The Shark

tom cruise drops in on a harvard law lecture. but where's goose?

[dennis]

Prestige has its perks. A class of Harvard Law students received a surprise visit by Tom Cruise on Monday. The class as taught by Cruise’s personal lawyer, Bertram Fields.

Cruise slipped into the back of the class but eventually began participating, according to the Associated Press:

He joined in with anecdotes and jokes while his lawyer friend taught the excited pupils, and discussed legal issues surrounding being a celebrity.

The actor even stayed behind afterwards to meet with some of the students.

The [student] paper said he shared "advice, stories, high fives, handshakes, hugs, and even at one point an impromptu dance."

Tom even did a jig! Anything for Harvard students! All accounts of the impromptu visit are generally positive, and there are no reports of couch-jumping or rants on postpartum depression. 

there's a disgruntled law grad in your closet.

[cynthia]

Normally I think excerpts from IMs are the lazy man's blogging, but this one over at The Namby Pamby made me smile. (Laughing is a lot to ask of me today.)

Daisy: [Our Law School] Alma Mater just sent me a survey! 

Daisy: where is the box for "i hate you"

...read the rest here.

first year humiliation: a rite of passage, always.

[julie anne]

From standing in line at the university business office next to 2Ls and 3Ls, from passing by more experienced students in the hallways in my first full week of school, and from being laughed at by the 2L boyfriend for my primeval 1L law school student ways, I have learned there are certain things that just scream "1L law school noob".

Are you channeling Quasimodo by having a ginormous backpack filled to the brim with ginormous casebooks, and cluttered with a rainbow of pens and highlighters? You just might be a 1L law school noob.

Upon entering the law school library, do you gracelessly struggle to get out your ID, attempting to balance your casebooks and coffee mug, while 2Ls and 3Ls brush on past (which happened to me this morning)? You just might be a 1L law school noob.

Do you highlight every single sentence in your casebooks because, dude, everything is important? Does the sight of your professor riffling through the class roster or even anything slightly resembling that (i.e. your date flipping through a menu, your dog digging in the backyard, etc.) make you break out into a cold sweat? Do you dream, as I did, about the horror of your casebriefs suddenly being deleted and being replaced with tons of photos containing Photo-Crashing Squirrel? 

And do you write a blog post during a cancelled class when you should really be reading ahead and briefing more cases? Then you definitely are a law school noob.

Calling all 2Ls, 3Ls, law school survivors and professors. What things do us 1Ls do that are a dead giveaway that we are 1Ls? Feel free to comment below!

attack of the annoying networkers.

[dennis]

CNN just unleashed its list of “The 12 most annoying types of Facebookers.” Many of the listed annoyers are also rampant in the legal social networking world, such as “The Friend-Padder” “The Lurker” “The Self-Promoter.”

The hallmark of an annoying social networker is that he does not talk with you, but at you. He does not care about who you are or what you have to say because you exist for his benefit (ie. to increase his follower, friend, and visit counts.) This why the annoying networker constantly adds people on Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn that he has no interest in, and that he will never interact with.

The annoying networker uses his online friends, visitors, and followers as a way to appear “connected” when he is anything but. This type of spam-networking, or non-networking, is counterproductive because your 1,000 LinkedIn connections are rendered moot by a single connection who says “I don't really know him. He just randomly added me.”

Law students, especially unemployed law students, can quickly fall into this trap and turn off peers, lawyers, and recruiters.

Here are five ways to avoid being that guy or girl.

1. Think before you add: Do you really care what this person has to say or are you just adding the person to increase your audience? On LinkedIn, don’t add anyone that you would not be comfortable with a recruiter contacting.
2. Create, don’t aggregate: It's okay to occasionally link to something that you find interesting. But the majority of your tweets and blog posts should not be links or summaries of other people’s content. Contribute something original. Don’t clog our readers and feeds with content we already saw on law.com or Bitter Lawyer unless you're adding commentary or some other useful content. 
3. Brag not, bore not: Unlike a personal blog, social networking sites require that you think about your audience. Before posting, consider if you would be interested in reading your post if it was authored by someone else. Would you really care to read that someone is in the library again or working on a brief?
   
