Drinking, DUI / DWI, Law Schools, State Judges, State Judges Are Clowns

Judge Accused Of Having Inappropriate Relationship With Cooley Law Student

By Staci Zaretsky

Judge J. Cedric Simpson and Crystal Marie Vargas

Law students who get to intern with judges are pretty lucky. If they play their cards right, they’ll be able to get a lasting relationship out of it — just think of all the tips, tricks, and recommendations that judge will be able to give you in your life as a lawyer.
Some law students who intern with judges reportedly forge “other” kinds of relationships with their would-be mentors. Those alleged relationships come with all sorts of perks, but if you get caught, the gavel may come down hard.
Take, for example, the case of Michigan Judge J. Cedric Simpson. Simpson is accused of having a “personal” relationship with Crystal Marie Vargas, a graduate of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School who once served as his intern. Simpson is now facing a complaint from the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission over his alleged actions while Vargas worked for him in chambers, including an incident where, according to the complaint, the judge attempted to interfere with the investigation and prosecution of Vargas’s September 2013 drunk driving charge.
Let’s take a peek at what allegedly went down between Simpson and Vargas…

Simpson is a 14-A District Court judge in Michigan, and we presume Vargas is a recent graduate of Cooley Law. Her LinkedIn profile seems to have been deleted, but here’s a snippet from it that we were able to find:

It seems that on the early morning of September 8, 2013, Vargas was driving drunk and crashed her car into a tow truck at about 4:30 a.m. The first person she called to tell about the accident was not a relative, not a law school classmate, not a boyfriend, not the police, but Simpson, who allegedly showed up at the scene less than 10 minutes later. Here’s what happened next, according to MLive.com’s report:

[Simpson] interfered with a field sobriety test being administered by Pittsfield Township Police Officer Robert Cole. In his initial response to the commission’s request for comments, Simpson denied speaking with Vargas while Cole administered the sobriety test to her.
Vargas was released from Washtenaw County jail at approximately 8 a.m. and allegedly went to Simpson’s home. Simpson then allegedly drove Vargas to recover her vehicle and paid the towing fees on his own credit card after her card was declined.
The second count alleged by the commission is that Simpson interfered with Vargas’ prosecution following the incident. He allegedly contacted Pittsfield Township city attorney Victor Lillich on multiple occasions in an attempt to intercede on Vargas’ behalf.

Despite Simpson’s best efforts to help this “good girl,” Vargas was charged with one count of operating a motor vehicle while impaired. She pleaded guilty, and was sentenced on January 21, 2014.
Simpson, of course, denies interfering with the police investigation or trying to get “special treatment” for his intern. Simpson also denies that he had a “personal” relationship with Vargas, but this excerpt from the Judicial Tenure Commission’s complaint seems to stand in contradiction to the judge’s assertions:

Simpson’s lawyer, Ken Mogill, had this to say about the complaint, per the Detroit Free Press: “We respectfully disagree with the JTC’s allegations, and I expect Judge Simpson will be exonerated.”
Best of luck to Judge J. Cedric Simpson as he tries to fight these ethical charges and keep his job, and best of luck to Crystal Vargas on the Texas bar exam. They’ll both need all the help they can get.
(Flip to the next page to see the juicy complaint filed against Judge Simpson.)

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Career Alternatives, Job Searches, Law Schools

Thinking Of Leaving The Law? Here Are Some Resources

By David Lat

Despite surveys showing that being a law firm associate is the unhappiest job in America, we know a fair number of happy lawyers. We don’t tend to write about them very much — we like our stories to have a little more bite or edge around here — but there is such a thing as a happy lawyer (affiliate link).
Still, there’s no denying that the stereotype of the miserable lawyer has some truth to it — and that, after a while, some of these lawyers leave the legal profession. Most people who go to medical school end up practicing medicine for the long haul; many people who go to law school end up doing something different after a while.
If you’re thinking of leaving the law, what should you do?

Start by reading “The Only Job With an Industry Devoted to Helping People Quit,” a piece for The Atlantic by Leigh McMullan Abramson, a former Kasowitz Benson associate who’s now a writer. Here’s one source’s summary:

For your readers there probably isn’t anything there they don’t already know. The reason that general-interest media keep doing the “law school grads have tons of debt and can’t get jobs” story is that a general audience has lots of people who haven’t read that already. And The Atlantic has a lot of people who think of the law as a prestige profession and will be shocked to learn there’s a whole industry built around helping people escape. But most lawyers already know that….

