Author: TSA Press

Bar exam results are out. You didn’t make it. Panic and grief sets in. Over the coming days and weeks, you will read about how many famous people like Hillary Clinton and John F. Kennedy, Jr., failed the bar exam, but this will not make you feel any better.

The only thing that will change your feelings will be to begin working on a plan of attack for the next time you take the exam. What was your strategy last time? What should you do differently this go around? Where will you find the answers?

We at Marino Bar Review have worked with thousands of students who have failed the bar exam. Some of them were very high profile people. We guided them to success on the bar exam by helping them follow these three simple steps:

1) Keep in mind that the bar exam does not test subject areas. People spend entire careers trying to master legal subject areas like Evidence or Constitutional Law. It is a fool’s errand to believe you could do so over the course of a couple of months. Instead, the bar exam tests rules. You do not need to know the entirety of Torts law; you just need to know the main 25 or so rules tested.

The last time you studied you spent weeks or even months skimming the surface of the law. But the exam isn’t nearly as big as it seems, and by focusing on what you study, you will have sufficient knowledge of the rules that are most frequently tested to pass the bar exam.

2) Don’t neglect any section of the bar exam. On the UBE, the essay section and the MBE section are each worth an equal number of points. While multiple choice is a large part of the bar exam, half of the exam is written and subjectively scored. Not all answers are equal and simply putting the correct answer on the page may not score you maximum points if you don’t know how to properly word it. Furthermore, it’s not as simple as the IRAC method you were taught in law school and led to believe was the best way to write by your previous bar review course. In fact, with the proper approach, you can score points even if you don’t know the rule being tested.

3) Don’t be afraid to get help. You need to know what went wrong on your last bar exam and your score report can give you a good amount of information about this. Everyone thinks that they just needed to study a little more or focus on the MBE, but the reality is that each exam taker’s scores and problems are unique. Just because your uncle, who took the bar exam many years ago, is convinced that you probably failed because you’re not good at answering multiple choice questions, does not mean this is actually the reason you were not successful. You can submit your score report to us here or email it to us at info@marinolegal.com and we will be happy to give you a completely free score evaluation and guidance on what went wrong and what you can do to improve your score for the next exam. We really know what we’re talking about!

Remember, the bar exam is not a referendum on your intelligence, nor is it an impossible hurdle. It is a hazing ritual that all future lawyers must go through. However, you need to approach studying for the exam the correct way or you will struggle to pass.

As always, if you have any questions about the bar exam or need help knowing where to start (or restart) your studying, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

We wish you good luck!

I don’t think there are words to actually describe the joy and relief I feel to know that I am his and he is mine and we will actually enjoy a long life together. We’re ready for the “in health.”

— Lauren O’Malley, a 2017 graduate of Georgetown Law, commenting on her wedding this past weekend to Jake Woodward, one of her law school classmates. During their third year of law school, O’Malley was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. After she had her tumor removed, she was declared cancer free and able to graduate on time. The couple got engaged in October 2017, and about one year later, Woodward was diagnosed with a thymoma tumor in his chest. The tumor was removed and while he was also declared cancer free, he was left so weak he’s been hospitalized several times since. “One silver lining of this is we know we can count on each other. We know we’re not going to run away,” Woodward said. “We’re all in on this.”

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Trick or treat?! Halloween is next Thursday, but let’s face it, most people in the legal community — especially the law students — are planning a weekend full of debauchery in their favorite witty (or incredibly naughty) costumes.

For the tenth year in a row, we here at Above the Law are soliciting legally themed costumes for our annual Halloween contest. We’re continually impressed with how creative lawyers and law students can be when they take their noses out of their books.

Have you got what it takes to top the winners of years past? We hope so!

Here are the winning looks from the past few years of the contest: Nefarious RBG (2015), the Donald J. Trump College of Law (2016), The Bluebook (2017), and Brett Kavanaugh’s calendar and his beer (2018).

Please email us your pictures and then we’ll vote on the winner of our annual competition. We’re all looking forward to judging you!

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Today, corporations are under unprecedented scrutiny.  Companies are being investigated not only by federal, state, and foreign government agencies, but also by private plaintiffs in a wide variety of litigations that place corporate conduct under a microscope.  In today’s increasingly intricate international legal and regulatory environment, investigations are more crucial — and complicated — than ever. We here at Above the Law partnered with our friends at H5 to take a deeper dive into the investigations space in order to better understand this intricate landscape. We took an in-depth look at the principal actors and their perception of trends, differences among categories of investigations — such as due diligence, cybersecurity, employee/workplace, and regulatory matters — and how those might vary within industries and across companies of different sizes.

