* “Rising tuition. Misleading employment statistics. Inadequate skills training.” So what are legal educators doing about it? Blogging, of course. [Law School Review]
* Trendspotting: cute judges the federal bench? The Senate has confirmed Loyola Law professor Stephen Higginson for a seat on the Fifth Circuit. [National Law Journal]
* People in New Jersey have morals. Who knew? When faced with aborting babies or aborting their careers, some nurses from UMDNJ decided to sue. [Washington Post]
* Elbert Lin is returning to Wiley Rein after a stint clerking for Clarence Thomas. We wonder what his wife would say about him if he was one of her LEWW contestants? [Blog of Legal Times]
* Another Real Housewife of New Jersey is facing legal troubles, but this time to the tune of $7.8M. Sorry Teresa, but at least Jacqueline Laurita’s got her hairline under control. [Huffington Post]
* Is Justin Bieber the father of a baby, baby, baby? That’s what a 20-year-old from California says, and she wants a paternity test to prove it. [New York Post]
Hot on the heels of support staff layoffs and on-shore outsourcing efforts at O’Melveny & Myers, we have news of another law firm doing the exact same thing. Except this law firm has figured out a way to do it with half the tears and way less relocation angst.
On-shore outsourcing might be better for the American economy than sending the jobs overseas, and Pillsbury Winthrop has figured out a way to do it that doesn’t involve shipping people to the third world country known as “West Virginia.”
Pillsbury is moving staff operations farther south, and the firm is bringing some of its executives with it, too….
Continue reading “Is On-Shore Outsourcing the Biglaw Wave of the Future?”
It was just last week that Jesse Strauss and David Anziska announced that in addition to their class action suits against Cooley Law and New York School of Law, they intended to sue 15 more law schools over their allegedly deceptive post-graduate employment statistics. In the days that followed, everyone wanted to know when these lawsuits would actually be filed, what role the ABA might play in the suits, and whether the law schools targeted would preemptively change their ways.
We don’t yet have more information about the lawsuits to be filed. And we certainly don’t have so much as a statement from the ABA. (Come on, why would the ABA deign it necessary to comment on an important issue like this?)
But we do have some reactions from a few of the law schools on the Strauss/Anziska naughty list….
Continue reading “Trendspotting: Will Law Schools Continue to Defend Questionable Employment Data?”
Peggy Ableman
Earlier this week, we reported on the latest benchslap from Judge Sam Sparks (W.D. Tex.). In his order, Judge Sparks invited attorneys to a “kindergarten party,” to address what he perceived as childish behavior.
Judge Sparks eventually called off the party. That makes sense, since he had already achieved his goal of publicly shaming the attorneys appearing before him.
Other judges have apparently taken notice. Now comes Judge Peggy Ableman of Delaware. She has called for attorneys appearing before her to attend “a ‘special’ emergency refresher course in first year ethics and civility.”
UPDATE (5:20 PM): Darn it. Delaware Superior Court Presiding Judge James T. Vaughn Jr. has taken over the case and canceled the “refresher course,” as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
What’s really going to make the allegedly childlike attorneys squeal is that Judge Ableman scheduled her remedial class for the middle of Labor Day weekend….
Continue reading “Judge-Ordered Remedial Civility Classes = The New Killing It”
Do you know an easy way for moderately priced public law schools to make even more money? Charge more for tuition. Do you know an easy justification for jacking up tuition rates? Say that you are moving to a “private funding model” while you bemoan the lack of public support for your institution.
After that, it’s all profit baby!
The big news in the law school hot stove league is that another major public law school is toying with moving to a private funding model. The logic for eschewing public funds for an increase in private dollars is, as always, disingenuous. But hey, as long as the law school keeps paying its tithe to the university, few will object to increased gouging of prospective law students…
Continue reading “Private Funding of Public Law Schools = Bad News For Future Law Students”
What is this, a law school for ants?
If the American Bar Association was serious about protecting its members, it’d be trying to do something to stop the influx of market-depressing new attorneys. America might need more lawyers willing to work for next to nothing to help those who can’t currently afford legal representation, but the last thing current attorneys need is even more law school graduates competing for the few paid positions available. Let the Obama administration start some kind of Americorps program for attorneys; the ABA should be concerned about keeping the supply of attorneys competing in the private market down around levels that come within shouting distance of demand.
(Of course, the ABA is still trying to figure out how to keep member institutions from lying to the ABA. I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the ABA to figure this one out.)
Instead, it looks like some law schools are starting to voluntarily reduce the sizes of their incoming classes. We reported on two schools, Albany Law and Touro, doing this back in March, and it seems that the trend is continuing.
I guess there are only so many disgruntled, unemployed graduates these schools want walking around griping about their legal education (or suing them over it)….
