The venerable firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore has entered the building, and it’s asking up to half of its incoming first-years to take a year off.
Cravath is offering a voluntary deferral option to its incoming associates, according to multiple Above the Law sources (as well as Bloomberg News). If the incoming associates are willing to take a year off, they will receive an $80,000 deferral stipend, health care coverage, and $1,000 a month in loan repayment assistance. This appears to be the top of the deferral stipend market, more generous than both Weil and Latham.
A tipster reports that there are no strings attached to this deal:
[T]hey don’t have to do anything but sit on their ass. No public interest, nothing. And they are assured a job in fall 2010.
But wait, weren’t the current summers at Cravath right now — the class of 2010 — supposed to start in fall 2010?
We detail their fate after the jump.
The extent of the cuts isn’t clear; the 716-lawyer firm said reports on Above the Law that the cuts ranged between 10 and 20 percent aren’t “entirely accurate,” which isn’t exactly an outright denial.
Today, we have more news about the salary cuts going on at Pillsbury. It now appears that the cuts range between 5% and 20%.
So, that’s marginally better, if you are close to making your hours.
What are those hours cutoffs? We have more details after the jump.
* Skadden has a new client, Dick Tracy. [Am Law Daily]
* And while we’re on the topic of celebrities that are calcifying in front of our eyes, Madonna won her appeal seeking to adopt a baby from Malawi. [Entertainment Weekly]
* Don’t forget, at one minute past midnight Facebook will do something colossally stupid. [National Law Journal]
* New York’s mini-state of anarchy continues. Democrats are going to court seeking an injunction to stop Republicans from having more votes. [New York 1]
* More tobacco regulation. God, you’d think cigarettes were bad for you or something. [New York Times]
* Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could go down today, without a single shot fired. [CNN]
* Somebody has finally noticed Electronic Arts’ total freaking monopoly over football video games. [Courthouse News Service]
Some of you have probably seen this already. It went up on YouTube in 2007. But we came across this today, and it made us terribly nostalgic. And not just because Cyndi Lauper always had a better voice than Madonna.
Remember when billing hours was cause for a somber ballad about the difficulties of being a lawyer? Now, hours are like a Hazmat suit in the middle of nuclear winter.
Keep your heads up. This too shall pass.
* Supreme Court Justices are more powerful. Very powerful. Castle Grayskull powerful. [Beacon Broadside]
* If I ever end up in a North Korean Court, would someone please use the hard diplomacy we practiced with the Somalia Pirates instead of the “soft diplomacy” we’re seeing today? Thanks, in advance. [Miss Trials]
* The benefits of t’ai chi to a practicing attorney. [Underdog]
* Bose McKinney & Evan attorneys have been sanctioned. Chameleons don’t make very good lawyers. [Indiana Lawyer]
* Here’s the next installment of the Summer Associate Interviews. Summers pontificate on what makes a good lawyer. Surprisingly, abject fealty to clients and their inconsistent whims regardless of your own personal commitments is not on their list. [Young Lawyers Blog]
* I’ve mentioned Weil Gotshal’s pro-bono efforts on behalf of puppy-mill puppies. The Humane Society has found new homes for all 32 animals. I hope a few Weil attorneys have some new, furry friends. [Humane Society]
Last night we tuned into a very interesting (albeit somewhat depressing) conference call, Staying Competitive During an Economic Downturn, sponsored by the National LGBT Bar Association. Three experts provided their thoughts on the current legal job market and advice for navigating it:
Robert Depew. A Managing Director in Major, Lindsey & Africa’s San Francisco office, Depew helps lawyers evaluate career alternatives and places attorneys at top tier law firms and select in-house positions in the Bay Area.
Christopher LaFon. As director of recruiting at Kelly Law Registry, one of the nation’s largest job placement firms, LaFon builds careers and aids in career transitions for attorneys, paralegals and other legal professionals.
James Leipold. The Executive Director of the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), Leipold helms the legal profession’s leading association dedicated to research, education and career development.
When will the legal economy return to normal? What can laid-off lawyers do while they wait for recovery? Is there any hope, for any of us?
Find out the views of the experts, after the jump.
Dear Above The Law,
I am currently clerking and the term ends Sept. ’09, and I’ve applied to a bunch of firms for an associate job, but none have responded to my resume.
I routinely field calls from whiny associates and partners from firms that have declined to interview me. During these calls, the attorneys are looking for some leniency from me (and ultimately the judge), usually because of some oversight their firm made in the filings, etc.
