I'd like to thank Carolyn Spencer who graciously shared this article with the rest of us!

Bad Grades? Don't Despair

Linda E. Laufer
New York Law Journal
09-23-2004

Q: I attend a top-tier school, and my first-year grades were bad. I was able to get some legal experience this summer, but I have avoided all job searches for next summer because of my grades. What should I do?

A: Dear Ostrich:

Get your head out of the sand and start to develop a strategy. Your inquiry focuses on only your grades. You give no indication of the type of firm or practice in which you have an interest, or the nature of the legal experience that you obtained during the summer. Nevertheless, since this is the season for large law firm recruitment and you "have avoided all job searches," it appears that you had an interest in pursuing positions with those firms. Reading further into your inquiry, one can surmise that either you were so disappointed with your academic performance that you removed yourself from the fall recruitment process without considering whether any firms would look beyond your grades, or you performed so poorly that you did not meet the qualifications required by any of the large firms, even for candidates from a "top tier school."

The first step is to examine your grades issue. How "bad" were they? Were they "bad" on an objective scale, or just worse than you expected? Do they preclude you from all large firms, or just the firms on which you had your heart set? What caused your grades to suffer? What are you doing to improve your grades? Did you obtain a good grade in any course?

19. Arnold & Porter: "Staffers get 12 weeks paid maternity leave and profit sharing of 7.5% of salary. The less you make, the less you pay for health-insurance premiums."

Actually, a correction: 18 weeks (as of January 1, 2008).

31. Alston & Bird: "Both the legal and nonlegal staff get super benefits, including 90 days of paid maternity leave, coverage of fertility treatments, and concierge services."

Concierge services? Fabulous. Atlantans, stop yer whining!

41. Bingham McCutchen: "They're proud of their elite grads: 72 from nearby Harvard Law, 24 from Yale, and 20 from Stanford. They all start at $160,000 a year."

55. Perkins Coie: "They value fun at this law firm. At 2007's Lawyerpalooza battle of the bands, the Perkins Coie rock & rollers brought down the house (and took home the top prize)."

See also Nixon Peabody: "Fun is not prohibited here." Speaking of which...

66. Nixon Peabody: "The law firm excels on policies for GLBT employees (a 100% rating from the Human Rights Campaign); it targets 3% of billable hours annually for pro bono work."

Please send us any theme songs that are composed to commemorate these honors. Thank you.

100 Best Companies To Work For (2008) [Fortune]

Earlier: Bingham McCutchen: Land of the Amazons?

Summer Associate Forecast Brighter in '08

Petra Pasternak
The Recorder
January 18, 2008

Jennifer Nejad, a second-year at Boalt Hall School of Law, worried that her status as a transfer student might affect her desirability in the eyes of summer employers.

But as it turned out, she found the fall recruiting season was a cinch. After 11 initial interviews led to about eight callbacks, Nejad followed up with four firms and received three offers. She'll be spending this summer at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, earning $3,077 per week.

She says her friends reported similar stories. "Almost everyone I talked to was pleased with how things worked out," said Nejad, a transplant from Hastings College of the Law.

Her experience reflects the conclusion of another robust summer hiring season, which apparently wasn't affected much by the darkening economic outlook, the turmoil in credit markets nor a slowdown in M&A activity.

A number of other law firms active in mortgage-backed securities work have announced layoffs in the recent past, according to the article: Clifford Chance terminated a six-lawyer group in November. Thacher Proffitt & Wood and McKee Nelson both have offered buyouts to large numbers of associates working in the area.

San Francisco Bay Area Law Firms Float on Turbulent Waters
Niraj Chokshi and Zusha Elinson
The Recorder
01-10-2008

A rough economy in late 2007 killed a lot of the M&A and corporate work that had powered 2006, but leading Bay Area firms say global presence and a balance of practices helped insulate them from the downturn.

Despite the subprime mortgage crisis and resulting credit crunch, most of the eight Bay Area law firms that have released financial data so far showed . solid increases in revenue and profitability in 2007, according to The Recorder's annual survey of California firm finances.

Two exceptions were Heller Ehrman, which saw revenues and profits per partner drop slightly, and Townsend and Townsend and Crew, whose 2006 numbers had been goosed by an exceptionally large contingency fee.

Some pointers that Mr. Herrman shared from his book:

* No such thing as a first draft for summer and law firm associates. You should always try to draft your very best piece of work for a reviewing partner. Same applies to partners drafting work for their clients. Get the concenpt of "draft" as a sloppy first cut out of your head!

