Author: TSA Press

As we begin 2020, we enter the busiest time of year for lateral attorney hiring. Law firms are less focused on on-campus interviewing and concertedly devote more attention to hiring laterals for busy and growing practice groups. Also, more lateral attorney candidates begin their job searches following annual reviews, bonus distributions, and promotion decisions. With this in mind, we thought it would be helpful to share our insight and some of the most useful preparation activities and strategies for lateral associate interviews. Research is conclusive: More interview preparation significantly increases the probability succeeding in the process.

Macro Interview Advice and Typical Law Firm Interview Structure

As a preliminary matter, as intuitive as it sounds, know that it is important to be relaxed and yourself at the interview. The sooner you are cognizant and mindful of this, the more likely you are to avoid being overly anxious. It is common to be nervous before an interview, though when overtaken by anxiety, it can affect our memory and ability to appear confident and knowledgeable. Interview preparation and the assurance of having carefully thought-out responses for interview questions can help alleviate pre-interview nervousness. While the interview does assess your relevant experience and legal acumen, it is also an acquainting (i.e. getting to know you) process, and being able to carry a conversation exuding a calm and positive temperament will make a lasting favorable impression on your interviewers.

Also, know that you have all the requisite credentials for the position, and you would not have received an interview if you were unqualified. Although interview preparation is key, meeting firms’ hiring criteria with good grades from a top-ranked law school and a peer-firm background are some of the greatest barriers to entry. At the interview, the firm is primarily evaluating if you have exposure to, and a genuine interest in, the types of matters the practice group handles. The firm is also assessing if your personality meshes with its culture (e.g. collegiality and being team-oriented). Your objective at the interview is to clearly articulate your relevant experience and these qualities through conversations with your interviewers. The content scope of law firm interviews mainly entails discussing transactions and matters you have handled and is less focused on hypothetical data-analysis questions common in investment banking and consulting interviews.

With respect to the format of law firm associate interviews. Most firms have a two-round process. The initial interview is typically with one or two practice group leaders followed by a second-round interview with four or five additional attorneys, including a mix of partners and associates. Essentially, you are preparing for micro-interviews of 30 to 35 minutes with each person or group of people on your interview schedule. Though each interviewer is unique, you can expect common themes and similar questions when meeting with most of the attorneys.

Where to Start: Study the Firm and Practice Group Inside and Out Using Key Resources

One core interview question to expect is “why are you interested in this position and firm?” Having substantive familiarity with the firm and practice group you are interviewing with is critical. Partners want to hire associates who are uniquely enthusiastic about their firm and practice and imparting your knowledge and understanding of the firm will convincingly demonstrate this. Being able to reference specific transactions or matters in your answers to questions is impactful (e.g., “I am particularly interested in the M&A practice group at your firm because of the opportunity to apply my drafting and negotiating experience on PE buyouts within the healthcare sector”).

Beyond reviewing the firm’s and practice group’s website. Key resources to study in your preparation checklist are Chambers and Partners (local practice group reviews), Vault, The Legal 500, The American Lawyer, and NALP firm profiles. These materials delve deeper into the firm’s background, composition, client-base, matters handled, interview style, and recent news and strategic developments. Make sure to obtain your interview schedule as early as possible and review the attorneys’ bios and, specifically, recent representative matters, news, and recognition or awards. Also, the attorneys’ LinkedIn profiles are helpful to see if the attorneys have lateraled to the firm themselves. We here at Lateral Link have a range of general and exclusive access resources allowing our candidates to leverage comprehensive market intelligence beyond what is in the public domain. A reputable recruiter should be knowledgeable about the  particular firm’s and practice group’s structure, culture, and work assignment system and should be able to provide insight and intel based on their strong relationships with the firms and from the experiences and feedback of past-placed attorneys and interviewees.

Practice Describing the Matters You Have Handled and Keep it Conversational

Another standard behavioral question genre to expect is “tell me about your experience” or “tell me about a case or deal you enjoyed handling recently.”  Perhaps one of the most useful interview preparation activities is to think of four to five matters you have recently worked on and be able to describe them in two minutes or less. Choose transactions or cases that are similar to the interviewers’ and firm’s representative matters. Remember interviews work best when they flow as an ordinary two-way conversation and are not merely you explaining why you are qualified for the position. This can lose the interviewer’s attention and present as overly confident or arrogant. Instead, you want to subtly sell yourself through conversation. Detailing tangible examples of transactions or cases that are comparable or complimentary to the firm’s practice most effectively conveys that your experience aligns well with the position. For example, if you are interviewing with an asset-based lending focused finance practice group, you can describe a recent syndicated secured credit-facility transaction you worked on either in response to a question or as a logical follow-up to a matter the interviewer discussed. Having these examples in your back pocket to use throughout the interview process is invaluable and will allow you to illustrate the skills you have developed and how you would positively contribute to the practice group.

