On the one hand, according to Law Shucks, September was almost three times worse for layoffs than August. On the other hand, that’s still a lot better than May.
While we’ve been focused on the U.S. market, Law Shucks reports that the biggest September layoffs happened in the U.K.
Of the seven firms that laid people off, the biggest by far was Eversheds, which laid off 117 people (22 lawyers, 95 staff) – the largest layoff in over two months. The second-largest was UK IP firm Marks & Clerk, which laid off 60 people as it consolidated offices and scaled back due to the downturn (in a story broken by us, thanks to tipsters).
Still, as regular readers know, September was far from quiet on the home front.
Click the link below to see all of the numbers in easy-to-understand graphical form.
The Month in Layoffs – September 09 [Law Shucks]
Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is not really retired yet. “I am more busy in retirement than before,” she told Above the Law in a recent interview. One of her myriad projects is Our Courts, a non-profit organization that develops Web-based games to teach seventh- and eighth-graders about government. We spoke with Justice O’Connor recently for our piece for the Washington Post reviewing the games.
We had hoped to actually play the games with her, but it turns out she’s not much of a gamer. Not being the computer type, she hasn’t actually played the Web-based games herself. “I watched young people play it. They have a lot of fun. They’re actively engaged. I think it’s very exciting,” she told us.
Justice O’Connor has been touring the country to promote the games. She even stopped in to chat with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. We got to catch up with her via conference call last month. We rung her up at One First Street — like some retired Biglaw partners, retired SCOTUS justices get to keep an office. After her secretary connected us, Justice O’Connor answered the phone: “Sandra Day O’Connor.”
We discovered that O’Connor is adamant about bringing an end to the election of judges in America. Read more from our interview, after the jump.
Continue reading “Should Judicial Elections Be Abolished?
(Or: ATL chats with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.)”
In an environment where hours are scarce, a new report shows that white attorneys are coming out on top. A new survey suggests that African-American attorneys — and minority attorneys in general — are experiencing a greater pinch for hours than their white counterparts. The Minority Law Journal reports:
[M]inority lawyers surveyed said they posted fewer billable hours on average last year than their white counterparts. The average hours billed figure in 2008 was 1,862 for black midlevels, 1,925 for Asian Americans, 1,965 for Hispanics, and 1,976 for whites. And minority lawyers are unlikely to boost their relative output much in 2009. Projected billables for this year were just under 1,825 hours for Asian Americans and African Americans, about 1,840 for Hispanics, and roughly 1,890 for whites.
Hours are low all over, but these numbers indicate the pain is not being shared equally.
Are minority attorneys being “out-hustled” for work, or are these numbers just another manifestation of the old boys’ network?
More numbers from the report after the jump.
Continue reading “African-American Lawyers Searching for Hours”
Is the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board unconstitutional? This admittedly boring-sounding entity has the important task of overseeing accounting firms, who in turn keep an eye on the balance sheets of corporate America, through such mechanisms as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance.
The constitutionality of SOX and the PCAOB is at issue in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, one of the most important cases of the new Supreme Court term. As previously noted, the D.C. Circuit upheld the board’s constitutionality against a separation-of-powers challenge — but over a strong dissent by Article III rock star Brett Kavanaugh, which may have grabbed the justices’ attention.
Read more — and comment (anyone care to predict the result?) — over at Going Concern.
Is the PCAOB Going the Way of the Dodo? [Going Concern]
Earlier: The Sarbanes-Oxley Accounting Board: Not Long For This World?
When the Princeton Review Law School Rankings came out last year, I was skeptical of their usefulness. The organization ranks law schools in 11 different categories based on student surveys. This year, 172 law schools were eligible.
