According to NPR, Justice David Souter is planning to retire from the U.S. Supreme Court at the end of the current Term.

Souter is expected to remain on the bench until a successor has been chosen and confirmed, which may or may not be accomplished before the court reconvenes in October.

Arlen Specter’s switch from Republican to Democrat looms even larger now.

We’ve reached out to the SCOTUS public information officer, but have not yet received comment. (We’re not surprised, though, since we reached out at 10:25 p.m.)

Update (11:47 p.m.): The PIO got back to us:

Justice Souter has no comment.

If true, Souter’s retirement would do little to change the balance of the court. Remember:

An Obama pick would be unlikely to change the ideological makeup of the court. Souter, though appointed by the first President Bush, generally votes with the more liberal members of the court, a group of four that is in a rather consistent minority.

Souter’s retirement is not entirely surprising to regular Above the Law readers. Earlier this month, we — via Underneath Their Robes — told you that Souter hadn’t hired any clerks for the October 2009 term.

Let the jockeying begin for Obama’s first SCOTUS nomination. We invite you to suggest nominees in the comments. Maybe we’ll do a poll…

Update: The BLT has an early line on possible nominees, after the jump.

There is late breaking news from Skadden tonight. Apparently the firm has decided to freeze salaries on its counsels. Here is the memo Skadden counsel received:

TO: Counsel

RE: Compensation

Given the current economic conditions and the level of activity within the firm, we have decided that we will not be increasing salaries for counsel in 2009. As always, payment of discretionary bonuses will be contingent upon levels of activity in the Firm’s practice areas, the economic environment as it affects our Firm and individual performance.

We are grateful for your continued commitment to the Firm.

That timing could have been better. But we understand that counsel pay has historically been decided on May 1st, so the firm needed to make a decision.

Skadden has not frozen salaries on associates, and the firm paid top-of-the-market bonuses to its personnel.

The firm has avoided laying associates off during this recession, but Skadden’s Sidebar Program allowed approximately 125 attorneys to take a year-long deferral from the firm.

Earlier: Associate Bonus Watch: Here Comes Skadden
Skadden’s Sidebar: Phase One Complete

* Are we sure that the Mayans don’t have any kind of legal doomsday prophecy for 2009? [Law and More]

* Best and worst rejection letters. Oh the Schadenfreude. [Legal Writing Prof Blog]

* First Facebook, then California A.G. as a brief stopover to global power? It could happen. [Law Dork 2.0]

* Some people are saying that Obama is dissing UofC. But the quote seems fair to me. [NYT]

* Some notes on lawyer’s personalities. [ABA Journal]

We’ve all seen commercials where a company promises to meet a competitor’s lowest price on an item. But a Long Island lawyer decided to put one of these guarantees to the test:

In its advertising, Sears vows to match competitors’ prices, but one Long Island lawyer has been walking a long road of disillusionment after the retailer refused to live up to its promises. Back in 2007, when Warren Dank showed employees at a Hicksville Sears ad clippings from competitors selling a 46-inch flat-screen for as low as $2,400—$1,200 less than what Sears was charging for the exact same product—a manager refused to budge on the price. And so Dank found his life’s calling: He drove around to three different Sears outlets in the metropolitan area and was denied the promised discount every time.

This is hero-lawyering at its best. Sure, the remedy might simply be more fine print at the bottom of the screen. And, fine, there could be costs associated with defending against this type of litigation that raises the price of televisions for all consumers. But hey, that’s just more work for more lawyers.

Dank might be stimulating the legal economy, but of course, somebody is going to have to pay:

A lot of people are calling Dank a hero (okay, just us), and he might not disagree, telling the Post: “I’m doing this single-handedly. No one else pushed it this far to go on a crusade.” UPDATE: Mr. Dank just emailed us with the following clarification: “Please set the record straight on your blog that the $100 and/or $300 million is to pay a class action settlement to all of the customers who were deceived and not to me.”

That’s the plaintiff’s bar, hard at work baby! Companies shouldn’t make promises they can’t keep.

Lawyer Sues Sears for Millions Over Their Flat Screen Prices [Gothamist]

Personally, I love jury duty. I’ve never been picked to actually sit on one, but I still hope to have the opportunity one day. It’s a great opportunity to participate in your community.

I know I hold the minority opinion on this. Most people find jury duty annoying, some find it outright insulting.

But few are willing to put it in writing. That’s what makes the jury affidavit below so special.

“I don’t believe in our ‘justice’ system and I don’t want to have a goddamn thing to do with it.” This is why we need states like Montana. It’s important for these people to have someplace where they can go, breed, and keep America just a little bit closer to the edge.

Today, Craigslist brings us the latest example of a (soon-to-be) lawyer trying to make it work in this difficult economy. Here’s the ad:

I am an experienced law student willing to answer your legal questions. The fee is $5 per question. To take advantage of this offer email your question to [Redacted]. You will then get a response with your answer. Must pay through PAYPAL ACCOUNT. ALL EMAILs must include the following information:

NAME
ADDRESS
TELEPHONE NUMBER
CITY/STATE
YOUR QUESTION

Now, it’s been a while since I took the MPRE, and I was all kinds of hung-over when I passed it. But isn’t there some kind of — I don’t know, rule — about giving legal advice when you are not a lawyer?

Seriously though, he doesn’t “hold himself out to be a lawyer,” so maybe that helps?

Either way, Bert J. van der Werff is just a guy trying to make some money during rough times. We speak with the student after the jump.

It appears that the out-of-state tuition at the University of Texas School of Law could be on the rise. The school’s website lists that the proposed non-resident tuition for the 2009 - 2010 academic year is $43,858. That is over a 10% increase from last year.

Is UT riding the wave of this year’s strong showing in the U.S. News law school rankings? Perhaps. But don’t blame the UT administration for the hike. UT is a public institution. As such, if you remember your middle school civics class, the school has very little control over its own tuition. A UT-Law spokesperson explains the situation:

Last year (March, 2008), the Regents set tuition at the University of Texas for the 2008-2009 academic year (this year) and the 2009-2010 academic year (next year). This year’s tuition for new, non-resident students was $39,642. The amount the Regents approved last year for tuition next year for new, non-resident students, $43,858, is a 10.6% increase over this year. The amount listed on our website for 2009-2010 is correct.

The Texas legislature is currently considering a number of tuition bills, some of which could affect the tuition charged next year, but we don’t have any idea how these deliberations will come out as of now.

After the jump, let’s take a deeper look at how Texas plans to make money off of law students.

A human resources professional at FriendFinder Networks (which publishes Penthouse) has brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against her former employers.

What were the odds?

Gawker explains:

[Natalie] Cedeno claims the atmosphere at the company changed substantially after Penthouse Media Group acquired Various Inc., the operator of Adult FriendFinder and other websites, in 2007 and changed its name to FriendFinder Networks. Various was buttoned-up, she says, despite operating websites where users planned hookups. Penthouse, by comparison, was pure frat-boy raunch — an attitude which culminated in an incident where a Penthouse Pet draped her boobs on an unwilling female employee in a staged photo meant to humiliate her.

Check out some of the allegations after the jump.

We’re not entirely sure of all the details, but there appears to be a very sad situation developing at Kilpatrick Stockton in D.C. today. Everybody in Kilpatrick’s building received this email this morning:

Good morning,

Please remain in our space until further notice. Metropolitan Police Department are currently responding to an unconscious male with a gunshot wound to the head on the 11th floor of Kilpatrick & Stockton. We are contacting building management to determine further information.

We will keep you posted. Thank you.

Kilpatrick is located at 607 14th Street, NW in D.C.

After the jump, we have another email from building management and a statement from the firm.

Update (1:54 PM): We also have reports from tipsters, after the jump.

Dan DiPietro, client head of the Law Firm Group of the Citi Private Bank, doesn’t think we’ve seen the end of lawyer layoffs. In the American Lawyer, he writes:

Among our 175-firm sample, head count for fiscal 2008 was up 4.5 percent from fiscal 2007. I showed the flash report of our sample to a colleague of mine who lends money to Fortune 100 companies. Her response? “So, Dan, the way law firms make money is to grow head count when demand drops?” This is a neat way of summing up the problem firms faced as they entered 2009—too many lawyers chasing too little work.

But I thought that all the struggling firms have already laid all the attorneys they could afford to spare?

With fairly aggressive layoffs evident in all but the top New York-headquartered firms, the decline in bonuses, and no foreseeable movement in salaries, expense growth will moderate, if not decline. This should net out to a 5-10 percent decline in profits per equity partner from 2008 levels. (After the meeting, several managing partners told me I was still too optimistic. To them and others at top New York firms I say: “Think layoffs.”)

The pessimism expressed at that meeting has been repeated to varying degrees in the 16 regional roundtables that my colleague Cindy Tambourine and I have just completed throughout the United States and in London. To put it simply, the mood in the U.S. outside of New York is grim; in New York it’s grimmer; and in London it’s the grimmest.

After the jump, are there any non-layoff paths to recovery?

* Jones Day’s Corinne Ball is having a busy week. She’s the lead bankruptcy attorney for Chrysler. “It requires a certain charisma,” said Robert Profusek, head of Jones Day mergers and acquisitions practice. “When everyone is jockeying to have their point of view expressed, who do people stop and listen to? She’s a very charismatic personality.” But one can’t really help but stop and stare listen to someone wearing that. [Reuters]

* … Meanwhile, Wall Street Journal is predicting the Chrysler Chapter 11 filing will go down today. [Wall Street Journal (subscription)]

* Atlanta lawyer Andrew Speaker decided to file a lawsuit this week against the CDC for ruining his life when he had tuberculosis in 2007. That totally sucks for him, but the CDC is dealing with SWINE FLU this week. PIG FLU. How can you think about your silly TB, the destruction of your reputation, the ruin of your marriage, and implosion of your career at a time like this? [CNN]

* Why did Manhattan lawyer William Parente kill himself and his family last week? FBI agents have raided his office to find out. [New York Daily News]

* The problem with the law firm business model is leverage, says Wharton. [Forbes]

* Federal Judge Jay S. Bybee will has been invited to testify before Congress about his torture advice while at the DOJ. A scary prospect given that people like Obam-ite John Podesta want to see Bybee impeached. [Washington Post]

* SCOTUS and the fate of Section 5. [Slate]

There is little chance that the American experiment would have survived a serious outbreak of the bubonic plague. The Athenians fought a war while stricken with the plague. Granted, it didn’t go so well, but that’s not the point. But a couple of kids get a new strain of spring flu (which is at least as accurate of a name for it as “swine flu”) and people start losing it.

Of course, law students are nothing if not susceptible to mass hysteria. Take this message that students at Loyola - Los Angeles received:

Dear Students,

Please be advised that students will be permitted to wear breathing masks during an examination. If a student chooses to do so, he/she will be permitted to bring and use the mask at his/her seat in the examination room. This policy will remain in effect through the end of the 2009 Spring examination period. Thank you.

Office of the Registrar Loyola Law School

On the one hand, are people really wasting precious exam cramming time worrying about swine flu? Really?

* Shareholder suits + TARP = taxpayer bailout for the plaintiff’s bar. Sweet. And if you live in a brick house the pitchforks and torches will have no effect. [Dealbook]

* Did Larry Lessig send YouTube a takedown notice just so YouTube would retain him to defend against the notice? [Boing Boing]

* Advice from a former lawyer and “rookie” mom. [Ivy League Insecurities]

* A blow-by-blow recap of Harold Koh’s confirmation hearing. [Suits & Sentences]

* Here’s some advice on how to write a “killer cover letter.” It is more collegial than mercilessly sabotaging the competition, but I’m not sure if it’s more effective. [Let’s Talk Turkey]

* Here’s the thing, if you are going to try and kill the billable hour, you must succeed. You can’t let it linger and heal itself. Because if you try to kill it but only succeed in hurting it, it is going to come back furious and stronger than ever. [Litination]

Did you apply to Columbia Law School last year for the class of 2011? Did you not get in or decide to go somewhere else? If so, don’t worry, Columbia is reconsidering applications. Here’s an email that a number of 1Ls who are not at Columbia are receiving today:

Dear [Applicant]:

Thank you for your continued interest in Columbia Law School. We are excited to report to you that we have received all the required components of your application and that your file is now complete. We will forward your file to the Admissions Committee, which will evaluate it in the order in which it was completed. Good luck in the admissions process and we hope to welcome you here as a member of the Class of 2012!

Best wishes,

Office of Admissions

Obviously, it’s some kind of screw up on Columbia’s end. None of the students who emailed in have expressed any “continued interest” in being a part of Columbia’s 2012 class.

But, as glitches go, this is a lot better than UNC inviting a whole bunch of people to admitted students weekend, notwithstanding the fact that the students had not been admitted.

But who knows, maybe Columbia looked at its incoming class of 2012, found it lacking, and now they want a do-over.

Update (5:44): It appears that current Columbia students are also receiving this email. 1Ls who are there now and 2Ls that transfer to Columbia after their 1L year.

Update (6:41): And now we have Columbia’s official apology:

We understand that you received an email at approximately [Redacted] p.m. this afternoon stating that your application for admission to Columbia is now complete. This email message was sent as a result of a computer glitch and is not a reflection of your current status at Columbia. Please disregard it in its entirety. We sincerely apologize for the error and want to assure you that your personal information remains confidential.

Yep, all your personal information is totally secure. Move along folks. Nothing to see here.

Earlier: Snafu at UNC Law Raises Hopes, Then Dashes Them

More schools are jumping in to try to help their own deferred graduates. Boston College Law School has come up with a “hodgepodge” of initiatives, according to EagleOnline:

* Law School Fellows Program: “as many as twelve positions” will be available, paid at “a modest hourly rate” in places like the Legal Assistance Bureau and the Law Library.

* Career Services Partnership Program: working with some firms and companies, the Law School will coordinate jobs for graduates from September 1 of this year to March 1 of the next, to help out those who are waiting out deferrals or bar exam results. While stipends vary, past participants have “averaged $800 to $1000 per week.”

* Audit Courses: Class of 2009 graduates will be able to enroll in “a number of courses” in the fall semester, without tuition but without the opportunity to receive a grade, with the “understanding” that “graduates will participate in the class as observers.”

* Eagle Scholars Program: while auditing courses, graduates can participate in a weekly seminar intended to help students produce “a law review article of publishable quality.”

