The Shark

offer day happy hour specials, coming to a miserable dive near you.

[cynthia]

True to 2009 form, I'm relaying some bad news. Above the Law has broken some more for law students and recent grads:

• Proskauer Rose is extending its 2009 class deferment, at least in its New York office. The firm, which already deferred incoming associates to March 2010, is hitting the pause button all the way to November 2010 now. This is, coincidentally, also when the 2010 class is supposed to be starting. LOL ?
• Mintz Levin has deferred half of its incoming class to April 2010 and half of it to January 2011. The latter group will be offered a stipend. 

Our sister publication, The AmLaw Daily, also has some great news of its own. Skadden has elected to cut its 2010 summer associate class in half, and has changed its "recruiting process" by making all its offers on one day in late September (rather than at the tail end of the program, as most firms do). 

I'd say this seems like a cold offer-esque ploy to get students to take other offers first, but, really, how many offers can rising 3Ls be expecting to get next summer? -3 each? 

Those lucky enough to land spots in Skadden's 2010 summer class will receive those offers on the same day--Sept. 22, which the firm has dubbed "Skadden Offer Day." The firm will continue to give those who receive offers 45 days to evaluate them in compliance with informal guidelines set by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP).

Skadden Offer Day! I'm envisioning the Hallmark cards now.

"new" trend: cancel that summer shit.

[cynthia]

I've added a few more firms to the 2010 summer program/offer table. Among them: Howard Rice and Loeb & Loeb, both of which have canceled their summer programs entirely. The latter went whole hog and canceled its summer program "indefinitely." Whoa! New trend? Possibly.

In the meantime, check out how many of the firms on the list have canceled their programs outright. I'm bad at math, but it looks like a large percentage. Are we witnessing the death of the summer associate right in front of our eyes?

What do you think?

paul hastings to make offers to 75%, defer most of them.

[cynthia]

Paul Hastings has announced, according to Above the Law, that it will be making offers to approximately 75% of its current summer class. Of those offers, some associates will start in 2010, but others will be deferred to January 2011. 

I've updated our table, which brings our grand total of firms who have made either recruitment or offers announcements to 18. If you know of any firms that I'm missing, please email us.

pillsbury to shutter california summer programs?

[amanda]

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman is scaling back its summer 2010 program, and will host one third the students it usually does, the firm said Friday. And, because it hosted so many students in San Francisco the past couple of summers, it’s not sure how many, if any, it will bring on next year.

You may have read something about this on ATL, which reported that the program on the West Coast was cancelled. While the firm says it hasn’t yet made a decision, it doesn’t look like there’s much hope.

Pillsbury had 50 summers nationwide this year, while next year it expects to bring on a much reduced class, about 15 to 17 students, according to a firm statement.

“Although it is true that our efforts will be focused and considerably more extensive in NY, DC and Houston, it is inaccurate to say that we have ‘canceled’ our program for SF,” the statement said.

“Rather, because we had comparatively larger summer classes in San Francisco in both summers 2008 and 2009 programs, we need to learn how many of those from the 2009 summer class to whom we are about to give offers will be accepting on the before we can determine how many, if any, 2010 summer associates we will need in California.”

For more information on other firms who are canceling programs and deferring current summers, check out our table.

Amanda is a Cal Law reporter. You can follow her on Twitter.

two more firms cut summer programs for 2010.

[cynthia]

Summer program cancelation update: the latest firms to axe their OCI schedules or shutter programs entirely are Dorsey & Whitney and Quarles & Brady. 

The former is canceling OCI in all cities but Minneapolis, and the latter has canceled its 2010 program, according to Above the Law. 

You can find out more information about other firms who have taken similar steps by visiting our 2010 table of doom.

As we close in on fall recruiting season, there is an expectation that more firms will be following suit and making similar announcements. If you hear any information you'd like to share with The Shark readers, please email us.

proskauer rose defers to fall 2011.

[cynthia]

I've just added Proskauer Rose, who, you might have heard, just deferred current summers to fall 2011, to our 2010 table of doom. The firm has not announced a public interest program or any deferral stipends.

Don't forget to email us with tips on start date deferrals and summer program cancelations. 

santa clara takes advice from *gasp* working lawyers on how to help its students.

[petra]

Law schools are doing all sorts of things to try to look less helpless against an abysmal job market.

Santa Clara University School of Law is the latest to roll out an extra program — one that’s built on advice from working lawyers.

Last summer, the school asked a number of well-placed alums for help understanding the looming recession and its impact on recruiting.

It formed what it calls the Legal Recruitment Advisory Board, which includes the dean, law faculty and deans, members of the career services staff, and eight alumni who hold managing or hiring partner posts at firms of all sizes. There’s even a corporate counsel.

It was a coincidence that their first meeting was held one week after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, said Vicki Huebner, the assistant dean for law career services. Good timing!

Offered in the spring and fall, the courses will focus on law firm economics and practice management, Huebner said. A third course is in the works, focusing on professional development skills. That class will have an intro to litigation and transactional work.

The courses are informed by insights from the working alumni.

