The Shark

uc irvine school of law announces new hires as university staff faces possible pay cut.

[julie anne]

The fledgling law school yesterday announced seven new hires, which brings its total number of tenure-track professors to 22.

Here's a bit of the release from the law school's website:

"Accepting law faculty positions at UCI are Mario Barnes, Alejandro Camacho, Jennifer Chacon, Stephen Lee, Christopher Leslie, R. Anthony Reese and Christopher Tomlins.

The fields of expertise of this impressive group include intellectual property, antitrust, national security, legal history, environmental law, immigration law and criminal law. They have taught at a number of top law schools, including University of Texas School of Law, Stanford Law School, University of Notre Dame School of Law, UC Davis School of Law, Northwestern University School of Law and New York University School of Law."

The news of the new hires came on the same day that OC Register reporter Gary Robbins wrote that university staff could face an 8 percent pay cut in order to meet budget demands by the University of California. 

At the moment, it's unclear how cuts to the university will affect the law school, which is set to welcome its first class for orientation Aug. 19.

But Rex Bossert, the U.C. Irvine School of Law Assistant Dean for Communications and Public Affairs, told The Shark earlier this month that new faculty members who have accepted offers and the 15 faculty members currently on staff will not be affected by cuts or a hiring freeze because their offers were accepted a while ago.

gray davis tells columbia grads to keep on keepin' on.

[cynthia]

You all may remember Brian reporting (with maybe some amusement?) on Gray Davis's scheduled appearance at Columbia Law's commencement.

Well, Davis got through the speech, which is now posted online (via Capitol Alert) for your perusal. To his credit, he didn't try to avoid the pink elephant in the room: he directly addressed his recall, and offered up some words of encouragement that might actually ease a struggling graduate's mind in these times:

"Rest assured, all of you will experience failure at some point in your life, deserved or not. I believe I am uniquely qualified to convince you that there is no defeat, no matter how devastating, that you cannot overcome."

which barbri lecturer are you? hopefully not the leah rimini one.

[cynthia]

One of the downsides of the recent trend toward every Joe and his grandma developing an app for Facebook or the iPhone is that a lot of crap slips through. "What color is your aura" and "what kind of sausage are you" quizzes, and maps the allow you to track every public bathroom you use on your roadtrip back to Iowa over the summer. Great.

Aaron Tenzer, who according to LinkedIn is a 2009 graduate of Chapman, has brought the #barbri angst and the crap app trend full circle to their rightful union by developing a quiz on Facebook: Which BarBri Lecturer Are You?  Ever-curious about the weird things law students do to fill up their spare time, I took it. I wasn't holding my breath, though, because the quiz has received a lowly 1 star out of 5 from users.

My result, and the questions for those not willing to add the app, after the jump.

much ado about yoo: padilla's civil suit rages on.

[julie anne]

If you thought that you wouldn't have to hear about U.C. Berkeley tenured law professor John Yoo for at least a little while, Yoo were mistaken.

Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District did not dismiss a civil suit brought by convicted terrorist Jose Padilla against Yoo for Yoo's role in the writing of memos that authorized the use of "enhanced interrogation methods", also known as "torture."

Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was arrested in 2002 for an alleged "dirty bomb" plot only to have the charges dropped three years later, and was jailed in January 2008 for separate charges of providing support to the Al-Qaeda terror network. He is now serving a 17-year prison sentence for terrorist activities, according to AFP.

White's ruling means that Yoo, who is being represented by the Justice Department, may finally have to answer for legal opinions that, according to the New York Times, subjected Padilla to “gross physical and psychological abuse at the hands of federal officials as part off a systematic program of abusive interrogation intended to break down Mr. Padilla’s humanity and his will to live.”

As interesting as this latest development may be, what's even more stunning is what White, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in his 42-page ruling.

top PPP firms manage to keep promises to incoming first years.

[cynthia]

Beyond the shining exception that is Cravath, most of the nation's top-earning big law firms have escaped the PR nightmare of start date deferrals.

According to the AmLaw Daily, nine of the top ten firms (ranked by profit per partner) will be starting their first years on schedule. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz; Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges; Boies, Schiller & Flexner; Sullivan & Cromwell; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Kirkland & Ellis; and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton have all dodged the deferral party bullet.

Poor Cravath, out there all alone!

great news for those indebted: new federal loan programs.

[julie anne]

Student debt in the six figures is certain to rank low on anyone's list of things that give them the warm and fuzzies, probably falling somewhere between guys that flip their collars up and Speidi.

But that attitude toward debt may change, at least for some borrowers, come July 1 when a new Perkins, Stafford and Grad PLUS loan program takes effect.

While the new policies won't eliminate debt completely, they could possibly turn someone's scary, monstrous, burdensome debt beast into something more manageable and possibly more cute and cuddly, according to a Project on Student Debt video that explains some of the changes.

If you were too caught up in the adorableness of the debt monster - I know I was - here are the basics.

According to a Bargain Babe interview with Bill Penn (who gives career advice to students at Lewis & Clark Law School), the change is twofold.

For starters, rather than paying back loans at a fixed rate, some borrowers can get something called income-based repayment, which allows lenders to cap payments at 15 percent of the buyers income. Under previous rules, this would have meant even more years of debt. Under the new program, however, whatever is not paid back after 25 years is forgiven.

