The Shark

hoping for an end-of-summer offer? chances are getting bigger that it'll come with a deferral

[pam]

OK, I think we are seeing the harbingers of critical mass. Morgan, Lewis did it. Orrick followed, and so did Hogan & Hartson. And now Weil Gotshal is telling its current summer associates, Hey, if you're lucky enough to get a full-time offer at the end of this summer, don't think you're lucky enough to be start within a year of graduation.

ATL reported this morning that Weil has jumped on the second-round-of-deferrals bandwagon. (And that Covington & Burling swears it won't.)

One thing that seems to set Weil apart, though, is that it's calling this deferral -- until January 2012 -- optional.

We paraphrase the Weil highlights, culled from the ATL item:

* Each summer associate who gets an offer at the end of the summer will have the option of deferring his or her start date from January 2011 to January 2012.

* Those who elect to defer will receive health care benefits.

* If you wanna use your year off to travel or something, health care is all you get.

* But if you spend 1,000 hours during the deferral year performing some form of firm-approved public service, you'll get a $75,000 stipend, too.

Pam Smith is an associate editor for Cal Law.

your profs suffer the economy's wrath right along with you, and some of them would prefer layoffs to pay cuts

[petra]

With pay cuts on the way, most University of California law professors won’t be happy puppies come fall.

But to hear two law deans tell it, students will hardly notice a thing (unless, we’re guessing, the professor ranks start thinning).

The UC Regents voted today to endorse UC President Mark Yudof’s proposal to cut all UC staff and faculty salaries by 4 to 10 percent and force them to take furlough days for the next academic year.

Two Boalt faculty have said that smart organizations choose layoffs over across-the-board pay cuts. Robert Cooter and Aaron Edlin propose in an L.A. Times opinion piece today that layoffs can help a bloated organization get rid of deadwood, while salary cuts encourage the best to leave.

Dean Michael Schill at UCLA's law school admits that no one is excited about these developments. Most of its professors will see a reduction in their pay ranging from 8 percent to 9 percent. According to tables from the UC finance committee, salaries in that range fall between $90,000 and $240,000. [Salary tables can be viewed here (.pdf)]

Asked whether he worried this will make some bolt to better-paying jobs, Schill said he’ll do whatever it takes to hang on to professors and attract new ones. “They know that I’m committed to competitive salaries,” he said. “I am committed that this will just be a blip.”

As the entire UC system deals with an $813 million hole in state funding, Schill and Boalt Dean Chris Edley maintain that students' services and programs will be spared.

Both say alumni have stepped up. Schill said UCLA law has just wrapped up its second most successful fundraising year. “Alumni understand that the only way we will be competitive with our peer institutions will be through philanthropy,” he said.

Edley says Boalt’s also in better shape than other Berkeley schools because the school’s in the fourth year of raising tuition to be closer to market.

“Our $120 million construction project, with no state support, continues apace, but in other respects we are tightening our belts in ways that will protect the student experience and sustain our competitiveness,” Edley wrote in an e-mail yesterday. “This is tough, but not frightening.”

Petra Pasternak is a Cal Law reporter.

morgan lewis, hogan & hartson: asking you to the deferral dance.

[cynthia]

Hot on the heels of Ropes & Gray and Cravath, two more biglaw firms have announced that they're going to rock the worlds of law students and young associates. In a bad way. ATL has broken the news that both Morgan Lewis and Hogan & Hartson are deferring current summer associates' offers by a year. 

The former is also cutting its summer 2010 program, eliminating lockstep (for 2010), and canceling appearances at OCI this fall. Whew. According to ATL "the firm plans to pass on some of these savings to its clients." Yeah, yeah.

In an internal memo, Hogan & Hartson honchos explain the firm's deferral of current summers:

"The specifics of the deferral program have not yet been decided -- only that the start date will be in 2011, not 2010.. The summers learned this news this morning; we hope you will make yourselves available to them to discuss the issue if, or when, they come to you for advice about their deferral year."

By "specifics," I'm assuming that they haven't yet decided if they're going to give you guys any money.

We'll have more on this news as the story progresses throughout the day. In the meantime, check out our brand new table of doom.

2010 table of doom: start date deferrals, summer program cancelations, other perks of biglaw.