* Research Assistantships: in a measure bound to raise the ire of some continuing students, graduates are being welcomed to apply for assistantships with professors. Some faculty members have been given the green light to hire an extra assistant for the summer and fall.

* Public Service Jobs: for graduates waiting out deferrals, the Law School is extending access to PS Lawnet in an effort to connect graduates with public service opportunities.

Unlike some schools, BC Law doesn’t appear to be offering an extension in health care benefits. But at least the school isn’t asking students to go deeper into debt. As long as graduates stay away from the local pig farm, they should be okay. At least the ones who have only been deferred until March 2010 or earlier.

The article also has an interesting quote from a BC Law spokesperson:

“[w]e’re all very concerned about our graduates and the economic situation,” but stressed that while “we all want to help…unless students come to us we won’t know how to help them.”

BC students might want to bring up “loan forbearance” just in case the administration is really unaware of how that might help out deferred or unemployed recent graduates.

After the jump, let’s look at what is going on at Loyola - Chicago.

Last month, K&L Gates fired 115 people: 36 associates and 79 staffers.

But since then, K&L Gates has made a number of smaller staff cuts in a number of its offices, including Pittsburgh and Chicago.

The firm refused to comment on its latest reductions. But our sources report that around 20 staffers have been let go from the firm today and over the last couple of weeks. The cuts are coming in the departments you’d expect when a firm is trying to reduce costs. Mailroom staff, the floating secretarial pool, these are the people getting hit right now.

Tipsters also report that in Chicago at least, the recent cuts are Bell Boyd & Lloyd legacy staffers.

Still, it’s got to be particularly tough to survive the K&L Gates March cuts, only to be caught on the backswing now. Nobody is truly “safe” in this economy, but you’d like job security to be a little more than a month-to-month proposition.

Kilpatrick Stockton fires associates after the jump.

For those of you just tuning in, we have a little bit of a back and forth going on between Fordham Law School and One First Street. Last week, we wrote about What Fordham Knows About Justice Scalia. Professor Joel Reidenberg, an information privacy law professor at Fordham, had his class compile a 15-page dossier on Justice Antonin Scalia after the Justice was quoted in January saying, “Every single datum about my life is private? That’s silly.”

Dan Solove expounds on Scalia’s privacy views at Concurring Opinions:

[Scalia] believes that certain kinds of information are not private — Internet tracking, most items of consumption (unless embarrassing), addresses, and so on. He partly seems to endorse the view that there’s no privacy violation if there’s “nothing to hide.”

We checked in with Justice Scalia to see how he felt about Professor Reidenberg acting on his professed privacy beliefs. He was not pleased:

I stand by my remark at the Institute of American and Talmudic Law conference that it is silly to think that every single datum about my life is private. I was referring, of course, to whether every single datum about my life deserves privacy protection in law.

It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said. Prof. Reidenberg’s exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment. Since he was not teaching a course in judgment, I presume he felt no responsibility to display any.

Professor Reidenberg responds to Justice Scalia’s response, after the jump.

It’s time for another list! The AmLaw 100 is out and we finally get to see some financial numbers from the nation’s top law firms. The 2007 numbers have been totally obsolete since Lehman collapsed, so we’ve been waiting a long time for these numbers.

In terms of gross revenue, there is not much of a change within the top ten:

1. Skadden: $2,200,000,000
2. Baker & McKenzie: $2,188,000,000
3. Latham & Watkins: $1,923,000,000
4. Jones Day: $1,540,000,000
5. Sidley Austin: $1,489,500,000
6. White & Case: $1,467,000,000
7. Kirkland & Ellis: $1,400,000,000
8. Mayer Brown: $1,294,000,000
9. Weil: $1,231,000,000
10. Greenberg Traurig: $1,204,000,000

But we all know that gross revenue is a little uncivilized when it comes to prestige whoring among fellow practitioners. After the jump, let’s take a look at the top ten in terms of profits per partner.

Many law school graduates are preparing for an endless summer. Endless in that they won’t be starting work until well into the winter. At this point, the majority of firms are starting 2009 graduates in January 2010. There are some outliers though — some firms are starting new associates as early as September 2009, and some are offering them start dates as late as January 2011.

Here are a few of the latest additions to the deferred start dates list from the past week:

Let’s keep rolling through the U.S. News law school rankings. Last time, we learned a couple of interesting things about Emory: ATL has a lot of readers who are alumni of Emory, and the school generates a lot of hate from other law schools in Georgia. Who knew?

While still first-tier schools, the next batch of schools probably have more regional appeal than national pizzazz. Here’s the list:

30. Fordham
30. Alabama
30. UNC
30. University of Washington
30. Washington & Lee
35. THE Ohio State University
35. UC - Davis
35. UGA
35. University of Wisconsin
39. UC - Hastings
40. Wake Forest
41. BYU
41. George Mason
43. University of Arizona
43. University of Maryland
45. American University
45. Tulane
45. Colorado - Boulder
45. Utah
49. SMU
49. Cardozo

Man, that’s a lot of “ties.” It’s like U.S. News is trying very hard to tell prospective students “the only difference between Fordham and Alabama is whether you want to practice in NYC or Birmingham.” But based on Monday’s thread, apparently Washington & Lee is the best law school in the country (that nobody’s ever heard of).

After the jump, is Cardozo happy with its top 50 ranking, or is it coming for Fordham?

Last week, we wrote about the Fordham law professor who assigned his information privacy law class to compile a dossier on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

The professor had chosen Scalia as the target for privacy invasion because of the Justice’s remarks at a January conference organized by the Institute of American and Talmudic Law. Scalia’s views on the privacy of personal information online are summed up nicely by this quote:

“Every single datum about my life is private? That’s silly,” Scalia [said].

(And his views are summed up at greater length here by privacy expert and GW Law Professor Dan Solove.)

Professor Joel Reidenberg and his class now have a 15-page dossier on Scalia, including his home address, the value of his home, his home phone number, the movies he likes, his food preferences, his wife’s personal e-mail address, and “photos of his lovely grandchildren.”

We checked in with the Justice to see how he felt about his online information being aggregated and mined by the professor and his 15 students.

Scalia was far from pleased (though we were pleased that a Supreme Court Justice would honor Above The Law with a response). Check out his reply to us, after the jump.

* From pirate-fighting hero to litigant in under a month. One of the crew members of the Maersk Alabama has filed a $75,000 lawsuit for his disabling injuries because the ship company knowingly sent him into “pirate-infested waters.” [Courthouse News Service]

* Nationwide Layoff Watch: Atlanta-based firm Kilpatrick Stockton lays off 24 lawyers and pushes back start dates for new associates to April 2010. Look out for a new start date round-up later today. [Fulton County Daily Report]

* Former Lawyer of the Day Loren Friedman, who doctored his University of Chicago Law grades to land a Sidley Austin SA gig, has had his law license suspended for three years. Some want his head, or at least his disbarment. But Friedman may not even care. Having a knack for the fine art of doctoring the truth, he’s now enrolled in business school. [Chicago Tribune]

* The Astor trial is in full swing in New York. The big question in the trial is where Brooke Astor wanted her millions to go. To charity? To her son? To her estate lawyer? Probably not the last. [New York Times]

* Federal prosecutors acting badly in an asbestos case got a verbal beat-down from Montana Judge Donald Molloy and may cause the case against a chemical company to be thrown out. [United Press International]

* The DOJ searches for the term “antitrust law violations” in the Google book-search settlements with authors and publishers. [Wall Street Journal (subscription)]

* If you take a sick day, don’t fall for the old “Facebook friend request from the managing partner” trick. [Maximum PC]

Everyone is writing about how summer associate programs will be lean and mean this year due to law firm cutbacks in the recession. The summer associate classes will be smaller. The summers will be shorter. The perks will be less lavish. The long summer associate lunches will be few and far between. And on and on.

Well, Cleary Gottlieb got the memo… and has posted a memo to the firm intranet letting their attorneys know just what to expect from the summer associate program this year. One source there said:

Cleary released some very bizarre summer associate rules. Can’t tell if they’re joking.

Here is a sampling, from the “2009 Summer Associate Lunch Policy” portion of the memo, neatly incorporating our suggestion to McWine and McDine SAs.

The full memo, a response from the firm, and special discounts to look out for this summer, after the jump.

* Anybody want to give John Grisham a hand? [West]

* Impeachment, Texas-style. [Grits for Breakfast]

* It is it legal to fire dirty lawyers? Probably. [Professor Bainbridge]

* Having momentarily dealt with fleeting expletives, SCOTUS could move quickly to address fleeting nudity. I propose this deal: the baby boomers can continue their astonishing string of selling out every single principle they ever claimed to have (R.I.P George Carlin) and keep their precious network television. Meanwhile, Gen X and the Millennials can have the internet. Oh, we’re already doing that? Cool. [SCOTUSblog]

* Marquette is hosting a national sports law writing competition. Topics will undoubtedly include how Obama’s relaxing of Cuban travel restrictions can help the Yankees’ farm system, how to hijack basketball teams from successful markets, and a cap and trade system that will help Drew Rosenhaus keep his hair without causing global warming. The winner gets to be the new NHL commissioner. [Sports Agent Blog]

* Another lawyer loses his credentials for failure to pay back student loans. I’ll be sending him my student loan bailout agitation package in the mail. [Legal Writing Prof Blog]

* The end of Ridiculum. [Ridiculum]

A month and a half ago, Husch Blackwell laid off a number of employees. At the time, Husch Blackwell’s chairman Dave Fenley refused to use the term “layoffs.” Instead, he said:

He said that Husch Blackwell was “going gangbusters” in certain areas and was meeting its numbers this year, “which is pleasantly surprising.”

Later, Fenley admitted that the gangbusters comment was “boneheaded,” but he also said:

These [layoffs] would’ve occurred “regardless of the economy” but the “economy reminded us” that it needed to be done.

But the latest news out of Husch is hard to reconcile with a firm doing well despite the difficult economy. Details after the jump.

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), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.

One day after work — or, in my case, after the block of time during which most people work — I take the subway uptown to meet my friend Gillian. Gillian lives near Central Park, so we are taking advantage of one of the first warm days of spring by going for a long walk.

When I emerge from the subway, Gillian is pacing on the street corner and talking on the phone. “It’s terrible,” I hear her saying. “I spoke to her, and she sounded pretty upset. I still can’t figure out why her.” She makes the universal symbol for “I’m talking to someone who won’t wrap it up.” “No,” I hear her say, “I thought she was great.”

Gillian fills me in when she gets off the phone. Her company, a tiny consulting firm, has laid off several people. Gillian was told about one of the people, with whom she was working on a project, and she was not surprised that the company was letting her go; Gillian thought that the woman was generally difficult to work with, and had not gotten good performance reviews. But the decision to lay off another employee — the woman she was talking about on the phone — had taken Gillian and her colleagues by surprise. “She was so good at her job,” Gillian laments, sounding stunned, “and the clients were crazy about her. I can’t figure out why they chose her.” Moreover, Gillian adds, the woman is a single mother. “I don’t know what she’s going to do,” she says, “or what to say to her.”

She turns to me. “What do you think would be helpful?” she asks. “What’s the right thing to do in this situation?”

Roxana continues her stroll through unemployment, after the jump.

Georgetown is the latest top school to try to come up with innovative ways to help its graduates deal with the global economic crisis. The headline news is that GULC will be offering an extended health care plan to graduates who need it. At least for a little while:

Health insurance. If you currently carry the University’s student Premier Plan, you will be covered under the current policy until midnight on August 14, 2009. All students covered under this plan will then be eligible to enroll for a six month extension through February 14, 2010; shorter or longer extensions are not available. Contact the Student Health Insurance Office at https://www4.georgetown.edu/uis/keybridge/keyform/form.cfm?FormID=2954 for further information about coverage, cost, and registration. While the Law Center does not endorse any insurance plan other than our own Premier Plan, there are other options that you might wish to explore. Dean of Students Mitch Bailin will be sending to you this week detailed information about options available through the ABA Law Student Division and www.studentcare.com, as well as more information about extending coverage through the student Premier Plan.

An extension to February 14th should help people with January start dates.

After the jump, we see that Georgetown is doing a whole host of things to try to help its new graduates.

Arlen Specter (R-PA), is switching parties. Politico reports:

Republican Sen. Arlen Specter is switching parties so he can run in the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary, abandoning his party because he does not want to be “judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.”

Specter is the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee (chaired by Patrick Leahy).

It will be interesting to see who replaces him as the Republican leader against future Obama judicial nominations. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) used to chair the committee. John Kyl (R-AZ) has been making a lot of news. Chuck Grassley recently became famous for his stance on banker suicide. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) might be a little young for the post.

The early money on the street is on Kyl. The Republican party seems to be listing right and Kyl has been out in front of that movement.

The back and forth on the Judiciary is important for lawyers (how much fun do you think Elena Kagan is having today), but obviously the bigger news is that Specter could be the 60th Senate vote for the soon-to-be filibuster proof Obama agenda.

The move stands to put the White House’s agenda on a fast track — and to renew hopes among organized labor for the Employee Free Choice Act.

The move also raises the stakes for the resolution of the Minnesota Senate race and may tempt Republicans to drag that fight on further.

Political expediency could be the name of the game for Specter. More details after the jump.

One would think that the current global economic crisis would be taking a toll on women’s issues. Work-life balance? Please, any associate not on track with their hours is a candidate for a layoff. Retention of women? Whatever, welcome to the world of forced attrition.

But is the prevailing view accurate? Patricia Gillette, an Orrick partner and founder of The Opt In Project, doesn’t think so. Today on AmLaw Daily, Gillette makes the argument that now is the perfect time for firms to address issues traditionally important to women:

There is another school of thought, the one that I subscribe to. It is this—the economic crisis provides law firms with opportunities they never before had. Those include: to step away from the salary and bonus programs that destroyed collegiality and prevented flexibility; to make structural and organizational changes long overdue; to kill the billable hour once and for all; to get ahead of the sea change that is coming to the legal profession.

Now is the time to take advantage of the immobility of partners and associates and the weakening bargaining position of law students, to make changes that may not be popular with everyone, but are long overdue. And these changes, in the long run, will benefit women and will answer the cries of all Gen Y lawyers for a kinder and gentler law firm life.