Am I really expected to bend over backwards to help out attorneys from a firm that wants nothing to do with me? Would respectfully and carefully hinting at the fact that I would enjoy an associate position with the firm have any positive impact, at all, at my current job (lack of) situation?
Circle of Life
Dear Circle of Life,
Listen to me very carefully. Take your law school diploma off the wall. Proceed to the bathroom. Place it in the toilet. Stand on top of the toilet, take a gun and then shoot your degree.
If you are seriously asking whether granting judicial favors, however small, in return for a job, is acceptable behavior, maybe it is time to burn down the country and start over. I had hoped that we had made some progress since the time when Richard the Lionheart slaughtered the nobles of Gascony and then imposed crushing taxes on the survivors to obtain their fealty. I read about that episode while sitting by the pool in a West Palm Beach retirement community and I remember thinking, “Those medieval people had it bad!” But maybe the framers of the Constitution have it worse, because a mere two hundred something years after the ratification of their glorious document, some pipsqueak clerk took a sh*t on it.
If you “respectfully and carefully” hint at the fact that you’d like a job at the firm that’s calling the judge for a favor, the only “positive impact” you will have is that you will never have to worry about getting a legal job again after your disbarment proceedings.
Your friend,
Marin
Elie alerts the bar association authorities, after the jump.
Is it nationwide salary cut day and nobody told me? Earlier today, Bryan Cave cut associate salaries. Now, Fish & Richardson will be doing the same thing. We just don’t know when.
At a firm wide video conference today, Fish & Richardson president Peter Devlin said that the firm would be cutting salaries in the near future. As we understand it, the chairman didn’t give a specific date. But he did say that Fish & Richardson would be moving towards a “meritocracy” with regards to its salary structure. Update (3:47): We’re still waiting for Fish & Richardson to get back to us directly, but firm president Peter Devlin now says that he did not suggest that Fish would be cutting salaries in the near future. Here is a statement he sent out to the firm:
Shortly after my address at today’s forum, a story appeared on the Above the Law website erroneously stating that I had announced that F&R would be “cutting salaries in the near future.” In fact, I said the opposite – that the Management Committee is not considering cutting our associate salary scale this year, despite the fact that several other firms have done so. I went on to say that we are reviewing our associate compensation system in view of the changing market, and that in my personal view any new system should link compensation with meritorious performance, put less emphasis on hours, and move away from lockstep advancement. You’ll be hearing more about this as our work progresses.
Did our tipsters misinterpret Devlin’s statement of moving towards a merit based system as a salary cut? Only time will tell. We’ll update you again if Fish & Richardson chooses to respond.
Boy, if lockstep was such a horrible system that didn’t reward merit, you have to wonder why nearly every firm used that system for so long. I bet there are a lot of people who wish they had been rewarded on merit during the boom times, instead of being punished for “performance” during the bad times.
The news should hardly come as a surprise to (remaining) Fish & Richardson associates. In January, the firm announced that it had laid off 49 lawyers. In May, the firm laid off 120 people. The salary cuts are just the latest cost cutting measure from the firm.
More details from the video conference, after the jump.
At least the salary cutting craze is staying localized in the lower echelons of the Vault 100. But that probably doesn’t mean very much to associates at Bryan Cave. Today, the firm announced that it was cutting salaries. The cuts were announced via firm wide email from firm chairman, Don Lents:
Annual compensation levels for existing associates will be reduced by 10% across the board (but where applicable to not less than the newly established entry-level compensation). Annual compensation levels for certain other lawyers (e.g., certain staff lawyers) will also be reduced. Information regarding your new annual salary will be available under the Comp Adjustments tab in the “My HR Information” section of eCave by 12:00 noon EDT today. The reductions will become effective in all of our U.S. offices other than those located in the State of Missouri on July 1, 2009. Due to legal notification requirements in Missouri, the reductions will become effective in our Missouri offices on July 13, 2009. In the U.K., a one month consultation period will commence immediately with a view to implementing the proposed 10% reduction to compensation with effect from July 13, 2009.
Bryan Cave is ranked #77 in your Vault Guide. But at #76, Chadbourne & Parke has already cut salaries. At #78, Thacher Proffitt & Wood no longer exists. So at some level Bryan Cave is keeping up with the competition.
The new base salaries for all offices after the jump.
A replacement for Elena Kagan as dean of Harvard Law School has been named. It’s the well-liked law school professor Martha Minow.
Harvard University President Drew Faust announced the news to HLS students, today:
I am delighted to let you know that Martha Minow has agreed to serve as the next Dean of Harvard Law School. She will take up her duties on July 1.