[cynthia]

We'll update this table as more information comes in, according to the same procedure as our 2009 table. So please be sure to email us when you or your roommate gets deferred.

Firm	2010 Start Dates	2010 Summer Programs	More Info
Ballard Spahr		Canceled	Above the Law
Cravath	Mandatory deferment to fall 2011; $65,000 plus health care and $1,000 in loan assistance		Above the Law
DLA Piper	Mandatory deferment to January 2011; optional deferment to January 2012, $60,000 stipend	OCI pushed back to spring 2010	Above the Law
Eckert Seamans		Canceled	Above the Law
Hogan & Hartson	D.C. and Northern Virginia offices deferring to 2011, other U.S. offices considering deferments as well; no stipend announced		The Shark
Howard Rice		Canceled	Above the Law
Loeb & Loeb		Canceled, indefinitely	Above the Law
McCarter & English		Canceled	Above the Law
McGuire Woods		"Likely to reduce number of summer programs"	Above the Law
Milbank		Canceled in Los Angeles	Above the Law
Morgan Lewis	Deferment to 2011; no stipend announced	Canceled	The Shark
Orrick	Deferment to 2012	OCI pushed back to spring 2010	The Shark
Paul Hastings	75% offers to current summer class; most offers will be defferred until January, 2011		Above the Law
Pillsbury Winthrop		Summer programs canceled in California; reduced in East Coast cities	Above the Law
Proskauer Rose	Deferment to fall 2011; no stipend announced		Above the Law
Ropes & Gray	Deferment to at least January 2011, with possibility of deferment even longer; no stipend announced		The Shark
Seyfarth Shaw		Canceled	Above the Law
Squire Sanders		Canceled	Above the Law
Thompson Hine		Canceled	Above the Law
Weil Gotshal	Optional deferment to January 2012; public service stipend of $75k and benefits		AmLaw Daily
White & Case	Deferment to fall 2011		Above the Law

don't count on those loan forgiveness programs.

[julie anne]

Law school tuition for one year? $37,950

Room and board in Orange County, Calif.? $15,300

Personal expenses? $5,277

Books and supplies? $1,560

One year of law school, including living expenses? $63,000

Getting a quality legal education? Upwards of $140,000

You were expecting me to write “priceless” to last one, right? Ha. I’m not going to trivialize the cost of a law school education by turning it into a MasterCard commercial.

The truth is, law school costs money. Lots and lots of money.  Scrooge McDuck pools and pools of money.

I knew that while applying to law school, but it was still a bit of a shock when I got my financial aid award letter from the Chapman University School of Law.  At first I thought that maybe there was a decimal point missing somewhere, but no. The first year of school will in fact cost about the same as a really nice car, and tuition and living expenses for all three years would cost about the same as a house in some parts of California.

Given the cost of a legal education, it’s no surprise that many students who had their hearts set on public interest work go into high paying jobs in Big Law.

Still there are a few who opt to continue with their public interest plans, banking on federal or state programs that promise to forgive a portion of their debt if they choose public service fields.

According to a New York Times article published last week, about 7,500 teachers, nurses and public interest lawyers benefited from Kentucky’s loan forgiveness program since 2003, at a cost of $77 million.

But just how reliable are these programs?

In another article also published last week, the Times found that while federal programs are safe, many states’ loan forgiveness programs are tied to the state budget.

As a result, the Times says, states sometimes see stories like that of Adam and Katie Thomas:

“… teachers of special needs children, the Thomases had a combined $85,000 in student loans. Partway through the payback period on those loans, however, the forgiveness program in their state cut its annual subsidy from 20 percent of the couple’s total loan balance to just 1 percent. That pushed them so close to the edge financially that they decided to sell their home and move in with Ms. Thomas’s parents.”

Yipes.

If you consider that the average law student graduates with about $80,000 in debt, and the average public interest lawyer makes about $36,000, a career in public interest can turn students saddled with thousands of dollars in debt off.

I’m not certain of the type of law I want to practice once out of law school, but I am certain that I and other law school students want public interest law to be a viable and financially sound option when we do graduate.

Forget about the car industry, President Obama. Where’s the graduate student bailout? At the very least, those interested in serving the public interest should have the continued financial incentive to pursue that interest without fear that the programs they rely on will be cut back or canceled several years down the line.

