Student with designs on fashion law gets crash course (and a handbag) at summer institute in NYC

On Memorial Day, I piled out of a taxi in Brooklyn.

It was the quintessential "20-something girl from the Midwest heads off to New York" opening scene to a movie — I dragged my huge suitcase up the front steps and struggled to figure out how to unlock the apartment doors with the set of keys my sister's best friend had left for me at a neighborhood coffee shop.

Of course I had packed a huge suitcase, full of a myriad of outfits for all types of occasions. I was in New York City for two weeks for the inaugural Summer Intensive Program in Fashion Law at Fordham University School of Law.

Fashion Law? Yup.

I actually have an undergraduate degree in apparel marketing and public relations and spent two years working for Payless ShoeSource at the corporate headquarters in Topeka. My friends like to joke that I'm like Elle Woods from "Legally Blonde," but unfortunately I did not get a 179 on the LSAT nor do I resemble Reese Witherspoon.

I heard about the program on NPR last summer when Professor Susan Scafidi spoke about the new Fashion Law Institute, the only place in the country to study the emerging field of fashion law. As an undergrad at K-State, an apparel marketing course focused on the global textile industry sparked my interest in going to law school. Intellectual property law came up, and since then I have been captivated by the legal issues of the apparel and retail industry.

Back to New York.

We had class every evening, so I took full advantage of exploring the city each day. I wandered around all of the highlights, walked along the beautiful Highline in Chelsea, and visited four of the five Apple stores on the island (my boyfriend works for Apple Retail). I went to museums and saw the phenomenal Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And of course, I ate some delicious meals. I loved having a big dish of Pinkberry for dinner (it truly is better than all of the knockoff yogurt shops around Kansas), and I scoped out the good food trucks and followed them on Twitter to find them in the city.

So what did I learn?

"Students in the Summer Intensive Program will explore the diverse areas of the law that affect the fashion industry and are at the heart of the Fashion Law Institute, including intellectual property, business and finance, international trade and government regulation, and consumer culture and civil rights. Within these categories, specific topics include the protection of fashion designs, counterfeiting, licensing agreements, fashion financing, garment district zoning, real estate, employment issues from designers to models, consumer protection, sustainability and green fashion, import/export regulations, sumptuary laws, and dress codes."

The class was composed of 35 students from around the world: 40 percent law students, 40 percent practicing lawyers, and 20 percent non-legal fashion industry members, including the ultra-chic director of ecommerce from Marc Jacobs, who gifted us all with a Marc Jacobs tote bag that pokes fun at designers knocking off their own lines.

The class's diversity made for interesting discussions, and Professor Scafidi had us sign up at the beginning of the course to defend a position statement. I chose to disagree with and defend the following statement: "Except in cases in which consumer safety or health are directly threatened, the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit goods should be legalized."

We also had a series of guest speakers. My favorites included the former president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), Stan Herman, who had an outstanding sense of humor and immense knowledge of the fashion industry; and Sigrid Olsen, a former fashion designer. Sigrid had her namesake company bought out by Liz Claiborne in 1999, only to see the brand she built shut down in 2008, and the "Sigrid Olsen" trademark retained by Liz Claiborne. Lesson learned from her? Don't name your company after yourself. Once the trademark and copyright rights to your name are sold, they are sold forever.

When we discussed issues related to modeling (employment and contract law) we had a former model tell her story about her experiences in the fashion industry, and then later in the evening heard from lawyers representing two different modeling agencies. I had never thought about the legal issues in the modeling world. Modeling agencies fight with each other to represent certain models; while models fight to stay alive on meager wages and starvation diets. Additionally, models often blindly sign away copyright privileges to the images they pose for, so the photos they think will be used in one way by one company are often resold by the photographers many times without the models receiving a penny of compensation.

I was incredibly impressed by Professor Scafidi. She lectured off the cuff nightly on a wide array of topics that are clearly her passion. The discussions on intellectual property were the most interesting to me, and it was interesting to contrast the laws in Europe, where apparel design is generally more protected, to the United States, where a bill is actually before Congress right now to offer more protection to designers.

