The Shark

more from orientation: a view from a non-traditional law student

[julie anne]

One of the surprises I received during my first day of orientation at the Chapman University School of Law was running into an old coworker who writes a column at the newspaper I used to work for.

Turns out, he's following in the foot steps of his daughter, a recent law school grad, and going back to school after being out for 27 years.

Here's a bit from his column, which appeared Wednesday in the Orange County Register:

"The road to law school at 50 could be a column itself. Ever try to find out from a J.C. you attended 30 years ago what a cryptically ominous 'action taken' on a transcript means? Ever try to keep pace with a bunch of too-smart-by-half twentysomethings in a three-month banzai-run of a prep class for a Law School Admissions Test that has nothing to do with law?"

Read his column in full here.

life in law school: orientation! (wear comfortable shoes.)

[julie anne]

There are a several things I learned yesterday, during the Chapman School of Law 1L orientation.

First, law school orientation means swag. 

After signing in during orientation registration, the nice people behind the table handed me a nifty messenger bag with law school merch inside. I'm talking a lunch bag, an accordion file folder, a 1GB flash drive and a nice pen in a nice box. Awesome because I had yet to purchase a flash drive and was planning to purchase one. Not so awesome because I had decided to walk to school that morning.

Which brings me to the second thing I learned yesterday: Your business casual shoes that were kinda comfortable when you put them on at 7 a.m. are not so comfortable when you've been running around to get your student parking pass, your student ID, and your law books. 

My feet were so angry at me by the end of the day, that I decided to just wait on the hefty law tomes because I knew there was no way I was going to be lugging them home in addition to my laptop bag and my swag bag.

The third and final thing I learned yesterday - in addition to the usual stuff about succeeding in law school, being healthy in law school, not being a smelly hermit, etc. -  is that law school students are not so scary as they are sometimes made out to be and as I had imagined them to be.

Besides the tons of people who introduced themselves early on during orientation, the law students we were assigned to sit with during the lunch hour were more than willing to give us pointers on surviving law school, and also volunteered honest evaluations of some of the teachers listed on our schedules.

Sure, there were students who made unnecessary comments during some sessions, and some people who had already formed cliques and had erected their clique-y walls, but on the whole, everyone I met was friendly and open.

Turns out that the only enemies I had that day were my angry, mutinous feet.

hastings looking to raise tuition. again. always?

[petra]

Public law schools across the country are barely done talking about bumping up the cost of a J.D. for the upcoming academic year.

UC’s Hastings is looking even farther out.

In a finance committee meeting yesterday, school CFO David Seward said California residents might be looking at a price tag of about $36,000 in academic year 2010-11, while out-of-state students might be paying $47,000. That doesn’t include health insurance and other fees, he said.

A third of the revenue from the latest fee increases would go toward financial aid.

Seward said the school is reacting to state budget cuts and fee increases at other UC law campuses. The goal is to fall just under the fees charged by the law school at UC Davis.

It seem like just yesterday that Seward prepared first- and second-years to pay $29,383 in enrollment fees in 2009-10 (.pdf).

“The good news is, we are the lowest-cost highest-value law school in California,” Seward said. “The bad news is, we’re not as low-cost as we used to be.”

The full board of directors will consider the proposal Sept. 11, after students have had a chance to weigh in.

All of the law schools in the highly regarded University of California system are raising tuition — called professional degree fees — by 10% or more.

Petra is a Cal Law reporter. 

paul hastings to make offers to 75%, defer most of them.

[cynthia]

Paul Hastings has announced, according to Above the Law, that it will be making offers to approximately 75% of its current summer class. Of those offers, some associates will start in 2010, but others will be deferred to January 2011. 

I've updated our table, which brings our grand total of firms who have made either recruitment or offers announcements to 18. If you know of any firms that I'm missing, please email us.

yoo protesters arrested after entering classroom and refusing to leave.

[cynthia]

The four prostesters who were arrested on Berkeley's law campus yesterday were detained inside Professor Yoo's classroom, according to an email sent out to students regarding the situation this morning. The protesters had entered Yoo's Civil Procedure II class in a loud enough way to disturb all the surrounding classrooms, and had refused to leave after UC Police entered the fray.

Berkeley Law students received an email this morning, alerting them that the school will be working with UC Police in the coming days to develop a "strategy" to deal with the protesters, who vowed to return as long as Yoo is employed

The full email can be found after the jump.

yoo protestors arrested in berkeley.

[cynthia]

The Associated Press is reporting that four individuals were arrested today at on campus protests against John Yoo's continuing employment at Berkeley Law.

The arrests were made outside of the law school, after protestors refused to leave the protest site.

The news of the arrests broke at 4:45pm this afternoon. Check back here for more info as I get it.

 

UPDATE: Protesters gained access to Yoo's classroom, refused to leave.

pillsbury to shutter california summer programs?

