Climbing the law firm ladder.
In addition to talk of bonuses and layoffs, another topic that instills fear in associates is partnership prospects. A couple of weeks ago, we asked you how current partnership prospects at your firm compared to last year, and how your firm treats associates who are passed over for partnership.
Forty-seven percent of respondents report that the chances of making partner are worse than last year, 42% say they are about the same, and 11% indicate that prospects are better.
First, the bad news: the percentage of respondents who say that prospects are worse is significantly larger among the senior associates who are either up for partner or nearing partnership consideration. For example, 66% of the Class of 2002 report that making partner is less likely than last year, as do 58% of the Class of 2003, and 55% of respondents who graduated before 2002 (which may include some current partners). Maybe it’s just the nerves talking, but it could also be that eighth year associates and beyond have a better grasp of reality than, say, Class of 2010 associates.
So what’s the good news?
Continue reading “Career Center: Partnership Prospects Survey Results”
Congratulations to successful applicants to the U.S. Department of Justice’s prestigious and highly selective Honors Program. As noted on the program’s website, the DOJ Honors Program “is the only way that the Department hires entry-level attorneys.” (Otherwise you have to clerk or practice elsewhere first — as I did, before joining the DOJ as an AUSA.)
Offers for the Honors Program have actually been going out for a little while now. We first heard of offers being issued a little over a week ago, around November 12. In the past few days, though, we’ve been getting many more reports. And according to the list of key dates on the program website, now is the time for offers to be issued.
So, which divisions — or “hiring components,” in DOJ speak — are making offers?
Continue reading “DOJ Honors Program Offers Are Being Issued: Open Thread”
Christina Walsh dba Capri Anderson
* The New Jersey Senate passed an Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights. Is this just reactionary pandering? Cue Elie’s opinion on the nanny state in 3, 2, 1… [New Jersey Star-Ledger]
* You’re doing it wrong! Chandra Levy’s murderer was convicted in D.C. without forensic evidence, a murder weapon, or eyewitnesses, because “there was a lot of evidence.” [Washington Post]
* How do you make a porn star moan? You don’t pay her. Capri Anderson and Charlie Sheen trade legal filings over their botched October sexcapade. [Los Angeles Times]
* Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol t-t-t-t-t-toothpaste. Massachusetts attorney Anthony Galluccio blamed a failed breathalyzer test on his toothpaste – and failed. [Boston Globe]
* It’s not a grope, it’s a freedom pat. ACLU complaints abound in light of the new TSA security measures. Will you be participating in Opt-Out Day? [Wall Street Journal]
* If Joe Miller had a reality television show, it would probably be called The Sorest Loser. He has until next week to file a state court suit over his Alaska election challenge. [Associated Press]
A correction to that last item, after the jump.
Continue reading “Morning Docket: 11.23.10″
Isn't flying fun?
* A discussion of the English language’s “internal structures of logic and order” — inspired by the “pleaded” versus “pled” dispute, a topic we covered back in 2008 — from Professor Eugene Volokh. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* A common-sense approach to airport security, from Professor Nathan Sales. [National Review]
* A careful dissection of my write-up of Justice Scalia’s recent remarks to the Federalist Society, by Professor Ann Althouse. [Althouse]
* A Sunday in the life of Jonathan Lippman, Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals. [New York Times]
* A review of the 11″ Macbook Air, from Professor Glenn Reynolds [Instapundit]
* A word of congratulations to nine outstanding Asian American lawyers and judges — NAPABA’s 2010 Trailblazer Award nominees. [NAPABA]
We’ve had to wait a long time for this announcement. Last year, Cravath kicked off bonus season on November 2nd. This year, bonus news took longer to arrive.
Was it worth the wait? Cravath just announced its bonuses, this afternoon.
So, what are the Cravath year-end bonuses looking like for 2010?
Continue reading “Cravath Bonuses Are Out: The 2010 Bonus Season Is Under Way!”
