The Shark

given the choice, would you do it all again? law school grads report mixed reactions.

[julie anne ines]

The ABA Journal recently posed a question that I’m sure many a lawyer and many a graduating law student have been asked: “If you could start from scratch, would you opt to take the LSAT and go to law school?”

Basically, can you see yourself going back in time in order to prevent a depressing future, a la disturbingly hot man-boy Zac Efron in the movie 17 Again?

I haven’t had the, um, privilege of seeing the movie, but I imagine it has something to do with a troubled middle-ager who gets a second chance to do things differently and learns some things along the way to a happy ending.

Unfortunately, life is nothing like it is in the movies.

In real life, we live with the consequences of our actions. And, in the case of law school, those consequences can add up to debt in the six-figures and work that isn’t as fulfilling or as profitable as one pictured while an idealistic law student, according to many of the posters on in the ABA Journal’s comment section.

Here’s a gem from poster “Captain Obvious”:

“Let’s see. I now hold ten times the amount of student loans as I did after graduating from undergrad, at more than twice the interest rate. I’ve been unemployed since graduating from an allegedly strong Tier 2 law school two years ago this month. I live in my parents’ basement, and can afford neither health nor malpractice insurance. My last interview with a law firm was eight months ago. I would eagerly take a non-legal job if anyone anywhere was interested in hiring a JD. Sadly, no one is. I do not have ten dollars to my name. So, after careful contemplation, I would have to come to the conclusion that I would not go to law school again, if given the choice.”

And I just signed up for how many years and how much in student loans? Gulp.

More heartening comments after the jump.

lawyers embarrass a law student. with video.

[patrick]

My newsfeed's fine sense for the absurd, which manifests by juxtaposition, never fails to deliver: Last week I received "good news" about the slipping economy (it has reduced traffic congestion) alongside "this week in layoffs" at ATL. Today Senator Burris swore to his innocence in the NYT while his peers began clucking and posturing for Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearing.

Also today, I received a passionate defense of lawyer advertising, alongside a collection of five truly hideous, completely genuine, lawyer advertisements. 

The defense of lawyer advertising, by Professor Stern from Florida State University College of Law argues that "[b]ans on self-laudatory lawyer ads are paternalistic, overly broad and elitist" and also unconstitutional.  There are many reasons to think he's mistaken, but I'm going to skip the constitutional babbling and simply rest on the Hammer, the Bitter, the Good Guys, the Daredevil, and the California Switchblade (who is from Oklahoma), all of whom peddle their wares with a straight face in the YouTube videos below.

So, who is paternalistic, overly broad, and elitist?  You be the judge: 

Look, call me a stodgy, old-fashioned, curmudgeon. But isn't this supposed to be a profession? 

Source here.

more on hastings: governor's proposal would create an $8k per student annual tuition increase.

[cynthia foster]

Although the governor's new budget proposal, which includes cutting off all state funding of Hastings, has not been approved and is being "viewed skeptically" by state legislators, it's a scary piece of news for Hastings students, both current and future.

If California does indeed revoke it's $10M annual payment to the school, and the school is forced to pass along the cost to its students, tuition would go up $8,175 per year for each of Hastings' 1,250 students.

According to the Cal Law story on the news (free reg. req.), "the governor [is] targeting Hastings and other state-funded programs that don't have a federal mandate." The switch would effectively make Hastings a private institution.

Unsurprisingly, the issue of UC Irvine and its new law school has come up:

"Why would we start a new law school when we've had Hastings around for 100 years, and it has a great reputation?" said Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego.

0L dates 1L: turns out law school puts some pressure on romance.

[julie anne ines]

I haven’t bought a single supplement, law school textbook, six-pack of Red Bull, or bottle of Tylenol for law school yet. I haven’t developed a drinking problem or a nervous tick or an irrational fear of words like “heretofore” and “estoppel”.

I haven’t sat through a single law school class (save for a mock class at Southwestern Law School earlier this year), but in some ways I have already lived through one year of law school.

That’s because my boyfriend – or the Boyfriend as I like to call him on my personal blog – and I have just pulled through his first year. And let me tell you, it was no small feat for him or me.

shame on you, law school cheaters! shame on you.

[julie anne ines]

Sometimes, I imagine law students, law school and the lure of high grades akin to throwing a bunch of hungry, ugly-cute baby sharks into a small tank with a juicy piece of red meat.