[amanda]

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman is scaling back its summer 2010 program, and will host one third the students it usually does, the firm said Friday. And, because it hosted so many students in San Francisco the past couple of summers, it’s not sure how many, if any, it will bring on next year.

You may have read something about this on ATL, which reported that the program on the West Coast was cancelled. While the firm says it hasn’t yet made a decision, it doesn’t look like there’s much hope.

Pillsbury had 50 summers nationwide this year, while next year it expects to bring on a much reduced class, about 15 to 17 students, according to a firm statement.

“Although it is true that our efforts will be focused and considerably more extensive in NY, DC and Houston, it is inaccurate to say that we have ‘canceled’ our program for SF,” the statement said.

“Rather, because we had comparatively larger summer classes in San Francisco in both summers 2008 and 2009 programs, we need to learn how many of those from the 2009 summer class to whom we are about to give offers will be accepting on the before we can determine how many, if any, 2010 summer associates we will need in California.”

For more information on other firms who are canceling programs and deferring current summers, check out our table.

Amanda is a Cal Law reporter. You can follow her on Twitter.

help give $10,000 to a fellow law student

[julie anne]

What would you do for a $10,000 scholarship to (help) fund your legal education?

Would you channel your inner film noir detective? Would you rap about what inspired you to go to law school? Would you unveil your deep dark secret Billie Mays fetish?

Law students who submitted videos for and made the top 10 of Access Group's "My Inspiration" contest did.

In the contest, law students were asked to submit videos describing what inspired them to attend law school, and 10 finalists were selected from 113 eligible videos. Voters now have the opportunity to vote for their favorites through Aug. 21.

The creator of the video with the most votes gets $10,000 for school, and up to five other videos, voted on by Access Group judges, get $1,500

Sounds like an easy 10 grand, right? Just slap together a video with a family member’s camcorder of you reading your law school admission essay, and you’re golden.

Not so fast there, Mr. Demille.

Turns out, law students – surprise, surprise – went above and beyond the YouTube quality vlog and put together some pretty elaborate, professional-looking videos

Here's the list of the finalists - and their respective schools, courtesy of Access Group - from my least favorite to the one that gets my vote:

old actor heads to southwestern to start second career.

[cynthia]

It's not often that I get to bring you news hot from US Weekly, but here I am. For those of you attending Southwestern Law School in Southern California this year, you can expect to see a (semi-)familiar face. Jerry O'Connell, of Sliders, Stand By Me, and Kangaroo Jack, will be in your midst.

The 35-year-old (whoa, Quinn Mallory and I are both old) will be attending night school, according to a Tweet from a fellow student last week.

Leslie Steinberg, the school's Assistant Dean of Public Affairs, told Us that O'Connell chose the school because he was "very impressed with the faculty and the vibe here. This is brand new to him as well. He's very much looking forward to his education.".

child genius goes to law school. and, nope, it's not me.

[julie anne]

There are several things I wished for when I was a little girl.

I wished to be several inches taller, as I was always the shortest girl in my elementary school classes. I wished to be blonde and blue-eyed because I didn't see any Disney princesses that looked like me in any of my favorite Disney movies. I wished for a new puppy at least once a week.

But my greatest wish, my wish of all wishes, was to be a super child genius that put all other child geniuses to shame.

I hoped and wished upon a star that someday I would wake up, roll out of bed and suddenly be able to compose a musical piece that would make tyrants weep, create a work of art that was worth a million dollars without me having to die, or build a supercomputer that does whatever it is supercomputers do.

Alas, twas not to be. I remained a normal little girl.

So I learned the value of hard work, gave up on the irrational hope of instant genius, and made my peace with the universe and with the child geniuses the world over who had been blessed by the genius gods even as I was passed over.

But occasionally there are news stories that force me to lift the veil on my magnanimity and make me just a teensy bit jealous of other peoples' lots in life.

The story of Kate McLaughlin - child genius, 174 LSAT scorer and soon-to-be Northwestern Law School 1L at just 19 years old - is one those.

Here's a bit from the Orange County Register's story on McLaughlin, an Irvine, Calif., resident:

"She skipped six grades, enrolled in community college at age 12 and graduated from UC San Diego at 17.

Only one class in her entire academic career has been challenging, she says – Calculus II, at age 13 – and now she's headed to Northwestern University this fall for law school. ...

'Schoolwork has always been easy for me,' said McLaughlin, an only child who lives with her mother and stepfather in Irvine. 'It was skipping from easy work to more easy work. I've never had a feeling of, this is where I belong.' ...

She has been burdened all her life with finding a place that would fulfill her insatiable quest for knowledge, a learning environment where she wouldn't feel like an intellectual oddity."

Burdened? I feel for the kid, I really do. But if a 174 LSAT score is a burden, where do I sign up?

McLaughlin is not the first genius to make the law school leap. Check out Above the Law's coverage here. And check out what the Wall Street Journal bloggers had to say here.