As you formulate your recent matter descriptions, organize them succinctly.  Legal fact patterns and transactions can be laborious, and you will want to summarize the matters by focusing on the key parties involved, transaction type or cause of action, and your role in the particular matter.  For example, an M&A associate could use:

We recently represented a PE sponsor in the acquisition of a financial services technology company where I had the opportunity to take the first cut of drafting the asset-purchase-agreement. There were significant representations and warranties and provisions structured into the deal to mitigate risk to our client regarding a pending IP litigation matter. With many moving pieces and interests, I carefully crafted a hold-back provision that sufficiently covered potential litigation costs and incorporated the valuation of losing the patented technology. Ultimately, the acquisition was successful, and our client was able to considerably expand their presence in the financial services sector. They were also contractually protected from any potential litigation drain on profitability.

In organizing matter descriptions, some of our candidates prefer to use the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) or SOAR (Situation, Obstacle, Action, Result) formats to concisely detail their relevant experience. Finally, you should practice your matter descriptions out loud in front of a mirror or through a mock-interview with your recruiter (this also applies to all other question responses).

Answering “Why are You Looking for a New Position?”

Answering the question of “why are you looking to leave your current firm?” is a two-step approach. The first step is to make sure to not say anything negative about your current firm and focus on your experience gained.  Speaking negatively about your current firm is unprofessional and, even if you are unhappy at your current firm, emphasize the value of the substantive experience you have received and how you will utilize those foundational skills as an associate with the prospective firm.

The second step in answering this question is to transition into discussing why you are particularly interested in the firm you are interviewing with.  This is another opportunity to exhibit your knowledge about the firm and discuss how joining the firm would be a good fit from a practice perspective. For example, a litigator potentially joining a top securities litigation practice group, may emphasize being intrigued by the chance to be part of a robust nationally recognized securities class action practice. They can then discuss specific cases of interest. Also, if you are relocating to another market you should highlight ties to the city you are interviewing in, such as family and friends in the area or your experience growing up there. If you are waiving into the bar or taking an upcoming exam in the jurisdiction, you should discuss the steps you have taken to become licensed to further evidence your commitment to the market.

Answering “What is a Weakness that You Have?” or “Tell Me About a Time You Wish You Had Done Something Differently?”

This is probably one of the trickier questions that arises in a law firm interview. In asking this question, the firm is looking for introspection and the ability to adapt and learn. In responding, you should use a weakness example that is fair and honest and discuss how you addressed the weakness and improved from it. For example, a products liability litigation associate could discuss adapting and improving their deposition questions for depositions of CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) employee witnesses regarding product recalls: “I adapted and drafted better deposition outlines by learning the fundamental regulatory question framework. I read through many deposition transcripts of similar CPSC employees while drafting my deposition outlines. By implementing this method, I was better able to structure questions to obtain favorable summary judgment testimony.”

In terms of what to avoid with this question, be sure to not use a weakness that will interfere with your ability to perform as an associate, such as weaknesses related to analytical deficits (e.g. missing key issues in matters or fact patterns), meeting tight deadlines, organization, and working in teams.  Also, do not use artificial qualities in your answer, such as “I am an overachiever” or “I work too much.” Additionally, avoid discussing continuing weaknesses that are unresolved and only use weaknesses you have corrected. Finally, only discuss weaknesses related to your work experience as the firm is looking for something in the context of your experience as an attorney.

Preparing Questions to Ask the Interviewers.

Make sure to have questions prepared for the portion of the interview, when the attorney interviewer asks “what questions do you have for me?” In this segment of the interview, you will want to have meaningful questions beyond asking about readily ascertainable firm facts. These questions should continue to demonstrate your specific interest in the firm and intellectual curiosity about the practice. More probing questions can include: “Are there particular aspects of the firm and practice group that you have enjoyed most?” (especially relevant if the attorney has practiced with other firms); “The team’s role in the merger of two pharmaceutical companies is intriguing, can you tell me more about your experience being part of that transaction?”; and “Where do you see the direction of the practice group heading over the next five years?” Other questions that demonstrate drive and initiative are: “Is there a particular type of associate who thrives in the practice group?” or “What are the matters you are currently handling that you are most interested in?”

Remember, in the interview phase, firms are interested in the value you will bring to the firm and therefore your line of questions should not focus on the benefits or opportunities the firm will provide to you. Thus, avoid asking questions about what training is available, billable hours, and, of course, compensation. Firms can interpret these questions as having concern about the amount you will work or showing a lack of self-sufficiency or experience.  While these are valid job search considerations, we recommend waiting until the offer stage to address them when you have more leverage. Also, a trusted recruiter should be able to answer many of these questions and can advise on how to innocuously approach these topics.

In the lateral process, interview preparation is essential to your success.  Taking the time to review key materials and market intelligence and practicing responses to question genres will substantially distinguish you from other applicants and improve your odds of receiving an offer. Our renowned team of dedicated expert recruiters at Lateral Link thoroughly prepares our associate and partner candidates for their interviews giving them an edge. If you or someone you know is interested in making a lateral move, feel free to connect with a member of our team and we are happy to assist.

