Nobody Likes a Tattletale
Thank you, Boalt 2L's, for not exhibiting the poor judgement and lack of foresight that a Michigan 2L demonstrated today by forwarding a letter from their CDO to the Wall Street Journal Law Blog.*
The Michigan letter encourages students with offers from White & Case to look elsewhere, as the firm may have over-hired its 2009 summer class. (For the record, the firm denies anything of the sort.) Setting aside whether the letter was accurate, one thing is certain: the Michigan CDO will think twice before sharing any inside tips with its 2L class. And, likely, White & Case now has a sour attitude toward the school. Neither of those are good for students.
I have never seen a letter from our CDO on WSJ Law Blog or ATL. Good. Perhaps our collective judgment is but one more reason to hire Boalties.
_______________________
*While speaking of Wolverines, how could we not mention other hot topics this year, which include cell phones and sandwiches?
The Michigan letter encourages students with offers from White & Case to look elsewhere, as the firm may have over-hired its 2009 summer class. (For the record, the firm denies anything of the sort.) Setting aside whether the letter was accurate, one thing is certain: the Michigan CDO will think twice before sharing any inside tips with its 2L class. And, likely, White & Case now has a sour attitude toward the school. Neither of those are good for students.
I have never seen a letter from our CDO on WSJ Law Blog or ATL. Good. Perhaps our collective judgment is but one more reason to hire Boalties.
_______________________
*While speaking of Wolverines, how could we not mention other hot topics this year, which include cell phones and sandwiches?
Labels: OCIP/Employment, Technology Rants
posted by Patrick Bageant at 9:29 AM
15 Comments:
If real, what's wrong with publicising the letter? If W&C really did urge students not to accept, so what? Isn't it better that students know?
And if the Michigan CDO is inaccurate (not sure why they'd lie about something like this), what's wrong with revealing that publicly?
It is incredibly cool of the Michigan CDO to seek out students with offers and share whatever information they have.
Thanks to the kid who shared the letter with the entire legal community, the CDO is much less likely to do so in the future. That's what's wrong with it.
Also notice how no one from boalt sent along CDO's firms are rescinding offers, accept offers quickly e-mail.
Why would the CDO be less likely to share that info? Is it private?
I really wonder what NALP is going to do about all of this. It's become clear that a good handful (if not more) are openly skirting the rules while we are simultaneously expected to abide by them. They have all the leverage, and we have little. This seems like the very thing NALP was designed to prevent.
Two other things:
1. You forgot to add the abysmal record of its football team under other hot Wolverines topics.
2. I just got this paper survey from ELS, and while I fully support making double-sided printing the default, I don't support adopting a pricing scheme that charges me 16 cents when I only need one side of the page (for, say, a letter or something). I couldn't find that option on the survey, though...
I understood from the survey that you CAN change to single-sided and pay 10 cents per printed side. But double-sided is default I'm pretty sure we'll still be able to pay 10 cents for a one-sided letter as long as we turn off the default. Is that wrong?
I understand this:
"Proposed scheme:
Default: double-sided
16 cents per SHEET, regardless of whether there is printing on one or both sides of the sheet."
and this:
"The printers will charge per SHEET, rather than per PRINTED SIDE; i.e. one sheet of paper will cost 16 cents regardless of whether it is printed on one or both sides."
to mean that if I print on one side of one sheet, I will be charged 16 cents. (The YES option also reflects this language.)
I also don't know of any way to override the default pricing settings of the printers, but if you know one, do tell!
Consider that the Michigan CDO was likely relying on information from a Michigan alum or someone else at the firm who is not supposed to say such things. Outing the CDO email ruins the 'looking out for one another' benefits of an alumni system because alums are not going to reach out like this if it seems likely that doing so could result in publicly embarrassing the firm.
As for the survey, charging more whether you double print or not is a necessary component of prodding people to make the shift. If it cost 8 or 10 cents to print single sided, some people would just get in the habit of always unchecking the default. That would undo the whole point of saving paper.
Loose lips sink ships!
I doubt the CDO is likely to withhold info in the future... they probably will just do better to eliminate the paper-trail.
I'm all for info like this being outed. Law firm hiring is at best a game, and at worst a joke. Things like cold offers (to make firms look like they are still hiring nearly 100%) to over-quota offering are what make this profession really REALLY frustrating to get into. If a firm does something like this, it's good to get that info out so that future students learn to take whichever particular firm is in question with a side of salt.
The bigger problem is the print release station. Wasting paper is bad but I see the release station as one more thing to break/cause a backlog. The cost per page should be a sufficient deterrent to wasteful printing. Maybe there could be a release for long documents (say over 50 pages) but otherwise I see this as doing more harm than good.
I don't mean to hijack this thread, but there's something patently unfair about basically taxing single-side printing, especially when there are professors and employers who require it for some things. (I like to consider myself a conscientious double-sided printer.) Additionally, I shouldn't ever have to pay double because I was too concise to take up a second page. That's just silly.
Laura very nicely described the reason the Michigan letter should not have been forwarded.
Re: the printers. Didn't someone do this exact same survey last spring?
?
Actually, the whole scene in the printer rooms is sort of surreal and probably worthy of its own little thread. For example, what is the story behind that newly placed, hand-scrawled 'please don't put westlaw paper in our lexis printer again, under any circumstances, ever' sign? Could we be witnessing the origins of a feud? Has some kind of line been drawn in the sand? Do we need a line of tape down the middle of the room?
After devoting the better part of my afternoon to clearing jams in the Boalt remote printer,* however, my thoughts are probably unprintable. So I'm going to put it behind me and head to Beckett's instead.
*The trick, by the way, appears to be flipping the paper over in the tray . . . wtf kind of "trick" is that??
Good, so I'm not the only one who consistently has to spend 30 minutes to get a one-page print-out. I thought I was cursed. Must be the printer.
And it's a bit early for Beckett's, no?
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