Okay, the bottom line of Abramson’s article might not be novel to many of our readers — but the piece serves as a comprehensive clearinghouse of resources for lawyers interested in exploring career alternatives. Here are some of the people, books, and websites mentioned in the piece (several of them prior contributors to, or coverage subjects for, Above the Law):
1. Liz Brown (@LizAfterLaw), author of Life After Law: Finding Work You Love with the J.D. You Have (affiliate link).
2. Casey Berman (@LeaveLawBehind), founder of the website Leave Law Behind.
3. Eileen Wolkstein, a New York career consultant.
4. Marc Luber (@JD_COT), founder of the website J.D. Careers Out There.
5. Kate Neville (@AttorneyCareers), founder of Neville Career Consulting, a Washington D.C.-based firm specializing in transitioning attorneys.
6. Amy Impellizzeri (@AmyImpellizzeri), author of the forthcoming book Lawyer Interrupted (ABA Publishing 2015).
If you’re looking for guidance as you think about transitioning out of the law, the resources mentioned above are an excellent place to start. You can also browse through Above the Law’s career alternatives coverage for possible inspiration and check out the ATL Career Center. Good luck!
The Only Job With an Industry Devoted to Helping People Quit [The Atlantic]
Earlier: Unhappiest Job in America? Take a Guess

02 Jul 2014 at 12:51 PM

Law Professors, Law Schools, Layoffs

Much Maligned Law School Cuts First-Year Class, Announces Layoffs

By Staci Zaretsky

Get out while you still can!

If you’ve managed to jump onto the speeding “now is a great time to apply to law school” train, then you might want to fling yourself from the tracks, because that thing is about to derail. We’ve got some major news from a law school that’s stereotypically regarded as one of the worst in the country. If you thought things were bad for law schools, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The legal academy has been waiting with bated breath for something like this to happen, and now it finally has. A law school is cutting an entire class year from its enrollment logs at one campus and laying off faculty and staff — all at the same time.
Which law school seems to be in full on disaster mode right now?

If you guessed the Thomas M. Cooley Law School, then you were correct. Elie Mystal’s years of coverage about this law school have served a purpose after all. If you took heed of his warnings, then we must congratulate you, because it looks like he helped you to avoid a complete catastrophe.
That’s right, Cooley Law — a school with a total of five campuses across Michigan and Florida, whose enrollment dropped by 40.6 percent over the past few years — is finally raising its hands in defeat. After years of statements from Dean Don LeDuc that the school was doing just fine, and despite the fact that the S&P gave it a negative rating, and despite the fact that it recently raised tuition by 9 percent to presumably cover its operational costs, the school seems to be throwing in the towel. Not even affiliating the law school with a public university could save the program from itself. Sure, Cooley Law has weathered class-action lawsuits about its quality, but it could no longer stand up against the staggering decline of legal market.
Today, we received a rather shocking notice that was posted on Cooley Law’s internal portal page:

As with most law schools across the country, Cooley’s enrollment and revenue have continued to decline. Despite our ongoing cost control efforts, it has become apparent that we must now reassess our costs, including our faculty and staff levels, in light of current enrollment. Thus, Cooley’s board of directors and administration are instituting a financial management plan designed to right size and reinvent the school. Unfortunately, and as has occurred at a number of other law schools, the plan will include faculty and staff layoffs. As part of the plan, Cooley will also hold off enrolling incoming first-term students at the Ann Arbor campus for fall 2014, though all currently enrolled Ann Arbor students will continue to be able to pursue the school’s full curriculum.

Wow. Considering that Cooley Law once declared that it was the second-best law school in the country, this is major. The announcement goes on to state that the school “has a history of making transformative decisions in response to our students’ needs,” but this time around, the school decided that some students no longer needed to attend Cooley. Look at it this way: Cooley Law just saved a whole bunch of law students the trouble of taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans for a 26.9 percent chance of working full-time as a lawyer after graduation. Pay close attention, because we’re about to offer a very high compliment to the Thomas M. Cooley Law School: what the school did was commendable.
Yes, Ann Arbor is a small campus, but instead of sentencing those students along with its other thousands of students (yes, thousands — its class of 2013 graduated 1,143 students) to a lifetime of seemingly insurmountable debt, Cooley opted to fall on its own sword and eat the minimal profits it would have reaped. It may be just one campus, but Cooley is the first law school in the nation to stop enrolling students because there are TOO DAMN MANY OF THEM. Cooley is working to “reinvent” itself, and right now, that means not enrolling any students in Ann Arbor because it’s too much of a burden.
To those who may lose their jobs because of this, we hate to say it, but perhaps you should have seen this coming. We certainly wish you the best of luck in the future, wherever your career brings you.
For now, we can’t help but wonder what’s next for Cooley Law. Will it stop enrolling students at all of its campuses? Will it decide to close down for good? Its future is yet untold, but this is very, very foreboding.
UPDATE (3:15 p.m.): According to MLive.com, Cooley Law acknowledged that it would be conducting faculty and staff layoffs in an announcement posted to its official website, but that message fails to mention anything about the elimination of the first-year program from the Ann Arbor campus. The memo concerning the Ann Arbor campus was posted only to the school’s internal portal page, and we have a copy of it which you can see for yourself on the following page, if you’re interested.
UPDATE (3:30 p.m.): According to the ABA Journal, incoming 1Ls who were accepted to Cooley’s Ann Arbor campus will have the option to attend any of the other Cooley campuses. Dear Lord, please help these would-be law students see the error of their ways. Does this mean that the Ann Arbor campus is going to be shut down? James Robb, Cooley’s associate dean of external affairs and senior counsel, said there were no plans to do so at this point. Perhaps they’re waiting for all current 2Ls and 3Ls to graduate.
(Flip to the next page to see the full announcement from Cooley Law, including a screenshot.)