Last week, I wrote a post about Touro Law School. The post highlighted allegations of wrongdoing at Touro College. In light of these allegations, and after talking about Touro Law’s reputation with a St. John’s law student I know, I suggested that the ABA might want to take a closer look a Touro Law — a fourth-tier law school that charges students $40,000 a year. Read the original post here.
Students at Touro and other fourth-tier law schools quickly came out of the woodwork. I see myself as a clear voice against the exploitation of these people by institutions charging them way too much. But they see me as an elitist who places institutional prestige ahead of quality education.
In my youth, I knew a lot of Touro Law graduates — I grew up on Long Island, and there are a lot of them out there. But it occurs to me that as an adult (and especially since I started working for Above the Law almost two and half years ago), I’ve had very little opportunity to interact with Touro students or grads, or people from other fourth-tier institutions. Our top-tier readers are often the most vocal, and ATL has put me in contact with scores of law students and alumni from second- and third-tier schools. The fourth tier, not so much.
With that in mind, one Touro Law student took the time to write an epic defense of Touro and fourth-tier legal education more generally. I don’t agree with a lot of it, but here at ATL, we do like to hear and present different sides of important arguments.
Everybody has heard my position on this matter (“the tuition is too damn high”), so let’s take a look at the other side — straight from the mouth of a student actually enrolled at Touro…
Continue reading “In Defense of Law School — Namely, Touro and Other Fourth-Tier Schools”
Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s new column for in-house counsel.
When I moved in-house ten months ago, my phone started to ring off the hook — and not just from folks I hadn’t spoken to in years, who thought that I’d now be itching to retain them. I also got a few calls from people who were simply curious about the difference between working in-house and working at a law firm.
One of the differences is self-evident: You arrive at work on your first day at a corporation, and you devote that day entirely to ministerial crap. You spend an hour completing immigration forms, spend an hour having your photograph taken for various ID cards, fill out your health insurance and retirement benefit forms, create passwords for a dizzying array of computer databases, set up your computer to receive corporate training, and then realize that everyone is heading home.
Ouch! Another wasted day! You didn’t do a minute of billable work. You might as well have been on vacation today, because you did nothing that could legitimately be charged to a client.
But wait….
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Vive La Différence”
I didn’t read one word. I have a life to live.
– Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, explaining that he didn’t read the 100 pages of RESPA disclosure documents when he recently purchased a house.
(Gavel bang: Josh Blackman, who notes that Judge Easterbrook’s colleague, Judge Richard Posner, previously said essentially the same thing.)
Flattery will get you everywhere in your legal career.
Really. Professors at the Kellogg Business School did an entire study and figured out that people with a legal background are especially skillful at sucking up — and sucking up will take you far.
On the one hand, this shouldn’t surprise anybody. People kiss up because kissing up works. On the other hand, the study is massively disappointing. You’d think that people could see through blatant brown-nosing. But people in powerful positions either can’t see through the BS, or they actually like it when underlings kiss the ring.
Truth to power? Overrated. Sniveling in front of your betters? That’s what people are looking for…
Continue reading “Pucker Up: Traits of Highly Effective Boot Lickers”
A frenchman cheated on his wife? Sacré bleu!
* It would be much easier more entertaining if Eva Longoria and Tony Parker had to settle their dueling divorce filings with a jump ball. [New York Daily News]
* Duquesne’s law student clothing drive was pathetic, but this just takes the cake. Would you pay an ASU law student’s tuition? [ABA Journal]
* After laying off lawyers, foreclosure supervillain David J. Stern had quit his own company. We sure know how to pick ‘em. [Businessweek; Daily Business Review]
* Personal responsibility fail. Getting lok’d up probably won’t make you insane enough to kill yourself, but this lawsuit says otherwise. [TIME]
* The publisher for America’s Mom dragged Gawker into federal court on a Saturday for a proper spanking over copyright infringement. [Media Coder / New York Times]
* Jimmy McMillan’s $350M lawsuit: the font used by the NY Board of Elections was too damn big to write his full party name on the ballot. [New York Post]
Justice Antonin Scalia, being interviewed by Jan Crawford of CBS News at the Federalist Society's annual dinner in Washington, DC.
