The basic idea is that the better the law firm, the more articles there should be on the Internet that refer to them. This is similar to the idea behind PageRank, although I can only find out the PageRank of a firm’s website to the nearest integer, which is insufficiently fine-grained.

I put each of the law firms’ full names through Google in the following format: "law firm name" AND law site:.au. The name is combined with the word law because firms like Gadens have rather common names that could be used in other contexts.¹ The search is restricted to Australian sites, because international firms like Baker & McKenzie would be unfairly advantaged - these rankings are meant to be for the Australian market.

Notes:
¹ This is very rough and some irrelevant hits might still be returned. However, it appears to be “good enough” via inspection of some of the hits found.
² The number of the partners is stated at 2 January 2009, and sourced from the Australian Financial Review, 12 December 2008, page 46.
³ “Deacon” is a common word and the search with this law firm’s name was particularly problematic with many irrelevant hits; the page count is therefore probably higher than what it should be.
⁴ Full disclosure: I currently work at Blake Dawson as a summer clerk.
^* The firms with an asterisk are the Big Six law firms.

For comparison, I used the same methodology on UK firms, this time switching the domain to .uk. Clifford Chance, with 236 partners in the UK, returned 19,000 hits. Linklaters, with 227 partners, was second, with 12,800 hits. Thirdly, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer scored 12,500 hits; it has 219 partners and counsels, roughly counted from their website. Interestingly, this is the same order as reported by The Lawyer Global 100 2008, which ranks law firms by total revenue!

And today, I accepted the summer clerkship offer from Blake Dawson.

If the question is about the Sydney Law Revue 2008, the answer is no. (The quote is from the “Holding out for a US Hero” skit, the closing skit.)

Last year, I wrote about the half-executed jokes that had the potential to be so much funnier. I wish I could make a similar comment this year. This time round, the directors somehow found it convenient to expend entirely with the punchlines in jokes. Instead, it was replaced with flat, meaningless drivel so that when it got to the closing, I was pretty much clapping out of politeness instead of sincere appreciation.

The occasional joke made in bad taste is to be expected in a revue; in fact, you could say it defines a revue. Normally, I’d have a good laugh at them. But given that the rest of the revue was so flat, when the (bad) jokes came around, the audience just didn’t buy them. We even had a heckler in the audience - and I pretty much agreed with everything he had to shout out. At one stage, one of the backstage members stuffed up with the mop between skits; that was almost one of the funniest moments (!).

China, with its astronomical growth and the Beijing Olympics just past, was an obvious topical subject. They didn’t fail to deliver on that count, but the jokes were so poorly delivered that they might have been mistaken for blatant racism.

To regain the confidence of its audience, the Law Revue in future years needs to create a coherent presentation that carries some kind of energy throughout the performance. A little bit of introspection might help; I’m sure if the directors actually sat down and listened to some of their own jokes, they might agree that they weren’t quite so funny after all. There was no doubt some great talent on stage; whether this talent was used most effectively is another question.

This year was no different, and I couldn’t resist snatching their advert from a law school noticeboard (after the applications have closed) to bring you a choice selection of alternative application methods. Satisfying any of the following would, apparently, “entitle you to an instant interview”:

1. List the middle names of all the partners of Gadens Sydney as at 30 June 2008
2. Draft your application entirely in prose, in the format of Dr Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham”
3. Accompany your application with an Elle Woods style application DVD.

The flier then says, “Attempting to satisfy all 3 criteria is just plain showing off.”

I was actually curious enough to look into these three criteria. First, the middle names: their website has a list of partners in Sydney, but I saw no middle names. I suspect you’d either have to be an insider or know an insider (in which case, you’re looking good anyway), or email each and every one of them and risk suffering their wrath.

For the second one, I may just be a philistine, but I’ll admit that I had to look up the Green Eggs and Ham reference.

Enoch I am
I am Enoch
I am Enoch
Enoch I am

That Enoch-I-am!
That Enoch-I-am!
I do not like
that Enoch-I-am!

Do you like
boring old law firms?

I do not like them,
Enoch-I-am.
I do not like
boring old law firms.

OK, I give up - especially after finding out from Wikipedia that the entire book is written using only 50 different words.

