The atmosphere in law school admissions offices these days is downright dreadful. Applications to law school are down 15 percent from this time last year, according to the Law School Admission Council, and down by a third from eight years ago. The projected number of law school applicants for fall of 2012 would be the lowest since 1996, when there were 21 fewer law schools nationally and 16 percent fewer seats to fill.
The laws of supply and demand may apply to legal education after all. Eight years ago, over 100,000 students applied to law school nationally, but this year, in the face of relentlessly downbeat news about the employment prospects for lawyers, applications have cratered. Only about 67,000 applicants are expected — but the number of accredited law schools is higher than ever.
Only one law enforcement agency in the Carolinas is known to have a drone aircraft, and that $30,000 remote-controlled machine is collecting dust in a storage unit. But it and others could soon be put to surveillance use. The Federal Aviation Administration is on the verge of releasing new guidelines that will make it easier for police and other public safety agencies to apply for licenses to fly small drones at low altitudes.
Put eight people in a jury box. Tell them about a practice called “securities lending” and feed them phrases like “indemnity triggering date” or “tender price warranting liquidation.” Show them graphs and charts with numbers, and play seemingly endless videotapes of deposition testimony by former employees. Repeat for six days. Is it any wonder that counsel for both sides would be wringing their hands, wondering if the jury would return any verdict at all, let alone the one they’d like? But return a verdict it did in City of St. Petersburg v. Wells Fargo Bank.
Too bad pom-poms can’t be used in court. The perfect cheer might have given former Boston College cheerleader Alexandra K. Weishaupt the edge she needed to convince a federal judge that her personal injury case belonged in North Carolina. Weishaupt is suing her alma mater, alleging that the college’s negligence contributed to a nasty tumble she took while performing a cheerleading stunt as her football team faced off against Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem in 2008.
The national media is agog these days over the very public implosion of another high-flying law firm, New York’s Dewey & LeBoeuf. At last count, at least 75 of the firm’s 300 partners have departed since January. And the firm has now told the rest to start looking for new jobs, while the Manhattan district attorney’s office has opened an investigation into the handling of the firm’s finances by ousted chairman Steven Davis. Though uncommon, Dewey’s demise is not unprecedented.
The National Labor Relations Board’s Region 11 office in Winston-Salem, which serves North Carolina, South Carolina and parts of Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, is one step closer to consolidating with the Region 10 office in Atlanta, the board announced earlier this month.
As director and general counsel of the N.C. Real Estate Commission’s legal department, Thomas R. Miller spent 30 years going after unscrupulous agents and was the man behind controversial laws and rules that have shaped the state’s real estate industry. His staunch consumer advocacy occasionally put him at odds with large Realtor associations, but he wasn’t one to back down. Not until now. Miller retired on March 1 after hitting the three-decade employment mark.
Learn about new hires, partnership announcements or community service notices from law firms around South Carolina.
Little attention was widely paid last summer when the North Carolina General Assembly passed a law that changed many of the state’s gun rules. George Zimmerman’s night of self-appointed security duty took care of that. It turns out that the law passed in June 2011 contains a section virtually identical to the “Stand Your Ground” statute passed in Florida in 2005 and made infamous after the February night that Zimmerman shot and killed a teenager named Trayvon Martin.