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This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. Jesse Hyde is a Director based in the Chicago office where he oversees attorney placements and client services in Chicago and throughout the Midwest. He specializes in placing associates, partners, and in-house counsel with leading Am Law 100 and 200 law firms and premier corporations. With a proven successful track record, Jesse advises attorneys, law firms, and companies through all stages of the recruitment and hiring process to effectively reach their objectives. Jesse received his J.D. from Loyola University Chicago School of Law where he was on the Dean’s List and a Member of the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal. Jesse received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and majored in history. Before recruiting, he practiced as a commercial litigation attorney with a Chicago-based law firm for four years.

Donald Trump did not want Kelly Loeffler to be a United States Senator. He wanted someone with more of a history of loyalty, and also with a penis. But when he asked Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to appoint said loyal penis to the seat instead of Loeffler, did he know that Mitch McConnell would use her in the most Trumpian way imaginable, brushing aside any concerns about conflicts of interest in appointing her to a post with oversight of not only her former employer, but her former employer still run by her husband?

“Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call / Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall / For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled / The battle outside ragin’ will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls /
For the times they are a-changin’.” — Bob Dylan

The new year often makes one think about the last year, the present, and what the future holds. And for many of us, we default to making lists: resolution lists, to-do lists, donation lists, future spring-cleaning lists, and bucket lists. For this week’s article, I thought I’d compile a list of the things that are currently occupying my mind as we welcome 2020.

