first?

Regarding Wachtell, they were impossibly busy for the past few years. Sounds like a combination of a better than average yield, combined with confidence regarding 2008 and beyond, combined with a desire perhaps to make hours not quite as ridiculous as they have been.

As for Kirkland, a low yield isn't terribly surprising. The firm seems to turn people off at the OCI and office interview stage. I'd bet their recruiting targets are a bit optimistic. The Chicago office's boycott of Columbia OCI doesn't help matters either.

Linklaters has 46 new 2L summers (plus 6 returning 1Ls hired last year). This is almost double last year's class. Word is that they had to turn away some big work in 2007 because some groups simply didn't have enough bodies (probably need more juniors for mass document review in M&A and litigation - regardless it sounds like they've done well generating NY business). Market may have slowed down but it sounds like they are still very committed to growing in NY.

That list can't be right. I remember getting that internal website last year too and it didn't have everyone listed on it (it had like 50 or so) but we had 96(!!) summers regardless LAST SUMMER in Chicago. So chances are its mostly due to lack of an update than what is really happening. Tipster is stupid. Lat is stupider for believing him with no verification.

3:52 - did you just say "stupider"? really?

I am offering an unpaid summer associate position. You will learn a lot as you do my work. I may take you to lunch at Midtown's finest immigrant-run delis on occasion.

I couldn't care less how many summer associates Quinn duped...er signed up. I hope it's half of what they expected, which would be commensurate with my bonus.

3:57--
I believe 3:52's use of stupider is suppose to be ironic. Looks like you are the stupider one.

D&L purposely cut back hiring of summer associates for 2008--I think we'll have around 45-50 for next summer. Steve DiCarmine (head of the firm) said at an all-associates meeting that this was because of the current financial market outlook for 2008...

...meanwhile, associates figure it's actually because of the merger...

Um, he's talking about New York...not Chicago.

Dear Mr. 3:58,

I will take it

Um, Lat's talking about Sidley NY, not Chicago. Be careful when calling someone stupider.

Baker & McKenzie has 18 2L summer's this year and is still recruiting for 1L's.

Double last year.

How did CWT's new interview system go over at schools like Pittsburgh? I heard they went to third tier schools and hired whomever could withstand the most cockpunches to prepare them for the REAL DEAL.

Baker & McKenzie has 18 2L summer's this year and is still recruiting for 1L's.

Double last year.

Posted by: Anonymous | January 7, 2008 04:14 PM

That's 18 summers in the NYC office.

Same difference if NY or Chicago. 3:52 is using an analogous situation to explain a point.

Stupider is a word you ignorant morons.

190

Stupider: what we all are for having read the foregoing.

seriously guys, where's my 190?

you can hire 0 associates, for all i care.

BANG THE DRUM!

4:24 - Hear hear...

STUPIDER!

Irregardless of what others say, stupider is a word. Look it up, Beamtard.

Stupider is the correct spelling, you self-righteous idiots.

I thoguht DiCarmine (at D&L) said they had 90 coming in, with about 45 per firm, which would be on pace with what they were each doing pre-merger. regardless, there was a small speed bump at the beginning of recruiting season when someone posted a crazy rumor on xoxo that the firms would only give offers to half of their summer classes. this was obviously false but stimulated a chilling effect nonetheless. oh, the gifts of xoxo...

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
stu·pid /ˈstupɪd, ˈstyu‑/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[stoo-pid, styoo‑] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation adjective, -er, -est, noun

Ropes NYC going full steam ahead with over 150 summers in its entire 2008 class.

Still hiring midlevel prosecution attorneys but IP litigation seems to be on the decline. Also adding tons of lateral partners.

Anyone know the summer class stats for Wilmer, KLG, Ropes, Proskauer, Goodwin, etc. for Boston? Pick a firm, I am interested in Beantown...I'll get there eventually.

Interested 2L that didn't cut it said "Pick a firm, I am interested in Beantown...I'll get there eventually."

'atta boy.

Ropes has 150 summers in NYC alone??????? Seriously? How big is their NYC office?

11 SAs at KLG Boston

The Ropes stat cannot be correct. If it is, I feel bad for a poor soul who went there because he thought he'd be less of a number than in a NYC-based firm. Ooops.

"Ropes NYC going full steam ahead with over 150 summers in its entire 2008 class."

That's for the entire class, obviously. There's well over 50 summer associates signed up for NYC.

"Irregardless" - Classic...

