We’ve talked a lot about law schools that are raising tuition. It borders on unconscionable for schools to pump up tuition at a time of deflationary legal salaries and a difficult job market.

So I was a little surprised when I received this email from a University of Miami School of Law student:

The Dean of UM just sent out an email announcing policy changes that are going to save students’ tuition money (up to a couple thousand $$$ per semester). This while other law school in America is trying to milk every last cent out of students.

A law school that costs less? To the bat mobile!

Year-end bonuses have been announced at the market-leading firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. And they are even lower than last year’s Cravath bonuses.

But look, this is 2009. Welcome to the Great Recession. Your true bonus is: you get to keep your job. That shouldn’t be taken for granted, even at Cravath.

Anyway, here’s the Cravath bonus scale for 2009 (via the WSJ Law Blog):

Class of 2008 — $7,500
Class of 2007 — $10,000
Class of 2006 — $15,000
Class of 2005 — $20,000
Class of 2004 — $25,000
Class of 2003 — $30,000
Class of 2002 — $30,000

Cravath’s bonus announcement is always important because the market tends to follow Cravath — as it did last year. Skadden’s 2008 bonuses, at roughly twice Cravath’s levels, were ignored.

Could this year be different? Are the Cravath bonus levels low enough such that a firm of similar or even lower prestige will try to better CSM? Or will other Biglaw shops simply avail themselves of the political cover provided by Cravath — which is arguably what happened last year, when Skadden’s generous bonuses went unmatched (excluding Wachtell)?

So, readers, what do you think? Read the FULL MEMO, take a READER POLL, and COMMENT — after the jump.

The 2009 billable year hasn’t even ended at most firms yet, but October has been full of announcements from Big Law firms across the country about major changes to associate compensation.  Check out the ATL Career Center, powered by Lateral Link , for the latest information from the legal markets and updates from users about who is paying what when.  In the last week, we have updated the firm snapshots for Schulte Roth & Zabel, Katten Muchin Rosenman, Morrison & Foerster, DLA Piper, Fenwick & West, Bingham McCutchen, Dorsey & Whitney, Foley & Lardner, and Nixon Peabody.  Below are some recent nuggets of golden and not-so-golden news about compensation from the Career Center’s firm snapshots:

• This firm announced that, in January 2010, it will move away from a lockstep compensation system to one that emphasizes merit-based factors as a more significant component of compensation decisions.  The firm says the combination of base pay and discretionary and productivity bonuses will keep overall compensation at or above current levels, but associates worry they may see significantly less pay if they don’t achieve the necessary merit marks.

• This firm has confirmed that it will be paying bonuses in early 2010, an announcement associates can only hope is the first of many.  Although the firm anticipates the amounts will be less than previous years, bonuses are still predicted to range from $5,000 to $50,000.

• This firm recently cut starting salaries to $145,000 in all of its offices (other than New York and Asia). The firm has indicated it will continue to monitor the situation and may re-adjust salaries (up or down) in light of legal market trends if necessary.

• This firm is also taking the merit-based compensation route: although it plans to retain a lockstep scale for base salaries, the firm has announced that its practice group leaders will now have greater discretion in awarding year-end bonuses.  Billable hours will continue to factor into bonus determinations, but so will qualitative and quantitative factors, such as financial productivity, profitability and teamwork.

Use the Career Center’s firm snapshots and comparison tool to find out what other bonus and salary changes firms across the country are making.  And as always, we encourage you to send information about your law firm experience to careercenter@abovethelaw.com.

The Government Accountability Office has released a new report on the rising cost of legal education. Who is to blame? Not the ABA. Not university presidents using their law schools as cash cows.

According to the GAO, the U.S. News law school rankings put law school deans in a “resource intensive” competition to rise up the U.S. News list. The two key slides from the 44-page GAO report (PDF) are below:

The GAO makes a provocative argument. Let’s discuss it after the jump.

If you live in California, you are surely aware of the state’s budgetary concerns. But if you work for Morrison & Foerster in California, you may now have some budgetary concerns of your very own.

MoFo decided to cut salaries today, but associates in New York and Asia will be spared the hardship. Here’s the official statement from the firm:

Starting salaries at Morrison & Foerster in New York and Asia will be $160,000, the same as last year, and starting salaries in other U.S. offices will be $145,000.

Note, however, that the market for first year salaries among national firms is undetermined at this time. Given that, we will continue to assess starting salaries, in light of market trends, and may elect to adjust as required based on larger market developments.

Parsing the statement, after the jump.

