Wall Street Journal

Size Matters: Should I Get a ‘Merge or Die’ T-Shirt?

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According to the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.), small law firms have adopted the mantra: merge or die. Indeed, the number of law firm mergers is staggering. “At least 60 mergers occurred in the U.S. and abroad last year, the highest level since 2008 and a 54% jump from 2010, according to legal-industry consulting firm Altman Weil Inc. Industry experts expect the figure to rise this year.”

Why the up-tick in mergers? The economic downturn has caused a shift when it comes to legal service providers: it is a “seller’s market for the first time in 20 years.” In other words, law firms are not able to raise rates in order to increase profits. So, small firms turn to mergers as a way to increase their revenue and allow them to compete with all-purpose, larger firms. Randall H. Miller, who as managing partner at Denver-based Holme Roberts & Owen LLP helped engineer its acquisition by Bryan Cave, explained that “[l]ittle by little, our ability to service our clients’ needs ha[d] been limited by our smaller size,” which was why he pushed for the merger.

Yet, small firm to large firm mergers are not the answer for all small firms. The article featured several potential problems….

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Morning Docket: 12.19.11

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* It’s about freakin’ time. Guess who’s jumped on board the ever popular “blame the ABA” bandwagon? None other than David Segal, the New York Times equivalent of the law school scam blogger. [New York Times]

* Newt says that as president, he’d ignore SCOTUS decisions. Raise your hand if you want to elect someone who doesn’t understand our government’s system of checks and balances. [Los Angeles Times]

* Remember that time you applied for the DOJ Honors Program? You were probably rejected because you were a damn, dirty, liberal hippie. [CNN]

* Facebook is threatening to sue Mark Zuckerberg. No, not one — he founded the company. The other one — no, not the lawyer. This guy: the “ultimate Facebook troll.” [Hollywood Reporter]

* “We are the 99 percent.” You know that our country is circling the drain when even Yale Law thinks that the Occupy Wall Street movement coined 2011′s quote of the year. [ABC News]

* North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has died. Say hello to his slightly taller successor. [Bloomberg]

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Quote of the Day: Hope There Weren’t Any Coke Cans on the Table

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Clarence Thomas set the table for the tea party by making originalism fashionable again.

– Berkeley Law professor John Yoo, in an interesting Wall Street Journal piece discussing how his former boss, Justice Clarence Thomas, has defended the Constitution and embraced originalism during his twenty years on the high court.

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Quote of the Day: So tell me more about this whole ‘occupational therapy’ thing….

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There are 64 open jobs in occupational therapy for every 100 working in the field, the [SimplyHired.com] site’s data show. Yet online job listings for these positions get 50 times fewer clicks than the hardest-to-place industry — the legal field. Meanwhile, unemployed lawyers now find themselves in the country’s most cutthroat race for a job, with less than one opening for every 100 working attorneys.

— from a recent Wall Street Journal article, Where the Jobs Are.

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How Can a Lawyer ‘Settle’ for the Only Job He Can Get?

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I’ve always wondered what kind of salary contract lawyers make these days. Okay, not really, I kind of already know, because a lot of my friends are contract lawyers. But for those of you who aren’t familiar with the wonderful world of contract lawyering, the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article yesterday, by Vanessa O’Connell, on the trials and tribulations of these lawyers-for-hire.

The Journal editors decided to give the piece a cutesy title by using a play on words: “Lawyers settle… for temp jobs.” Lawyers are supposed to be settling cases, and now they’re settling for temporary jobs. Oh, that’s so very witty.

What the WSJ folks might not have realized is that when you’re an unemployed new lawyer in this kind of economy, or even if you’re an older one, you don’t really have the option of “settling.” It’s depressing, but you kind of just accept the fact that this is the hand that you’ve been dealt.

But maybe there is a bright side to this situation after all. Maybe these contract attorneys are making serious bank in these temporary positions….

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Quote of the Day: A Professor’s Practical Perspective

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[T]he imperatives of law enforcement distract soldiers and intelligence agents from their primary war-fighting mission. We don’t want our soldiers pausing on hostile battlefields to read detainees Miranda warnings, take down witness statements, and collect evidence in plastic baggies. They should remain focused on finding and killing al Qaeda terrorists.

– Professor John Yoo, in an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal.

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An Article To Send To Your Family and Friends to Explain How Screwed You Are

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Those inside the legal bubble know that it’s a terrible time to be graduating from law school, so as Ashby Jones notes, this Wall Street Journal article about the sucky job market for law grads holds few surprises. Well, really no surprises: it’s tough this year for law grads.