You can see some breakdowns of former summer classes by law school at http://lawfirmaddict.blogspot.com/ and http://lawfirmaddict2007.blogspot.com/ -- IIRC these were taken from info posted on Xoxo and LSD.

My mid-size DC litigation boutique got NO Georgetown 2Ls this year - the first year this has ever happened as far as I know. Hopefully partners will wise up to the fact the reputation for subpar bonuses gets around!

Ahhhh How I LOVE Christmas Break!! Yawn!! Well time to get in my pajamas and get drunk again

I know that at least one Sidley office is in the process of interviewing more 1Ls which means that their numbers should be bigger even a couple months from now. Depending on what their numbers look like later there may not be a huge difference in the number of people Sidley is taking on this year.

5:18-probably Chicago, given that they can't expect possibly people to stick around with the horrible bonuses they doled out.

Hiring more 1Ls isn't good. It is just a way for firm to cover up a bad recruiting year and still post good numbers (well bad recruiting or just trying to slow growth, neither of which is really good).

Sorry, meant "possibly expect."

Anyone know what the numbers are for big firms in Talahassee? I am looking for a firm that pays $160,000 as a first year and gives at least three weeks vacation so I can go see my girlfriend in New Mexico. Please give me some tippppps!

Tip - Learn to spell "Talahassee." Also, I am no guru on this stuff but I don't think 160 is market in FL. I think it is just 60.

Guys from my high school got paid $160,000 just to see their girlfriends in New Mexico, it was no big deal.

Sidley's NY recruiting department has had some speed bumps, which likely explains the poor showing. I would assume that this will not involve actually having such a small class but, rather, having a class that is of a lesser aggregate prestige value (law school ranking X grade point average).

What about Latham? Didn't they have the largest class last year? Repeat??

Please give me some tipppppps!

Oh screwey, then I'm not going to Talahassee...where do they give $160,000 where I can still have 3 weeks to go see Jen? I'm from Mobile, AL, and want to stay down south but I don't want to work too hard. Would love some tippps.....

Just make 95K a year in Mobile and live like a king...you could have a mansion in three to five years.

160 exists in Boston and NY...luckily most people that apply get positions and the work is pretty much 9-5. Right up your alley.

I love tippppppps! Please gimme some!

I like to typpppppppppe my messsssssssssaggges like an iiiiiiiiiiiiiiidiot, too!

Um, don't firms want a small class, with the big slowdown going on now. I remember the huge summer classes of 2000 and 2001. Then the economy tanked and firms that hired too many associates had problems finding work for them all in 2002-2003. Some even got laid off (Dewey) or had their high flying firms collapse (Brobeck).

Guys seriously, anyone have any info on other cities like Montgomery, Savannah, or Jaxsinville? I really want some tippps about where to apply for a job-position as an attorney or lawyer. Thanks.

You are raising too many questions with your posts to be taken seriously. These questions include, but are not limited to the following:

Why does he spell "tips" so emphatically over and over with so many "p"s?

Why did he spell Jacksonville like that?

Does he know that an attorney and a lawyer are the same thing?

But above all, is this guy even a lawyer or law student? If the answer is no, that is fine...but you are putting the carriage before the horse. Take the LSAT, get into law school, then seek feedback. I can't imagine if you are near the top of your class at any law school outside the fourth tier, that it would be difficult to get a nice job in any aforementioned city.

Bingham wasn't able to recruit a summer class. Not after it was the only firm to raise to 2100 hours requirement.

If you want my tipppp, Talahassee Guy, here it is:

stick with either sophisticated cross-border transactional work or complex, bet-the-company litigation.

what is "transactional work?" is that like business law and stuff like that? do they do that stuff in big cities in the south like jaxsOnville? can i make a "buck" sixty thousand doing it? im more of a litigation fellow myself ;-)

Large firms, including Sidley, will (for the most part) have smaller 2008 summer classes for the following reasons:

1) Most had their largest summer classes ever in 2007.

2) Attrition has slowed. More associates are sticking around, mainly due to the salary increases, but also to the efforts of many firms to be "nicer" (while still working associates to death). Associates also have fewer in-house opportunities right now (though this wasn't the case just 6 months ago).

3) The credit crunch has slowed things down. Duh! (But not as much as the media claim, and not for long.)

Sidley, Kirkland, etc. will be glad they went with leaner classes for 2008.

Query (6:46), you are an idiot. This person is obviously a troll playing a "redneck" persona.