Thomas M. Cooley Law School — ranked #12 among ABA accredited schools, according to Thomas M. Cooley Law School — is looking to raise tuition. The school has been expanding, but apparently enrollment is down. So, predictably, the school decided to raise rates on its students.

An email informing Cooley students of the change was sent over the summer by Cooley’s president and dean, Don LeDuc. The last paragraph reads as follows:

Of course, we wish that we did not have to increase tuition, but the reality is that the cost of operation escalates and enrollment varies. The May 2009 class came in below the usual size, and transfers remain too high. Our operating revenue is tuition-based, so tuition must be set based on projected enrollment numbers. This year, the cost of financing our facilities at Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Auburn Hills increased due to the dislocation in the financial markets (the Ann Arbor facility is leased, so it does not contribute to the increased financing cost). It is in everyone’s interest to recruit new first-year students and to retain them in the second and third year.

How will students react to this?

Corporations are so busy reducing the amount of money they spend on outside counsel that it’s easy to overlook the fact that they are also reducing the money they spend on in-house counsel. Well, it’s easy to overlook the fact if you are not in-house.

But a new survey reports that in-house lawyers are feeling the salary pinch along with their firm-based colleagues. The ABA Journal reports:

Lauren Chung, director of the Hildebrandt survey, told the ABA Journal that the frugal approach extends to compensation for in-house lawyers.

“Do I think that lawyers overall are making less?” Chung said. “They’re not getting the increases that they had been enjoying for the past several years. Every year they were almost guaranteed an increase. This year we see very clearly that is not the norm anymore.”

Of course, in-house lawyers aren’t exactly crying poverty. Their salary, even without the yearly raise, is still pretty good.

Check out just how good it is after the jump.

If you are going to run a scam involving fraudulent checks, is it wise to use an account that belongs to a law firm? Texas Lawyer reports that check scammers have been telling people to cash fraudulent checks drawn against a Fish & Richardson account at Bank of America. Apparently the scam is not working:

As soon as people started contacting the firm last December with questions about Fish & Richardson checks they had received in the mail, the Boston-based firm notified its bank that someone was trying to pass counterfeit checks written on a firm account. Most recently, on Oct. 5, the firm learned from its bank that someone tried unsuccessfully to cash one of the checks, suggesting the scammers may have mailed a new round of letters, says Kelly Largey, chief marketing officer for the 418-lawyer firm.

The checks were sent to people around the country — including at least five in Texas — with cover letters telling recipients to cash the checks, and to send some of the money to the sender for “processing fees” or to a “mystery shopper, and keep the rest of the money.”

If you were going to try this, wouldn’t you run this scheme against a bicycle shop, or a cosmetics company, or some institution that isn’t as meticulous as a freaking law firm?

And it’s not like Fish & Richardson is being loose with its money these days. The firm is closing offices and cutting departments.

In any event, consider this a Public Service Announcement: if you receive a check from Fish & Richardson, don’t cash it.

Fish & Richardson Battles Scammers Writing Fake Checks on Firm’s Bank Account [Texas Lawyer]
Another Law Firm—Fish & Richardson— Says Scammers Hijacked Its Accounts [ABA Journal]

There has been quite a bit of coverage on how the recession is affecting the august Harvard University. For example, the undergraduates aren’t getting hot breakfast anymore.

Meanwhile, over at Harvard Law School, things have gotten so bad that HLS is looking to sell off some naming rights to wealthy donors. Tax Prof Blog reports:

The following list provides a representative sample of named gift opportunities. In addition, several naming opportunities exist in the Law School’s Northwest Corner building project currently under construction.

* $25,000,000: International Graduate Student Fellowship Program, The Low Income Protection Plan Program
* $10,000,000: The Harvard Law Library Reading Room, Research Program (Academic/Clinical)
* $5,000,000: Combined Professorship and Research Fund
* $4,000,000: Professorship
* $2,000,000: Visiting Professorship
* $1,000,000: Research Fund
* $250,000: Scholarship/Fellowship Fund
* $100,000: Financial Aid Fund
* $10,000: Revolving Loan Fund

Remember, Harvard is only called “Harvard” because John Harvard had a nice library.

Maybe graduates of Harvard Business School can still afford to make lavish $25,000,000 gifts; alas, graduates of Harvard Law School probably don’t have that kind of flow anymore. But why should they be iced out of the naming game?

After the jump, let me suggest some low-cost naming rights that HLS could sell.

