Obviously, things are not well in Pennsylvania. Ballard Spahr has canceled its 2010 Summer Program. Dechert is laying people off. Drinker Biddle is changing the nature of the Biglaw experience. WolfBlock … does not exist.

So it’s not surprising that people are becoming concerned about another titan of the Philadelphia market, Blank Rome. The firm has cut associate salaries, and it did lay off 79 people back in March.

On Wednesday, multiple rising 2Ls at Penn Law received information that led them to believe that Blank Rome was pulling out of on-campus interviewing at Penn. That made others speculate that Blank Rome’s entire 2010 summer program was in jeopardy.

But sources at the firm — including some partners — contend that the firm is going full steam ahead with its 2010 Summer Program, which will include recruiting at Penn. A firm spokesperson furnished Above the Law with this response:

I can confirm that we are currently scheduled to recruit at Penn and that we will be continuing our summer program.

How did so many Penn students get spooked about the Blank Rome recruiting situation? We investigate after the jump.

Just last week, Ballard Spahr was sending around inspirational messages to its associates. Today, the firm has decided to cancel its 2010 Summer Program.

Thompson Hine has also decided to cancel its 2010 Summer Program. If nothing else the move should give Rogue Associate an opportunity to comment.

It’s one thing to cancel your entire summer program. But what is surprising about Ballard Spahr and Thompson Hine is that the firms did not make any formal, official announcement about the decision. Instead, students learned the information from their respective law school recruiting offices.

Update (1:04): Now Squire Sanders is also canceling its 2010 Summer Program. More details after the jump.

Here’s the Ballard Spahr “announcement” (via Penn Law School):

Dear Students, As we near the close of bidding, we wanted to provide you with an update on schedule changes that we received so far today. Akin Gump went from 40 interview slots in NYC and 40 interview slots in DC to 20 interview slots in NYC and 20 interview slots in DC.

Paul Weiss went from 80 interview slots to 60 interview slots.

Ballard Spahr will not have a 2010 summer program and, as such, has canceled on campus interviews.

All of this information is updated in Symplicity. Please note that we will continue to provide you with updates as is feasible. However, it may not be possible for us to email you with all changes so please be sure to check Symplicity before bidding closes tomorrow, July 21st at 11:59 p.m.

After the jump, we see that Duke students were the first to learn about the Thompson Hine cancellation.

As goes Harvard Law School, so goes the rest of the law school world. Last month, HLS pointed its students towards an escape from Biglaw purgatory: clerkships.

Now Penn Law is doing the same, revising its clerkship policy to allow students to blanket the country — and cyberspace — with clerkship applications. From Law Clerk Addict:

JUDGE LIMIT POLICY

In light of the current market conditions and the expectation that the competition for clerkships this year will be greater than in the past, CPP and the Faculty Clerkship Committee decided to reconsider the 100 judge limit and have agreed to the following new limit: Applicants will be limited to 75 paper applications. There is no limit on the number of OSCAR judges you may apply to.

At least there’s still a limit on paper applications. Trees everywhere are breathing sighs of relief.

(For those of you who clerked in the Mesozoic Era, as we did, OSCAR has nothing to do with the Academy Awards; rather, it’s the Online System for Clerkship Application and Review.)

Update: UVA is following suit. Full message after the jump.

More after the jump.

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.

It’s time for readers to choose the Legal Eagle Wedding Watch’s Mr. and Mrs. April 2009. Will it be the couple with four Penn degrees, the spunky HLS grads, or the silver-haired former ambassador and his Bushie bride?

Keep in mind that when you vote, you’ll be helping to determine which couple will be eligible to compete in December for the honor of being ATL’s 2009 Couple of the Year — the crème de la crème of legal/marital enviability.

Here are your finalists:

1. Elissa Bassini and Jeremy Pick

2. Tracy Zuckerman and Ryan Van Grack

3. Leslie Fahrenkopf and Thomas Foley

If you’re ready to vote, here’s the poll. If you need a refresher, you can find our write-ups on the couples after the jump. Voting concludes at noon on Friday.

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.

When faced with a struggling and a declining job market, I’m sure there are some Penn Law students that have some time on their hands.

Which is great news for us! And pretty good news for the general UPenn Law community. It looks like an unknown number of students have started a comedy publication. A tipster reports:

So we came into school yesterday, and every available surface was covered in copies of these…. Hearing law students laughing was a nice change. It seems the student names are all fake, but the professors are real.

The stories seem pretty real too:

Check out the full paper by following the link below.

goat’s milk.pdf

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the economy is bad. People are losing their jobs, firms are cutting back on summer programs, and some firms are dissolving.

If you are a 2L sitting on multiple offers, could you please — for the love of God — accept one of them already, so the spots you don’t want can be filled by other candidates? At this point, in this market, it is just common courtesy.

And it might be in your best interest as well. The career services office at U. Penn Law School sent around a letter to students today, urging them to make a decision:

We recommend that you do not wait until the expiration of the offer to render a decision. Additionally, in this market, we advise that you seek an extension for an outstanding offer only if you fall under the public interest exception or have truly extenuating circumstances that justify your need for more time. Indecision does not qualify as a legitimate reason for an extension. …

Wednesday, we learned that one of your 2L colleagues had their offer for employment rescinded before the expiration of the offer because the firm experienced a higher than usual acceptances from outstanding offers and had to close their class immediately to prevent over subscription thereto.