http://abovethelaw.com/2014/07/breaking-much-maligned-law-school-cuts-entire-first-year-class-announces-layoffs/

Unemployment

• 11 Apr 2014 at 2:00 PM
• NALP, National Association for Law Placement (NALP), Quote of the Day, Unemployment

Survey Says: The Class Of 2011 Is Screwed, Forever

By Staci Zaretsky

I think the class of 2011 will historically come to be seen as the bottom of the market.

– Jim Leipold, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), in comments made during the group’s 2014 conference in Seattle, Washington. Recall that the overall employment rate for the class of 2011 was just 85.6 percent — the lowest since 1994 — with less than half finding jobs in private practice.

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• Tags: Class of 2011, James Leipold, Jim Leipold, Job Searches, Law Schools, Lost Generation, NALP, National Association for Law Placement (NALP), Quote of the Day, Unemployment

Making Law School Millennial-Friendly

Making Law School Millennial-Friendly By Joe Patrice

Law school applications are down. It looks like the Millennials just don’t want to go to law school. It’s probably because they’re too busy be lazy and texting, amirite?
Or, if we’re not going to jump on lazy stereotypes that have been passed down from generation to generation since Maynard G. Krebs roamed the Earth, maybe there’s something wrong with the way that law schools approach education and the Millennials just happen to be the generation that inherited the sluggish job market that exposed the festering problems within the legal academy.
Many law schools have suggested that more “practice ready” clinical education is the solution. Elie thinks this is basically a marketing gimmick. I think it’s a valuable complement to legal education, but certainly not a replacement for other reforms.
But maybe the answer is not so much about making “practice ready” students, but making “practice ready” professors….

Professor Montré D. Carodine of the University of Alabama School of Law doesn’t see Millennials as spoiled online denizens, which means she’s automatically disqualified herself to ever write for Time magazine. Instead, she sees a generation brought up to revere innovation and entrepreneurialism. More than any recent generation, the Millennials have been fed the idea that the path to success is not soldiering up the corporate cursus honorum, but to invent something amazing and sell it in a matter of months for billions. Whether it’s a generational thing or just a matter of the job climate, Millennials want some indication that their investment in higher education will pay dividends, rather than trusting, “Hey, it’s a law degree… that’s always been a solid job in the past!”
Here’s where law schools shout “clinics,” but Professor Carodine thinks there’s more to being “practice ready” than “take traditional model, add in six months as a glorified paralegal, and stir.” She thinks that there are opportunities to teach students about the practical side of law beyond 3L clinics if the legal academy is willing to look outside its cloisters:

Schools today lack the innovative spark because the professors who run law schools mostly talk to each other. Some faculties even pressure professors to live around and socialize with each other. Despite this isolating atmosphere, I know a few professors who have ventured out to work in the “real world” in various capacities. The benefits were immediate and substantial — both for them as teachers and in helping their students forge career paths.
One colleague recently took a sabbatical to work at a law firm for a year. Drawing on this experience, she created a class focused on the “business” of lawyering — real-world issues that practicing lawyers face, from finances and becoming a “free agent” to emotional health. The class has been a huge hit, receiving rave reviews from students and attorneys alike. Designing this new class was a massive undertaking because it was far from a traditional course; she came up with the concept, the content and all of the material. A new book based on the class will soon be available for professors across the country who want to teach similar classes.