It seems to me that moving away from lockstep compensation necessarily leads to more subjective forms of salary advancement. The billable hour might be the bane of a lawyer’s existence, but it is at least based on objective criteria. Will putting salary decisions in the hands of intra-firm politics and relationship building really lead to a “kinder and gentler” law firm? Or will it lead to an “eat-what-you-kill” approach that many partners complain about when it comes to their compensation structure?

After the jump, Gillette outlines three big moves that could help women in law firms.

In yesterday’s open thread on #17 though #28 schools in the U.S. News rankings, we neglected to include a riff on the crime statistics in various schools’ cities. We did start thinking about it today, though, as it seems that bullets occasionally fly in the City of Lakes, home to the #20-ranked law school. And Dennis Jansen, a University of Minnesota 1L, was unlucky enough to catch one in the back this weekend.

Jansen keeps a blog called No. 634 tracking his law school adventures. Usually the posts are about fairly mundane topics, like his new dog Harley (a mastiff) and classes (“CrimLaw is a waste of time”). But yesterday, he posted something rather out of the ordinary. One of his fellow students sent it along to us, saying, “So I read this blog by a kid in my 1L crim law class… and THIS was definitely the most interesting post: Jansen gets shot.”

According to the post, Jansen was out on the wild streets of Minneapolis Sunday after going to a club when…

I’m walking across Hennepin with what felt like the entire hiphop room of the Gay 90’s, when I hear popping sounds.

People scream and start running.
I feel something hit my back.

I stop on the curb and call over to T.

Me: “I think I got hit.”
T: “Shut up, where?”
(I lift up the back of my shirt and point.)
T: “OH MY GOD, they got you! They shot you!”
Me: “It’s a gunshot?”
T: “YES! THEY GOT YOU! (then to the street) HE GOT SHOT!”

His first thoughts were not of his mortality but of class the next morning:

So it’s around 2:30 am on a Monday morning and I’m sitting downtown bleeding on the side of the street. Random people coming from clubs stopped as they saw the blood coming from my back. I had a pretty good idea that I was going to miss this morning’s civil procedure class…

And you thought you were having a rough finals week.

Jansen may give former honoree Alex Botsios (the Arizona 1L who wrestled his laptop away from an armed robber) a good running for ATL Law Student of all time. More after the jump, including a gratuitous, but not graphic, photo of the wound.

We know you can’t use the f-word as a verb or noun on television. Just to be clear, you can’t use it as an adjective either. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Supreme Court is giving tentative approval to government regulation of the use of even a single curse word on live television.

Somehow, this is all Bono’s fault. Bloody hell.

But the SCOTUS ruling wasn’t a complete loss for free speech advocates:

But the court, in a 5-4 decision Tuesday, is refusing to pass judgment on whether the Federal Communications Commission’s “fleeting expletives” policy is in line with First Amendment guarantees of free speech. The justices say a federal appeals court should weigh the constitutionality of the policy.

Justice Scalia delivered the opinion for the 5-4 majority.

Court Upholds FCC ‘Fleeting Expletive’ Rule [Wall Street Journal]

While the cutting edge firms have moved onto cutting salaries, there are still firms that are getting through their layoffs.

Yesterday, Above the Law learned that Wildman Harrold decided to go through another round of cuts. Here is the firm statement:

We have reduced our associate ranks by 10 and our secretarial staff by 7. The individuals affected by these reductions are all high quality employees and professionals, who have made valuable contributions to our firm. Our diverse profile as a firm remains unchanged by these departures.

Back in January, Wildman laid off approximately ten attorneys.

Layoffs have definitely slowed down this month, but they haven’t stopped. But with summer associates on the way, hopefully forced attrition is almost at an end.

Earlier: Nationwide Layoff Watch: Wildman Harrold Makes Deep Cuts

* Marc Dreier will plead guilty on May 11. Defense attorney Gerald Shargel said he “wants to enter the plea to demonstrate his acceptance of responsibility and his profound remorse.” Or maybe it’s just because he ran out of money to pay Shargel. [Forbes]

* Forget the office attire debate over suit vs. blazer and skirt suit vs. pant suit. Mexico City attorneys are sporting surgical masks. (And midtown Manhattan firms, watch out. There’s been an outbreak at Ernst & Young’s Times Square office. Okay, not an outbreak. One case. But we feel a strange journalistic urge to fan the flames of panic.) [National Law Journal]

* Is it just us or do the media seem gleeful about the fact that summer associates will actually have to work hard this summer? [Forbes]

* Alleged Craigslist killer and BU med student Philip Markoff could afford a $1,400 luxury one-bedroom in Quincy, but can’t afford an attorney. [Boston Globe]

* Maybe Markoff should burglarize some cars in order to fence stolen property to pay his lawyer. That’s what this Wisconsin teen tried to do. [United Press International]

* No more getting freaky in Chicago. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan demands that Craigslist take down its erotic services section. Like other state AGs, she is doing it in response to the Craigslist killings, but the legal issue is that people are getting freaky for money, and that Craigslist is not donating the profits to charity. [Los Angeles Times]

* Sheppard Mullin’s LA office had a scary Friday. [Contra Costa Times]

* The rankings are important, for your ego at least. [The Cuban Revolution]

* This national conspiracy to keep the white man down is going very well. Pretty soon, they’ll be the second class citizens. Hahahahaha, hahahaha … wait, what do you mean my loan application has been denied? [Gothamist]

* There is probably not a single person alive that would willingly give police officers access to their hard drives. But if there is, we need to do something about that person for the genetic vitality of the species. [Underdog]

* Here’s a conservative Harvard Law Professor. Really. I’m not joking. [WSJ Law Blog]

* There isn’t really a legal angle here, but I wanted to make sure our readers knew about this. [TXTS FRM LST NGHT]

* It’ll be interesting to see if Desmond can go back in time and fix this. [Popsquire]

* A five towns boy made good, and now his son is hosting Blawg Review.
[New York Injury Cases Blog via Blawg Review]

* In case you missed it, we are still interested in the size of your law office. [Above the Law]

* Thanks to all of the people who have already sent in a resume to be one of ATL’s new interns. We’ve just started going through the responses, but if you haven’t already, feel free to send in a resume. [Above the Law]

More bad news for associates that A) enjoyed making a top of the market salary, or B) think lockstep compensation is a good idea. Nixon Peabody has joined the list a of firms cutting salaries.

The memo just went out to all associates:

The first step in our move to this new approach was a comprehensive review of base salaries for all associates. We are rolling back starting salaries to the previous level - $145,000 in Boston, DC, NY, Chicago and California (and corresponding lower levels in the rest of our US markets). This impacts current first year associates as well as our incoming summer associates and our new associates who will join us in January of 2010.

We have also reviewed base pay for the balance of our associates, making adjustments to our associates’ base pay based on individual performance and contribution to firm financial results. Base pay changes will be reflected in the May 21, 2009 paycheck. Associates will be informed of any changes to base pay beginning today.

So far, early reports indicate that some associates received a performance based pay cuts between 15% and 20%. But we did also speak to a source that did not receive any cut at all.

After the jump, Nixon Peabody takes another swing at lockstep by changing its bonus structure.

We are continuing our march through the latest U.S. News law school rankings. So far we’ve learned that students who go to law school in warm weather climates believe their quality of life is much better than what is experienced by students who attend law schools in the Northeast and Chicago. We’ve also learned that the anti-GULC contingent of our readers are vocal and relentless.

The next batch of schools includes some rising stars and one major fade. To refresh your memory:

17. Vanderbilt
18. USC (Gould)
19. Washington (St. Louis)
20. Boston University
20. Emory
20. Minnesota
23. Indiana
23. Illinois
23. Notre Dame
26. Boston College
26. Iowa
28. William & Mary
28. George Washington

Boston University continues its rankings pwnage of Boston College. When are the educationally inclined Jesuits going to bring out the big guns (rulers?) and apply it to the law school? Meanwhile, is Notre Dame really no longer the best law school in Indiana?

After the jump, it’s George Washington University Law School time.

It’s an exciting day here at ATL when we can find three excuses to cover the salacious beat (see #1 and #2). Judge Richard Posner brings us our third opportunity.

Judge Posner issued a ruling [PDF] Friday in a patent infringement case involving “sex aids” companies. Posner brings his dry humor and excellent wit to the decision, starting off by defining the nature of the business the plaintiff and the defendant are in:

Both firms produce what the parties call “sex aids” but are colloquially referred to as “sex toys.” A more perspicuous term is “sexual devices,” by analogy to “medical devices.” The analogy lies in the fact that, like many medical devices (thermometers for example), what we are calling sexual devices are intended to be inserted into bodily orifices, albeit for a different purpose.

Never before has patent infringement been so sexy… and sex toys so un-sexy:

The devices are generally in the shape of rods of various curvatures and are made out of rubber, plastic, glass, or some combination of these materials. Until the plaintiffs began manufacturing their patented sexual devices, glass sexual devices were made out of soda-lime glass, the most common form of glass.

We are not as well-versed in the nature of sex toys as is Judge Posner. We didn’t realize there were such things as glass dildos — despite the presence of this commenter in our threads — but apparently there are, and they have been around for a long time. The plaintiffs in Ritchie (Know Mind Enterprises/Topco) v. Vast Resources Inc. claimed to innovate the glass dildo design, obtaining a patent for those made with borosilicate glass (the stuff used by Pyrex). Adding silica makes the devices “slippery,” “lubricious,” and “resistant to heat, chemicals, electricity and bacterial absorptions.” While we like chemistry in bed, electricity might be a bit much.

Ritchie sued Vast Resources for violating its patent, and making their own slippery glass rods. The Seventh Circuit, in Judge Posner’s opinion, reversed the lower court’s decision in the plaintiff’s favor, ruling that Pyrexing sex devices is not patentable. It’s an “obvious” invention, an example of “modest, routine, everyday, incremental improvements of an existing product or process that confer commercial value… but do not involve sufficient inventiveness to merit patent protection.”

Posner is a judge on the Seventh Circuit but sat on this Federal Circuit case by designation. Like us, Posner likes writing on salacious topics. After all, having penned the book Sex and Reason in 1992, Posner is a judicial sexpert.

Decision [Federal Circuit]
Slippery Sex Toys Aren’t Inventive, U.S. Court Says [Bloomberg]
Slick Glass Dildos are an “Obvious” Improvement! [The Legal Satyricon]
Judge Posner at the Federal Circuit: Patent on Sex Aid is Obvious [Patent Law Blog]

Way back in December, long before the cool kids started doing it, Squire Sanders & Dempsey froze associate salaries.

Having already frozen salaries, Squire Sanders is now cutting them outright. Tipsters report that the firm has announced a 10% reduction in associate salaries across the board. The cuts will start in May.

You’ll remember that Squire Sanders was very reluctant to raise salaries in the first place. So it’s not entirely surprising that the firm is showing no hesitation to cut salaries given the opportunity.

But just in case some Squire Sanders associates think about complaining, the firm also fired a number of people.

Additional details after the jump.

We’ve been bringing you a number of stories about law students melting down as the recession, finals, swine flu, and a spate of year-end elections takes its toll on America’s next generation of lawyers.

The latest missive comes from a female Cardozo student who accuses the Cardozo law review board of gender bias. It turns out that this student lost an election to be Editor-in-Chief of the Cardozo law review.

But it also turns out that the executive board of the Cardozo law review has no female members.

The situation is so surprising that school officials have organized a meeting of all the law review 2Ls to discuss this matter. Unfortunately, the student who lost the Editor-in-Chief election will not be able to attend. Fortunately (for Above the Law readers), she decided to commit her thoughts to email:

I believe the journal does have a problem with gender bias in elections that we should address. It was striking that, for the second year in a row, the executive board does not have a single female member. It also stands out that, of all the editorial board positions with input into the article selection process for both the Law Review and de novo, not a single position is held by a woman.

The all-male composition of the most influential positions on the editorial board is at odds with the composition of the journal. It is also at odds with the objective performance of the female members of the staff. Of the thirty-seven Vol. 30 staffers, sixteen (43%) are women and twenty-one (57%) are men. The results of the blind Note-selection process mirror these statistics: of the sixteen Notes selected for publication in Vol. 31, seven (44%) were authored by female staffers and nine (56%) were authored by male staffers. Statistics are not available by which I could objectively assess the quality of staffers’ C&Sing work. However, the Note publication rates suggest that, when blind judging is applied, female staffers perform as well as male staffers. This objective fact regarding the quality of female staffers’ Notes is not reflected by the results of the past election. I believe there were well-qualified female candidates for the executive board and other editorial board positions who were overlooked.

Are law reviews still just an elaborate old boy network? You’d think not, you’d hope not, but this student provides other compelling stats after the jump.

Deidre Dare was our Lawyer of the Day Weekend back in January. Judging from the traffic on that post, we assume most of you know her story. If not, here are the quick and dirty details:

Dare, a Columbia Law grad, was a senior associate in Allen & Overy’s Moscow office. She was having fun expat adventures and decided to write about them in an online novella that included lots of alcohol, drugs, sex, donkeys, and dwarves. A&O was not a fan of one of its lawyers publishing porn online and made her stop writing it. Then, A&O fired her.

And the firm, unwisely perhaps, revealed exactly why it fired her (instead of just silently including her in the 10% layoff sweep, which resulted in the booting of many in the Moscow office, including Deidre’s Russian boyfriend). From a firm statement published by the Lawyer at the time:

Following our normal disciplinary process, we found that Ms Dare’s behaviour - in publishing the material she did in the professional name under which she practises, and the way that she has responded to a number of reasonable requests from us since - was unacceptable and totally at odds with the standards of behaviour that we expect from all of our people.

We’ve therefore terminated her employment.

Well, Deidre e-mailed us this morning with an update on her situation:

I know how you all love to hate me, so I thought you’d be interested in the following news!

Sex novelist lawyer Deidre Dare sues for being sacked

Obviously, Deidre doesn’t know us well, if she thinks we would hate a lawyer-turned-porn-writer. We couldn’t imagine much out there that we’d rather write about. While we wait for her to accept our Facebook friend request, we’ll tell you a bit more about what Deidre’s up to these days.

Hint: rather than legal memos, she’s penning lines like, “I am a dirty girl. I am dirty in bed and I’m happy to be dirty anywhere else if the need arises.”

[Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past two years. You can reach them by email: asia at kinneyrecruiting dot com.]