One of the general themes that have come out of discussions was the growing specialization of law practices, Dennis Brown told us Thursday afternoon. The managing partner of Littler Mendelson’s San Jose office who also sits on the advisory board, said the best chance to get a position in the new economy is to get some experience in a sub-specialty of the law – whether through clinical programs, volunteer work or externships. 

“When I graduated from law school, hiring decisions were primarily based on GPA and getting a broad survey of general law courses so you could run, ride, rope and shoot — like a cowboy,” Brown said. “What we have seen, especially with a dwindling job market, is the firms no longer have the capacity or inclination to take the raw clay and to shape it completely into something they would like the associate to be.”

The other alums are: Cooley Godward Kronish chief operating officer and litigation partner Mark Pitchford; Teresa Corbin at Howrey; Kathryn Meier, the former managing partner of Hoge Fenton Jones & Appel; DLA Piper’s Managing Partner of the East Palo Alto Office Andrew Valentine; Randy Gard at Gard & Kaslow; Wilson Sonsini partner Rod Strickland and Frederick Gonzalez, general counsel at SonicWall.

Petra is a Cal Law reporter.

welcome to the farm, john and judy law school grad!

[julie anne]

After all the baseball analogies used during Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination hearings, I think it's time we called a moratorium on baseball-sounding language of any kind in relation to anything going on in the legal world.

But not until after this fun little bit from one legal blog.

According to a posting on the site, new associates at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld LLP "are heading to the minors" of a new associate training ground - or "farm", as they're calling it - before going into the big league law firm.

Rather than proceeding straight into the hungry, gaping maw of a ginormous law firm after graduating from law school, green and somewhat-immature new associates will get sent to associate farms, where they will have the time to plump up and ripen with knowledge of the legal world for maximum nom-ability. 

Mmmm. Tasty.

If you're thinking that this all sounds like something that would appear on a Sci-Fi channel show - oh, excuse me: Syfy - or like the plot for a new book by Margaret Atwood then you've just hit it out of the ballpark.

Yup. The post isn't real news, but satire from Litination, a satire site intended to blend real and fake legal news for entertainment purposes only.

But is there some truth to this fiction?

Is the current "Big Law" system broken? Are new law school graduates as unprepared for "real world" practice as the article says they are? Is it really all that bad to be transferred over to DLA Piper?

And is baseball really the best analogy for law and all things law related?

Chew on those questions for a little while.

dla piper mixes and matches recessionary cost-cutting measures.

[cynthia]

According to Above the Law, DLA Piper has announced a deferral/summer program cancelation plan that mixes other firms' previously announced plans. Much like Weil Gotshal, DLA will defer current summers until Januar 2011 at the earliest, and will encourage said summers to take a voluntary deferal until January 2012.

DLA also announced that it will push back its recruiting to spring, similar to the plan announced by Orrick.  As ATL points out:

"Of course, assuming that firms like DLA and Orrick still hire summer associates for 2010, and defer them to 2012 or beyond, eventually all of these deferrals are going to have to catch up with the firms. Either the firms will have to greatly reduce the number of summers hired or offers extended, or at some point they will have to accept a huge class of first-year attorneys. Nobody really wants to turn law school into a four-year experience where the fourth year is spent hiding out in a public interest organization."

DLA would-be first years can participate in a public interest fellowship through January 2012 with a stipend of $60k. Unless I can't read (possible), DLA did not announce if it plans to offer a stipend for all those who choose to enter the firm in January of 2011. 

You can check out the firm's full memo to law school deans and career services offices, after the jump. You can also check out our ever-growing list of firms who have deferred 2010 offers and/or modified summer programs and recruiting policies here.

biglaw doom & gloom: it's just what we do.

[cynthia]

Good afternoon. As if I opened the floodgates last week by starting our 2010 table of doom (not that I think I'm god, or anything), more firms have announced various cost-cutting measures that put law students and newly minted JDs on the front lines. A few glimpses:

Ballard Spahr, Thompson Hine, and Squire Sanders have all announced that they are canceling their 2010 summer programs. According to ATL, Thompson Hine chose to keep it real classy, not issue any formal announcement, and put the onus on law school recruiting offices to let students know.

Penn Law School sent this email out to its students, to aprise them of various changes in firm involvement in OCI:

"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."

In offer deferral news, we've got Weil Gotshal and White & Case. The former has deferred to 2011 or 2012, according to AmLaw Daily.

"[Weil Gotshal] is giving all of its current summers... the option of deferring their start date from January 2011 until January 2012, and it will pay any summer who chooses the 2012 option a $75,000 stipend and health benefits--provided the summer gets a firm-approved public service job."

White & Case has announced the current summers who are in receipt of offers will be able to join in fall 2011. The firm "fully expects" that "most, if not all" current summers will receive offers. No word on whether or not most, if not all will receive deferral packages.

Despite all this, there's Covington & Burling. Not to gloat and preen, of course, but the firm sent a memo to all its current summers in exultation of the fact that it has no plans to defer and will conduct fall recruiting in a "typically robust" fashion.

I've received some email tips about some other major firms canceling summer programs, so while we look into those, please take a moment and email me about anything you've heard.