Job Searches

Paging All Bankruptcy Lawyers….

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Are you a bankruptcy attorney who needs to empathize more with your clients — e.g., by declaring bankruptcy yourself? Check out this job posting — which won’t be our Job of the Week anytime soon — courtesy of that gold mine of employment opportunities, Craigslist:

Bankruptcy Attorney Position (Dallas)

Small Consumer Bankruptcy firm in Dallas looking for new associate attorney. 50-60 Hours per week, with some travel to Fort Worth required. Salary: $40,000.

If “travel to Fort Worth” is required, you need to add another zero to that salary. This is not the kind of income that will help you pay off massive educational debt (non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, at least for now).

But wait, there’s more….

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Career Center: Show Me The Money

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Career Center AboveTheLaw Lateral Link ATL.jpgThe results of the 2010 ATL Career Center Associate Satisfaction survey are in, and they are part of the all new Career Center, powered by Lateral Link. Over the next few weeks, we will be highlighting insider information shared by Career Center users.

Today, it’s all about the money — compensation. Tell us about the comp structure at your firm — click here to take our short survey.

  • This firm is known for its “entrepreneurial culture,” but is a follower when it comes to bonus amounts, with only a "few stars get[ting] . . . above-market" bonuses.
  • This "incredibly well managed law firm” has not jumped on the non-lockstep compensation bandwagon and still provides strictly lock-step salaries and bonuses.
  • This Texas-based firm has announced it will be moving to a hybrid-lockstep compensation system in 2010, but awarded "better-than-expected" bonuses in 2009.
  • This Washington, D.C.-based firm cut starting salaries to $135,000 in January 2010 but also unfroze previously frozen mid-and senior-level associate salaries.  
  • This firm unfroze salaries in January 2010, awarded year-end market bonuses, and made good on its earlier promise to repay lost 2009 salaries as additional year-end, make-whole bonuses.

Additional compensation highlights, which will interest readers who are either (1) researching firms to work for or (2) involved in setting comp at their own firms, appear after the jump.

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Did Quinn Emanuel Hire, Then Fire, a Convicted Sex Offender?

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CHECK YOU EMPLOYEE BACKGROUND. That appears to be the lesson learned by the New York office of litigation powerhouse Quinn Emanuel.

A source at QE recently sent us an email with this dramatic subject heading: “A rapist among us.. Quinn Emanuel.” Here’s the allegation:

[Earlier this month] our Records Manager, [name redacted - hereinafter "Got-a-Record Manager"], was fired. He’s been employed at Quinn for over 2 years. Termination Reason: He was a convicted rapist. He’s been convicted since 1987. He was charged with sodomy and first degree rape. I shudder to think that we had a rapist among us and the firm who claims to do background check on employees did not even catch this. An employee did a simple Google search on him and came up with it…. How did the firm miss this?

The tipster provided links to Got-a-Record Manager’s (1) LinkedIn profile, showing his employment at Quinn Emanuel as a “Records Manager,” and (2) a sex offender profile on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement website, containing Got-a-Record Manager’s name and photo. If you enter Got-a-Record Manager’s (uncommon) name into Google, the first result in his sex offender registration and the third result is his LinkedIn profile.

How did this come up? According to our source, “People just like to Google others for fun, and this time someone got a surprise.” Indeed.

Was Got-a-Record’s criminal record “a surprise” to the powers-that-be at QE? We reached out to the firm for comment….

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Career Center 2.0 (Beta) Is Now Live!

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Career Center AboveTheLaw Lateral Link ATL.jpgWe are pleased to announce the launch of our newly re-developed Career Center, featuring an enhanced design and completely updated firm profiles based on the results of the 2010 ATL / Lateral Link Career Center Associate Satisfaction survey.

Are you curious which firms are getting the most buzz? Which firms do people most want to work for? Want to compare firms on compensation, billable hours, partnership prospects, summer programs, maternity leave, etc.? Check out the revamped Career Center, powered by Lateral Link, for user generated insider information, and see how your colleagues and peers rank your firm and others. It’s like Yelp! for law firms!

On the updated Career Center, you will find out that this firm’s compensation includes a unique bonus program for associates who attract new business to the firm, this firm considers associates for partnership after a “refreshingly brief” four to seven years at the firm, and this firm’s unlimited pro bono policy results in its lawyers averaging over 160 pro bono hours annually.

We are still working out a couple bugs here and there so if you see any errors (in the site or the data), please email us.  As always, we encourage you to send information about your law firm experience by emailing us or by clicking the "Update Firm Data" button in each firm snapshot.

The Coming Law Firm Staffing Shortage?

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There’s a reason why our weekly column by Law Shucks has been retitled from “This Week in Layoffs” to “This Week in Biglaw.” The pace of law firm layoffs has slowed dramatically. They haven’t stopped completely, and we suspect that many firms are still conducting “stealth layoffs” (which we welcome tips about — just email us). But many firms have stopped cutting, and some are even hiring again. Last month the legal sector added 300 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In terms of the bigger picture, we’re not out of the economic woods just yet — Europe’s economic troubles have led to increased chatter about a possible double-dip recession — but things are definitely improving. Here’s one sign, reported earlier this week by the Associated Press:

One sign of better economic times is when more people start finding jobs. Another is when they feel confident enough to quit them. More people quit their jobs in the past three months than were laid off — a sharp reversal after 15 straight months in which layoffs exceeded voluntary departures, suggesting the job market is finally thawing.