In order to gain a better understanding of the investigations space, we fielded a survey targeting those in all roles and at all stages of investigatory process. We heard from those involved with the management and strategy of investigations, those whose responsibility it is to select and manage vendors and resources, and those who respond to investigations — and asked them to share their experiences on everything from how technological tools are leveraged to how they see the field changing in coming years. 

Download the report to read about the insights they shared and the future they see coming!

A disturbing aspect of an  elder law and trusts and estates practice is the discovery of elder abuse. According to the National Institute on Aging, hundreds of thousands of adults over the age of 60 are abused, neglected, or financially exploited each year. Elder abuse includes physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in addition to neglect and abandonment.  The perpetrators are often relatives or friends who have influence over the individual who may be vulnerable due to illness, disability, or age. Sometimes the abuse occurs at the hands of caregivers, whether in the home or in a facility.

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has introduced bipartisan legislation to help protect the elderly and infirmed by improving health care worker hiring practices in long-term care and medical facilities. Too often the elderly and infirmed are harmed as a result of the individuals working in the very facilities that are charged with helping rehabilitate them.

The Promote Responsible Oversight and Targeted Employee Background Check Transparency for Seniors Act, also known as “PROTECTS,” is an act that would expand access to the National Practitioner Data Bank for Medicare and Medicaid providers to conduct background checks on employees. Specifically, PROTECTS would include Medicaid/Medicare-certified skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, hospice programs, and pharmacies.

The Act has been endorsed by the American Health Care Association and the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. The aforesaid Data Bank would reveal malpractice for potential employees and assist facility administrators in their hiring and consequently affect the standards of care.

As an attorney who regularly practices with the elderly population, I visit a lot of nursing homes. As a guardianship practitioner, I interact regularly with many professionals servicing the elderly such as nursing home administrators and geriatric care managers. Personally, I have spent many days and nights at hospitals and rehabilitation and nursing facilities for my own parents. As is the case with one’s health care, it is imperative that you learn to advocate for your needs. The problem is that those in facilities are often too sick or too intimidated to speak up for themselves. For those lucky enough to have involved friends and family, the risk of being abused or mistreated is lessened by the mere fact that they have someone present to speak for them. Additionally, would-be predators are likely aware of the patients who receive visitors and who have involved family members.

Elder abuse, however, does not just occur in facilities. It also occurs in the home. Relatives and close friends often gain access to bank books and financial accounts and take advantage of a vulnerable person’s assets. Financial scams abound wherein the elderly are lured into investing in businesses that do not exist or do not provide that which they promise. Unfair annuities and reverse mortgages are pitched at lunch events targeted toward senior citizens, eager to connect with someone or something. Savings are often divested and the reporting of these actions is low.

Sometimes the abuse is at the hands of home health aides who insist on or help themselves to gifts as a result of their “care” of the patient. In many cases, the abuse extends beyond the patient’s life, when last wills and testaments are revealed naming health care aides or others as beneficiaries, much to the surprise of family members.

New York’s PROTECTS Act is a good step towards increasing protections for the elderly and long-term care patients. Other states have made similar endeavors. From a macro perspective, it is imperative that we keep the elderly a part of our greater communities. They fall prey to abuse when they are isolated. There are many seniors who do not interact with anyone outside of their residence. Similarly, there are many who do not receive any visitors when residing in a facility. Keeping seniors a part of our society, along with proactive legislation to protect against predators who abuse in a myriad of ways, is just a start to reducing the rate of elder abuse in our country.

Cori A. Robinson is a solo practitioner having founded Cori A. Robinson PLLC, a New York and New Jersey law firm, in 2017. For more than a decade Cori has focused her law practice on trusts and estates and elder law including estate and Medicaid planning, probate and administration, estate litigation, and guardianships. She can be reached at cori@robinsonestatelaw.com. 

She did it, you guys.

UPenn Law’s Amy Wax has successfully demonstrated yet again that trading in academic credentials for easily debunked innuendo can pay off if you’re willing to put your faith in the lowest common denominator and the feckless cowardice of university officials.

As a truly spooky Halloween event, Berkeley Law’s Public Law and Policy Program (co-sponsored by the Federalist Society and the Pacific Research Institute) will have UPenn professor Amy Wax give a spiel at an event that’s NOW titled “A Conversation with Amy Wax and Mickey Kaus,” marking a rare opportunity for superficial hot-take artist Kaus to be the reasonable one in the room.

But that’s not what the event was always called. No, this ostensibly academic endeavor was at one point billed as “Nationalism, Identity, and Immigration: Considerations for the Academy and the Nation.” Wax now gets to slap the name of another prestigious academic institution onto her bio — an honor befitting a woman who recently graduated from just making stuff up to misconstruing Wikipedia pages.

