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Daily Kos: The Daily Show: Tuesday w/ Hannity poll

Jon: Well, at the very least, is the government better prepared to deal with Rita then perhaps we were with Katrina?
Rob: Absolutely Jon. Whatever they’re shortcomings in the past; the federal government has learned the lesson of Katrina, star blaming state and local officials now. I’ve already been assured by FEMA that the mayor and governor will have failed. And this time the president will not be detached. There are already plans to have him helicoptered in to save a baby trapped in raging floodwaters.
Jon: That seems to be taking a bit of a chance, no?
Rob: Nah, they’ve got 5 babies spread out around the area. Jon, they’re confident Bush will get one.
Jon: who would give their baby to be used in that type of fashion?
Rob: You’d be surprised Jon, the GOP has a classification for that level of donor… They’re people who have donated $250,000 and of course a baby

(PS: While I was writing this, I managed to break the other theme, so here’s a new one. huzzah!)

Matt Hoffman, of the [non]billable hour placed an excellent post up about how to fix law schools. By the way, I hadn’t read the 5×5 with Law Student Bloggers until midway through this post. And here I was thinking that I had been somewhat novel with my idea for “rotations.”

Oh well - great minds think alike, I guess…

• I would really like to see a “rotation” program begin for law schools. Look, at most law schools, only a few people will get a summer associateship with a big firm - and at some, no one will. But this is one thing that could fix a lot of things - helping people who “really shouldn’t be lawyers” figure out what they should be and helping people who aren’t sure what kind of law they want to do figure that out. It’s not that hard - they do it in medicine. You don’t want a cardiologist who hates doing cardiology, do you? That sounds like it would be a good way to lose heart - but hundreds of law students go out there, get miserable, and then decide that what they’d really like to be doing is sailing a boat in the U.S. Virgin Islands instead of ever having considered law in the first place.

  How would rotations work? Well, it would need the ENTIRE legal community behind it, I think. There’s already some “interaction” between the law schools, judicial system, and law firms - but we’re talking major interaction. Law school would be extended by one year - but during that one year, students could even get paid. (I suppose this could also be done without extending it and using the third year as the rotation year - but there are some really interesting upper level electives that would get killed…Heck, it could even be one semester!)

  Each student would spend a month or so in a practice area: in-house counsel, judicial interning, small firm practice, large firm practice, state/local government, federal government, non-profit, NGO, criminal prosecution, and criminal defense. Now, I haven’t quite worked out any logistics, but this would expose students to so many things that they wouldn’t normally get to do. Andy suddenly is able to figure out that while he didn’t enjoy working for a judge, he really enjoyed working with people at South Jersey Legal Services. Molly can learn that while she hated the atmosphere at Workem & Payem and couldn’t see herself as a big firm lawyer, she greatly preferred working at the Philadelphia Prosecutor’s Office. And Ashanti, who went through all those and decided that while she loved law school, practice wasn’t for her? Well, she’ll know that she should concentrate on consulting - I hear McKinsey & Co. is hiring!

  See the changes that would wrought on the profession? Rather than a bunch of mopey-eyed miserables, people will be doing something they actually want to do.

• Big Firms: I had a professor say something very interesting to me today that put a lot of my recruiting worries to rest: “Why are you so worried about life after third year? Go out, do your associateship, and don’t shut the door on the rest of your life. You don’t have to take the offer. If you like working at the big firm, swell! You’re one in a million, take the money and go for it. If you don’t, say “Thanks, but no thanks,” tell them you appreciate the offer, and go off to England or work for the Justice Department or whatever you want! It’s a summer job, not a marriage.”

  But seriously, I understand the point about big firms - and he agreed. I don’t know if it’s what I want, and I’ve been told how miserable it can be (and believe me, I love being in law school; if I had a choice between working as a lawyer and being a professor somewhere, I would jump to be Professor Monkey rather than Mr. Monkey, Esq.). But I definitely won’t know if I don’t try it - and even though you’re in a magical happy land for the summer, you can still see the way other people work. If I don’t like it…well, I suppose I just will have to find something I like! I hear American Samoa is nice all year round.