Besides being fiercely competitive over-achievers, these Type-A sharkies have been told their survival in the law school tank depends on them being able to get those yummy ‘As’ and ‘Bs’.

Which is why it came as no surprise when we wrote a couple weeks ago that the Syracuse University College of Law would be taking measures to flush out cheaters who used their bathroom breaks to cheat on exams.

It is also no surprise that the National Law Journal recently reported that students are seeing more gray areas between honesty and dishonesty, and are using technology and changes in testing administration to get ahead.

What is surprising, to me at least, is that law students still see cheating as a viable option.

We’ve all been told since kindergarten that “cheaters never win, and winners never cheat,” and that “the only person you cheat when you try to cheat is yourself.” Call me square and naive, but I think both quotes are true, especially in law school exams.

Yes, law schools use exams to gauge how you fare against your classmates. But students should also take advantage of exams as an opportunity to reflect on material learned and possibly predict how well they’d do on the bar exam.

If you cheat in law school, you may be able to stay afloat and keep swimming. But when you get into the bigger ocean out there, you’ll be eaten alive if you fail to know your stuff.

breaking: governator wants $10M from hastings to add to the budget cut pot.

[cheryl miller]

As part of an effort to cut $5.5 billion from the state budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday proposed eliminating almost all state funding for Hastings College of the Law. The $10.3 million cut amounts to roughly one-quarter of the school's academic budget, said Hastings' chief financial officer, David Seward.

More on this as news develops later today.

SCOTUS shortlist: kathleen sullivan and pamela karlan are not in fact the same person.

[cynthia foster]

In the last installment of our SCOTUS shortlist way back when feature, we bring you two Stanford law professors who have made their reputations on campus. Unlike some of the other contenders for the nomination, politics and business have played little role in the careers of Kathleen Sullivan and Pamela Karlan.

Kathleen Sullivan, Stanford Law professor
Alumna: Harvard Law School, 1981

• A close colleague/mentee of Lawrence Tribe, who was her professor in her 2L year, and who enlisted her to work on various appellate cases with him.
• Won the Ames Moot Court Competition, an annual upper level competition at Harvard.
• A recipient of numerous fine teaching awards, including the Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award for Teaching Excellence at Harvard.
• Became the first female dean of any of Stanford's schools when she was appointed dean of the law school in 1994. She left that position in 2004 to found the Stanford center on constitutional law. (Stanford)
• During her deanship, she created Stanford's LLM program.
• She failed the California bar exam in 2005, after being hired by Quinn Emanuel to start an appellate practice group. She passed the Feburary 2006 exam.
• She supported Hillary Clinton via a donation during the Democratic primary. (Campaignmoney.com)
• She is openly gay.
• For a video of Sullivan and beleaguered Professor John Yoo of Berkeley hashing out the relevance of the Rehnquist court (Sullivan more than holds her own), click here.

Pamela Karlan, Stanford Law professor
Almuna: Yale Law School, 1984

• Formerly taught at the University of Virginia.
• Took a job as Assistant Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund out of law school.
• Moved to Stanford after Virginia Law. There she became the founding director of Stanford's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.
• Also the faculty advisor to Stanford's chapter of the American Constitutional Society.
• Has a Facebook group created to support her addition to the SCOTUS shortlist. (Facebook)
• She is openly gay.
• A very well-regarded commencement speaker, whose remarks at graduations at both Yale and Stanford have been disseminated across the web with bloggers calling her "funny," "scary smart," "clever," and "inspiring." Excerpts below.

"Would I like to be on the Supreme Court? You bet I would. But not enough to have trimmed my sails for half a lifetime. Sure, I’ve done lots of things I regret over the years. But the things I regret aren’t the things that keep someone from being nominated or getting confirmed. I regret being unkind to people I love and respect and admire. I regret getting frustrated by little things. I regret never taking a summer off. I regret not being able to stick to a diet. But I don’t regret taking sides on questions involving the Voting Rights Act. I don’t regret helping to defend the constitutional rights of criminal defendants. I don’t regret litigating cases on behalf of gay people. I don’t even regret being sort of snarky." - Stanford Law commencement, 2009 (Ms. JD)

