As an undergraduate, I worked for the Harvard College Fund. I made calls to alumni of the college and many of the professional schools asking for money. Yes, scum salt-of-the-earth kind of work.
You learn a couple of things doing that job: don’t let women call people who graduated before 1960 and think that girls still belong at Radcliffe. Make sure your accent is “good for all time zones” (mine is). And most importantly, don’t call up graduates of HLS asking for money unless you can handle rejection well. HLS graduates are more likely to cry about their backbreaking work schedules than voluntarily fork over $20.
Granted, I’m not the best person to ask. I try to avoid giving HLS the money that I already owe them — I’m not about to dip into my pocket to give them anything extra. But I think most people would rather give money to their undergraduate institution than to their law school. College is an experience; law school is a trial.
And that was before the recession.
Now that we’re in a situation of salary deflation and job uncertainty, one imagines that law schools are only getting money from the cold dead hands of recent graduates.
Harvard Law School students recently received an email reminding them about the 2010 class gift. When I was there, such reminders were met with annoyance. But this year, students reacted with outright anger. Are Harvard kids alone on the “I’m not giving you a penny” island?
Over the weekend, the New York Times took employers to task for taking advantage of university kids eager to get work experience. Unpaid internships abound, and the recession has made it easier for corporate employers to cry poor, and bring on free labor.
However, there are strict federal guidelines [PDF] around unpaid internships, and many are breaking the law by giving their eager little beavers noneducational menial work. The folks at the Labor Department are on to this devious scheme:
Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York’s labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’ internships. Now, as the federal Labor Department’s top law enforcement official, she and the wage and hour division are stepping up enforcement nationwide.
While most of the abusive internships are in the exciting worlds of fashion, film, media, and music, there was at least one poor NYU student suckered into cleaning out bathrooms for free at a law firm…
Last month, we learned that deferred lawyers got along pretty well with their temporary public interest colleagues in New York. Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune reported that public interest organizations were more than happy to have temporary talent who had their Biglaw dreams deferred for a year:
The opposite ends of Chicago’s legal profession found a way to come together out of economic necessity to partially consume the supply of highly educated young lawyers looking for work. Despite several challenges, the unusual experiment has paid dividends. It also has sparked discussions of whether a more permanent model of apprenticeships can be developed that would train law-school graduates at a lower cost and benefit public-interest legal organizations that are suffering from funding constraints while attending to a greater need because of the recession.
“We absolutely would do it again,” said Robert Acton, executive director of Cabrini Green Legal Aid, or CGLA. “It would be a very generous act on the part of law firms.”
Permanent charity from law firms? Don’t bet on it. We’ve already seen evidence that the generous deferral stipends extended to the class of 2009 are being scaled back for the class of 2010.
And really, we shouldn’t expect major American businesses like law firms to be all that charitable. It’s one thing for a firm to encourage its attorneys to take on some pro-bono cases, but really isn’t it the job of law schools to — you know — invest the resources necessary to train young lawyers?
Do you know how to drink responsibly? I hope so. By the time you get to law school, I really hope that you at least know how to avoid criminal behavior when drunk. Law school administrators do too. At the Indiana University Mauer School of Law, the Dean of Students decided to send 1Ls preparing for a bar crawl a little reminder. Here’s how one 1L described the email:
I am a 1L at Indiana University Maurer School of Law and I feel like we have an unusual predicament. Tonight, (4/2), the 1Ls organized a bar crawl with shirts for members of the class to go out and have a good time at the time we felt was our last opportunity before the big exam grind. The administration has apparently heard about our bar crawl, and is not too pleased. We got an email today (1 hour before the bar crawl) from the Dean of Student Affairs
We’re talking about a bar crawl in Bloomington, Indiana. I know that there isn’t a lot to do in the Midwest — aside from getting outrageously drunk and maybe tipping a cow — but we are talking about adults here. IU thinks they are qualified to get themselves into six figures of debt, surely they can be trusted to go out for a night on the town without hurting themselves.
The advice from the Dean of Students reminds me of what your mother would say before you go out to the state fair …
[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.]
Robert Kinney here, writing from my hometown, Austin, Texas. We’re enjoying fine weather for our music conference, South by Southwest (SXSW) this this week, and I’m having a slow week (on purpose) at work. Slow, for me, is about 9 calls a day with candidates and clients, instead of 20 or 30. One of the strange paradoxes about going from law practice to a recruiting practice is that you wind up working like a lawyer all the same, provided you want to really excel at the work. You have the same requirements from clients that come up at all hours, you deal with smart people and sometimes have difficult situations to navigate, and you have to travel to do it right. As a matter of fact, for the first time in what seems like several months I’m not currently feeling any jetlag. I had hoped to return to Hong Kong for Rugby 7′s at the end of next week, for my third trip to Asia this year, but I’m taking a few weeks off of travel. 200,000 miles last year made for a sore backside, and I’m on pace for another year like that. So is Evan Jowers; as he described in his article last week, he’s been tearing up runways around the world as well. Thankfully, doing so is paying off for our clients and candidates. We won’t stop because it is a major key to our success.
