Former UI law school assistant dean charged with stealing from Chicago agency

Authorities say a former assistant business dean at the University of Illinois College of Law had been charged with stealing $20,000 from a Chicago city agency.

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez says 38-year-old Ming Liu of Urbana, also known as Ming Liu Bengtsson, was indicted for theft, official misconduct and forgery.

Liu is accused of stealing $20,000 intended to promote tourism while working as a project administrator with the city of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs from 1997 through June 2006.

Former Prof Arrested, Accused of Taking 2 Guns, 53 Rounds Into Law Library
By Martha Neil

A former adjunct faculty member at the University of Louisville’s law school was arrested Friday after allegedly bringing two handguns and 53 rounds of ammunition into the law school library around 8:30 a.m.

Police were initially called about Thomas Irwin, 56, because a library employee who recognized him knew that he had been banned from the campus in 2008, reports the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Authorities said Irwin had a permit to carry the handguns and told police he had the guns because he planned to go to a shooting range later in the day, the newspaper recounts. However, guns are banned on the University of Louisville campus, and Irwin was charged with carrying a concealed deadly weapon and criminal trespass. Both are misdemeanors.

Read the whole article at MinnLawyer.com…

Bad economy can make taking the bar exam even more stressful
by Michelle Lore

The lack of sleep, quick meals, missed social events and late-night studying will soon be over. This week more than 830 would-be lawyers will flock to the RiverCentre in St. Paul for two days to sit for the Minnesota bar examination.

Test takers say that preparing for the exam has been stressful, in part because of the vast amount of information they must digest and to a lesser extent, the uncertain economic times. But for most, thoughts of anything but the exam have been put aside for the past eight weeks.

“All of the issues with the economy and employment have to be put in the back of my mind and all of my focus has to be on the law that I need to know for the bar,” said University of St. Thomas School of Law grad Rasheen Tillman, who has not yet found employment. “If in the end I don’t pass the bar I wouldn’t have a job anyway, so it all comes down to passing.”

Scott Swanson, director of academic achievement at the University of St. Thomas Law School, runs a dedicated bar review course that meets twice a week in the two months leading up to the exam. He said that despite the downturn in the economy, he doesn’t think that the stress level of test takers is higher than usual.

“Bar exam stress is its own separate thing,” he said.

…

Living the law

Whatever study methods the law grads employ, it’s a stressful time for them.

“Everything in my life came to a halt,” said Tillman. “I live, breath, and sleep the law. I am trying not to burn out, but it is tiring studying day after day for such long hours.”

While the stress is real for all test takers, those law grads who don’t have a job lined up may feel it more keenly.

“There’s this fear that you really do have to pass it or people aren’t going to hire you,” Swann explained.

The NY Daily News reports…

NY lawyer charged with misdemeanor after leaving her bickering daughters on the side of the road
BY CARRIE MELAGO

A prominent Park Avenue lawyer was arrested after cops said she got so angry at her young daughters that she kicked them out of her car – and drove off.

Madlyn Primoff apparently couldn’t bear any more squabbling between her 10- and 12-year-old daughters Sunday and booted them out of the car in White Plains, Westchester County, authorities said.

The fedup Scarsdale mom – a partner at white-shoe firm Kaye Scholer – soon relented and let her 12-year-old daughter back in when she caught up with the family car.

The younger daughter wandered around the corner to Mamaroneck Ave., where a good Samaritan spotted her in tears about 7:30 p.m., bought her ice cream and then approached a cop in a patrol car.

The officer described the girl as “very upset” and “emotional” in the police report.

Primoff reported the girl missing to Scarsdale police, who contacted White Plains cops and were told the girl was out of harm’s way.

The 45-year-old mom was arrested when the family arrived at headquarters to pick up the child.

Read the whole article at TheLawyer.com…

Study reveals lawyers’ IQs are more in line with mere mortals’
by Kit Chellel

News that the relative intelligence of the legal profession could be in decline sparked a storm of debate on TheLawyer.com

The study, carried out by the Centre for Market and Public Organisation (CMPO) at Bristol University, suggested that lawyers have moved closer to average intelligence over the past 12 years.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many readers found this difficult to swallow. “The law employs, as it has always done, the finest minds in the City,” protested one commenter.

Others were more circumspect. “I think it’s about right. I went to law school after being addicted to Ally McBeal,” admitted an anonymous poster.

So have lawyers dumbed down during the past decade, and what does this research say about the intellectual state of the profession?

