This takes the cake

A summer associate (i.e. not a lawyer) gets fired from a law firm (Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell ) because he can’t perform. He also wants to make more money. (A commendable virtue.) So he sues his law school. He says his GPA was too low. His GPA was too low because the tests he took required him to type fast, and he can’t type too fast, and he chose to type his exams.

(You can read the complaint law suit against his firm here: http://www.autoadmit.com/complaint.pdf. He filed this pro se. He typed it. I can’t find what his GPA was. However, since U. Mich. has quite a high curve, I should note that if he had been at any other law school, he would have been on probation or asked to leave. It is unclear whether he intends to sue UMich in a Michigan court. The complaint is sort of funny because for various technical reasons, and is sure to end up on law firm refrigerators.)

Nevermind that University of Michigan bends over backgrounds to help people with disabilities.

But, while we are on the subject, why don’t we talk about things that unfair about law school. 1) Schools with better reputations have higher curves, and therefore, it is easier to pass and obtain acceptable grades. Schools with worse reputations have lower grade curves and often award many C and Ds, resulting in up to 1/3d of the 1L class leaving. 2) Law school rewards law students with a background similar to other lawyers, because these people know what sort of behavior is acceptable to professors and employers. 3) Law schools generally test based on written exams at the end of semesters. People not having a “good day” on these days don’t do as well. 4) Law schools don’t teach for “the bar.” So, students that don’t separately study for the bar fail. 5) Most firms don’t recruit at “lesser” law schools. If this guy had gone to another law school, MNAT wouldn’t have take him on as a summer associate. 6) Law schools reward reading. If you can’t read so well, you probably won’t do so well.7) The practice of law involves rectifying perceived injustices inflicted on individuals. In dealing with such individuals one must perceive that one is being treated unfairly as compared to the individuals doing the inflicting.

… and the list goes on and on. Somehow, most life is also unfair.

Part of me feels for this guy, because, perhaps all the injustices of the world (and law school) are placed upon him. The other half thinks he is just frustrated.

Larry, at 8:15 am EST on February 5, 2007

The list doesn’t stop

Don’t forget the worst burden of all. People who didn’t go to law school at all don’t have as much success in being recruited by law firms as those who did. Clearly all recruiting efforts should be ‘major blind’.

stm60, UConn, at 11:25 am EST on February 5, 2007

Anyone ever take a typing (keyboarding) class?

Sigh!

Any student taking academic coursework in a college or university ***ought***, in this 21st century, to know that good typing skills are an ***essential***, not a frill. There are papers to compose, library-provided databases to search, notes for presentation to be prepared. And, as Mr. Zack found out, exams to complete within certain timed limits.

If students do not have typing or keyboarding classes available to them prior to college there are other ways of learning the requisite skills. There are typing tutorials available for computers (Mavis Bacon anyone?).

And there are books! What a concept. At their local libraries should be books listed under subjects such as: TYPEWRITING, or under: KEYBOARDING. It only takes a few weeks to become an acceptable typist, and a few months more of diligent practice (work on those term papers!) should make one a proficient, even a fast, one.

The book _Typing Made Simple_ (nowadays called _Touch Typing Made Simple_), an old watch with a sweep second hand (today you’d want one with HH:MM:SS display), and my mother’s ancient Remington, plus an hour a day during less than two months of summer vacation one year in high school, and I became a typist long before personal computers were invented. With the computer, and less need to pound the keys of a manual typewriter, I am a faster, and better, typist than ever I was as an undergraduate.

Typing/Keyboarding ought to be a skill acquired in elementary school, along with reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic.

Touch Typist, at 4:05 pm EST on February 5, 2007

I’m down with the slow typist on this one—we slow typers need to band together, raise our two overworked index fingers in the air, and take the fight to Congress for some protective anti-discrimination legislation. I’d write more on this but it would take me too long to do so.

Craig P, at 4:45 pm EST on February 5, 2007

Typing has nothing to do with this suit

If you read the complaint, he also alleges a conspiracy to injure him between law school officials and the place that hired him. Yes, these folks (based on some “unknown” but “apparent animus") spent a great deal of time and energy to harm him. It seems to me that if he had been a fast typist, he would have instead realized that his professors had simply agreed to give him bad grades, based on the same “motive.” In my opinion, this poor guy needs help that a remedial typing class will not provide.

Tom, at 5:55 pm EST on February 5, 2007

Quizzical and R.11, Unfortunately, because he is pro se (even though he is admitted in another state as far as I can tell), there is a fair chance that he won’t be sanctioned. It is very difficult – if not impossible – to send a clear message to these types (e.g. angry pro ses and lawyers representing themselves) that they need to get over it.

Obviously, something happened that we don’t know about, because hardly anyone is ever fired from a summer associate position weeks before it was to end. Although the suit will be dismissed, it would be funny to see people give depositions in which they talk about that ever-so-vague term of “fit.”

Larry, at 6:25 am EST on February 6, 2007