If you spent your summer at Mintz Levin in 2009 and received an offer, congratulations! You must be very proud. Now wrap it up very tightly and put it in a safe place, because you won’t be pulling it out again until 2012. Multiple sources report that Mintz just deferred its 2009 summer associate class to 2012 — but the deferral is to January 2012, so those associates will taste a little bit of Biglaw life before the rapture.

One tipster put it this way:

We just found out that we are not starting until January 2012 at the earliest. This is ridiculous and they said that we still have to wait until April to find out if more information. They say nothing about stipends or salary advances or anything. Only that they will pay for the bar course and bar exam. Please publish this info because we are all pretty freaked out.

I’m not sure how publishing this story will make you less freaked out. I mean, you’re not starting until 2012. It just seems to me that as you sit there and just stare at the numbers, 2-0-1-2, and contemplate just how far away that is, and think about what you could possibly do to fill that time in the middle of a recession — well, if it were me I think having it published would make me more freaked out.

Mintz Levin has confirmed this news. We have a statement from the firm.

Back in June, Cravath took the aggressive step to preemptively defer associates that received an offer from the firm to be part of its 2010 incoming class. At the time, we reported:

Today’s announcement from Cravath also delays the start dates of this year’s summers until fall 2011. It’s a mandatory deferment, and they will get $65,000 plus health care (plus $1,000 in loan assistance).

But last night, Cravath indicated that maybe they pulled the deferral trigger on the incoming class of 2010 a little too early. Multiple tipsters report that Cravath has emailed its 3Ls and informed them that some members of the class may be able to start in the fall of 2010.

Not the entire class. A limited number of fall 2010 spots will be made available based on department need. The opportunity to start in 2010 will be determined by a lottery.

I bet that when people received a summer associate offer from Cravath, they weren’t expecting to have their careers reduced to a Powerball drawing. Personally, I would have gone with a Survivor-style reality show where we lock potential Cravath starters in a dorm and watch them cannibalize each other. But I suppose a lottery has enough of a “we’re making this up as we go” feel to it.

Details on who will be eligible for the lottery after the jump.

We have a Nixon Peabody situation, deep in the heart of Texas. Winstead has decided to rescind offers to two of their incoming associates who were set to start on Monday.

It just goes to show, you don’t have a job until you are actually sitting at a desk, performing work. Paycheck or it didn’t happen.

Above the Law received the following statement from Winstead management:

Winstead hired 9 of the 11 law students that were deferred. A portion of the group started last September and the remainder start with the Firm on February 1, 2010. The facts and circumstances relating to the 2 deferred law students that are not starting with the Firm are confidential employment matters and it is not appropriate for us to discuss the details.

We were shocked when Nixon Peabody re-deferred incoming associates 20 days before they were scheduled to start. I don’t even know what to say about having your offer pulled two business days before you’re supposed to start working.

This past Tuesday, January 19, was the first day of work for many class of 2009 associates. They’ve been deferred, they’ve been scraping by on stipends, but yesterday many of them finally got to start work.

Right?

On our most recent start date round-up, we noted a number of firms that pinned their class of 2009 start date to January 19th, 2010.

Were those people actually able to start on time? How did it go? Let’s discuss after the jump.

Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

Dear ATL,

Deferred associates are starting soon at my V100 firm… which is *odd* because there’s not enough work to go around. At least not for junior level associates, because the mid levels and senior levels hoard work for themselves. So if my firm is going to downsize juniors, do you think they’re more apt to fire these incoming associates or other junior level associates with slightly more tenure?

How Will I Know if He Really Loves Me

Dear How Will I Know if He Really Loves Me,

Luckily this question came in over the holidays, so I had the chance to go home and consult my sister’s Ask Zandar game and get what you really need, which is a wizard’s opinion. I first asked, “Zandar, will this person’s firm fire incoming associates first?” Zandar did not reply. I then asked, “Zandar, is it unacceptable for my 17 year-old cousin to have Neytiri from Avatar as his screensaver?” And when Zandar once again failed to reply, I realized that he had no batteries.

As you may have noticed, things are looking up these days. Bonuses are hitting people’s TD Banks, there’s salary thaws, “true-up” raises* — and the whole global warming trend turned out to be just a weird ’90s phenomenon. On ATL, we’ve traded in Bloody Tuesdays or Outplacement Thursdays for lighter fare about holiday greeting cards and courthouse shootings. Unless executives go back to stealing from their companies — which they won’t be doing because we have rules in place now to deal with that sort of thing — the days of mass layoffs are over. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

So, to those of you who have spent the last year afraid to jinx yourself by unwrapping your 2009 BNA Tax Code — RELAX. The Committee of Public Safety isn’t blocking off conference rooms anymore. But if they do, they’ll certainly fire you first, because if they wanted to fire the people they’re bringing in, they just wouldn’t have had them start. Also, they’re cheaper.