In addition to the strengthening job market, there’s another reason for increased voluntary movement: overwork and discontent among those who managed to hang on to their jobs in the recession….

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The ‘What’ List?

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“Hey, are you on the Posse List?”

“The what list?”

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away — seven years ago in the Farragut North area of Washington, DC — the “what?” list was my response when I first heard of the Posse List from a fellow contract attorney on one of my first projects. At the time, I was a newly minted lawyer, who also happened to be broke and unemployed.

“The Posse List,” replied my colleague, handing me a piece of paper. “Here, write down your email.”

Soon after handing over my email address, messages started appearing a couple of times a week in my inbox from The_Posse_List@yahoo.com. The emails contained news about various projects in D.C. that were either about to start or status updates on current ones. It was sort of my own personal “heads up” as to what work was available.

I was lucky to be one of the first few hundred people added to the list. In 2003, very few contract attorneys knew what the Posse List was; by 2005, it was a household name. And today, in the world of e-discovery and legal technology, it is known around the world.

So how did the Posse List attain such a long reach from such humble beginnings?

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The Secret to ’100% Employed at Graduation’: Duke’s Bridge to Practice

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When the U.S. News rankings came out this year, Duke Law School had fallen out of the top ten. But one thing that hadn’t fallen was its Graduates Employed At Graduation statistic. As Elie noted (with skepticism), Duke reported that 100% of its 2008 graduates were employed.

Elie wondered how that was possible given the economic climate in 2008. Though the climate in 2009 was even worse, Duke maintained its perfect score. However, we’re told that Duke will likely not have a 100% in this box for its class of 2010.

As Duke Law News reported, Duke worked hard to ensure its graduates had jobs. While it didn’t go the SMU route of paying employers to “test drive” its graduates, it does now provide stipends to some of its unemployed graduates to allow them to work for a couple months at no cost to employers. Using SMU’s car metaphor, the law school pays for the gas while Dukies and prospective employers take a little spin. Duke calls it “The Bridge to Practice” program.

It started in 2008 — employing the nine graduates who would have otherwise ruined that nice round 100%. The numbers of participants have increased since then, as the economy has worsened.

We interviewed a couple of them about the experience. The escalating numbers and Bridgers’ stories, including how much Duke pays, after the jump.

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Legal Sector Adds Jobs: Let’s Not Lick Each Other’s Popsicles Just Yet

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This morning, you might have heard the great news that the legal sector added jobs in May. Jobs, yay, woohoo! It sounds like great news, until you look at how tepid the jobs bump was in May. Am Law Daily reports:

The legal sector gained 300 jobs in May after experiencing losses in the hundreds during the previous month, according to the latest employment report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the industry has still lost 400 jobs since March, and a total of 22,200 legal jobs have disappeared since May 2009.

It’s been a while since my mathlete heyday, but couldn’t you write this story as: “Legal sector loses 100 jobs since March.” Or you could say: “Legal sector loses 19,900 jobs over the past year.”

And we don’t even know if these 300 jobs are “good” jobs…

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A Mass. Lawyer You Don’t Want to Work For and a Law Student You Don’t Want to Hire

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UPDATE (May 30): Law student responds via YouTube, and shows off his very impressive office.

A law student in Massachusetts is looking for a job. He found a listing on Craigslist to work as a paralegal for a bankruptcy attorney. He applied, got an interview, and got an offer (kind of). But then he got into a spat with the attorney via email, preserved for posterity by The Docket.

The law student interviewed on Monday. On Tuesday, the female attorney sent him a rather candid email:

I have to confess, I am on the fence about offering you a position. This is a thought I had…tell me your thoughts.

The thought was that she would have the law student do a few freelance projects for a month, and if those went well, she would offer him a full-time position. He responded:

I can do any type of Motion, and research. I do not think a 30 day trial period is necessary. I would prefer bring me on full time to show you my capabilities.

That’s really not the right time for a grammatical typo, my law school friend.

In response, the lawyer laid out exactly why she had reservations about him, and wished him “best of luck in [his] job search.” That just made him crankier…

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Georgetown Law Lamentation on NPR

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The mainstream media is on to the fact that life kind of sucks for the law school class of 2010. The Wall Street Journal brought your troubles to the attention of the general public earlier this month, and we encouraged you to send the article to your family and friends to explain how screwed you are. But the Wall Street Journal is a subscription-only publication, so maybe your loved ones couldn’t access it.

Now, luckily, National Public Radio has tackled the issue of tough times for law grads. Five Georgetown then-3Ls, now alumni, shared their dismal prospects with NPR on All Things Considered last week. Now those family and friends who either don’t subscribe to the WSJ or are illiterate can also have the opportunity to hear about how screwed you are. Pass it on: Economy Seems Bleak For Graduating Law Students.

Why you gotta hedge, NPR? We think it’s fair to say it IS bleak. Host Robert Siegel asked the five grads how many jobs they had applied for. “I’ve sent out at least 150 résumés and cover letters,” responded one female Georgetown 2010 grad, who scored a government job. “Hundreds,” said another, who is still jobless.

Judging from this little sample, Georgetown will not have a 93.5% employed-upon-graduation rate this year: Two have jobs, three do not. So, what are their plans?

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