Continue reading “Trendspotting: Will Law School Start Decreasing The Supply of Unemployable New Lawyers?”
Critics of the legal-education industrial complex would probably like to see some radical changes in the U.S. law school system. They’d probably want a few dozen law schools to shut down entirely, to reduce the glut of lawyers in this country. Barring that, they might want to see law schools reduce tuition dramatically — not just freeze tuition, which some schools are already doing, but make an outright cut in the sticker price of a J.D.
Alas, expecting such changes isn’t terribly realistic. Law school deans and law professors aren’t going to willingly reduce their salaries or send themselves into unemployment — and why should they? Despite all the warnings about the risk involved in taking on six figures of debt to acquire a law degree, demand for the product they’re selling, legal education, remains robust (even if it’s showing signs of abating).
Interestingly enough, however, we’re seeing some law schools cutting their production (of graduates, of J.D. degrees)….
Continue reading “A Trend in the Making: Shrinking Law Schools?”
You can’t call it a trend just yet, but the University of New Hampshire School of Law has joined Maryland Law and Miami Law in the fight to keep law school tuition down during a still-recovering economy. The school reports it will not be raising tuition for the 2011-2012 academic year.
It’s a sad state of affairs when a law school holding the line on tuition is breaking news. But with nearly every other law school rushing to bilk students who will pay anything for a legal education (law schools at Stanford, Arizona State, and Minnesota spring to mind), it’s nice to see at least a couple of schools that regard their students as something more than profit centers.
Maryland announced its tuition freeze in December. The National Law Journal reports that Miami recently announced it would be maintaining a tuition freeze already in place. Now UNH Law is joining their ranks. There’s still plenty of room on this bandwagon if your law school would like to take a brief break from molesting your financial future.
Not that UNH Law is cheap, especially for a third-tier law school. But this tuition freeze is another indication that UNH is at least trying to think about legal education in a somewhat realistic way…
Continue reading “Law Schools Join the Ranks of Institutions Averse To Profiteering During a Rough Economy”
In a couple of years, we might look back on today as the first point where the giant, unsustainable bubble that is the student loan market began to burst. Check out this press release:
The Student Loan Corporation (NYSE:STU – News), a subsidiary of Citibank, N.A., and a leading originator and servicer of student loans, announced that The Student Loan Corporation (“SLC”) and Discover Financial Services (“Discover”) have entered into a definitive agreement for Discover to acquire SLC, and thereby become the owner of its private student loan business as well as $4 billon of its private student loans. Separately and immediately prior to the transaction, (i) SLM Corporation (“Sallie Mae”) will acquire from SLC $28 billion of securitized federal student loans and related assets and (ii) Citi will acquire from SLC certain federal and private student loans and other assets totaling $8.7 billion. Upon the closing of the transactions described above, shareholders of SLC will receive $30 per share.
So Citi is getting out of the student loan origination business (although they’ll still have some existing loans on their books). I guess they don’t want to be the Lehman Brothers of this failing market…
Continue reading “Citi Sells Student Loan Division: Can’t You Hear the Bubble Bursting?”
Here at Above the Law, we like to know what’s going to happen, before it happens. We therefore pay special attention to Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. The firm is a trendsetter of sorts — at least for things that are bad. Few remember, but Cadwalader faced down a bed bug epidemic back in 2007, long before every New Yorker lived in fear of the critters.
More people know that Cadwalader was one of the early adopters of massive associate layoffs, with the first sizable round all the way back in January 2008 — well before the fall of Lehman and the true start of the financial crisis. CWT was kicking people to the curb before it was cool.
Nobody knows why Cadwalader seemingly has this mystical power to experience calamities before they happen elsewhere, but one doesn’t have to be able to explain every thing that happens to be true. So ignore the following email sent around the New York offices of Cadwalader at your own risk — but don’t say that CWT didn’t warn you…
Continue reading “Always a Trendsetter, Cadwalader Now Experiencing Thievery”
Hello? Anyone home? Right now it feels like everyone is on vacation, even though Labor Day is still two weeks away. C’mon, folks, this isn’t freakin’ Europe.
Maybe some people are still on their “bar trips” — multi-week (or even multi-month) post-bar-exam vacations, to some exotic destination (or destinations; I have friends who have traveled around the country, or even around the world, on their post-bar jaunts).
But wait. Do people still do bar trips? That’s the question we raised last August, when the Great Recession and pushed-back law firm start dates threw customary ways into chaos. Many of you answered in the negative last year, claiming that you were replacing Carmen Sandiego-esque globetrotting with more staid “staycations” — or even using the time to get an early start on the job search, for the many readers without employment already lined up.