Finally, while I have observed that a number of select individuals at law school would fit right into the set of Legally Blonde, I suspect they have at least some measure of self-dignity. But law students prove me wrong all the time.

I don’t profess to have the answer to this question, because it is unfair for me to answer this question when I have only attended one of them (Sydney). However, surely, a recourse to statistics would provide us with an objective answer?

And with statistics, UNSW has proclaimed themselves the King of Law Schools in Australia. They claim:

The Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney leads all Australian universities for the quality of learning and teaching law. This is the second consecutive year the Faculty of Law, together with UNSW Australian School of Business, has achieved the top ranking in the business, law and economics cluster.

This claim is followed by a bunch of graphs that show that UNSW scores higher on a number of metrics, including “overall satisfaction”, “generic skills” and “good teaching” as measured by the Group of Eight. So far, this is all very convincing evidence that UNSW is better, right?

As Daniel pointed out when we were perusing these graphs together, there is a fundamental flaw with the statistics as presented. Where would they obtain measurements for metrics such “overall satisfaction” from? From their graduates of course. Unless they performed some kind of normalisation between the different universities, the outcome is liable to be affected by, for example, the difference between what Sydney and UNSW law students expect from their courses (maybe Sydney students just demand more?) or bias arising from the pride that students have in their own institution.

Clearly, statistics are one factor to consider in your choice of law school or university. However, it would be a mistake to base your decision merely on these statistics, or other statistics such as the proportion of graduates in full-time employment after a year (maybe more students from a particular university went into post-graduate study?). There is more to university than that. You need to consider the experience outside the classroom, in the form of clubs and societies and extracurricular activities. There is also a difference in culture that you need to consider. This was best highlighted for me when I watched the UNSW Law Revue last year; their jokes weren’t funny to me for the most part, yet all the UNSW-ers seemed to enjoy it; I put it down to a difference in culture.

So what do I think? I certainly don’t regret choosing Sydney University (for both my science and law degrees). I enjoy the intellectualism that pervades the place, although law students at Sydney tend to be more competitive than I find optimal.

Some highlights:

• There is no legal obligation to tell the public where the red areas are…
• The legislation does not appear to provide a limit on how far a person can be escorted from the green area…
• No criminal convictions are necessary to be on the list. It is only necessary that the Police Commissioner satisfy himself that a particular person would pose serious threats…

Given the good-natured protests thus far, police concerns have hardly been warranted, and a please explain might be in order as to why their fears were even remotely believable to begin with.

Aiya, UNSW Law Revue 2007 (entitled Poll Fiction) was a load of shit. A complete waste of a Thursday, the leaden acting, lame jokes that lacked even the concept of a punch-line and the bright spotlights that seemed intent on burning my retinas out made the night a memorable event for all the wrong reasons. I won’t be going back any time soon la~ Fine, there were some enjoyable skits, but the drive home (thanks Tommy!) was a more interesting experience than the revue itself. Yeah, what he said. Daniel and I were youtube-ing before heading off, and we noticed a video (now deleted? can’t find it now) from someone at Usyd blasting the UNSW revue for making fun of our quad and having the UNSW Galactica joke - well, there wasn’t a Usyd quad in sight, but the Galactica got a mention. With the Galactica joke, I think it’s more likely that there’s a mole on the UNSW team that allowed Usyd to score a hit against UNSW before their revue even started.

Over the weekend, I went to Malaysia Fest 2007 (photos) and got myself a dose of Malaysian culture. I can see why it’s true that Malaysians are said to live to eat… the food, having Malay, Chinese and Indian influences, was quite interesting and tasty =) Of course, it helped that I had a guide who lives to eat, so Ru Jih, if you actually read this, many thanks for a great day out, wouldn’t have been the same without you … hope it didn’t make you too homesick~

The other thing that’s happened recently is, of course, the lunar eclipse. Conclusion: I need a tripod. These black rectangles are awful - you really can’t do a shutter speed longer than 1/60s if you’re holding the camera with your hand, and when the moon’s that dim, you’d need at least a few seconds of exposure. Still, it was a very beautiful thing to watch, and literally out of this world.