Instead of tacking some clinics taught by adjuncts onto the end of the traditional model, Professor Carodine advocates a holistic change to the legal academy, integrating real world experience into classroom courses as well. The problem with such a wholesale change to the way law schools have operated for over a century is, of course, tenure. But the answer is not to lazily call for eliminating tenure, but to reform it:

Today, when the question of law school reform gets raised, the discussion invariably turns to tenure and whether it should be eliminated. But tenure is so institutionalized that professors won’t give it up without a hell of a fight. Frankly, I don’t see it going away anytime soon. Nor will the requirement that law professors produce legal scholarship to obtain tenure. Which is why most adjunct professors (the ones who practice law and teach classes on the side) will never get tenure and become policy makers — they tend not to produce scholarship, and many don’t want to teach full time anyway.
The solution is to send the policy makers — the tenured professors — into the real world. Doing so would breathe new life into our curricula and enhance our scholarship (even if fewer research leaves translates to less scholarship, what we do produce would be far more relevant and impactful). “Experience sabbaticals” funded by our schools (if necessary) to work in corporations, small businesses, law firms, nonprofits or government agencies should be normalized to give us fresh perspectives on the world that our students will face.

I think Professor Carodine isn’t going far enough on this point. A school willing to scale back on publication requirements to include such an experience sabbatical as part of the tenure process would accomplish the dual goal of increasing exposure to rubber-meets-the-road practice and reducing the role played by writing articles no one reads in deciding who is a good professor. Or maybe “very few people read” — I forgot about the 2Ls making line edits for the law reviews.
This isn’t completely unheard of in education. For example, the U.S. Military Academy has some officers assigned long-term to the school in leadership roles, but the bulk of the officers who serve as professors rotate back out of the school to the “Real Army” so the school never loses the practical edge. And the military is a profession. For that matter, my doctor is a med school professor. When you think about it, law school is really the only professional school that doesn’t put a premium on professors taking time to keep current on the practice of the profession.
So is this about making law school better for Millennials? Maybe. But given that law school’s insular faculty model has little company among professional schools, this may actually be about making law school better for everybody.
Fix Legal Education: Send Law Profs Back to the “Real World”
Earlier: Which Law Schools Have The Best Clinics?
The Myth Of The ‘Practice Ready’ Law Graduate

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Alabama Law, Law Schools, Millennials, Montré D. Carodine

Editor's note: Elie, Asberger's Syndrome is a serious mental illness especially when one is helpless and in the hands of an Asberger's suffering professional such as a physician or attorney. This Shark received nightmarish treatment from a physician's assistant who was an adult with Asberger's Syndrome...not a pleasant experience.  Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com

10 Jan 2014 at 11:21 AM

Disability Law, Law Professors, Law Schools

Law Prof Seeks ADA Accommodation To Continue Yelling At Students

By Elie Mystal

Disrespecting and intimidating students should be a right for law professors, not a privilege. If you roll into class unprepared, or even just looking stupid, law professors should be able to able to throw a hissy fit at you. That’s practice-ready training. Students should learn that in the real world, partners and judges will intimidate them and make them feel small and stupid for any reason, or no reason at all.
One law professor is having that right taken away from him. He’s been barred from campus. The professor claims he’s suffering from depression and Asperger’s Syndrome, and that the school violated the Americans With Disabilities Act by not accommodating his disability.
Disability? In my day, the moody professor who couldn’t keep his mouth shut or read social cues was the grindstone against which brilliant gunners sharpened their unique skills…

The National Law Journal reports that Professor Joel Cornwell has filed suit against John Marshall Law School (Chicago). Cornwell was put on administrative suspension after an “incident” in which he “lost his temper in class and chastised two students for being unprepared.” Court records don’t say what, exactly, Cornwell said to the students. But apparently John Marshal Dean John Corkery wrote: “Your recent conduct has been so disrespectful, intimidating and insubordinate that your relationship with the Law School appears to be irreparably damaged.”
I wonder what Cornwell said. I wonder what kinds of Dr. Gregory House-level stuff this guy said to his students. “Name me some examples of minimum contacts… What do you mean you can’t think of any? Take off your shoes, TAKE ‘EM OFF. Now if the classroom is Blackacre and the lawn is Whiteacre and I THROW YOUR F**KING SHOES onto Whiteacre [throws shoes out of the window], is that enough to establish personal jurisdiction? IS IT ENOUGH? No? Good, good, you are f**king educable.”
In any event, Cornwell asked the law school to make certain accommodations:

Cornwell returned to teaching in fall 2011, but his suit alleges that administrators denied his request that they appoint a mental health professional to facilitate his communications with colleagues and superiors. Cornwell later requested a faculty mentor — a request the complaint says was ignored.
Problems surfaced again in October, when Cornwell lost his temper in class and chastised two students for being unprepared, according to court records. An associate dean ordered Cornwell to apologize to the class; another administrator wrote out the wording. Cornwell read the written apology in class and then issued his own apology.