   This also applies to messaging. Don’t message your casual acquaintances and slip in comments about making law review or your recent A+ in torts. We will think you’re that guy. I promise.
   
   
4. Prestigious Eyes Test: AKA, avoid overshare. Before posting, ask yourself if you would be mortified if a recruiter or your law school’s dean saw your post, picture, or tweet. Also think about the impression you are giving your peers: I know of a student who did not get onto the law review editorial board soley because he kept tweeting about how miserable his first year on law review was.
5. Engage: the whole point of networking is to engage other people, or “add value,”  for others. This means writing meaningful replies to posts and tweets, and taking a genuine interest in what others have to say. Remember, if you don’t really want to engage other people then you don’t really want to network.

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.".

what to wear to law school orientation?

[julie anne]

As the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression. The same holds true for law school orientation, which, for other soon-to-be 1Ls like myself, is only a couple of weeks away.

Ladies, you do not want to be "that girl." You know, the Elle Woods wannabe who insists on wearing the pink velour jumpsuit that reveals a tramp stamp when she sits down, or the bedraggled "slutty hobo" that blawger Jansen Dennis encountered during his first year orientation at the University of Minnesota Law School.

And gentlemen, you do not want to be "ewww." Do not pop your collar. Do not bathe in Axe Body Spray or similar body scent. Do not wear flipflops, and, if you insist on doing so, please keep the toes looking as un-Hobbit-like as possible. We at law school orientation do not want to lose our first and/or second breakfasts staring at your hairy feet.

With this in mind, I started swimming through the clothes in my closet looking for orientation outfits after I received my Chapman Law packet requesting that 1Ls wear "business casual" for this first of many law school rites of passage. 

I had seen the dress code before when I used to work in a newsroom, but the outfits I encountered were on the more casual end of the "fashion" spectrum. If memory serves, I think there were even Hawaiian shirts involved.

With no other point of reference, I turned to my old friend the Interwebz for guidance, where there is no shortage of tips for getting the right balance of business and casual.

For starters, there's Polyvore, a site that my super-fashionable cuz introduced me to. You can sift through clothing collages - or "sets" as they're called - for inspiration on outfits. I did a quick search for "business casual", and loved the "Green Can Make Things More Interesting" set and this untitled set.

You can also take the advice of blawgers Dennis, of No634, and Huma Rashid, of Reasonably Prudent Law Student, who offer great ideas of what and what not to wear.

With all the researching, I still don't know exactly what threads I'm going to be rockin' come orientation day, but I do have a better idea of what to shoot for. Dressy black pants, maybe. Daisy Dukes, no go.

Got ideas for what to wear to law school orientation, or have a story of a super horrible law school orientation outfit that you or another student wore? As always, feel free to post below!

we seem to have stumbled upon the gunner in his native habitat. crikey!

[julie anne]

There are many guidebooks available to those of us making our first foray into the law school wild. There's Scott Turow's "1L", "Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams" by Richard Michael Fischl and Jeremy Paul, and, of course, "Law School for Dummies" from the popular "Dummies" book series.

For the most part, these books give the lay of the land. The vast forests of unfamiliar material.  The arduous peaks of preparing for an exam. The valleys of what little down time a law student may have. The desert of what was once your social and romantic life.

But one thing these books fail to elaborate on is the taxonomy of the native law school wildlife.

Enter John Infante: law blogger and law school explorer extraordinaire!

On his blog, Fearfully Optimistic, Infante has started a detailed series of posts on the people you meet in law school that outlines the telling characteristics of a particular species of law student, how to approach the species in the wild and also how to tell if you are one.