1. All good things must come to an end. In 2014, David Lat gave me an opportunity to write for Above the Law and I’ve been gripping the pen and sharing my thoughts with the ATL audience for over five years. In 2017, Lat handed the full-time reigns to Elie Mystal, who recently announced he will be leaving his day-to-day duties here at ATL. Between Lat and Mystal, I’ve had the chance to learn from some of the best in the business. Although they will still be interwoven in the ATL fabric, I will miss their daily commentary on and editorial selection of the profession.
2. Leaders are human. Time and time again, we are reminded that even the most revered leaders are human. In 2018, I had the opportunity to join a new team in North Carolina focused on healthcare strategy and transformation, with a number of leaders recruited from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Center. One summer Saturday afternoon, our former CEO, drove under the influence. As a chief medical officer, doctor, and father, he should have known better than to take the wheel while intoxicated on that fateful day. In the healthcare industry, we often like to say, “healthcare is human.” It’s important to remember — so are those we place on pedestals.
3. Good culture remains undervalued. It’s hard to put a price on good culture. Sometimes you can’t explain it, but you know it when you see it. You didn’t need to read Mike Isaac’s 2019 book Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber to understand that Uber had become a bro-toxic culture under its founder Travis Kalanick. Former Uber employee Susan Fowler’s 2017 memo exposed just how poisonous Uber’s culture had become. Companies that foster healthy cultures shouldn’t tolerate “brilliant jerks” or “cultural terrorists.”
4. Diversity remains a struggle at our top law firms, most law firms. Diversity in law has flatlined since the Great Recession. Now that the books have closed for 2019, does your law firm have any receipts for its diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives? Or is your firm stuck in its business-as-usual ways of the past decade? In his book What You Do Is Who You Are, Ben Horowitz describes “values” as what you say you will do and “virtues” as what you actually do. These days, I hear a lot of firms waxing poetically about their dedication to diversity and inclusion, but I rarely see these firms produce the respective receipts for these initiatives. It is no secret: high minority attrition rates remain a problem for law firms. It would be great if the legal industry reflected the diversity of people and culture in our country, but this has never been the case. As Brad Smith, Microsoft General Counsel & Executive Vice President (Legal and Corporate Affairs), notes, “To better understand the situation, it helps to compare diversity in the legal profession to three other professions with broad education or licensing requirements: physicians and surgeons, financial managers, and accountants/auditors. Although the percentage of under-represented minorities in each of those professions lags behind the national workforce, the gap between the legal profession and these other professions has actually worsened over the past nine years.” Diversity does not happen by accident. Diversity is not self-executing. The legal profession must evolve if it aspires to be as diverse as the country it serves.
5. The koalas are in trouble. Koalas are begging humans for help and it is heartbreaking. Thank God, heroes (see here, here, and here) are stepping up to this climate challenge, forest devastation, and animal annihilation.
6. At least the youth are serious about global warming. TIME’s 2019 Person of the Year is Greta Thunberg. As written in TIME’s feature article: Thunberg began a global movement by skipping school: starting in August 2018, she spent her days camped out in front of the Swedish Parliament, holding a sign painted in black letters on a white background that read Skolstrejk för klimatet: “School Strike for Climate.” In the 16 months since, she has addressed heads of state at the U.N., met with the Pope, sparred with the President of the United States and inspired 4 million people to join the global climate strike on September 20, 2019, in what was the largest climate demonstration in human history. Her image has been celebrated in murals and Halloween costumes, and her name has been attached to everything from bike shares to beetles. Margaret Atwood compared her to Joan of Arc. After noticing a hundredfold increase in its usage, lexicographers at Collins Dictionary named Thunberg’s pioneering idea, climate strike, the word of the year.
7. Houston Rocket General Manager Daryl Morey stood up for the Hong Kong protesters, but his NBA colleagues remain silent. It turns out that when faced with speaking up for democracy or being silenced by the almighty dollar, many will bend the knee to the crushing pressure of capitalism. Last October, in support of pro-democracy efforts in Hong Kong, Daryl Morey shot a Tweet heard around the world: “fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” In response, as noted by The Ringer, the Chinese government, the Chinese Basketball Association, and various Chinese businesses quickly denounced Morey and moved to sever ties with the Rockets. Many wondered, especially myself, how “The King,” LeBron James would respond. After all, LeBron produced the greatest documentary in 2019 (see below) on athletes and their influence on civil rights. To say LeBron’s response was disappointing is an understatement. Time and time again, we are reminded that even the most revered icons are human.
8. Inequality levels are the highest since the Great Depression. The systematic inequality of the original Gilded Age has returned. Income inequality in the United States is the highest it’s been since 1928, according to the Pew Research Center. The new Gilded Age we are experiencing in our country is not an alternative reality, it is an existential threat to our democracy. Past periods in our country, such as the industrial revolution, left many Americans in the dust. As we have often witnessed before, during periods of economic growth, stark boundaries begin to develop between the haves and have nots. But due to a confluence of events, we are now seeing an even grander wall being constructed between the few and the masses during this new Gilded Age. Never in the history of humanity have so few held so much. That is a problem. And never have so many of our citizens been so at risk or incarcerated. This is a catastrophe.
9. Universal basic income is a popular idea again. Similar concepts once championed by Milton Friedman and Martin Luther King Jr. have made their way back into our country’s mainstream consciousness in the form of the “Freedom Dividend” thanks to American entrepreneur, philanthropist, lawyer, and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Since I interviewed Yang, he has published a book, The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future, and announced his presidential candidacy. Admittedly, he’s a long shot to win the primary, but it’s nice to see a form of Milton Friedman’s “negative income tax” concept being discussed and debated on the national stage.
10. “What’s My Name, Muhammad Ali” is my favorite documentary of 2019. As published on HBO’s website: “Muhammad Ali transcended sports in a way the world had never seen before,” says executive producer LeBron James. “It’s an honor to have the opportunity to tell his incredible and important story for the coming generations. He showed us all the courage and conviction it takes to stand up for what you believe in. He changed forever what we expect a champion to be, and I’m grateful that SpringHill gets to be a part of continuing his legacy.”
    “Muhammad Ali had a deep impact on me from an early age,” observes Antoine Fuqua. “Being given the opportunity to tell his story, both inside and outside the ring, is a privilege and a dream come true.” Lonnie Ali, who was married to Muhammad Ali for the final 30 years of his life, adds, “We are at a time in American history when we look to a new generation of heroes like LeBron James to carry on Muhammad’s legacy, not only by remembering Muhammad, as is done so eloquently in this documentary, but also through their own words and deeds. I’m grateful to LeBron, Maverick Carter, SpringHill Entertainment, and HBO for advancing the ideals that Muhammad believed in and fought for throughout his life.”
11. “American Factory” is my second favorite documentary of 2019. It is the first film distributed by Barack Obama and Michelle Obama‘s production company, Higher Ground Productions, according to Wikipedia. No doubt, influenced by Michael Moore’s 1989 documentary “Roger and Me,” this documentary highlights the struggles of a Midwest community, American manufacturing, and the labor class. The new world so many workers are left navigating leaves a lot to be desired. It is no wonder so many have fallen in love with the idea of making America great again.
12. Americans continue to die by gun violence at an astounding rate. According to CBS News, “there were more mass shootings across the U.S. in 2019 than there were days in the year, according to a gun violence research group. 2019 had the highest number of mass shootings in any year since the research group started keeping track. By the end of 2019, there were 417 mass shootings in the U.S., according to data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which tracks every mass shooting in the country. Thirty-one of those shootings were mass murders.” During the holidays, I visited the Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where twenty-two people were gunned down, only to hear a few days later of another shooting in a Texas house of worship. Lest anyone forget about the Sutherland Springs church mass massacre. Many people have been denied the chance to walk in their commencement or celebrate their next birthday because we as a country refuse to talk about responsibilities. People can talk all day about their Second Amendment rights, but we need to begin the discussion about our responsibilities. How many more mass shootings in schools, synagogues, and churches can we endure before we accept some responsibility?
13. We forgot about Aylan Kurdi. The current refugee crisis is the humanitarian issue of our lifetime, and we have met it with little to no fanfare. America was once viewed as a beacon of hope. Lady Liberty represented freedom and opportunity. But now we have plans to build a much vaunted wall while we permit our most at-risk communities to drown in lead-contaminated water. We pledge to never let millions of innocent lives suffer again or deprive our communities of their most basic needs. But how easily we forget. Humanity washed along the shore, and we walked by. We are witnessing so many refugee hands reach out, but we refrain from reaching back.
14. The franchise is still under attack. Last week, The News & Observer’s columnist Will Doran wrote, “[r]acial discrimination was at least part of the motivation for a new voter ID law in North Carolina, a federal judge wrote Tuesday, striking the law down for now. In a 60-page ruling evoking decades of racism in North Carolina, the judge wrote that parts of the new voter ID law ‘were impermissibly motivated, at least in part, by discriminatory intent. North Carolina has a sordid history of racial discrimination and voter suppression stretching back to the time of slavery, through the era of Jim Crow, and, crucially, continuing up to the present day,’ she wrote.”
    Shortly after moving to North Carolina in 2018, I became alarmed just how blatant GOP operatives were in their mission to commit election fraud. While so many GOP members raise a ruckus about nonexistent voter fraud, when election fraud actually happens, those same GOP members sit on their hands and turn a blind eye. I’m surprised some of them didn’t tweet out their “thoughts and prayers” for this self-inflicted wound. My colleague Elie Mystal wrote about this issue earlier last year in a piece titled, “Good Time To Point Out Voter ID Would Not Stop Republican Election Fraud.”
15. Bryan Stevenson finally gets his due. I’ve been waiting for over four years for Michael B. Jordan to star in the movie adaptation of Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy, which is based on the true story of Stevenson, a young lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative –- a legal practice dedicated to defending the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children. I still can’t believe we have the opportunity to watch Stevenson’s story on the big screen.
16. Law schools continue to attract some of the best and brightest minds in America. Are you thinking about applying to law school? If you’re attending law school, do you need an inspirational reminder of why you sacrificed three years of your life to such intense study? If you’re an attorney, are you leveraging your degree in the ways in which you had hoped for at this point in time? Check out one of the more popular posts from last year on why others responded to the clarion call of the legal profession.
17. The workplace is a changin’. In the fourth quarter, my workplace transformed into an open office. And more and more of my colleagues are working from home. Although I’m a millennial, I feel like an old soul. I like having an office, a desk, and the everyday banter with my coworkers. But the writing is on the wall. As our generation has put new demands on our employers, and employers seek an edge in recruiting Generation Z talent, the workplace has become more flexible, more remote, and more accommodating. In many ways, this is a good thing.
18. There is hope for healthcare in America. As highlighted by Future Crunch, stroke rates for U.S. adults over the age of 65 have decreased by one third each decade for the past 30 years; new diabetes cases have declined by 35% since 2009, the longest decline since the government started tracking the statistic; and under the Affordable Care Act nearly 2 million diabetics, have received access to health insurance.
19. There are reasons for optimism. There is a lot to be thankful for and to look forward to. The news cycle may seem like an endless narrative of negativeness, but it’s important to focus on the big picture. No doubt, it’s been a year of tumult — environmentally, politically, and societally, but there’s also been a lot of good in this world. As Dr. Angus Harvey, co-founder of Future Crunch proclaims, “if we want to change the story of the human race in the 21st century, we have to change the stories we tell ourselves.” In addition to the healthcare story above, here are additional 98 good new stories that Dr. Harvey and his company highlighted to inspire hope and change the narrative.
20. Representation matters. In my favorite post from 2019, I had the opportunity to interview three 1Ls at Harvard. In 2020, I hope to speak with many more law students and recent alum on the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of their legal journeys. Stay tuned!

