Okay, see that XKCD cartoon up there? That’s not how law-school academia works. Law school academia is more like this: It’s not exactly news that law review articles don’t carry the same weight in their relevant field as, say, scientific papers published in a peer-reviewed journal. Ask any practicing lawyer...
At the close of yesterday’s post, we talked a little about how we’re starting to see signs of opposition to the insane quantity of federal crimes. More and more people are starting to see how bad it really is, we noted — perhaps enough some day soon to reach a...
A few times, now, we’ve talked about how there are too many federal crimes, and how an enormous number of them are frankly unjust. We’re just one of many voices crying out about this deep and dangerous problem. The other day, the WSJ entered the conversation with a piece titled...
Real nice, Google. Because we were bored out of our skull this afternoon, we checked this blog’s stats on Google Analytics. Browsing through the various keywords people have used to find this blog over the past year, all we can say is “The hell is wrong with you people?” Leaving...
Looks like there’s going to be more work for defense lawyers, and that’s a real shame. Hey, we like working as much as the next guy, but we’d rather have a lower crime rate. After Obama’s little press conference yesterday, though, we can’t help but think that the crime rate...
This morning’s WSJ has a short article with a long headline, “Manhattan DA Is Put on Defensive: Vance’s about-face on bail in sexual-assault case follows two high-profile court defeats for office.” The blurb from the website’s front page summarizes the story pithily: “The newly surfaced problems in the sexual-assault prosecution...
Bill Otis, a former AUSA and now an adjunct at Georgetown Law, had a piece earlier this month in the Federalist Society’s magazine Engage titled “The Slow, Sad Swoon of the Sentencing Suggestions.” His article opens with the sentence “The Guidelines are a lost cause.” We were in total agreement...
Everyone knows that eyewitness identifications are completely reliable — that is, you can count on them to be wrong. (Everyone does know this, right?) If the person being identified is a stranger, the chances of a correct I.D. are slim to none. There are lots of reasons for this. Eyewitnesses...
The New York Times had an interesting data crunch yesterday called “The Lawyer Surplus, State by State.” Economic consultants EMSI estimated how many new jobs for lawyers there are going to be each year, in the near future, in each state. Then they used the actual number of bar...
Too many people are in jail. The rate of incarceration is just going up and up. Is it doing any good? If you look at the two graphs above, you’ll see that the prison population in the United States has soared, while the amount of violent crime has plummeted. The...
Where did all the law jobs go? And are they coming back? Good questions. More on that in a second. But first, we have to say that we’re frankly tired of hearing law students and newish JDs moaning about the dearth of lawyer jobs to be had. Particularly grating are...
In a post on the future of law schools, Josh Blackman predicts that “many legal services that are created today through individualized, customized efforts by toiling associates, will be replaced by information products that can be downloaded on demand, like a commodity. … This transform no doubt would dramatically...
We rag on Attorney General Eric Holder from time to time on this blog. For good reason — he’s been something of an idiot on profiling, miranda, terrorism, etc.. But today he did something praiseworthy, and we’d be out of line if we didn’t say so. Last August, Obama...
The law is an amazing profession, but it’s not for everyone. In fact, it’s not for the vast majority of people. And when it’s not a good fit, the downside is awful. Mismatched lawyers are miserable. Their lives can really suck. They may be very good at what they...
We keep being surprised by these folks who insist that lawyers need to blog. That it’s a great way to generate clients, pumping up the old SEO so potential clients see your website and hire you. That advice always strikes us as the equivalent of saying you ought to name...
Recent Comments