Far from poking a mocking finger at young lawyers, the study was carried out for a specific purpose. Researchers wanted to look into the barriers apparently preventing many people from poorer backgrounds from making it into certain careers.

The Government’s new social mobility supremo Alan Milburn has admitted that “too few youngsters from comprehensive schools are becoming lawyers, doctors or army officers”.

The first defence of any law firm or chambers when confronted with this fact is that they hire purely on merit, regardless of background.

The CMPO study challenges this argument. It found that, although the comparative wealth of lawyers’ parents had increased between the two study groups – born in 1958 and 1970 – their scores in IQ tests had moved closer to the average.

…

Many readers questioned why these two dates were important and why they are relevant to the profession today. The simple answer is that they happen to be the years in which the two largest surveys of professions began.

Read the whole article at The Boston Globe…

Boom times turn bleak for Boston lawyers
Prestigious firms forced to cut jobs, freeze salaries
By Todd Wallack

Paul Semenza practiced law for 25 years, including work as a defense attorney in personal injury cases. So the Wakefield lawyer figured it would take only a few months to find work after losing his law firm job a year ago. But the economy steadily worsened, and no offers came. Now Semenza, 51, has been forced to find a different way to earn a paycheck – by selling sofas and mattresses at a local furniture chain.

“It’s very frustrating not being able to do something that I enjoyed for so long,” he said. “While I enjoy meeting and helping customers, I really miss the law.”

So do lots of other lawyers. After years of giddy growth in Boston’s legal industry, the party is over because of the recession. Many of Boston’s most prestigious law firms have frozen salaries, slashed bonuses, and cut positions in the past few months. Goodwin Procter eliminated 74 jobs for attorneys and support staff nationwide, Nixon Peabody axed 56 jobs, Goulston & Storrs cut more than 40 jobs, Choate, Hall & Stewart let go 38 people, and Foley Hoag shed more than 30 jobs. In fact, there were so many firms announcing staff reduction on Feb. 12, some lawyers called it “Black Thursday.”

“It’s pretty bleak,” said legal recruiter Linda Kline, managing partner of New England Legal Search Ltd. in Boston.

The downturn marks an entrance into uncharted territory for one of Boston’s marquee industries. For years, major law firms consistently reported higher annual revenue and profits and vied with Wall Street for Ivy League law school graduates. Starting salaries for newly minted lawyers at top firms rose from $125,000 in 2005 to $160,000 two years later. And firms had little trouble passing along the cost to clients, who needed lawyers to help handle a growing number of mergers and other key business deals. That’s all changed, as demand has slowed and clients look for ways to slash their legal bills.

Read the whole article at The Los Angeles Times…

Laid-off lawyer in predicament she never imagined
By STEVE LOPEZ

“I can’t get a job anywhere.”

I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails that start like that. This one was from Ellie Trope of Mid-City in Los Angeles, near La Brea, who lost her job more than a year ago. She wrote me after reading my column two weeks ago about the endless mob scene at the employment office in Van Nuys.

Trope, 43, is an attorney with 15 years of experience, and she said lawyers are losing their jobs in droves.

When people in banking and the mortgage industry were getting the heave-ho, it came as no surprise. In fact, on Friday I spoke to a banking executive with 20,000 employees under him who got fired in December after 21 years on the job. But I would have thought anyone with a law degree would be able to talk their way out of a layoff, file for an injunction, whatever.

Not so. Trope told me it’s gotten much worse of late, and when I made some phone calls and checked on the Internet, I found that law firms in California and throughout the nation have been handing out pink slips by the dozens and the hundreds.

“Job cuts in U.S. legal sector hit 1,300 for January,” said a headline at Legalweek.com.

“Today isn’t over, but it already has a name: Black Thursday,” said a Los Angeles County Bar Assn. blog this week, making reference to hundreds of layoffs in the legal biz that were announced around the world the other day.

Trope sounded weary when I spoke to her by phone. The financial pressure of losing her job took a huge toll on her marriage, she told me, and she and her husband are now living separately. They share custody of their two children, and despite the financial strain, Trope hasn’t wanted to put the nanny on the bricks too, so she’s shuttling back and forth between households with the kids.

…

[S]he reluctantly decided to lower her expectations and began applying for jobs as a contract administrator, an office administrator and a paralegal. But she struck out there too, in part because other lawyers were trying the same thing.

“After a while with the paralegal jobs, the listings said, ‘No attorneys.’ I think it’s because they figured attorneys would leave as soon as they found work as lawyers.”