Look, I can do it too: "Thanks y'all, but I'm rilly looking for advice on where a yung lawyer can make a heep of money here in the south. Im thinkin that the big cities like Tallahassee and Jaxsonville are probly the best places to go for that, cuz I want a mercedes or a linkin or stuff like that. Do they give out free phones at those law firms too?"

6:38 - I think you'll find the most "job-positions" in the closely-related sex-worker industry. I don't have any tippps on where you should apply, however.

Also, irregardless is a perfectly crumulent word.

It was widely known as early as July that Sidley's Chicago office had way too many summer associates last year (they warned the summers that, unlike in previous years, there would likely be stiff competition to get into litigation-oriented practice groups). Since that time the hiring partners have been saying that they would extend fewer offers in 2008. I attend mixers for recruited 2L's (all those in Chicago with summer associate offers) in fall 2006 and fall 2007. The fall 2007 mixer was much smaller. It would make perfect sense if the 2008 Chicago summer associate class was significantly smaller than last year's class, by the firm's choice, not due to "recruiting difficulties."

I have no idea how this relates to the NY office, but I assume hiring trends are firmwide.

Anyone have info on the big NYC firms other than WLRK and S&C (Specifically DPW, Cleary, Debevoise and Paul Weiss)?

I bet that people that got offers from Sidley NY got scared off by the fact that departments are split between two buildings, blocks apart.

i had the same thought as 8:51. i chose to go to sidley in the end and my only hesitation was the split between the two offices- i want to focus on corporate but also want some lit exposure, hard to do when youre a block or two away.

that said, i also was told from partners they were aiming for a smaller summer class. well only really know if thats true if they fill the 15 odd spots with 1Ls or not.

S&C had over 130 SA's last summer. If they got over 130 for this coming summer, it isn't that much of an increase (or perhaps an increase at all).

Bingham had serious trouble recruiting this year - many offers were declined.

The walk isn't THAT bad, it's a nice excuse to stretch your legs.

W/r/t the person who made a guess at the NY 2008 summer class "prestige": the law school "prestige" seems pretty standard, with roughly a third of the class coming from the T5, and substantially over half the class coming from the T14. Obviously, I have no clue what the GPAs look like, take that for what its worth...

I've heard from a reliable source (Chicago) that some firms which have scaled back on their 2008 summer classes plan to invite post-grads (i.e. fall 2008 associates who are in town studying for the bar) out to a few lunches and various (summer associate) events.

Anyone else heard such a thing? Anyone heard from their firms regarding bar fees, Barbri, etc.?

Sidley NY is still hiring 1Ls, as is Weil Gotshal. Have any 1Ls heard from Cravath or S&C? Are they taking any 1L SAs this summer?

Wiley Rein's recent popularity might be because every SA in each of their last three summer classes got an offer. The RIM litigation take made for huge one-time payouts to equity partners and pretty small payouts to associates.

It seems there are a bunch of Sidley posters here who actually believe that by essentially writing that things are ok at the firm, that sentiment will come true.

Does anyone know what's going on with Jenner in Chicago?

Move to Houston.

9:46--Its pretty common for firms to take out future associates studying for the bar in town, esp. if people at the firm liked hanging out with you last summer

Email your adviser about fees. Most likely=you pay, they reimburse you

BTW, Lat should do a threat about filling out these crappy ass bar applications. 6 people needed for character? I barely know 3 people. List every place you've lived the last 10 years, even if temporary? I can't remember where I slept last night. List every place you worked, paid and unpaid, in the last 10 years? Wow, I wonder if they ever get paperboy. List speeding tickets over 200 bucks and give citing officer's name, date of offense, citation number, etc? I remember I got pulled over and paid a lot but damn if I remember anything other than that. how technical does one need to be about such stupid matters?

Favorite Bar app. question: do you promise to uphold the US Constitution and the Constitution of the state? Ummm...I'll say yes....

Chick in that pic is really fat in the tum-tum

Any news on Cravath?

Any word on the Magic Circle?

I'm surprised that anyone other than WLRK isn't scaling back after last year.

Wiley hired 5 from W&M alone. From what I heard, the last few to receive offers were told by Wiley that it had over-offered this summer, so there was some worry that there would be a lower percentage of return offers.

Any word on Schulte Roth?

I have from a reliable source that for all the lean summer hiring taking place at Sidley or Kirkland, Winston and Strawn may have taken up all of the slack and then some.

My understanding is that Winston's 2008 summer class may be somewhere on the order of 150% last year's in size.

I hear that Shearman's summer class is swelling at about 140. I think it was 85-90 in previous years.

