If you haven't checked out the massive number crunching that's going on over at Law Shucks, you probably should.
The blog uses compiled layoff data (the Layoff Tracker) to chart the decline of the legal industry in a graphical way that's easy for everyone who is doped up on Xanax to understand.
Couple the tracker with the summer associate survey results from our sister publication The American Lawyer, and you've got an easy way to back up the following general statement: summers are happy to be at firms that haven't done layoffs.
I've borrowed a few screencaps to show you below, but be sure to check out the full post here.
The top 10 firms according to summer associate satisfaction, of which only two have done attorney layoffs:
And the top 10 firms according to Law Shucks' layoff data, contrasted with their ranking among summers:
We here at The Shark will have more from the American Lawyer Summer Associates Survey throughout this week.
Recently, my law school's Office of the Registrar sent out the passwords to download the latest version of test-taking software Examsoft.
That's all well and good except, as discussed before, I'm a Mac living in the PC world that is law school. (By the way, based on the students who use PCs and those who use Macs in my law school classes, I can affirm that those who use Macs are in fact hipper and more attractive than their peers who use PCs.)
I had put the whole Mac or PC thing at the back of my mind in favor of learning the intricacies of personal jurisdiction, but the email brought the issue back to the fore: Should I buy a separate laptop for test taking, or should I just go ahead and install Windows on my MacBook with BootCamp?
The $120 price tag of the new Windows 7 operating system had me leaning the way of just buying a netbook that runs Windows, however, a new promotion for students from Microsoft has me considering the other option.
For a limited time, Microsoft is offering Windows 7 for $30 for students with a university email account.
"'In the US, students can pre-order their copy of Windows 7 beginning
September 17th and can download the OS beginning on October 22nd
(general availability),' a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed with Ars.
For US students, we checked and saw that they need to have a .edu
e-mail address or be attending one of the 158 schools."
My school wasn't on the list, but I registered my school email address anyway and received an email several minutes later confirming that I was cleared for download.
Buffalo news reports that the professor’s knee started to swell during his lecture, so he canceled class and dismissed the students. The students refused to leave, and called campus security, but security refused to send a vehicle to help the professor to his car.
The professor said he would drive himself to the hospital, but the students would not let him:
“So these students picked me up and carried me outside, commandeered
a shuttle bus to drive me to my car on the opposite side of campus,”
Kloch recalled during an interview from his bed at Kenmore Mercy
Hospital.
But the bus driver said, ‘This man is in no shape to
drive himself.’"
Then they summoned security and security called an
ambulance and I was taken to DeGraff Memorial Hospital,” Kloch, 58,
said.
Their professor is Richard C. Kloch, who is also a judge. So, even if the student's don't get automatic A's, they can certainly expect an amazing recommendation letter.
When the UC Irvine School of Law first opened its doors in August, and perhaps even before, some were speculating that the presence of another Orange County, Calif., school — a public school no less — would put a stop to the private Chapman University School of Law's plans to make it to the Valhalla of law schools: the U.S. News and World Report's Tier 1.
But after Thursday night's "Battle of the Law School Deans" — a debate between Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of Irvine and Dean John Eastman of Chapman — I don't believe that a neighborhood rival is such a bad thing for Chapman or Irvine, which also has its sights set on a top spot.
Students at The American College of History and Legal Studies (you read right; only history will be studied at this school) will have the option, at the start of their fourth year in the undergraduate program, to enroll in Massachusetts School of Law to begin their JD studies. Said students could wrap up both a BA and JD in 5 years, as opposed to the standard 7, and would be guaranteed admission to the law school if they "perform well" at the American College.
“What is intriguing about it is they are going to provide students an opportunity to go on to law school,’’ said Catherine Pride, an associate dean at Middlesex Community College who negotiates Middlesex’s transfer agreements with other institutions. “That’s something that can shorten a student’s road to getting a law degree.’’
I've been working on updating the 2009 start date deferral table (not to be confused with the 2010 table) with all of the recent outpouring of info on start date deferral extensions and offer revocations.
A lot of firms are pushing would-be associates back even more (we're now at, like, full body's length, rather than just arm's length). Some notables: Arent Fox, Chadbourne & Parke, Baker & McKenzie... the list goes on.
Check out the table, which I'll endeavor to keep updated for as long as this "season" lasts. Please also email me with any updates, corrections, or thoughts of your own.
