continue reading “Open Thread: 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings (The Second Tier)”
Back in November, when we broke the news about the release of the California bar results from the July 2012 administration of the exam, after celebrating their success or bemoaning their failure, people immediately wanted to know about the pass rates by law school. Alas, the only information we had at the time was about the overall pass rate — 55.3 percent. The pass rate was 68 percent for all first-time takers.
We also knew about the overall pass rates for first-time takers who attended ABA-accredited law schools, both in-state (77 percent) and out-of-state (64 percent). But now, just a little more than a month later, we know all of the individual California bar exam pass rates for law schools nationwide.
Last year, we praised USC Law for its top performance on the exam. But this year, we’ve got a different victor. Which law school took home the glory this time around?
Continue reading “California Bar Exam Results By Law School: Open Thread”
Dear internet, make me a graphic like this, only for law school prices and with, like, a student crying or something.
So we’re all going to vote tomorrow, and then on Wednesday most of us are going to wake up with the same old problems. I’m going to need to lose some weight. Romney’s going to be an unemployed rich guy nobody likes. And America’s law students are going to wake up in the middle of the night worried about getting jobs.
Last week, the Washington Post wrote an important article on the abysmal state of the legal job market. It sounded notes that are familiar to regular readers of Above the Law, but I feel that whenever the facts about legal education make it into the Post or the New York Times, it’s important because parents see it there. The more parents know, the less likely they are to push their kids into law.
While most of us know the broad picture (it’s a figurative disaster), it is still fun to pick through rubble….
Continue reading “Washington Post Hops On The ‘Do Law Students Know How Stupid They Are’ Bandwagon”
* “This case has nothing to do with the United States.” We’d normally let that slide because of this law from 1789, but now the Supreme Court is suddenly skeptical about the validity of the Alien Tort Claims Act. [Reuters]
* “Why are we being punished for Dewey & LeBoeuf?” Come to think of it, former employees at the failed firm are probably wondering the exact same thing as the fictional characters on “The Good Wife.” [WSJ Law Blog]
* Reduce, reuse, and recycle your claims? New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed suit against JPMorgan, alleging that the bank’s Bear Sterns business defrauded mortgage-bond investors. [Bloomberg]
* A man of many firsts: Randall Eng, the first Asian judge in the state, was appointed to lead New York’s Second Department as presiding justice, the first Asian-American to serve in the position. [New York Law Journal]
* UC Irvine Law is planning a six-week summer camp for in-house counsel. They’re calling it the Center for Corporate Law, but Mark Herrmann’s “General Counsel University” has a nicer ring to it. [National Law Journal]
* Why shouldn’t you get a dual JD/MBA? Because hiding out in school for another year isn’t going to save you from all of the extra debt you’ve incurred earning yet another degree. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]
* When thinking of the Penn State situation (the alleged cover-up, not Jerry Sandusky’s crimes), I am reminded of how critically important due process is to the proper administration of justice. You really notice due process when it’s gone. [The Volokh Conspiracy]
* I haven’t eaten at Chick-fil-A since college. No homo. [Fox News]
* It’s funny to think of law professors getting their pieces rejected by law reviews. Funny insofar as there are people who actually care about what ends up in a law review. [lawprofblog]
* I’m not inclined to believe things coming out of Nigeria, but if this is true, it’s crazy. [Gawker]
* The bright side of losing your job because of the LIBOR scandal. [Dealbreaker]
* Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the University of California Irvine School of Law, thinks that you can’t cut faculty salaries enough to achieve substantial reductions in tuition without losing your top faculty. But in this market, I bet a law school that said, “We hire only cheap professors and pass the savings on to you,” would have a lot of appeal. [National Law Journal]
D&L would've been better off doing this.
* Dewey even care if we spent money like it was going out of print? A new D&L bankruptcy court filing states that the failed firm used $43M of secured lenders’ funds in just one month in an attempt to save the ship from sinking. [Bloomberg]
* The Jerry Sandusky trial continues: Mike McQueary’s testimony in the former football coach’s case was pretty disgusting, but then again, most things are going to be pretty disgusting when you’re dealing with an alleged child predator. [Daily Item]
* A few ways you can tell this isn’t England: 1) our dental hygiene is generally better; 2) our royalty is entirely made up of reality TV stars; and 3) you still can’t serve people via social networking sites like Facebook. [paidContent]
* Foul ball(s)! Remember Clark Calvin Griffith, the former William Mitchell adjunct sports law professor who was accused of unsportsmanlike penile conduct? He pleaded guilty to indecent exposure. [Pioneer Press]
* “Do I have to read the whole settlement?” Yup! UC Irvine Law’s consumer protection clinic will work to see if banks are keeping their end of the bargain in a $25B foreclosure-abuse settlement. [Los Angeles Times]
* Anna Gristina, the accused “Millionaire Madam,” claims in a motion to dismiss that police tried to make her name her johns, one of whom is apparently “a prominent Manhattan lawyer.” But which one? [New York Post]
* CBS claims that ABC’s “Glass House” is a rip off of “Big Brother,” and the network is trying to block the show from airing. OMG, please let it air so we can see this law school dropout in action. [Celebrity Justice / FindLaw]
Ever since the UC Irvine School of Law opened its doors in 2009, the fledgling institution has been garnering rave reviews. It has already been labelled one of the most selective schools in the country. Every single member of its inaugural class had a job last summer. And that same first class goes to school for free.
Over the weekend, the emerging West Coast powerhouse added a new impressive statistic to its quickly filling trophy case. This year, the school boasts one of the highest federal clerkship placement rates in the country.
Keep reading to see which elite law schools have been edged out by UC Irvine….
Continue reading “UC Irvine Announces Better Clerkship Numbers Than Almost Everyone Else”
When the UC Irvine School of Law first burst onto the scene, the school offered free tuition to everyone in its inaugural class. Then, in its second year, UC Irvine offered a 50% discount to all students admitted to the class of 2013.
And now, UC Irvine will knock 33% off its tuition, for members of its third entering class (the class of 2014).
Students considering UC Irvine will certainly appreciate the money. The National Law Journal reports that, not counting the discount, in-state tuition is $40,000 a year and out-of-state tuition is $50,000 a year. Welcome to public law school in the 21st century.
Despite being a public law school, UC Irvine will fund this tuition reduction through private donations. So you have to wonder: how long can they keep that up?
Continue reading “UC Irvine School of Law: Now Offering 33% Scholarships to the Class of 2014″
Victims of what anti-law-school bloggers have dubbed “the law school scam” might argue that working for a law school, or at least the kind of law school that saddles students with debt and can’t get them jobs, is closer to a crime than community service. There is certainly an argument that law professors who aren’t part of the solution are part of the problem.
But the notorious William Lerach, the securities plaintiffs’ lawyer turned convicted felon, believes that law teaching is a noble calling — and wants the community service credit to show for it….
Continue reading “Is Teaching at Law School a Form of Community Service? Bill Lerach Thinks So”
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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 »
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
Keep reading »
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