Biglaw, Job Searches, Summer Associates

NYC Biglaw Is Brooklyn Bound

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Law school snobs — or “tierists,” as some call them — should check out this interesting article, by Lindsay Fortado of Bloomberg News. It’s about how high demand for summer and permanent associates is pushing large law firms to expand their recruiting efforts, to include law schools outside the “top 10.”

When Josh Kleiman, a student at Brooklyn Law School, interviewed at 17 law firms for a summer position, 12 called back. He joined New York’s Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobsen, one of the city’s most profitable.

The competition has increased for Kleiman and other students at so-called second-tier law schools for jobs that pay more than $3,000 a week, plus free lunches and cocktail parties. New York’s largest law firms have hired record numbers of summer associates to deal with an abundance of work and defections of lawyers to banks and private equity clients.

Kleiman had the pick of the Biglaw litter:

Kleiman was also offered summer positions at Sullivan & Cromwell; Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker; White & Case; Shearman & Sterling and Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel. He said he chose Fried Frank, ranked 14th in the city in revenue per partner, because the attorneys were “diverse and interesting.”

Presumably Kleiman chose Fried Frank over the conventionally more prestigious S&C sometime this past fall (pursuant to the NALP deadlines). But if similarly situated law students turn down S&C in higher-than-usual numbers this coming fall, we’re blaming it on this guy.
(To whom, by the way, law clerks may owe their newly improved bonuses. Some speculate that S&C raised its clerkship bonus to $50,000 because it feared a tough recruiting season this fall, due in part to L’Affaire Charney. Eventually Simpson Thacher followed suit, followed by many other top shops. And the rest is history.)
Lawyer Search Spurred by M&A Sends Manhattan’s Best to Brooklyn [Bloomberg]

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