"You’re not facing a choice between being a public interest lawyer or being a sellout. Truly great lawyers take both paths from the fork. They use their gifts to give back to the community, as well as to take care of themselves and the people they love. They make corporations more responsible. They prosecute crime. They pave the road for new technologies to bring life-saving and life-enhancing products to the market. They defend the accused. They remember a wonderful insight from one of my favorite poets and readers of poetry, Randall Jarrell: "If we judge by wealth and power, our times are the best of times; if the times have made us willing to judge by wealth and power, they are the worst of times." The best of times .... the worst of times. Rather than quoting more from A Tale of Two Cities, – “it is a far, far better thing” and all that – let me point to the opening sentence of David Copperfield. It goes like this: "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." The pages of the briefs you file and the memoranda you write and the opinions you publish in F.5, or whatever we’re at when you become judges, should be a part of making your own life heroic." - Yale Law commencement, 2007 (.pdf)

fish & richardson rescinds offers, defers start dates, generally wreaks havoc.

[cynthia foster]

Things are pretty bad over at Fish & Richardson. I think things have to be really bad for a firm to wait until so late in the game to announce they are deferring people for a year and essentially rescinding offers. That's indeed the announcement the firm management made today, as reported by Above the Law (with some really, really, really angry tipsters weighing in).

Directly from the firm's press release:

"While approximately one-third of our 2009 associate class will start on time, we are deferring the majority of the class to October 2010. About half of those deferred will receive a stipend of $5,000 per month for twelve months, along with reimbursement for health insurance. We have informed the other half of those deferred that, given current economic conditions, it is unlikely that we will have a position for them next fall, and we have advised them to seek other opportunities. That group will receive a stipend of $5,000 per month for six months, along with reimbursement for health insurance, and we will revisit their situations in mid-2010."

This is one of the worst deals for law students to make its way onto our table of doom. Sorry about this one, guys.

irvine's scramble to the top advances a bit with announcement of first clinic

[cynthia foster]

The National Law Journal is reporting that Dean Erwin Chemerinksy of UC-Irvine's new law school has unveiled the latest addition to a stable of top faculty and cutthroat admissions stats: the school's first clinic.

An anonymous endowment from a "global" foundation will fund the clinic, which will focus on environmental law. The clinic will also work in conjunction with UC-Irvine's public health program.

Chemerinsky, ever-ambitious, reportedly hopes that the school will eventually create other clinics and programs as well, focusing on areas including intellectual property, technology and public interest law.

The NLJ also reported that the law school received "several million dollars" in "fresh" donations last year. Even Brian Leiter has hopped on the UCI bandwagon: by his calculations, the school will make its way "solidly" into the top 20 national schools. Take that, doubters!

SCOTUS shortlist: the man, man.

[julie anne ines]

Amidst a sea of female contenders, California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno’s name stands out as the lone male presence on the U.S. Supreme Court nominee short list.

A San Francisco Chronicle columnist calls the California native a “long shot” for Justice Souter’s seat because, well, "he’s a dude." The NYTimes concurs.

Still, here’s a list of things you may or may not know about this lone wolf.

Carlos Moreno, California Supreme Court Justice
Alumnus: Stanford Law School, 1975

• Moreno, a Los Angeles native of Hispanic descent, went to local public schools before making his way east to Yale University, where he completed his undergraduate degree in 1970.
• With his appointment to the Supreme Court of California in 2001, he became the third judge of Hispanic heritage to serve in the Court's nearly 150-year history, and the first in more than a decade. (ABA)
• He has served as president of the Mexican American Bar Association, the Yale Club of Southern California, and the Stanford Board of Visitors.
• A foster parent himself, he is the Chair of the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care, which makes recommendations to the California Judicial Council on the ways in which “the courts and their partners can improve safety, permanency, well-being, and fairness outcomes for children and families.” (California Courts)
• His mother came to the U.S. at the age of 16 with her mother and little sister following the Mexican Revolution in the early 1900s. (Thomas Jefferson School of Law)
• He played in the Stanford Law School mariachi band, La Rondalla. (Stanford Law)

Read about rumored nominee-possibilities Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, and about Jennifer Granholm, Diane P. Wood, and Janet Napolitano. Check back later this week for our final installment of the SCOTUS shortlist series, with items on Katheleen Sullivan and Pamela Karlan.