Are you kidding me, a translator? How would that not be awesome: “What Professor Cornwell meant when he called you a ‘stunning example of a vainglorious twat’ was that your answer seemed to reflect your own opinions instead of that of the Court.”
Yes, I’m being sarcastic and honestly defending Cornwell at the same time. Here’s the thing: Cornwell has been teaching at John Marshall since 1985 — 1985, folks. In 1985, we still called handicapped people “retarded” and retarded people “Mondale voters.” Let’s not act like Professor Cornwell has been teaching law since 1985 and just now started missing social cues and losing his temper at students. He was probably just as Asperger-y and depressed years ago as he is now. It’s just that John Marshall happily looked the other way.
Oh, but now that the current crop of special snowflakes can’t take that heat, now, suddenly, action needs to be taken. The word I’m seizing on from Dean Corkey is “insubordinate.” Yelling at students isn’t “insubordinate.” Yelling at maintenance workers (which Cornwell is also accused of) isn’t “insubordinate.” I’m forced to wonder if Professor Cornwell got all up in the dean’s face about something, and it was that, not his history of intimidating students, that got him suspended.
Asperger’s, real actual Asperger’s Syndrome and not just some kind of virulent strain of “I’m an a**hole,” must be something that is really hard to work with. If Cornwell had been able to overcome it successfully for all these years, it seems like John Marshall could have really gone the extra mile to get him the help he needed to deal with the current crop of students.
Professor Alleges Law School Violated ADA [National Law Journal]

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Americans with Disabilities Act, Asperger Syndrome, Depression, Disability Law, Joel Cornwell, Joel R. Cornwell, John Corkery, John Marshall Law School, Law Professors, Law Schools, Mental Health

03 Jan 2014 at 11:19 AM

Crime, Law School Deans, Law Schools, Prostitution, Sex, Sex Scandals

Former Law Dean Arrested On Prostitution-Related Charge

By Staci Zaretsky

Illinois Law has been going down ever since its inflated admissions data first came to light in 2011, and it hasn’t been pretty. The school put forth the “lone gunman theory of admissions fraud,” and Paul Pless, its former assistant dean for admissions and financial aid, was put on administrative leave, before he quietly resigned from his position. Not only did the school drop 24 spots in the U.S. News rankings, but it also got a costly spanking from the American Bar Association.
What’s happened to Paul Pless since then? Today’s news serves to remind us that some law school administrators love to screw — sometimes with numbers, and sometimes with hookers…

Several tipsters notified us about these allegations involving Paul Pless’s possible pleasures:

Paul Pless

On December 30, 2013, members of the Bloomington Police Department’s Street Crimes Division arrested four males in connection with a prostitution sting. The arrests all occurred at a local hotel in Bloomington. …
Paul Pless, 41, of Dewey was arrested for Solicitation of a Sexual Act (720 ILCS 5/11-14.1).
The Bloomington Police Department utilizes various websites and other investigative techniques to disrupt and deter prostitution activity in the City of Bloomington.
Pless [was] booked in at the McLean County Jail.

We wonder if Pless “knowingly and intentionally” attempted to cram everything he could into a prostitute — like he allegedly did with Illinois Law’s admissions stats. Given his apparent obsession with rankings-driven prestige, we’re surprised by these allegations — patronizing prostitutes isn’t exactly a peer activity.
But then again, Pless isn’t the first law school administrator to have been accused of such a crime. Mark Sargent, Villanova Law’s former dean, was implicated in a hooker hullaballoo back in 2009. Even law professors have allegedly been drawn in by the allure of ladies of the night. In 2007 and again in 2011, Professor D. Marvin Jones of Miami Law faced charges relating to the procurement of prostitutes.
We wish Paul Pless better luck fighting these charges than he had at Illinois Law. Let us take pity upon him; the poor man wasn’t even able to add Reema Bajaj as a notch on his bedpost.
Prostitution Sting: Four Men Arrested [City of Bloomington - Illinois]

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Admissions, Admissions Deans, Crime, Law School Deans, Law Schools, Paul Pless, Prostitution, Sex, Sex Scandals, University of Illinois College of Law

31 Dec 2013 at 3:37 PM

Admin, Announcements, Asians, Bar Exams, Biglaw, Bonuses, Celebrities, Divorce Train Wrecks, Law Schools, Magic Circle, Money, Partner Issues, Pro Se Litigants, Racism, Rankings, Reality TV, Sexism, Small Law Firms, U.S. News, Videos, Women's Issues, YouTube

Above the Law’s Top 10 Most Popular Posts of 2013

By David Lat

As 2013 draws to a close, let’s look back at the 10 biggest stories in the legal profession over the past year. This is an annual tradition here at Above the Law, which we’ve done in 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009. We’ll fire up the old Google Analytics machine to get data on our most popular posts, based on pageviews, and share the results with you.
Before turning to specific stories, let’s look at the top general discussion topics here at ATL. For 2013, our most trafficked category page was Biglaw, which bumped Law Schools out of the top spot — a spot that Law Schools held from 2010 through 2012. Now that the word is out about the perils of getting a law degree, leading to plummeting applications, perhaps it’s time to move on from the “don’t go to law school” narrative.
After Biglaw and Law Schools, our third most-popular category page was, as usual, Bonuses. This wasn’t a terribly exciting year for bonuses — there were no spring bonuses, and Cravath and its many followers paid out the same bonuses as last year — but people still want to know the score.
Our fourth most-popular category page was small law firms. Small firms, including boutiques, are an area of increasing focus and readership for us — and also where many of the job opportunities are these days.
Moving on from the topic pages, what were the 10 most popular individual posts at Above the Law in 2013?

