March 2009

Above the Law has been able to confirm that Ballard Spahr has officially pushed back start dates for its incoming first year associates. A tipster summarizes the details: On Friday Ballard Spahr told its incoming class that it is delaying start dates until September 2010. There will be a $45,000 stipend offered…. The firm claims […]

While President Obama and a bipartisan Congress spent most of last weekend trying to recoup $165 million in taxpayer money that insurance giant AIG paid to its upper-level employees, the Miami-Dade County Commissioners were finalizing a plan to spend $359 million in taxpayer money to build a new baseball stadium for the Florida Marlins “bailout”-demanding […]

In Blawg Review #204, I quipped that lawyers don’t do well in a street fight. Thanks to Judge Ian Richards, I stand corrected. Check out this TMZ video: The video is a little grainy, so let me give you the play-by-play, after the jump.

Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com. ATL – I am one of many 3Ls who already missed OCI and are now trying to figure out what to do. We go to a T-50 school in a major market and have grades ranging from top 25%-15%. We’ve tried mass […]

* A U.S. District Judge in Virginia, Rebecca Beach Smith, will soon decide whether preserved Titanic artifacts must remain available to the public. [The San Francisco Chronicle] * Adam Liptak gives us a lively look into the Supreme Court discussion about the highly critical Hillary documentary. [The New York Times] * Obama’s lawyers were in […]

The NYU Law School “Law Revue” is opening this weekend. We linked to a promotional video a few days ago. But with opening night right around the corner, the NYU guys are stepping it up, with this fully animated homage: That’s it, I’m in. Can somebody get me tickets? Earlier: NYU Law Revue Preview

* The AIG bonus tax is also sexist. And, of course, communist. And most likely racist, homophobic, ageist, it certainly doesn’t do enough to fight AIDS or cure cancer, and is solely responsible for the death of every puppy in North America. [TaxProf Blog] * According to NYU Law School “all your deans are belonging […]

Yesterday, we mentioned a NALP “glitch” that allowed users to get a sneak peak at the organization’s 2009 statistics about law firms. The problem, whatever it was, was fixed soon after we alerted NALP to the problem. Here’s the quick statement we obtained from NALP: Legal employers provide this data to NALP each winter. NALP […]

Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Notes from the Breadline,” a column by a laid-off lawyer in New York. Prior columns are collected here. You can reach Roxana St. Thomas by email, at roxanastthomas@gmail.com, or find her on Facebook. After a few weeks of unemployment, I begin to wonder whether some sort of […]

I wanted to circle back to a very interesting piece on AmLaw Daily yesterday. Their article on what Texas law firms are doing during this economic downturn confirms suspicions I’ve had for a little while: At a time when law firms are more openly announcing and discussing layoff decisions, one group of firms is being […]

Last week, we brought you our NCAA-tournament style March Madness for Law Firms. We took the top 32 firms from the Vault prestige ratings and asked you to vote on which firms were the “safest” — the places where you’re least likely to get laid off. After Round One, we’re down to the Sweet (Safe) […]

Back in rosier economic times, we started a series of open threads on career alternatives for attorneys, i.e., things you can do with a law degree that don’t involve Biglaw or contract work. These days, we’re starting to think of the series as things you might do if you can’t find Biglaw or contract work. […]

Incoming first years all over the country continue to find out that they won’t be able to start when they had hoped. Dewey & LeBoeuf officially pushed back start dates for its new associates until January, 2010. The email went out last night: After careful consideration, the firm’s Executive Committee has decided to delay the […]

The National Law Journal reports that Goldberg Kohn has made deep cuts: Goldberg Kohn, a Chicago law firm with 77 lawyers, last week cut about one-quarter of its associates and dismissed support staff as part of a cost-savings effort that will also include reducing pay and scaling back its summer associate program…. The pay cuts […]

* United Airlines settled a suit filed by a former pilot, who resigned after repeatedly finding porn in hidden places in her cockpit, including underneath a cap on a safety device called a “stick shaker” (no pun intended). Click to see United’s ridiculous effort to dismiss. [The Seattle Times] * Attorney General Andrew Cuomo convinced […]

We love to point out when our commenters point us in the right direction. Over the weekend, somebody placed this comment in the recent Law Shucks post: Hunton & Williams is planning big layoff in week ahead. The firm has been laying off PARTNERS in stealth moves during the past two months and a firm-wide […]

* I’m not sure what a female associate is supposed to wear to her first golf outing. But I know what the commenters are thinking and they are certainly wrong. [Corporette] * Brian Cuban does a brilliant job here comparing the various ways dating is like basketball. But he acts as if a brother is […]

As we predicted last month, Harold Hongju Koh is stepping down from the deanship at Yale Law School. President Obama is nominating Dean Koh to serve as the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. Dean Koh previously served in the State Department, as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, […]

There doesn’t appear to be a Wolf Block miracle in Philly today. The firm is dissolving. A press release was just issued by Bradford Hildebrandt, whom the ABA Journal reported this morning had been brought in by the firm to oversee a possible wind-down. The partners of WolfBlock LLP have voted to commence an orderly […]

There’s a pretty interesting glitch happening right now over at NALP (here at ATL, we know something about “technical difficulties” — we’re working on ours). Even though the new numbers haven’t been made public yet, if you know what you’re doing you can get a sneak peak at the 2009 NALP numbers. We’re not going […]