This year, things seem to be returning to normal in law firm land, at least in part. Not as many lawyers are deferred, and some of the deferrals are shorter (or being ended early). Does this mean bar trips are back on? Let’s discuss — not just bar trips, but summer vacation more generally, since August is a big month for getting away.
Are you traveling this summer, or have you traveled already? If so, where? Do you have any travel tips or great destinations that you’d like to recommend to others? Or perhaps you’re in need of some advice and vacation ideas yourself?
Here’s an open thread for discussion. Bon voyage!
Earlier: Open Thread: Is the ‘Bar Trip’ Barred By the Recession?
In the movie The Untouchables, Sean Connery counsels Kevin Costner: “If you don’t want to get a rotten apple, pick one fresh off the tree.” Apparently, Hewlett-Packard is taking the same advice; instead of hiring in-house attorneys seasoned in Biglaw firms, HP is getting its next crop of legal help directly from the nation’s top law schools. The Recorder reports (gavel bang: ABA Journal):
This fall, Hewlett-Packard is going where few corporate law departments have gone before: hiring fresh graduates for full-time in-house positions.
Four first-year associates will join HP in Palo Alto, Calif., in September — one from Harvard, two from Northwestern and one from UC-Berkeley. The associates will earn $115,000 per year plus a $15,000 signing bonus and undergo a training program similar to the type installed recently at firms like Howrey and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.
We just did a report about how the lawyer training programs offered by firms like Howrey weren’t catching on. But perhaps HP can offer the renowned better lifestyle of in-house attorneys to buttress their below Biglaw market salary?
Continue reading “Hewlett-Packard Picks New In-House Lawyers Fresh Out of Law School”
Last week, we set up an open thread for people to discuss the next round of tuition hikes at their law schools. Sadly, it appears that many schools are indeed raising tuition despite the soft economy for legal jobs. Once again, the cost of legal education is proving to be recession proof.
But another, even more disturbing trend could be on the way. At a few schools, the new plan seems to be raise tuition on entering students by a higher percentage than the tuition on returning students. To keep the money rolling in, it looks like this next crop of 1Ls will be subsidizing their jobless, 3L brethren.
The situation at the University of Houston Law Center could be a harbinger of an even darker future for the class of 2013…
Continue reading “New Tuition Trend: Will 1Ls be Willing to Subsidize 3Ls?”
What should be done to protect fashion designers from copycats? Law professor Gerard Magliocca would probably say nothing, but other observers are more sympathetic to the designers. Law profs Scott Hemphill (recently married) and Jeannie Suk (half of celebrity couple Feldsuk) propose what they call “the squint test.”
Although fashion designs don’t currently enjoy copyright protection, designers who feel they’ve been ripped off do have other options. They can try suing under a theory of trade dress infringement, which is exactly what some of them have been doing.
Trade dress litigation over fashion designs seems as ubiquitous this season as thigh-high boots. Alexander McQueen recently sued Steve Madden, claiming that Madden’s Seryna peeptoe bootie is a ripoff of McQueen’s Faithful model (see for yourself here). Meanwhile, Forever 21, the fashion retailer known for cheap knock-offs, umm, affordable interpretations of designer fashion, has settled a lawsuit brought by Trovata, the Newport Beach clothing company. Trovata claimed that Forever 21 was copying its striped tees, sweaters and blouses.
You can read more, compare the designs, and comment, over at Fashionista (links below).
McQueen Sues Madden: Halle-f*&%#ng-lujah [Fashionista]
Settled & Stuff [Fashionista]
My friends, we have a trend. Bryan Cave has become the third firm we know of to offer its incoming associates money to simply go away instead of starting at the firm.
Tipsters report that the firm is offering some associates $70,000 to “walk away” instead of showing up for work. That’s the carrot. This tipster reports the stick:
[A Bryan Cave letter] stated that they are unable to guarantee a start date at this time .. The letter [also] said was that they are unsure if they will need any first year associates before 2011. Shady, shady, shady…
Stroock — the first firm to offer incoming associates go away money — offered $75,000. Pillsbury offered $60,000. So Bryan Cave is keeping up with the market for these kinds of things.
After the jump, a reader poll, and Bryan Cave’s strategy for incoming associates.
Continue reading “Bryan Cave Offers Incoming Associates ‘Go Away’ Money”
Back when we worked at a law firm, one partner was obsessed with the concept of the “paperless office.” He wanted to have as many documents as possible scanned and stored electronically, in order to eliminate any unnecessary use of paper. It was a bit OCD of him, and his jihad against paper was viewed with mild amusement around the firm.
Perhaps this partner was ahead of his time. Back in 2006, law firms were described as the “last frontier in going paperless.” But now the trend is moving strongly in the direction of a paperless world. These days it seems that everyone wants to go commando.