But it’s good that the Wall Street Journal is spreading the word outside of the legal bubble, letting non-lawyer readers of the WSJ know that the law school golden ticket is currently tattered and torn:

The situation is so bleak that some students and industry experts are rethinking the value of a law degree, long considered a ticket to financial security. If students performed well, particularly at top-tier law schools, they could count on jobs at corporate firms where annual pay starts as high as $160,000 and can top out well north of $1 million. While plenty of graduates are still set to embark on that career path, many others have had their dreams upended.

If you’re having a hard time explaining to non-lawyers just how shattered your dreams are, send this article along to them. It lays it out in a clear and concise matter, and includes simple, pretty charts explaining the supply-and-demand problem in the legal job market.

Now, what should you do if you’re in the enviable position of having post-graduation employment lined up?

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Under Attack, Should the Billable Hour Be Concerned For Its Safety?

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Angry clock.JPGIs there really blood in the water around the billable hour? Or are we simply hearing an updated version of a familiar refrain? This morning the Wall Street Journal took another look at killing the billable hour (subscription):

People who follow the world of law firms know, among so much else, two things: 1) that billing-by-the-hour has long been the way law firms get paid and 2) companies have over the years had only limited success in getting firms to agree to do it any other way.
That’s changing. In a big way. Companies are starting to ditch the hourly structure — which critics complain offers law firms an incentive to rack up bigger bills — in favor of flat-fee contracts and other types of arrangements.

Of course, we’ve heard all that before. Heralding the death of the billable hour is much like predicting the end of the world: eventually somebody is going to be right.
Has anything fundamentally changed this time around to make the billable hour more susceptible to death? Here’s the best argument.

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White Powder Scare at WSJ & HLS

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Harvard Law School seal logo.jpgToday there were white powder scares at some venerable institutions. The Wall Street Journal editors were targeted this morning, as were professors at Harvard Law School. Many tipsters believe that Professor Alan Dershowitz was targeted.

HLS just sent around this message reassuring students:

Dear members of the HLS Community,

Earlier today, a letter delivered to an office on the Fifth floor of Hauser Hall was opened by a faculty assistant and was found to contain some white powder. The university police and the Cambridge police department were notified and responded to the scene immediately, along with the Cambridge Fire Department and the university’s Environmental Health & Safety team.

There is no indication of adverse effects to any of the people who were in the vicinity of the letter when it was opened. Samples have been taken for laboratory testing by the investigating authorities.

While testing has yet to be completed, the authorities have concluded and informed the law school, based on the investigation thus far, that they do not believe that an evacuation of Hauser Hall is warranted. Nevertheless, because the investigation is ongoing, caution and prudence require that the fifth floor of the building remain off limits until the investigators have cleared the scene. Moreover, in order to minimize the possibility of interference with the investigators and responders, the law school administration is asking that anyone intending to study or conduct

business in Hauser not do so until further notice informing the community that the building can once again be accessed freely.

Any students and staff presently in Hauser should feel free to leave if they so choose. Classes scheduled in Hauser later today or this evening, are being rescheduled, and any affected individuals or groups should contact the office of the Registrar for further information regarding new locations for those activities.

We will continue to update the community as we learn more.

I know Professor Dershowitz a little. Intimidating this man is not an option. In fact, Dersh is more likely to defend these powder sending yahoos and use the case as an educational opportunity for his students than he is to lose sleep over this nonsense.

Next time, you best bring kryptonite.

We’re glad to hear everybody is safe.

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Reporting the Law: A Year-End Review

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Reporting the Law A Year End Review.jpg
Last week, we attended and reported on a talk at UVA Law School by Dahlia Lithwick, who discussed covering the Supreme Court. Now we bring you coverage of another interesting event, featuring more navel-gazing by legal journalists:

Reporting the Law: A Year-End Review
New York Law School

Moderator: Brian Lehrer, The Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC

Panelists: Emily Bazelon, senior editor, Slate; Dirk Olin, editor, Judicial Reports.com; Dan Slater, lead writer, WSJ Law Blog; Candace Trunzo, editor in chief, Star magazine.

The two lawyers on the panel, Bazelon and Slater, are pretty young things — and were smartly dressed for the occasion. Bazelon, whose features are reminiscent of Christy Turlington’s, wore a white v-neck blouse and well-tailored brown sweater. Slater, baby-faced yet lantern-jawed, wore a gray suit with a blue windowpane pattern, a blue patterned shirt, and a dark navy tie with pink stars (très preppy).

Oh, sorry — we got distracted by the superficial. We have more substantive comments as well.

If you’re interested in the legal media, you can read about the panel discussion after the jump.

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