Evan here, just finishing another all-nighter at about 10am EST I am not proud to say (after all, have to still work on Asia market time when I am stateside with family in our Miami Beach home). Apologies for the couple of weeks without a new post. It has been a very busy past four weeks, with a lot of travel and a surge in Asia associate interview activity finally (as we mentioned in previous post). The surge in interviews that started a few weeks ago has so far resulted in only one senior associate placement in Shanghai (my first associate placement in China since three in January), but we expect three to five associate placements in the next month from the current interview activity in HK / China. We also continue to make partner placements from time to time in this down market, keeping us as busy as ever (we have more partner level candidates in Asia than I can remember at any time previously).

As always, please feel free to ask any questions in comments and we will answer each asap (although this time let’s keep my wife out of the comments, shall we?). The China doomsdayers (all firms are closing withiin 5 years) and impersonaters are welcome too, but these days I have at long last (and at the urging of the “fake Evan, the real fake Evan”) stepped up to the plate with my very own ATL account for commenting, complete with photo, an example of technical savy to be sure.

Please note a sampling of some of our more urgent associate openings (although “urgent” in this market does not make for quick offers, as we have seen even a few five round interview processes):

Tokyo - project finance / leveraged finance mid-level to senior associate, Korean required

Dubai - PE / M&A mid-level to senior associate, must be UK qualified

Beijing - PE / M&A mid-level to senior associate, Mandarin required

Shanghai - IP litigation senior associate, Mandarin required

Hong Kong - PE / M&A mid-level to senior associate, Mandarin preferred

More notes on Asian economic vitality after the jump.

Above the Law is a valuable resource for lawyers planning their careers. Faithful ATL readers know that the site contains important and useful information about the nation’s leading law firms, in terms of culture, compensation, and a whole host of other metrics. If you’d like to know about law firm layoffs, bonuses, or start dates, to name just a few examples, ATL is there.

Now we’re providing you with a resource for researching your favorite firms in a more systematic fashion. Together with our friends at Lateral Link, we have created a brand-new Career Center. To check it out, click here.

The site has a few sections. In Firm Snapshots, you can view profiles of individual firms. In Firm Comparisons, you can compare different firms on various metrics.

To keep the information in the Career Center accurate and up-to-date, we’ll be asking for your help. Please register for full access to the site. If you’re a lawyer at a firm included in the Career Center, you’ll be asked to answer short survey questions about your firm when you visit. We’ll aggregate and update our data each time a new visitor logs in to the site. By providing users with the ability to generate detailed firm reports, both individually and on a comparative basis, the Career Center offers attorneys a new way to navigate the law firm landscape.

If you are a recruiting director at a featured firm, please take a few minutes (if you have not done so already) to review the content of your firm profile for accuracy. If you have any corrections or updates, or general feedback about the Career Center, please email them to careercenter@abovethelaw.com. Our goal is to present data that is dynamic, continually updated, and accurate, differentiating our Career Center from other outlets.

We hope that the new Career Center will be a valuable resource to ATL readers. Enjoy!

CAREER CENTER - Powered by Lateral Link

* Harvard 3L Juan Valdivieso talks about his plans for his Morgan Lewis $60K deferral stipend. [Boston Globe]

* Copyright attorney Jo Oliver on the impact the Pirate Bay ruling will have on the legal war on piracy. She has no sympathy for “Internet freedom fighters.” [Reuters]

* … Meanwhile, the Pirate Bay folks are appealing the ruling against them alleging that the judge was biased. He’s a card-wielding member of two pro-copyright organizations. [CNet]

* O’Melveny & Myers partner Alejandro Mayorkas has been tapped to be the director of DHS’s Citizenship and Immigration Services. [Chicago Sun-Times]

* We don’t really know what the point of Twitter is, but it’s probably not to issue death threats. Oklahoma man arrested for tweeting about turning the April 15 Tea Party into a blood bath. [Threat Level/Wired]

* Sex, Second Life, and virtual law. [San Franciso Chronicle]

* PSA: Wash your hands frequently, folks. [New York Times]

We’re running late to the airport, so we’re keeping it short and sweet. If you’re looking for an entertaining vacation memo, try this one or this one instead.

Your above-signed scribe — who has been writing more for these pages lately, as some of you have noticed — will be out of the office, from now until Tuesday, May 12. We’re heading off to the ancestral homeland, for the weddings of two cousins (not to each other; but those of you who have taken the New York bar know that this is acceptable in the Empire State).

Although internet access is plentiful in the Philippines, we’ve decided to go “off the grid” for this vacation. We won’t be checking email or voicemail. We won’t be on AIM or Gchat. We won’t be on Facebook or Twitter (but feel free to friend us or follow us, and we’ll accept the request or return the follow when we get back to NYC).

Please send all tips, questions, complaints, requests for comment moderation, and suggestions for Non-Sequiturs to tips@abovethelaw.com. The tips feed goes to both Elie and Kash, who will keep you enlightened and entertained over the next two weeks. You can also reach Elie by telephone: 212-334-1871, ext. 3. For advertising information, see here.

Maraming salamat! See you in May.

Earlier: Elie’s Vacation Memo
How Does A Turkey Write A Vacation Memo?

[Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks. Law Shucks has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.]

First time jobless claims ticked back up again last week, up 27,000 to 640,000, continuing the 12-week run of record number of people staying on unemployment. There was a net increase of 93,000 in the overall number of people collecting benefits, at a total of 6.14 million. From the “ray of hope” department, the rolling four-week average, which is less volatile, dropped slightly to 646,750 from 651,000 first-time applicants.

“There is nothing suggesting at this point that payroll declines are going to abate,” said Tom Porcelli, a senior economist at Castlestone Management Ltd. in New York. “We could bounce along the bottom here for a while.”

That may be true in the broader markets, but in BigLaw there is one factor looming on the horizon that could stanch the bleeding. What is it? After the jump.

While the NFL Draft is the premier sporting event going on this weekend, we aren’t too far away from the Kentucky Derby. That means planning for all of the events surrounding the Derby is well under way. One of the most exclusive Kentucky Derby parties is being organized by a 26-year-old law clerk.

Chris Barnstable-Brown — whom we mentioned briefly last year, back when he was still in law school — is currently clerking for Judge Boyce F. Martin (6th Cir.), by day. By night (and on lunch breaks), he organizes the Barnstable Brown Gala, which is the place to be in Louisville on race day:

While it’s known as one of Louisville’s most star-studded Derby events (People magazine once listed it among the top parties in the nation), the Barnstable Brown Gala has been going on for 20 years now, long enough for an event to get stale and vulnerable to competition. Over the years, smaller, more accessible parties have sprung up and gained enough stature to pull in a few big names of their own.

Yet there’s no sign that the gala will lose its top dog status anytime soon, in part thanks to Barnstable-Brown. He keeps his mother, gala co-hostess Tricia Barnstable Brown (Chris hyphenates his name, while Tricia does not), hip to the hottest celebrities of the moment and does what it takes to help get these stars to the party.

Mmm … landed gentry.

Running an exclusive Derby party has given Barnstable-Brown a pretty impressive list of contacts:

Over the years, Barnstable-Brown has aided with efforts to lure hip-hop stars like P. Diddy, Jermaine Dupri, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and Ludacris. His efforts are helping, bit by bit, to bring a more up-to-date edge to the gala, which has had, at times, relied on decidedly B-list stars to populate its guest list….

A football fanatic, Barnstable-Brown, a wide receiver on the football team during his high school days at St. Xavier, takes on the job of rounding up star athletes, too. NFL superstars like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning have also become regulars at the party. Last year, he helped seal the deal on getting football bad boy Terrell Owens, then with the Dallas Cowboys, to the gala.

But can he turn those names into clients? After the jump, the rich keep getting richer.

* Notes from the Breadline continues to spark discussion around the nation. Now if it would only spark a job offer. [My Shingle]

* NYU was the first law school in the country to hold a career fair for its deferred associates and furloughed alumni. Kash is working on a story about this and would love to hear how the fair went. Supposedly, 300 3Ls were in attendance. Could a few of you email Kash at kashmir@abovethelaw.com? She promises to be nice. [NYU Law School]

* Super couple Samatha Power and Cass Sunstein had a baby. His name is Declan Power-Sunstein. But we can probably start calling him “International Overlord” right now, just to get on his good side. [Reliable Source / Washington Post]

* If it’s not good enough for your freshman history class, it’s not good enough for a court of law. [NorthJersey.com]

* A civil libertarian’s quest for inner harmony. [Underdog]

* Punishment has been handed down to an overly litigious Stanford Law graduate. [Overlawyered]

* I don’t understand digital rights management, but I’m sure there are legal fees available for somebody that does. [Intellectual Property Colloquium]

* Britney Spears is not mentally fit to testify in court. If you are surprised by this ruling, you are not mentally fit to testify in court. [Popsquire]

The first weekend after Easter traditionally marks the beginning of High Wedding Season, where the weekly NYT fodder switches from merely interesting to heart-stoppingly impressive. This year is no exception, as last Sunday’s pages were chock-full of prestigious lawyer couplings.

Here are the three best:

1. Dena Ringold and David Gossett

2. Ashley Potter and J. P. Bruynes

3. Tracy Zuckerman and Ryan Van Grack

Our complete analysis of these couples, after the jump.

The mainstream news media have tuned into layoffs in the legal world. The essence of most of the MSM coverage is, “You know things are really bad when lawyers start getting fired.” Thankfully, legal layoffs seem to have subsided somewhat, or at least not been so fast and furious as in months past. We welcome the respite and the chance to do the fun news: law revue contests, bad legal mamas, and gunners gone wild.

This week, The Atlantic spilled some ink for a legal firing of the political variety. Murray Waas has a piece on former Nevada U.S. Attorney Dan Bogden. The U.S. attorney firings are a story of yesteryear — specifically, 2006 — but there are still questions that have not been answered, including the reason why Bogden got the boot.

During his time as a U.S.A., Bogden got rave reviews from superiors at the DOJ. He has never received an adequate explanation for why he got pink slipped, even though the Inspector General devoted a whole chapter of its 358-page report on the firings to Bogden.

As noted by the WSJ Law Blog, the Atlantic article sheds a little light on the firing. Apparently, kids would have helped his job security:

“I’m concerned about Bogden,” [Deputy attorney general Paul McNulty] told [AG AG chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson] and a few other senior DOJ officials in the room. “… he’s 50, hasn’t had a job in [the] private sector, and what about his family.”

According to Sampson’s account, another senior official corrected McNulty: “He’s a bachelor,” the official said, “He’s single.”

As Sampson recalled to investigators, McNulty responded, “Okay never mind.” McNulty, Sampson said, “then got up and left my office.”

When questioned by investigators, McNulty did not disagree with Sampson’s basic version of events. Having learned that Dan Bogden was a bachelor, McNulty recalled, “I guess I don’t have any objection [anymore] to going forward.”

We didn’t know the detective from the Wire was working for the DOJ. Cool.

The article goes on to reveal that the screwed over fired U.S. attorneys have an informal little social club, holding reunions on a yearly basis. More on how U.S.A.s get wild, after the jump.

Yesterday, we reported on a law student at Loyola - Chicago who was very unhappy with how one law school course was being taught. Today, Dean David Yellen responded to the critics, in an email to the entire law school community:

Dear Students,

By now, many of you have read or heard about the “Above the Law” item regarding our third year student who complained to me about Accounting for Lawyers. I thought I would give you a little additional information.

After the student e-mailed me (and the entire class) late Monday night, I spoke with Professor Ramirez early Tuesday. He was already planning to meet with the student, which he did that day. They had a very good discussion, after which the student e-mailed me apologizing for the tone of his e-mail and saying that he was pleased with Professor Ramirez’s plans for the rest of the semester. The student concluded, “I have, for the most part, truly enjoyed my experience here at Loyola and this experience will not change my belief that I chose the right law school for me.” I was proud of the student for acknowledging a mistake in sending the e-mail.

Yesterday, the student wanted money back for having to take the class. We assume that didn’t happen.

But after the jump, Dean Yellen expresses disappointment in the students who commented on yesterday’s post.

We’re a little late in reporting this news about Schulte Roth & Zabel (just as we were the last time around). But the firm once again handled the situation quietly — stealthily, you might say — so it took us a while to get adequate confirmation and corroboration.

But we did eventually. We’re now in a position to report the following about SRZ, based on reports received from multiple sources:

1. Earlier this week, approximately 20 attorneys were let go at Schulte Roth & Zabel. Cuts were made in corporate, real estate, litigation, and possibly other departments.

2. How to characterize the cuts is unclear. It seems that some lawyers were told they were being let go for performance-related reasons, while others were told they were being let go for economic reasons.

3. The affected attorneys are receiving a two-month notice period — i.e., two months in which to find new jobs — and outplacement assistance. This is consistent with Schulte’s past practice (see our most recent severance package table).

Additional info, about the summer program and start dates, after the jump.

The next group of schools in the U.S. News law school rankings have the legal education drivers clumped together more closely than cars in a NASCAR race.

To refresh your memory, here are the law schools ranked 6 through 15:

6. UC Berkeley
6. University of Chicago
8. Penn
9. Michigan
10. Duke
10. Northwestern
10. UVA
13. Cornell
14. Georgetown
15. UCLA
15. UT-Austin

We’re doing a series of open threads around the U.S. News rankings to allow you, oh glorious readers who are at or graduated from these schools, to opine on how you decided between them. We hope your wisdom will help future law school applicants in choosing between the schools in the future… unless they’re just rank slaves who choose by U.S. News slot alone. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The first question is probably the most obvious: What is the difference between a school like Chicago or Berkeley and the schools in the top five? If you want to live in Illinois or California, aren’t you much better off going to a school in the region than going to Columbia or NYU? If you got into the top five, but chose a school from this bunch instead, tell us why in the comments.

Alternatively, if you were dissed by the top five — or you chose to dis them by not applying — but you were considering multiple schools from this bunch, how did you choose?

Chicago Law students consistently feel wronged by being left out of the top five. We invite them to argue their position — or the need to increase their position — in the comments.

At least Chicago Law administrators didn’t seem to take this round of rankings personally. Take a look at how Dean David E. Van Zandt of Northwestern reacted, after the jump.

As Above the Law’s Safest Firm bracket proved, smaller can be a big can of better. Today’s Job of the Week is with another boutique law firm. Lateral Link has been tremendously successful helping smaller law firms recruit top talent. If you are a small firm looking to hire an attorney, please email Michael Allen at mallen@laterallink.com.

