New Year, New Law Librarian of Congress

Welcome to 2012!  Today marks the start of David Mao’s tenure as the Law Librarian of Congress.  Appointed Deputy Law Librarian of Congress in May 2010, Mr. Mao has served as a key member of the Law Library’s leadership team and managed the Law Library’s global legal research portfolio, including the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN). He succeeds Roberta Schaffer, the 22nd Law Librarian of Congress.

The news regarding the transition was posted by Andrew Weber who has been the Legislative Information Systems Manager at the Law Library of Congress since June 2004.  An active blogger at In Custodia Legis, Weber also supplied the text of January 2011 interview in which Mr. Mao expressed his thoughts regarding the responsibilities of the Law Librarian of Congress and described the career path he chose, which should prove to be inspirational reading for law and library school students alike who are considering becoming law librarians.

Book Reviews: Forensic Oratory

Bradshaw, Brad. The science of persuasion: a litigator’s guide to juror decision-making. Chicago, Ill.: American Bar Association, 2011. ISBN 978-1-61632-989-1

Mathis, Laura. Acting skills for lawyers. Chicago, Ill.: American Bar Association, 2011. ISBN 978-1-61632-932-7

Both of these recent ABA publications address the subject of forensic oratory, and while they stress many of the same points, their approaches are very different.

Mathis is an actor, not an attorney (although she is married to one!) In her preface, she draws a parallel between actors and attorneys: “Both actors and attorney are expected to entertain, to inspire us to look at life a bit differently, and to share a story that has not been told” (p. xi). Her book offers an amusing and instructive overview of the tools attorneys need to meet these expectations, and thus to best represent their clients. Her focus is on physical presence, demeanor and appearance, with advice on relaxation, breathing, diction and body movements. Mathis likens taking depositions to being a talk show host (p. 57), and preparing witnesses to being an acting coach (p. 97). Quick tips (e.g., “Depose your coffee maker or potted plant”) and exercises, both physical and mental, are presented in text boxes throughout the book.  She even devotes a chapter to advice on the perfect photo shoot.

Bradshaw is a trial consultant with a Ph.D. in experimental psychology, and the emphasis of his book is on the psychological aspects of oratory.  It has a more serious tenor than Mathis’s book, but it is not at all a dry scholarly tome. He says in the preface that he wants to reach as broad an audience as possible: “… law students, experienced litigators, and everyone in between” (p. xiii). The book’s opening chapter presents the basic elements of persuasion: credibility vs. likeability, “reading” an audience, and framing an argument to fit that audience’s beliefs. The following chapters work through a linear progression from trial preparation through jury deliberations. Text boxes throughout highlight practical advice; e.g. “Make sure your witness is comfortable with silence” (p. 64). The final chapter of Bradshaw’s work is an extended exercise, entitled “Putting it into practice”. It presents a fact pattern, and then suggested lists of questions covering depositions and voir dire, plus opening and closing statements for both plaintiff and defendant.

These two books make an outstanding combination, and all but the most seasoned litigators are sure to find something useful in each of them.

Your Law School’s Ranking? Not as Important as You Think!

Law
school success, as measured by grades, is more important for lawyers’
career success and satisfaction than the ranking of the law school they
attended, according to a recent study reported by the ABA Journal’s blog.

The study was encouraging news for lower-tier law schools and their students. The ABA article said:

[T]he
salary boost for achieving high grades more than makes up for the
salary depreciation associated with attending a lower-ranked school. The
study also found that lawyers who left law school with the lowest
grades felt the least secure about their jobs.

The authors of the study, “The Secret of My Success: How Status, Prestige and School Performance Shape Legal Careers,” summarize how its findings contradict “conventional wisdom”:

The
consistent theme we find throughout this analysis is that performance
in law school–as measured by law school grades–is the most important
predictor of career success. It is decisively more important than law
school "eliteness." Socioeconomic factors play a critical role in
shaping the pool from which law students are drawn, but little or no
discernible role in shaping post-graduate careers. Since the dominant
conventional wisdom says that law school prestige is all-important, and
since students who "trade-up" in school prestige generally take a hit to
their school performance, we think prospective students are getting the
wrong message. (p. 2)

Those
of you who chose law schools to be closer to home, or because you
wanted more practical preparation for practice (a demonstrated strength
of NSU's), feel good about your choice! You're likely to be more
satisfied with your law school, and over a lifetime, you may well do
better.

The
yet-to-be-published study is by Richard Sander (UCLA Law) and Jane
Yakowitz (Brooklyn Law). It looked at beliefs about the effects of the
ranking of the students’ law school, grades in law school, and societal
position. It then reviewed the literature and statistics on the effects
of these three variables on lawyer career success. It also compared the
effects of the factors using a regression model.

