wow. WOW!

That is very scary - the kid's either planning something big or is having a breakdown of some kind.

um, way to follow instructions there, asshole.

wow. WOW!

How many comments until someone posts a play on the phrase "law school gunner"?

I think we're all missing the point. Since when is 11:15-1:15 three hours? I guess we know why he isn't dean of the business school.

5 apparently

good job keeping students in the dark. If, god forbid, something was to happen, I hope everyone in administration loses their job.

No PC is acceptable in these cases. The Dean has to tell everyone exact facts and what was done. He also needs to identify the "student" so if anyone else has any info/experience with him they could step forward.

3:20: maybe when you have to start billing, you'll learn how to make 11:15 to 1:15 into 3 hours.

3:20: my first response, as well.

3:37: so clever

This stuff is scary. This happened "in the morning," way before the NIU shooting. Who knows how many people are out there just waiting to go off like this.

Follow up e-mail re: office hours sent 10 minutes after first e-mail:

Dean Randall’s open office hours today will run for three hours from 11:15 – 2:15 p.m.

(NOT 1:15 p.m.)

Thank you

3:35 - i'm sure you'd love the sordid details, but obviously the police are involved already. If the dean really did NEED to do any of those things, they would have told him and he would have done it already.

TTT and a nervous breakdown? Kid sounds well grounded to me. Realized his crappy prospects

3:49 - grow up

3:49 - give me a break.

Lat - disappointed that all of these "reports" are "he said"...none of the writers were actually there, apparently.

Probably should give the admin and school a break until all the facts are known.

Something vaguely similar happened at Northeastern a few years back, with the similar result that the kid was evaluated at a local mental health facility. It's sad to see things like this happen.

Something vaguely similar happened at Northeastern a few years back, with the similar result that the kid was evaluated at a local mental health facility. It's sad to see things like this happen. The administration didn't post anything about it in that case.

I saw a girl have a breakdown at my law school right around exam time. She accussed some cafeteria worker of stealing from her. She started shouting obscentities at the workers, then ran weeping down the hall as people stood in shocked silence. It was like the eighth time this girl had an incident at the law school. She now works at a prestigious firm.

"Yesterday, a first-year property professor apparently wished his students 'Happy Valentine's Day' through a message written on his classroom's whiteboard."

Most human beings (i.e., non-Lawyers) would phrase this as: "Yesterday, a first-year property professor apparently wrote 'Happy Valentine's Day' on the classroom whiteboard."

I heard from a friend at U.Tennessee law that something similar to this happened there a few weeks ago.

Well you know you have to be crazy to want to waste your time and money getting a degree from such a TTT

I bet it was that Grammar chick. Not having the period probably drove her mad

4:28 - is the doubt experienced by your "most people" whether the expression is truly on the board (the ink keeps fading in and out, for example), or whether the professor wrote it (notwithstanding that it was his classroom - at least for that time slot)? I think the original poster has done a little better job than you of describing the situation though, of course, language being what it is . . .

4:22 tells the truth: this happened in Scott Commons at UVA. The girl tried to get her money back for an extra thing of blue cheese or some such. VERY bizzare.

I once heard of a study that showed that people enter law school with the same relative proportion of mental issues as the normal population, but graduates of law schools have higher incidence. I think we -- as a profession -- frankly, should seriously consider the level of competition rampant in law schools, the stress level that it creates, and the challenges many students face in dealing with it. Not commenting on this issue per se, but in general, law students need to learn to RELAX.

Wow, what a crazy story.

I mean, the property professor is apparently both male *and* female. I had no idea Alabama was so open-minded...

My favorite part is them clearing the library of everyone but the big firm recruiters...really, there's so many ways you could go with that...you could say they cleared the library of all humans/worthwhile beings or that they were trying to create opportunity for more placements...okay, yeah, the issue is serious, but this is ATL, there has to be humor in that somewhere.

I was sitting in the room... within 6 feet. It wasn't 'nothing'.

I think the half-truths are probably more harmful than the real truth. We don't know what has happened since.