Here are our top 10 stories for 2013, in ascending order of popularity, measured in pageviews.^[1] Click on the title of each post to be taken to the original story.
10. The Racist Law Firm Ad Update — The Maligned Law Firm Speaks: After a racist law firm advertisement went viral, we played a role in clarifying the situation. We published a statement from the law firm in question — McCutcheon & Hamner, a small personal-injury firm in Alabama — denying its involvement in producing the highly offensive YouTube clip.
9. Did Lamar Odom Cheat On Khloe Kardashian With A Lawyer? Reality TV star Khloe Kardashian recently declared that she’s “excited for this year to be over” — just like her marriage to NBA player Lamar Odom, which ended in 2013. A contributing cause: Odom’s alleged affair with a gorgeous California lawyer, Polina Polonsky, who allegedly asked Odom to help her review client files. Oy!
8. Nationwide Layoff Watch: Major Cuts Come To Weil Gotshal: The Kardashian-Odom split wasn’t the only soap opera that generated headlines this past year. People tuned in for As The Weil Turns — upheaval at the high-powered law firm of Weil Gotshal, kicked off by large-scale layoffs in June. The following months witnessed a slew of partner defections, especially in Texas (although the firm maintains that this is strategic and intentional shrinkage). Can Weil stop the bleeding in 2014?
7. Breaking: Cravath Announces Year-End Bonuses; Let the 2013 Bonus Season Begin! The bonus announcement of Cravath, the extremely prestigious and profitable law firm that sets the market for Biglaw bonuses, always lands in the top 10 stories (last year it was #5). This year, Elie Mystal and I argued over whether the bonus glass was half-empty or half-full.
6. Which State Has the Most Difficult Bar Exam? Professor Robert Anderson of Pepperdine Law developed a methodology for ranking bar exams by toughness. Which state’s test took the top spot? Hint: it wasn’t New York (which didn’t even make the top 10).
5. Lawyer: Apple Should Protect Me From My Porn Addiction: Blocking web users from accessing porn: there’s an app for that? Well, if not, there should be — or so claims lawyer Chris Sevier, who filed a pro se lawsuit that, as Joe Patrice put it, “seeks damages and injunctive relief against Apple for making devices that can display porn, or as the rest of us call it, the Internet.” More recently, Sevier sued President Obama for alleged involvement in the Duck Dynasty debacle.
4. The 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings: Lawyers love rankings — and U.S. News’s closely watched law school rankings are the biggest game in town. As law schools fight over a shrinking pool of law students, a law school’s position on the prestige totem pole is more important than ever.
3. Biglaw Memo From Top Firm Advises That Women ‘Don’t Giggle,’ Don’t ‘Show Cleavage’: Clifford Chance, a member of the elite Magic Circle, is one of the world’s top law firms — not just in profits and prestige, but also in generating juicy memos. Last year, its famous Law Firm Mommy Memo took the #3 spot; this year, the firm holds on to third place, with a controversial collection of “Presentation Tips For Women” that Staci Zaretsky described as “one of the most sexist Biglaw memos we’ve ever seen.”
2. The ATL Top 50 Law School Rankings (2013): The U.S. News law school rankings might be the biggest game in town (for now), but they aren’t the only one. In our inaugural law school rankings, we stripped out dubious factors like library size or money wasted spent per student to focus on what really matters: employment outcomes, i.e., jobs for graduates. Based on the great traffic and reader feedback we received, our rankings were a huge hit, and we’ll be doing them again in 2014.
1. A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter: The cease-and-desist response heard round the world, this rip-roaring rebuttal — a delicious combination of snark and substance — went viral. What could be more satisfying than watching a bullying lawyer get a taste of his own medicine? The letter kicked off a trend of awesome C&D responses — see, e.g., here and here.
We hope you enjoyed this look back at the 10 most popular stories of 2013. If you have a favorite Above the Law story from the past year that didn’t crack the top ten, please feel free to give it a mention in the comments.
And now for a brief programming note: Since Wednesday is the federal holiday for New Year’s Day, we won’t be publishing much (if at all) between now and Thursday, January 2. Happy New Year, and we’ll see you in 2014!
[1] For purposes of this listing, intended to serve as a look back at 2013′s biggest stories, we did not count posts published in 2012 that racked up major traffic in 2013 — e.g., Cam Girl Pleasures Herself In A Top Law School’s Library.
Earlier: Above the Law’s Top 10 Most Popular Posts of 2012
Above The Law’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2011
Above The Law’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2010
Above The Law’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2009

13 Sep 2013 at 1:00 PM

Law Professors, Law Schools, Pictures, Weirdness

What Is This Creepy Law Professor Doing???