More distastefully — if possible — this event is being run as a fundraiser with a $60/head admission charge. This means people are actually expected to spend good money to listen to Wax discuss immigration policy when they could easily just ask Cooter to spit out a missive through his meth-depleted teeth.

With Wax and Kaus on the same stage, I can save everyone some time and preview the festivities:

Wax: America is better off without people who aren’t from Northern European stock. That’s not a racist statement, I’m just saying those people are dirty and dumb.
Kaus: As a proud liberal… I totally agree with all of that and it’s a shame that the Dumbocrats don’t understand that. Which is something I can say because I’m totally a liberal.
*Repeat ad nauseam*

This isn’t much of a surprise from a group that’s previously hosted Heather Mac Donald, author of The Diversity Delusion, a book that unabashedly argues that the academy is better off when it’s populated by exclusively by white men. Berkeley’s just sitting by as its name serves as an aegis for gussied-up, whitewashed white supremacy. It’s long past time to reserve the term “white supremacy” for violent overt racists. Any ideology positing that white people or culture are supreme — and remember Amy Wax doesn’t “shrink from the word, ‘superior’” — is quite literally white supremacy and deserves to not fly under the radar just because it’s gussied itself up for the cameras. Wax is getting cited by Stormfront. At a certain point, what your work justifies matters.

And no doubt the response of the school’s defenders will again be that the academy thrives on different and controversial viewpoints and that they respect the views of these affiliated groups even if they don’t agree. Which is a fine answer in theory, but also one that Wax and her cronies have thoroughly hacked for their own gain. The academy is about allowing controversial professors to post their empirical research and expose themselves to the slings and arrows of their colleagues’ research to build upon human knowledge. It’s not about letting people pop off about MS-13 conspiracy theories. Drawing that line is uncomfortable for academics. They want to say, “Who are we to say when something isn’t academic freedom?”

It’s a cop-out that everyone knows is coming and it’s a cop-out that Amy Wax has built her career upon.

Earlier: Law School Professor Amy Wax Cites Wikipedia And We Need To Stop Pretending Tenure Was Made For This
Amy Wax’s Racist Remarks Force Penn Law School To Let Her Take A Paid Vacation
T14 Law Professor Goes To White Nationalism Conference And Says White Nationalist Things And Somehow Still Has A Job
Academia Means Never Having To Say, ‘I Got Fired’
T14 Law Professor Goes To White Nationalism Conference And Says White Nationalist Things And Somehow Still Has A Job
Professor Amy Wax And The Bell Curve
Law Professors Say White ’50s Culture Is Superior, Other Racist Stuff
Penn Law School Prof Amy Wax Stumbles Into A Truth… Before Delving Back Into Vile Conspiracy Theories
Amy Wax Relieved Of Her 1L Teaching Duties After Bald-Faced Lying About Black Students
Professor Declares Black Students ‘Rarely’ Graduate In The Top Half Of Law School Class
Dog Whistling ‘Bourgeois Values’ Op-Ed Gets Thorough Takedown From Other Law Professors
Law Students Seek To Ban Professor From Teaching 1Ls
Law School Professor Says Dr. Ford ‘Should Have Held Her Tongue’ In Latest Embarrassment To Her School

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.

Once upon a time, a law school’s decision to bring a Supreme Court justice to campus to teach a class was a no-brainer. It would bring prestige to the school, it would be a unique educational opportunity for their students, and everyone would be pleased with the outcome. But now that increasingly controversial people are being appointed to lifetime appointments to the Court, it fundamentally changes the calculus for law schools.

The University of Florida Levin College of Law announced that in spring 2020, Justice Clarence Thomas is teaching a compressed course on the religious clauses of the First Amendment. That decision has been met with complaints by students at the law school. A new advocacy group, We Believe Survivors, wrote a letter in the student newspaper, The Independent Florida Alligator, asking Dean Laura Rosenbury and school administrators to “explain how the celebration of Clarence Thomas’ presence on campus will help the effort to address the culture at UF that has led to an increase in campus sexual assault.”

The letter calls attention to the allegations of sexual harassment Anita Hill made against Thomas as well as a recent UF survey on sexual assault and misconduct which found UF undergraduate female reports of nonconsensual sexual conduct increased from 23 to 26 percent since 2015. Given the concerning uptick in sexual misconduct at the school, We Believe Survivors believes treating Thomas as a honored guest at the law school will send a problematic message to survivors:

“If we come forward, will we be treated like Hill?” the letter said. “Will we be ignored while our abusers are paraded as esteemed guests at our law school? Does Levin really believe survivors? Or do we only believe survivors when their abusers aren’t powerful?”

As reported by Law.com, second-year law student Dalia Figueredo believe the issue was exacerbated because students weren’t told before Thomas was invited:

But it’s about accountability, the way Figueredo sees it, as she’d hoped her university would have first told students about the idea of inviting Thomas.