On Thursday evening, I had the great pleasure of attending the annual dinner at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention, in Washington, D.C. The event — attended by an estimated 1,400 people, and held in the cavernous ballroom at the Omni Shoreham — featured, as always, conservative and libertarian legal luminaries galore.
(Did Judge Diane Sykes just air-kiss Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain? Isn’t that Ken Cuccinelli over at the bar? What might Judges Brett Kavanaugh and Jeff Sutton be discussing so intently — maybe the latest clerks they’ve placed at the Supreme Court? Whoa — Ted Olson chatting with Justice Samuel Alito! Be still my heart….)
The highlight of the evening was the interview of Justice Antonin Scalia by Jan Crawford, chief legal correspondent of CBS News (who was looking fabulous in a black dress with open sleeves). The justice was in fine form, hilarious and freewheeling in his remarks….
Continue reading “Justice Scalia at the Federalist Society Fête”
A liveblog of what should be a most interesting debate on Prop 8 and gay marriage — taking place at the 2010 National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society, and pitting Professor William Eskridge against Professor Richard Epstein — after the jump.
Continue reading “Proposition 8 Violates the Fourteenth Amendment: A Debate”
[T]he imperatives of law enforcement distract soldiers and intelligence agents from their primary war-fighting mission. We don’t want our soldiers pausing on hostile battlefields to read detainees Miranda warnings, take down witness statements, and collect evidence in plastic baggies. They should remain focused on finding and killing al Qaeda terrorists.
– Professor John Yoo, in an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal.
Fly like an eagle, or at least a California Quail, successful bar takers.
I’ll say this for California: at least they didn’t accidentally release the results of the July 2010 bar exam and then lie about it for a whole day. Apparently, the good people at the Nuts & Boalts blog have been acting like there’s been an early release… and then Rickrolling people who click on it.
But as of 6 p.m., Californians can log in and see if they passed the bar exam. Here’s the link to the State Bar of California website. As always, we congratulate those who passed and encourage those who didn’t to keep their heads up.
Discuss your triumphs, your near-triumphs, and your abject failures here. It’s been a long wait; enjoy yourselves.
Earlier: New York Bar Examiners Admit to Accidental Release of New York Bar Results
* The president of Duke begs students to stop acting like douches. Good luck! I beg my dog to learn how to use the toilet while I’m at work, but every evening she needs to dookie in the street. [The Not-So Private Parts / Forbes]
* Over there, that thing slinking along the ground, is that “the bonus”? No, NO, that’s the layoff monster. We should get out of here before it notices us. [Law Shucks]
* Ladies, what’s the best thing about being a woman? Is it the emotional security that comes from knowing nobody ever had a party to celebrate chopping off a part of your genitals? [WSJ Law Blog]
* Good job, MSNBC. You’ve managed to create an environment where you have to conduct witch hunts against your own on air talent. “Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.” [Politico]
* If TSA is still molesting people like this as they try to get to their Thanksgiving destinations, there could be a full-on riot at major American airports. To cut tensions, I think that anybody who is groped by TSA should be given one free orgasm by the airline employee of their choice. [Jezebel]
* Don’t forget to check out this job opening for a junior litigation associate. [Above the Law (sponsored content)]
Earlier this month, we asked you to tell us how you were doing with your hours.
I planned to announce the results of the survey when the first firm announced bonuses contingent on an hours requirement. But since bonus news is late this year, perhaps Rudolph has some sort of tumor?
I still think bonuses will come. Associates will stand in Evan Chesler’s office and force him to watch them shoot bunnies until he names a bonus, if they have to.
So they’re coming. While we wait, let’s take look at how hard people are working. It turns out that quite a few of you have been busy little bees…
Continue reading “The Hours Survey Results”