Continue reading “The Paper(less) Chase”
Now that aspiring lawyers have taken the bar exam, they can relax and try to forget about it until the fall, when results come in. One way of relieving stress is “the bar trip”: a post-bar exam vacation to an exotic locale, for sun, surf, or snow, depending on one’s travel preferences.
The bar trip — the last hurrah before immersion into the grim realities of law firm life — is a tradition among law grads. But we’re hearing that the recession may be interfering with the tradition this year. With Biglaw start dates pushed back, and talk of lower salaries running rampant, law grads may be feeling less celebratory this year.
Purely anecdotally, law grads have told us that they’re scaling back. They’re not going on extravagant bar trips, and in some cases, not going on bar trips at all.
Are we only friends with fiscally conservative types, or is this actually a trend this year? Are you thinking of a “staycation,” or are you still planning a trip around the world?
If you’re traveling, please tell us where you’re heading and for how long. If you are heading out of the country, we hope you’ll be sure to spend some time in internet cafes checking out the latest ATL news.
Earlier: Post-Bar Travel: Open Thread
Many have noted that the jobless rate hit 9.4% today, and many are calling that excellent news. Bloomberg reports:
The U.S. lost fewer jobs than forecast in May, reinforcing signs that the deepest recession in half a century is starting to abate….
“The recession is very close to an end,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts, whose payrolls forecast matched the closest estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. “The labor market is still pretty awful, but vastly better than it was.”
Did anybody else just hear Kevin Bacon screaming “all is well”?
But maybe the new numbers are positive. The L.A. Times tells us about the happy experiences of the “funemployed”:
Michael Van Gorkom was laid off by Yahoo in late April. He didn’t panic. He didn’t rush off to a therapist. Instead, the 33-year-old Santa Monica resident discovered that being jobless “kind of settled nicely.” …
What most people would call unemployment, Van Gorkom embraced as “funemployment.”
While millions of Americans struggle to find work as they face foreclosures and bankruptcy, others have found a silver lining in the economic meltdown. These happily jobless tend to be single and in their 20s and 30s. Some were laid off. Some quit voluntarily, lured by generous buyouts.
Not to have a type A meltdown, but what the hell are these people talking about?
I call shenanigans, after the jump.
Continue reading “Funemployment Rate Reaches 9.4%”
Earlier this month, duty called us to a midtown Manhattan bar to cover a Pink Slip Party for our sister site, Dealbreaker. Geared toward those laid off from Wall Street, the “party” was a depressing scene meant to bring job-seekers together with potential employers. There were more recruiters than potential employers around, though, and there were lines of people in suits waiting to sit at booths to go over their resumes with the recruiters.
Job seekers are similarly disadvantaged in the legal market, thanks to continuing layoffs. One unemployed lawyer is trying a novel new approach. He wants to turn the headhunter payment arrangement inside out, and pay a recruiter to find a job for him. From his Craigslist ad:
This economy sucks. It probably sucks for recruiters too! Therefore I want to make life a little more interesting. This may not be a huge amount of money, but if you’re already on commission it’s more than usual I imagine.. For any recruiter that helps me a permanent position as an associate attorney in relevant areas (defined below) I will pay the following immediately:
$60,000- $69,999 per annum I will pay you $3,000
$70,000 – $90,000 per annum I will pay you $4,000
$100,000 + per annum I will pay you $5,000
I am also looking for contract work in the short term. I will pay $300 for anything which is supposed to last more than a month.
This seems to make sense. Sometimes job seekers are advised to avoid working with a recruiter because it makes them more expensive, since the employer has to pay the recruiter a fee on top of the new hire’s salary. If the new hire foots the recruitment bill, the game changes.
Some people don’t like this idea. The Craigslist poster, who asked to remain anonymous, has had some angry responses, after the jump.
Continue reading “Job-seekers Paying Recruiters: Hot New Trend?”
You can use Facebook to accumulate friends, poke strangers, and tag photos. And if you’re a lawyer in Australia, you might be able to use it to serve a complaint.
Our legal friends in the Land Down Under have made an interesting ruling. From the Associated Press:
A court in Australia has approved the use of Facebook, a popular social networking Web site, to notify a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan.
The Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court last Friday approved lawyer Mark McCormack’s application to use Facebook to serve the legally binding documents after several failed attempts to contact the couple at the house and by e-mail.
The lien notice could have been sent by Facebook messaging–the judge specified that posting to a Wall was not kosher–but the couple got wind of the plan in news reports and took their profiles down.
We love rulings that legitimize the use of Facebook in the workplace. Next up: legal notice via gchat?
Australia OKs Facebook for serving lien notice [Associated Press]
