Showing posts with label lawyers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lawyers. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Hiring former Supreme Court Clerks (is expensive)

 The Washington Post has the story:

Clerks for hire: The Supreme Court recruiting race. Supreme Court clerks are offered bonuses of up to $500,000 to join law firms  By Tobi Raji

"Only around three dozen law clerks work for the justices during each one-year term, which means these lawyers — and their unparalleled knowledge of the court — are in incredibly high demand. Jones Day, the leader in the race to recruit and hire as many clerks as possible, announced last month that it snagged 8 law clerks, all of whom worked for conservative justices during the term that began in October 2022.

...

"The recruitment is so competitive that signing bonuses for Supreme Court law clerks have reached a new high — $500,000, according to a spokeswoman for law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Such a sum far exceeds the salaries paid to the justices — the clerks’ former bosses — who are paid slightly less than $300,000 a year.

"The bonuses — alongside annual starting salaries of more than $200,000, which alone are nearly triple Americans’ median household income — are the product of a decades-long competition among elite law firms seeking any advantage they can find in arguing high-profile cases before the Supreme Court. They view the clerks’ experience and knowledge of the court as profitable assets that attract clients in a highly specialized sector of the law, and they see clerkships as effective filtering devices in identifying promising hires, according to interviews with former Supreme Court clerks, lawyers and experts."

Friday, January 26, 2024

The DOJ on competition for workers

 A lot of market design is done by regulators, and some of that is done to enforce existing laws.  Here's a report from the Department of Justice, focusing on four cases involving payment to workers (including authors of books).

Athey, Susan, Mark Chicu, Malika Krishna, and Ioana Marinescu. "The Year in Review: Economics at the Antitrust Division, 2022–2023." Review of Industrial Organization (2024): 1-20.

"In this review article, we report on five enforcement matters that expanded the scope of enforcement by the Division. The first four enforcement matters highlight a number of the Division’s actions to protect labor market competition in criminal and civil merger and non-merger cases. These include: criminal enforcement against a provider of contract health care staffing services that allocated nurse employees through a no-poaching agreement and agreed to fix the wages of those nurses; civil enforcement to stop an e-Sports league from effectively imposing a salary cap on its players; civil enforcement to stop a conspiracy among poultry processors to share information about worker compensation; and the successful challenge of a merger between two of the largest book publishers in the U.S., which preserved competition for books that will benefit authors."

Monday, October 31, 2022

Unraveling of the market for new law professors

 Kim Krawiec, a law professor who is among the most penetrating analysts of controversial markets and market practices, emails me about unraveling in the market for new law professors:

"prior to Covid, the AALS (American Association of Law Schools) ran a hiring process with a central meeting in Washington DC and nearly every law professor was hired through this process. During Covid, this of course stopped and has now been dropped (I think) permanently, so now schools are sort of making up their own schedules. Some schools are starting early and making exploding offers before other schools have even begun the process. The idea of exploding offers is not new — it happened before. Though some (mostly higher ranked schools) considered it bad form, other schools argued that they had to do it or would wind up hiring no one year after year as favored candidates accepted other jobs near the end of the season. But the physical meeting and control over the timing by the AALS at least posed a basic schedule. That now appears to be gone and people (both candidates and hiring committees) are up in arms. ... My guess (completely speculating) is that the interests of higher ranked and lower ranked schools are not aligned on this and that makes it harder to find a new equilibrium, but I don’t know."

*******

Law already 'enjoys' a number of unraveled markets, for law clerks, for associates (and summer associates) in law firms, and for articles in law reviews.  So I have to admit the prospects for preventing wholesale unraveling of the law professor market looks bleak, unless law schools can start to think outside of the box, perhaps e.g. by preparing to give offers to students who have already accepted exploding offers, if necessary to start in the following academic year...  

Maybe in that way the academic law community can start to come to some agreement on some  time, midway between early and late, in which offers should be made and during which they should be left open.

Saturday, September 3, 2022

Further unraveling of law firm offers to (first year) law students, and offers to new (first week) bankers from private equity

Eric Budish writes with a pointer to a Business Insider story on the current unraveling of the market for new lawyers and big law firms.

Inside the 'Wild West' of law-school recruiting that has Big Law reeling in talent earlier and more aggressively than ever

"this year, some legal-industry professionals say the competition has gotten out of control.

"Latham & Watkins, which hires about 300 students a year for its 10-week summer program, has told law schools that it has made 2023 summer-job offers to so many students ahead of the traditional period for on-campus interviews, or OCI, that it expects to conduct fewer OCI interviews this year, three people familiar with the firm's strategy said.

