Stop Legal Outsourcing on Facebook. Join Now!

Locke at Shilling Me Softly has alerted us to a new Facebook page and their mission to stop legal outsourcing. If a Facebook group could get Betty White on Saturday Night Live, I think a good number of lawyers and supporters of keeping American jobs at home can come together to take on this serious issue via Facebook.

If you are an aspiring lawyer, it would behoove you to understand the text of ABA Formal Opinion 08-451, Lawyer's Obligations When Outsourcing Legal and Nonlegal Support Services, which Locke explains in his latest post.

If you have a Facebook account, please join Stop Legal Outsourcing now and tell your friends!

Horror News Open Thread

Another day, another sign that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Let's start with the news that 300k teachers could be laid off this summer. Unlike overpaid law professors who fuck (literally) their students and contribute little to the well being of our society, teachers who work in primary, middle, and high schools are underpaid, overworked, yet are essential to an educated safe, and productive community. Schools in my area have already proposed 4-day school weeks and extended vacation. I expect the crime rate to skyrocket. When teenagers have nowhere to go because all of the schools and recreational facilities have been shut down, the only thing left to do is alcohol, drugs, sex, and loitering.

I've been putting off the BP Oil gusher spill because it's just too depressing beyond what we've all read and seen on the news and in photos. I recommend Naked Capitalism and Corrente for updated news and analysis of the cover-up story. Not only have wildlife and jobs been destroyed, but now there are reports that fishermen have become ill from BP's toxic chemicals while trying to clean up the spill.

More and more stories about sick fishermen are beginning to surface after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The fishermen are working out in the Gulf -- many of them all day, every day -- to clean up the spill. They said they blame their ailments on the chemicals that BP is using.

One fisherman said he felt like he was going to die over the weekend.

"I've been coughing up stuff," Gary Burris said. "Your lungs fill up."Burris, a longtime fisherman who has worked across the Gulf Coast, said he woke up Sunday night feeling drugged and disoriented."

It was like sniffing gasoline or something, and my ears are still popping," Burris said. "I'm coughing up stuff. I feel real weak, tingling feelings.

"Marine toxicologist Riki Ott said the chemicals used by BP can wreak havoc on a person's body and even lead to death."

The volatile, organic carbons, they act like a narcotic on the brain," Ott said. "At high concentrations, what we learned in Exxon Valdez from carcasses of harbor seals and sea otters, it actually fried the brain, (and there were) brain lesions."

Despite the environmental disaster in the Gulf, Shell continues to go forth with plans to drill on the Alaskan coast as early as July 1st.

Do you have additional doomsday news to report? This is an open thread. Legal and non-legal news welcomed.

Careers Services Scrambling... Reminds me of my Alma Mater

I hope this post doesn't offend anyone.  If you're overly sensitive or PC, you should not read this post.  I am not sensitive, nor am I politically correct, and I cannot censor myself.

I ran across this article and it brought me back to my school, circa 2000.  Basically, some Colorado Law School is looking at an unemployment rate of 65% at graduation.  So, what are they doing?  Are they overhauling the system, not accepting a new 1L class?  Are they setting up loan forgiveness programs?  NOPE... they are "scrambling" to place students in temporary jobs.  Ha.  Is that so they can report 99% of students employed to US News?  If they get all grads on the same temporary project that lasts 1 week, for that week, they can say that all grads are employed. Hilarious....

Well, this is not really the point of my post, but a side note.  Back when things were good...  Oh yah... they haven't been good for lawyers since the dot.com bubble exploded--which is when I graduated.  But I digress.  In my class, there was a guy who I could not stand.  Although I'm friends with many gay men, I could not stand this one.  He was queeny and catty and annoying.  Imagine Christian Siriano, but a lawyer and not particularly nice.  He would regularly spread rumors that every straight/married/attached guy in our school made a pass at him when they were alone.  I just found his efforts to convert people, or claims that he did, a little obnoxious.  He wasn't even cute... a little pale, frail and skinny boy. If I were a straight man-- I would not turn for him.   Let's call him Lee.  

He was also a trust fund baby (one of the few people in my class that paid for his tuition in full) and VERY southern.  As such, when he graduated with very good grades, he insisted that he wanted to stay in the south.  In an ideal and non-bigot world, besides his obvious personality issues, he should have been a shoe-in with excellent grades and a commitment to staying in the area.  But Lee was inexplicably rejected by firms although he was the most qualified candidate.  In his own little trust fund world, he failed to see the merits of toning it down a  little bit for the sake of the stuffy old white guy in the suit.  And I admit that it's a sad state of affairs that "toning it down" is necessary.  But even straight people have to do it some extent.  As you may recall:

1.  If you are married and female, don't wear a wedding ring.  Employers will think you'll get knocked up soon.

2.  If you are not married and male, wear a wedding ring.  Employers like to think that you are shackled down with responsibility and a family. It makes you a harder worker.

3.  If you have curly hair, straighten it and tie it back.  I don't even know why this is. I guess old white stuff lawyers are scared by curly hair.

and so on...

So, Lee failed to tone it down a bit to land a job and he would prance into interviews in his queen-like way and not get the job offer.  

So graduation came around and Lee was still unemployed.  Well, my Alma Mater freaked out because they couldn't have one of their star students, who was from a rich and well known family, remain unemployed. 

So what did they do?

They scrambled.  The created a professor position at the school and gave him an offer.  And he happily accepted. I guess he thought he was just that good.  Maybe the dean was secretly lusting after him as well.  

Unfortunately, this is not a singular incident--isolated to my school.  It has happened at other schools subsequently.  There is just so much pressure to lie for the U.S. News & World Report.