The class was phenomenal, but I left New York overwhelmed by how much we had learned and discussed in two weeks, and figuring out how to apply it all. I hope that down the road I may be able to find a way to incorporate my love for the apparel industry into my career as a lawyer. In the mean time, I will continue to read articles posted to the Institute's Facebook page and a few different blogs dedicated to fashion law, like the one by my professor, Counterfeit Chic, or by one of my classmates.

And yes, we all received fuchsia beach towels emblazoned with the Fashion Law Institute's fantastic logo. I will use it with pride.

Lauren Luhrs, 2L at KU Law

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The power of positive psychology: part two

In our last Career Services blog posting, we introduced the field of positive psychology and its potential impact on law students and lawyers. To review, positive psychology is the science of exceptional human performance. Researchers in the field consider a number of questions, and one of the most important and fundamental is – what makes us happy?

Is it money? Prestige in the form of good grades? Status from wealth or material possessions? Education level? Youth?

Positive psychology research would answer in the negative to each of these.

Research by positive psychology pioneers Dr. Edward Diener—aka Dr. Happiness—and Dr. Martin Seligman has shown that once your basic needs are met, additional income does little to raise your sense of satisfaction with life. Neither education nor a high IQ is consistently linked by research to happiness.

According to research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, older people tend to be more satisfied with life than the young and less likely to fall into dark moods.

In an oft-cited study of law students, there was no significant correlation between a lack of distress and age, undergraduate GPA or law school GPA.

So what makes the average law student happy?

Professor Lawrence Kreiger of the Florida State University College of Law and Professor Ken Sheldon of the Department of Psychology of the University of Missouri concluded in their research that law students thrive when the things they value most relate to (1) understanding or improving oneself; (2) being closely connected to other people; (3) helping others; and (4) building community.

Kreiger and Sheldon identified a shift in law students away from activities and behaviors that are inherently enjoyable, meaningful or important and towards extrinsic motivations. As students progress through law school they increasingly report pursing goals to please others. Examples may include impressing others through wealth accumulation, status or prestige, or doing things out of guilt, fear or compulsion. Students who emphasize extrinsic motivation or values tend to experience persistent stress and anxiety and are unlikely to experience sustainable happiness.

Based on positive psychology research, what then are some practical steps law students can take that fit into the intrinsic motivation model that has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety and to promote sustainable happiness?

Here are a few suggestions that consistently pop up in the research:

Practice gratitude

• Write in a gratitude journal, a diary in which you express what you are grateful for every day or week.
• Write a letter to or visit with someone who has made a difference in your life.
  

Perform acts of kindness

• Studies have shown that people receive a greater happiness “boost” by doing good things for others rather than themselves.
• The acts should be both random (holding a door open for a stranger with an armful of packages) and systematic (participating in a Big Brothers Big Sisters program once a week).
• These acts make you feel generous and capable and help build connections with others. They also tend to result in reciprocated kindness.
  

Take care of your body

• Sleep—7 to 8 hours a night.
• Exercise—Take a look at KU psychology professor Steve Ilardi’s groundbreaking research about depression, which has shown that of the six factors tracked by Ilardi, exercise has the biggest effect on treating depression.
• Stretch
• Smile and Laugh (really)
  

Law schools are increasing warming to the tenants of positive psychology. In addition to the work of Prof. Lawrence Kreiger at FSU Law, important research into the potential for positive psychology to improve the lives of law students has been completed by Prof. Todd Peterson at the George Washington Law School, and Dan Bowling at Duke University School of Law School has recently begun teaching a for-credit elective called Well-Being and the Practice of Law.

In our final posting in the series, we’ll tackle some additional, more theoretical ways to combat depression and improve the potential for happiness.

Todd Rogers, Assistant Dean for Career Services

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Career services dean answers employment questions from prospective students

Let’s address some questions about employment raised byprospective students over the last few weeks.

(1)  When will employment statistics be available for KU Law’s mostrecent class?

For each graduating class, KU Lawmeasures employment at graduation and nine months after graduation. Each February, every law school in thecountry submits final employment data to the National Association for LawPlacement (NALP). In June, law schoolsreceive a detailed report from NALP of national and school-specific trends.

We will submit our class of 2010report to NALP on February 22, 2011. Atthat time, we will update our website with the “employed at graduation” and“employed nine months after graduation” data using the US News formula (whichdiffers slightly from the NALP formula).

