In these difficult times for the legal profession, it’s more important than ever to know all your options. So we resume our series on career alternatives for attorneys — jobs for J.D. holders that don’t involve working as a Biglaw associate or contract attorney.

In a prior post, we discussed the career alternative of entrepreneurship. If you’re tired of working for a boss, then become the boss: start your own company.

Today we focus on two lawyers who, interestingly enough, have started their own businesses in the same area: admissions consulting and academic coaching. Perhaps this is the start of a hot new trend? Cf. the cupcake craze sweeping the nation, which another lawyer is capitalizing on.

Adam Nguyen, formerly of Paul Weiss and Shearman & Sterling, is the president and CEO of Ivy Link. Jon Palmer, formerly of Schulte Roth & Zabel, is the president and founder of The Admissions Experts.

Both businesses are headquartered in New York — which makes sense, given how obsessive Manhattan parents can be about getting their offspring into elite educational institutions. NYC ≠ TTT!!!

Read more about these gents and their new enterprises, after the jump.

One casualty of the economic recession could well be the position of “staff attorney.” We’ve reported that Skadden and Covington & Burling have had major cuts to their staff attorney programs. Above the Law is now able to report that similar reductions have happened at Paul Weiss. Sources report that at least a dozen staff attorneys have been let go by Paul Weiss over the past couple of months.

UPDATE: We are now hearing reports that the number is significantly higher than a dozen, perhaps as high as 45 (since November 2008). “This can all be confirmed by the lawyer lists that are sent out at the start of each month,” said our source.

A tipster puts it this way:

PW has sneakily let go [a number of] staff attorneys. There have been … cuts in the past few months and it is getting more steady and consistent in the last few weeks. They are letting a few people go every week. It is so ridiculous that they haven’t told anyone what’s really going on and everyone is just waiting around for the call.

Apparently they need to cut all the staff attorneys so they have some work for 80 or so first years that just started who are already doing nothing but doc review and who should expect to be doing nothing but doc review for the foreseeable future. Some of these staff attorneys have been there for seven and eight years and they are not even offering severance. They say it has nothing to do with performance but are letting some of the good people go first.

Paul Weiss declined to comment for this story. But we understand that no associates have been let go.

Are junior associates the new “staff attorney”? More from our tipsters after the jump.

The cast for the latest season of Survivor, which premieres on September 17, has been announced. This season, the show’s nineteenth, takes place on the tropical island of Samoa.

Four of the 20 contestants, or a fifth of the field, are either lawyers or law students. Is appearing on a reality television show the best way to wait out the recession?

We believe this to be the highest number of law-related contestants in a single season. We reached out to Charlie Herschel — the former Survivor contestant and current Weil Gotshal associate, who has encyclopedic knowledge of the show — and he said that, as far as he knows, four would be a record. Herschel explained:

Lawyers are making a better showing than bartenders for once on Survivor! There was a lawyer on the first Survivor who sued producers for rigging the show. Word was that they avoided casting lawyers after that.

Also, it’s generally difficult for lawyers to drop everything at a moment’s notice for the casting process and also for the show (which is required), so they have trouble casting lawyers. Most of the lawyers on survivor dont practice anymore.

Perhaps you know one of these four. Let’s learn more about them, shall we?

Even though we are moving out of the Vault top ten, we are still firmly in the land of law firms that everybody recognizes.

To refresh your memory, here is the next batch of firms on the Vault list:

11. Williams & Connolly
12. Debevoise & Plimpton
13. Paul Weiss
14. Gibson Dunn
15. Sidley Austin

Williams & Connolly was crowned the safest firm by Above the Law readers in March. And so far, the firm has worn its crown with grace and style. No layoffs to report at this small dynamo. It’s something to consider during this recruiting season.

After the jump, the Paul Weiss / Gibson Dunn troll fight starts in 3 … 2 … 1 …

The world of contract attorneys isn’t our primary focus around here. We make occasional forays into that territory, but for the most part we leave it to more specialized sites, like Temporary Attorney (aka Tom the Temp).

If the temp-attorney world is your cup of tea, however, then check out this interesting new site, which several ATL readers have emailed us about: Big Debt, Small Law. We reached out to Law Is 4 Losers — the angry author, who still works as a contract attorney (he just finished a New York project for a large national law firm) — and asked him about the site’s origins. He explained:

I was prompted to start the blog for two reasons. First is the membership solicitation from the ABA asking me for $250 in dues and listing all the wonderful things that they’ve been doing of late to “improve” this profession (curiously, outsourcing my job to India via ethics opinion 08-451 was not among them).