1256 -

True dat! But I'd still hit it.

How come everytime someone mentions obama they have to say "cum"... disgusting.

9:20 - any documentation on that?

Cleary has 93 is what I heard in the NYC office.

Ropes IP (Fish & Neave) is going down the tubes. Its not nearly as strong as it used to be. Its not a surprise that their litigation is lagging.

Yes, Sidley's NY offices are split between two locations. They are only a few minutes apart. We leased additional space because we ran out of space in our first building. What do you think that says about the firm's economic health?

at my t10, both sidley and kirkland NY turned away some of the best in the class, while taking some middle of the pack candidates instead. very personality driven recruitment. not sure if this backfired or not- 38 seems oddly low compared to previous years. cravath and sullivan were way more "good grades? youre in."

10:44 what evidence is this based on?

"It seems there are a bunch of Sidley posters here who actually believe that by essentially writing that things are ok at the firm, that sentiment will come true."

It seems there are a bunch of posters who actually believe that the collapse of the subprime market and overall economic downturn of the past 6 months is *only* affecting Sidley (or Kirkland or Cravath or any other firm except their own).

Most BIGLAW firms are similarly affected, to varying degrees. At Sidley - as at any other firm with a noticeably smaller class this year - the number of summer associates hired is a conscious decision made by the firm.

11:09, it says that your firm isn't willing to shell out the money to move the entire firm to a respectable location, and that the firm is not sure if it wants to have a strony NY presence yet.

Does anyone know anything about Pillsbury NYC? How many will be in the class?

11:21 - "Personality drive" is a great adjective to describe Sidley, and a big reason why I loved the firm. The kind of people who judge a law firm by its street address, for example, might have trouble getting a callback there.

"Personality driven" :) My bad.

11:43 (1): No, actually, it means that when a firm with one of the ten largest offices in the city (as it has since Sidley & Austin merged with Brown & Wood, which, in your language, had quite a "strony" NY presence) has its offices destroyed in a world-changing terrorist attack, there isn't always a suitable, immediate replacement building. Asshat.

Send me your tipppps!

2007 Sidley Summer Assoc.-let's not drink too much of the kool aid. If you work in Sidley's home office, you got a bonus this year of about 20% less than you did last year, even though you had the same hours. Clearly, not everything is great there.

2007 Sidley Summer Assoc.=dork

20% less, yes, but at least we still have a job that pays, by most metrics, quite well.

12:19 - Like I said previously, this is not a firm-specific problem. Maybe a few BIGLAW firms have been completely insulated from the rest of the economy so far, but it's naive to think that most firms - even those who paid larger bonuses than Sidley - aren't or won't be facing the same issues. Sidley chose to cautiously err on the conservative side with expenditures. I don't claim to know what specifics went into this judgment, but I'm sure they were roughly the same specifics most other BIGLAW firms weighed in the past few months in allocating bonuses. Who knows, maybe Sidley will come to regret their decision if it prompts a massive exodus of mid-level associates. Maybe other firms will regret their decisions to pay higher bonuses if they face a cash crunch or debt problem in the next year. One thing is certain: no firm-specific "problems" at Sidley are responsible for the smaller size of next year's summer associate class. If Sidley or any other BIGLAW firm wanted more summer associates, they would go out back and pick them off of the law-school tree, which, you may be surprised to hear, has more branches than the T14.

Weil anyone? They've had huge classes recently.

weil gave tons of callbacks at top schools, ask anyone at columbia, harvard or penn, planning on really upping the size of its summer class.

but then i heard that many of those students that were called back did not receive offers... weil supposedly decided to not enlarge its class size after all.

true?

I get it; talahassee guys a Mohel.

GDC DC has ~30 summers, mostly HYS. Similar to last year.

brown and wood was a TTT doing low-end securitization garbage. They merged with a big mediocre Chicago shop. sidley's exposure to subprime was multiples of non-garbage firms because they were heavily invested and leveraged in the lowest end of rote securitization dogshit.

2007 Sidley Summer Associate = Marketing Director

3:16---I work at another firm in Chicago, but I still have to ask you how you call Sidley "mediocre". They are a vault T20, rank very high in revenue amongst all firms in the world, and have a long, prestigious history and alumni roll. Every lawyer I meet from there went to UChicago, NW, Harvard, etc. I just don't get what you are saying.

5:02: It is not accepted practice to be reasonable on an internet thread. In fact, your comment often gets deleted by the Internet God if you don't engage is some aggrandizement, hyperbole, or fail to mention TTT somewhere in your post.

