It’s time to unveil the second half of our Best Law School Scandal bracket. Spend your Friday morning reveling in the stupidity of the legal academy with these classic ATL stories.
As a quick reminder, if you haven’t yet voted in the prior two regions, click here and here. If you want to skip ahead to the fourth region, click here.
Alright, on to the first bracket reveal of the day: Email Snafus. Some people are afraid of SkyNet massacring all of humanity… we worry about some law student flipping the “genocide all” switch. Here’s your region:
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Remember voting is open until Sunday, March 20, at 11:59 p.m. EST.
1. Northwestern Law Student Emails Hand-Job Offer to Entire Law School
The Northwestern SBA emailed the entire student body encouraging students to come by in person to have face-to-face meetings. Now this is where it’s important to remember that “being horny” and “technological ineptitude” make comedy gold — go ahead and hit “reply all” girl:
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Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2010 12:29 AM
To: [All Law Students] @LISTSERV.IT.NORTHWESTERN.EDUHey [SBA Guy],
So, I understand that the SBA office is the best place to have face-to-face convos. What about hand to weiner convos? teheheheheheheehehe
Love, [Lady Who Likes Giving Hand Jobs]
Fantastic.
8. Law Professor Outraged By Plan To Use His Raise To Fund Jobs For Unemployed Graduates
In 2014, when the employment scene for recent law school graduates was looking rather bleak, Oregon Law decided that it would suspend faculty raises and use that money to create a new jobs program for graduates without jobs. After all, just 50.3 percent of the school’s graduates were employed in full-time, long-term jobs as attorneys, and it had affected its U.S. News ranking. According to Oregon’s dean, this would’ve been a great way to game the rankings, but Professor Robert C. Illig — a former associate at Nixon Peabody, where according to him he “was all but certain to be earning more than $1 million annually” — nearly lost his damn mind at the prospect of not receiving his yearly due. His reaction can be best described thusly:
Pardon my French, but this is absolute bullshit. Colleagues do not ambush one another like this.
How can I trust the administration or any of my faculty colleagues? No wonder we’ve become a third-tier law school. Who’s going to want to come here to study or teach in this kind of poisonous atmosphere? …
I feel that having given up the chance at a seven-figure annual income is charity enough for the students….
[poll id=”528″]
2. Law Professor Who Sent Anal-Bead Porn To Her Students Now Under Investigation
Look, sometimes you’re just sitting around your office cruising Pornhub for some lovely anal bead videos and you suddenly remember you need to email your students a link. Just make sure that copied to your clipboard.
Professor Lisa McElroy frequently uses TWEN to update assignments and such, and this was sent [out on Tuesday, March 31] with an erroneous link. The posting was for her first-year Legal Methods writing class.
The event triggered a Title IX investigation, which was probably warranted by the letter of the law, but certainly seemed like a stretch. And then she doubled down with an embarrassing op-ed in the Washington Post blaming everyone but herself for what was an admittedly humorous but ultimately harmless — dare we say? — cock up.
It was so dumb because it was just so easy to spin. Say you were going to a bridal shower… America basically write-offs any predilection in the bridal shower context.
7. Law Professor Sends School-Wide Email Bitching About Grads Who Fail The Bar Exam
Say you’re a professor at a low-ranked law school. You must be used to hearing about numerous recent graduates failing the bar exam. It’s a thing that must happen twice a year, every year. Professor Mark Summers of Barry Law School had had enough. He fired off this lovely school-wide email after the latest round of bar failure news:
As a member of the law faculty, I am deeply disturbed by reports that some of you have not taken seriously the bar preparation courses. That was also the attitude of the February bar takers, and the results speak for themselves. Unlike the 38% who did not pass in February, you still have a chance to avoid failing the July exam if you apply yourself during your bar preparation course. This will require six weeks of hard work and dedication. Before you decide NOT to make that commitment, ask yourselves these questions:
1. Am I not willing to work hard for six weeks to achieve something to which I have dedicated the last three years of my life?
2. Given the amount of money I have spent on law school, how can I justify not taking the bar exam seriously?
3. Do I really want to put my legal career on hold for a year or more if I fail the bar exam and do I really think the chances of passing are better the second time around?
4. Would I want to be represented by a lawyer who had so little self-respect that she didn’t give her full effort to passing the bar exam?
Think about it.
[poll id=”529″]
3. A Message from Career Services: Ladies, Please Learn How to Dress Yourselves
We get it. Law schools don’t think their female students know how to dress professionally. But does the Duke Law Career & Professional Development Office really need to send out fashion advice like this?
At the time, we noted, “[I]n case it wasn’t obvious, you should strive to wash both your hair and your body. We know that this is groundbreaking news, but you should wear deodorant, too. Apparently, the objective of going to an interview is to not stink. Who knew? And if you do choose to wear a fragrance (other than B.O.), you should avoid any whore-scented perfumes.”
6. Kids These Days: Or, Why You Should Always Sign Out of a Public Computer
Mercifully, the steady march of technology has all but eliminated the computer lab. But back in 2008, there were still some law students out there who had to log onto a public computer to get their work done.
And by “work,” we mean “scheduling blowjobs.”
Here’s a portion of a Gchat transcript left open for all the world to see at American University’s Washington College of Law:
female: Hey – I just got your text, no I’m not still at school. I had to go home to get my car because I’m meeting [redacted] at 5. [Professor X] wants us to check 30 (no joke) books out of the main campus library and bring them to her. What were you doing there?
male: stuff for class, is there any way i can get a bj today at school?
If this were the end of the conversation, this wouldn’t be much of a scandal. But what happens next is a free-ranging discussion of each other’s schedules, the crowdflow of the library, and the physics of giving head in a toilet stall.
[poll id=”530″]
4. T14 Law Student Loses His Mind In School-Wide Email Over Stolen Apple
Law students can get very, very angry when their healthy snacks are stolen by fellow students. Here’s one student’s ode to an apple thief, sent in a school-wide email:
I was going to eat that. That’s what most people do with food they own, and what pets and assholes do with food owned by other people. It was in a bag, too. That means you had time to really consider what you were doing.
Well, I hope you enjoyed it. No. No I don’t. I hope you hated it. I hope it was a bad apple. That certainly would be fitting, and in a way, cannibalistic. I hope each bite brought you an appropriate amount of shame, which is to say, a lot, but not too much. And I hope that when you were finished eating it—that thing that wasn’t yours—you looked down at the slimy core, devoid of all value, and saw in it your own image; a reflection of your ruined, seedy self, thieving the fruits of another’s labor.
We suppose that’s how smart apples roll at Michigan Law.
5. Oops! Top Law School Email Screw-Up Reveals Grades, Ranks Of All Clerkship Applicants
If you thought copying and pasting information into an email was difficult for law school professors, then you should see what happens when someone from a law school career services office tries to attach a document to an email. At schools like UVA Law, this kind of an otherwise simple task could turn into a complete debacle, and soon you’ll be receiving a follow-up email with a subject line like “PLEAE [sic] DELETE IMMEDIATELY” and a body with only two words: “WRONG ATTACHMENT.”
This is apparently what happens when you send out all of the unedited academic information for the school’s clerkship applicants, including GPAs and class ranks (information the school doesn’t even give out to its own students), to the school’s 155 clerkship applicants.
If you’re thinking about heading to UVA, you might want to check this out:
[poll id=”531″]
Check out the final region on the next page…