Martha has been a member of the HLS faculty since 1981, and she has served the school with extraordinary dedication and energy. She is an eminent scholar of uncommon range and imagination, a greatly admired teacher who guided the school’s recent curricular review, and an outstanding citizen not only of the Law School but of the University, with impressive experience in academic leadership roles. She has a clear-eyed view of the challenges and opportunities facing the Law School, and a talent for bringing people together to work through important academic and institutional issues. Most of all, she has a passion for the law and for all that legal scholarship, education, and practice can do to advance the public good. I look forward to welcoming Martha to the University’s Council of Deans and to working closely with her in the years to come.
Faust also thanked interim Dean Howell Jackson for his service over the past few months.
More on Minow after the jump.
As Dave Chapelle once impishly remarked: “this racism is killing me inside.”
I get the joke. It’s like how saying “hillbilly” is a lot easier than saying “Kenny Hilbig.”
We regularly receive tips about educational or charitable events that might interest our readers. Because we don’t have the ability to give shout-outs to all, and to ensure equal treatment, we direct everyone with events of a non-commercial nature to mention them in our Community section (which, by the way, is overflowing with openings for deferred associates right now).
(The Community section is for non-profit events or opportunities. If what you’re trying to promote is commercial in nature, please advertise. Commercial postings will be pulled from the Community.)
Our rule against event promotion admits of exceptions. We will mention events featuring significant participation by Above the Law editors — like this one, taking place this coming Tuesday, July 16:
Breaking Back into a Large Law Firm: How to Make Your Way Back into a Top Law Firm
Moderator: BRIAN DALTON, Managing Editor, Vault.com and Editor Vault Guide to the Top 100 Law Firms
Speakers: DAVID LAT, Founding Editor, AboveTheLaw.com; T.J. DUANE, Principal, Lateral Link; HELEN LONG, Director Legal Recruiting at Ropes & Gray LLP; JOHN J. CANNON III, Hiring Partner, Shearman & Sterling LLP.
The panel is part of an a day-long conference, co-sponsored by the New York City Bar and Vault, with the following mission:
Affected by the current financial crisis, many lawyers are finding themselves looking for employment. This program is designed to assist job-seeking attorneys in learning how best to market themselves whether they are looking to go to a firm, start their own practice or are considering an alternative legal career.
A former Mayer Brown associate, Venus Yvette Springs, has filed a complaint against the firm. She alleges Mayer Brown discriminated against her and eventually fired her in 2008.
Springs was an associate in the real estate group of Mayer Brown, Charlotte. In her complaint, she claims that the head of the group, Frank Arado, said that he would make her a partner with the firm as recently as March 2008. But in May 2008, she was informed that she would be fired. She was officially terminated in September of 2008. The heart of her discrimination claim seems to be this paragraph:
In a statement obtained by Above the Law, Mayer Brown strenuously denied the claims:
Mayer Brown has not yet been served with the complaint filed by former employee Yvette Springs. However, based on our current review, we believe her claims have no merit. We will defend ourselves vigorously in this matter. Consistent with our policy of not commenting on personnel matters or pending litigation, we have nothing further to say.
* UCLA Law students were successful in protecting our right to curbside carne asada. [Los Angeles Times]
* Apparently, Sonnenschein is “fat and happy” and moving its New York office. [New York Observer]
* Washington, D.C. lawyer Kenneth Feinberg has been appointed compensation czar and will get to set the salaries of CEOs at beleaguered companies getting government aid. [ABA Journal]
* The impeachment proceedings against Judge Samuel Kent — the first federal judge to be charged with a sex crime — will move on to the House of Representatives. [Associated Press]
* Sonia Sotomayor once called herself “an affirmative action baby.” [New York Times]
* San Diego lawyer Alfred Rava sued the Oakland A’s for sex discrimination after a 2004 Mother’s Day promotion that excluded males. Now ESPN columnist Rick Reilly is taking Rava and his men-ism suits for a round in the batting cage. [ESPN]
If you are miserable at work and feeling lost in your career, then our weekly column will come as a breath of fresh air. Go to www.thenewworldinstitute.com to find out how we can help you.
This week’s installment is about signs. Signs that your career might be in need of a little realignment… or even a complete restart.
The 3pm Coma–Are you finding yourself bored to tears with the day-to-day tasks of your current job and falling into an afternoon energy slump? Ask yourself this question: If given the chance, would I delegate everything I am doing to someone else? If the answer is “yes,” then you should look into finding work that is more engaging.
