Many of our readers get highlights from Above the Law in their inboxes every day. Our ATL Newsletter spotlights our top content from the day, so you’ll never miss the story that everyone is talking about.
But did you know that the Newsletter could get you drunk? It can! Sign up for the newsletter now, and you’ll be entered to win two free tickets to Eater’s “Meat & Moonshine” event, taking place here in New York at Hill Country on August 13th.
The event has been described as “a boozy summer hoe-down party.” Tickets sell for $120 each, but Above the Law readers can be entered to win two of them just by signing up. Good luck!
Since we last mentioned the new Above the Law App, sponsored by Westlaw, 1,500 of you have downloaded the app. To the other 998,500 of you, what are you waiting for?
So far, we’ve gotten great feedback from partners around Biglaw.* They’ve said things like: “What’s an app?” and “How did you get into my office?”
But the ATL app isn’t just designed for partners who want to know how low they can keep bonuses this Christmas. Regular people can use it too. One third-year law student said, “I showed the app to my interviewer during OCI, and then we swapped stories about how helpful ATL is when we’re procrastinating.”**
* “Partners around Biglaw” may include homeless people within panhandling distance of the Lipstick Building.
** Obviously this quote is made up. The only 3Ls talking to interviewers on campus are the ones in violation of their restraining orders.
We have an app. Above the Law now has an app, exclusively sponsored by Westlaw. Turn up my symphony, turn up my symphony. Let’s drop the app link!
You can take a look at the Above the Law app in the iTunes store here. And if you have an Android, we’ve got an app for that, too.
You can now check Above the Law anywhere you want. On the beach. In the club. On a donkey in Mexico you are riding to get away from the bar exam. Obviously, we just want people to be able to access Above the Law from anywhere they want.
And if this helps you read Above the Law without your employer noticing, so much the better.
Thanks to all of our readers for your continued support.
All across the country, law students and law firms are gearing up for on-campus interviewing. If you are seeking to advance your legal career or trying to figure out where to work, check out Above the Law’s new Career Center, which contains a wealth of resources to help you with your job search.
On Friday, we pointed you to our brand-new ATL Law Firm Directory. The Directory contains ratings for over 70 law firms, based on responses from over 6,000 attorneys. Our individual firm profiles break down the employers using a number of metrics, and based on your surveys we’ve been able to give each of the firms a letter grade (curved around a “B,” which should be familiar to most law grads). The profiles are dynamic, reflecting both publicly available information and user responses, so if you feel like your firm is getting an unwarranted grade, the profile page will lead you right to the survey, where you can tell us what you think.
We’re also interested in hearing about how the summer associate experience has been this year. We invite you to take our summer associate survey.
Our effort to expand the career-related resources for our readers is just getting started. We’ll soon be launching a page dedicated to lawyers in the lateral market, as well as resources for those in other career paths outside of Biglaw. As more people fill out surveys, we’ll be able to construct profiles for more firms. And yes, eventually we will have letter grades for law schools as well as law firms — and that won’t be controversial at all!
The Career Center will grow and evolve over time, and we welcome your suggestions for adding to and improving it. If you have recommendations, questions, or concerns, you can reach the Career Center team by email: careers@abovethelaw.com.
It’s an exciting time here at Above the Law, and we hope you’ll take advantage of these new offerings. In today’s fast-moving and challenging world, information is king — and we want you to have access to all of it.
With the assistance of Above the Law’s Research Corner, you’ll be able to access white papers from leading legal technology companies. Did you know that we’ve recently added exciting new white papers to our collection from Arkadin, the “global local expert” in remote collaboration strategies?
Arkadin offers users a complete range of remote collaboration solutions from audio, web, and video conferencing to unified communications. If you are a business decision maker working at a large law firm with more than 250 employees, Arkadin has the right remote collaboration solutions for you!
By signing up for the Research Corner, you can now do all of the following, at no cost to you:
Request a free demo to learn how Arkadin can help increase productivity and drive incremental revenue of your law firm.
Download the “Remote Collaboration Services in the Legal Industry” white paper to learn legal applications of remote collaborations.
Download “The Top 5 Benefits of Remote Collaborations” to learn how to cut costs and increase profit for your law firm.
What are you waiting for? Sign up for the Research Corner today by clicking here.