Position: Litigation Associate

Location: Orange County, CA

Description: A highly regarded litigation boutique in Orange County is looking for an associate to join the practice. The associate will work primarily on commercial litigation with some real estate and bankruptcy lit as well. The attorney must have at least four years of substantive litigation experience and some experience taking depositions. In addition the associate must be an outstanding writer. Billables are around 1900 per year and compensation is less than that at the top national firms, but the associate will get significant hands on experience.

For more information about this position or to apply, please see Position 10496 on Lateral Link. Current members can also contact their personal search consultant directly to discuss this position. Membership in Lateral Link is free and you can apply at www.laterallink.com. Also, a reminder that the LACBA presentation “The LA Legal Market: How to Find a Job in the Midst of an Economic Downturn” is coming up on April 29.

We periodically conduct surveys to obtain more information about our readership demographics, which we use for both editorial and marketing purposes. If you’d like to learn more about Above the Law’s audience, click here (information about age, gender, education, and income), or here (PDF; information about employer type).

Today we’d like to find out about employer size. The question for today is:

How many lawyers (including yourself) work in your office?

If you work for an employer with multiple offices — e.g., a law firm or corporation with a presence in several cities — please include only those lawyers who work at your location.

To take the survey, click here (or below). Thanks!

How big is your law office? [Survey Monkey]

Even though we’ve been busy covering the start dates of graduating 3Ls, we don’t want to ignore what is going on with summer programs.

So let’s catch up with the news out of Philadelphia. Summer programs are so short there that summer associates won’t be able to get in more than a couple of trips to Atlantic City.

We’ve already reported that Blank Rome will have a six week summer program. The Legal Intelligencer reports that Buchanan Ingersoll will also have a short summer:

Buchanan Ingersoll will also scale back its 2009 summer associate program by three weeks, bringing it down to seven weeks, the spokeswoman said. She said there will be 10 summer associates firmwide compared to the 23 summers the firm had in 2008.

How competitive will those seven weeks be? Last summer, Buchanan Ingersoll extended offers to 13 of its 23 summer associates. But maybe the small program will allow the firm to give offers to all of its summers?

Buchanan Ingersoll Puts Off Start Dates, Cuts Summer Program [Legal Intelligencer]

Earlier: Nationwide No Offer Watch: Buchanan Ingersoll

* Kenya has emerged as the chosen venue to try piracy cases. This article is worth it just for the quotes from the Kenyan piracy lawyer. Just try to imagine how much cooler your life would be if you were a Kenyan Piracy lawyer instead of a Biglaw associate. [The New York Times]

* Florida Judge Thomas Stringer worked for years to establish himself as a trusted, competent man. “then last spring, the well-respected, married judge suddenly found his face splashed beside that of a troubled exotic dancer in a kimono,” including here at ATL, of course. Amazing. [The Associated Press]

* Attorney General Eric Holder dodged alternating attacks on Capitol Hill Thursday, with some Congressman telling him to release more documents on Bush-era torture, and some telling him to stop releasing them. [CNN]

Thanks to everyone who participated in Above the Law’s First Ever Law Revue Video Contest. We thank the nominators, who drew our attention to so many worthy — and some unworthy — contenders; the voters, who viewed the six finalists, and cast almost 10,000 ballots; and, of course, the talented law students (and faculty members) who created these delightful entertainments.

The contest turned into a struggle between two contenders:

Boston University: My New Outline

University of Virginia: Con Luv (aka Hot Bodies of Law)

My New Outline took an early lead, but Con Luv quickly pulled even. It was a close race until the home stretch, when last-minute voters showed some love to Con Luv.

There were allegations of cheating, on both sides. We asked our friends at Vizu to audit the results — which explains our delay in announcing the results, for which we apologize — and Vizu gave the contest a clean bill of health. There were a handful of IP addresses that submitted multiple votes, but (1) this is not per se evidence of gaming, since multiple users can be on the same IP address; and (2) even throwing out all of these votes, Con Luv would still prevail, by several hundred votes. We’re not talking Coleman v. Franken here.

So congratulations, UVA Law! You’re not only the Coolest Law School in America, but one of the most creative as well. This has to be good for a few spots in next year’s U.S. News rankings.

More discussion — a full breakdown of the results, details about next year’s contest, and your chance to sound off in the comments about who wuz robbed — after the jump.

* U.S. News doesn’t just rank law schools. What, you’ve never heard of the bitter rivalry between Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins? It’s like Dr. Richard Kimble versus Dr. Charles Nichols every year between these two schools. [True/Slant]

* Always remember that professors are just as excited to get done with classes as students are. [Legal Profession Blog]

* Vice President Biden’s speech at Georgetown was very well-received. [The BLT: Blog of the Legal Times]

* A Chicago Law grad falsified his transcript and has now been punished. This is what happens if you don’t embrace the calm sense of mediocrity inspired by grade inflation. [TaxProf Blog]

* It’s the Bard’s birthday. [What About Clients?]

* More mergers means less job security for in-house lawyers. [Law and More]

* Facebook Ghosting would be more interesting if there were any legitimate job opportunities to be had. [Young Lawyers Blog]

* Here’s the old school way to handle breach of contract claims. [Anonymous Lawyer]

There are still firms that are just now announcing start dates, even though we’re nearing the end of April.

Kilpatrick Stockton has the most interesting news. Yesterday, incoming first years were informed that they would not be able to start until April 2010. It’s a mandatory deferral. Above the Law received this statement from co-managing partner Diane Prucino:

Kilpatrick Stockton announced today that it will delay the start date of the firm’s Fall 2009 entry associates class. Entry associates are scheduled to join the firm in April 2010. Firm departments will have flexibility to have their entry associates join their teams earlier, depending on work levels. All entry associates will be offered a two-month salary advance.

Though the firm remains strong in this challenging and volatile business environment and had a solid financial year in 2008, this difficult decision is structured to further improve the long-term success of the firm and to enhance the achievement of our strategic goals through more efficient use of personnel and realignment of our expense structure. We, like other leading law firms, believe these measures are necessary to adapt to changes in the economy and to the demand for certain legal services. There is an intense commitment to enhancing the firm’s first-rate, innovative and cost-effective client service. With these goals in mind, Kilpatrick Stockton is dedicated to continuing to identify strategic growth opportunities to expand our world-class firm and improve our competitive position in the marketplace.

Kilpatrick’s deferral stipend isn’t very competitive compared to what other firms are offering for shorter deferment periods. As we understand it, Kilpatrick is only offering $17,000 to its incoming first years. It’s not even a deferral “stipend,” it is a deferral advance. Associates will have to pay the money back once they start at the firm.

Hopefully Kilpatrick Stockton won’t cut salaries over the next year on its incoming first years who suddenly have more debt.

News from Andrews Kurth, Bingham McCutchen, and Dechert after the jump.

Voting has ended for last week’s Couple of the Month polls, so it’s time to announce the winners. The January poll was extremely close; the February and March crowns were captured decisively by couples associated with the Obama machine and the Kennedy dynasty, respectively.

Check out the results, after the jump.

Chadbourne & Parke has already laid off associates. It has already frozen associate salaries. So perhaps cutting associate salaries outright isn’t too much of a surprise.

Associates at Chadbourne were just informed that their salaries would be cut. But they weren’t told how deep the cuts would go. Here’s the pertinent part from the firm-wide memo:

We will be reducing base salaries of attorneys, administrative personnel and other staff for the remainder of the year, beginning with the May pay period. All personnel will be advised of the reduction to their salary. Depending upon Firm financial performance and individual effort and contribution, all personnel will be eligible to recoup all or part of the amount of the reduction in the form of a bonus to be distributed at the same time discretionary bonuses have been traditionally distributed.

That really brings a whole new (and much more terrible) meaning to the term “special bonus.”

Just like with Baker & McKenzie, Chadbourne seems to be doing more than simply cutting associate salaries. The firm is doling out different cuts to different people, and it doesn’t appear that class year has a lot to do with it. It’s another shot at lockstep associate compensation.

Has Chadbourne management been listening to The Dow is Up Guy? Interesting details after the jump.

Despite the skepticism of Above the Law commenters, David Post, writing for the Volokh Conspiracy, decided to do some research into possible legal claims available to deferred or laid -off incoming associates.

A particularly litigious incoming first-year will be happy to see the fruits of Professor Post’s efforts:

[I]t turns out things are a little more complicated than one might have thought (or than the folks on ATL might have realized, had they not been so busy mocking ideas into silence). Turns out there have been a bunch of cases on this very question, and the outcomes, perhaps surprisingly or perhaps not, go in both directions. A good ALR annotation collects the cases together [1 ALR 5th 401 (“Employer’s state-law liability for withdrawing, or substantially altering, job offer for indefinite period before employee actually commences employment”)].

It would be nothing short of fascinating if — instead of unleashing rats on the Lipstick Building on May Day — an associate actually took on their former firm based on a theory of promissory estoppel.

Not that anybody should actually try, but the best available arguments after the jump.

Now that the new U.S. News rankings are out, we want to bring the strength of the full Above the Law community to bear on the discussion of the best law schools.

Every year, people warn prospective students against making decisions based solely on the rankings. To help students gather as much information as possible in case they do want to think about bucking the list and choosing a lower-ranked school, we’ll be posting a series of open threads around closely-ranked schools.

We hope the threads will help prospective students think about information that cannot be easily codified by sortable data, and will allow alumni to share the hard-earned & intimate knowledge of their schools that doesn’t come in brochures. For example, it’s rumored that students at this year’s #1 school have a tendency not to wipe the toilet seat.

Let’s start at the proverbial top. According to the rankings, the top five law schools in the nation are:

1. Yale
2. Harvard
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. NYU

We know we have readers that got into a number of these schools. Said readers, we invite you to share enlightenment in the comments about how you decided on which school to grace with your presence.

After the jump, we pull together some other things about the top five.

Law school students with graduation less than a month away are understandably stressed. Finals loom. The Bar Exam soon awaits them. Law firms do not. They have mountains of debt, and law firms are telling them to go away for a year (with a paralegal-sized salary, if they’re lucky).

It seems like some 3Ls are going into serious meltdown mode. Earlier this week, a University of San Francisco gunner sent out a school-wide email of fury after being passed over for graduation speaker.

Now, we have another such email. This time, a 3L from Loyola University Chicago School of Law has snapped. Like many others, this student is looking back on the last three years of law school and asking, “Was it worth it?” When it comes to the business law course Accounting for Lawyers, the answer, according to this student, is a resounding “NO.”

The student wrote to Dean David Yellen, cc’ing members of the class:

After yesterday’s disaster of a panel discussion on the financial crisis of the nation, I am so angry, I can’t even sleep.

I am officially giving notice that I will refuse to answer any exam question that goes beyond the bounds of the course description and I fully expect to graduate 5 days later. I will be encouraging my fellow 3L’s to do the same. Should this letter or my course of action be answered by any negative action that would affect my graduating law school, I will send an open letter the the entire Chicago legal community explaining to the potential employers of future Loyola Law grads that professors at Loyola School of Law are given free reign to teach whatever they want despite the school’s official course catalog and descriptions.

That sounds like blackmail to me… though probably undermined considerably by this post. The letter writer goes on to lambaste the Accounting class and the professor who taught it, accusing him of “defraud[ing] students,” “misrepresent[ing] this class [with the] course description,” and “wast[ing] the proportionate amount of my tuition dollars (approx $3000).”

Read on, after the jump.

Spring is in the air. It’s a time for rebirth and renewal. At Above the Law, it’s a time for expansion. Last month, our traffic was up over 200 percent from March of last year. To continue to bring you the best coverage of the legal industry during these difficult times, we need to add staff.

So we’re hunting for interns.

We’re looking for a few good people to be part of the ATL team. The new interns will primarily help us research issues, interact with the larger ATL community, and yes, copy edit. Interested interns may also have the opportunity to publish stories on Above the Law.

The position is unpaid, but the experience should be invaluable. If you are looking to break into the world of blogging and legal journalism, an Above the Law internship is a great place to start.

Please submit resumes — or any other material that would be useful in evaluating your candidacy, such as a writing sample or a link to your personal blog (if you have one) — to Elie Mystal (subject line: “Interns”), at elie@abovethelaw.com.

We’ll be in touch. Thanks!

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), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.

In last week’s installment of Notes from the Breadline, I enumerated a few of the reasons why I thought that hanging out the proverbial shingle was not right for me. You may further recall that the commentariat came ou, in force, to point out the infirmities in my position. (I know I do.)

“Who knew that the question of whether to venture into solo practice would be such a divisive one?” I asked Lat, pulling the remnants of virtual rotten tomatoes from my hair. “You would think that I had insulted Susan Boyle. What am I missing?”

As we talked about the (numerous) ideas proffered by readers, Lat stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Well, Roxana,” he said, referring to the suggestion of several commenters, “in light of recent events, you might want to think twice about advertising on Craigslist.”

He paused for a moment to take a sip of coffee (which runs, hot and cold, from a spigot in his office). “But, while I agree that hanging out a shingle isn’t for everyone, perhaps this whole idea deserves a second look. Maybe you need to talk to a professional.”

“What are you trying to say?” I asked pointedly.

“Hehe,” he chuckled. “What I meant is that maybe you should get another perspective.”

Lat was right: I needed to gather more information before categorically ruling out anything, whether it was the possibility of striking out on my own or one of the countless other ideas I had entertained. But who could I talk to?

After asking around and conducting a bit of due diligence, I reached out to Ari Kaplan, a writer and former practicing attorney who has become something of a professional development guru.

Like many of us, Ari was an associate at a Biglaw firm (McDermott Will & Emery), for much of his career. While he was busy toiling away, billing hours, and scrambling to keep his head above water through various cycles of boom and bust, he was also consistently churning out articles on an assortment of topics. Ari estimates that, while he was a practicing attorney, he wrote about 120 articles for publication.

These efforts eventually led him to write a book, The Opportunity Maker: Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career, which was published last year. Ari now works full-time as a professional writer and speaker.

Read about Ari’s professional journey, and his insights for Roxana on hers, after the jump.