Mentoring Picnic Gets Noticed

The 2009 Mentoring Picnic sponsored by the Shepard Broad Law Center Career Development office and the NSU Law Alumni Association was featured in The Florida Bar News for September 15.   The picnic at the Shepard Broad Law Center brought law students together with members of the practicing bar and bench in an informal setting, giving the students the opportunity to learn, as well as to network.  Morethan 70 Broward County attorneys and judges attended, including Judges Paul Backman, Robert Diaz, Joel Lazarus, Jeffrey Levenson, Linda Pratt, and Arlene Simon.

- By: Deborah McGovern

ABA’s Secrets of Superstar Associates podcast

What sets “superstar” associates from the rest? Your ABA, the ABA’s Media Relations e-newsletter, has a brief review of the Section of Litigation’s podcast episode that tries to answer this question by interviewing twelve partners who were identified as “superstars” when they were associates.Some of the tips:

• Build
  a great reputation. Good reputations are set early. Recognize that your
  reputation will follow you your whole career.
• View everyone as a client; anticipate partners’ expectations and deliver on them.
• Treat
  professional development like a case on a docket. Plan ahead, set goals
  and recognize how your current activities fit your future plans.
• Have fun with litigation. “People who love what they do are happy to immerse themselves in it,” says Hentoff.

- By: Meg Kribble

 

Managing your reputation

Eweek Careers reports that 83% of recruiters now use Google to research prospective employees, up 9 points from two years ago.  Even more striking is that the number who report having eliminated a candidate based on web search results has risen from 25% to 43%. 

The article goes on to explain ways you can use the rules of Google’s page rank system to improve the quality of results that your name generates.  One that can be implemented in a number of ways is to be proactive, creating positive pages and links that will show up high, pushing less desirable results lower.  If you use Facebook and MySpace for personal contacts and keep your profiles private, sign up and configure a public profile at professional networking site LinkedIn.com, which has a high page rank.  Get out there and comment intelligently on websites and blogs in your field using your name with a link to your own website, blog, or your LinkedIn profile. 

For more about the pitfalls of social networking with links to additional tips for cleaning up and managing your web reputation, see this Novalawcity post.

Hat tip: FSU College of Law Research Center Blog

Social networking sites as litigation tools

From our director Lisa Smith-Butler comes this article from Law.com, Finding Treasures for Cases on Facebook.

At Malbrough & Lirette in Houma, La., a secretary browses MySpace and Facebook Web sites each day.

She’s not checking the online social networking sites for personal reasons, but is performing one of her job duties.

. . . .

In one case, Malbrough said she helped secure shared custody for the
father after finding his wife had posted sexually explicit comments on
her boyfriend’s MySpace page. In another case, a husband’s credibility
was questioned because, on his MySpace page, he said he was single and
looking.

. . . .

Steve Balash of Santa Barbara’s Balash & Haaland-Ford said that
Jessica Binkerd was sentenced in January to five years and four months
in prison after she drove under the influence of alcohol and got into a
crash in which her passenger was killed.

Balash said he expected Binkerd to get probation, but she
received a prison sentence in large part because her MySpace page
showed her wearing an outfit with shot glasses and an alcohol
advertisement after the accident.

“That’s all the judge talked about,” said Balash, adding the
outfit was a part of a Halloween costume and his client had not been
drinking at the time. “He never got past that. He said she learned no
lesson and showed no remorse.”

Future lawyers should also be careful about what they post on their social networking profiles.  Here are some resources with tips about limiting public availability of your social networking profiles:

• Common Sense Facebook Advice for Students
• How to clean up your digital dirt
• How to use Facebook without losing your job over it
• MySpace, Facebook, and Job Searching

- By Meg Kribble

Landing the job blog

For advice about applying for jobs and the interview process, take a look at Landing the job blog.  The author of the blog has recently published a book about the same (Landing the Internship or Full-Time Job).  Recent posts on the blog include tips on proper job interview etiquette and resume style.  This reference came from Workplace Prof Blog.

High demand for patent attorneys

Patent attorney positions are among the top five careers in demand according to this story on CNN Money: 5 careers: big demand, big pay.  It helps if that attorney has "an advanced degree in electrical and mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, biotechnology, pharmacology or computer science."  The pay scale in a large law firm for a patent attorney may be as high as $125,000 to $135,000.

Job search tool

Indeed.com is a new search engine for those seeking employment opportunities.  The service indexes job postings from over 500 sources including job web sites, newspapers, associations, and company career listings.  Searches can be narrowed down by location.  The site also features a blog called Blog Indeed.