Litigation Secretary/Assistant (Newport Beach)

[Ed.-- No education requirements, except to not be a JD.]

http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/npo/4770850937.html

         Litigation firm in Newport Beach looking for Litigation Secretary/Assistant. Applicant should be well-versed in calendaring rules for Orange and Los Angeles Counties and be able to calendar manually as well as with computerized docketing systems. Applicant must be experienced in filing pleadings in federal and state court, preparing trial binders, and must be proficient with Microsoft Word. Applicant must have at least 3-5 years of experience. Please send resume and compensation requirements by email. No phone calls please. No JD's please.

Duties will include:
-Filing documents with Court
-Contacting clients, opposing counsel, etc. by mail, email or phone
-Indexing documents
-Calendaring
-Filing
-Binders for appearances
-Research
-Answer phones, take messages, direct incoming calls to appropriate staff
-Respond to client questions and/or paperwork as needed

• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• do NOT contact us with unsolicited services or offers

Conflicts Assistant- CONTRACT POSITION ((LOOP))

[Ed.-- Thanks to Dan for emailing this in using the contact form on the right.]

http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/lgl/4765742984.html

A downtown Chicago law firm seeking Conflicts Department Assistant. MUST have some legal and research experience and come from a strong academic background. Candidate MUST be able commit to a 4-6 month assignment. This is great experience for someone looking to gain legal experience at a reputable, large firm! Those with their Juris Doctorate will not be considered for this role.

Responsibilities Include:
• Conflicts analysis and identifying possible conflicts
• Manage correspondence, create reports, presentations and time-sensitive materials. 
• Ensuring accuracy of documents and presentation materials. 
• Able to follow specific detail-oriented projects as assigned.
• Keeping a high level of discretion with corporate documents and classified records. 

Please apply if you have the following:
BA degree is REQUIRED
MUST have ADVANCED technical skills (Microsoft Suite especially STRONG Word, Excel and PPT)
Strong attention to detail
Legal experience is REQUIRED
Those with their Juris Doctorate will not be considered for this role.

Immediate Need for Entry-Level Paralegals (Washington, D.C.)

[Thanks to Jackie for sending this in via the message box on the right.]

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/lgl/4747184560.html

Law Resources, Inc. is seeking temporary entry-level paralegals for an immediate start. Candidates must have a college degree with a GPA of 3.0 or higher and be able to make a two (2) year commitment. An eye for detail, strong worth ethic and team oriented attitude is desirable. Please submit your resume ASAP for consideration - qualified candidate will be contacted to discuss the opportunity in more detail. THIS IS FOR AN IMMEDIATE START!

PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR RESUME IF YOU'VE ALREADY DONE SO. 
PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR RESUME IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A GPA OF AT LEAST 3.0.
NO JD'S - THIS IS AN ENTRY-LEVEL POSITION.

Contracts and Rights Management (Chatsworth)

[Ed.-- Weirdly, they don't want an entertainment law LLM to negotiate their contracts.  Must be an oversight.]

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/lgl/4761401893.html

Looking for an experienced Film Distribution Contracts Paralegal to support Business Affairs and Legal. We are a worldwide Distribution company with a library of of 500 titles that licenses all available rights: Theatrical, DVD, Television, VOD and Ancillary.

Candidate mus have working knowledge of License Agreements, Royalty Reports and FilmTrack or other Rights Management Database experience. Responsibilities to include:

CONTRACTS:
• Drafting of contracts for distribution, worldwide, domestic, and sales international
• Draft IFTA Multiple Rights License Agreements and Admendments
• Follow up on Royalties per Agreements terms, including Digital deals
• Initiating IFTA Arbitration and attending if necessary
• Handling SAG matters
• Handling delivery process of legal documentation to distributors

RIGHTS MANAGEMENT:
• Management of Rights through the FilmTrack database, entering all contracts to ensure proper Avails and running Avail Reports.
• Assisting Sales Department to acquire Producer approvals
• Assisting Accounting Department in reporting to Producers
• Monthly and Quarterly scanning and emailing Producer their Reports

SALES AGENCY AGREEMENTS:
• Assisting in drafting of Sales Agency Agreements with Producers

OTHER:
• General Office Duties (i.e. Filing, Coping, Answering Phones) & assist CEO.