In it for the money–If cash is king, then happiness is King Kong. Staying in a career for financial reasons can take an emotional toll and wear you out over time. People who love their work are connected to their purpose–something that goes beyond money to other important values like making the world better and believing in the mission of your company.
Stunted growth–Are you still learning in your current job? If not, then this can also become very wearing. Being in an environment that fosters growth and learning is a key to long-term career satisfaction. If you are working for a boss who does not care about your growth, then it’s probably time for a new boss!
Try out our brand new Career Change Assessment. This assessment is used by our coaches to assess our clients and now it’s available to everyone.
The New World Institute specializes in helping executives who are at a career crossroads find their true calling and revitalize their careers. It’s never too late to change, so call us for a free consultation: 347 445 5763.
Laurel Donnellan is the President and Co-Founder of The New World Institute. www.thenewworldinstitute.com
Dating is a mix of exhilaration and dejection, depending on your success or failure. It can be tough on the ego if you make a move and get rejected.
Some say it’s easier online. You wink, poke, or send a message. If not winked, poked, or messaged back, you can move on to the next strategically photographed person whose profile reveals their love of music, movies, and traveling. It’s all anonymous, so the rejection doesn’t sting like it does when it happens in person.
Or maybe it does sting. Maybe it stings enough to warrant a $5 million-plus class action suit.
Match.com makes the promise that if you use their site, you will “Find Love. Guaranteed.” But there’s something that’s not guaranteed: That the person to whom you’re reaching out is actually active on the site. From the New York Post:
A Brooklyn man sued Match.com yesterday for inflicting “humiliation and disappointment” on lonely hearts “who feel rejected when their e-mails get no reply.”
Sean McGinn alleges the popular matchmaking Web site dangles phony date bait by posting profiles of people who no longer subscribe to its $39.99-a-month service.
As a result, lovelorn singles have been “defrauded” out of millions of dollars and countless hours spent sending heartfelt missives in vain, the 37-year-old TV producer says.
Most members of Match.com — which claims 86 million searches a month in the United States — are actually unavailable because they “are canceled subscribers or never subscribed at all,” according to his suit filed in Manhattan federal court.
McGinn is not alone. Fifteen other disgruntled Match.com users will join the case, says his attorney. And he’s not alone in love either. He’s currently in a relationship, thanks to Match. Eric Turkewitz says the humiliation McGinn suffered through unreturned winks “will be nothing compared to being known as the guy that sued Match.com for humiliation and disappointment.”
But we think there’s something satisfying in being able to sue a tease. DOT-COM HAS ‘DATE’ IN COURT [New York Post via New York Personal Injury Law Blog]
* As usual, yesterday’s outsourcing story sparked some strong reactions. But now there is a Scottish lawyer trying to get jobs based in Bangalore outsourced to Scotland. Globalization baby. Catch the fever. [Legally India]
* Billing during sex is much better than billing for sex. [Lowering the Ball]
* I have lots of questions for the current class of summer associates. But these are nicer. [Young Lawyers Blog]
* How much does it cost to buy a state judge these days? [What About Clients?]
* Anybody interested in suing the California State Bar? [Badbizfinder]
* Are associates even allowed to by angry about their shrinking salaries? [Litination]
At what point does a salary freeze start to feel like a salary cut? Staff at O’Melveny & Myers are about to find out. O’Melveny just announced a new salary ice-age for its staff. Above the Law obtained this internal memo sent to O’Melveny staffers:
We are committed to taking proactive steps to maintain our financial strength in the face of unprecedented economic times. As part of this effort, we continue to look at how we can prudently and efficiently manage our costs and have therefore decided that there will be no salary increases this year and the performance evaluation cycle will be extended from 12 months to 24 months. Your performance evaluation will now cover the period between July 2008 – July 2010. We will consider salary increases at the end of the new performance review period in July 2010.
O’Melveny has already been through layoffs. In March, 200 people were let go, including 110 staffers. So on the one hand, a salary cut is a lot better than being out on the street.
On the other hand, staffers don’t make much to begin with, and nobody wants a static salary. O’Melveny staff better start rooting for the rest of the American economy to continue its deflationary trend.
O’Melveny confirmed that the freeze only applies to staff.
Will we see more ice-age freezes this summer? Stay tuned.
Check out the full firm statement after the jump. Earlier: Nationwide Layoff Watch: O’Melveny Fires 90 Lawyers, 110 Staff
I guess the summer months aren’t a bar to firms laying off more associates and staff. The Nashville Post reports (subscription) that Bass Berry is going through a round of cuts:
In yet another sign that things in the economy need to get worse before they will get better, one of Nashville’s premier law firms has laid off 32 employees.