As we continue to expand our coverage of law firm partners and in-house counsel here at Above the Law, we are looking for talented individuals who have experience with these constituencies in a marketing and/or editorial capacity and who wish to join a fast-paced, growing media company. The market experts will work closely with the ATL editorial, research, and business teams to develop new products and services targeting in-house lawyers and partners at large law firms.
If you are interested, please send your résumé and a cover letter explaining how you are perfect for this job — a full-time position, with benefits — to jobs@abovethelaw.com. We welcome your ideas on how we can engage with these audiences even more, and we look forward to hearing from you.
With the assistance of Above the Law’s Research Corner, you’ll be able to access white papers from leading legal technology companies. Did you know that we’ve recently added exciting new white papers to our collection from Arkadin, the “global local expert” in remote collaboration strategies?
Arkadin offers users a complete range of remote collaboration solutions from audio, web, and video conferencing to unified communications. If you are a business decision maker working at a large law firm with more than 250 employees, Arkadin has the right remote collaboration solutions for you!
By signing up for the Research Corner, you can now do all of the following, at no cost to you:
Request a free demo to learn how Arkadin can help increase productivity and drive incremental revenue of your law firm.
Download the “Remote Collaboration Services in the Legal Industry” white paper to learn legal applications of remote collaborations.
Download “The Top 5 Benefits of Remote Collaborations” to learn how to cut costs and increase profit for your law firm.
What are you waiting for? Sign up for the Research Corner today by clicking here.
As we continue to expand our coverage of law firm partners and in-house counsel here at Above the Law, we are looking for talented individuals who have experience with these constituencies in a marketing capacity and who wish to join a fast-paced, growing media company. The marketing managers will work closely with the ATL editorial, research, and business teams to develop new products and services targeting in-house lawyers and partners at large law firms.
If you are interested, please send your résumé and a cover letter explaining how you are perfect for this job to jobs@abovethelaw.com. We welcome your ideas on how we can engage with these audiences even more, and we look forward to hearing from you.
Ed. note: A sizable chunk of the Above the Law readership consists of partners at large law firms. Please welcome our newest writer, Anonymous Partner, who will write a candid column speaking to this demographic.
It’s about time. Time for someone like me to offer some perspective on what being a partner is, can, and should be all about. Time to leverage Above the Law’s bully pulpit to give a voice to current and future senior-level legal industry players (in addition to the valuable but inherently distanced insights of former partners, consultants, and law professors). Where a managing partner, or a general counsel, or even a newly-minted partner can let me, and by extension you, know what is really going on in this centaur-like hybrid of a business/profession. Where we can discuss what works, what is broken, and whether buying in to Biglaw is something to celebrate or to pity.
Now, Biglaw has signed all my paychecks, and it is where I have cast my lot until now, so Biglaw is what this column will discuss. And because my name does not stare back at me in gold-plated glory when I step off the elevator in the morning, this column will have to be anonymous, at least for the initial stages. Being anonymous will allow me to be as candid as possible when sharing my thoughts with you.
That said, you deserve to know at least a little about me….
This is my first column for Above the Law on the Supreme Court. In an effort to help me generate effective linkbait, the Supreme Court issued an opinion yesterday at the intersection of bankruptcy and tax law for farmers — Hall v. United States.
Basically, Hall means that, if you’re a farmer and you declare bankruptcy on your farm under Chapter 12 (“the one just for farmers”), and, while in bankruptcy, you sell your farm, you will still have to pay capital gains tax on the sale of your farm — any liability to the IRS is not dischargeable.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the opinion is that Ninth Circuit was affirmed. Though, in fairness, the Ninth Circuit opinion was written by Judge O’Scannlain, so it’s not as though the Supreme Court affirmed Judge Reinhardt.
Also, farmers who are in bankruptcy and sell their farms now have to pay tax on the profits from those sales. I’m sure much of the Midwest is rioting in response.
For those who practice tax law, bankruptcy, or farming law, you will definitely want to read the opinion and some of the write-ups on it.
But the most exciting part of the morning involved new members of the Supreme Court bar….
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
Many of our readers get highlights from Above the Law in their inboxes every day. Our ATL Newsletter spotlights our top content from the day, so you’ll never miss the story that everyone is talking about.
