It’s become clear that many college graduates make their decision to go to law school based on apathy, a critical misunderstanding of the legal market, and shocking hubris. As we’ve said many times, the decision to go to law school has become disassociated from the expected value of going to law school.
Prospective law students are flocking to law schools in droves. What’s going on at Duke Law School right now is just the latest evidence. Here’s part of a letter Duke Law sent out to people on its waitlist:
Since our tuition deposit deadline at the end of April, the class has been completely full. Although a few people have requested deferrals or otherwise changed their plans for the fall, we have not yet been able to make any additional offers of admission.
When the reigning champion of our douchiest law school competition is getting inundated with applications, you can see why law schools are quite comfortable charging more and more tuition…
* Since Senate Judiciary Republicans seem to want to discuss Thurgood Marshall so much, Bingham McCutchen attorney Thurgood Marshall Jr. decided to speak up. [Washington Post]
* The ABA has high praise for Elena Kagan. [ABA Journal]
* Being LeBron’s lawyer must be fun. [Am Law Daily]
* A person emailed me to complain that during the Kagan confirmation liveblog, I took the Lord’s name in vain. I told the guy: “The power of the Establishment Clause compels me. The power of the Establishment Clause compels me.” [The Volokh Conspiracy]
* No-Fault divorce looks like it will finally come to New York State. [New York Daily News]
A lot of ink (virtual and otherwise) has been spent the last couple of days grading the performance of Elena Kagan at her Supreme Court confirmation hearings before the Senate. If confirmed, this week is the last time Kagan has to talk to the people, so it’s right to focus on how she did.
But there seems to be a media blind spot when it comes to grading the Senate Judiciary Committee itself. These 19 elected representatives are entrusted with the awesome responsibility of being the people’s voice in a process that ends with a lifetime appointment. Yet few seem to care if these guys are doing a good job — or if they even know what they are talking about. Sure, we’ve got to live with confirmed SCOTUS Justices for the rest of their lives, be we have direct electoral control over the Senators who do the confirming. Is it too much to ask that we find 19 people in the entire U.S. Senate that actually understand what judges do for a living?
Let’s get this ball rolling. Which Senator best fulfilled his or her duty to all of us, and which ones need to be transferred to Foreign Relations — where only our enemies and allies have to suffer under their stupidity?
* If you’re feeling frustrated with a partner, and don’t have time to draft a letter that can never be sent, vent with this video. We award major points for this compilation of the 100 best insults in cinematic history. [Pajiba via Gawker]
As an officer of the court, I must bluntly state that you appear to have serious mental issues involving extreme narcissism and illusions of grandiosity which effectively interferes with your ability to act as a Judge.
Yes, you read that headline correctly. Out of nowhere, Cahill Gordon & Reindel has decided to give out a mid-year bonus. Not Cravath, not S&C, but Cahill Gordon. The same Cahill Gordon that is one of the few firms to have significant layoffs in 2010. This is the firm that could push the market towards mid-year bonuses?
Apparently so. A tipster reported the bonus scale to Above the Law. It’s not a huge amount of money, but it’s something….
The appeal of working in-house is two-fold: decent hours and decent $$$ enough money to live on. How much money exactly? A new survey out from legal recruiter Laurence Simons (gavel bang: WSJ Law Blog) has the median salary ranges for those in-house, with experience ranging from zero to 21+ years. It’s six figures throughout, but barely in those baby years.
As we’ve noted before, salaries in-house remained flat in 2009. The Global Salary and Benefits survey [PDF] included responses from 1900 in-house lawyers world-wide, and breaks its results down by country.
Corporate Counsel reports that bonuses were uncommon in-house in the U.S. last year, so base salary reflects fairly reliably what these folks actually made last year. So what do those base salaries in-house look like?
As we noted yesterday, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, on track to be the newest justice of the Supreme Court, apparently hasn’t been bitten by the “Twilight” movies. When Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) tried to get Kagan to weigh in on the case of Edward v. Jacob, Kagan declined — a little forcefully. This won’t help White House efforts to depict the Divine Miss K as a girly girl.
But perhaps other legal types have a weakness for the series of vampire romance films. On Wednesday, the Washington Post had an article on the hard-core “Twilight” fans who came out in force for Tuesday night, post-12 a.m. screenings. Reports the Post:
After “Eclipse” was over, moviegoers gave it mixed reviews.
“It was a lot more frustrating than I thought it was going to be, ” said Bill Murray, 31.
“I thought it was fantastic,” said Gus Golden, 33. “It had a little bit in it for everyone.”
It seemed odd to find thirtysomething men at the midnight screening of a film aimed at teenage girls. To be sure, Robert Pattinson is ridiculously hot, and Taylor Lautner is quite the butterface (butHISface?), with abs that should be illegal under the Model Penal Code (hehe — penal). But then a little bird told us: “Gus Golden and Bill Murray are both rising 3L’s at Georgetown University Law Center.” And suddenly it all made sense.
The “Twilight” films are supposed to be juvenile and insubstantial — not typical cinematic fare for lawyers and law students. But before we started on a post heaping scorn upon these GULC students, and cracking jokes about how a fall from the so-called “T14″ is imminent, we decided to do some digging….