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Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn. 

If you’re a lawyer, I bet there’s been more than a time or two you’ve elicited eye rolls from nonlegal friends and family by dropping legal Latin into everyday conversation. We use it enough at work, it’s going to eventually slip into our social lives, right?

But how many of us can also recall a time where, without realizing quite what we were doing, we managed to turn a polite chat with a friend or spouse into a full-blown cross-examination and closing argument? How many of us have used the Socratic method to ruthlessly disassemble an acquaintance’s ill-considered opinion? How many of us have, without even trying, escalated a minor dispute into a world-shattering contest of wills?

Being a lawyer changes who you are in many ways –- for better and worse. When you do something 40-plus hours a week for a number of years, you’re going to probably keep doing it outside those 40-plus hours. As Carl Jung said, “We are what we do.” But because the practice of law is so inherently adversarial, it begs another adage, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.”

The Jerk Store Called

Most attorneys spend their days engaged in one form of conflict or another. Transactional attorneys have to negotiate constantly, both with the other sides of deals and even within their clients’ own corporate structures, jockeying for resources or priority. Litigators literally dispute things for a living, all day every day, on paper and in front of judges and juries. We lawyers spend thousands of hours a year in advocate mode, pushing and prodding others to try to achieve our clients’ goals.

We build up tough shells and learn not to take arguments personally, because even when opposing counsel is accusing you of fraud, malpractice, and bad fashion sense, lawyers know it’s just business. We have to be able to take it as well as we plan to dish it out.

In short, the practice of law teaches us to be jerks. It conditions us to spend our days dealing with others in a sharp, rough-and-tumble, arm’s-length manner. By the time most of us had finished our fifth years as attorneys, we had over 10,000 hours of practice at being professional pains in the rear. If you believe Malcolm Gladwell, that was the point where we functionally mastered the art of being insufferable and argumentative. For those of us at the 20,000, 30,000, or 40,000 hour mark, it can be increasingly difficult to keep those instincts compartmentalized to the work day.