Looking at Princeton Review’s list of top ten Best Career Prospects, I remain skeptical:
1. Northwestern
2. Penn
3. Michigan
4. University of Chicago
5. Stanford
6. Boston University
7. Boston College
8. Harvard
9. NYU
10. GULC
Honestly, I’m okay with Harvard being ranked lower than BU or BC in terms of career prospects. I mean, that’s wrong but whatever. I’m okay with NYU placing in the top ten while Columbia does not. Again, probably wrong but no big deal. But — as I said last year — having a list that ranks the ten best law schools for your career that doesn’t include Yale undermines the credibility of the entire list. You’re really telling me that there are ten law schools that are better for your legal career than Yale Law School? That’s just dumb. Maybe next year, Princeton Law will be on the list.
Anyway, after the jump we take a look at some of the other categories.
Continue reading “Law School Rankings From Princeton Review”
Jerry Maguire appeared as a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School last night. A HLS tipster tells us that Professor Bruce Hay invited Tom Cruise to talk to his Entertainment Law class on Monday night.
A most excellent guest, Tom Cruise is quite familiar with lawyers. He’s had legal star turns in The Firm and A Few Good Men. And he’s been involved in lots of litigation, including a suit filed by injured extras in Valkyrie, a RICO lawsuit against him and the Scientologists, and his plaintiff turn in that I’m-not-gay suit. (Insert “you can’t handle the truth” joke here.)
One HLS student sent us a link to this photo from last night. No word on whether or not Cruise jumped up and down on Hay’s lectern.
Our tipster was not in the class, but he did catch a glimpse of Cruise’s getaway.
Continue reading “The Eyes of the Law: Professor Tom Cruise at Harvard Law School?”
It’s been a long time coming, but Bloomberg is finally ready to unveil its new legal research tool. It will compete with Lexis and Westlaw for the hearts and minds of law students and junior associates across the land.
Bloomberg Law will have its launch party at the end of the month at the west side offices of Willkie Farr.
It is way too early to tell if Bloomberg Law will truly offer an innovation in case law research. But we already know the company has put a metric ton of money into the product.
And we know that they’ve been hiring former attorneys for at least two years. I found out about the Bloomberg Law project way back in early 2007, when I was freelancing and looking for work (I declined to follow up on the opportunity). More recently, if you know a New York attorney who was laid off at the end of 2008 who didn’t interview with Bloomberg, then you know a New York attorney that wasn’t really trying that hard to get a job.
Click here (PDF) to check out Bloomberg Law’s initial offerings.
We’ve learned how to Shepardize, we’ve learned how to KeyCite, will we all soon learn how to Citator?
In these difficult times for the legal profession, it’s more important than ever to know all your options. So we resume our series on career alternatives for attorneys — jobs for J.D. holders that don’t involve working as a Biglaw associate or contract attorney.
In a prior post, we discussed the career alternative of entrepreneurship. If you’re tired of working for a boss, then become the boss: start your own company.
Today we focus on two lawyers who, interestingly enough, have started their own businesses in the same area: admissions consulting and academic coaching. Perhaps this is the start of a hot new trend? Cf. the cupcake craze sweeping the nation, which another lawyer is capitalizing on.
Adam Nguyen, formerly of Paul Weiss and Shearman & Sterling, is the president and CEO of Ivy Link. Jon Palmer, formerly of Schulte Roth & Zabel, is the president and founder of The Admissions Experts.
Both businesses are headquartered in New York — which makes sense, given how obsessive Manhattan parents can be about getting their offspring into elite educational institutions. NYC ≠ TTT!!!
Read more about these gents and their new enterprises, after the jump.
Continue reading “Career Alternatives for Attorneys: Admissions Consulting and Academic Coaching”
One casualty of the economic recession could well be the position of “staff attorney.” We’ve reported that Skadden and Covington & Burling have had major cuts to their staff attorney programs. Above the Law is now able to report that similar reductions have happened at Paul Weiss. Sources report that at least a dozen staff attorneys have been let go by Paul Weiss over the past couple of months.
UPDATE: We are now hearing reports that the number is significantly higher than a dozen, perhaps as high as 45 (since November 2008). “This can all be confirmed by the lawyer lists that are sent out at the start of each month,” said our source.