By Staci Zaretsky

Some law professors are cool, some are complete weirdos, and some do creepy things like this:

Paging Dr. Law to the dean’s office…

Last night, someone sent us this picture (originally posted on Reddit), with the explanation that it was taken at a “competitive law school.” This well-dressed man seems to be eavesdropping on the study group inside a room at the law school’s library by pressing a stethoscope against the glass.
At first, we thought it was a student gunning incredibly hard at a T14 law school, but then we found out that this was no gunner at all. In fact, it’s not even that “competitive” of a law school, unless you count the recent graduates who are competing for scarce jobs with their retroactively inflated transcripts.
This is a picture of Professor Hiro Aragaki, who teaches Negotiation at Loyola Law School – Los Angeles. He’s apparently listening in on some group exercises, but we’ve got to wonder what possible academic reason would inspire a professor to observe his students in this unorthodox kind of way.
He didn’t want to distract his students, you say? The only thing more distracting than a creepy law professor pressed up against the window (with a stethoscope, no less) would be coming to the sudden realization that this man is likely being paid six figures to do it.
Assuming there is no better way to accomplish this goal, props to Professor Aragaki for coming up with a unique if unconventional method to observe his class. We reached out to him for an explanation of his academic stylings, and we’ll update this post as soon as we hear back from him.
Otherwise, we’ll be left to believe he’s still clinging to broken dreams of going to med school, and the stethoscope is all he’s got left. Damn you, MCAT. Damn you to hell.
I go to a competitive law school. [WTF / Reddit]
Earlier: Loyola Law School (L.A.) Retroactively Inflates Grades

27 Jun 2013 at 1:30 PM

Bad Ideas, Cardozo Law School, Law Schools, Money, Rankings, U.S. News

A Law School Shows Everything That’s Wrong With Law Schools and U.S. News Rankings, In One Email

By Elie Mystal

And now back to our regularly scheduled programing. We join this episode of “My Law School Nearly Got Away With It,” already in progress.
We all know that law schools do all kinds of things to game the U.S. News law school rankings. U.S. News knows this, yet does little to stop this behavior. But rarely do we catch a law school red-handed.
Here, we have a school openly calling upon its students to do something for the express purpose of increasing the school’s U.S. News rank.
Even more embarrassingly, the school is targeting a class of graduates who have generally not had much luck in the employment market. The email suggests that the way to increase the value of their law degree is to give money to the school, since right now it’s not good enough to get them a job…

This email from the Cardozo School of Law alumni office is truly shameful. They sent it out to the class of 2011. The subject line, bluntly and inelegantly, says it all:

Subject: Help Cardozo Move Up The Rankings

The email is actually written by another person in the ‘Dozo class of 2011. You know how these things go. The school thinks you are more likely to give if one of your classmates makes the ask. But you know the alumni office approved this message. Here it is, in part:

Getting down to business, I would like to let you know a little secret about helping out Cardozo move up the rankings.
Did you know that one of the factors that US News considers in its rankings is percentage of alumni who participate in annual giving?
It’s true. Your gift to the law school can actually increase the value of your own degree…
I know money may be tight and, if you are like me, you may still be making a contribution to your legal education in loan payments every month. But, by helping out the school, it increases the value of what we have already put our hard earned time and money into. Something that I know I’m willing to do.

You can read the full email on the next page.
This email is pretty horrible. It’s instructing Cardozo students to give for the express purpose of gaming the rankings… because gaming the rankings “increases the value of your own degree.”
And you know who is going to be most interested in increasing “the value of what we have already put our hard earned time and money into”? People in the class of 2011 who are unemployed, underemployed, or generally disappointed with what the “value” of a Cardozo degree has gotten them so far.
In essence, the alumni office is telling people who haven’t gotten a lot of value out of a Cardozo law degree that the way to correct that problem is to give Cardozo more money. Does that even qualify as “throwing good money after bad”?
But law schools are going to do what law schools are going to do. What is U.S. News going to do? Here, we have direct evidence that Cardozo is trying to game the U.S. News rankings… is U.S. News going to react in any way? Are they going to punish Cardozo? Or are they just happy to continue to have these factors that have no relation to the value of legal education that schools can use to increase the perceived value of their law degrees?
I’ll note that Cardozo did not crack the top 50 in the Above the Law rankings.
And I’ll note that if the Cardozo alumni office sent out an email trying to “game” the ATL rankings, it would have to be sent to Cardozo alumni who are employers, telling them to give jobs to Cardozo students — not money to the Cardozo administration.
(If you’re interested, you can see the full letter on the next page.)