Another reason was my recent NYS Law license renewal of $350. There was no waiver provision or extension for unemployed lawyers. [W]e contract attorneys have to pay health insurance, bar dues, CLE fees, and other obligations out of our own pocket. And at the $28 an hour straight-time now offered by NYC Biglaw (or the $40K small firms are paying), this is a hell of a lot of money. Forcing people to choose between their rent and their job is unconscionable….

I hope to warn incoming One L’s and prospective law students about the reality out there behind the slick admissions brochures and silver-tongued charlatan deans who will lie thru their teeth to get their hands on that Sallie Mae loan money. I’d also like to lobby the state bars to offer fee waivers or extensions on dues to unemployed lawyers who can prove financial hardship.

If you’re an associate and feeling sorry for yourself, perhaps because your pay has been cut or layoffs are taking place at your firm, Law Is 4 Losers doesn’t want to hear it:

Bad as things are for associates, they are 100 times worse for doc reviewers. We’ve been losing jobs every few weeks or months ever since leaving law school, having no “careers” to speak of, and also no health insurance, severance, or savings.

His most recent blog post — deeply depressing, but scabrously funny — describes the misery of temping at two of Biglaw’s biggest names: Paul Weiss and Sullivan & Cromwell. And he doesn’t pull his punches.

Welcome back to our occasional series on career alternatives for attorneys — i.e., things you can do with a law degree that don’t involve working for a law firm as an associate or contract attorney. If you feel like your knack for being hospitable is wasted in the law, you might be interested in this alternative.

Rob Gregor was an attorney in the New York office of Paul Weiss until April of this year, when he quit to head north. One of the partners to whom he sent his departure e-mail responded to say that he had the best excuse ever for leaving the firm: becoming an innkeeper in Maine.

Gregor is now the owner of the Herbert Grand Hotel, a 27-room historic inn in the small ski town of Kingfield, Maine. Gregor wrote to us: “The town has a population of about 1,100 and I have become BigLaw’s version of Bob Newhart.”

So how does one go from dealing with SEC complaints to dealing with plumbing leaks for a hotel built in 1918? Find out after the jump.

A partner at a top New York law firm — we have more partner readers (and tipsters) than you might think — sent us an email with this subject line: “Stimulus Money for Law Firms?” The email directed us to two links on Recovery.gov, the disturbingly expensive website devoted to tracking where the federal economic stimulus money is going.

Almost $900,000 in stimulus money — i.e., your taxpayer dollars hard at work — is going to two top law firms: Debevoise & Plimpton and Paul Weiss. Debevoise is getting $432,680 and Paul Weiss is getting $462,528, both from the U.S. Department of Energy. Links are here and here.

Needless to say, this got us hugely excited. Have things gotten so bad that law firms — even firms as prestigious and profitable as Debevoise & Paul Weiss — need government funds?

Economists sometimes talk about the hypothetical stimulus of the government paying people to dig ditches and then refill them. Is the federal government now trying to jump start the legal economy, by paying law firms to draft merger agreements or summary judgment motions, then send them through the shredder? Has the phenomenon of fake work spread beyond the summer associate class, into the ranks of associates and partners, to be paid for by U.S. taxpayer dollars?

Not quite (although that would have been a juicier story). Find out the somewhat boring reality, after the jump.

Maybe the recruiting people at Paul Weiss read all of the comments from Massholes about Massholes on Thursday’s Suffolk Law thread, and decided to change their recruiting strategy? Or maybe the legal economy really isn’t getting any better? Despite the firm’s generally strong showing during the recession, Paul Weiss has decided to pull out of recruiting at Boston University and Boston College. Here was the short email that students who bid on Paul Weiss received this morning:

You recently bid for the above-referenced firm through the New York BC/BU Off Campus program. The firm has just notified me that they will not be participating in our program in August.

I will be removing your bids from Symplicity. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you.

This is one of the first chinks in the Paul Weiss armor during the recession. So far as we know, the firm hasn’t laid people off, it hasn’t frozen or cut associate salaries, and it hasn’t deferred incoming associates or deferred current summer associates.

With a public facade of such strength, maybe the firm feels like it can scale back on recruiting for its 2010 summer class?

It’s good news if you already work for Paul Weiss, but it also probably means that it will be more difficult for rising 2Ls to get into the Paul Weiss pipeline.

Earlier: Ladies, Are You Looking for Love in Boston? Try Suffolk Law

Gentleman, how emasculated would you feel if your future father-in-law shuttled your bride down the aisle, and then, instead of pecking her on the cheek and handing her over, actually turned around and performed the wedding ceremony? Talk about control issues. That’s exactly what this groom endured last Sunday, as he was married by his father-in-law, United States Federal District Judge Jed S. Rakoff.

The Rakoff wedding didn’t make our final three. Neither did a couple of lesbian unions, a WGWAG, and several other worthy contenders. Here are the three who made the finals:

1. Devon Quasha and Jeffrey Thorn

2. Saralisa Brau and William Van Horne

3. Linda Cho and James Brennan

More about these impressive legal-eagle newlyweds, after the jump.