“Our administration is here to serve us, and I think it’s very important to question what kind of message law school is sending to potential survivors of assault or harassment when they invite someone who has been credibly accused to campus,” Figueredo said.

Dean Rosenbury’s statement on the controversy says she supports student advocacy at the law school:

“We are a diverse law school, and our students, faculty and staff care deeply about a range of issues,” Rosenbury said. “We encourage all of our students to become effective advocates, whether through student groups or other means.”

But Thomas will still be teaching at the law school next year.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Safe bet the New York City Bar won’t be inviting Attorney General Bill Barr to the next Young Lawyers Happy Hour event. In fact, he’s pretty much persona non grata for the foreseeable future since the organization just published an open letter telling the Attorney General to GET THE F*** OUT OF TOWN. Well, they phrased it somewhat more diplomatically, calling for him recuse himself from any “Ukraine-related issues.” And if not, “he should resign or, failing that, be subject to sanctions, including possible removal, by Congress.”

Alrighty then!

Citing the president’s infamous July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky when Trump promised twice to have Attorney General Barr coordinate the Ukrainian investigation of Joe Biden, the NYC Bar says, “Mr. Barr was obligated to recuse himself from any involvement in DOJ’s review of either the whistleblower complaint or the substance of the President’s actions once the President offered Mr. Barr’s services to President Zelensky.”

Barr’s name also came up in the Whistleblower Complaint, and yet the AG failed to recuse from the criminal referral to the Office of Legal Counsel, which buried it after a cursory investigation and refused to turn it over to Congress in accordance with the law. In fact, Barr was aware of the substance of the allegations weeks earlier, since the whistleblower tried to make an informal complaint through the general counsel at his agency, but Barr and his deputy John Demers decided that a criminal referral didn’t count unless it was in writing.

More recently, the Attorney General has been gallivanting all over Europe trying to gin up evidence for Trump’s crackpot theory that the entire intelligence community is lying about Russians hacking the DNC, and somehow the DNC server was spirited away to Ukraine. (Yes, this theory relies on murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich being the “real” leaker, and yes, they actually believe this horsesh*t.) And just last week, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney took to the podium to confess on national television that congressionally allocated funds for Ukraine were being held up to ensure that country’s compliance with that DOJ probe — a clear quid pro quo.

So, yeah, Barr’s up to his jowls in it. And by failing to live up to his basic professional obligations — including 28 CFR 45.2, 5 CFR 2635.502, and the U.S. Attorney’s Manual 3-2.170 — the Attorney General sets a lousy example, both for young lawyers sitting for the MPRE and for the thousands of lawyers under him at the Justice Department.

Because respect for law is central to our nation’s governance, the Attorney General of the United States bears a special responsibility to see that our laws are justly administered for the benefit of the American people.  The Attorney General is, and must be seen as, the representative of the nation in advising the President and other federal officers and must demonstrate an unquestioned commitment to compliance with law by all who exercise the powers of government.

Even Jeff Sessions, who was too stupid and racist to win judicial confirmation from his own party — look it up! — understood his ethical obligation to recuse from an investigation in which he was likely to be a fact witness. And when you’re being compared unfavorably to a guy who said in open hearing, “I am not insensitive to blacks,” it’s probably time to turn off Fox News and do some serious thinking.

But serious thinking isn’t really Bill Barr’s thing. He’s far too busy at the moment planning his Christmas party at the Trump Hotel in D.C.

Your move, D.C. Bar!

Attorney General Barr Should Recuse Himself from Department of Justice Review of Ukraine Matter [NYC Bar]
New York City Bar Calls for US AG William Barr’s Recusal in Ukraine Matter [Law.com]

* Rudy Giuliani is reportedly looking for another defense lawyer.  Guess he listened to the old adage about he who represents himself… [CNN]

* Rose McGowan is suing the lawyers Harvey Weinstein enlisted to discredit her, including David Boies.  I’m sure the defendants know a few good attorneys to represent them. [New York Times]

* The D.C. Bar just released an ethics opinion on what managers and employees should do if they think a lawyer is impaired. Based on some of the stories on this website, such guidance is sorely needed. [American Lawyer]

* A Clarence Thomas documentary is set to be released in 2020.  Guess Justice Thomas wanted his own RBG. [Time]

* A lawyer who is suing her former employer must pay the legal fees of her former law firm because she failed to produce critical evidence for 17 months. [New Jersey Law Journal]

* A man caught on video punching his own lawyer in court was acquitted of the assault, since the injuries were deemed not serious.  Apparently being injured with a concussion and a broken nose from an assault by a client is just a job hazard for lawyers. [WTVR.com]

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.