POSITION REQUIREMENTS:
• Ideal candidate MUST have at least 3-6 Years experience with Entertainment law or paralegal experience preferably media, broadcast or the entertainment industry.
• Must type at least 80-100wpm and team oriented and work some OT
• Must have strong computer skills in MS Office, Outlook, and Rights Management Database
• Strong oral and written communication skills and attention to detail
• Ability to work within deadlines, exercise good judgement and maintain client confidentially

Candidate MUST have at least 6 Years experience with major Entertainment law firm or motion picture company handling substantially all of the above.

Salary
Competitive salary (commensurate with experience)

Additional Information
At noted above, this position requires substantial experience handling all of the above matters. This is NOT an entry level JD position and PLEASE no phone calls.

Entry Level Paralegal (Downtown) (New York, NY)

[Ed.-- I have never seen an "LSAT Disadvantage" listing before.  One wonders how the employer plans to verify that his prospective employee has never taken the LSAT.  The insistence on a "top 200" undergrad-- apparently, school #200 offers invaluable skills you just can't get from #201]

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/lgl/4728094040.html

Entry Level Paralegal (Downtown) 

Major mass litigation firm has openings for Entry Level Paralegals in their Bankruptcy department. 

ENTRY LEVEL POSITION.

Job responsibility include: internet research, communicating with clients, reviewing documents, 

Job requirements: Experience interacting with clients, heavy phones, following and documenting processes/internships are OK. Must have a 4 year degree, from a top 200 college and graduated with a GPA over 3.5 and majored in Pre-Law, Political Science, Economics, Communications, etc. 

- Must be willing to make a 2+ year commitment (ideally even more long term) 
- Cannot have taken the LSAT or have a date registered for the LSAT 
- Can start within 2 weeks 
- Has worked in an office setting before 
- Worked throughout college
- Well spoken, polished/professional 
- Will not get bored with administrative tasks or overwhelmed by competing priorities 


Must have strong communication skills, time management and organization abilities.

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities


Great opportunity for candidates who plan to go on to Law or Grad school in 3-5 years.

Mission Statement

By now, word is out that law school graduates, particularly those from non-elite schools, are frequently unable to find jobs as lawyers.  While law school apologists have largely abandoned the “law school is not a trade school” argument, there are three arguments that have become increasingly popular:

1. The “you need to network” argument.  Under this argument, new law school graduates can find a job; they simply need to undergo the mystical practice of networking.  If they do not find a job, then it is proof positive that they simply did not network hard enough. This proposition is a variant of arguing that unemployment is high because people keep blowing their job interview.   I will happily concede that the number of entry level legal jobs is somewhat elastic and an individual graduate can improve their chances by networking-- I have little doubt that, here and there, graduates of marginal schools can work their way into a law clerk position by cold calling their undergrad’s alumni database.  However, this does not solve the systemic problem.  No amount of networking can solve the massive imbalance between the demand for new lawyers and the supply of new lawyers.  
2. “You need to hang a shingle”/”Rural lawyer” argument.  Under this construction, lawyers have the ability to simply open their own practices and become a lawyer that way, especially in rural America.  This argument has already been ably refuted, so I will not belabor the point, except to note that our hypothetical rural lawyer would have to come up with at least somewhere between $5,000-$15,000 just to open their law practice, on top of student loan debt.  Getting that kind of loan from a bank after being $100,000 in debt from law school is, itself, a non-trivial problem.  It also ignores the fact that at lowly ranked schools, half the graduates don’t pass the bar.  For example, at the most recent July administration of the California Bar exam, only half of the graduates from Thomas Jefferson passed. Law schools are admitting students who may never pass the bar exam and hence can’t hang a shingle.  Similar to #1, an individual applicant may be able to improve his chances of passing the bar by working hard, but if half the graduates of a school are failing, then that points to a systemic problem.
3. The “JD Advantage” argument, which is the primary focus of this blog.  The National Association for Law Placement (“NALP”) page on this concept is representative:

It turns out that the JD degree prepares you for a variety of exciting jobs and careers. While many law school graduates go on to practice law, many others go on to play leadership roles in a variety of settings. Many law school graduates obtain positions for which Bar Passage, or even a JD, is not required, but their legal training is deemed to be an advantage or even necessary in the workplace. As the saying goes "you can do almost anything with a law degree!"

This argument has at least three critical flows..  The next series of posts will describe them in detail, but in brief:

First, let’s suppose everything said above was completely true.  It fails to be persuasive on its own terms.  A “JD Advantage” job is, by definition, one that could be acquired without a JD.  To the extent somebody ends up in a JD Advantage job, then they will almost invariably have been better off if they had simply taken that job, or a substantially similar one, three/four years earlier instead of going to law school.  Given three/four years of lost earnings on account of time spent attending school and the debt that the average law student carries, then somebody who takes a “JD Advantage” job will financially be massively behind somebody who took the same job without the JD.