* Former Attorney General John Ashcroft is opening a new firm with four offices in Boston, St. Louis, Austin, and Dallas, each to be headed by Bush appointed federal prosecutors. [The Wall Street Journal]

* The Supreme Court had a an energetic discussion yesterday about the use of race in hiring and promotion when arguing about the New Haven firefighter’s case. [The New York Times]

* A judge ruled that Blockbuster will have to go to court after allegedly sharing customer’s video purchases with their Facebook friends as part of a targeted advertising campaign. [Geek.com]

* Former broker Kosta Kovachev pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring with Marc Drieir. [Reuters]

* The New York tax lawyer who killed his wife and two daughters before committing suicide may have run a $20 million ponzi scheme. [Bloomberg.com]

Lindsay Harrison at One First Street. Photo by Patrice Gilbert.

Earlier this year, we conducted an interview of Lindsay C. Harrison, an associate in the Washington office of Jenner & Block. In January, Lindsay had the privilege of arguing before the United States Supreme Court — in her first oral argument ever. We chatted with her about the argument she presented in what was then Nken v. Mukasey and is now Nken v. Holder: what she wore, how she prepared, who was mean to her at argument.

This morning, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case. And even though Lindsay took the “liberal” position, she prevailed — by a 7-2 margin, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the Court. Congratulations, Lindsay!

Here’s a summary of the decision, from the ABA Journal:

A court of appeals retains its traditional authority to grant stays in deportation cases, despite a 1996 statute that limited the circumstances in which courts may block the removal of aliens, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a 7-2 opinion…..

The government had argued that a provision in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 limited the circumstances in which stays could be granted. The Supreme Court disagreed, saying the statutory provision — on injunctions blocking the removal of aliens — leaves intact the court’s traditional authority to grant stays….

Harrison says the decision is “a critical victory” for [Jean Marc] Nken. “It’s a case that could really literally mean life or death for my client,” she says. “If he were deported while his appeal was pending, he is likely to be killed or jailed or tortured in Cameroon.”

As Lindsay told us in our earlier interview, she and her colleagues at Jenner in D.C. have devoted hundreds — by now, thousands — of hours to the case (pro bono). It looks like the Chicago office of Jenner isn’t the only one that can burn the midnight oil.

(Digression: One tipster is skeptical of the claim that Jenner’s office in Chicago is busy round-the-clock: “Amusing article about a condo owner who can’t sleep because her new next door neighbor, Jenner & Block, leaves its lights on all the time. Every lawyer in Chicago knows that Jenner is faking it — it’s like the guy who slips into the office on Sunday for two minutes, just to be seen by anyone who happens to be there.”)

This afternoon, we caught up with Lindsay Harrison over the phone. Our interview, after the jump.

Back in January, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was a speaker at the Institute of American and Talmudic Law’s midwinter conference on privacy issues. Sitting in the New York office of Weil Gotshal, Scalia told attendees that privacy was not that important to him.

From the Associated Press (available cached only):

Discussions of privacy rights in the digital era should distinguish between such confidential data as medical records and information that might be personal but is easy to find out, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Wednesday.

Considering every fact about someone’s life private is “extraordinary,” he said, noting that data such as addresses have long been discernible, even if technology has made them easier to find.

“Every single datum about my life is private? That’s silly,” Scalia [said].

Well, Fordham Law Professor Joel Reidenberg interpreted that as a challenge. He gave the fifteen students in his Information Privacy Law class a special assignment this semester: Track down everything available on the Web about Antonin Scalia to compile a dossier on him.

Find out what they found out, after the jump.

* David Lat was on television today, trying to explain attorneys’ pain to the masses. [Fox Business News]

* Did you forget Administrative Professionals’ Day? We did too. [The Glass Hammer]

* Georgia State is very, very proud of its new U.S. News ranking. [Law School Headlines]

* Are public universities disproportionately burdened by FOIA requests? We should ask the students at Michigan Law. [Blackbook Legal]

* Susan Boyle can teach lawyers (and GW Law students) an important lesson on how to use low expectations to their advantage. [New York Personal Injury Law Blog]

* Law reviews are working together to form one behemoth of a website for legal scholarship. [TaxProf Blog]

* Syracuse University College of Law administrators apparently just finished watching Jerry McGuire for the 20th time and decided to finally do something about it. [Sports Agent Blog]

* USC begs students to try its product. [Litination]

We’ve got another new program from a law school that is trying to help its students weather the difficult job market. The University of Texas School of Law is initiating the “Long Career Launch Program.” The goal of the program is to help Texas graduates find public interest work:

The University of Texas School of Law (UT Law) is proud to announce the Long Career Launch Program, which is designed to make it financially possible for our recent graduates to obtain legal work experience in unpaid internships while they are awaiting bar results and looking for permanent employment. Graduates who are selected to participate in the Program, which is generously funded by a grant from the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Foundation, will receive a $6,000 stipend to support work in an unpaid legal internship with a government agency or a 501(c)(3) public interest organization.

Unfortunately, the program only extends to internships lasting between August and November 2009. That is not quite enough time to help students that have been deferred until January 2010, and it is a woefully inadequate amount of time for students who have been deferred all the way until the fall of 2010.

But it is something.

Perhaps the most important part of the program is that it encourages public interest organizations to contact UT directly and post their job openings with the school. Ideally, this will lessen the transaction costs for UT law students trying to find appropriate public interest organizations so they can get their deferral stipend.

The Texas march on the top-14 continues.

Earlier: Northwestern Law Gets ‘Proactive’
UCLA: The Latest Law School To Help Deferred Students

Whenever we talk about outsourcing, a number of commenters disparage the quality of work provided by less expensive, foreign lawyers. But jingoistic rhetoric isn’t going to do anything to stop the movement of legal work offshore. Indian lawyers scored a major victory yesterday, as a suit against Sacha Baron Cohen was tossed out of L.A. Superior Court.

The suit alleged that Cohen (performing as Ali G) suggested he had sex with a woman (who is referred to as “Jane Doe” in the lawsuit) during an “interview” with Gore Vidal. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Terry Friedman threw out the suit. He ruled:

No reasonable person could consider the statements made by Ali G on the program to be factual. To the contrary, it is obvious that the Ali G character is absurd, and all his statements are gibberish and intended as comedy. The actor, Sacha Baron Cohen, never strays from the Ali G character, who is dressed in a ridiculous outfit and speaks in the exaggerated manner of a rap artist. Ali G’s statements are similarly absurd. For example, prior to the reference to Plaintiff, while ‘interviewing’ the author Gore Vidal, Ali G refers to the Constitution of the United States as having been written on two tablets, clearly intended to confuse the Constitution with the Ten Commandments. Altogether, the program is obviously a spoof of a serious interview program. No reasonable person could think otherwise.

It’s an important victory for comedy performers. But who did the lion’s share of the legal grunt work on the case? That would be an Indian law firm under the supervision of SmithDehn.

More details after the jump.

The 2010 U.S. News law school rankings leaked over the weekend were not fake. Bob Morse — the rankings guru — essentially confirmed the results to the Wall Street Journal today, ahead of the magazine’s official release tomorrow.

Here’s the official list of the top 20 law schools:

1. Yale
2. Harvard
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. NYU
6. (Tie) Berkeley, University of Chicago
8. Penn
9. Michigan
10. (Tie) Duke, Northwestern, UVA
13. Cornell
14. Georgetown
15. (Tie) UCLA, Texas
17. Vanderbilt
18. USC
19. Wash U
20. (Tie) Boston University, Emory, Minnesota

As many of you have already pointed out, one school in particular experienced a precipitous drop out of the top 20. George Washington’s surprising fall, after the jump.

Richard Marinaccio was laid off from midsize firm Hodgson Russ LLP in Buffalo, New York, in January. While he was job searching, he may have spent his time constructively polishing his resume. And he may have spent some time playing board games. Both activities paid off.

In March, he both found a new job and casually surfed over to Hasbro’s website and took a quiz on his Monopoly strategy. He did well on the quiz, moving to the next round, which involved writing essays on his strategy. He did well again, and qualified for an online game-playing session with 80 other players. He scored at the top and was one of 28 people to participate in Monopoly’s national championships in Washington, D.C., last week.

He told us it was his first time participating in competitive Monopoly, though it’s always been his favorite game to play with his family. The family game-playing sessions prepared him well and Monopoly money is turning into real money for the 26-year-old attorney. He won the championship, taking home a purse equivalent to a Monopoly bank: $20,580. Marinaccio will also go on to represent the U.S. in the Monopoly world championship in Las Vegas in October.

And he’s not even a real estate attorney. He recently got a new job working as in-house counsel at a health care company.

He wasn’t the only attorney trying to force people into bankruptcy. Ellis Baggs of Hunton & Williams also qualified for the national competition, though he was eliminated before having the chance to square off with Marinaccio.

Advance to Go. Collect $20,580. Congratulations on the new job, the Monopoly skills, and a place in the ATL Lawyer of the Day annals, Mr. Marinaccio.

Earlier: (Laid-Off) Lawyer of the Day: Hudson River Plane Crash Passenger Frank Scudere

Buffalo Resident Crowned U.S. Monopoly National Champion [Business Wire]
Monopoly pays off big in competition [Washington Times]
Henricoan wins 1st round in national Monopoly championship [Richmond Times-Dispatch]

Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

ATL -

I’m a junior associate at a V100 firm in NYC, and my fiancee just got a great job offer in LA. The firm has a fairly large office in LA, so I’m thinking about asking for a transfer, but I fear that asking for a transfer might put my head on the chopping block if there is another round of layoffs.

I don’t want to jeopardize my future at the firm, but I also don’t want to have to choose between my fiancee and my job. What should I do?

Tormented Transferee

Dear Tormented Transferee,

My right ear has been clogged and ringing since Saturday. I’ve been taking 875 mg of Amoxicillan twice a day since Sunday but it’s not working and at this point I cannot think straight. I have an appointment with Manhattan Eye & Ear at 8:30am this morning and if they can’t fix it I will go ballistic. My advice to you is to calm down, get a life and ask your firm for a transfer. That may put you in a worse position re: layoffs but that’s life, so get used to it. Jesus.

Your friend,

Marin

My bad mood does not lift after the jump.

Madlyn Primoff, a partner in the bankruptcy and business reorganization group at Kaye Scholer, left her two daughters by the side of the road in White Plains. According to the New York Daily News:

A prominent Park Avenue lawyer was arrested after cops said she got so angry at her young daughters that she kicked them out of her car - and drove off.

Madlyn Primoff apparently couldn’t bear any more squabbling between her 10- and 12-year-old daughters Sunday and booted them out of the car in White Plains, Westchester County, authorities said.

A threat doesn’t carry much weight if you’re not willing to back it up, right? A tipster quips:

So maybe I won’t apply to Kaye Scholer … if their partners are this crazy.

But the 12-year-old demonstrated the dedication required of a future Kaye Scholer associate. She ran after her mother’s car, caught up to it, and got back in. You can’t stealth layoff that kid!

Unfortunately, the 10-year-old went to pieces:

The younger daughter wandered around the corner to Mamaroneck Ave., where a good Samaritan spotted her in tears about 7:30 p.m., bought her ice cream and then approached a cop in a patrol car.

The officer described the girl as “very upset” and “emotional” in the police report.

More discussion — including information about Madlyn Primoff’s $2 million home in Scarsdale, and a reader poll — after the jump.

* The trustees of the estate of Leona Helmsley, the famous hotelier and heiress who left her Bijon $12 million and much of the rest of her estate to the care of dogs, will not be carrying out her wishes. They reduced the Bijon’s trust fund to $2,000,000 (that is a lot of Purina) and will only donate $1 million to animal-related charities. Was it so wrong for Leona to think that animals are more worthy than people? [The New York Times]

* 16 of 62 Congressmen who left government last year are now working for lobbying firms. Will they have to wear the scarlet L around Washington now? [USA Today]

* A federal judge rejected Blagojevich’s request that he be allowed to travel to Costa Rica to tape the reality T.V. show “I’m a Celebrity…Get me Out of Here!” Blago said he needed the money he’d get from fighting Heidi Montag in the jungle. The judge said the former governor does not seem to understand “the position he finds himself in.” [The New York Times]

* There seems to be surprisingly little protest against the expansion of gay marriage across the country. They’re all at tea parties—at least the recession is good for something. [ABC.com]

* Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling predicts the UK’s worst recession since World War II. The only comparison more depressing than the Depression. [Bloomberg]

* It is no news to loyal readers that law student’s job prospects are grim, but here is another story about it just in case. [Law.com]

* Justice Breyer: boxers or briefs? If the other kids like to “stick things in [your] underwear,” it’s only because they want you to sit on the Supreme Court someday. [Washington Briefs (hehe) via UTR]

* ATL’s Elie Mystal will be participating in a panel discussion on the internet as a new business networking tool, at the ABA Taxation Section meeting next month in D.C.[American Bar Association (PDF)]

* Some additional thoughts on Building A Better Legal Profession (BBLP), from Professor Jim Maule of Villanova Law. [Mauled Again]

* “Which is more nerve-wracking: Final Jeopardy!, or facing the Socratic Method at the University of Chicago Law School?” [University of Chicago Magazine]

* The 10 most hilarious crimes in celebrity history. [e-Justice blog]

* Congratulations to Judge Marsha Berzon (9th Cir.), whose daughter Alexandra Berzon — familiar to ATL readers as the ill-fated coffee carrier — just won a Pulitzer Prize! [Underneath Their Robes]

Earlier this month, we told you that Hogan & Hartson was moving associates who are not on track to make their hours down to the firm’s lower paying 1,800 hours track. It appears that Wiley Rein is following that lead. We’ve received reports that Wiley is involuntarily moving associates not on track to bill 1,950 hours through the first quarter of 2009 down to its 1,800 hours track. The new base salary for those associates starts at $125,000.

The firm did not respond to Above the Law’s requests for comments. But Wiley Rein has long had two different tracks for associate compensation. According to the firm’s website:

Wiley Rein’s associate salaries are competitive with those paid by other major Washington, DC law firms. We remain committed to the goal of maintaining a healthy work environment, allowing our associates to make decisions in the office that have a positive impact on their lives outside the firm. We are also committed to allowing associates to choose their level of work and compensation.

In keeping with these twin goals, we have established a two-tiered salary structure based on billable levels— the current starting salary levels are $125,000 at the 1,800 billable hours level and $160,000 at the 1,950 level. Associates receive deferred compensation if they bill 1,950 hours. The firm also provides half of the deferred compensation amount for those who reach 1,875 billable hours.