A tipster puts it this way:
PW has sneakily let go [a number of] staff attorneys. There have been … cuts in the past few months and it is getting more steady and consistent in the last few weeks. They are letting a few people go every week. It is so ridiculous that they haven’t told anyone what’s really going on and everyone is just waiting around for the call.
Apparently they need to cut all the staff attorneys so they have some work for 80 or so first years that just started who are already doing nothing but doc review and who should expect to be doing nothing but doc review for the foreseeable future. Some of these staff attorneys have been there for seven and eight years and they are not even offering severance. They say it has nothing to do with performance but are letting some of the good people go first.
Paul Weiss declined to comment for this story. But we understand that no associates have been let go.
Are junior associates the new “staff attorney”? More from our tipsters after the jump.
Continue reading “Nationwide Layoff Watch: Paul Weiss Staff Attorneys”
* This is the first case of the Supreme Court’s new term… [Associated Press]
* …but the most interesting case may be Scalia vs. Sotomayor. [National Law Journal via ABA Journal]
* Apparently tere are not enough lawyers — for the poor facing foreclosure, that is. [USA Today]
* The limbo of the deferred. [Wall Street Journal]
* New York’s calorie posting law is not especially nutritional. [New York Times]
* This is the trial that never ends. Yes, it goes on an on, my friends. The jury started deliberating over it, not knowing what it was. Now they’ll continue deliberating forever just because… [New York Times]
Unlike some firms which post ads on Craigslist looking for attorneys to work for free, at least one Greenport, NY man is looking to pay for legal services.
The service he needs rendered could be out of community building 101. Here’s the ad, via Jerks in your Area:
Need Halloween Legal Help (Greenport)
Every year I put on a Halloween haunted house for my neighborhood. In the past few years, I’ve really stepped up my game with fake blood, assorted limbs and bones (shins, arms, skulls), and lots of pop up zombies, mock executions, etc. Last year I had a bit of a legal snafu when a kid on my block had a seizure and another had to go to therapy after a bullet squib popped too close to his head. Their parents threatened to sue me and the whole ordeal was a hassle. Anyway, I was thinking that this year there are so many out of work lawyers out there that I could probably get one pretty cheap to come and hang out around the house and keep an eye on things. If another parent gets pissed off or whatever, it would be good to have someone who knows the law. I might also need you to write up a release because this year the guillotine will be real.
I’ve never really hired a lawyer before so I’m not really sure what they charge but I’m guessing it won’t be more than like $18 an hour. If you have one of those insane clown masks that would be really helpful too.
Aww, that’s sweet. That’s just how we roll on “Strong” Island.
But are former Biglaw types even qualified to do this kind of work? Let’s discuss after the jump.
Continue reading “Seasonal Work For Laid Off Attorneys: Halloween Time”
* Next up for Erin Andrews and Bingham McCutchen? Maybe suing Marriot and Ramada. [Legal Blog Watch]
* District Judge Stefany Miley, who replaced district Judge Elizabeth Halverson, is also allegedly a victim of domestic violence. Vegas baby. Nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there. [Legally Unbound]
* Silicon Valley lawyer Craig Johnson, founder of Venture Law Group, RIP. [WSJ Law Blog]
* We got to him first, but do check out Forbes’s interesting profile of Ted Frank, who’s “on a mission to protect consumers from their own class action lawyers.” [Forbes]
* Apparently Macy’s can’t even afford a shredder. That doesn’t bode well for this year’s Thanksgiving Day parade. [Missouri Lawyers Weekly]
* Social Networks: Friends or Foes? Check out this conference at Berkeley later this month, featuring such folks as Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy and ATL’s own David Lat. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Today is World Teachers’ Day, a.k.a. World “wash your hands and don’t give me swine flu you nasty urchin” Day. [Solo Practice University via Blawg Review]
It’s been a while since a firm asked people to voluntarily fire themselves. Maybe with the economy getting better it’s time to dust that strategy off?