If you are sitting on an offer, you might find that your offer has been rescinded by the time you’ve made up your mind. We’re getting (unconfirmed and highly speculative) reports to ATL that multiple firms have extended more offers than they intend to honor and that slots will be given on a first come, first employed basis.

Accept now!

Read the full Penn letter, after the jump.

The University of Pennsylvania Law School announced they will begin offering a J.D./M.B.A. program that can be completed in three years.

In order to make it work, Penn will concede a painfully obvious point: one year of law school is really all anybody needs. According to their press release:

Students in the new program will spend the first year in the Law School and the following summer in four Law and Wharton courses designed specifically for the three-year J.D./M.B.A. The second and third years will include a combination of Law and Wharton courses, including capstone courses in the third year and work experience in law, business, finance, or the public sector in the summer between the second and third years.

Applicants will still need to apply to the two schools separately. So, you’ll have to be able to get into Wharton on the strength of that multi-million dollar business you’ve been running out of your treehouse since you were eight.

Penn is not exactly breaking new ground here; Northwestern has been offering a 3-year J.D./M.B.A program for a few years. But maybe Penn just doesn’t fear the purple:

Penn’s three-year J.D./M.B.A. is the country’s first fully integrated three-year program offered by elite law and business schools.

You hear that Kellogg? Penn is calling you out.

Expect U.S. News & World Report’s highly anticipated “Best 3-Year J.D./M.B.A Programs In the Lower 48 States” issue to be coming out soon to help college graduates make a decision.

Penn Law and Wharton Create 3-Year JD/MBA Degree [University of Pennsylvania Law School]

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.

A bit of follow-up on goings-on at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. First, in yesterday’s post, we predicted: “[E]xpect Dean Fitts to send out some vague email offering blanket reassurances, but declining to say more due to federal privacy law. That seems to be par for the course for these incidents.”

Our prediction has been vindicated:

Sent: Wed 3/5/2008 12:01 PM
To: [U. Penn. community]
Subject: A Message from Dean Fitts

To the Law School Community,

As you may know, there was increased Public Safety presence at the Law School for a few days. Like most institutions, the University varies security on campus in response to changing situations and often does so out of an extra sense of precaution. We usually do not discuss these measures publicly. In this case, we did not do so out of respect for the privacy of a member of our community. Let me assure you that there were never any threats made nor were there any “incidents” at Penn Law. Our decisions in this case, as in others, are made and evaluated constantly with the intent of serving the best interests of our community. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to stop by my office.

Have a great spring break,

Mike

Second, check out comment #7 on the Daily Pennsylvanian article, posted today at 12:04 AM. It purports to be from the student in question (who identifies himself by name). This individual writes:

Unless there was yet another mishap by Penn or Penn Law, I am the student who was placed on this leave of absence. This is nothing more than a staged proceeding to force me to make precedent in the third circuit by tarnishing my reputation.

I am not on any psychiatric medication nor have I taken any. If the University actually believes that I pose a threat to your safety, then it should protect you by requiring me to seek mental health treatment instead of invoking this policy. I am now alone and upset and near a campus full of bright and happy students.

Very curious. We do wonder whether some law schools, out of an entirely legitimate concern for the safety of their students, overreact to reports of unusual behavior. History is full of examples of mass hysteria, from the Salem witch trials to the day care sex abuse scare, that turned out to be unfounded.

We’re not disputing the need for law school administrators to be vigilant, especially in light of the horrific school shootings of the past few years. And we completely understand their concern: if, God forbid, something were to happen on their campuses, they would be held responsible.

We’re just playing devil’s advocate and tossing out some fodder for discussion. That’s all.

Comments: Student prompts security increase [Daily Pennsylvanian]

Earlier: What’s Going on at Penn Law?

Last year, the WSJ Law Blog posed this question: “Are law students emotional wrecks?” Their post generated hundreds of comments.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that some law students have, in modern parlance, “issues.” The stress of law school may have a tendency to trigger meltdowns. See, e.g., here (University of Alabama law student who gave a strange speech in class), here (Indiana University law student who shot up his casebooks), and here (University of Arizona law student accused of kidnapping her ex-boyfriend).

One of last year’s more memorable incidents was this one, involving a student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who riddled his neighbors’ apartment door with bullets. Now we return to U. Penn — where we recently spoke, and where the students struck us as happy and well-adjusted — thanks to this Daily Pennsylvanian article:

Security has been increased around the Law School over the past several days in response to a student who has exhibited signs of unstable behavior. The student is being placed on involuntary leave….

The student had caused administrators concern because of an incident that happened at the Law School. It was then discovered that he had taken himself off of his psychiatric medication about a month ago, according to two Penn Law employees who were briefed on the situation and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose this information. However, they were not told the specifics of the initial incident.

A tipster there tells us:

The Penn Law students have not received ANY formal communication about this, and the students are generally very upset that 1) we weren’t told anything and 2) the first communication came from the undergraduate newspaper.

We’ll keep you posted. If you have info to share, please email us. If you comment on this post, please do not mention any individuals by name, consistent with ATL’s standard operating procedure.

Based on past precedent, we’d expect Dean Fitts to send out some vague email offering blanket reassurances, but declining to say more due to federal privacy law. That seems to be par for the course for these incidents.

Student prompts security increase [Daily Pennsylvanian]

Related: Law student arrested for firing at neighbors