• You know, I wonder how to better reach out to solo & small firms. I bet it wouldn’t be too hard - there’s a phone book & e-mail everywhere these days. Why the heck not just do a mail merge and say “Hey guys, we’ve got all these young lawyers looking for work, and they want jobs.”

  Back when I was a marketing major, one of the ways to “takeover” a company was the “internal buy-out” method. I don’t know if this is the real name, because I can’t find my notebook from Professor Nickel’s class. But here’s what I remember:

  Find an old person who wants to retire in a few years. Agree to work for a certain number of years at a certain salary, getting more and more money and control of the company every year - and you keep paying them a salary and then possibly even a pension (I think one has to pay the pension). At the end of the few years, take over the firm.

  What does this do? You keep the old person’s company alive. They get money. They get someone who cares about it. You get the goodwill of the company and the trust of the community. EVERYBODY WINS. This is something that small firms can do pretty easily, and I think it would translate well.

• Okay, this might sound odd, but the most interesting work I did all summer had to do with attorney ethics. I would love to take a class on advanced ethics for attorneys (and actually, call me a turncoat, but if there was an ethics prosecution, and there probably is, but I’m currently too tired to search for one) I would jump to serve on it. It could be all about what naughty lawyers have done, and discuss philosophies in law and how to better encourage an ethical and moral bar. And you know, speaking of attorney ethics, I want more outrage when attorneys do bad things - how come we can talk about “bad CEOs” or “bad government officials” in business school or social studies, but not “bad lawyers” in law school?
• Since I mentioned teaching above, why is there such an insistence on “Harvard/Yale + Law Review + Clerk” to teach? One professor, when I asked about teaching, gave me five options: Go to Harvard/Yale; get an LL.M. from Harvard or Yale; work at a soul-crushing big firm in NYC (and get a LL.M. from Columbia or NYU); clerk at the Supreme Court; or donate a lot of money to the school on the condition of becoming a professor. Here’s my idea: I’m fine with getting an LL.M. (frankly, I’m excited by going to school) especially if I can get one from Oxford or the London School of Economics. I have no problem with practicing for a few years. So I’ll take this: I’ll go to one of the British universities (or even Harvard or Yale, I guess) and I’ll work for a few years. And I’ll throw in a bonus: I want to teach, not just write boring articles and sit on my ass - and you should know that someone who wants to do something is usually going to do a much better job than someone who doesn’t care.
• More Free Food. Look, law school is expensive anyway. I could use a cookie or something other than just pizza. How about sandwiches once in a while? Maybe a nice taco tray, or some of those little tomatoes with whitefish inside? Gosh, those are good.

Don’t forget to donate: Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation
Some of the headlines capturing the depth of the devastation (borrowed from AmericaBlog:

CRISIS BUILDS IN NEW ORLEANS — USA Today

OUR TSUNAMI — NY Post

DAMAGE TO ECONOMY IS DEEP AND WIDE - NY Times business section

PANIC DRIVES GAS PRICES, TEMPERS UP — Atlanta Journal-Constitution

and then:

NEW ORLEANS’ NIGHTMARE GROWS — USA Today

HELP US — NY Post

CHAOS GROWS IN NEW ORLEANS — USA Today

NEW ORLEANS IN DESPERATION AND CHAOS — LA Times

And then:

DESPAIR AND LAWLESSNESS GRIP NEW ORLEANS AS THOUSANDS REMAIN STRANDED IN SQUALOR — NY Times

ANGER, ANARCHY IN NEW ORLEANS — USA Today

VIOLENCE, CHAOS MARK EXODUS FROM NEW ORLEANS — WaPo

NO FOOD, WATER. JUST CHAOS, FEAR. — Atlanta Journal-Constitution`

WORLD STUNNED AS US STRUGGLES WITH KATRINA — Reuters

And now:

RELIEF TRICKLES INTO NEW ORLEANS — USA Today

DOME EFFORTS STALL, FIRES ERUPT — USA Today

EMPTY, RUINED AND DESPERATE — Guardian UK

NEW ORLEANS BEGINS COUNTING ITS DEAD — Atlanta Journal-Constitution

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY — Time magazine

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? — Time magazine

A NATIONAL DISGRACE — NY Daily News