Exam time can be stressful. Doesn’t it make you just want to go online and post a series of pictures of mutilated Barbie dolls with captions threatening to butcher your professors?
What?
That’s just one of the allegations against a law school student charged with second-degree harassment and breach of peace. The allegations also include racist emails and harassing professors with bogus complaints…
Continue reading “Law Student Arrested for Anti-Semitic, Racist, Threatening Comments”
Attorney retirement home?
Well, the election is over, and a gaggle of new Congressfolks and Senators are coming to Washington in January. Of this population, 43 percent are lawyers, reversing the decline in lawyer politicians. So let’s review the incoming class and you can not-so-quietly judge our new legislators for their education and experience in the comments.
Ten new members attended Harvard Law School, so congratulations Crimson for continuing your tradition as the shadowy institution ruling our lives. There are also some inspiring stories among the new members. Like Joseph P. Kennedy, who lifted himself up by the bootstraps and managed to get into Harvard without any connections whatsoever. Everyone’s education info and any interesting career tidbits are provided below.
With all the freak-outs that happen during finals week, one might get a cynical view of how law students (and professors) handle stress. But despair not!
There is still this thing that exists called integrity — and sometimes, when people screw up, they acknowledge their mistakes, then try to fix the situation the best they can.
Today we have two examples, one from a frazzled SBA representative trying to manage peers suffering from caffeine withdrawal, and the other from a professor who spaced out when creating his employment law exam.
Keep reading for the details of the blunders, plus the (seriously) classy apologies issued by both individuals….
Continue reading “Even During Finals, Some Law Students and Professors Manage to Act Like Adults”
Welcome to the top … of the second tier. We are at the point where the value proposition of going to law school is questionable. But the “nailing attractive co-eds” possibilities remain high. Check out some of the schools ranked in this batch. If you are going to spend three years and six figures on something, you’re going to need more than illusory job prospects to keep you warm at night:
52. Pepperdine
52. Cardozo
54. Florida State
54. Yale Law School’s Hartford Campus/University of Connecticut (j/k)
56. Case Western Reserve
56. Loyola (Los Angeles)
56. Cincinnati
56. San Diego
60. Georgia State
60. University of Houston
60. Miami
60. Tennessee
64. Baylor
64. Lewis & Clark College
64. Kentucky
67. Brooklyn
67. Kansas
67. New Mexico
67. Pittsburgh
67. Villanova
72. Penn State
72. Seton Hall
72. St. John’s
72. Temple
72. Hawaii
72. Oklahoma
See what I’m saying. I bet young law students are just cutting a swath through the undergrads at Yeshiva University.
Seriously though, FSU, Miami, Rocky Top, Ha-freaking-Waii. Good times! You know, unless you want to get a job…
Continue reading “Open Thread: 2011 U.S. News Law School Rankings (52 – 72)”
Way back in 2007, a time so long ago that firms actually made offers to summer associates, we mentioned the story of UConn law professor Robert Birmingham. The professor showed a clip from the movie Really Really Pimpin’ in Da South, and got in a little bit of trouble. The film is (apparently) a “prostitution training film” that contained an interview the professor wanted his students to see. Professor Birmingham was forced to take a leave of absence back then, but he’s back on campus.
Unfortunately for the professor, now his girlfriend is in trouble. Heather Kaufmann — who is not only Professor Birmingham’s girlfriend but also represented Birmingham back in 2007 — has been charged with a litany of crimes. The Hartford Courrant reports:
Heather Kaufmann, 33, surrendered to police Monday and is facing charges of second-degree forgery, third-degree larceny, third-degree identity theft, credit card theft, receiving goods illegally, charging less than $500 on a revoked credit card and five counts of fraudulent use of an ATM….
According to court documents, police said that in the days following the death of her aunt on Dec. 7, 2008, Kaufmann used her aunt’s ATM card and wrote a check on the account that, together, came to more than $3,200.
Birmingham isn’t just tainted by the romantic association with Kaufmann; he allegedly also received some of the misappropriated funds.
Continue reading “Lawyer of the Day: And Her ‘Real Pimpin’ Law Professor Boyfriend”
John Belanger, who appears to be a rising 3L at the University of Connecticut, will likely be deferring his third year of law school. He has some bigger legal issues to deal with.
Belanger, 27, was arrested last week for his role in running an international drug ring. From the Watertown Daily Times:
Federal authorities have charged more than 45 people nationwide over their alleged roles in an international drug-smuggling operation that moved $1 billion worth of marijuana.
The two-year investigation exposed a pipeline moving thousands of pounds of marijuana each month from the north country to numerous U.S. cities, including Boston, New York and Miami, prosecutors said. The crime syndicate is alleged to have moved the marijuana, which came from Canada through the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation in Franklin County and near Churubusco in Clinton County, over the past four years….
Zachary Gouchie, 24, of Montreal, Edward Kener, 31, of Weston, Fla., and John Belanger, 27, of Hartford, Conn., were accused of recruiting people and directing the movement of the marijuana along the East Coast.
Given that this allegedly started four years ago, perhaps Belanger decided to go to law school to give legal advice to the drug cartel. Those with knowledge of Belanger tell us about his exploits at U. Conn. and his special interest in American Indian law, after the jump.
Who hasn’t “killed off a grandparent” in order to obtain an extension on a paper? I had a friend who went through six grandmothers in four years of college.
But one University of Connecticut law student is not joking around. As we understand it, an editor of the Connecticut Law Review received an email this morning from a rising 2L who is trying to write on to law review. The submission is due tomorrow, but the 2L is seeking an extension because of troubles back on the home front. The 2L pointed the law review editor to this article in the Hartford Courant, which allegedly concerns the 2L’s parents (one of them a local lawyer):
Police continue to negotiate with an armed man who they believe is holding his estranged wife hostage and who claimed that his house is wired with explosives.
We hope the 2L received that extension — and that everything turns out okay.
For students who do not have crazy situations like parental terrorism taking place at home, I imagine your requests for extensions are weak.
Update (9:15 PM): According to the Hartford Courant, the hostage has been safely released.
Update (11 PM): Not surprisingly, the 2L received the requested extension. All’s well that ends well.
Hostage Drama Unfolding In South Windsor [Hartford Courant]
Hostage Situation May Involve Hartford Lawyer [Connecticut Law Tribune]
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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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