Find more information on federal student loan forgiveness here.

given the choice, would you do it all again? law school grads report mixed reactions.

[julie anne ines]

The ABA Journal recently posed a question that I’m sure many a lawyer and many a graduating law student have been asked: “If you could start from scratch, would you opt to take the LSAT and go to law school?”

Basically, can you see yourself going back in time in order to prevent a depressing future, a la disturbingly hot man-boy Zac Efron in the movie 17 Again?

I haven’t had the, um, privilege of seeing the movie, but I imagine it has something to do with a troubled middle-ager who gets a second chance to do things differently and learns some things along the way to a happy ending.

Unfortunately, life is nothing like it is in the movies.

In real life, we live with the consequences of our actions. And, in the case of law school, those consequences can add up to debt in the six-figures and work that isn’t as fulfilling or as profitable as one pictured while an idealistic law student, according to many of the posters on in the ABA Journal’s comment section.

Here’s a gem from poster “Captain Obvious”:

“Let’s see. I now hold ten times the amount of student loans as I did after graduating from undergrad, at more than twice the interest rate. I’ve been unemployed since graduating from an allegedly strong Tier 2 law school two years ago this month. I live in my parents’ basement, and can afford neither health nor malpractice insurance. My last interview with a law firm was eight months ago. I would eagerly take a non-legal job if anyone anywhere was interested in hiring a JD. Sadly, no one is. I do not have ten dollars to my name. So, after careful contemplation, I would have to come to the conclusion that I would not go to law school again, if given the choice.”

And I just signed up for how many years and how much in student loans? Gulp.

More heartening comments after the jump.

facebook groups: go, join, gripe.

[julie anne ines]

I’m not even in law school yet, and I already know - by benefit of being in a relationship with a law student, and a frequent reader of law school student Twitter streams and blawgs - to expect something of a bitch fest once my law school journey starts this fall.

Please believe me when I say I mean no disrespect to those who frequently air their grievances. As someone who came from a profession that spawned AngryJournalist.com, I understand the need to vent and write strongly-worded, unpunctuated, all-caps forum posts/emails/tweets. But save for Twitter and personal blogs, I could not for the life of me find one law-related website that served as a forum to collect all said grievances into one place for my general amusement.

That is, until I remembered Facebook groups.

In the world of Facebook, as in the world of law school, law students nationwide have formed themselves into communities by drawing on their shared experiences of acquiring nervous ticks, learning from sometimes ineffective instructors, navigating through trial-by-fire, and turning into alcoholics.

The result is a collection of groups whose titles and descriptions alone paint vivid, sometimes-amusing, occasionally scary, pictures of the law school experience.

Law School Haiku

Members: 29

Description: Describe your classes in poetic form! Reconnect with your creative side! Share your feelings for law school in a total of 17 syllables! Example: Marbury and Graves, Spend days in the library —, What sense of humor?

Law Students for Naptime

Members: 49

Description: “C'mon, you know you're tired. You know you'd like to curl up on the couch, throw a blanket over yourself and fall asleep. So give in!”

Dear Law School

Members: 67

Description: “A healthy outlet for your angst against law school. In the tradition of ‘getting it off your chest’, please pen your grievances, plaints, and pleadings addressed to law school, appellate briefs, the reasonably prudent person, etc. Example: Dear Law School, is it too much to ask that an alcohol stipend be included directly in the Stafford loan? Sincerely, Jane. Please note that any attacks on specific individuals or groups will not be tolerated. “

I've Thought About Dropping Out Of Law School At Least Ten Times Today

Members: 6,321

Description: “This is a support group for students who have seriously considered throwing down their highlighters and running screaming from the building at least ten times in the past day (or hour, if you're me). If you've been feeling this way, but yet still keep coming back for more, please join. Invite your friends. And together, BY GOD, we will persevere.”

Dear Law School: High School Called, They Want Their Drama Back.

Members: 8,160

Description: “Quit your bitching and see below.”

You Might Be In Law School If ...

Members: 15,460

Description: “You consider dropping out of law school approximately every hour, but after that first semester you realized you were already in too much debt to be anything other than a lawyer. … You can name without hesitation at least three people who make you want to throw things when you see them raise their hands in class."

surprise: biglaw deferrees are cramping style of public-sector hopefuls.