* One bra size does not fit all. There are so many different reasons why one might get a severe rash from a Victoria’s Secret bra that the 17 suits filed in various states cannot be consolidated into one. [On Point News]

* More on Law Student of the Day: Leo Wolpert. The UVA Law card shark is spending his summer writing memos for the ACLU. Money quote from the article: “With the economy as it is, it’s definitely nice to have poker to fall back on.” [Washington Post]

* A North Carolina company had a big day in court last week. On Thursday, MIG Inc. filed for bankruptcy and filed a big lawsuit against Paul Weiss. MIG alleges that stock offering documents drafted by the firm were unprofessional and filled with errors that cost it $140 million when it merged with another company in 2007. [American Lawyer]

* Rihanna may sing from the witness stand today in Chris Brown’s assault trial. [CNN]

* Federal Judge Denny Chin of the Southern District of New York has a flair for the dramatic. [Studio 360]

This week’s contestants are not our strongest crop ever, but they’re evenly matched — so much so that we were unable to choose a winner. So we’re taking the unusual (but not unprecedented) step of opening this week’s contest to a reader vote. The poll is below, after the jump.

Here are your finalists:

1. Elissa Bassini and Jeremy Pick

2. Julia Bartolf and Gregory Milne

3. Valerie Durollari and Ken Biberaj

Read all about these couples and vote for your favorite, after the jump.

Twenty-seven-year-old hottie marries much older non-hottie: Normally a match like this would be explained by the groom’s (1) job at Goldman, (2) trust fund, or (3) peerage. But no, this groom is (drumroll) the associate dean for finance and administration at Yeshiva’s Cardozo School of Law. This is how bad the economy is, folks: Attractive women are marrying associate deans of non-T14 law schools.

Here are this week’s finalists:

1. Adrienne Lockie and Adav Noti

2. Inna Dexter and Benjamin Nussdorf

3. Arlene Hong and Darren Duffy

For our analysis of these couples, click on the link below.

Even I have “adjusted” to the fact that the market thinks Half-Skadden set the market with their low associate bonuses. People are afraid for their jobs and firms have an opportunity to use the fear to save a buck. Why compete with elite firms like Skadden when there’s money to be made?

Still, a few people have held out hope the one of the last remaining top firms will stick it to Cravath and all the other followers with a Skadden level bonus. Unfortunately, this morning another top firm fell into the Cravath morass. Paul Weiss associates were informed this morning:

Thank you for your contributions to the Firm and for your important role in helping accomplish the extraordinary results we achieved for our clients this past year. Below is a schedule of 2008 associate bonuses by class.

Class Year: Bonus
2008: $17,500 (pro rated)
2007: $17,500
2006: $20,000
2005: $22,500
2004: $25,000
2003: $27,500
2002: $30,000
2001: $32,500
2000: $32,500

Weil? S&C? Bueller? Frye?

Read the full memo after the jump.

This story is salacious, but not at all funny. Anthony Ottaviano, an attorney at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, was shot to death by a man who was obsessed with his girlfriend:

After fatally shooting Anthony Ottaviano, musclebound madman David Krieg kidnapped the white-shoe lawyer’s girlfriend, Edythe Maa, a Long Island native who goes by the name Jade Vixen in fetish circles.

Ottaviano and Maa happened to be into S&M, but it appears that the couple’s sexual predilections have little to do with Ottaviano’s murder:

The violence began when Ottaviano, 40, and his girlfriend returned to her Philadelphia home after a cozy dinner, police sources said.

Krieg, a former client of Maa’s who had been stalking her for months, was waiting for them in a parking lot near her home, police said.

The tattooed lunatic shot Ottaviano and then forced Maa into his car.

Ottaviano’s friends and colleagues at Paul Weiss were understandably sadden:

“It’s a terrible tragedy,” said Jack Baughman, a partner at Paul, Weiss …

“He was a really nice guy. He was a hard worker. He was conscientious. He was careful.”

Our hearts go out to all of Ottaviano’s friends and family.

Lawyer’s Deadly Secret [NY Post]

Last week, we attended OutLaws: A Discussion With Out Lawyers, held at the LGBT Community Center here in New York. The event featured “out lawyers sharing different perspectives and stories — how they got to where they are professionally, as well as what went right, what didn’t, how they’d approach things differently today, and the specific challenges they faced as an LGBT person.”

The panel was moderated by Lisa Linsky, a litigation partner at McDermott Will & Emery. She was joined by Michael Colosi, general counsel for Kenneth Cole; Phylliss Delgreco, associate general counsel and senior vice president at Citigroup; and Roberta Kaplan, a litigation partner at Paul Weiss.