Welcome to the next in our series on the results of the 2010 ATL/Career Center Associate Satisfaction survey. We’ve used the survey results to revamp the Career Center, powered by Lateral Link, with completely updated profiles and each week, we are highlighting insider information that Members shared about their firms in the eight key areas of associate satisfaction covered by the Career Center.
Today, getting away from it all (or not): face time and vacation policy.
Face time at this firm, “one of the best names to have on your resume, bar none," varies by partner and practice group, but in general, Members report that the firm puts no particular emphasis on face time.
This firm, a Beltway insider, offers a Reduced Workload Policy, which allows attorneys to work reduced schedules to fulfill family care responsibilities as well as activities designed to enhance professional development or stature in the legal community.
This firm’s extensive overseas office network may contribute to its "generally good" attitude about respecting vacations and the fact that most associates are generally "able to use all of [their] vacation time."
This Chicago-based "powerhouse" recently made the switch to an unlimited vacation policy, allowing attorneys to take vacation days at their discretion; Members say most attorneys use the policy judiciously and average between two and three weeks of vacation.
Who else is getting more vacation than you are? Additional highlights, after the jump.
It’s been a long, below-market salary road for DLA Piper associates. For over a year now, DLA has been screwing around with associate salaries. Yesterday the firm announced that it would be moving back to a $160K salary scale — at least in New York — by 2011. (If you know of other firms that are finally moving back to $160K, don’t forget to send us an email.)
It’s taken DLA a long time to get back here. Back in May 2009, DLA cut associates salaries by 20%. That was ten percent more than other firms were cutting, and after a time DLA restored ten percent of the initial 20% cut.
But DLA wasn’t done, and a couple of months later, DLA associate salaries were back on the chopping block…
It’s not every day that a partner leaves the storied firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. But it’s not every day that a suitor with comparable prestige, wealth, and WASPiness comes calling. Dealbook reports:
Morgan Stanley said on Thursday that it has hired Francis P. Barron, a partner at the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, as its chief legal officer. Mr. Barron will replace Gary G. Lynch, who will remain with Morgan Stanley as a vice chairman in London…. The hiring is the latest management shake-up under James P. Gorman, Morgan Stanley’s chief executive since the beginning of the year.
At Cravath, where he has worked for 32 years, Mr. Barron specialized in litigation, corporate matters and advising boards. Among his clients are financial firms like Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, UBS and Goldman Sachs, as well as General Electric.
Moving from a law firm to Wall Street isn’t uncommon. On New York magazine’s recent list of hottest Wall Street bachelors — co-authored by Bess Levin, of our sister site Dealbreaker, and Jessica Pressler — two out of the 15 “foxes of finance” have law degrees (one from Harvard and one from Seton Hall).
A move at this high a level, from a Cravath partnership to an investment bank, is less common. But such moves happen — and, interestingly enough, Frank Barron isn’t even the first ex-Cravath partner to wind up in a top position at Morgan Stanley….
Aharon Barak wonders: Why do Senate Republicans hate me so much?
Yesterday morning, while I was shamelessly snooping scanning the bookshelves of my significant other, a handsome book caught my eye. The title, Purposive Interpretation in Law, wasn’t very sexy, but the author’s name grabbed my attention: AHARON BARAK.
Yes, the Aharon Barak — the man whose name has been constantly invoked this week, over the past three days of Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings. “The other white meat Barak,” not be confused with our president Barack (Hussein Obama). The bugaboo of the rule of law, in the eyes of Kagan critics. Quite possibly “the worst judge on the planet,” in the words of failed SCOTUS nominee Robert Bork.
As I picked up Barak’s book from the shelf, a chill ran up my spine. I felt myself in the presence of a judicial Voldemort. Should owning a book by Aharon Barak be grounds for breaking up with someone? Is it tantamount to owning a lovingly dog-eared copy of Mein Kampf?
I needed to educate myself. Just who is Aharon Barak?
* It’s too bad that Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana can’t seal the slick as easily as he can his office’s oil-spill records. [New York Times]
* Rockin’ New York judge Matthew D’Emic is trying to decide what to rename his band. Possibilities: Rock-n-Robes, L.L. Cool Judge and The Electric Chairs. [Associated Press]
* Eric Holder is in Afghanistan to lecture President Karzai on corruption. [NPR]
* Scottie Pippen scores in his legal malpractice case against Pedersen & Houpt. [ABA Journal]
* Harvard is a good choice for wannabe spies. [New York Times]
* That was quick. Class action against Apple over the “defective” iPhone 4. [Courthouse News]
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.
It’s become clear that many college graduates make their decision to go to law school based on apathy, a critical misunderstanding of the legal market, and shocking hubris. As we’ve said many times, the decision to go to law school has become disassociated from the expected value of going to law school.
Continue reading “Duke Law Waitlist Proves There’s No End in Sight To Lawyer Oversupply Problem”
* If you’re feeling frustrated with a partner, and don’t have time to draft a 
As we 
* It’s too bad that Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana can’t seal the slick as easily as he can his office’s oil-spill records. [
