Last year, in our douchiest law school competition, Duke Law was crowned as the douchiest law school in the land. But we might have to run the contest again based on the new information we have about UVA Law.
On the law school’s website, the school is posting summer associate stories from UVA students who were able to secure SA positions. The one posted yesterday is so full of sweetness I developed adult-onset diabetes before I finished the post. It’s 565 words from a rising 2L at UVA about the (apparently glorious) opportunities available at Arent Fox. Yes, that’s the same Arent Fox that revoked offers to several members of its incoming associate class this past September. I think we can safely say that the idyllic summer experience at the firm isn’t at all like the nightmarish reality of getting your career aborted before it starts.
But such weighty issues are of no concern to this UVA student. You’ve got to check out her report.
Warning: you are about to enter a trippy world of lollipops and rainbows, so proceed with caution….
Let’s continue our march through the U.S. News law school rankings. Today we finish up the traditional top-14 — and we’ll throw in the schools tied for 15th, because we’re pretty sick of hearing UT and UCLA students whine. To refresh your memory, here’s the next group of schools:
6. NYU
7. Berkeley
7. Penn
9. Michigan
10. UVA
11. Duke
11. Northwestern
13. Cornell
14. Georgetown
15. UCLA
15. Texas
All joking aside, dropping to #6 is really not that big of a deal. NYU Law students will be fine — check out how the kicked it on the basketball court just after the rankings came out…
It’s difficult trying to figure out what to write about when you’ve been away for a week and return to hundreds of unread emails. But, luckily for me, UVA’s Lile Moot Court Board has a way of making itself really, really obvious.
I trust you all remember the Lile Moot Court Board. Back in September, the board threatened to call prospective employers of students who withdrew from Moot Court competition. Because, you know, threatening scared 2Ls is one way to feel powerful and accomplished.
Over the weekend, news broke of more shenanigans from the Lile Moot Court Board. But at least this weekend’s obnoxiousness was limited to actual Moot Court issues — as opposed to employment matters that are none of the board’s business. Thank God for small favors.
The Lile Moot Court Board versus two 3Ls, after the jump.
Holy crap.
We did not Photoshop this picture. It actually appeared in a New York Times wedding announcement. Chuckle at it, if you must. But know that when you do, you’re fiddling while a venerable institution goes up in flames.
December isn’t a great month to get married, and this December was particularly bad. Still, our final Legal Eagle Wedding Watch couples for 2009 have some surprisingly strong Biglaw credentials. Here they are:
From Jeff Zucker, president and CEO of NBC Universal:
Getting rejected by Harvard Law School was “the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”
Winning admission to HLS is the dream of many a college student (not just Elle Woods). Being a Harvard Law alum puts you on the fast track to a prestigious law firm job with a $160,000 starting salary (and allows you to attend exclusive dating events).
So why was HLS rejection Zucker’s lucky break? Click on the link below for the full story (and a possible implicit dig at UVA Law, which Zucker got into but never attended). Jeff Zucker [Digital Facility]
When we tried to launch the ill-fated Courtship Connection, a matching service for ATL readers, we were stymied. Matchmaking was hard (especially when people didn’t respond to our e-mails).
Maybe we should have organized singles parties instead. That’s how the Ivy Plus Society operates. Whereas Courtship Connection sought to match up legal types, this dating society wants to bring together potential mates from elite universities. It had its inaugural D.C. event on Friday, reports ABC News:
Requirements for membership in TIPS are strict. Attendees must have attended one of the eight Ivy League schools or a handful of other TIPS-approved institutions. The University of Chicago and the Naval Academy qualify for the list.
If you were a graduate University of Virginia School of Law graduate, OK, you can attend. But, if you studied at UVA only as an undergraduate, sorry. UVA doesn’t make the grade.
[UPDATE: As noted by a commenter, UVA undergrad is now on the list. Perhaps there was an outcry over its original omission?]
“You can only be so superficial for so long,” said one young college graduate at Friday night’s event, who preferred to remain anonymous. He said he’s tired of trying to meet potential mates at general admission bars and parties. “I would like to find people of equivalent educational background — too dicey to go to a bar and find that. It’s nice to know, generally, people are going to be closer to your intellectual range.”
Because it’s not superficial to date only people from top-ranked schools…
So which law schools make the cut for Ivy League Plus?