In mid-January she got a temporary lawyer job for hourly pay, and this week she’s switching to another temporary arrangement, hoping this one turns into a long-term job.

“In my life, things were always way too easy to get,” Trope said. “I put my head in the sand and never thought about the worst that might happen. It was way too easy to not have a backup plan, and I didn’t worry. I did a great job at work and I thought that was enough, and it’s not anymore.”

Witness ‘too believable’ says judge

A woman’s case has been thrown out of court after the judge ruled her evidence too “believable”.

Driving instructor Denise Dawson, 36, was punched and robbed as she was giving a lesson in Bristol.

Judge Jamie Tabor described her as “honest, utterly decent and brave” but thought her “impressive” performance in the witness box could sway the jury.

He felt her three-second glimpse of the alleged attacker, 20-year-old Liam Perks, was insufficient to ensure a safe conviction.

Perks, of Fennell Grove, Henbury, who denied robbing Mrs Dawson in December 2007, was found not guilty on Judge Tabor’s direction.

Judge Tabor told the court: “Denise Dawson was a particularly impressive witness because she showed courage, clarity of thought and was undoubtedly honest. The jury may lend more weight to her evidence than her facts allow.”

Read all about it in The Star…

Law student’s big miscalculation

A law student and the professor who paid to have sex with her face up to a year in jail after the student told police she was a sex worker, officials said on Thursday.

The woman went to police in Ann Arbor, Michigan to press charges against the professor for slapping her during sex.

She ended up confessing to having as many as nine other clients who paid up to $500 for sex.

She told police she needed the money to pay tuition.

“Perhaps she should have cracked a legal textbook before coming in to the police station to talk about this,” Ann Arbor Detective Sergeant Richard Kinsey said.

The two met in April after the associate professor in the University of Michigan’s department of near eastern studies responded to an online ad describing the student’s sexual services. She was not a student of his.

They met at an Ann Arbor hotel where the student told police she reluctantly agreed to let the professor whip her with a belt but got angry when he slapped her twice in the face.

The professor paid her $300 and asked if he could see her again.

She told him she’d have to think about it and then went to the police station to report she’d been assaulted.

She told police she suffered vision problems from being slapped, but did not have any lasting injuries.

The professor, whose wife works in the same department, told police the student was a willing participant and the two hugged when they were done.

He said he considered having a more involved relationship with the student, perhaps as a mistress he could take with him on his travels.

The professor admitted to giving her the money and then said, “I guess I’m in trouble, huh?”

The student later regretted her decision, telling police she just wanted the investigation “to go away”.

Read this interesting editorial in The Los Angeles Times…

Affirmative action and the bar exam
A California professor studying affirmative action should have access to law school performance statistics.

Americans have been debating the fairness and efficacy of racial preferences in college and graduate school admissions for more than 30 years. Now a UCLA professor is seeking to test his hypothesis that affirmative action programs actually hurt the career prospects of minority law school graduates. But he has been hampered in his research by the indefensible failure of the State Bar of California to provide the statistics he needs.

The professor, Richard H. Sander, has requested data about the performance of white and minority law school graduates on the bar examination, along with information about the schools they attended and their grades. In resisting his request, bar officials cite the need to protect the privacy of test takers and to honor an agreement that test material will remain confidential. At the same time, some defenders of affirmative action have argued against releasing the data because they think Sander’s project could have only one purpose: to discredit the idea of racial preferences.

The privacy and legal arguments strike us as spurious, a view shared by the executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, which has joined Sander and his colleagues in asking the state Supreme Court to order the release of the information. Sander has promised that no individual student would be identified by the statistics, which would break down performance by law school.

It’s also unfair to accuse Sander of seeking to dismantle racial preferences. True, his hypothesis is that affirmative action students are disserved because they derive less benefit from an elite law school than students who meet the usual admission standards. This is the “mismatch” theory, which suggests that students who are weaker than their classmates will often do better academically — and on the bar exam — if they attend a less-competitive school.

The mismatch theory may be mistaken. But suppose it were found to be valid? That wouldn’t necessarily lead to the abolition of racial preferences. Another result might be the strengthening of mentorship and other programs to help less-well-prepared students achieve at higher levels.

An additional objection to Sander’s project is that good marks on the bar exam don’t guarantee success in the practice of law. Perhaps so. If the exam does a poor job of measuring the credentials of lawyers, it ought to be revised. But that has no bearing on Sander’s request.

…

Regardless of what we think of Sander’s hypothesis, he should be given the data he seeks. Defenders of affirmative action should not fear a serious examination of how well it’s working.