Bass Berry & Sims has cut 10 associate attorneys and 22 staff members from its roster. The cuts represent 5 percent of the firm’s attorneys and 9 percent of non-attorney staffers. The layoffs affected the firm’s Nashville, Knoxville and Memphis offices.
Layoffs at Bass Berry? This would never happen at Jack Daniels!
Bass Berry might be a small, southern firm to a lot of ATL readers, but don’t forget that regional firms are dealing with all the pressures that big, coastal firms are struggling with. Often enough, those firms are coming to the same Biglaw conclusions:
Keith Simmons, managing partner of the firm, told NashvillePost.com that the decision to downsize was not made out of financial distress.
“We are being asked to do more by our clients with less. This is an effort to get our cost structure in line with the market,” he said. “Big firms are going to have to look at their structure. We are staying close to the needs of our clients.”
A tipster called today’s move a “Bassacre”
Good luck, our Tennessee friends. I’ve been playing a solemn version of Rocky Top while writing this post. Bass Berry lays off 32 [Nashville Post] (subscription)
For the last few months, media outlets covering the legal industry — present company included — have predicted lean, mean summers for this year’s summer associates.
Well, now you summer associates are ensconced in your Biglaw offices. Welcome! (Again.)
We know that most programs are leaner in terms of the number of summer associates. Firms have brought in fewer SAs, presumably knowing they will have fewer full-time spots to fill. And we know firms have cut back on their meal budgets.
But what about the big events — the concerts, the booze cruises, the sneak previews of eagerly anticipated movies? Are they generally intact and as indulgent as in summers past?
We want to run a CONTEST — because we love contests, and because we welcome the opportunity to celebrate old-school Biglaw indulgence. We plan to crown one firm’s summer associate event the best of 2009. (And knowing us, we might have a crown of thorns for the worst event as well.)
Please send submissions to us at tips@abovethelaw.com with the entry “SA Event Contest.” Please include the firm name / office, date of the event, and a short description. You will be kept anonymous.
We’re also curious about the first week(s) of Great Recession summer associate life. Do you really feel McWined and McDined? Tell us in the comments.
In 2009, a small group of Harvard Law School students noticed an absurd monopoly in the bar prep space, held by an unchallenged leader with a non-evolving product. In response, these students teamed up with Harvard Law alumni to launch BarMax on January 14, 2010.
The mission: democratize bar prep by embracing new technologies to provide the very best bar exam review courses at a fraction of the cost normally associated with these courses.
Since then, with the encouragement of thousands of students and an unwavering commitment to their success, BarMax has established itself as a comprehensive alternative to the stagnant, over-priced status quo.
As we continue to expand, we do not want to lose sight of the basic premises that led us to create BarMax in the first place. If you are a law student who believes that there is something fundamentally wrong with being forced to take out yet another loan to pay for a $4,000 bar exam prep course, you are not alone.
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 five years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com
Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December.
As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / China), please note that thus far in January ’12, we have already made seven US associate and counsel placements in Asia. This is an especially impressive number, considering the biglaw lateral hiring market in Asia is down right now (see state of the market brief overview below). These new placements are of new hires in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, who were interviewing with their new firm for a month or more and they are spread out among different practice areas, including project finance, litigation, fund formation, M&A and cap markets. We are close on four additional new associate placements, in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, that we expect to close soon. We do not discuss partner placements in these articles, but the pace of partner recruitment in Asia (a large part of our business) has continued.
Hedge Fund In-House Openings in Hong Kong
We are seeing a small run of new in-house openings in Hong Kong at hedge funds. We are currently filling three different in-house positions at three different hedge funds in Hong Kong, two of these searches we are handling on an exclusive basis. All three will most likely be filled by a US associate, with about 4 to 6 years of experience. Mandarin not required. Candidates from NYC and London will be considered, but at one of these funds the new hire will likely come from Hong Kong / China or Singapore (with HK being the strong preference).
Please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com if you are interested in these hedge fund openings. As you probably would expect, the competition for these spots will be fierce and the funds will be very selective when choosing which candidates to interview.
The venerable firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore has entered the building, and it’s asking up to half of its incoming first-years to take a year off.
Continue reading “Cravath Offers Voluntary Deferral to Class of 2009 — and Delays Class of 2010 a Full Year”
Last night we tuned into a very interesting (albeit somewhat depressing) conference call, 
For the last few months, media outlets covering the legal industry — present company 