In case you didn't notice, yesterday was Skadden Offer Day. The firm, responding to changes in OCI schedules at schools across the country, issued all of its offers in one day, regardless of office or campus.
I was skeptical of this tactic, and thought I smelled a ploy to get students to accept other offers, therefore limiting the Skadden pool to accommodate its shrinking summer class sizes.
"...the firm says it is happy with the results. In fact, fewer 2Ls than usual turned down Skadden offers because they had already committed to another firm, says Howard Ellin, Skadden's hiring partner.
The firm managed to just barely escape losing all of the top law school talent to other firms, by carefully scheduling the offer day.
"Industry guidelines mandate that firms give candidates 45 days to decide whether to accept an offer. For an offer to have expired before Skadden Offer Day, a firm would have had to extend the offer in early August--before on-campus interviewing started at most schools."
Well played, Skadden. You scheduled your big holiday early enough to manage to hold on to the T14 kids, but late enough to ditch the more mediocre talent that snapped up the first offer made! You laugh in the face of death, don't you?
I'm not sure if this is news to anyone or what, but I can be a sort of negative individual. Some might even say (and rudely, I might add) cynical. But every now and then I come across something that even I can't think of anything negative to say about. This happened to me today, with the Really? Law? post on the Socratic method (hat tip to Thanks, But No Thanks).
The 1L in charge over there had these things to say about any insecurity you may be feeling about that one time yesterday you got called on by the professor and had no idea what to say and felt trapped in the headlights and Oh My God!!!!!:
We don’t really care. We’re too busy focusing on what the professor says.
We don't remember. Unless you keeping bringing it up after class.
We’re not laughing at you. We all know that next week the professor might be drilling us and we may not have the answer. It’s not funny and we’re not laughing.
We don’t think you’re stupid. You just got caught on the one thing you didn’t know. Or you got flustered. Or you misunderstood the question. Or any number of things that don’t involve your intelligence. Law school is hard–for all of us.
I think this is all really nice. And practical. For all the flak law students get for being ruthless and indiscriminate in their ruthlessness, it appears that there are those out there willing to stand up for the nice side of law school. Particularly in these uncertain times, it behooves us all to stand up for some normalcy, in the classroom and otherwise.
Apparently, there are no Barbri girls in Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin legislature believes that graduates of the University of Wisconsin Law School and Marquette Law School are so well versed in Wisconsin law that it is unnecessary for them to take the Wisconsin bar exam.
The plaintiffs argue the bar exam is a burden faced by graduates of out-of-state law schools. They note that the fees for admission by bar exam are roughly double the fees for admission by diploma privilege. The plaintiffs allege a disparity of preparation for admission, arguing that the bar examination requires study of all the subjects listed in SCR 40.03 because all are potentially tested, but a Wisconsin law student can graduate without taking classes in all of them. An out-of-state applicant is further hindered in a way the Wisconsin law school graduate is not by the delay created by an exam administered just twice a year, they added.
The exemption does have some advocates, especially at The Daily Cardinal:
But simmering under the legal grounds of the lawsuit is the issue of whether the bar exam in really all that necessary for Wisconsin students. It would seem that a diploma proving you had completed three grueling years of legal study is a better indicator of one’s possible legal success than a single two-day exam. And considering that attorneys educated at Wisconsin law schools are only marginally more likely to be investigated for ethics complaints than other attorneys, it seems there is little statistical need to weed people out using the bar exam.
This Minnesotan is unimpressed.
There is a reason why most states require a law school diploma and a bar examination: competence.
This smells a lot like the loophole that I discovered as a high school student in Florida. In high school I had two options:
Take AP classes and suffer through a grueling exam in hopes of scoring a perfect "5" because my university might not give me credit for a "4" or,
Go to the community college in the evenings on my high school's dime and rack up A's that Florida colleges could notreject.
Of courseI opted to go to community college. A student who would not get any credit for their AP score of a "3" or "4"
could easily earn an A in the comparable community college course, which meant that out of state applicants to my university were grossly disadvantaged. I had a friend who started college with 90 credits through this dual enrollment program, whereas out-of-state students who took a boatload of AP classes typically started with only 20 or so credits, if they were lucky.
Was this unfair? Of course it was.
This in-state favoritism is exactly what is going on in Wisconsin. I’m sure that Wisconsin and Marquette are great law schools, but not everyone that manages to graduate law school is competent to practice. If Wisconsin schools are really that great at teaching their students, then their graduates will do as well on the bar as their Nordic neighbors.
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