[cynthia foster]

Colby Freeman (left) is a 3L at USF and has been volunteering for the San Francisco DA's office for four years.  He's committed a huge chunk of his life to the office, and of course was hoping that time served would land him with a job after graduation. 

Unfortunately, timing is not on Freeman's side.  Despite the fact the DA's offices across the country have rescinded offers to 3Ls (citing budget cuts, in most cases), there's an added layer of distress: biglaw refugees looking for public interest work to tide them over until their firms can afford them, according to a really interesting Cal Law story by Petra on the subject (free reg. req.).

Across the bay from Freeman, Alameda County's DA office is experiencing a crunch that seems to paint a pretty scary public-sector picture:

"Senior Deputy DA Kevin Dunleavy said his office relies on its summer program as its main hiring vehicle; it typically fills higher positions from within the office. In a typical year, the DA hosts eight to 12 summer clerks and makes offers to about six, contingent on openings. In 2008, there were 11 summer clerks. A letter went out in January, with apologies for the delay, explaining that no offers could be made, Dunleavy said. What's more, the office isn't able to pay its new deputy district attorneys the starting salary of about $75,000. Four deputies who passed the bar in November are getting a law clerk wage of roughly $21 an hour, with limited benefits."

Despite the fact that sympathy for biglaw deferrees rages on throughout the blogosphere, I think a fair amount of attention needs to be paid to these governmental offices who are struggling to now accomodate all of the country's law grads.  While the private sector bides its time, the Dunleavys of the world are forced to make tough decisions that will have a real impact on the futures of recent grads. 

So far, several counties in California (including Contra Costa) are not offering positions to biglaw deferrees.  According to Petra, "some [DA's offices] said they [are] weighing the fairness to those for whom this would not just be a pit stop until the economy improves."  Sounds like a tough call.

your high-priced TTT education.

[brian lauter]

Every once in a while I write an item that is critical of the state of legal education.  I’ve suggested getting rid of the 3L year, talked about the importance of practical experience in the new job market, and weighed in on the practical v. theoretical debate.

An item yesterday on Legal Satyricon, entitled “The Worthlessness of American Legal Education,” makes my little criticisms look like child’s play.  The tirade critique by Professor Marc John Randazza attacks American law schools with a candid fervor rarely witnessed in the blawgosphere.  It’s informative and entertaining and I recommend checking it out.

The item is long, so, rather than relate it all to you here, I pulled out a few choice quotes. 

On legal academics:

“Nobody wants to upset the academic apple cart — more appropriately described as a circle jerk.”

“…you’ll be shocked at how many people with a few months of experience practicing law are responsible for training the next generation of lawyers.”

On the myth of solo practice right out of law school:

“Should we really turn out a few thousand solo practitioners a year who have been taught by those who couldn’t hack it as practitioners? Then what? Just have them “figure it out” on their own?”

“The majority of tenured law professors don’t know how to be lawyers either. With that kind of “training,” dumping hundreds of clueless solos on the market will result in: 1) an avalanche of legal malpractice suits; 2) a hailstorm of unethical and unprofessional behavior by solos who lack the institutional mentors to teach them better; and, 3) a swarm of unsupportable litigation by desperate solos who are just trying to pay the rent.”

On UCLA’s new “Transition to Practice” LLM program:

“Yes, for the bargain basement price of $41,500, and another year of your life, UCLA will actually teach students what they THOUGHT they were getting for the first three years of tuition payments — how to practice law.”

“This new “program” at UCLA is an admission that law school is severely broken. Many people already say that law school is a year too long. I partially agree. It is a scam.”

“What kind of an abject fool would actually pay to attend this program? Honestly, anyone with this LLM on their resume should be blackballed as someone too incompetent to be a lawyer in the first place.”

"lawyers are like cockroaches." - david lat

[cynthia foster]

Our sister blog Legal Pad has posted a wrap-up of David Lat's presentation at Berkeley Law.  This is the third time today we've heard about how fast he talks.  Itmustberlyfast!  Also: he recommends a strict regimen of yoga to get over how screwed you are in this economy.

If you're interested in following David Lat on other forms of social media besides his blog and our blogs and everyone else's blog, he can be found on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace, YouTube, and even Friendster.