The Shark

morgan lewis: shady used car dealer?

[cynthia]

Our sister pub, The Legal Intelligencer (who last week brought us the news that Dechert is no-offering half of its summer class), brings more sunshine to your day: Morgan Lewis is not giving offers in "at least one major office."

The firm, after informing all its summers of their fates, offered this further explanation of its firm-wide decision: 

"Firmwide hiring partner Eric Kraeutler said there were 102 eligible 2Ls across the country in this year's summer program. Of that group, 28, or 27.5 percent, were given offers to start as first-year associates in the fall of 2011 -- a year later than would normally be the case given the deferrals of the 2009 first-year class until the fall of 2010."

Never fear, no-offerees. Morgan Lewis is stating it will provide a letter for you to show other prospective employer that it's not personal. This reminds me of that CarFax commercial, with the "note" from the previous owner, ensuring everyone that everything is all good with the beater.

Unfortunate. Sign of the times. You know the drill.

I hope the Mayer Brown kids aren't laughing at the Morgan Lewis kids right now.

ethics committee puts kibosh on courts hiring deferred associates.

[cynthia]

Remember how I reported back in June that the Massachusetts Judicial Ethics Committee of the Supreme Judicial Court approved the hiring of deferred associates on public interest fellowships as court clerks?

There was some blowback about the policy decision, particularly the caveat that would-be clerks keep their association with biglaw firms a secret during their tenures as state employees. 

To quote one Shark commenter: 

"So SECRET payments from a law firm that may have matters before the court are not a problem, but disclosed conflicts of interest would be unethical? What a strange place Massachusetts is."

According to the Boston Globe (via The AmLaw Daily), these "safeguards" were not enough to ensure the policy's passage with the final ethics committee it came before: the state Ethics Committee. In an unpublished opinion, it recommended against the decision by the Judicial Ethics Committee, and it appears that's the final word.

dechert no offers just one more sign of a frosty recruiting season?

[cynthia]

Our sister publication out of Philadelphia, The Legal Intelligencer, has an article up (reg. req.) on the Dechert no offers you might have heard about earlier in the day on Above the Law.

To make a long-ish story short, the firm has made offers to 50% of its 2009 summer class. The remaining half have been informed that they'll have to wait until January 2010 to find out if they've got a spot at the firm.

The implications of this are pretty extensive, especially when couple with ATL's assertion that Dechert is going to be actively recruiting 3Ls.

Gina Passerella of TLI has yet another angle: 

Of the 20 or so firms she is tracking in and around the area, Lennon said only four have given offers so far. Large law firms typically want to give offers to summer associates as quickly as they can once completing evaluations and assessing practice area needs, she said, because they then have to begin recruiting on campus for next summer’s class. They want the students who received offers in the summer to act as advocates during the fall recruiting season, Lennon said. 

With some firms not hiring for next summer and others questioning the lead time between hiring summer associates and bringing them in as full-time attorneys two years later, firms are taking their time this year. 

"Now, here in the real world in 2009, I think firms generally are going to wait as long as they can to make these decisions," Lennon said.

So what's the deal, here? Playing current summers against their law school compatriots, in a fight to the death over an offer? I think ATL got it right: Dechert is trying to trade up.

superhero power of choice: signing that offer letter.

[cynthia]

From a National Law Journal commentary on fall OCI:

One of Northwestern's fearless leaders, William Chamberlain, assistant dean of law career strategy and placement, has the following nugget of wisdom for all you 2Ls entering what will no doubt be an interesting recruiting season:

"...accept your offer quickly. The key is to get a job for next summer. Smart students will not rely on NALP's 45-day guideline but rather accept their offers as soon as humanly possible. From the school side, we have dealt with all sorts of reactions by firms to the economy and are urging our students to be risk-averse. Any sense of entitlement will be fatal this fall."

Be grateful! Be conservative! Be inhumanly fast, if humanly possible! Be BigLaw.

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.

attack of the annoying networkers.

[dennis]

CNN just unleashed its list of “The 12 most annoying types of Facebookers.” Many of the listed annoyers are also rampant in the legal social networking world, such as “The Friend-Padder” “The Lurker” “The Self-Promoter.”

The hallmark of an annoying social networker is that he does not talk with you, but at you. He does not care about who you are or what you have to say because you exist for his benefit (ie. to increase his follower, friend, and visit counts.) This why the annoying networker constantly adds people on Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn that he has no interest in, and that he will never interact with.

The annoying networker uses his online friends, visitors, and followers as a way to appear “connected” when he is anything but. This type of spam-networking, or non-networking, is counterproductive because your 1,000 LinkedIn connections are rendered moot by a single connection who says “I don't really know him. He just randomly added me.”

Law students, especially unemployed law students, can quickly fall into this trap and turn off peers, lawyers, and recruiters.

Here are five ways to avoid being that guy or girl.

1. Think before you add: Do you really care what this person has to say or are you just adding the person to increase your audience? On LinkedIn, don’t add anyone that you would not be comfortable with a recruiter contacting.
2. Create, don’t aggregate: It's okay to occasionally link to something that you find interesting. But the majority of your tweets and blog posts should not be links or summaries of other people’s content. Contribute something original. Don’t clog our readers and feeds with content we already saw on law.com or Bitter Lawyer unless you're adding commentary or some other useful content. 
3. Brag not, bore not: Unlike a personal blog, social networking sites require that you think about your audience. Before posting, consider if you would be interested in reading your post if it was authored by someone else. Would you really care to read that someone is in the library again or working on a brief?
   
   This also applies to messaging. Don’t message your casual acquaintances and slip in comments about making law review or your recent A+ in torts. We will think you’re that guy. I promise.
   
   
4. Prestigious Eyes Test: AKA, avoid overshare. Before posting, ask yourself if you would be mortified if a recruiter or your law school’s dean saw your post, picture, or tweet. Also think about the impression you are giving your peers: I know of a student who did not get onto the law review editorial board soley because he kept tweeting about how miserable his first year on law review was.
5. Engage: the whole point of networking is to engage other people, or “add value,”  for others. This means writing meaningful replies to posts and tweets, and taking a genuine interest in what others have to say. Remember, if you don’t really want to engage other people then you don’t really want to network.

"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.