As one commenter said:

"Why does it feel like Law School is going to be one giant episode of The Crocodile Hunter? Ahem: 'Crikey! It seems we have spotted the elusive Sandbagger and the colorful Gunner. Notice the calls of the Gunner as it displays its legal plumage. Oh! It seems the Sandbagger has slipped off!' Oh boy; fun times are ahead indeed."

Read Infante's post on The Gunner here and his post on The Sandbagger here.

welcome to the farm, john and judy law school grad!

[julie anne]

After all the baseball analogies used during Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination hearings, I think it's time we called a moratorium on baseball-sounding language of any kind in relation to anything going on in the legal world.

But not until after this fun little bit from one legal blog.

According to a posting on the site, new associates at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld LLP "are heading to the minors" of a new associate training ground - or "farm", as they're calling it - before going into the big league law firm.

Rather than proceeding straight into the hungry, gaping maw of a ginormous law firm after graduating from law school, green and somewhat-immature new associates will get sent to associate farms, where they will have the time to plump up and ripen with knowledge of the legal world for maximum nom-ability. 

Mmmm. Tasty.

If you're thinking that this all sounds like something that would appear on a Sci-Fi channel show - oh, excuse me: Syfy - or like the plot for a new book by Margaret Atwood then you've just hit it out of the ballpark.

Yup. The post isn't real news, but satire from Litination, a satire site intended to blend real and fake legal news for entertainment purposes only.

But is there some truth to this fiction?

Is the current "Big Law" system broken? Are new law school graduates as unprepared for "real world" practice as the article says they are? Is it really all that bad to be transferred over to DLA Piper?

And is baseball really the best analogy for law and all things law related?

Chew on those questions for a little while.

io9 blog reveals top legal minds of science fiction

[julie anne]

The one profession I used to associate with superheroes -- aside from their superhero-ing, of course -- was journalism. Peter Parker (aka Spiderman) is a photographer for the Daily Bugle and Clark Kent (aka Superman, Kal-El of the planet Krypton) is a reporter for the Daily Planet.

But science-fiction/pop culture blog io9.com recently opened my eyes to the fact that science fiction and the superhero world is populated with brilliant legal minds who could best you in court in addition to giving you a thorough beating.

Check out the list -- which includes some Marvel superheroes, Joseph Adama (the father of Commander Bill Adama of the Battlestar Galactica), and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law -- here.

As a Friday bonus, here's a fun clip of Harvey Birdman in court.

'douchebaggy cyber-bullying emails' bring shame to house that records built?

[julie anne]

The legal folks over at Guinness World Records recently received a FAIL Blog-style welcome to the Interwebz -- complete with an old school Rick Roll -- when they sent a strongly-worded letter to the FAIL blog folks demanding the removal of a screengrab critiquing a portion of the Guinness World Records Web site.

According to the email sent by Guinness World Records, its logo is trademarked, and the FAIL Blog must remove all trademarked material or else face the wrath of the Guinness legal department.

The FAIL Blog's response? Why, simply blurring out the logo, of course!

Here's a bit of their response to the email:

"Dear Sir/Madam, Thanks for writing us an email regarding the “Record Breaking Fail”. Unfortunately, douchebaggy cyber-bullying emails will only bring upon you more shame on your house. I am also resisting the urge to write this email in ALL CAPS.

I believe it is the duty of FAIL Blog(TM) to call out organizations when they encourage the public to do such things as 'Break the record' for the 'Most Individuals Killed In A Terrorist Act'. We firmly believe that our publication of your fail is protected under the concepts of fair use, commentary and non-trademark use. Please RTFM and we welcome you to teh interwebs.

Since we at FAIL Blog(TM) don’t have a legal defense department, we have complied with your request to remove the trademarked term and logo from the original image. We have used the “naughty bits filter” on the image to secure your naughty, naughty, trademark assertions. However, we have posted your email so that our audience can see why we had to remove the name of the failer from the image. I hope that this is the outcome you have expected as now NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW THAT GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS LIMITED HAS FAILED."

Read FAIL Blog for the original email from Guinness World Records.