Class began fairly normal. Class begins and the professor began her lecture. Some time into it, he raised his hand and made a very weird comment. it was completely unrelated to everything going on in class, and the timing and content was very strange. Someone before class had written a happy valentines day note up on the board. (student, not professor). He asked if she could erase it off the board, and then started explaining that it was distracting, something about a date Saturday night, and how he couldn't do any of his reading this week because of that holiday. She asked if he was serious, and in a voice that sounded very joking, he said that no, he was only kidding. A little while later, maybe 15-20 minutes, he again raises his hand. We were looking at hypotheticals on a slide, and one involved both the University and Auburn. Again the timing and connotation of these comments were very weird and completely out of context. He asked her if she had written these herself or if she had gotten them out of the book. Again he looked very agitated. She said she had written them. He then asked her to change the slide up on the board, because Auburn up on the screen bothered him. He said something about how he has siblings that go there, and how it was very distracting to him. She seemed to notice something was wrong at this point, and just disarmed the situation by saying sure and changing the slide in the PowerPoint presentation.
After a while he began typing something on his laptop in Microsoft Word. He had been taking notes there, but what he was typing was different. I also heard afterward from someone sitting near him that he had been googling things on his laptop too (i.e. school shootings, OKC bombing). He raised his hand for the last time about 15-20 min before the end of class. At first he said he had a joke to tell, then an apology. He began reading it aloud. At first he said something along the lines of, I'm not like Nebraska or Colorado, and I'm not like Andrea Yates or Charles Murray or any of those other defendants we learned about in Criminal Law.. If you want to go through my bag, or my car, or my apartment, you are more than welcome to. and then some sort of apology about how he was sorry.

I think I was one of the few people that it clicked with that Nebraska and Colorado were references to school shootings. sometime during his talking, the professor asked him if this was the joke. He replied with something like 'yes, I just need to read all of it'. After he got finished, he was very visibly upset. He was shaking, his eyes had welled up and he was crying a bit. He was very twitchy and jumpy. He turned his chair and reached at the top of a black bag, and grabbed it by the top. He did not try to reach inside. Almost immediately, he put the bag back down, and then turned his chair face forward again. He reached for his keys, and his shaking intensified. He looked like he was on the brink of breaking down. With keys in hand, he got up and tried to leave. He did not pack up his things. He said 'excuse me' to the person next to him, and the guy began moving his chair up and out of the way very slowly. He suddenly seemed to change his mind and turned and sat back down. At that point he began using his laptop mousepad to highlight the text of what he was said in class, and made the font very large, so it took up the whole screen. After class I think the Prof kept him in there to talk to him.

To me it felt like he was trying to make amends, or apologizing for something he was about to do.. The room was very tense and very strange.. and I don't know how many people picked up on all the things that happened.. but it felt very intense sitting that close to him.

People that claim it's nothing are either stupid or naive. Saying you know him well enough to know he wouldn't do anything is the most invalid argument ever. The guy's parents from the NIU shooting also didn't think their kid was capable.

and please stop posting rumors and false truths. it wont assist in any way getting the kid the help he neds.

"4:28 - is the doubt experienced by your "most people" whether the expression is truly on the board (the ink keeps fading in and out, for example), or whether the professor wrote it (notwithstanding that it was his classroom - at least for that time slot)? I think the original poster has done a little better job than you of describing the situation though, of course, language being what it is . . . "

4:47, you must be the same illiterate who wrote "Said student then volunteered to answer another question later in the class, only to go on a long tirade all about school shootings, delivered while standing up. There may or may not have been crying involved. ... Several students in the class were immediately more concerned by these statements, ..."

The incredible thing was that the professor tried to disarm the situation and release class. Yet some girl, who was too dumb to realize what was going on, continued to ask dumb question about future interests. Even though the prof. kept saying "we will go over that on mOnday."

5:20, sounds like a case professional courtesy: just one gunner enabling another.

Ironic that she was curious about future interests while possibly on the verge of relinquishing all of her present interests.

"In order to make myself available to all students, I will have open office hours today for 3 hours from approximately 11:15 a.m. – 1:15 p.m."

That Dean can't count. Sheez.

@5:20

2 words:
Bottom. Quarter.

Ok, some of the "accounts" are just ridiculous. I pretty much second everything 5:12 says. The guy was seen looking at some school shooting articles just in that class and not the past few weeks. Students did not call the police. The administration brought in the police to err on the side of caution. The library was NOT cleared. I went to the library right after that class and stayed for a few hours. Some of the rooms were searched just in case. This was a serious situation and I think that the administration handled it the best that they could with the information that they had.

Please don't tell "your side" of the story if you weren't even there and just want to share a rumor that you heard from your friend who heard it from someone who heard it from someone that may have been there.