Is this a salary cut? Tipsters weigh in after the jump.

The University of San Francisco School of Law decided to have an open competition to choose its student speaker at graduation. A tipster explains that nine students performed speeches and the student body voted on the winner. We understand that a well-liked and well-spoken student won the competition.

As C.J. Cregg once said: “In a democracy, sometimes the other guy wins.”

One of the eight non-winners had an interesting perspective on the loss. The student sent the following email to the San Francisco School of Law student body:

I write to express my extreme frustration and disappointment with the process that was used to choose the graduation speaker. Specifically, I feel strongly that merit should have been taken into account.

The graduation speaker will be perceived by the audience as the valedictorian, which has traditionally been someone at the head of the class. That academic achievement and involvement in the school community were not areas reflected on the evaluation sheet and I suspect that you did not take it into account in making your choice, either. I understand that the quality of the speech and its delivery are to be important factors, however, I am shocked to learn that the person who will represent our class is not the person who was the most involved or the person with the grades- not even by a longshot. I intend to speak to Dean [Redacted] about this so that this mistake does not rob someone deserving of this valued post next year.

I love the smell of crazy bat feces in the morning.

After the jump, we try to decide if the student is having a little joke, or if the student requires immediate medical attention.

Remember the law revue video What Can You Do With a JD from Hofstra, based on What Do You Do With a BA in English? We gave the video a shout-out last week. In light of the Great Recession, which has hammered hard at the legal profession, Hofstra grads aren’t the only ones wondering what they can do with their expensive law degrees.

But it’s not all bad news. From an article about career prospects in law, from the New York Times:

Good news for spring graduates: Most firms are not reducing starting salaries, says James G. Leipold, executive director of the National Association of Law Placement (NALP). Bad news: A number are deferring start dates of first-year associates, and encouraging public-interest work for a few months to a year, with stipend. “We’re also seeing a small number of offers actually rescinded,” he says.”

Of course, if you know about actual rescissions, please email us.

This squib was followed by a very interesting table, listing median salaries, salary ranges, and total degree cost, for 30 leading law schools.

Check out the table, after the jump.

Some of our DC-based readers may have spotted this DLA Piper hate ad making its way around town via taxi. An ATL reader sent us this photo, saying:

I saw this cab on Connecticut Ave. in front of the Mayflower yesterday and it caught my attention. Strange.

Our first response was, “Bad PR for DLA Piper, but doesn’t everybody already know that blood money is the currency of Biglaw?” Our second response was to find out about this legislation and reach out to the firm.

The American Lawyer wrote in 2008 about the Piper’s playing the flute for the Ethiopian government. Partners Dick Armey, a former House majority leader, and Gary Klein lobbied on Capitol Hill on behalf of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who angered human rights advocates in 2005 with violent crackdowns on protesters during the elections there. The American Lawyer reports that the Piper was playing to the tune of over $50,000 a month. That’s a whole lot of injera.

The taxi ad refers to a bill introduced by Senators Feingold and Leahy “to reaffirm United States objectives in Ethiopia and encourage critical democratic and humanitarian principles and practices.” Or. in other words, a bill to encourage Ethiopia not to inflict violent crackdowns on its citizens. DLA Piper’s lobbying efforts may have paid off. The bill has been languishing with the Committee on Foreign Relations since 2008.

DLA Piper’s spokesman told us that the firm’s representation of the Ethiopian government actually ended in November. A statement from the firm refers indirectly to the protesting taxi driver (and other DLA Piper haters): “There are some very vocal elements of the Ethiopian Diaspora, particularly in the Washington area, who are opponents of the current administration in Ethiopia and go to great lengths to try to embarrass or demean those who are associated with it.”

See the full statement, after the jump. DLA Piper may no longer have Ethiopia as a client, but the firm is actively helping to churn out new lawyers over in Addis Ababa.

Living under the constant threat of layoffs or salary cuts is no fun. But even though many firms are shedding employees and most firms are looking for ways to reduce their overhead expenses, there are many AmLaw 100 firms that are weathering the economic storms without coming down on their associates.

But it is a moving target. Just because a firm hasn’t announced a major expense reduction yet, doesn’t mean one isn’t in the works. Quiet doesn’t necessarily mean secure.

However, when a firm goes through the trouble of publicizing all the things it is not doing, that is the kind of good news that many associates are waiting to hear. Covington & Burling recently made just the kind of public statement of health that few firms have been willing to make.

Details after the jump.

Last week, we reported on staff layoffs at Kirkland & Ellis. At the time, we didn’t know the full scope of the Kirkland cuts. While the firm still declines to comment on its layoffs, our sources have been hard at work.

It now appears that at least 80 staffers were let go from Kirkland. Most of them were informed on Friday, but additional people who were not in the office on Friday were told on Monday. The cuts only took place in Chicago, New York, and D.C.

No attorneys have been let go, and our tipsters report that attorneys feel relatively secure in their jobs. People we spoke to claimed to be on track with their hours.

Secretaries were the main focus of the layoffs. But a tipster also reports that mail room staff and record keeping personnel were also hit pretty hard.

Earlier: Staff Layoff Watch: Kirkland & Ellis

Last month, Philly-based midsized firm Wolf Block joined Thacher, Thelen, Heller, & Morgan & Finnegan as victims of the Great Recession. The firm officially dissolved on March 23.

The press release at the time said:

WolfBlock will remain in the practice of law for several months to protect the interests of its clients, employees and creditors. The decision to unwind was reached in view of a confluence of unfavorable factors: the economic recession, especially in the firm’s core real estate practice; the constriction of credit occasioned by the ongoing banking crisis; and the intended and anticipated departure of significant partners and practices.

We now know where some of those partners and practice groups went. Duane Morris is picking up 50 of 290 WolfBlock attorneys, including the firm’s Trial Practice Group, Employment & Immigration Practice Group, and Business Reorganization and Financial Restructuring Practice Group.

It’s not a good time to be part of a Real Estate Group, but two Real Estate partners and one associate managed to make the jump.

From the Duane Morris press release:

“When this unique opportunity materialized to add such a prominent group of lawyers from a venerable institution, we acted immediately,” said John J. Soroko, Chairman and CEO of Duane Morris. “These lawyers bring an impressive level of experience, knowledge and business acumen that will integrate well with Duane Morris’ international platform. Our collective goal is to take their already significant practices to the next level.”

The lawyers will be joining Duane Morris’s offices in Philadelphia, Cherry Hill, N.J., and New York. See the full press release and the names of the saved, after the jump. As to the other 200+, WolfBlock attorneys, we’ve not seen any press releases as to their fates.

* Woody Allen wants $10 million from American Apparel for putting Woody-Allen look-a-likes on billboards without his permission. [The New York Post]

* The Supreme Court will decide if a federal law that prohibits selling videos depicting animal cruelty is a violation of free speech. [The Los Angeles Times]

* A Georgia Lawyer pleaded guilty to a $28 million ponzi scheme, which defrauded 125 people, including some senior citizens who gave their life savings. [The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

* Dole fruit has accused attorneys of recruiting people to give fake testimony that pesticides sterilized them when they worked on Nicaraguan banana farms. [The Los Angeles Times]

* Civil Libertarians are starting to question Obama, as he resembles Bush on issues related to terror detainees. [Time]

In October, we reported that the new law school at UC Irvine would be offering a full scholarship to students who enrolled for the fall 2009 semester. It looks like the strategy paid off. The school received 2,741 applications for 68 positions. According to the school’s press release, that makes UC Irvine School of Law the most selective law school in the country:

The University of California, Irvine School of Law has chosen its inaugural class by accepting only 4% of its applicants, making it the most selective of any law school in the nation.

UC Irvine accepted only 110 of a total of 2,741 applicants to fill its 68 first-year positions, for an acceptance rate of 4%. By comparison, Yale Law School at 7%, and Stanford Law School at 9%, are the only other law schools with single-digit acceptance rates, according to the most recent data available from the American Bar Association (2007).

With all the kerfuffle about the U.S. News rankings, it’s a good time to point out that people like getting into “selective” law schools. UC Irvine also reports that its yield rate on its offers is 62%, third behind Harvard and Yale.

Offering free tuition in a down market is nothing to laugh at:

UC Irvine’s founding dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, attributes the high number of applications per position and the high quality of the incoming class to the strength and support of the University of California, Irvine, to the high quality of the founding faculty, and to the three-year, full-tuition scholarship offered to each member of the first-year class.

“We are extremely pleased to have fielded such a high-caliber inaugural class,” said Chemerinsky. “Along with a faculty that was ranked in the top 10 in the nation in a recent study, this will allow us to be considered among the best law schools in the country from the very start,” he said. “Our goal and the university’s goal was to be a top 20 law school from the moment we open our doors in August.”

Good luck Irvine. We might not need more law schools, but you have to hope this “free” thing catches on.

Read the full press release after the jump.

* The new UCLA LL.M. program could make heads explode. [The Legal Satyricon]

* Two-thirds of Americans support federal legal aid for poor people. If this catches on, the new fourth year of law school (between graduation and being allowed to start at your Biglaw firm) might net some extra money. And there’s something in it for poor people too. [ABA Journal]

* Is Obama derangement syndrome a real thing now? [What About Clients?]

* The Britney Spears stalker might not be a stalker. [Popsquire]

* Wow. It’s been at least ten years since I heard the name “Rico Sauve.” But he might have made a good lawyer. [Courtoons]

* Here’s an environmentally friendly Blawg Review. [Green Patent Blog via Blawg Review]

So far, salary cuts have been localized to mid-sized and regional firms. But it appears Baker & McKenzie has become the first national firm to slash associate salaries. A tipster reports that associate salaries have been cut between 10% and 25% for some associates at the firm.

As we understand it, associates are receiving individualized memos about their salary reductions. Salary cut decisions are being made on a case-by-case basis and it is difficult for associates to know what is going on with colleagues down the hall.

Baker McKenzie has been making all sorts of news lately. Two weeks ago, the firm laid off 124 people. Then the firm pushed back start dates until January 2010. But it is surprising to see the firm get out in front on cutting salaries while its peer firms are resisting salary cuts.

Is this another nail in the lockstep coffin? Additional details after the jump.

Last week, we wrote about Villanova University School of Law running out of work-study funds. Over the weekend, we received several copies of an interesting follow-up email — one that went to every 1L and 2L at Villanova, as well as every dean.

Some background, from a tipster:

This email is sent as-is, with typos and random, misplaced sentence pieces intact (“ing we put on email …” ?). Dean Sargent gives ATL a shout-out and echoes Professor-Blogger Jim Maule’s excitement as well.

And the email:

From: Mark Sargent
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 3:01 PM
To: Wendy Barron; 2010dist; 2011dist
Cc: William James; Doris Brogan; Felicia Hamilton; Lori Bogish; Jennifer Nguyen; Christine Stango
Subject: RE: Work-Study funds for summer 2009

Wendy, we need to be careful with this kind of mass communication, helpful as it is. As I am sure you saw, this ended up on Above the Law. I did not get nearly as excited about it as Maule, and I know other schools will have the same problem, but readers naturally (albeit idiotically) put a bas [sic] spin on it for us.

This is what we get for being transparent and helpful! The internet really is a type of hell!
________________________________
ing we put on email or elsewhere can go viral almost instantly.

Mark A. Sargent
Dean and Professor of Law
Villanova University School of Law

From a second tipster:

I had to forward this. It is the email equivalent of the scene in Billy Madison where Chris Farley gets on the school bus and yells, “NO YELLING ON THE BUS!”

Our observations:

1. Thanks for the shout-out, Dean Sargent! We’re glad to have you as a reader.

2. You’re right — other law schools are having the same problem. For example, there’s no more work-study money at Rutgers - Camden (email after the jump).

3. “[R]eaders naturally (albeit idiotically) put a bas [sic] spin on it for us.” Oh, Dean Sargent, don’t read the comments — they will only cause you grief. We’ve helpfully hidden them, so they don’t display by default; you have to affirmatively seek them out.

Finally, this is not the first time Dean Sargent has had problems with that pesky “reply all” button. Remember the saga of Peanut Girl? Back in the fall of 2007, Dean Sargent complained about having to deal with a student with a very severe peanut allergy — in an email he sent to the deans of all ABA-accredited law schools. In a subsequent apology to the listserv, he described his gaffe as “the oldest mistake in the history of email.”

We reached out to Dean Sargent for comment on his latest email error. Read more, after the jump.

Ed. note: The legal world is much bigger than New York, or Washington, or even the United States. Welcome to Letter from London, a weekly dispatch from the other side of the pond. Our U.K. correspondent, Isaac Smith, will expose ATL readers to the latest goings-on in the London legal world. You can reach Isaac by email, at isaacsmithlondon@googlemail.com.

Hey, we love the Skadden “Sidebar” programme - which, like a year-old Hollywood movie, washed up belatedly on these shores last week. A third of your massive salary to do whatever you want, no strings attached - plus you’re exempt from any redundancy rounds while you’re away! And the reassuringly accomplished Sidebar branding means you really believe them when they say that.

The bitter irony is, of course, that this thing is being wasted on lawyers. “So what would you do if you had a whole year to do anything you fancied and still get paid?” I asked a group of London Big Law associate friends over some drinks in the pub last week.

“I’m fascinated by different cultures, so I’d go skiing,” said one.

“I’d have my bathroom refitted - you get a much higher standard of finish when you’re there to monitor the work yourself,” contributed another.

“A combination of the two would afford a sensible balance,” added a third.

After the jump, is expansion the answer?

We’ve already reported that Mayer Brown pushed back its start date for incoming first year associates to January 19, 2010.

But today, we’ve learned that Mayer Brown is also giving people the option of deferring for an entire year. A Mayer Brown spokesperson confirmed that the voluntary deferral will include a stipend of $5,000 per month:

[A]nyone in that class who voluntarily chooses to extend their deferral for any reason may do so, up to October 2010. Those who choose to take advantage of this option will receive a $5,000 monthly stipend.

The deferral option is being communicated to incoming first year associates over the phone, just in time for final exams.

Pushing back start dates is just one of many things going on a Mayer Brown right now. We have some new management details after the jump.