Bingham Associate Leaves With Hopes of Movie Making
by Zusha Elinson

Cupcake Brown is ready to write the next chapter in her life.

The former prostitute and junkie-turned-lawyer left Bingham McCutchen earlier this month to work on a movie script for her widely acclaimed memoir, “A Piece of Cake.”

“I enjoyed the practice of law, but I want to help people,” Brown said. “I’ve just been inundated with speaking requests, but it’s hard to do when you’ve got billable hours and lots of responsibilities.”

She said she may eventually return to the profession as a public interest lawyer, but doesn’t know yet.

After surviving rape and abuse as a child at the hands of her foster families, Brown joined a violent gang in Los Angeles as a teen. Her life spiraled into heavy drug use until she nearly died on the streets of San Diego after a four-day crack binge.

She eventually kicked her habit and went on to graduate from law school at age 37, in 2001. Since then, she had worked as a litigation associate in Bingham McCutchen’s San Francisco office.

…

She doesn’t have a movie deal yet, but Brown said she’s already chatted with actresses Regina King (”Friday,” “Jerry Maguire”), Kerry Washington (”Ray”) and Nia Long (”Big Momma’s House”). The lead role in the movie she hopes to make will be a difficult one, Brown noted: “There’s the street Cup, and then there’s the professional Cup, and you have to be able to play both.”

Hard Case: Job Market Wanes for U.S. Lawyers
Growth of Legal Sector Lags Broader Economy; Law Schools Proliferate
By AMIR EFRATI

A law degree isn’t necessarily a license to print money these days.

For graduates of elite law schools, prospects have never been better. Big law firms this year boosted their starting salaries to as high as $160,000. But the majority of law-school graduates are suffering from a supply-and-demand imbalance that’s suppressing pay and job growth. The result: Graduates who don’t score at the top of their class are struggling to find well-paying jobs to make payments on law-school debts that can exceed $100,000. Some are taking temporary contract work, reviewing documents for as little as $20 an hour, without benefits. And many are blaming their law schools for failing to warn them about the dark side of the job market.

The law degree that Scott Bullock gained in 2005 from Seton Hall University — where he says he ranked in the top third of his class — is a “waste,” he says. Some former high-school friends are earning considerably more as plumbers and electricians than the $50,000-a-year Mr. Bullock is making as a personal-injury attorney in Manhattan. To boot, he is paying off $118,000 in law-school debt.

“Unfortunately, some find the practice of law is not for them,” Seton Hall’s associate dean, Kathleen Boozang, said through a spokeswoman. “However, it is our experience that a legal education is a tremendous asset for a variety of professional paths.”

A slack in demand appears to be part of the problem. The legal sector, after more than tripling in inflation-adjusted growth between 1970 and 1987, has grown at an average annual inflation-adjusted rate of 1.2% since 1988, or less than half as fast as the broader economy, according to Commerce Department data.

…

On the supply end, more lawyers are entering the work force, thanks in part to the accreditation of new law schools and an influx of applicants after the dot-com implosion earlier this decade. In the 2005-06 academic year, 43,883 Juris Doctor degrees were awarded, up from 37,909 for 2001-02, according to the American Bar Association. Universities are starting up more law schools in part for prestige but also because they are money makers. Costs are low compared with other graduate schools and classrooms can be large. Since 1995, the number of ABA-accredited schools increased by 11%, to 196.

Evidence of a squeezed market among the majority of private lawyers in the U.S., who work as sole practitioners or at small firms, is growing. A survey of about 650 Chicago lawyers published in the 2005 book “Urban Lawyers” found that between 1975 and 1995 the inflation-adjusted average income of the top 25% of earners, generally big-firm lawyers, grew by 22% — while income for the other 75% actually dropped.

…

The news isn’t any better for the 14% of new lawyers who go into government or join public-interest firms. Inflation-adjusted starting salaries for graduates who go to work for public-interest firms or the government rose 4% and 8.6%, respectively, between 1994 and 2006, according to the National Association for Law Placement, which aggregates graduate surveys from law schools. That compares with at least an 11% jump in the median family income during the same period, according to the Census Bureau. Graduates who become in-house company lawyers, about 9%, have fared better: Their salaries rose by nearly 14% during the same period.

Many students “simply cannot earn enough income after graduation to support the debt they incur,” wrote Richard Matasar, dean of New York Law School, in 2005, concluding that, “We may be reaching the end of a golden era for law schools.”