The Shark

more on newton's move to notre dame.

[cynthia foster]

Our sister blog Legal Pad has a nice and thick item up about Newton's "defection" to Notre Dame.  Among the highlights in the follow-up story: Newton cut out early on her five year contract, and several names (including Professor Shauna Marshall, former dean Mary Kay Kane, and Professor Leo Martinez) are being circulated as replacements.  Get all the details here.  Commenters in a previous Shark item on the subject posit that Newton may be leaving because of Hastings's budget woes.  One never knows.  One thing's for sure: Notre Dame is a step up from Hastings in the US News rankings (the former is #22 to Hastings's #38).  But, of course, Newton doesn't care about those silly rankings anyway.

orrick offers law grads an opportunity in... west virginia.

[cynthia foster]

ATL has an item up this morning on a job posting that made its way over to Georgetown (and several other "top" law schools).  Orrick is offering "Career Attorney" positions to recent law grads at their global operations center in Wheeling, West Virginia.  You can read more about the opportunity (along with the requisite snark) at ATL, but we've got a little something extra for you.  An inside look at the Orrick office in Wheeling.  Below is a video shot by a Cal Law reporter for a story on said office back last year.  A little history, a little culture.  Note: the official name of the office is Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe's Global Operations Plant.  A little ominous, no?  UPDATE: A reader pointed out I've got the name wrong.  Official name is Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe's Global Operations Center.  Less ominous.  Dang.

hastings dean bails for notre dame.

[petra pasternak]

The thing with rumors is, sometimes they’re true. Murmurs that Hastings College of the Law Dean Nell Newton was defecting to Notre Dame turn out to be true. An emergency board meeting on Friday regarding Newton’s employment fueled rumors of some kind of change being afoot, South Bend was mentioned here and there, and the full story came this morning.

Calling it her most difficult decision of her professional life, Newton announced that she was resigning from Hastings to take the dean position at Notre Dame Law School.

Nell said in an email sent to Hastings faculty and staff at 6:30 this morning that she is “drawn by the mission of Notre Dame and its unique commitment both to academic excellence and to fostering a dialogue between faith and reason.”

“This change will also bring me closer to my brother, Fred, who lives in the Midwest,” she wrote.

Nell lists her proudest accomplishments, among them the claim that the school raised $11.9 million in the past two and a half years and added ten new faculty members in that time. Both were her stated goals when she first started.

In a press release out at 9 a.m. this morning, Hastings announced that Newton will step down July 1.

The Board will select an interim dean to begin July 1, and thereafter conduct a nationwide search for a replacement dean, Board Chair James Mahoney said in a press statement.

For a full copy of the release from Hastings, click here .

the nell newton non-story continues. yeah, it's probably a story.

[petra pasternak]

We tried to pierce through the smokescreens, but few at Hastings know what’s up with Dean Nell Newton.

Some think Newton might be ending her tenure there, after 2.5 years on the job, for a gig at Notre Dame Law School.

Newton herself told us today that there is no story, but attorney James Mahoney, chair of the board at Hastings, said an announcement was coming Tuesday that ought to clarify the issues with her employment discussed at an emergency closed meeting of board members held last Friday. Check out Cal Law's full story here (free reg. req.) and tune back into The Shark tomorrow for more information.

SF PD heads to stanford to fight the good fight for indigent defense.

[cynthia foster]

For those of you folks in Palo Alto today, you might want to take a moment to check out San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who is speaking at a Stanford panel entitled "Providing Indigent Criminal Defense in the Financial Meltdown."  Adachi, who has been warring with Mayor Newsom to get more funding for the SFPD from city hall, charges the nation's local governments with responding to the recession by cutting public defense programs.  He's also empowered by the fact that he'll be joined by other beleaguered PDs from all over the country.

From the SFGate item on the panel: "I was relieved to learn that I was not alone in fighting against budget cuts," Adachi said of Monday's event. "Basically, what we're seeing is an attack on the right to a lawyer around the country and it's not just isolated to San Francisco."