Apparently, that is what Crowell & Moring is hoping for. The firm just asked its staff to voluntarily help them get down to a 4 to 1 attorney to staff ratio:
Our goal remains to handle this necessary reduction in a humane and generous way. Accordingly, effective today, we are offering a voluntary opportunity for our support services employees to elect to resign from the firm in exchange for payment of six months of each employee’s annual salary. We are hopeful that this opportunity may be of interest to a number of our secretaries and will bring the firm closer to achieving its goal of an average lawyer to support services ratio of 4 to 1 across our offices. This voluntary package will be available through October 23. At the end of that period, we will reassess our staffing levels and determine whether involuntary reductions are necessary.
Six months severance is a nice package, especially for staff who don’t typically receive as much severance pay as attorneys. If you assume that the firm will not be offering six months to people that are “involuntarily” laid off after October 23rd, the package could be a pretty powerful motivator.
Of course, if there are still no jobs in six months, then does it really matter? If you are a rock star secretary maybe you should just roll the dice and try to hang on.
Tough decisions abound during a recession. Good luck, Crowell & Moring staff.
Read the full internal memo after the jump.
Continue reading “Crowell & Moring Asks Staff To Voluntarily Lay Themselves Off”
We’ve devoted a lot of coverage to the few firms that are moving away from a lockstep compensation system. One consistent theme has been that the move away from lockstep appears to be an attempt to reduce overall associate compensation.
Not so at Bingham McCutchen. The firm just released its new compensation plan. Calling it a hybrid approach, Bingham is keeping lockstep compensation for base compensation but make bonuses heavily merit based. Our sources tell us that while nothing has yet been finalized, the firm’s intention is to hold the line on base compensation.
“Merit Lockstep” Base Salary Structure
After significant review, we have decided to modify our current associate base compensation lockstep structure slightly, moving to what we are calling a “merit lockstep” approach. We intend to retain a salary class level system. All salary class levels will remain subject, as always, to future market changes as well as our own internal determinations.
I’ve been critical of firms that announce they are moving to a merit-based system, without actually explaining what merit-based means. But at Bingham the firm seems to have a concrete plan for its new merit bonuses.
Details and a reader poll after the jump.
Continue reading “Bingham McCutchen’s New ‘Merit-Lockstep’ Hybrid”
We know it’s difficult for laid-off attorneys to find new Biglaw jobs. Very few firms are hiring — and many of the firms that are hiring do not want to look at résumés from associates that have been previously laid off.
RollOnFriday has the news from London:
RollOnFriday can reveal that there is blatant and widespread discrimination throughout the City against lawyers who have been made redundant.
Last week’s report that a recruitment consultant wouldn’t consider redundant lawyers who for a job seems to be the tip of the iceberg. Readers deluged RollOnFriday Towers with complaints about both rec cons and law firms. All had the same experience: their attempts to apply for a job had been stymied when they revealed they’d been made redundant. The firms who came in for the most criticism were American, with several big names being accused of discrimination.
Legal Blog Watch asks if the same phenomenon is happening here in the states. Recruiters we have spoken with say that it is.
Reports from recruiters and tipsters in the U.S., after the jump.
Continue reading “Bad News for Laid Off Associates: Your Résumés Are Not Welcome”
For long-time readers of Above The Law, Herman Thomas is a familiar name. He’s the former Alabama state court judge who allegedly enjoyed spanking male prisoners, traded favorable treatment for sexual favors, and improperly interfered on behalf of a cousin in legal trouble.
He gave up the paddle gavel two years ago. Now he’s headed to trial.
From the Associated Press:
Chief Assistant District Attorney Nicki Patterson said authorities began looking at Thomas after he changed a jail sentence in 2006 for his cousin, former Mobile County school commissioner David Thomas, even though the case was being handled by another judge. Other cases that Thomas had taken over from other judges without their approval soon surfaced, she said.
And what happened to the prisoners in the cases commandeered by Thomas?
