
Law School Offers Class On Trump & The Constitution, Gets Attacked With Scare Quotes
This is some of the heaviest lifting I've ever seen quotation marks do.
This is some of the heaviest lifting I've ever seen quotation marks do.
Law professor Paul Campos prevailed in his fight with his employer.
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'But at some point years of petty discrimination and harassment will finally go too far, and for me that point is now.'
* Fresh off his six-month stint as White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus will be returning to Am Law 200 firm Michael Best and Friedrich, where he'll serve as president and chief strategist. He'll lead the firm's government affairs practice group, and he plans to help clients with their Trump problems. Best of luck, those clients might need it. [POLITICO] * Sorry, consumers, but the Senate had to call in VP Mike Pence in the middle of the night to kill the the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule banning mandatory arbitration clauses in credit card and checking account agreements. Damn all those "frivolous lawsuits by special interest trial lawyers"! [The Two-Way / NPR] * Author John Grisham was inspired to write his latest novel, The Rooster Bar (affiliate link), after reading an article in The Atlantic by Paul Campos about for-profit law schools and the student loan crisis. Well, at least someone is going to make some money after learning about a for-profit law school. [CBS News] * Biglaw firms are trying to reduce the amount of their leased square footage. According to the CBRE Group, on average between the first quarter of 2016 and the second quarter of 2017, firms in 26 markets were able to shrink their office space by about 27 percent. But did their headcount shrink along with it? [Wall Street Journal] * Major lateral hire alert: Paul Basta left Kirkland & Ellis this summer, and now he's landed at Paul Weiss, where he'll be working as the co-chair of the firm's corporate restructuring practice. Alan Kornberg, the practice group's current chair, called Basta's arrival at the firm "sort of a dream come true in a way." [Big Law Business] * According to a study conducted by Professor Carlos Berdejó of Loyola Law School, prosecutors tend to give white defendants better plea deals than black defendants. We needed a study to confirm that some prosecutors discriminate based on race? [Slate]
* In the wake of the surprise announcement that Whittier Law School will be closing, the administrations at other schools may feel as though they've finally been granted permission to do the same thing. According to Professor Paul Campos, we may see as many as ten more law school close within the next five years. But which ones? [Big Law Business] * "Their indifference to us as a student body is unacceptable." Angry Whittier Law students gathered last week to protest their school's impending closure, demanding answers from the board of trustees as to why the powers that be decided to throw in the towel on their education. We'll have more on this later today. [Whittier Daily News] * Two Harvard researchers have found a second parchment manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence in a records office in England. The only other parchment copy is housed in the National Archives, in Washington, D.C. They speculate that the copy was originally commissioned by James Wilson, who helped draft the Constitution and served as one of the first Supreme Court justices. Awesome find! [Boston Globe] * The number of transfer students may have dropped from 1,979 to 1,749 between 2015 and 2016, but it's still a great market for first-year students who are interested in switching schools. After all, high-achieving 1Ls can "easily move to a higher-ranked school, or stay put and get bigger tuition discounts." So, which law schools accepted the greatest number of transfers? We'll delve into the details later today. [ABA Journal] * Charges were dropped against two Maryland teens who were accused of committing a hate crime after allegedly lighting a Trump campaign sign on fire "with discrimination or malice toward a particular group, or someone's belief." David Rocah of the Maryland ACLU said the charges were "beyond absurd" and reflected "a profound misunderstanding of what the Maryland hate-crime statute says." [Baltimore Sun]
* “Cases swing. I don’t." Justice Anthony Kennedy would really like it if folks would stop referring to him as the high court's swinger swing vote. In other news, the Supreme jurist thinks Legally Blonde is a "pretty good movie." [Harvard Gazette]
* Hey, everyone, it's high time we did something about this law school debt crisis. Have you somehow never heard about or experienced this before (despite reading Above the Law for eons)? Not to worry, because the New York Times is on it! [New York Times]
* "She’ll still be fighting for the things she cares about. But this time, she’ll be asking us to join her." Irin Camron, co-author of Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (affiliate link), thinks we'll see more Badass Bader this Term. [New York Times]
* The Pennsylvania Senate is trying to kick embattled Attorney General Kathleen Kane out of office because she's working with a suspended law license. Come on, it must be pretty embarrassing when your AG can't even refer to herself as a lawyer. [Morning Call]
* According to Professor Paul Campos, the law school scam will keep on trucking thanks to the for-profit institutions -- Arizona Summit Law, Charlotte Law, and Florida Coastal Law -- that are run by InfiLaw. Well, at least they're good at one thing, right? [The Atlantic]
* Toke the vote! The next states that will likely legalize recreational marijuana by ballot referendum come November 2016 include California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada. Vermont, on the other hand, may pass marijuana-friendly legislation. [Rolling Stone]
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Law professor is tired of all the bad news about the legal market and he wants law schools to do a better spin job.
Many solos don't succeed because they don't want to be entrepreneurs, according to columnist Shannon Achimalbe.
It's a sink or swim situation for new lawyers entering solo practice, and there are no life preservers available or rescue boats coming to help them.
* Apparently Daredevil has nailed the dramatic representation of young attorneys. [The Legal Artist] * Professor Campos thrashes those who deny the law school scam. Um... these analogies may be a tad over the top. [Lawyers, Guns & Money] * Judge Kozinski movie night!!! [Los Angeles Times] * Discovery is awesome. Let's read some highlights from the Deutsche Bank LIBOR transcripts! [Bloomberg Business] * "5 bad things about being a City lawyer that nobody tells you about." [Legal Cheek] * Marriage equality will likely come down to one simple edit. [Slate] * The latest episode of Thinking Like A Lawyer talks video games and the law. Remember to subscribe here. [Legal Talk Network]
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Do these institutions epitomize the law school scam? A law professor says yes.
Who's coming to the defense of legal academia in the New York Times now?
Law schools need to get students through the door somehow, and the whole "we're good at teaching law" thing is sooo 2013.
* Let’s hit some lingering holiday stories that came in after we went off the air on Tuesday. Think of it as your Christmas hangover. First up, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, reimagined as a lesson on pregnancy discrimination. [Bolek Besser Glesius] * On a related note, here’s a nice chart comparing the original poem with the legalese version created by Dezert-Rose. [TaxProf Blog] * Well, that’s one thing you can do with law reporters in the age of Westlaw and Lexis. [Legal Cheek] * Isn’t it really nice of prosecutors when they actually try to fulfill their constitutional obligations? [Katz Justice] * A life lesson for these thieves: there’s no such thing as a Christmas tree that doesn’t shed. [Legal Juice] * The lawyers supposedly told NFL players they would not be taking any of the concussion settlement money. There’s a lesson to be had here about how you shouldn’t trust lawyers. [Overlawyered] * Professor Nancy Leong went on Ashley Madison with a “white” profile and an “Asian” profile. The Asian profile got more hits. Is this interesting? Sure. Is this the sort of academic work worth charging law students $180K to support? Not so much. [Lawyers, Guns & Money]
Someday James Cameron will make an epic movie about law schools.