The problem is that, to a certain degree, being a jerk can be good for business. I’ve had countless potential clients tell me over the years that they want to hire a bulldog, a ruthlessly aggressive attorney who’s not afraid to step on toes if it gets them a good result. Attorneys who are willing to go scorched-earth in the name of pleasing their clients seem to earn a huge degree of loyalty from their clients (at least until the client gets the bill for all the unnecessary fights their attorney picked). And in fairness, it’s hard to be an effective lawyer without being willing to strategically take stances and actions that you know will anger your opponents. We can’t control how others react, so why not do what’s most effective for our side and not worry about feelings across the aisle?

Maybe this state of affairs is an expected byproduct of an adversarial legal system. Maybe it’s just how the legal culture has evolved in the competitive early twenty-first century landscape. But no matter how you slice it, the norms of the legal world are not normal, pro-social human behavior. The way lawyers interact with one another is not generally healthy for people that want to have warm social interactions. And it’s hard to spend your days arguing with and cajoling others without those instincts spilling over into other areas of life; areas where strident advocacy and sharp elbows are far less welcome.

Taking Off Your Advocate Hat

I’m not naïve enough to think the practice of law will change with an appeal to be nicer to one another. The world is trending ever more away from professional camaraderie and toward arm’s-length, one-off dealing. And sadly, being a jerk to opposing counsel is an effective enough client-management strategy that there will always be incentives pushing some in the profession in that direction.

What I do think we can focus on, though, is openly acknowledging that our work lives and social lives need to be subject to different rules and expectations. Being an effective lawyer may mean taking tough stances in the office, but we need to train ourselves and the oncoming generations that even if you have to sharpen your elbows at the office, you better soften them when you get home. Telling the attorney on the other side of a negotiation to take the deal or pound sand may be poor form; telling your spouse or family to do the same is interpersonal malpractice.

The Warren Buffett Approach

The practice of law doesn’t have to suck our souls out. It can and should make its practitioners better people, just like it did for us back in law school. The legal mindset is a tool, one that can be used for good or for ill. We can choose to use it well. It’s just that sometimes that means not using it at all. Keeping our lawyerly habits at the office for the sake of our loved ones should be part of our basic professional training.

One can measure success in dollars or trial victories, but perhaps we should consider the Warren Buffett approach to assessing success: How many people do you want to have love you, and how many of those actually love you? If you’re still in the market for a new year’s resolution, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better goal to work toward.

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James Goodnow is an attorney, commentator, and Above the Law columnist. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and is the managing partner of NLJ 250 firm Fennemore Craig. He is the co-author of Motivating Millennials, which hit number one on Amazon in the business management new release category. As a practitioner, he and his colleagues created a tech-based plaintiffs’ practice and business model. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by emailing him at James@JamesGoodnow.com.

There’s nothing wrong with ranking the 10 Best Cat GIFs On The Internet, but once someone starts ranking something as serious as the quality of law schools, there’s a moral obligation not to recklessly steer grads wrong. People are depending on these rankings to make a massive professional and financial decision.

So you can’t go out and write something like:

A number of excellent law schools consistently graduating classes with high bar passage rates as well as significant employment outcomes exist outside the T14.

And then list schools with 50 percent employment scores. Spoiler: Someone wrote that and then listed schools with 50 percent employment scores.

We’re the first to cast a side eye upon U.S. News & World Report for throwing dubiously useful rankings at earnest undergrads trying to cut through the hype and figure out where to go to law school, but at least there’s a methodology to USNWR’s madness. We may not agree with counting library books to determine the best law school in the land, but at least the unnecessary rankings they introduce are backed by something.

After pointing out that New England Law Boston’s dean will be leaving with a retirement package of over $5.3 million despite guiding the school to absolutely nowhere in the rankings, a tipster pointed me to a publication, the College Gazette, promising readers that New England Law is “on the rise.” Since I’ve already seen Star Wars, I know how disappointing a “Rise” can be, but that didn’t prepare me for the ramshackle mess of this article.

“10 Prominent Law Schools On the Rise” is a mess from the headline because if a law school is already prominent… where is it rising to? But it boldly leaps from there to a misleading point about how you don’t need to go to a T14 to be successful — which is true — without noting that when it lists New York Law School that institution is not, in fact, Vanderbilt.

What qualifies as a law school on the rise?

One, the school has to have demonstrated significant achievement as well as excellent student outcomes over the past decade.

Secondly, the school cannot yet be ranked in the top 50 of the US News best law schools list.

They’ve got the last part covered. The first seems to be a mere suggestion.

Of New England Law Boston, the number 4 school on the rise, the College Gazette writes:

Impressively, their class of 2018 featured 83% of their graduates finding gainful employment within 9 months of graduation, with another 4% pursuing an additional degree.

That… is not actually impressive, but it’s also not tracking any numbers we can find. The USNWR entry lists a solid “N/A” for employment stats and Law School Transparency finds a mere 75.4 percent of 2018 grads employed and only 47.5 percent of those grads were in law jobs — the sort that require actually passing the bar exam.

From the good folks at Law School Transparency… does this look like “excellent student outcomes over the past decade”?

Because that’s the trend line for New England’s bar passage rate.