My prayers are with this guy because he's normally an easy-going, nice guy. I would have picked several other classmates to do this sort of thing before him.

4:58: i cannot agree more. i'm a generally calm and in control person, but i definitely lose sleep over law school finals. it just feels like there's so much at stake if you don't do well.

how do you get somebody to actually relax if it's clear that unless they shine they will not get a good job? law school is inherently stressful as hell, and it doesn't seem like there is any way to make it less competitive. employers only want to hire students at the top of the class because clients only want to be represented by the best and the brightest. but not everyone can be the best and brightest, and there you have the essence of why law school is what law school is.

the only alternative is to convince law students that biglaw is not all its cracked up to be, and the biglaw salary is what it is because the hours are insane... as one lawyer-friend of mine put it, "you earn every penny." but on the ground you're hard pressed to convince aspiring lawyers that they should work for small firms and make very little money. there is no glamor in that...

as far as what happened in alabama: i'm surprised that a kid would have a break down this early in the semester. if law school is going to break you, you would at least think it would happen closer to finals.

"In order to make myself available to all students, I will have open office hours today for 3 hours from approximately 11:15 a.m. – 1:15 p.m."

On the first day of legal writing my 1L year, we learned to never say "In order to" Just say "To..."

Elementary, my friend.

for what it's worth: at least one reader on this board finds it highly juvenile of posters to make light of this very serious situation. everyone makes silly errors in emails... i'm horrified to think that something like this could happen at my school.

Lat,

I hope you can confirm the office hours email from the Dean. I never received this email, nor did anyone else in the Property Class where the incident happened. The first email went to the entire school. There is a good chance that the office hours email is a fake. If it did not come from a law.ua.edu email address then it is fake.

So this all happened before the Illinois shooting? Think the guy knew the Illinois guy and had been told something was about to happen?

5:59, you're pathetic:

"i definitely lose sleep over law school finals. it just feels like there's so much at stake if you don't do well."

Uh, you should. Because there is, and rightfully so. Which leads into your next weepy little point:

"how do you get somebody to actually relax if it's clear that unless they shine they will not get a good job"

Who said anything about relaxing your way through life. Of course you're not going to get anything handed to you if you suck at what you're being hired to do.

"employers only want to hire students at the top of the class because clients only want to be represented by the best and the brightest."

Can you blame them?

"but not everyone can be the best and brightest"

If they're not, that's nobody's fault and nobody's problem but their own. Are they entitled to some sort of rarified, exciting, well-compensated, fufilling existance? No.

"as one lawyer-friend of mine put it, 'you earn every penny.'"

Uh, that's how it works with money, yes.

"you're hard pressed to convince aspiring lawyers that they should work for small firms and make very little money. there is no glamor in that..."

Sure. The problem is there's very little money in that. We could give a fuck about "glamor."

1. Practicing law is stressful. If you cannot handle stress, it's the wrong career for you. Making law school less stressful doesn't solve he problem. It just delays the time when you find out you weren't cut out for that career.

2. Many areas of law involve "very serious situation[s]" -- say, wrongful death, child custody, criminal law, etc. You have to be able to remove yourself from the "serious situation" and be able to evaluate the legal and factual issues dispassionately. Paying attention to the precise wording of a statement or statute, for example, is not trivial or making light of the underlying factual situation, it is practicing law.

6:31: name calling will get you far in life. i'm not pathetic. i was simply agreeing with somebody else that law school is very stressful and makes some people crack.

you clearly missed the point of what i was saying. clients should not have lower expectations of their lawyers, and good firms should not hire students that did poorly in law school.

i was making an objective observation about why law school is inherently competitive. the point was not that firms should hire underqualified candidates, rather it was that many law students would benefit from lowering their expectations and not being devestated by ending up at a smaller firm that pays less than biglaw.

and it is more about the glamor than you care to admit. laywers at smaller firms start at around 50k and will be making 6 figures (or slightly under) within 7 or 8 years of working. that is more than enough to live a very fulfilling life and comfortably support a family. indeed, my parents put me and my brother through college and grad school on a similar combined salary.

however, for some reason law school culture views this outcome as a failure. how can i start at 50k? our perspectives are fundamentally skewed...

and no, i'm not a TTT student trying to justify my own outcome. i turned down a plush job making 80k at a smaller firm in a secondary market (with almost a guarantee of making partner) in favor of a large firm job in NY that pays 160. will i be happier there? no. i'm sure of it. will i make partner there? probably not. but that's where the glory was. law school culture would not have allowed me to take the other option, even though that's probably where i would be happier in the long run.