The University of Virginia Law School, and legal academia more generally, have been rocked recently by a controversy involving a leading law professor and claims of anti-gay animus. William N. Eskridge Jr. — currently the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School, where we had great good fortune of having him as a professor — testified last month before Congress in support of the pending Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009 (ENDA). ENDA would prohibit sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in the workplace. In explaining the need for ENDA, Professor Eskridge made reference to his own career, testifying that “I was denied tenure at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1985 based in part on my sexual orientation.” You can, and should, read his complete testimony here (opens as a Word document).
The controversy has, of course, reverberated throughout the blogosphere. See, e.g., the UVA Law Blog (including 40+ comments, many of them quite insightful); Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports (here and here); and The Faculty Lounge. The UVA Law Blog also reprints a Virginia Law Weekly article from January 1986 about the Eskridge tenure denial (which was strongly opposed by students; if you’ve been lucky enough to have Bill Eskridge as a teacher, this should not be a surprise).
We reached out to both Professor Eskridge and UVA Law School. We received written statements from Professor Eskridge and from Dean Paul G. Mahoney.
Their statements, plus a comprehensive collection of links, appear below.
I’ll admit, I did not participate in any kind of fake court moot court competitions during law school. It just wasn’t my thing. But for other students, moot court can be a really exciting way to pass the time while you are waiting for law school to stop charging you money. I totally respect that.
Unless people take it too seriously. When moot court turns into gunner heaven, it’s hard not to laugh at all the Lil’ Boies running around acting like the competition is more important than 1L torts.
But at UVA Law School, it looks like the people running the school’s William Minor Lile Moot Court Competition have taken things to an entirely new level of pettiness. A UVA 2L explains it this way:
[T]he Lile Moot Court competition is our intramural moot court that 240 2Ls are competing in. It is run by appx. 10 incredibly rude and power-hungry 3Ls … and they have been inconsiderate to say the least. It’s the talk of the campus, or at least of the 2Ls.
You see what happens, Larry? You see what happens when 3Ls don’t have secure firm jobs waiting for them upon graduation?
After the jump, the members of the UVA moot court board completely lose their ever lovin’ minds.
Some of you, especially the straight males, may recall Stephanie Shimek (née Stephanie Haney). She’s the University of North Carolina law student who tried out for Playboy, to wit, the “Girls of the ACC” issue. We wrote about her in a post entitled “Career Alternatives for Law Students: Playboy Bunny.”
Multiple ATL readers — who read Playboy just for the articles, we’re sure — have alerted us to the good news: Stephanie made it into the magazine! WCHL reports:
A UNC student has had her dreams of being featured in Playboy magazine come true in the 2009 October ‘Girls of ACC” issue.
Twenty-four year old Stephanie Christine says ever since she first picked up a copy of the magazine at her aunt’s house, she wanted to be like one of the Bunnies.
That’s one open-minded aunt! (Based on an interview with Stephanie on the WCHL website, however, it seems that the issues belonged to her uncle — no lesbianic aunt here.)
Stephanie is a 3L, and as we’ve discussed, 3L recruiting is a nightmare this year. But don’t worry about Steph; she has backup options. According to WCHL, she aspires to work in entertainment law — but if that doesn’t work out, “[f]uture involvement with Playboy has been extended to her.” In addition, “her parents and family have been really supportive.”
As diligent journalists, we went out to a local newsstand and picked up a copy of Playboy’s “Sex on Campus 2009″ issue. After showing photo ID — we got carded (yesss!!!) — and plunking down $5.99, we took the plastic-wrapped periodical back to the office, where Elie gave us a brief tutorial in female anatomy. (We’ve never seen a woman’s private parts in real life, except this one time we went to a nude beach in France.)
After the jump, we present you with pictures of Stephanie, plus one other young woman who aspires to a legal career. We have carefully redacted the photos — drawing on skills honed during document review years ago, before online doc review became commonplace — so they are safe for work. Enjoy.
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
When we filed our last column, we were full of anticipation over Chelsea Clinton’s then-upcoming wedding. And the New York Times did not let us down with its wall-to-wall coverage of the big day. In case you missed it, you can read the NYT on Chelsea’s dress, Chelsea’s wedding planner, the secrecy, the confidentiality agreements, the feeding frenzy, the frustration of the fashion media, the interfaith angle, the rabbi’s spiritual journey, and the reaction in the town of Rhinebeck. Oh, and there’s a slideshow.