Adachi also invited sparring partner Newsom to the conference, according to SFGate.  No word on whether or not Newsom will participate in the civil rights-off.  An email to the mayor's office has gone unanswered as of the time this item was posted.

uc hastings dean's employment subject of emergency board meeting.

[cynthia foster]

We've just received word that the UC Hastings Board of Directors is holding an emergency meeting regarding Dean/Chancellor Nell Newton's employment at 4pm.  That is literally all we know, but it sounds like possibly intense news. 

You can check the .pdf of the board's announcement here, and we'll bring you news on what's going down as soon as we have it. 

Newton, pictured, returned home to San Francisco in 2005 to take the helm at Hastings after serving as University of Connecticut School of Law's dean.

In unrelated law school faculty/admin news: UC Irvine has snagged a prof away from UC Davis, and a research prof from the American Bar Foundation, reports Brian Leiter at his blog.

UPDATE: As of the end of the meeting on Friday evening, Newton's employment status has not changed, according to current chair of the board James Mahoney.

advanced advocates tries to get into your social media stable.

[brian lauter]

Chances are you’re all about Facebook; you spend hours a day on gchat; you’ve got more RSS feeds than you can keep up with; and against your better judgment you’ve joined the Twitter hypolution.

Still, there are probably a few hours a day that you don’t spend “connecting with friends,” so maybe you’d like to add to Advanced Advocates to your Web 2.0 portfolio.

According to an item I read yesterday at the Social Media Law Student (“SMLS”) blog, Advanced Advocates is “a new social networking site designed for and open exclusively to law students.”

It’s Facebook for law students.  I guess nobody pointed out to them that law students are allowed to join Facebook or that most law students have taken advantage of this opportunity. I joined anyway, just to check it out.

While I’m not sure that law students really want another way to connect with other law students, Advanced Advocates does have some features that could be useful.

For instance, the site has searchable brief and outline databases. Also, there is a “Clerk Ratings” feature which basically allows users to rate their employers (the name is slightly misleading, as the idea is that users will want to rate legal employers of any kind).

The site also includes a less useful “Bookstore,” feature which would be cool if, instead of just hawking Amazon.com products, it allowed users to sell their used books to other law students a la Half.com.

A one-stop hub for briefs, outlines, student employer reviews, and book sales is actually a pretty good idea. The biggest problem with the site right now, as SMLS points out, is that there are only around 40 users. The site relies on users to upload their briefs and outlines to the databases, which I doubt many will do. No users means empty databases which means no reason to join, which means no new users.

If it wants to get this thing off of the ground, Advanced Advocates might want to start putting together the databases itself. This is one of those “if you build it, they will come” situations.

Right now it looks like my Advanced Advocates profile will be dormant for quite a while, but if at some point you do decide to join, friend me. We can talk about how much we hate the latest Facebook update.

it's not a deferral party if it happens every night.

[cynthia foster]

We've updated the economy vs. law students table.  You can find info on Clifford Chance, Weil Gotshal, Edward Angell Palmer & Dodge, and Squire Sanders.  Two of the shocking moves of the day: Weil Gotshal is offering a market-breaking $75k to 3Ls who agree to defer their start dates to 2011 and Edward Angell has pushed their start date all the way back to March, 2010 in addition to slashing their summer program entirely.

Don't forget to continue updating us on deferral/summer news via email or comment.

UPDATED to also include Alston Byrd and King & Spalding.

a closer look at the NALP summer numbers.

[cynthia foster]

As we reported earlier this week, NALP has released its summer hiring numbers.  The data is searchable through the NALP site here, but we've compiled two tables that we believe will be helpful in your interpretation of the data.  Overall, as was expected, firms nationwide are shrinking their summer class sizes.  1Ls in particular have been impacted.

This first table reflects the current AmLaw 10.