inherent stress aside, law school is set up in a way that makes it more stressful than it needs to be. why would you make the first year so much harder than second and third year. in college you start with 100 level classes and end up at 400 level classes by the time you're a senior and know what yoiu're doing. law school is quite the opposite. this is why many students have such a hard time first year. they are not less capable than their peers. indeed, they end up doing better than their peers in the long run, but they do worse at the beginning because they didn't catch the elusive magic formula that it requires to do well as a first semester 1L. people come to law school having no clue what they're doing, and they face the hardest semester of their three years. it doesn't allow for a learning curve.

my point is that, yes, law school is inherently stressful, but some of the stresses of law school are chosen by us as law students and by the requirements of the law school system. law school is more stressful than it needs to be.

just to point out - Clinic area wasn't cleared either

7:17, the reason 1L year is harder than the others isn't because the material is harder. It's because 1Ls are idiots.

I could easily see someone saying that they thought freshman year of college was the hardest (in fact, I'm pretty sure I *have* heard people say this). Likewise, many people say the first year at a law firm is the hardest. It isn't because it's objectively the hardest; it's because virtually everybody sucks at something when they're doing it for the first time. After you get over the learning curve you can handle much more difficult stuff with greater ease.

"will i be happier there? no. i'm sure of it. will i make partner there? probably not. but that's where the glory was. law school culture would not have allowed me to take the other option, even though that's probably where i would be happier in the long run"

That's a very sad comment. You took a job where you know you will be less happy than elsewhere? And this b/c law school culture ostensibly did not allow you to take the option that was the better one for you? You have bigger problems than "law school culture." One day you're going to have to figure your life out for yourself b/c you are responsible for your own life and happiness. In the meantime, I suppose you'll just have be miserable. . . with no one to blame but yourself.

and it is more about the glamor than you care to admit. laywers at smaller firms start at around 50k and will be making 6 figures (or slightly under) within 7 or 8 years of working. that is more than enough to live a very fulfilling life and comfortably support a family. indeed, my parents put me and my brother through college and grad school on a similar combined salary.

Has it occured to you, 7:17, that we'd rather make 190k to start, work hard at a job that inherntly requires a lot of compromises in our personal lives to do well while younger, and leave after five, maybe eight, years? By which time we're making lot more than 190k, enabling us to have some investments, that let us take a more relaxing job as we hit our mid to late 30's and have a supplemental income stream? That some of us have no interest in working as a fucking lawyer for the rest of our lives?

"law school culture would not have allowed me to take the other option"

If 'culture' influenced you, and not debt or desire for more money, you're an irrational moron.

"it doesn't allow for a learning curve"

Guess what: neither to most large law firms.

1L year is only harder if you didn't do well enough to make law review or qualify for any of the activities to make second year three times the work.

9:27,

Law firms don't allow for a learning curve? First years come in expected to, say, negotiate claw-back rights or tipping baskets, or to know what they are?

7:17 - "culture", really? if you know you'd be unhappy at a biglaw job but you can't stay true to yourself because of peer pressure, i have a hard time imagining you as an effective advocate. don't blame the "culture"--just own up to the fact that you want to make a shit ton of money right away or you're insecure enough to need validation from biglaw to be happy.

To imitate a great mathematician

$70k + NO billable hours = Loving Life

That is all!

Law schools only have oppressive cometition whenits not a top 10 law school.

Mark wrote..."I hope everyone in administration loses their job."

His job. Her job. Or, his or her job. Everyone is singular.

And federal law prohibits the school from releasing much in the way of information. You may disagree with that (as do I), but that's the law.

first of all it is truly pathetic for people to use something like this as a chance to take pot shots at how good the law school is. Ignorant people making derogatory marks like this about a school they have never visited and know nothing about is bad enough, but after a potentially tragic event like this shows how worthless some people really are.

secondly almost the entire third paragraph of note 4 is completely BS. Students did not call the police, and we were definitely NEVER told not to tell the media or to keep it a secret in any way. I do not know how things like this get started, but to go a step further and post garbage like that without checking the facts is irresponsible and despicable. What happened to the student is not known either.

first of all it is truly pathetic for people to use something like this as a chance to take pot shots at how good the law school is. Ignorant people making derogatory marks like this about a school they have never visited and know nothing about is bad enough, but after a potentially tragic event like this shows how worthless some people really are.

secondly almost the entire third paragraph of note 4 is completely BS. Students did not call the police, and we were definitely NEVER told not to tell the media or to keep it a secret in any way. I do not know how things like this get started, but to go a step further and post garbage like that without checking the facts is irresponsible and despicable. What happened to the student is not known either.