Here are the US News numbers fromthe 2006-09 graduating classes:

Graduation Year	% Employed at Graduation	% Employed Nine Months after Graduation	US News Ranking
2009	63.2	89.0	TBD (April 2011)
2008	69.4	93.6	67 (April 2010)
2007	67.1	95.5	65 (April 2009)
2006	65.9	94.7	73 (April 2008)

(2)  What’s the geographic dispersion of recent KU Law grads?

For the class of 2009, the lastclass for which we have complete information, 51.2 percent of the class wasemployed in Kansas, 21.7 percent in Missouri and 27.1 percent in other statesand countries.

Most students reportingemployment in Missouri were employed in the greater Kansas City area.

Outside of Kansas and Missouri,the most traveled-to states by the Class of 2009 were:  Washington, D.C. (7), Arizona (3), Oklahoma(3), Colorado (2), Illinois (2) Maryland (2), New York (2), Texas (2), Virginia(2) and Washington (2).

Historically, between 65 percentand 75 percent of our students remain in the West North Central Region, asdefined by NALP to include Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, NorthDakota and South Dakota. The bulk ofthese students find employment in Kansas and Kansas City, Mo. 

Other popular regions for ourgrads are South Atlantic (on the strength of D.C.), West South Central (mainlyin Texas) and Mountain (primarily in Arizona, Colorado and Utah).

(3)  How has the recession impacted on-campus recruiting?

Nationally,the most dramatic impact of the current economic situation was on fall 2009recruiting of 2Ls for summer 2010 positions. At the largest national law firms,the median number of summer offers dropped from 30 in fall 2007 to 18.5 in 2008to just 8 in 2009. The percentage of callback interviews resulting in summerjobs fell from 60 percent to 46.6 percent to 36.4 percent over that three-yearperiod. The acceptance rate of 42.8 percent was an all-time high.

Our on-campus interview (OCI) numbers serve as a rough barometer of the overallhealth of the legal economy, especially regionally. By tracking the last threeacademic years, it becomes clear that the recession was in full bloom in latesummer/early fall 2009, the same time period in which employers were decidingwhether to participate in the fall 2009 OCI program to recruit 2L law studentsfor the summer of 2010.

Over half of law schools surveyed reported a decrease of 30 percent or more inthe number of employers on campus in fall 2009 compared with fall 2008. Ourdrop was 40 percent, from 72 to 43 employers; 38.2 percent of schools in theMidwest reported a decrease of more than 40 percent. 

Some good news: In the fall of 2010, 50employers from 7 states conducted 670 interviews on campus, as compared to 562on-campus interviews in the fall of 2009. An increased number of call-back (second) interviews, offers andacceptances were also reported by our students.

(4)  What did last year’s 1Ls do over their summer break?

Eighty percent of the Class of2012 reported summer employment and/or participation in summer school, a lawschool clinic or a study abroad program.

• 45 enrolled in a summer school class.
• 40 enrolled in a clinic in which they received course credit forcompleting practical legal work.
• 15 participated in a KU Law-sponsored study abroad program.
• 10 received a Bremyer Summer Clerk Scholarship for summer workwith a legal employer in a less populous Kansas community.
• 15 received a KU Law Summer Stipend for volunteer legal work witha public interest organization. Stipend recipients worked in Kansas, Missouri,Arkansas, California, New York, Texas and Washington.
• Finally, 25 students secured a legal internship with an employeroutside of the Bremyer or KU Law Summer Stipend Programs.

Todd Rogers, Assistant Dean for Career Services

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International Law Society Wine Tasting Fundraiser to benefit underprivileged children

Last year, more than 150 KU Law students, faculty and alumni, including local lawyers and judges, attended the International Law Society's annual Wine Tasting Fundraiser. Guests were greeted with wine glasses and encouraged to mix and mingle over incredible wines, enjoy the exquisite fruit and cheese spread, and dance to live music. Guests were also able to bid on silent auction items flown in specifically for the event, including hand-dyed canvas batiks, hand-beaded jewelry and mounted photographs.