We received a complimentary note last weekend from a senior partner at a client law firm in Asia. I think it sums up why it’s a good idea to work with us if you’re looking to hire or move overseas (or within any of our domestic markets):
“We work with you guys for four reasons: (i) quality of candidates; (ii) detailed involvement in the interview/decision process; (iii) valuable market information; and (iv) we prefer to work with dudes we like — life’s too short.”
The Major League Baseball Season started last night and gets underway in earnest today. Football might be the biggest sport on the American landscape, but baseball is still America’s pastime. It’s a favorite of lawyers and judges — and according to a recent poll, baseball is the sport that draws a nearly equal percentage of liberal and conservative fans.
If you’ve actually been to a baseball game in the past decade, you know that the experience is ridiculously expensive. My first baseball game cost my dad $55 all-in (Mets/Padres, 1987, Straw hit one out). My last game cost my wife and I upwards of $200 — and we saw the pitiful Nationals in bad seats.
Duke law professor Richard Schmalbeck and Rutgers business professor Jay Soled think they know why the price of attending a baseball game has skyrocketed. They blame the tax code and the money generated from corporate ticket buyers. Have you ever gone to a game on your firm’s dime? If so, you are part of the problem …
* Cockfighting men > Cockfighting chickens. [Business Week]
* The first person in line to buy an iPad tomorrow in Chicago is an area lawyer. Criminal defense. Well, why not, it’s not like her clients are going anywhere. [ABA Journal]
* Wisconsin law professor changes his name to “Mitch.” Just, Mitch. [Obscure Store]
* Deluge in New England will get some people a tax extension. [Going Concern]
* Why hasn’t anybody thought to make a house arrest, reality t.v. show before? [THR]
* Remember the South Park episode where Cartman goes on t.v. saying “I do what I want”? Okay, now read all the Justice Breyer quotes in this article in the Cartman voice. Hilarity will ensue. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Thoughts about anonymous commenting? There are a lot of them. [MathewIngram.com]
In this week’s 10th Justice, we consider how predictions for cases are spread out over time, both before and after oral arguments, and how the statistics for the sets differ throughout the lifecycle of a case.
After two weeks of urban analysis, voting, and ample trash-talking, we have finally arrived at the ATL March Madness Final Four. Giants have fallen along the way.
New York was cut down by Washington, D.C. Dallas did away with two Southern belles. San Francisco proved its supremacy over the other cities of the West Coast. Chicago had the easiest path to the finals — the Midwest is the weakest conference.
Here is how these four cities made it to the Big Dance:
Chicago, D.C., Dallas and San Francisco duke it out, and we provide commentary, after the jump.
This week, we didn’t receive our usual “deluge” of reader questions. Rather than make up some crap question that you don’t care about, Elie and I thought we’d honor this most holy time in the Judeo-Christian calendar with a song and dance tribute to the Israelites’ 40-year tanning session and Jesus disappearing act.
For those not familiar with Passover, there’s a song called “Dayenu,” which translates to “it would have been enough.” The song gives thanks to god for magnanimously backtracking on his original decision to enslave the Jews the Egypt, giving them crummy bread that begat thousands of generations of IBS suffers, making them walk through a desert even though many of them were pale and required sun block, and tricking them into wasting all their nice jewelry on constructing a false idol made of gold. The song is a kind of a double-edged “thanks a lot,” and is one of my favorite holiday sentiments…
It’s a wonderful time of year. No more innuendo: NALP forms have been updated, and firms have had to come clean with their statistics on summer hiring.
Let’s crowdsource this baby. You look at your firm and tell us in the comments if somebody surprisingly massacred their summer class, and we’ll follow up next week.
After yesterday’s report on the latest developments in Supreme Court clerk hiring, we received word of several new hires, both by email and in the comments. So we thought we’d do a quick follow-up to pass along what we’ve heard.
Please keep in mind that we have not verified every hire to 100 percent accuracy; corrections may be posted later. This information is unofficial; the Supreme Court’s Public Information Office does not release the official list of October Term clerks until the immediately preceding summer.
With these caveats in mind, let’s take a look at the latest news, shall we?
This week’s Job of the Week sends globetrotters across the pond. That’s pretty cool, British pounds are worth more and look more funky than American greenbacks. As always, Job of the Week is brought to you by Lateral Link.