* Associates should always endeavor to get drafts to partners at least three days prior to the client deadline. Partners have their own internal deadlines dictated by their clients. It will win you any accolades to send a "draft" to a partner on the the client expects the final work product.

* Get involved in journals, whether it be law review or some other journal. The ability to write notes and articles beyond law school is critical to client and practice development.

You can listen to Mr. Herrman's aka/the Curmudgeon's talk on the OCS website here: http://www.law.umich.edu/currentstudents/careerservices/workshops/Pages/workshops.aspx

Some startling innovations: wholesale abolition of billable hour requirements for first years ( Ford & Harrison ), reducing billable hour requirement to 1600 (Boston-based Lowrie, Lando & Anastasi),and presenting new associates with two compesnation tracks ( Chicago-based Chapman and Cutler), among others.

As EIW comes to a close, students will have any variation of three basic questions relating to EIW: 1) When should I hear back from employers about callbackss? 2) What do I do if I don’t get my desired callbacks (or any callbacks?) 3) How do I schedule and prepare for callbacks?

While the OCS staff is certainly available to meet with you on an individual basis to address your concerns and answer questions, below is some general guidance from OCS counselors on the three basic questions.

1. What should I hear back from employers about callbacks?

While it’s true that you or some of your peers may have received callback invitations during EIW (and in some cases the day of the screening interview) employers are all different and handle callbacks differently. Students can typically expect to wait anywhere between 1-2 weeks to hear back from employers. Some of your peers may get callback offers earlier than others-the fact that you have had to wait does not necessarily mean that you are not getting a callback. Similar to your experience with law school admissions, some get accepted earlier, some later, and so on.

2. What do I do if I don’t get callbacks?

After two weeks or so of waiting for a callback you might be in either of two positions: (1) received rejection letter from firm(s) or (2) not heard back from firm(s). For the firms that have rejected you, put them to bed and don’t waste time mourning over or thinking about them. For those that you have not heard back from, you should be proactive and follow up with the firms by both leveraging other callback offers against this particular firm and/or by expressing your great interest in visiting with the firm on a callback. To leverage an offer, you simply let the firm that you seek a callback from know that although you already have a callback from firm X, but that you are really interested in interviewing this particular firm. In short, don’t give up until you either get the callback or a rejection.

3. How do I schedule and prepare for callbacks?

Scheduling callbacks is relatively painless. Typically you’ll be given the number of the law firm recruitment coordinator (or travel agent) who will help you schedule your callback interview. While it might be advantageous to schedule a callback soon after you receive the invitation, there may be other good reasons to not schedule it as soon as possible. For callbacks on the West Coast, due to the travel time and time change, you might consider blocking off several days to complete all your callbacks in that region. For callbacks where travel time is not a major issue, you can plan your callbacks to best fit your class and personal schedules over a period of weeks.

As far as preparing for callbacks, for the most part think of them as multiple screening interviews. You should be prepared to speak to your resume, about your grades, and of course why you are specifically interested in their firm. Often times you will get a schedule of interviewers before the callback, which makes it possible to research your interviewers to come up with good questions and points for discussion. You can also ask for a schedule a day or two before the callback.

What Every Lawyer Should Know About the Economics of a Law Practice

Melchior S. Morrione
Marketing the Law Firm Newsletter
08-30-2007

Why do so many lawyers know so little about the economics of practicing their profession? Not surprisingly, it's because their law school education did not address any of the business aspects of practicing law. So most young lawyers join law firms with little understanding of how they operate and without a clue as to what it takes to make a law practice successful and profitable. Many lawyers, especially those who join large firms, manage never to master these concepts -- and, in many cases, work hard at avoiding them.

This abyss between law school education and professional practice is finally being acknowledged in academia. Harvard Law School has established a research center, under the direction of professor David Wilkins, to identify the broad issues that have transformed the legal industry. In addition to research projects, it has identified the need to make law school curricula more relevant to current issues in the profession. I would hope that this will include the basic economics of practice, how law firms operate, how services should be delivered and how to adapt to the changing needs of clients.

"Is this any way to recruit associates?" asks a lead story in this month's American Lawyer.