"Other elite firms — including Weil, Skadden, and Davis Polk — have also been making large numbers of early offers. At Simpson Thacher, a partner said, "We probably did half our interviewing before the formal OCI process."

"Working at a law firm after a student's second year, or 2L, has long been a rite of passage for students bound for Big Law. "Summer associates" are paid about $4,000 a week at top firms and get the chance to do legal research, eat nice meals on the company's dime, and meet the people they'll likely be working with after graduation — because upwards of 90% of them get an offer to return full time.

...

"Some law students are now entering recruiting talks in the spring of their 1L year. School administrators say it's often the students who get the ball rolling by submitting résumés via a firm's website after meeting a partner at a school meet and greet.

...

"Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania still ban pre-OCI recruiting, their websites said. Other schools require pre-OCI offers to stay open until OCI, so a student can compare firms. But not all firms respect the rules, and students sometimes are afraid to invoke them, said David Diamond, an assistant dean at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law.

"We've seen situations where a student receives an offer, and the offer deadline follows our policy, but the offer is accompanied by a diversity scholarship, and the diversity scholarship expires before or during" OCI, Diamond said.

...
"Some people trace the boom in early recruiting to a 2019 decision by the NALP to scrap rules that limited firms from courting first-semester law students. The rules were replaced by nonbinding guidelines."
**********
And even more frenzied are the job offers that new bankers (in their first week(s) on the job) are getting from private equity firms:

Wall Street just kicked off an annual Hunger Games-style recruiting ritual for junior talent that has young bankers interviewing till 2 a.m. for jobs that don’t start until 2024. https://advance.lexis.com/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:668V-4FD1-DXY7-W4MT-00000-00&context=1516831 

"As Insider reported on Tuesday, the frenzied process appears to have kicked off on Monday evening when recruiters for a handful of firms sent out blast emails to select junior bankers suggesting meetings ASAP — before the window of opportunity closes.

"The emails forced these young bankers — many of whom have just started their first Wall Street jobs at places like Goldman Sachs and Citi — to figure out ways to quietly leave their desks to interview for jobs that won't start until the fall of 2024. 
...
"In recent years, the PE recruiting process has moved earlier and earlier, from October to September, but never to late August, as it has done now. It's forcing firms to figure out how to interview candidates with no real job experience. "



Thursday, November 4, 2021

Lawsuits involving NKR's kidney exchange contracts

 Kim Krawiec, the Sullivan & Cromwell Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, sheds some light on recent legal exchanges between the kidney exchange nonprofit National Kidney Registry and some of the Transplant Centers that are (or were) members of its network. Both suits (which seem to have been settled out of court) involved the TC's desire to withdraw (or partially withdraw) from NKR's system, and NKR's attempt to charge them $1000/kidney/month in perpetuity (or until they supply the kidneys) for kidneys they received in excess of kidneys they supplied. (In particular, NKR wanted $8000 per month from Colorado forever, or until they supplied 8 kidneys.)  Her post is long and learned, and well worth reading in its entirety, but here are some snippets.

She leads off with this graphic of a judge's gavel hammering a stethoscope



Recent Contract Disputes In The Transplant World November 3, 2021 / By Kimberly Krawiec 

"Readers may be interested in two relatively recent lawsuits involving the National Kidney Registry (NKR) and the University of Colorado Hospital Authority (“UCH,” filed 3/26/21) and the University of Maryland Medical Center (“UMMC”, filed 4/2/2018), respectively. (Citations and links to both lawsuits are at the end of this post)

...

This option to specifically perform is interesting in its own right, and I may say more about it later, but what if a Member Center couldn’t deliver kidneys to the network, say because the UCH kidney transplant program had been closed? Or because they determined that kidney exchange was bad for their patients? In the event that delivering kidneys to NKR is impossible, is a court likely to award NKR these fees into perpetuity – a present value of nearly $5 million? (using an interest rate of 2%, which may understate the amount, given the current low interest rate environment)

"Under the penalty doctrine, NKR would have to describe its loss, and why $1000/kidney/month is a reasonable estimate of it, even if it can’t provide a precise amount. Here, the “in perpetuity” aspect may be troubling to courts, even if the present value is not high relative to whatever the alleged loss is, as it seems unlikely that NKR is harmed in perpetuity if a member center backs out.

...