Firm	2L Summer 2008	2L Summer 2009	% Change	1L Summer 2008	1L Summer 2009	% Change
Skadden	241	218	-9.54%	27	3	-88.89%
Latham	259	158	-39.00%	3	0	100.00%
Baker	64	44	-31.25%	20	0	100.00%
Jones Day	206	198	-3.88%	30	7	-76.67%
Sidley	179	150	-16.20%	23	7	-69.57%
White & Case	181	92	-49.17%	8	0	100.00%
Kirkland	172	160	-6.98%	17	0	100.00%
Greenberg	45	43	-4.44%	10	0	100.00%
Mayer Brown	175	109	-37.71%	25	2	-92.00%
Weil Gotshal	169	159	-5.92%	27	5	-81.48%

This second table reflects the current CalLaw 10, at their California offices.

Firm	2L Summer 2008	2L Summer 2009	% Change	1L Summer 2008	1L Summer 2009	% Change
Latham	116	78	-32.76%	1	0	100.00%
DLA Piper	28	13	-53.57%	1	TBD, at least 1
Morgan Lewis	27	24	-11.11%	0	TBD, likely 0
Paul Hastings	66	61	-7.58%	16	TBD
O'Melveny & Myers	91	73	-19.78%	1	1	0.00%
Gibson	81	76	-6.17%	3	not reported
MoFo	84	54	-35.71%	13	TBD, at least 5
Orrick	62	39	-37.10%	4	4	0.00%
Bingham	27	32	18.52%	4	0	100.00%
Pillsbury	29	20	-31.03%	3	not reported

According to the numbers above, Bingham might be one of the safer destinations in California.  Take heed, though.  Bingham's been doing layoffs for the last year.  The increase in its summer associate class, while pretty substantial, is tempered a bit by the fact that the firm has been letting associates go.

These charts beg the question: What's a law student to do? Where's a law student to go?

While we don't claim to be an oracle, we all know the internet is.  And it's got some scuttlebutt.  Jones Day is one of the only remaining firms with a notable presence in California to abstain from economy-related layoffs (see comments for, um, commentary), and actually increase their summer sizes. Those class sizes, broken down by California office, are below.  Note: Jones Day's 1L summer hiring numbers are conspicuously missing from the NALP data.  Read into that what you may; I would wager that it means they may be trying to get rid of their 1L summers.  But 2Ls, take heart and read on.

Jones Day Office	2L Summer 2008	2L Summer 2009	% Change
Los Angeles	12	11	-8.33%
Silicon Valley	7	8	14.29%
Irvine	3	5	66.67%
San Francisco	5	15	200.00%
San Diego	3	2	33.33%

Jones Day has traditionally had a pretty bad reputation.  Nicknames like "Jones Day and Night" have been coined to describe the culture at the firm, and Jones Day scores toward the bottom of firms in California in a national survey of summer associate opinion.  (Note: Jones Day does score well when matched up against other Bay Area firms, however.)

One might argue, however, that sucky work is better than no work.  So if you're interested in trying to ride out the recession with a firm that has taken the fewest number of shots at summers and associates, Jones Day might be worth a look.  And they don't seem to be too paranoid about macroeconomic factors: they just opened up offices in Dubai and Mexico City.

golden gate finds new leadership in high profile former basf director.

[cynthia foster]

Golden Gate University has announced that, effective Aug. 1, it will have a new dean. 

Drucilla Ramey, former executive director and general counsel of the Bar Association of San Francisco and a champion of gender and ethnic diversity in the law, will take-over for Acting-Dean Alan Ramo, who took over after former Dean Frederic White departed for Texas Wesleyan.  The press release didn't indicate whether Ramo will be returning to his role as professor, but we hope to have more information for you later in the day.  Check back.

UPDATE: You can read Cal Law's story on Ramey and her new job here (free reg. req.).

FURTHER UPDATE 3/30: Prof. Ramo emailed me over the weekend to clarify that he is indeed returning to the faculty at GGU.  He also states: "We are all thrilled with the appointment of Dru Ramey."