With apologies for the delay, here’s our promised update on the situation over at Dechert LLP.
As we mentioned last Friday, back in this post (and its multiple updates), it looked like Dechert laid off 13 lawyers in its Finance and Real Estate practice (“FRE”). Then firm chairman Barton Winokur sent out this message, late on Friday afternoon:

Due to the major shift in market conditions affecting client demands in our Finance and Real Estate practice area, we currently do not have sufficient work for all the associates in FRE. As a consequence, we have told 13 associates in the U.S. FRE group that we see no demand for them in that group in the foreseeable future. However, due to increased and substantial demand in other practice areas, we will be offering those lawyers the opportunity to work in those other groups.

We think we’ve gotten to the bottom of what happened to the Dechert 13. And we’ve picked up a few other tidbits about the situation over there.
Read more, after the jump.

Continue reading “Nationwide Layoff Watch: An Update on Dechert”

Last year, the WSJ Law Blog posed this question: “Are law students emotional wrecks?” Their post generated hundreds of comments.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that some law students have, in modern parlance, “issues.” The stress of law school may have a tendency to trigger meltdowns. See, e.g., here (University of Alabama law student who gave a strange speech in class), here (Indiana University law student who shot up his casebooks), and here (University of Arizona law student accused of kidnapping her ex-boyfriend).
One of last year’s more memorable incidents was this one, involving a student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who riddled his neighbors’ apartment door with bullets. Now we return to U. Penn — where we recently spoke, and where the students struck us as happy and well-adjusted — thanks to this Daily Pennsylvanian article:

Security has been increased around the Law School over the past several days in response to a student who has exhibited signs of unstable behavior. The student is being placed on involuntary leave….

The student had caused administrators concern because of an incident that happened at the Law School. It was then discovered that he had taken himself off of his psychiatric medication about a month ago, according to two Penn Law employees who were briefed on the situation and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose this information. However, they were not told the specifics of the initial incident.

A tipster there tells us:

The Penn Law students have not received ANY formal communication about this, and the students are generally very upset that 1) we weren’t told anything and 2) the first communication came from the undergraduate newspaper.

We’ll keep you posted. If you have info to share, please email us. If you comment on this post, please do not mention any individuals by name, consistent with ATL’s standard operating procedure.
Based on past precedent, we’d expect Dean Fitts to send out some vague email offering blanket reassurances, but declining to say more due to federal privacy law. That seems to be par for the course for these incidents.
Student prompts security increase [Daily Pennsylvanian]
Related: Law student arrested for firing at neighbors

Email screw-ups and law school listserves have provided us with tons of material in the past. Today’s cautionary tale comes to us from NYU Law School:

“Reply all” has its pitfalls, but so does the “reply to” address. Yikes!

[This student] was replying to an email from the professor sent out after the semester was over. The prof had sent the email via a listserver, so even if you just hit “reply” instead of “reply all,” everyone’s going to see it. The very same pitfall with the very same listserve caused a smart kid to broadcast an email griping because he had too many circuit court clerkship interviews one day.

And here’s the email that was sent to the listserv:

Prof. [xxxx],

I am writing to inquire about my grade in last semester’s [xxxx] class. I turned in the exam feeling that I had under-represented what I actually learned, but I was still somewhat surprised to recieve a C in the course. If you get a chance (and it is appropriate), could you tell me if the grade was purely the result of a sub-par exam or if other factors were included?

Thank you,
[xxxx]

By the way, this is not very skillful grade-grubbing. An email is too easily ignored, and it lacks emotional force. If you want to grade grub, set up an appointment with your professor, and do it in person.
Let them see you, in the flesh — and with tears in your eyes. Make them fully understand how they’ve shattered your dreams of a Vault 10 law firm job or a feeder-judge clerkship — unless, of course, they revisit their prior determination, and give you a grade that more accurately reflects your true abilities….