The list of rising law schools also includes University of Illinois Chicago John Marshall where the bar passage rate has gone from 87.9 percent in 2008 to 62.3 percent in 2018 though at least the employment score is up over the last 10 years. It’s only up to 51.6 percent, but astoundingly that’s a major improvement. New York Law School (or the NYU Tribeca campus) also makes the cut having gone from a 91.3 percent bar passage to 62.7 percent since 2008. Quite the rise!

Where are they getting the sense that these schools are on the rise? The New England blurb reads like they just cribbed the school’s promotional materials. “Historically, this prominent institution has had some of the most important faculty of any law school in the country; in fact, eight US Supreme Court Justices have lectured or taught at New England Law.” Cool story. And if you want to see them, but never be them, you too can go to New England.

By the time the reader clicks on the final page, you half expect to find Charlotte School of Law lauded for its immersive practical education in bankruptcy.

The list isn’t all bad. Rutgers took a bar passage dip in 2018, but has generally posted good numbers and has steadily boosted employment figures to a solid 79.4 percent with only a 10.3 percent underemployment score. Albany, the University of Denver and the University of Houston are all on the list and are models of consistency over the past decade. Maybe not “rising” but they would fulfill the promise to the reader of schools where one can find success outside the T14.

College Gazette also has a top 10 law school post that, mercifully, includes only legitimately elite schools, though it’s not without its shortcomings. About NYU they write:

According to Above the Law, a leading law school publication on the internet, NYU is ranked as having the best overall faculty in the country.

Nice to know we’re “a leading law school publication on the internet” but a quick glance past the headline would reveal that we didn’t make this claim, we merely reported on the academic study that did.

Who is writing this stuff? College Gazette was founded in the Fall of 2019 and almost exclusively publishes articles that find “10” of something though in December the folks over there let their hair down and listed “15” colleges. Again, pretentious journos get huffy about these sorts of posts, but there’s really nothing wrong with them — lists are psychologically appealing and readers appreciate some fluff to argue about. But these lists need to stay in their lane and not try to coax students into bad law school decisions.

Naming the 10 best college towns is a perfectly subjective frame to help kids explore some of the reasons that Austin, Texas really is empirically nicer than other college towns. On that note, the College Gazette article on this subject does not include Austin, Texas, which should have been the first clue that something was wrong.

10 Prominent Law Schools On the Rise [College Gazette]

Earlier: Dean Builds 146th Best Law School And Retires With $5.3 Million Package
‘Slap A Number On It, Who Cares?’: The US News Law School Ranking Story

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Government

All those nights at bar review finally pay off.

By Joe Patrice

at 11:36 AM

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As a newly minted attorney, I recently experienced my first end-of-year push to complete as much as possible before the holidays. According to my peers and colleagues, such a year-end scramble — whether it be for filings, client requests, or anything in between  — is neither uncommon nor unanticipated. And I suppose I may have anticipated this ramping-up of workflow toward the end of the year, especially having happily joined a boutique litigation firm that takes on not-so-boutique cases. What I did not anticipate was the flurry of documents and legal pads and note flags that would trail in its wake, rendering my office a bit of a snow globe. Before I could sort all of that into anything pleasingly intelligible, I was rushing to catch a flight cross-country to spend a few days with family.

If you missed the chance to impose order on your workspace before the holidays, the dawn of a new year is the perfect time to consider the life-changing magic (as Marie Kondo would say) of tidying up your office. Ample research exists with data demonstrating the psychological (and even physical) benefits of living and working in tidy spaces. However, I offer my personal impressions gleaned from years of work at various levels in practices of varying size and specialty.

First impressions first. Though I don’t subscribe to the wear-a-suit-to-take-exams school of thought, I do believe visual impressions are critical on many levels. I want to feel good when I walk into my office, and I want others who enter my space, whether they be colleagues or clients, to feel the same. A tidy office, for me, inspires that positivity. When my office is well-ordered and clean, I feel at ease and confident — confident that whatever I need will be easy to find, that nothing will slip through the cracks, and that I simply have it together at a foundational level. From another’s perspective, the aesthetic of an untamed office risks concerns analogous to one’s attorney or colleague beside them showing up to court with a crumpled suit and documents falling out of their briefcase — not a great look.

Clutter, while perhaps indicative of an active workflow, is not only distracting but also tends to beget more clutter. I have found that the longer an unruly workspace remains untamed, the harder it is to ultimately address — mentally and physically. The physical task of decluttering is often a pain but always gratifying. The mental burden is, I find, the harder one to surmount. It is easy to shove papers left and right and stack them like skyscrapers to carve out desk space. But once one’s office looks like the view from my window in the Financial District, the mere idea (not to mention the job) of addressing that skyline becomes a burdensome (and, let’s not forget, unbillable) task on the never ending to-do list that is the practice of law. It’s much harder to strategize the tearing-down of a skyscraper than, say, a small shed.