We had an incredible turnout and were able to make a larger charitable donation than ever before. Proceeds benefited OptimusYouth, a nonprofit organization co-founded by KU Law 2L and ILS member Sean Foley. OptimusYouth partners with well-established community efforts worldwide to make a difference in the lives of underprivileged children.

The proceeds from the 2011 Wine Tasting Fundraiser will again benefit OptimusYouth, and the festivities are shaping up to be just as grand. Guests will again be treated to fantastic wines, catered hors d'oeuvres, live music and a silent auction. We hope you will join us!

2011 ILS Wine Tasting Fundraiser
7-11:30 p.m. Feb. 24, 2011
Lawrence Arts Center
940 New Hampshire Street
Lawrence, KS 66044

Lani Leighton, ILS president

Photos from last year's Wine Tasting Fundraiser

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A response to ‘Is law school a losing game?’

On Jan. 8 the New York Times published a much-discussed article called “Is Law School a Losing Game?” The article’s author, David Segal, is critical of a law school system that he alleges overstates employment prospects to prospective students, all in the name of packing classrooms with students who pay high tuitions.

The Lawrence Journal-World linked to the article on Jan. 13 and asked about the employment picture at KU Law.

Let me partially answer that query by referring to two specific criticisms leveled by the article and then explaining how KU Law does business.

• Segal refers to the “Wonderland” of law school employment statistics and states that many schools — even some outside the top 40 — list the median starting salary of their graduates in the private sector at $160,000.

  As a prospective law student, it’s imperative to carefully scrutinize employment stats. For example, there’s a significant difference between private practice and public sector salaries. Statistics that blend private practice and public interest salaries together are relatively meaningless.

  So are private practice salary stats based on only a small percentage of graduates. It’s likely that schools outside the top 40 listing a median starting salary of $160,000 for grads in the private sector have not accounted for even a majority of those graduates when calculating the average.

  For the class of 2009, 79 KU Law students reported a private practice salary. This represented 80.6 percent of 2009 graduates employed in private practice. The average salary was $72,660.

• Segal also alleges that schools massage employment data to produce numbers that are inciting to prospective students and palatable to current student and alumni. In doing so, he notes that “a school with the guts to report, say, a 4 percent drop in postgraduate employment would plunge in the rankings, leaving the dean to explain a lot of convoluted math, and the case for unvarnished truth, to a bunch of angry students and alums.”

  The decision to come to law school is an important one that ultimately involves three years of intense study and, in some cases, significant borrowing. Prospective law students should be afforded every opportunity to review accurate employment data. The following information for graduation years 2006-09 is available on the KU Law website.

  Graduation Year	% Employed at Graduation	% Employed Nine Months after Graduation	US News Ranking
  2009	63.2	89.0	TBD (April 2011)
  2008	69.4	93.6	67 (April 2010)
  2007	67.1	95.5	65 (April 2009)
  2006	65.9	94.7	73 (April 2008)

  In the midst of the recession, our numbers took a hit, but we were upfront about reporting the losses accurately.

• One statistic not touched upon in the article, and not often discussed by prospective students, is the percentage of students employed in “bar admission required” positions.

  Most law students enroll with the goal of practicing law after graduation. By graduation, some have decided to pursue less traditional, “J.D.-preferred” or other professional positions that do not require the passage of a bar exam.

  During the recession, we’ve seen the percentage of recent grads employed in “bar admission required” positions decline as an increased number of graduates who do want to practice law have been unable to secure traditional legal positions and have been forced to look elsewhere.

  Here’s the percentage of KU Law graduates from the last eight classes who were employed in “bar admission required” positions nine months after graduation:

  KU Law Class	Ratio	Percentage
  2002	117/162	72.2%
  2003	96/146	65.8%
  2004	133/184	72.3%
  2005	124/179	69.3%
  2006	117/170	68.8%
  2007	115/157	73.2%
  2008	120/161	74.5%
  2009	97/156	62.2%

  (Note: Other categories are J.D. Preferred, Other Professional, Non-Professional, Pursuing Degree FT, Unemployed-Seeking and Unemployed-Not Seeking.)

The recession has certainly put a damper on graduates securing traditional legal positions, and prospective students deserve access to this information from all schools they’re considering.

Todd Rogers, Assistant Dean for Career Services

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