Second, these JD advantage jobs are incredibly scarce.  There is a variation of the sharpshooter fallacy going on here; NALP found people with good non-legal jobs who have JD’s.  What they do not provide is any evidence that the law degree was necessary to obtain or keep the job in question.  If I searched hard enough, then I am quite confident that I could find people who spent some time in prison yet, against the odds, now have a great job; obviously, it would be absurd to characterize these jobs as “Breaking and Entering Advantage.”  Similarly, just because somebody has a good job and a law degree that they don’t use, it doesn’t mean that the law degree led to the job.

Third, it’s actually worse than that.  “JD Advantage” jobs are rare, but the “JD Disadvantage” jobs this blog memorializes are incredibly common.  That is, job listings which are available to people who have just a college degree (or not even a college degree), but that explicitly say that JD’s will not be considered.  In other words, because a graduate from a non-elite school will likely never find work as a lawyer and merely having the JD cuts off other opportunities, a non-elite JD can and does have negative value-- and would even if it could be obtained overnight and for free.  The purpose of this blog is to move the “JD Disadvantage” job beyond anecdote and prove from publicly available job listings that a JD is toxic on the open market, even for non-lawyer legal jobs.  

Finally, I will put up a post that responds to some criticisms of the “JD Disadvantage” concept, taken substantially from the JDU thread about this blog.

Patent Agent – Small Corporation – New York, N.Y.

[Ed.-- This company needs someone to assist with drafting, writing, and prosecuting patents.  This ad says four different ways that they don't want JD's... not even if the Editor in Chief of the John Marshall Review of Intellectual Property Law was available.  As always, keep in mind that "not having a JD" is a separate qualification; if you have two years of experience, a master's degree in a scientific field, 2-4 years firm experience, scientific knowledge and experience in cellular biology, etc., etc., they still do not want you if you have a JD.  The JD ruins the value of the other skills, experience, and degrees you have.]



NeoStem is seeking a Patent Agent to assist with drafting, writing, and prosecuting patent applications; and, strategically developing patent portfolios, and supporting litigators in the development of enforcement and defense strategies. The ideal candidate will NOT have a JD and will have a strong technical background in Biology and MUST have 2-4 years of patent prosecution experience. NO JDs will be CONSIDERED at this time.


Responsibilities

• Prepares and drafts patent applications
• Conducts prior art database searches for patentability and freedom to operate analyses
• Manages a portfolio of approximately 100 patents and patent applications
• Analyzes patents and scientific papers and documents to assist patent attorneys on patent prosecutions in the US and OUS
• Works closely with business, project teams, general counsel and product development to identify and articulate opportunities for patent protections
• Supports Patent attorneys in patentability and analysis
• Coordinates prosecution activities with various departments
• Other duties as assigned

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Biology or a relevant scientific or life sciences discipline required; Master’s degree preferred
• At least 2-4 years of experience with patent prosecution; prior firm experience is a plus
• DOES NOT require a JD degree and NO JDs wll be considered at this time
• Must have scientific knowledge and experience in cellular biology/biotechnology
• Must be available to work minimum 15-20 hours per week
• Registration with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) a plus
• Must be proficient in Microsoft Office Suite, preferably Word and Excel
• Must have an excellent track record in building effective relationships with other departments and third parties
• Ability to comfortably interact and clearly communicate with individuals at all levels of the organization
• Proven ability to manage multiple activities and make complex decisions
• Must be organizational savvy and action-oriented
• Ability to manage critical and ambiguous situations to make effective decisions
• Ability to maximize business results through continuous improvement
• Strong technical, written and verbal communication skills required
• Strong influencing, planning, organizing, problem-solving and negotiation skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills

Contact
If you are interested in this exciting opportunity, please send a copy of your resume directly to scotton@neostem.com.
Additional Info
Employer Type: Small Corporation
Job Location: New York, New York

As a leader in the emerging cellular therapy industry, NeoStem is pursuing the preservation and enhancement of human health globally through the development of cell based therapeutics that prevent, treat, cure, or regenerate damaged or aged tissue, cells and organs and restoring their normal function. Cellular therapy is the process by which new cells are introduced into a tissue to prevent or treat disease, or to regenerate damaged or aged tissue. We believe that cell therapy will play a large role in changing the natural history of diseases as more breakthrough therapies are developed, ultimately lessening the overall burden of disease on patients and their families, as well as the economic burden that these diseases impose upon modern society.