That said, tidiness tends to beget more tidiness. When I returned to my office from the holidays, I was invigorated by that new-year-fresh-start feeling. I was inspired to finally get rid of stacks of hard copy marked-up cases that I had no reason to keep in my space. And, through that sifting and sorting process, I was prompted to think about — and indeed learned — what actually is useful for me to have on hand. Documents I could recall picking up countless times while researching and drafting for ongoing matters got their own folders and were housed in files (organized by case and subfiled by document type) which now sit tidily on my shelves. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that any hard copies I preserved ‘sparked joy,’ as Marie Kondo would urge, but I was at least prompted to consider the utility of physical files in this day and age.

Since I undertook to tidy up and impose order upon my workspace, I feel that the task of staying organized will be much easier. In fact, as I glance around my office, despite having a busy week, not a single piece of paper in view is without a home to which it will return at the end of the day. That does spark joy.

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John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

Well, that didn’t take long. On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit against him based on a claim that New York courts lack personal jurisdiction over their client. Inviting the court to “take judicial notice that the President of the United States has resided in the White House for the past three years,” they requested her to make this whole unpleasant case disappear before the discovery phase. Because faced with the prospect of putting President P-Grabber under oath to talk about sexual assault, Trump’s lawyers were willing to try just about anything.

Yesterday, they got their answer. Surprising exactly no one, Justice Doris Ling-Cohan declined the offer to “take judicial notice” of Mister Trump’s residency, saying, “Although defendant Trump, through his counsel, claims lack of personal jurisdiction, notably, there is not even a tweet, much less an affidavit by defendant Trump in support of his motion.”

Shaaaaaaaade.

Seems like Her Honor noticed that, while the defendant was happy to have his attorneys to make conclusory attestations on his behalf, he was unwilling to swear out an affidavit himself claiming that he was not actually a resident of the state where he maintains a residence, is registered to vote, owns a business, and presumably filed his taxes.

The Court notes that that not only was no affidavit from defendant Trump supplied in support of this application, but even the defendant’s attorney’s application does not assert a basis (evidentiary or otherwise) for dismissal; rather, the affirmation acts as a mere conduit to provide documents relating to the procedural posture of the case.

Then Justice Ling-Cohan delivered a mini-lesson on New York civil procedure and standards for filing an Order to Show Cause in Manhattan Supreme Court. It was ice cold.

“We are pleased, and unsurprised, that the Court refused to tolerate Donald Trump’s latest attempt to avoid discovery in our client’s case,” said Carroll’s counsel Roberta Kaplan, a partner at Kaplan Hecker & Fink. “We look forward to moving ahead in this case and proving that Donald Trump lied when he told the world that he did not rape our client and had not even met her.”

Trump’s motion to stay discovery was also denied.

“WE MOVE AHEAD!!” tweeted a jubilant Carroll.

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Last week we announced our latest Gaming Like It’s 1924: Public Domain Game Jam, and among the newly public domain works first released in 1924 is George Gershwin’s classic Rhapsody in Blue, which you might better know as the United Airlines theme song.

This is extremely noteworthy, because during the debate over the Mickey Mouse Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act fight in 1998, the Gershwin Estate was among the most vocal supporters and lobbyists in seeking an extension for the copyright. Indeed, the head of the Gershwin Estate, George’s nephew Marc was particularly worried about losing artistic control over his uncle’s work. Indeed, he seemed particularly worried that someone might make rap music out of his uncle’s work:

Marc G. Gershwin, a nephew of George and Ira Gershwin and a co-trustee of the Gershwin Family Trust, said: ”The monetary part is important, but if works of art are in the public domain, you can take them and do whatever you want with them. For instance, we’ve always licensed ‘Porgy and Bess’ for stage performance only with a black cast and chorus. That could be debased. Or someone could turn ‘Porgy and Bess’ into rap music.”

Oh, the horror. That same article noted that Gershwin seemed to be ramping up the licensing fees for his uncle’s work in the meantime:

Fifteen years ago, the license fee for using a Gershwin song in a television commercial for one year could be $45,000 to $75,000. The same song might now go for $200,000 to $250,000.

But, sure, it’s not about the money (though I’ll note that Marc recently sold his $5.4 million apartment in Manhattan). Of course, this is even more ridiculous when you realize that Gershwin frequently drew on influences of various other artists, including for Rhapsody in Blue (as for Porgy & Bess, we still have a few more years until that hits the public domain). George Gershwin himself admitted that Rhapsody in Blue was inspired by a variety of other music:

I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness.

As the good folks over at the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain note, Rhapsody in Blue did draw on a variety of other types of music and now you can too, no matter what Marc Gershwin and the Gershwin Estate think:

Indeed, Rhapsody is a musical melting pot: it draws on everything from African American blues, jazz, and ragtime styles, to French impressionists and European art music, to Jewish musical traditions, to Tin Pan Alley. Now that it is in the public domain, this wonderful composition can be part of your kaleidoscope, where you can draw upon it to create something new, just as Gershwin drew upon his influences.

Of course, it does seem notable that the Gershwin publishing catalog was sold off a few months ago to Downton Music Publishing, who, it seems likely, will try to squeeze the last bit of cash out of it before it drip, drip, drips into the public domain for everyone to use.

George Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue Is In The Public Domain And Gerswhin’s Nephew Is Worried Someone Might Turn It Into Hip Hop

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