Your friend,

Marin

The cast of Hair lunges into the audience and awkwardly forces you to participate, after the jump.

We have some good news and some bad news for incoming K&L Gates associates.

I’m feeling charitable, so I’ll lead with the good news. Our sources report that everybody is officially set to start on January 4th. The firm called people over the weekend to mention some final, minor details, but people will have a job on the first business day of the New Year.

Yay! Doesn’t everybody feel good?

Okay, now the bad news. One of those minor details was a big old salary cut for incoming first-year salaries. The cut will really put K&L Gates first years on the low end of the Biglaw salary pool.

UPDATE: The salary cut does not apply to all incoming first-year associates. Details after the jump.

The big day is almost here for many young lawyers. Recent law grads nestling up in their beds have visions of Blackberries dancing in their heads.

January 2010 will bring start dates for many bound for Biglaw firms. But some firms have had second thoughts. Winston Strawn and Nixon Peabody recently informed incoming associates of more deferrals.

This has made lots of young lawyers nervous. Brian Baxter at AmLaw Daily wants to help calm your nerves, so he surveyed over 40 top firms to ask whether their little associates can count on start dates coming down the chimney. Over half responded.

We’ve noticed that Paul Hastings-bound associates have been especially vociferous in our comments section. They can stop flipping out. According to a spokesman there, the firm plans to start them “on time” in January.

Given recent news and the AmLaw survey, we’ve decided to update our start date round-up. After the jump, we’ve got a new list of start dates at firms nationwide, sorted two ways: alphabetically by firm name and chronologically by start date.

Dear law firms:

It is December 15th. Christmas is ten days away. January 4th is a mere 20 days away.

I bring this up because some of you seem to be having trouble with the Gregorian calendar. Some of you have incoming associates that are set to start at your firm on January 4th or soon thereafter. These incoming associates have already been deferred by your firm.

Perhaps you have the desire to defer these people again? Sorry, but you missed your chance. It’s too late. You should have deferred them (again) sooner. To do so now is just cruel. A lot of these people have signed leases, bought plane tickets, and truncated holiday plans — as you would expect of good employees.

Evidently calendar mastery is not something that can be taught on the fly. So just take my word for it. It is too late to defer January starters again. It’s time to suck it up, clear out some office space, and get your pro bono partner on the ball. Trust me.

Your friend,

Common sense and basic decency.

The above message came too late to help incoming Nixon Peabody associates, but maybe we can teach other firms that mistreating incoming associates is wrong.

Details after the jump.

McDermott Will & Emery was supposed to have its incoming class start in January. But now that January is almost upon us, MWE is the latest firm to change its mind.

The news first broke on Facebook late last week, via status updates of unhappy incoming associates:

♫ “re-deferment in december. happy holidays.”

Yeah, there is a lot of that going around. It’s like the Biglaw version of the Lexus “December to Remember” ad campaign.

McDermott will be offering the (now standard) deferral extension stipend of $5,000/month. Given that the firm has been cost cutting for a while, incoming associates should probably be grateful for the stipend they will receive.

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

Last Thursday, we asked you if deferred incoming associates were all set to start working. With a lot of associates scheduled to start in January, firms that extend the deferment in December might need a visit from Christmas ghosts.

Well, a few incoming associates received a large “bah, humbug” from Mayer Brown. The firm is asking people to “voluntarily” extend their deferral to October 2010.

On the positive side, the decision will only affect a few of Mayer Brown’s incoming class.

An explanation from the firm after the jump.

It’s December. Bar results are out. Firms are compiling their end of the year numbers. Trees are being trimmed, candles are being lit. Is it time, finally, for in the incoming class of 2009 to start working?

Above the Law has been furiously covering all of the Biglaw deferrals this year. A lot of firms deferred their incoming class to December or January. Well, these months are upon us. And first years are ready to go.

[Cue foreboding music]

Or are they?

Above the Law has started to receiving increasingly nervous emails from would be first year associates. Many of them still haven’t had any significant communication with their firms about actually starting work.

Uh-oh.