Continue reading “Ex-Judge Herman ‘Who Needs a Spanking?’ Thomas Now on Trial”
It’s the first Monday in October. There is a chill in the air, the Yankees and Red Sox are gearing up for the post-season (while the Mets mercifully go away), and the hearts and minds of Biglaw associates turn to their year-end bonuses.
Some have predicted a “no bonus” season, courtesy of the Great Recession. But DLA Piper has given Above the Law the first concrete bonus information of the season, and bonuses will be paid.
Associates at DLA Piper were informed on Friday that while this year’s bonus won’t meet last year’s half-Skadden levels, the firm will be paying bonuses this year. Sources report that DLA’s bonus will come in between $5,000 and $50,000. A tipster reported the news this way:
I’m just finishing up my first full calendar year at DLA. I’ve got a job, I’ve got a bonus. I’ve got all my life to live, I’ve got all my love to give. I WILL SURVIVE.
Congratulations.
DLA won’t make a final decision until January. But as of now, we have a market floor for bonuses, and it is greater than zero! That is pretty awesome.
Other good news from DLA Piper after the jump.
Continue reading “DLA Piper Previews the 2009 Bonus Season”
The University of Virginia Law School, and legal academia more generally, have been rocked recently by a controversy involving a leading law professor and claims of anti-gay animus.
William N. Eskridge Jr. — currently the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School, where we had great good fortune of having him as a professor — testified last month before Congress in support of the pending Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009 (ENDA). ENDA would prohibit sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in the workplace. In explaining the need for ENDA, Professor Eskridge made reference to his own career, testifying that “I was denied tenure at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1985 based in part on my sexual orientation.” You can, and should, read his complete testimony here (opens as a Word document).
The controversy has, of course, reverberated throughout the blogosphere. See, e.g., the UVA Law Blog (including 40+ comments, many of them quite insightful); Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports (here and here); and The Faculty Lounge. The UVA Law Blog also reprints a Virginia Law Weekly article from January 1986 about the Eskridge tenure denial (which was strongly opposed by students; if you’ve been lucky enough to have Bill Eskridge as a teacher, this should not be a surprise).
We reached out to both Professor Eskridge and UVA Law School. We received written statements from Professor Eskridge and from Dean Paul G. Mahoney.
Their statements, plus a comprehensive collection of links, appear below.
Continue reading “Eskridge v. UVA Law: Prominent Professor Testifies That He Was Denied Tenure Because of His Sexual Orientation”
Last year, we wrote about retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor entering a new field: video game development. She’s spearheading a project called Our Courts, which seeks to improve civic education in middle schools. The Our Courts website officially launched in January of this year.
The first two games, “Supreme Decision” and “Do I Have A Right?”, went live this summer. The Washington Post contacted us and asked us to review them. We played Nintendo, Oregon Trail, and Carmen Sandiego growing up, and we spent a recent Friday night at Elie’s playing Rock Band, so we were willing to give the Our Courts game a go.
Check out our review of the games, along with additional reflections on civic education and public access to the courts, in this Washington Post piece: Educational? You Be the Judge.
While Lat was in D.C., he swung by the Washington Post’s offices to talk about the games. Check out his star turn in the video after the jump.
Continue reading “Educational? You Be The Judge.”
* Disbarred lawyer and video game crusader Jack Thompson sues Facebook, because of the abundance of Jack Thompson hate groups on the social network. [PC Mag]
* The man responsible for the Erin Andrews peephole tape has been arrested, thanks to Bingham McCutchen, Kroll, and the FBI. [True/Slant]
* Who can I sue? There’s a website for that. [Sun Sentinel]
* The UK lets a lawyer serve an anonymous blogger via Twitter. [BBC News]
* SCOTUS justices got their minds on the money, and money on their minds. [New York Times]
* Mark Heller, the lawyer for Jon and Kate’s Jon Gosselin, has a “shocking professional past,” says Radar Online. In other news, we’re a bit disappointed by what Radar deems “shocking.” [Radar Online]
* Journalists finally find a reason to dislike President Obama. [CNN]