What is "this way?" We all know the drill, most of us from both sides of the table:

* Top law schools orchestrate dances of 20-minute interviews between visiting firm partners and law students;
* questions are kept superficial (one Latham recruit got a steady diet of fantasy football questions);
* grades and class rank are presumed to be valid proxies for post-employment performance; and, in the event,
* of students offered summer jobs by "big" firms (> 250 lawyers):
o just 28% accept
o 40% of whom are gone by their 3rd year, and
o 62% of whom are gone by their 4th.
* And, according to NALP, half of associate departures are "unwanted" by the firms.
* Finally, depending on who you believe, replacing a needed associate costs from one to three times their fully loaded annual costs.

Worse, the pressure is intensifying. According to the National Law Journal's "250" report (ranking the largest 250 US firms by lawyer headcount), the number of associates at those firms has increased 76% over the past decade while the number of law school graduates has gone up just 7%. Firms are going to more law schools, reaching farther down into the class ranks, or both. And at the elite schools, firms are simply pushing harder. Georgetown Law, for example, anticipates a 10% increase in firm interviews this year, and the same again next year.

Need I add that most of this takes place with students fundamentally in the dark about what differentiates one firm from another?

"[Students] aren't helped much by firm marketing materials, which often say the same thing and make firms indistinguishable from each other. "They all tell you they have great clients, and they work hard but [have] a very collegial atmosphere," says the Stanford student. "It's the same discourse over and over again."

Fine. Diagnosis is one thing, prescription another.

Aric Press
The American Lawyer
August 1, 2007
Printer-friendly Email this Article Reprints & Permissions

Put aside the conventional wisdom. Here's the state of associate life.

-Associates aren't miserable, except perhaps in certain high-pressure New York precincts. The average satisfaction score hit a record high this year: 3.81 on a five-point scale.

- Associates don't plan on staying. Despite the high level of job satisfaction, only 44.9 percent of the respondents predicted that they would be at their firms in five years, and only 11.7 percent expected that they would become equity partners at their current firm.

- Despite all the hand-wringing over associate retention, law firms report that in nearly half the associate departures -- 49 percent -- the firms were either neutral about the departures or happy to have the associates leave. (This statistic comes from the latest survey by the National Association for Law Placement.)

- There may not be enough lawyers to feed the hiring appetite. According to our survey of summer associate hires, Am Law 200 firms expect to bring on roughly 10,000 associates next fall. That astonishing number equals about one-quarter of all the students who will graduate from U.S. law schools next year. To put it another way, the top 20 law schools will only produce about 6,500 graduates.

What do these four facts mean? For law firms, at least three things. First, in the short run, the war for talent will become more ferocious. Second, the cost of talent will only increase. And third, the need for firms to differentiate themselves will become apparent even to the hidebound.

Do not ask questions about benefits, billables and compensation. Wait until you get an offer before you jump into such question or find the answers from the website or through other resources.

Do not ask questions that shed the firm in a negative light or questions that may put the firm on the defensive. Avoid asking why the firm does not compare to other firms in terms of pro bono, minority partners, etc. Save those questions for later after you have received an offer.

Do not ask extensively about opportunities in the firm’s international and/or entertainment practices. Often times, students express interest in these practice areas without having a thorough understanding of what is actually involved in those fields. International law as practiced at major law firms involves international arbitration and drafting contracts and agreements with clients overseas. More likely than not, it will not involve appearing before the International Court of Justice, WTO or similar institutions. Similarly Entertainment law is labor and employment law relating to those in the entertainment industry.

Do not ask about the quality of life, life/work balance and culture of the firm. While these may truly be important to you, they may create a perception with the employer that you are not willing to work hard. Save these questions after you have received an offer of employment.

David Hammond represents companies when they get in trouble for their work in Iraq

Daphne Eviatar
The American Lawyer
June 20, 2007

When the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on what it calls "War Profiteering and Other Contractor Crimes Committed Overseas" Tuesday, David Hammond, the lead partner handling Iraq liability issues at Crowell & Moring, was there.

As a lawyer for some of the top private security companies operating alongside U.S. troops in Iraq -- Blackwater USA, Triple Canopy Inc., DynCorp International Inc. and Erinys Llc -- a big part of his job is monitoring the growing outrage over those companies' alleged abuses.

Hammond was there in February, too, when the House Oversight Committee held its own hearing on the role of military contractors and Blackwater, the North Carolina-based private military company, was on the hot seat for the gruesome deaths of four men it had sent to Iraq. The men were independent contractors hired by Blackwater, on a security mission near Fallujah, when they were ambushed by insurgents and shot, dismembered and hung from a bridge that spans the Euphrates River.