Bryce is not maximum security. Bryce doesn't even have a gate. The maximum security facility in Tuscaloosa is Taylor Harden.

This stuff doesn't happen at top 10 schools.

Lat, stop posting about TTT law schools.

Obviously, the student suffers from an anxiety disorder. Symptoms of such disorders include thinking thoughts about topics that disgust/repulse you (such as, "I hope I don't fall on the ice and break my leg") over and over. Many of those experiencing this may wish to purge themselves of these thoughts, as it is disturbing to think this way.

I am truly surprised that members of a profession with so much stress/anxiety can't understand that this is a mental health issue, and that IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE. If you think it can't happen to you (b/c you went to a top school or b/c you never had an issue like that before) THINK AGAIN.

Have a heart Above the Law readers.

I would encourage you all to find out about the symptoms of stress-related mental health disorders so that you can respond with resources and understanding if someone you know experiences a problem like this. Judging others doesn't make you better than them - it makes you worse.

11:01, Just because the guy was out of paxil, doesn't mean he "shouldn't have better known better." Anxiety sucks, but you can still get your shit together without scaring the Duke of Norfolk's ghost out of everyone...

guys in my high school class would ask the teacher to erase happy valentine's day from the whiteboard and then make freaky incoherent comments all the time. It was no big deal.

11:51pm, I am shocked and appalled by your response here. If it is correct, why not use your real name? I think we all know why you posted anonymously - you are being ignorant and crude. A sad commentary on the legal profession!

11:18, you sure get shocked easily. I had to scroll up to make sure you weren't talking about a different 11:51. And what part of his response do you refer to when you say "If it is correct?" The part where he says anxiety sucks? The part where he says even the anxious can get their shit together? You're just...retarded is all. And why would anyone put their real name on here.

You contribute nothing to life! :(

It always amuses me that people think during a tragedy is no time to make jokes. Certainly, a guy going nuts in law school is sad, but enforced solemnity will not make it any less so.

I'd simply like to point out that UA is not a TTT as it has been in the top 50 law schools in the nation for several years now. In fact, I believe the most recent ranking was 36th. Last year's class had a 100% bar passage rate on the AL bar. Thanks.

Excuse me, Mr. "you contribute nothing to life." It is that kind of immaturity that makes me sick. The poster suggested that someone suffering from a mental disorder should just "get his act together" That is a ridiculous statement.

TTT? Anyone who refers to UA Law as a TTT has never looked at US News & World Reports and is most likely a homosexual. Have a great day!

Has nobody mentioned that he had stopped taking his prescription medications earlier in the week? On the medications, he had never raised any problems that his classmates are aware of.

US News and World Reports is BS, but bashing the public schools in general just makes you look like a cock and/or a spoiled trust funder.

Most kids at Alabama just want to be lawyers. Most don't think about jobs in New York. And they won't kill themselves billing 2100 and actually working god-knows-what either at some bastard firm that only hires T5 students, and find out a year or so in that they make less in real money than some guy working for a "no-name" firm in Memphis.

What is a TTT?

omg, alabama is terrible. i can't believe anyone would attend this ttt. I am impressed at the number of ridiculous attempts by students to legitimize their attendance there.

I was 4 feet from this guy in class! I wanted to git my gun from the rack of my truck jest to be safe, but I left it at my hunting camp. This guy usually seems normal so I don't know what was going on their.

Also, UA is not a ttt! Anyone who thinks a top 50 school is a ttt is a idiot!

Ummm, 12:16, really?

" Anyone who refers to UA Law as a TTT has never looked at US News & World Reports and is most likely a homosexual."

What a strange analogy. How does not news magazine or referring to UA as TTT relate to sexual orientation? Seriously, the third grade called, they want their immature gay joke back.

Ummm, 12:16, really?

" Anyone who refers to UA Law as a TTT has never looked at US News & World Reports and is most likely a homosexual."

What a strange analogy. How does not reading a news magazine or referring to UA as TTT relate to sexual orientation? Seriously, the third grade called, they want their immature gay joke back.