The news is even better for those who go into public service. You can have your loans forgiven after just 10 years.

Find out more about what these loans could mean for you at the Project on Student Debt website. Also, check out the Project on Student Debt's Facebook page for information on the June 17 and June 24 webinars conducted by Equal Justice Works.

stanford law prostitute left for broke by rich husband.

[cynthia]

Last year, we reported on Cristina Warthen, the Stanford Law grad who got in trouble with the feds for failing to report income earned while working as a prostitute. Warthen, who struck a deal on the tax evasion charges and agreed to pay fines using money from her rich husband (the founder of Ask.com), has since been left in a bit of a lurch.

Her husband has left her, she has no money (and neither does he, due to his stock portfolio taking a dive into the toilet), and she's told the court she can't pay her settlement. From the San Jose Mercury News:

"A federal judge on Monday put off Cristina Warthen's scheduled sentence in the case until she can resolve financial woes that have hit her since her plea deal was reached in January. At that time, Warthen pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges and agreed to pay at least $313,000 to the government to cover taxes on earnings from her days as an upscale prostitute who went by the name "Brazil."

But in court papers filed last week, Warthen's lawyers say her pending divorce from David Warthen, the co-founder of the online search engine Ask Jeeves, now known as Ask.com, has left her close to $100,000 short of being able to complete her plea deal."

After all the fun I made of her, I'm starting to feel kind of bad. Turns out David Warthen filed for divorce just days after her guilty plea. No word on why, but I think one can safely assume it wasn't because the revelation that she had been a prostitute was new to him.

big law is over.

[cynthia]

So says the New York Times, anyway. Jennifer Lee, of the NYT's City Room blog, attended a NY Bar Association event for unemployed lawyers that featured hiring partners and Above the Law's David Lat, and heard from attendees and panelists alike about the demise of the industry.

It seemed to be a commonly agreed upon that regulatory work will be on the upswing through Obama's administration, and that networking is the key to getting back into "big law" as it stands now.

It begs the question, though: If everyone is unemployed, who exactly should you be networking with?

this year's court clerks, brought to you buy corporate america.

[cynthia]

One might thing it would be a little conflict-y to put deferred (and still salaried) biglaw associates to work in courtrooms. But Legal Blog Watch is reporting that the Massachusetts Judicial Ethics Committee of the Supreme Judicial Court approved the practice last week. The chief administrator of the state's courts appealed to the governing body for permission to hire deferrees as "volunteer interns" while these "interns" remain on the payrolls of biglaw firms. The committee agreed it would be ok, sending images of corporate-sponsored court employees rippling through the heads of the blogosphere.

What makes it ok for these "interns" to be biglaw associates, you ask? Only this gargantuan catch: they must keep their associations secret, in what strikes me as a bit of Fight Club trickery.

"The committee acknowledged that allowing law firms to pay the salaries of judicial law clerks would implicate judicial ethics rules that require judges to avoid impropriety and appear unbiased. The interns' services could also be seen as inappropriate gifts to the judges from the law firms, the committee said. But all this could be circumvented, the committee concluded, if the clerks are forbidden from telling anyone -- even on Facebook or Twitter -- about their connections to their law firms."

Ahso so!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're a deferred associate right now, don't most of your friends know? Your family? Your blog's readers? Are you supposed to un-tell them to get a job with Massachusetts' courts?

Although the judicial ethics committee handed down its approval, despite outrage from members of the legal community, the plan will not go into effect until the State Ethics Commission issues its opinion on the matter. As Legal Blog Watch notes, it could be so long until this happens that "deferrals may well expire before the plan can ever be implemented."

And in other clerkship news, check out this Above the Law item on whether or not $250K signing bonuses for SCOTUS clerks are outrageous in this economy.

save an annoyed boyfriend, hug a lawyer.

[julie anne]

Have you hugged a law student or lawyer lately? No? Well, maybe you should.

Turns out, underneath their hard exteriors, some of them have squishy insides that just need some squishin'.

Thanks to my Google Reader "law student" alert, I stumbled across GroupHug, a website that allows users to post anonymous confessions online a la PostSecret. Unlike PostSecret, however, members of the community can interact with the poster and send them a cyber "hug".

Here's the post that my GR picked up on:

• Confession #294244324: "I’m a law student who repeated 1st year 3x. I feel so ashamed. I know what my peers think of me. And while I love being a law student, I feel like I’m wearing an 'I’m stupid' shirt all the time."

Curious to see if other law students had posted as well, I searched the site and came across these:

• Confession #782743846: "Truth be told, I’m not smart enough for law school."
• Confession #228748274: "I lied to my family and everyone else about applying and getting in to law school because I felt too much pressure and wanted to take a year off before going. Now if I don’t get into the school that I have supposedly deferred from I might be found out! I hate lying because you have to follow your web of deceit around and make sure it isn’t found out."
• Confession #679368142: "i want to be a lawyer but i worry sometimes if i have what it takes!"

Of course, the lawyers need some McLovin too:

• Confession #762490921: "i’m a workaholic lawyer and i wish i could sit around all day smoking pot and playing video games."

Here's the kicker, though. Even though it's sad that a law student or a lawyer can't reach out to their families or friends and instead feel they have to post to the GroupHug site, what's even sadder is that the "hug" feature on the site has been disabled indefinitely.