Position: Mid-Level Capital Markets/M&A Associate
Location: London
Description: Prominent international firm seeks multiple mid-level associates with 4 – 6 years of experience in capital markets and/or M&A to join their well-regarded and growing practice. Candidate should have excellent experience in capital markets and/or M&A gained in a top ranked international firm (top 5 US firms heavily preferred), and must be currently employed with such a firm. Preference will be given to candidates who have been with one firm to this point in their career. Excellent academic pedigree required. Collegial team environment and excellent partnership potential. For more information about this position, please view Position #6049 on Lateral Link. You may also contact Justin Flowers, jflowers@laterallink.com or 646.257.4886, for any other opportunities in the London area. Membership in Lateral Link is by application only and you can apply at www.laterallink.com.
* Eric Turkewitz didn’t bag the minnows he was hoping to catch with his April Fool’s joke that we (and many other legal bloggers) were in on. But he did snag one very big fish. [New York Personal Injury Law Blog]
* I thought Newark going a full month without a murder was the biggest April Fool’s joke of all. But apparently, it’s true! [Newark Star Ledger]
* New airport security measures for international travelers. [New York Times]
* Dear Law Enforcement: the Taser is not a toy. [ABA Journal]
* Teachers in Oregon are free to wear religious garments to work. [The Becket Fund]
* A big trademark case win for Weil on behalf of eBay. [Am Law Daily]
* You can’t ignore your creditors forever. Wage garnishment is their nuclear option. [New York Times]
* The Vatican is on the attack against the mainstream media. They’d have managed better if they had a plan. [New York Post]
April 1 is a dangerous date. It’s a day when punking people becomes the national sport. It’s not just traditional pranksters like College Humor marking the holiday. Law firms and law schools have been getting in on the fun today as well.
Shortly after your ATL editors got back from lunch, we got an alarmed email from a Columbia Law student, upset about Columbia’s plan to block some popular websites starting Monday:
When the Dean’s Advisory Committee addressed the Senate last month, it conveyed the faculty’s concern regarding student inattention and declining participation in class. The consensus among professors is that in-class Internet use is the primary cause.
Yesterday, we were informed that IT will begin blocking access to certain Internet sites inside the Law School’s three main buildings, while classes are meeting. Selective site blocking is scheduled to begin Monday morning. Among the 2-3 dozen sites affected are Facebook, Gmail and Above the Law. Others may be added later.
We’re honored to be part of that Holy Trifecta of websites, though Elie was initially quite upset at Columbia — until he visited the linked website and “got Rick-rolled for the first time in years.” Judging from the flood of emails we’ve gotten, he’s far from the only one.
Weil Gotshal and Yale Law School also performed some prestigious pranks. You’d think legal types’ natural cynicism would help protect them today. But you’d be wrong…
* Speaking of the Founding, if there’s another Constitutional Convention, I demand that all delegates wear wigs. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Mother sues hospital after the staff gave her the wrong baby to breast feed. So, I guess she won’t be appearing on the Project Wet Nurse reality show I just made up in my head. [BL1Y]
* What does Google think about the LSAT? [LSAT Blog]
* Minorities do better than whites when it comes to getting hired into tenure track positions at American law schools. But don’t start getting melanin injections just yet. [ABA Journal]
* Becoming a lawyer for the Catholic Church is a lot like becoming a lawyer for any other organization. [Slate]
* Former Duke lacrosse head coach Mike Pressler settles his lawsuit with the university. I’d say that he should go to a strip club to celebrate, but that would probably look bad. [NewsObserver]
Supreme Court clerk hiring is once again in the news. This subject, usually of interest just to hard-core legal nerds, migrated over to the mainstream media in Jeffrey Toobin’s recent New Yorker profile of Justice John Paul Stevens. Toobin cleverly used the topic of clerk hiring as a backdoor way of getting at JPS’s retirement plans:
With the election of Barack Obama, the question of Stevens’s retirement has become more pressing. Even though Stevens was appointed by a Republican President, many assume that he would never willingly have turned his seat over to George W. Bush. I asked Stevens about his plans.
“Well, I still have my options open,” he said. “When I decided to just hire one clerk, three of my four clerks last year said they’d work for me next year if I wanted them to. So I have my options still. And then I’ll have to decide soon.” On March 8th, he told me that he would make up his mind in about a month.
April 8 is just around the corner. If you hear of Justice Stevens re-hiring his former clerks (or hiring new clerks) for October 2010, please let us know.
In an interesting online chat with Toobin about his JPS profile, the subject of clerk hiring came up again….
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.
As an undergraduate, I worked for the Harvard College Fund. I made calls to alumni of the college and many of the professional schools asking for money. Yes, 
Continue reading “Open Thread: The State of Law School Giving”