"when federal law prohibits the exchange of valuable consideration for a kidney, by definition there is no market price for either the court or the contracting parties to reference. Here, the parties attempted to overcome that problem by specifying a recurring charge, but it’s continuation into perpetuity may raise eyebrows, even if the present value of the charges is otherwise reasonable.

***********

The various legal documents can be found at these links

https://kimberlydkrawiec.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Member-Terms-and-Conditions.pdf

 https://kimberlydkrawiec.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Complaint.pdf

 https://kimberlydkrawiec.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/May-7-motion-to-dismiss.pdf

 https://kimberlydkrawiec.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/1Summons-Complaint.pdf

***********

Given NKR's non-profit status, paragraph 30 of the Colorado complaint caught my eye:



Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Exploding offers of admission to Notre Dame Law School

Notre Dame Law School has apparently sent out more acceptance letters than it has positions, and the offers will expire automatically once sufficiently many students have accepted them by making a binding deposit.  Read on and see that there was also a threat to students who had been offered financial aid.  (I wonder if this will work out the way Notre Dame wants, or if enough law students are rich enough to make more than one deposit...)

 The blog "Above the Law' has the story:

Chaos Reigns: Notre Dame Law School Tells Non-Wealthy Students ‘Thanks, But No Thanks’ By Kyle McEntee and Sydney Montgomery

"Notre Dame makes application decisions on a rolling basis instead of a pre-selected date. Once an applicant is admitted, the school requires two deposits to confirm enrollment. Law schools have used this process (more or less) without incident for decades.

"Most law schools ask applicants to deposit by a certain date, traditionally mid-April to early May. Notre Dame’s first deadline was April 15 and required a $600 non-refundable deposit. Notre Dame’s offer letter, however, increased the pressure with an unusual warning. The school informed applicants that they had until the deadline or “when we reach our maximum number of deposits.

...

"For the applicants who received a scholarship offer, pressure mounted with a second warning.

"While most law schools frown on double-depositing (holding seats at more than one law school), Notre Dame warned scholarship recipients that they may lose their scholarship offer if the applicant also deposits at another school.

...

"In other words, if you want to come to our school at the price we’re offering, you’d better send us a non-refundable deposit now."


HT: Paul Kominers, Parag Pathak

********

I recall that decades ago, a certain midwestern Economics department (just) once made more offers of graduate fellowships than it had, with the fellowship offer expiring when enough acceptances had been received. No binding deposits were involved in that episode, however.


Monday, February 3, 2020

Unraveling of appellate court clerkships (only more so)

Steve Leider writes:

"I know you keep an eye on the unraveling of judicial hiring.  Listening to a podcast about the supreme court they gave an example of even more extreme advance hiring.  At about 51:30 minutes into this podcast (recorded at Michigan, ...) they talk about an Appeal's Court judge (Judge Katzmann, 2nd Circuit) currently hiring for the 2024 term.


 As one of the hosts noted - "A law student could get married, give birth, and have a baby - and the baby would be in pre-K before the clerkship even starts."



Thursday, October 11, 2018

An online spot market for lawyers

Need a lawyer, but not a big law firm?  A Britain-based firm, Lexoo, will recommend lawyers they think are appropriate for your case, and let you get bids from them online:

"Lexoo is an online platform for businesses, that lets you easily source and compare quotes from our curated network of specialised commercial lawyers and quality boutique firms, worldwide. Our team of ex-City lawyers with over 45 years of combined legal experience, ensure you only receive proposals from the most suitable lawyers for your work."

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Salaries of new lawyers at big law firms are on the move

After a long period of stagnation, salaries of lawyers in associate positions at large law firms recently started to move, and are climbing (probably in lockstep) once again.

Above the Law has the story:
New York To $190K — No, Cravath Didn’t Make The First Move
The next associate salary war is beginning.

and here:
Salary Wars Scorecard: Which Firms Have Announced Raises? (2018)

and here

The Billion-Dollar Biglaw Firms That Have NOT Raised Associate Salaries





See earlier posts:

Sunday, July 3, 2016

Friday, May 25, 2018

Some adult supervision of the law clerk hiring process


Kagan Says She'll 'Take Into Account' Whether Judges Follow New Clerk Hiring Plan

"U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan recently threw her support behind the new law clerk hiring plan by saying she will “take into account” in her own hiring whether judges and law schools comply with the new process
...
"Kagan’s message for her own chambers is likely to be heard coast to coast. In her nearly eight years on the high court, Kagan has hired clerks largely from the D.C. Circuit but also from the Fourth, Sixth and Ninth circuits and from judges across the ideological spectrum.