Back in June, Dorsey & Whitney laid off 55 people and announced that it was cutting associate salaries by 10 percent. At the time, our sources reported that the decisions were made in reaction to the firm’s revenue numbers from May:

Management got May’s figures last night, and apparently, the situation was quite dire. The prognostications for the future months also did not hold to budget and they decided something relatively drastic needed to be done.

A tipster reports that Dorsey is cutting salaries again. And this time the cut is even more drastic:

Per an email from Marianne Short, the firm is slashing associate salaries firmwide. Could be up to 25-30% for midlevel / senior associates.

The firm contends that salary cuts will not get up to the levels reported by the tipster. But Dorsey is one of the firms that has decided to abandon lockstep compensation. Could that result in 25 percent reductions to base pay?

Additional details and a statement from the firm, after the jump.

As regular Above the Law readers know, there are a few firms that are offering “go away” money to their incoming associates. The deal, like ones at Stroock and Pillsbury, is that the firm will give incoming associates a large payment instead of a job, and the incoming associate will quietly go peruse other employment options.

We haven’t really gotten a sense of how many would-be associates would actually consider this offer — until now. Fenwick & West offered its incoming associates $60,000 to stay away. According to our sources, around 40 percent of Fenwick’s 2009 class took the money.

But there is a catch; there’s always a catch.

Details after the jump.

Back in the day, young lawyers would complain that they were “selling their souls” for $160K a year. But now we are in a recession and the price of a fresh soul has come down considerably. From Craigslist:

1 Soul of Healthy Young Man - $100000 (Hamden, CT)

For sale:
The gently used soul of a healthy, Roman Catholic, young twenties, quinnipiac law student.

So, let me give you some background on the product and the reasons for selling:

My student loans are piling up and I’ve realized I really don’t give a shit what type of law I practice, I’m really only in this thing to further myself economically. Problem is, my student loans are outrageous and by the time I pay them off I’ll be spending the rest of my money on Cialis and colonoscopies. I don’t want that, I don’t need that. So let’s make a fucking deal.

In exchange for the payment of my student loans you will get my soul. This is a la motherfucking carte. No organs included. No skin, no vas differens, and certainly no homunculus.

Dude, you go to Quinnipiac, can’t you get a job as a pollster?

Just the other day, we told you about a law firm that was looking for free labor from an attorney who had already graduated from law school and passed the bar. Here, this law student wants somebody to purchase his soul for $100,000 bucks. When inflated expectation meets free market capitalism the fields are soaked with the tears of the martyrs.

Read more of the ad after the jump.

Federal judges have been complaining about their salaries for years now, but all they’ve managed to get recently is a small cost of living increase.

Federal judge Stephen Larson of the Central District of California is taking a stand on the issue — by quitting. From the National Law Journal:

U.S. District Judge Stephen G. Larson of the Los Angeles-based Central District of California said in a prepared statement on Sept. 15 that the failure by Congress to increase judicial salaries made it impossible to support his seven children, all under age 18.

“The costs associated with raising our family are increasing significantly, while our salary remains stagnant and, in terms of purchasing power, is actually declining,” he said. “The short of it is that I know I must place my family’s interest, particularly the future of my children, ahead of my own fervent desire to remain a federal judge.”

We can see where he’s coming from. Larson, 44, hasn’t seen big(law) money since 1991, when he was a second-year associate at O’Melveny & Myers. Since then he’s been in public service, as an assistant U.S. attorney and a judge.

We have so many questions!

Finally, we wonder: are federal judges underpaid? Find out how much judges make, and vote in our poll as to whether they’re underpaid, after the jump.

UPDATE / CORRECTION: After we noticed comments 34 and 41, we reached out to Loyola Law School for clarification. A Loyola spokesperson confirmed that the Chicago Tribune made an error: Loyola has renamed its main building for Philip Corboy, but NOT the school itself. For a correct account of what has taken place, see the law school’s press release.

We regret our replication of the Chicago Tribune’s error. Thanks to our commenters for bringing the mistake to our attention.

FURTHER UPDATE: The Tribune has corrected its story, but without noting the fact that it was corrected. Most publications, such as the New York Times and Slate, will note substantial corrections after they are made. Here at Above the Law, we will also explicitly note corrections that go to matters of substance (as opposed to, say, typographical errors).

We mentioned this already in Morning Docket, but the decision by Loyola - Chicago bears further discussion. We know that the overall economy has made things difficult on law schools. Tuition keeps going up, despite nearly record numbers of new applicants. So one should applaud a law school for getting a major boost to its endowment.