Seyfarth Shaw is set to become the latest firm to flip its incoming associates the Bird. A very angry tipster reports:

[Seyfarth] just deferred all incoming associates to October 2010 with only $2000/month as a stipend beginning on our former start date of January 19, 2010! It’s a joke … we know for a fact that they were busy and could have afforded us. It is a firm managed by horrible, greedy, selfish individuals … This is amusing, in light of the fact that the firm turned a profit last year …

We would like to warn anyone considering accepting an offer from the firm to STAY AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is particularly disconcerting for those of us who turned down offers from Biglaw in favor of a firm that apparently “cared soooo much” about us. Go Vault or go home.

Whoa, tell us what you really think. You have to wonder if these deferred incoming associates will come up with any fun banners about their would-be employer.

As angry as the deferred incoming associates appear to be, it is not at all clear that Seyfarth could have afforded to bring on a new class of people at this time. In addition to telling the incoming associates to wait for almost another year, today the firm announced that it was cutting first year associate salaries.

Details and a statement from Seyfarth, after the jump.

Last week, we asked you if deferral stipends for incoming associates are too small. The reaction was mixed. Some people felt that incoming associates should be thankful for every penny they get. Others noted that it was extremely difficult to make loan repayments off of the deferral stipend.

But many people felt that deferred associates should just go out and get a job, any job.

I had assumed that most deferred associates were already actively engaged in the process of looking for work. Not just to defray the costs of their deferment, but for a long term position in case their firm never actually allows them to start working. But then this question came into the ATL inbox:

I am emailing because I think it would be useful to deferred associates to dialogue on how we should react to the situation we are in. I have an offer at a law firm that had initially deferred incoming associates until January 2010. Now incoming associates are being deferred until later in 2010. Are incoming associates (to all firms) being foolhardy for continuing to rely on these offers? What if we are deferred again, or worse, what if our offers are rescinded? Will we look back and question why we did not look for another job sooner? Will potential other employers think we were naive for relying on the offers for so long, making our chances of finding another job less likely? Is it enough that we received job offers from prestigious, competitive firms, but in the end it did not work out; will that get us another job? These are all questions we have to ask ourselves, but it is hard to come to any answers without the benefit of knowing the future…obviously. I think it would be useful to get the industry perspective, because in the end, it the industry perspective that will dictate how our decision to wait around or not wait around is viewed.

Let’s discuss and take a reader poll after the jump.

We receive a lot of interesting emails here at Above the Law. Once law firms started deferring their deferred incoming associates for a second time, we started getting emails like the one below. Since I don’t really know how to respond to the people who have been asking this type of question, I figured I’d throw it out to you guys for your expert advice:

Can you do a story about the size of deferral stipends? Particularly, breaking down the math of expenses showing that some firm’s stipends are too small. For instance, [Redacted] is paying deferred first years only $3300 per month before taxes. After taxes this only comes out to like $2600 per month. Most law students went to expensive schools with $150,000 debt (not to mention undergrad debt), and have $1,000 per month loan payments starting this month even if you select the maximum 30 year repayment plan. Under the 10 year payment plan, loan payments are $1500 per month. When you consider that rent in New York, DC, Chicago, LA, and San Francisco is at least $1,200 (being very very conservative), that leaves no money to pay for things like food or utilities. They expect us to basically spend more than we make for 3, 6, 9, 12+ months? This is practically a layoff. I don’t have the finances or rich parents to go 6+ months with no money. Firms like [Redacted] need to pay at least the market $5,000 per month so that the deferred first years have enough to live on. Especially when our original offer letter promised us “market compensation.”

Is there anything useful we can tell this person (and the other incoming associates in the same position)? Let’s try after the jump.

Katten Muchin is using every tool in the box when it comes to figuring out what to do with its incoming associates. If there is a plan for dealing with soon-to-be first years that has been discussed on Above the Law, Katten is using it.

A tipster reports that Katten has broken up its first year class into three groups:

Katten Muchin Rosenman rescinded several offers to 2008 summer associates today. From what I’ve heard about 1/3 were rescinded, 1/3 were re-deferred to October, and 1/3 will start in February as scheduled.

Essentially, Katten just turned itself into Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross: “As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.”

Let’s talk some more about the third prize after the jump.

So far, firms that have deferred their 2009 summer associates to 2011 have been noncommittal about whether they will be giving a deferral stipend. Many class of 2009 graduates received money from firms for the year long wait. It’s not clear that class of 2010 graduates will be as lucky.

With the market still up in the air, Shearman & Sterling is giving its incoming class of 2010 the same offer it gave to its incoming class of 2009. A tipster reports:

Shearman NY has announced deferral stipends of $65k.