A former Harvard Law School dean and professor, Kagan is in a position to understand the effect on students of the former hiring process in which first-year students faced pressure to make clerkship commitments and law professors make recommendations “on less and less information,” Morrison said."
***********
see my earlier post

Tuesday, March 6, 2018



HT: Kim Krawiec

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Another New Federal Law Clerk Hiring (Pilot) Plan

Future law clerks who are already in their second or third year of law school have already been hired, but here's a plan to defer the hiring of those who just entered law school this year.  It will have implications for hiring starting in 2019, and again in 2020, after which it will be reviewed. (This will be the seventh such attempt to halt unraveling in this market since 1983.) The attempt to ban exploding offers is new...

The DC Circuit publishes the following announcement:
Notice of Adoption of the New Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan
February 2018


"Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan

Starting with students who entered law school in 2017, the application and hiring process will not begin until after a law student’s second year.

For students who entered law school in 2017 (graduating class of 2020): Judges will not seek or accept formal or informal clerkship applications, seek or accept formal or informal recommendations, conduct formal or informal interviews, or make formal or informal offers before June 17, 2019.

For students who enter law school in 2018 (graduating class of 2021): Judges will not seek or accept formal or informal clerkship applications, seek or accept formal or informal recommendations, conduct formal or informal interviews, or make formal or informal offers before June 15, 2020.

A judge who makes a clerkship offer will keep it open for at least 48 hours, during which time the applicant will be free to interview with other judges.

This is a two-year pilot plan. Participating judges will reconsider their participation after June 2020. A copy of the plan will be posted on the OSCAR website at https://oscar.uscourts.gov/federal_law_clerk_hiring_pilot."
**********

And it is now indeed on the OSCAR site: Federal Law Clerk Hiring Pilot
[OSCAR--the Online System for Clerkship Application and Review-- is a web based platform for the law clerk job market.]

HT: Kim Krawiec

Sunday, July 3, 2016

The market for first year lawyers: some top salaries are moving to 180K

After years at which top salaries for brand new lawyers at big firms were concentrated at $160,000, the magic number seems to be jumping to $180K.

See Above the Law: http://abovethelaw.com/2016/06/salary-wars-scorecard-which-firms-have-announced-raises/

************

See this earlier post: Wednesday, August 15, 2012 Salaries of new law grads

Sunday, November 8, 2015

More on (third party) litigation financing, including a medieval word, "champerty"

In the NY Times: Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit?
In recent years, investors have started buying shares in other people’s
litigation proceedings. Are they warping the legal system in the process?
By MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ

"Despite the hypercapitalist spirit of its rise, litigation finance actually has its roots in antiquity. According to Max Radin, a historian of ancient city-states, members of Athenian political clubs would back each other in lawsuits against their rivals. Apollodorus, a wealthy banker’s son, bought shares of lawsuits and hired professional orators — some of the earliest lawyers in Western history — to write his court speeches. The Romans tolerated the practice in some cases until the sixth century, when it was banned by Emperor Anastasius. The Roman taboo on litigation finance, Radin writes, sprang from the idea that ‘‘a controversy properly concerned only the persons actually involved in the original transaction,’’ not self-interested meddlers. In medieval England, litigants could hire ‘‘champions’’ to represent them in ‘‘trial by battle.’’ By the late 13th century, these strongmen were being compared to prostitutes, and their prevalence hastened the movement of dispute resolution to the courtroom. During the Middle Ages, this concept of ‘‘champerty’’ — assisting another person’s lawsuit in exchange for a share of the proceeds — emerged as part of the larger ecclesiastical taboo against usury. Though the word was associated with feudal land grabs, Radin notes that in practice, champerty was used by rich lawyers ‘‘on behalf of propertied defendants.’’ In 1787, Jeremy Bentham, the political philosopher, mocked prohibitions on champerty as a holdover from feudal days, where courts were beholden to ‘‘the sword of a baron, stalking into court with a rabble of retainers at his heels.’’
Nevertheless, a vestigial squeamishness about investing in lawsuits made its way across the Atlantic. The first such disputes, early in the 20th century, were over contingency fees, the practice, now common, of lawyers taking on a case in exchange for a percentage of future damages. Unlike England, which still caps fees for winning solicitors, America was open to this kind of payment structure, in keeping with its frontier ethic toward credit and speculation. Twenty-eight states now explicitly permit champerty, as long as funders do not act out of malice, back frivolous lawsuits or exert too much control over trial strategy."
****************

For previous posts on litigation financing, see here, here, and here.