Loyola - Chicago received a huge gift, so massive that the school has decided to change its name its main building name in honor of the donor. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Loyola University Chicago’s School of Law will be renamed the Philip H. Corboy Law Center after the noted alumnus and prominent personal injury attorney who donated the largest single gift in the law school’s history, it will be announce Monday.

Some might argue that a decrease in the confusing proliferation of law schools named after St. Ignatius Loyola — we already have Loyola of Chicago, Loyola of Los Angeles, and Loyola of New Orleans — is a good thing. But was going with Philip Corboy the right move? Wasn’t Henry Walpole available?

More details after the jump.

Gawker reports that Incisive Media — the legal media giant behind the American Lawyer magazine, Law.com, and many other excellent and influential print and online publications — is taking back its old name: American Lawyer Media (ALM).

ALM adopted the Incisive moniker back in 2007, after being acquired by Incisive Media for $630 million. Incisive itself was acquired in 2006 by Apax Partners, a private equity firm.

The full memo about the ALM rebranding appears after the jump. Here’s the most interesting part:

While we will continue to be majority-owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, our lender, Royal Bank of Scotland, will swap a portion of its existing ALM debt for a 49% equity stake in the company and become a minority owner of ALM.

Turning over almost half of the equity in the company to a lender — that doesn’t sound good, does it?

But there’s more to the story here.

My friends, we have a trend. Bryan Cave has become the third firm we know of to offer its incoming associates money to simply go away instead of starting at the firm.

Tipsters report that the firm is offering some associates $70,000 to “walk away” instead of showing up for work. That’s the carrot. This tipster reports the stick:

[A Bryan Cave letter] stated that they are unable to guarantee a start date at this time .. The letter [also] said was that they are unsure if they will need any first year associates before 2011. Shady, shady, shady…

Stroock — the first firm to offer incoming associates go away money — offered $75,000. Pillsbury offered $60,000. So Bryan Cave is keeping up with the market for these kinds of things.

After the jump, a reader poll, and Bryan Cave’s strategy for incoming associates.

Meet Ken Basin. This legal prodigy, just 24 years old, is an associate at Greenberg Glusker, one of the top entertainment law firms in the country. Basin graduated last year from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude and with a Sears Prize, at the tender age of 23.

Basin isn’t just a handsome legal genius; he’s also a trivia ace. Back in 2003, he made it to the semifinals of College Jeopardy (which, incidentally, his girlfriend won back in 2000).

On Sunday, Basin was back in the hot seat. He made it all the way to the million-dollar question on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

So how did things turn out for Ken Basin? Did he join the ranks of lawyers who have won seven-figure sums on television — e.g., Victor and Tammy Jih, of Harvard Law School and the Amazing Race, and Yul Kwon, of Yale Law School and Survivor?

Find out how he fared, after the jump.

Do you want to purchase a discount legal education, but you don’t know where to look? A new list from the National Jurist will point you in the right direction. Tax Prof Blog reproduces the list of which law schools give you the most bang for your buck. Here are the top 15:

How do you come up with a list that ranks N. Carolina Central the best at anything? Check out the methodology after the jump.

Above the Law has learned that officials at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law are investigating the actions of the school’s 2008-2009 Student Bar Association President. As we understand it, the investigation remains internal and has not resulted in any law enforcement action; accordingly, we will not be printing the student’s name.

Word around campus is that the former SBA president is being investigated for allegedly misappropriating student funds. A tipster reports the details this way:

[The former SBA President] is now under investigation by the administration for embezzling thousands of dollars from the University. [He] reportedly used this money to fund trips around the country, including a spring break booze-fueled extravaganza — having told the administration that the funds would be used to attend a “conference.”

Our sources report that university investigators have already contacted and questioned members of the Moritz class of 2009 who know the former president. We also understand that his boyfriend, an undergraduate at OSU, has been questioned.

The allegedly embezzled money came from the Inter-Professional Council:

Throughout the year, IPC plans or co-plans a variety of social, professional outreach, and community services events, including professional skills workshops, multi-cultural dinners at area restaurants, and food drives for the Mid-Ohio Food Bank.

We believe that the total amount of money at issue is in the neighborhood of $3,600. As one student put it, the IPC “doesn’t do much for students anyway.”

The law school’s response and more details, after the jump.

A U.S. House member wants Bank of America to turn over extensive documentation relating to its Merrill Lynch deal (with a focus on lossess and loss projections at Merrill). We wonder which law firm is representing B of A in this matter — there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned congressional investigation to get the billable-hour engines revving.

Read more and discuss over at Dealbreaker.

In A Surprising Twist, Lawmakers Focus On The BAC/ML Merger [Dealbreaker]