After the jump, we compare Shearman to itself.

The signals seem mixed in terms of whether the legal profession is on the road to recovery. On the one hand, the pace of layoffs is certainly slowing. On the other hand, firms are taking other steps to keep headcount (and expenses) down. They are not yet in a mode where they need more hands on deck to handle all the work.

One of the popular approaches is deferral extension, i.e., pushing start dates for incoming associates back yet again. A number of firms have gone down this path. To view our prior coverage, click here and scroll down.

The latest firm to take this approach: Winston & Strawn. The firm’s incoming associates were previously scheduled to arrive on January 19, 2010. Now, according to a memo issued yesterday by hiring partner Joseph Torres, class of 2009 associates will be starting on one of three dates: February 1, 2010; June 1, 2010; or October 4, 2010.

Deferral extension details, including the full memo, plus other information about Winston — after the jump.

The big news out of Sidley Austin today involves Brian Schroeder, a 2009 Harvard Law School graduate who recently turned himself in for setting fire to a chapel housing the remains of 9/11 victims. Earlier today, the firm told ATL it was rescinding Schroeder’s job offer.

But there are other developments at Sidley too. Regarding start dates for class of 2010 graduates, a source reports:

Sidley Austin sent out letters regarding their deferral program. The details are a January 2012 start date, not optional. Health insurance coverage starting June 1, 2010 (thank goodness), and a stipend of $5000 / month starting January 2011. As usual, no stipend if we work for another law firm, and they reserve the right to call us back early if hell freezes over work picks up.

Sidley declined to comment on its deferral program.

On the subject of being summoned to work before 2011, we’d tell the tipster: hey, it might happen. As you may recall, some Sidley D.C. incoming associates were contacted over the summer and asked to start early.

A year and a half is a long time to be deferred. Hopefully members of the class of 2010 won’t get into as much trouble as Brian Schroeder during their time off.

CORRECTION: As noted in the comments, and confirmed by emails sent to us directly, Sidley is splitting up the class of 2010. Some are starting in January 2012 and some in January 2011 (which is apparently the earliest start date).

Speaking of Brian Schroeder, we wanted to draw your attention to one reader comment that struck us as funny, as well as yet yet another testimonial about him (to add to the prior ones).

Check them out after the jump.

Kaye Scholer has announced that its incoming first year associate will still be starting in January. All of them. But there is a catch. Kaye Scholer will split the class into two groups of full time associates. One group will work for the firm’s paying clients and get paid the normal first year starting salary. The other group — roughly half of the class — will work exclusively with the firm’s public interest group and will make $60,000.

Above the Law spoke with Kaye Scholer managing partner Barry Wilner about the program. He emphasized that the firm wanted to invite everybody in its first year class to start at the firm because the class is “excellent.” But he acknowledged that the demand for legal services isn’t what it used to be. Instead of sending half of its class back out on the street to look for public interest work, Wilner wanted to put them to work under the umbrella of Kaye Scholer’s pro bono efforts:

It’s incredibly difficult to get public interest work in this environment. … It’s a good thing from the standpoint that the firm is providing excellent public interest training and mentoring.

Wilner also told us that the public interest associates would still have access to all of the training other first year associates have, and they would be eligible for full firm benefits.

Associates weren’t asked to volunteer to be in the public interest group. Wilner said that the firm had to make difficult decisions about how to split the class. Practice group preference was one factor. But Wilner also said that because the incoming class was strong across the board, some amount of arbitrariness also played a role.

After the jump, incoming associates in the public interest group weigh in.

Earlier this month, we reported on layoffs at Foley & Lardner. Foley later confirmed the news.

Maybe Foley is just clearing out room so it can bring on its class of incoming associates? Right. Maybe if I had wheels I’d be a wagon? Foley has already deferred its incoming associates until February 2010. Now it is deferring associates again. Tipsters report:

I know every office has been talked to about the *possibility* of changing start dates. … [In Chicago] it’s complicated:

* all incoming IP associates are deferred until September, 2010, with a $5K/month stipend (no health care) beginning February 1;
* half the litigation associates will start in February as planned; the other half will actually start *earlier*, this December;
* the incoming transactional associates haven’t been told anything yet. My guess is they’ll be summarily shot.

The firm has not responded to our multiple requests for comment.

Incoming associates are asking firms to let them know when they will be starting. But does it really matter? Are there opportunities that incoming associates are really passing up this fall because they plan on starting this after the first of the year? Let us know in the comments.

Earlier: Nationwide Layoff Watch: Foley & Lardner Lays Off 39