The freewheeling discussion was quite enlightening. You can read about it after the jump.

What did you miss if you didn’t peruse last Sunday’s NYT weddings section? The marriage of Theodore Roosevelt V, for starters. Also, a whole lot of gayness! We counted seven same-sex weddings on this week’s list, which we suspect is a an all-time high. (And how sociologically interesting that all seven were men marrying men!) None of this week’s same-sex weddings made it into the finals, but LEWW is delighted to reflect (in a rare moment of seriousness) on how much has changed since August 2002, when the paper announced that it would include same-sex weddings for the first time. Long live love!

Here are this week’s couples:

1. Tania Brief and Andrew Ehrlich

2. Jori Finkel and Michael Lubic

3. Laura Millendorf and Mark Yopp

Click on the link below to read all about these legal lovebirds.

The theme of yesterday’s LEWW was the hotness disparity between three glowing brides and their very lucky grooms. Today we’re delighted to report that the wedding gods stepped it up with our most recent batch of newlyweds. They’ve brought us four grooms who are at least as attractive as their brides or co-grooms. (And needless to say, all six of our newlyweds have the shiny credentials that you’ve come to expect from the Legal Eagle Wedding Watch.)

On to the finalists! Here they are:

1. Joanna Schwab and Nathan Pusey

2. Joseph Loy and Michael Kavey

3. Zoe Palitz and Brian Goldman

Click on the link below to find out more about these couples.

In honor of the new Vault rankings, we’re doing a series of open threads on the 100 most prominent law firms. We invite you to compare and contrast the firms in the comments. In the last open thread on Vault firms 6-10, there was an animated discussion about litigation at Cleary and which Kirkland office is best to work for.

Moving on down the Vault 100 list, here’s the next bunch up for discussion, with prestige scores in parentheses:

11. Covington & Burling LLP (7.428)
12. Debevoise & Plimpton LLP (7.417)
13. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (7.290)
14. Williams & Connolly LLP (7.238)
15. Sidley Austin LLP (7.201)

The oddest language in the “notable perks” in this bunch is at Williams & Connolly: “Fancy bunch of smarties.” Well-dressed intelligent lawyers, or a big basket of the tart candy?

Please discuss the work, perks, and lifestyle at these firms in the comments. More threads to come.

Earlier: Vault 100 Open Threads- 2009

A staff attorney reader of ATL once described his position as “either the bluest white-collar job, or the whitest blue-collar job.” We found the description quite apt, based on what we know about being a staff attorney.

For those of you who are not familiar with them, staff attorneys perform work similar to contract attorneys — e.g., document review, document production, other discovery-related tasks — but, unlike contract attorneys, they are “on staff” at their specific firms (hence the title of staff attorney). They don’t have to worry, like contract attorneys, about what their next gig will be, since they are employed directly by their Biglaw shops (i.e., not placed through an agency). Staff attorneys have stable jobs, good benefits, and reasonable hours (at least most of the time; they may have to work overtime if a case is busy).

But there are also disadvantages to being a staff attorney. All that document work can be monotonous, even mind-numbing. Unlike associates, staff attorneys are not on the track towards partnership. They are often the first to be let go during downturns (e.g., at Milbank Tweed; see here and here).

Some staff attorneys claim they are treated like second-class citizens. Back in March, over at the Huffington Post, Yolanda Young — a former staff attorney at Covington & Burling — decried what she described as the firm’s “staff attorney ghetto,” noting the high proportion of minorities among the staff attorney ranks (and the low percentage of minorities among the ranks of partnership-track associates).

If it is a “ghetto,” however, it’s a rather well-paid one. From one tipster:

I’m a Paul Weiss staff attorney. [ATL] has a loyal following among us.

I’d be interested in seeing a post on SA salaries. I wonder how much they differ from firm to firm here in NYC, or in other cities.

I’m sure such a post would get hammered with comments from BigLaw associates. But it would be widely read, and interesting to the growing ranks of the staff attorney underclass.

We’re happy to oblige. Here is the requested post.

Find out how much Paul Weiss pays its staff attorneys in New York — and, if you’re a staff attorney at another firm or in another city, dish about how much you make — after the jump.

Congratulations to Keira Driansky and David Simon, chosen by ATL readers over Kristy Hong and Jonas Blank III as April’s Legal Eagle Couple of the Month.

Now for the next set of entrants, and it’s a crowded field. We think this week’s column sets a record for total number of Ivy League JDs. Here’s our latest crop of outstanding newlyweds:

1. Deborah Adler and Brian Sutherland

2. Rachel Hannaford and Justin Lerer

3. Zoe Segal-Reichlin and Daniel Garodnick

4. Alison Franklin and Shane Milam

Read up on their pedigrees and passions, after the jump.