Monday, October 5, 2015

how can David sue Goliath? A new marketplace for litigation funding

Justice and the courts are in principle available to all, but litigation is expensive. So it may be hard for a plaintiff of limited means (call him David) to receive justice by suing a defendant with deep pockets, such as an insurance company. That will be particularly true if the plaintiff's need is urgent, if the defendant can afford to delay the proceedings (and add to their expense) through legal maneuvering.

But firms that offer to finance lawsuits often have bad reputations, in part because lawsuits themselves often have bad reputations. So litigation financing has suffered from some repugnance, including legislation limiting it.

A new marketplace for litigation financing, called Mighty, has just been launched. It is intended to allow potential investors to bid to support meritorious cases, and thus bring some market discipline to the process.

I earlier had a chance to chat with one of its founders, Joshua Schwadron, who accompanied the launch with this essay: Power to the Plaintiff, from which these quotes are taken:

"Well aware of plaintiffs’ precarious situations, insurance companies often prolong the legal process, waging a war of attrition to get plaintiffs to accept quick, less-than-fair settlements. This happens even in the most clear-cut cases. It’s called “frivolous defense,” a phrase you will have heard much less frequently than “frivolous lawsuits,” even though many scholars believe it is the former that causes our courts to clog, not the latter. And frivolous defense works — it almost always does. It’s a systemic scandal.
The fundamental problem is that defendants enjoy what economists call“monopsony power.” Monopsony power is just like monopoly power, except that one buyer has all the market power instead of one seller. Essentially, the defendant is the only legally authorized “buyer” of the plaintiff’s liability claim. As Stephen Gillers, one of the most prominent legal ethicists in the United States, explains:
“[The defendant] is under no time pressure. It is, furthermore, the only authorized purchaser of [the plaintiff’s] claim, the only one allowed to bid on it. Now it requires no MBA to recognize that if one person is under duress and needs to sell something and another person is the only one legally allowed to buy it, the buyer has an enormous advantage.”
...
Plaintiff financing provides plaintiffs with funds that enable them to live their lives while they wait for fair settlement offers. It’s not a loan; it’s an investment, which yields a return to the investor only if a plaintiff’s case settles or is won.
...
"The insurance industry has consistently fought the adoption of plaintiff financing. Just last year, The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies awarded State Legislature of the Year Awards to three legislators who helped regulate plaintiff financing out of existence in Tennessee.
...
"If plaintiff financing is such a commonsense solution, why is it not more widespread? First, the market is nascent. A handful of early participants have been bad actors and stifled the practice’s growth by engaging in opaque tactics. Second, skeptics claim that plaintiff financing could lead to an increase in frivolous litigation. But in reality, empirical studies have shown that plaintiff financing does not increase non-meritorious litigation because investors are rational actors who invest only in the cases most likely to win. Finally, plaintiff financing can be rhetorically reduced to the “financing of lawsuits,” a description that is plagued by the ick factor and offends the sensibilities of many."
***************


Here is a WSJ blog post: Personal Injury Plaintiffs May Benefit from New Litigation Funding Marketplace

Here are some older links to litigation financing, and it's repugnance...

February 10, 2015  Updated 02/11/2015
Litigation-finance firms bet on the little guy
Hedge funds, private-equity players fund small businesses' lawsuits.

Litigation Finance Firm Raises $260 Million for New Fund

Litigation Financing Firm Exits Tennessee As New Law Goes Into Effect
By Andrew G. Simpson | July 3, 2014
By WILLIAM ALDEN

LITIGATION OR LAWSUIT FUNDING TRANSACTIONS 2014 LEGISLATION  summary of state laws

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Matching German lawyers to their first jobs

There's a lot of interesting market design problems being studied in Germany these days.  Here's a recent working paper from the Department of Economics at Humboldt University in Berlin:

Matching with Waiting Times: The German Entry-Level Labour Market for Lawyers by Philipp D. Dimakopoulos and C.-Philipp Heller


Sunday, April 27, 2014

Law clerk hiring

Over at Concurring Opinions a little while ago was this :The Law Clerk Hiring Process – An Interview with Federal Judge Thomas Ambro