Just so this isn't deleted: OSU football is TTT.

11:43(1) -- There are very few buildings available that have the contiguous space that Sidley NY needs. Most possibilities were downtown. I guess we could have gone back downtown and that would have been much cheaper, but being downtown is not something that appealed to many people. Ask WFC tenants how they like being downtown. Sure they have nice offices, but can they get a cab late at night or dart up to Central Park during a slow day?

3:16 -- Check your facts. Sidley doesn't have particularly high leverage as firms go. They're not making layoffs or offering buyouts at all, unlike other SF shops. Additionally, subprime was only a fraction of Sidley NY's SF work. And other SF sub-specialties that do not qualify as the "lowest end of rote s* d*" have gotten hit just as hard by the credit crunch. How many SIVs, CDOs and exotic structured vehicles are being done these days? How many innovative buyouts are being done using SF? Not many. The whole structured market has dried up due to the credit crunch.

Now on to the main topic of the thread -- the sweepstakes! I guess if summer recruiting is a sweepstakes, then some firms cleaned up. But unless those same firms had corresponding jumps in headcount, then "cleaning up" actually means finding new carbon blobs (apologies to Waylon Smithers) to fill the seats of those that will become disgruntled and leave the firm between now and the fall of 2009. To all the 2Ls who want to go to firms with ginormous summer associate classes, I wish you well during your 12-to-30-month stint in BigLaw!

Any specific info about Wachtell's summer class? How much bigger than expected?

Regarding the person who inquired about Ropes & Gray IP, it's pretty well-known that they have been hemorhagging people over the last couple of years. Even the guy who I responded to who seems to work there acknowledges this (see 4:40PM) and the decline of IP lit at Ropes. Fish & Neave (the firm that Ropes & Gray merged with in order to establish an IP department) used to be a top 2 or 3 IP firm, but now it may not even be a top 10 anymore (check out vault for its exact placement). As of 2004-2005, I remember they were second or something like that, you'd figure if Ropes did a good job they would still at least be in the top 5. Instead they seem to be consistently falling every year.

oh yeah, that said, Ropes and Gray overall is still strong (I concur with what 4:40 on January 7th said). Its just the IP department that doesn't have the panache/prestige that it used to......

Shearman & Sterling hired 144 summers this year - way up from about 90 last year.

Nixon Peabody:
2008 Summer Class:

Boston: 11 students from Boston College, Boston University, Harvard, Loyola University of Chicago, Notre Dame, Northeastern, Suffolk, and Virginia

Chicago: 2 students from Northwestern and Ohio State

Long Island: 2 students from Hofstra and Washington and Lee

New York: 11 students from American, Columbia, Fordham, Georgetown, Michigan, New York University, and State University at Buffalo

Rochester: 6 students from Cornell, State University at Buffalo, and Syracuse

San Francisco: 8 students from Golden Gate, Hastings, Santa Clara, Stanford, University of San Francisco, and William and Mary

Washington DC: 11 students from American, Drexel, Duke, George Washington, Georgetown, and Virginia

anyone know cravath's numbers?

just got an email from Skadden Chicago to the summers....there appears to be about 55 emails on the list.

Um, shit?? Didn't they have 29 last year??

Re Mayer Brown... any firm that doesn't fill its quota in the current over lawyered market (you may have heard from a blogger known as Loyola 2L re the lack of job students) would be in serious trouble. The real issue is the quality of the law grads they got. I wonder if Loyoal 2L applied?

I heard S&S will have approximately 140 summers next year. An attempt to move up in NY's largest firm rankings????

What is S&S

Sidley NYC has 45 summer hires actually, not sure how many are or aren't 2Ls though.

Anyone know about Holland & Knight's Tampa and DC office?

Anyone have summer associate info about Kaye Scholer's NY office?

Re: 806,

Very possible that the 7 people added to the summer list since this post appeared are 1Ls (the firm reported having 8 1Ls in 2007).

Just a guess though.

11:13,

H+K has 10 SAs in the DC office.

Milbank NY has 93 this summer. Their director of summer programs of 20+ years will be leaving this month. Meanwhile, with all the restructuring going on, legal personnel is entrusting the entire program in the hands of a director from Proskauer who only just joined the firm a month ago.

For those of you joining Milbank this summer, beware. This year’s class is much bigger than prior years. There will be budget cuts and lack of job assignments due to current economy performance. This year’s program will be completely different than prior years—not in a good way.