21 Jun 2013 at 11:12 AM

Crime, Drinking, Drugs, Law Schools, Money

Law Student Embezzles Thousands of Dollars While Drunk, High

By Staci Zaretsky

We haven’t seen a good Student Bar Association scandal in a while, but that’s all about to change. In case you’re not aware, the law students who are elected to serve on their school’s SBA are tasked with organizing fun events that will make their peers happy, and those events usually cost a lot of money. What can I say, alcohol and vomit clean-up fees are expensive.
So understandably, when that beer money starts to get mysteriously low — in this case, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars inexplicably missing — people start to panic. At what point do you realize the girl responsible for managing your organization’s finances has embezzled more than $30,000?
Probably when she admits to you that she spent the cash to fuel her drug and alcohol addiction…

Coming to you straight from the Lego Law School (more commonly known as the University of Baltimore School of Law), we’ve got the tale of Margaret Oyler. She was elected to the position of SBA treasurer in the spring of 2010, held the position through April 2012, and stole funds from the student organization throughout her reign by providing false financial statements to the rest of the SBA executive board during each accounting period. By all accounts, it sounds like she would’ve been one hell of a lawyer.
In total, Oyler managed to yoink $33,000 from right under the SBA’s nose over a two-year period without anyone ever noticing until a changing of the student government’s guard. A tipster notes that the SBA informed the Baltimore Law administration of Oyler’s embezzlement in April 2012, but formal charges weren’t brought until more than a year later. Sorry, but wouldn’t it have been more intelligent to bring criminal charges against a student back then, rather than during a time when you’re trying to generate positive publicity for a $119 million building that would make even Nathan Sawaya cringe?
Here’s Maggie Oyler’s case information, including the crime she was charged with:

Yesterday, Oyler pleaded guilty before a Baltimore judge to the theft of $33,000. As part of a deal, she was given a five-year suspended sentence and three years of probation, and she must pay $33,000 in restitution. A tipster reports that Oyler’s parents are loaded, and they put thousands of dollars in an escrow account for her restitution. “Had it not been for the escrow account, I would imagine that such a lenient plea deal would not have been offered,” notes a source from UB Law.
When asked for comment, a law school spokeswoman assured the public that Oyler never graduated and that the dean of students would work with student clubs “to help improve their financial oversight.” And by “help,” we presume this means the school will now rule over the SBA and other clubs with a Bogomolnyian iron fist. If you’re wondering why Oyler didn’t graduate, it’s not just because of this embezzlement scandal. A tipster claims that this financial femme fatale was suspended around the same time her thievery was discovered for a matter “regarding a letter of recommendation and a misrepresentation of her grades” — as if her grades matter now that she’s a convicted criminal.
The Baltimore Sun snagged an interview with Oyler after she entered her guilty plea:

In an interview, Oyler said the thefts happened during “an extremely dark period in my life.”
She said she used some of the money to feed her alcohol and prescription painkiller habits. Her probation will include substance abuse treatment, Oyler said.
“It wasn’t just like one day I woke up and decided, ‘Let’s do this,’ ” Oyler said. “I can’t describe in words where your head goes. … Everything that I’m trying to do is trying to right this wrong and correct this mistake.” …
“I made a confession to [the SBA president], but I don’t remember … because I was so drunk,” Oyler added.

We’re glad that Oyler will get the help she needs, but it’s a shame that it took three years of law school and a foray into the criminal justice system to get her life in order. Think about that for a second: three years of debt, all for nothing, and with nary a lesson learned from her first-year criminal law course.
Well, we guess she did learn one thing: voluntary intoxication is not a defense to crime. Cheers!
UPDATE (3:00 p.m.): We spoke to Maggie Oyler this afternoon, and here’s what she had to say about her legal wranglings:

I am grateful for the opportunity to repair the damage that I have caused financially, and the chance to make sincere amends to the students and the institution that I have harmed. I look forward to a happy, sober life both personally and professionally.

UB Student Bar treasurer stole $33,000 from organization [Baltimore Sun]
Earlier: How Much Did It Cost To Build Lego Law School?
University of Baltimore Tries To Keep The Devil Way Down In The Hole

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• Tags: Alcohol, alcoholism, Baltimore Law, Crime, Drinking, Drugs, Embezzlement, Law Schools, Law Students, Maggie Oyler, Margaret Oyler, Money, SBA, Student Bar Association, Theft, University of Baltimore Law, University of Baltimore School of Law