The Florida Bar Exam results are out, and they’re not pretty for some of the top Flori-duh law schools. [FN1]

Law School Headlines asks “What happened on the February 2009 Florida Bar?” noting the abysmal performance by graduates of University of Florida, FSU, and University of Miami. Their passage rates dropped from percentages in the high 80s and 90s on the July exam to 64.9%, 65.0% and 61.1%, respectively. Here’s the press release [PDF].

Did exam takers spend too much time on the beach, and not enough time at BarBri classes?

A representative from the Florida Board of Bar Examiners wouldn’t comment on the problems the graduates of these schools had. She did note though that the rate of passage for first-time test takers is consistent with years past (around seventy percent), and that February exam takers (as opposed to July testers) are a “different group of people.” They tend to be non-traditional students, who didn’t do the whole “enroll in the fall, graduate in three years, take the bar exam in July…”-and-then-pass thing.

But FSU had the highest passage rate among Florida schools on last year’s February exam, as well the July 2007 and July 2006 exams. FSU College of Law Dean Donald Weidner told Tallahassee.com, “It’s disappointing and puzzling.”

It’s also unusual. See passage rates from previous years, after the jump.

Most of our coverage of the effect of the Great Recession on law school students has focused on 3Ls and 2Ls. The 3Ls graduate soon, but don’t start their Biglaw jobs soon, assuming they’re lucky enough to have jobs lined up, while the 2Ls are expecting shorter, less lavish summer associate programs.

But what about 1Ls? It would appear that many are seeking out refuge in Big Government. And facing fierce competition for Little Money. (1Ls aren’t the only ones — Legal Times reports that government jobs are elusive for laid-off lawyers as well.)

At the deferred associates job fair in New Jersey earlier this month, a representative from Newark’s Office of the Corporation Counsel told us he had received hundreds of applications for 12 available spots in the city’s unpaid summer law program. This is at least double the amount of applications received in previous years.

And a source from Texas says the trend is the same there:

I don’t know exactly what 1Ls are doing this summer, but I know that they’ve been applying for judicial intern jobs in droves. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has gotten tons of applications. They’re seeing about triple the applications as usual, if not more. This is even though the court hasn’t exactly been getting good press lately.

I also heard that the US Attorney’s Office here, which runs a year-long unpaid internship program, has gotten 35 applications for next year (up from about 6 applications two years ago) and nearly the entire UT Law review editorial board has applied. So I think it’s not a stretch to say that law students are freaking out.

Who’s not freaking out these days? It’s the friggin’ Great Recession.

A 1L from a T10 school says the classmates who wanted firm jobs are doing public interest work. Others who wanted public interest jobs couldn’t get them. “There are more public interest jobs out there. But they are in small towns where no one wants to go,” she wrote. “Seems like a lot of people are working for professors, some who wanted to anyways, and others as a last resort. Still others don’t have jobs despite excellent credentials. I think those people are now looking for jobs that are only marginally law-related, but I know a couple who are just taking the summer off. It’s tough.”

At least 1Ls have two more years of law school refuge time. Unfortunately, the legal world that will greet them upon graduation will be mighty different from the one that existed when they enrolled (Biglaw to 125K and the end of lock-step!).

One Michigan 1L wrote to us asking if he should drop out if things aren’t looking good at OCIs this summer. See his speculation as to what the future holds, and offer the poor kid advice, after the jump.

Every year, somebody claims to have obtained a leaked copy of the U.S. News and World Report Law School Rankings. Every year, there are numerous hoaxes and fakes. This year is no different. But over the weekend, we saw one version of the leaked rankings at least had the air of legitimacy.

The official rankings are due out Thursday, but the Critical Badger claims to have the rankings now.

In this version, the top 14 law schools remain the top 14 law schools. Here’s another version from Top Law Schools.

We reached out to the people at U.S. News to see if these rankings were the real rankings. They offered “no comment.”

After the jump, are these real?

Ed. Note: Sorry for the delay. We’re having technical issues this morning. Please bear with us! (And, no, “technical” does not translate to “hungover.”)

* The Iranian court will consider the appeal of the Iranian-American journalist who was sentenced to eight years in prison for “spying on Iran for Washington.” [The New York Times]

* The Supreme Court will take up a case in Arizona “that could limit a federal court’s power to tell states to spend more money to educate students who aren’t proficient in English.” [The Associated Press]

* U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway from Missouri is leaving her job to start a law firm with former U.S. attorney general and Missouri governor John D. Ashcroft. Ashcroft’s apparent lack of ambition could pose a problem for the new firm. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

* Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, orchestrator of that other Ponzi scheme, has asked a judge to unlock $10 million in frozen assets so he can hire lawyers to save him from his inevitable demise. “It’s not fair,” said Houston criminal defense attorney Dick Deguerin, who is defending Stanford on the “hope” that he will have enough money to pay him. “We’re going to need lawyers all over the world.” Keep hoping, Deguerin—and dreaming of money. [Bloomberg]

* A South Korean blogger, Park Dae-sung, a.k.a. Minerva, a.k.a. “the prophet of doom,” who predicted sharp falls in the stock market and the collapse of Lehman brothers was acquitted Monday of spreading false information…because he was obviously right. [Reuters]

Happy Sunday. Thanks for visiting Above The Law this weekend.

We just wanted to remind you that voting in the (first) Annual Law Revue Video Contest ends tonight at the stroke of midnight. Or actually at 11:59 p.m. So if you haven’t yet watched the best in Law Revue humor and found what makes you laugh hardest, we advise you do so soon.

To see Northeastern’s gunner Lion, UVA’s adderal-fueled serenade and Backstreet Boys take on constitutional law, NYU’s Barbri Girl and South Park-inspired Arthur Miller animation, and Boston University’s version of My New Haircut, check out our post on The Finalists.

As of 7:54 a.m. on Sunday morning, BU’s Outline and UVA’s Hot Bodies are leading in the polls. BU has the tiniest of leads:

The stars that appear in the winning video will receive fame & glory (of course), as well as ATL t-shirts, ATL gavel-shaped stress balls, and a round of drinks with the ATL editorial team (but the Law Revue stars have to come to New York to claim the drinks prize).

Vote after the jump. The clock is ticking.

[Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks. Law Shucks has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.]

Speculation was that last week’s relatively low bodycount (100 lawyers, 253 staff) might have been a result of the Easter and Passover holidays, but that trend continued into this week. With just 131 layoffs confirmed at major law firms this week, four of the last five weeks have been among the slowest this year. Is the tide turning? The pessimist in us suspects we’ll see another wave as first-quarter results are finalized.

Layoffs slowed in the broader markets as well, with first-time claims dipping slightly, but continuing claims keep breaking records. So even though the pace of layoffs may be slowing, there still isn’t any significant hiring to offset the job losses.

The big story in law firm layoffs this week was Skadden’s deferral program, mostly because it was picked up by the New York Times. They’re far from the only firms doing so, though, so check the ATL Start Date Round Up.

Of course, deferrals only apply to associates. Staff attorneys need not apply - msnbc.com has the story of Frank Scudere. Skadden gave Frank a break and didn’t fire him when the firm cut a host of other staff attorneys on January 16, but only because he was still drying off after being on the plane that crash landed in the Hudson River. His luck didn’t last long, though. He lost his father a week later and his job last month. Scudere’s tough breaks qualified him for ATL’s (Laid-Off) Lawyer of the Day on Friday.

After the jump, we analyze layoff and other cost-saving activities this week.

* One law professor’s vote in our ongoing Law Revue video contest. UVA is making a strong run, but the polls are open all weekend. [Legal Writing Prof Blog]

* A partner shares some advice on how to survive in today’s environment. [TechnoLawyer Blog]

* Also from TechnoLawyer, some insight from a name you know and love. [TechnoLawyer Blog]

* John Yoo, who has been visting at Chapman this semester, is coming back to Berkeley — and some students aren’t happy about it. [Nuts & Boalts]

* Major Lindsey & Africa is now offering outplacement services to the loads of laid-off lawyers. [MLA Global]

* Mel Gibson is getting divorced. “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” — The Gospel according to Mark. “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take … our freedom!!” — The Gospel according to Mel. [Popsquire]

In November, Howrey picked up 40 lawyers from Thelen, including former Thelen chairman Stephen O’Neal. Today, tipsters report that non-equity partners at Howrey are being asked to make capital contributions to the firm:

At Howrey the non-equity partners have been told they must make a … 10% capital contribution to the firm. This is a suggested minimum, the partners are being encouraged to contribute more.

We mentioned yesterday that firms that picked up Thelen lawyers have had a couple of bumps.

A Howrey spokesperson clarified our tipster’s report. But non-equity partners will be required to make their contribution by June 1st. A Howrey spokesperson characterized the new program as follows:

However, beginning June 1, 2009, Non-Equity partners will be asked to contribute capital, at a percentage far less than equity partners. Additionally, all partners, Equity and Non-Equity, will now able to contribute voluntary capital and several have already agreed to do so. All these are signs of their commitment and dedication to the Firm and its plans for growth.

This is reminiscent of the DLA Piper situation. Back in November, DLA asked its non-equity partners to kick in a capital contribution, in exchange for turning the contributing non-equity partners into equity partners. But it does look like Howrey is maintaining the distinction between non-equity and equity partners.

While Howrey contemplates the structure of its partnership, the structure of its staff is being downsized. Additional details after the jump.

Easter weekend was a slow one for weddings, with the New York Times featuring only one couple eligible for LEWW consideration. We’re taking this opportunity to catch up on Couple of the Month voting for January, February, and March.

Below the jump, you’ll find write-ups on all our 2009 weekly winners so far, plus the opportunity to cast your vote for the strongest legal-eagle couple from each month. Polls close Monday at noon; we’ll announce the winners next week.

Happy voting!

Is the housing collapse getting you down? Why don’t you join the vanguard of the people that are trying to bring the market back? The job market in Southern California has been a bit slow lately and so in addition to the below Job of the Week, we invite LA area attorneys to an event coming up on April 29, “The LA Legal Market: How to Find a Job in the Midst of an Economic Downturn” hosted by the Los Angeles County Bar Association at their downtown LA offices. Lateral Link’s Theresa DeLoach will be speaking on the panel along with several other experts and practitioners. Click here for more information and to RSVP.

Position: Mortgage Origination Attorney

Location: Orange County, California

Description: This private company and a hedge fund affiliate specializing in the full suite of services required by the residential loan and real estate market is seeking a Mortgage Origination attorney. Candidates should have experience with fair lending laws, HMDA, TILA, RESPA, loan disclosures and fees, state-specific requirements for marketing/advertising, CAN-SPAM, telemarketing and other relevant solicitation statutes; ability to devise policies and procedures for a growing origination business; able to communicate effectively with executive management and competently represent the Legal/Compliance department in meetings with business unit leaders; able to work in a fast, thriving environment; opportunity for a great work-life balance.

For more information on this position or to apply, please see Position 10483 on Lateral Link. Current members can also contact their personal search consultant directly to discuss this position. Membership in Lateral Link is free and you can apply at www.laterallink.com.

Reports started flowing in this morning about a round of staff cuts taking place today at Kirkland & Ellis.

Above the Law has now been able to confirm that staff layoffs did take place at Kirkland today. Staffers in Chicago, New York and D.C. were let go. Sources at the firm report that the layoffs were a “small percentage” of the firm’s overall staff complement, but weren’t able to tell us the final number of cuts.

We understand that no attorneys will be let go in this round of layoffs.

Other sources report that Kirkland is calling staff into a large conference room to break the news. All of the staff that are being let go should know by the end of the day.

We don’t know what kind of severance the staff is getting.

Earlier this week, we reported that Kirkland moved into its new, shiny, Chicago office. At least there will be more room for the staff that comes into work on Monday.

Earlier: Kirkland ‘Perk’ Watch: Starbucks AND Dunkin’ Donuts at the New Chicago Office
What’s Going On at Kirkland?

We just reported on Villanova School of Law running out of summer work-study money. The University of Michigan Law School is not in such dire straits. But Michigan law students still want whatever money they think they have coming to them.

Tempers flared this week over Michigan’s Student Funded Fellowship program. A tipster explains:

It’s a program where 1Ls doing public interest during the summer apply for funding, and judgments are based on the history of their public service, what job they envision doing, and other essays. Typically around 75% of applicants receive funding, but it’s probably down this year since there will definitely be less people at firms.

Apparently one Michigan student didn’t get the fellowship. Chastened by failure, he or she did what any aspiring lawyer would do, and started filing papers.

More details after the jump, including a response from the rejected applicant.

Today’s evidence that the Biglaw paradigm is crumbling comes from the clients of Morgan Lewis & Bockius. The ABA Journal reports:

Among the sea changes is a reluctance by a number of clients, or even an outright ban, as far having first-year associates work on their matters, says [Morgan Lewis Chairman Francis] Milone in a wide-ranging interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“It’s a trend,” he tells the newspaper. “We literally have some clients who are telling us they do not want us to put brand-new associates on their matters.”

On the one hand, you can take that comment with heavy dose of cynicism. It’s exactly the kind of thing a managing partner would say if he was laying the groundwork for an associate salary cut. For a more full example of how to cut salaries by making associates feel generally useless, check out Womble Carlyle.

After the jump, we see there are even more reasons to be skeptical about chairman Milone’s motives.

Villanova is more well-known for its basketball team than its law school. But Villanova has a law school — in fact, a tier 1 (or at least top 100) law school.

But sadly, the school is out of summer work-study money. I’ve never heard of that happening to a law school, but here’s the message from the assistant dean for financial aid:

I am sorry to report that we have run out of funds for work-study for this summer and many of you have applications in for these funds but we will not be able to give you an award. If you are a PA resident and applied to a PA employer, you would have already received an award letter so you know that you have these funds. If you are not a PA resident or you are trying to work other than in PA you probably do not have an award letter but that does not mean that funds haven’t been reserved for you - we may be waiting on your contract from your employer before your letter goes out or it may mean that we ran out of funds before your folder was complete. We will let all of you know as soon as possible.

Sorry - I wish the news were better.

Are there other schools that are out of work-study money?

This news is primarily directed at 1Ls, the ones most likely to have applied for some kind of unpaid internship for summer work.

Which begs raises the question: what are 1Ls doing this summer? Are 1Ls working? Are they living in tents and basements across the country? Are they eating ramen and mayonnaise sandwiches?

Or maybe everything is okay?

Send us your 1L stories.

Earlier: Nationwide Pay Freeze Watch: Welcome Brooklyn Law School Faculty