Question: How far in advance do you select your clerks?  Some federal judges are now hiring two years in advance?  What is your current practice?
Answer:  Right now (March 2014) I have all positions filled for the 2014-’15 and the 2015-’16 terms.  I also have two clerks committed for the 2016-’17 term. My typical lead time for a clerk is two years. That may mean that a clerk will be at least a year removed from law school when she or he begins working in my chambers. That time is usually spent in another clerkship (almost always a District Court clerkship, though on two occasions it has been another Circuit Court clerkship), with a law firm, or sometimes both another clerkship and work in a law firm.
....
"In addition to letters of recommendation, I welcome calls from recommenders. That tells me that the recommender is willing to put her or his reputation on the line for the applicant, something I value highly. It is also a great shortcut to my becoming aware of good applicants.
Question: Apart from typos or grammatical errors, what is the most common mistake that applicants make?
Answer: In addition to believing that a high-profile recommender is preferable to one who knows you better, the most common mistake I observe is when an applicant feigns interest in a particular judge. When the hiring plan was in place, you could discover that very quickly. If calls or emails by judges to an applicant were not to be made before a set time on a particular day and I got my calls or emails sent out timely, I could tell who was interested by how quickly they responded. If an applicant got back to me within half an hour, she or he was interested.  If that person got back to me hours later, I was “low on their totem pole.” Now that the hiring protocols are discontinued, it becomes harder to know who is interested. That is yet another reason why I try to get as much information as I can from persons who recommend applicants.
...
Question: I see that as of February 13, 2014, the Administrative Office of the Courts has discontinued the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan. How do you feel about that?
Answer: I wish that there would be a plan in place. The hiring plan that was in place had many flaws, including making hiring season a frenetic chase for information and significant gaming of the system. That said, there was at least some organization.  I wish judges would be willing to consider something akin to the match system that exists for those in the medical profession. There would be a period for interviewing applicants (preferably after the 2L grades are out), both the judges and the applicants would prioritize their preferences and submit them to a central place, and those preferences would be dealt with by an algorithm in a computer program. No doubt that system could be “gamed” as well—for example, by having a recommender or other school official gauge a judge’s interest in an applicant, and vice versa, before the preference picks are submitted. That is not bad, however, as it is a good way to determine which applicants are truly interested in clerking for me.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Race based admissions, and the search for plaintiffs

The NY Times has an interesting story that touches on various transactions that some people regard as repugnant...in this case, race-based university admissions, and lawyers advertising for clients...

The story focuses on Edward Blum, the legal activist who has been at the forefront of the battle against using race as a criterion in admissions to American colleges and universities. Now he's looking for plaintiffs who think that some universities might be ignoring recent rulings.

"Admissions letters have just gone out, and there is no particular reason to think the court’s decision in Fisher v. University of Texas affected how students were selected. And the lawsuits Mr. Blum predicted have not materialized.
There are reasons for that, Mr. Blum told me last week. One is that it is hard to find plaintiffs willing to call attention to having been rejected by a prestigious institution, to blame that rejection on race discrimination and to persevere through years of litigation.
...
But Mr. Blum does not give up easily. He is launching a series of websites seeking plaintiffs.
“Were you denied admission to the University of North Carolina?” one asks. “It may be because you’re the wrong race.”
...
"Civil rights movements have long recruited plaintiffs, and so the sites may be said to be part of a proud tradition. But some may detect a whiff of the personal injury lawyer about them."

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan is officially over

Here is the official announcement, dated January 13, 2014:

To: All United States Judges
From: Judge John D. Bates
RE: LAW CLERK HIRING (INFORMATION)

In accordance with recommendations made by the Online System for Clerkship
Application and Review (OSCAR) Working Group (Working Group), I am writing to inform
you that the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan has effectively been discontinued and no further
dates are being set in connection with that plan.
I also have adopted the Working Group’s recommendation that there be a phased
approach for opening OSCAR to law school students in 2014. The Administrative Office
will open OSCAR to rising second-year law school students in a read-only capacity effective
June 1, 2014, and permit them to build and finalize clerkship applications effective August 1,
2014. Third-year law school students and alumni will continue to have full access to OSCAR
year-round.
The Working Group judges have developed a list of Federal Law Clerk Hiring Best
Practices to support transparency in the hiring process. In addition, the Working Group is
asking the National Association for Law Placement to create a list for judges of
recommendations regarding clerkship recruiting best practices from the law school
perspective. The Administrative Office will post the list in OSCAR. I hope you will find
both lists helpful in determining your clerkship recruitment and hiring practices.
The Judiciary supports a transparent clerkship recruitment and hiring process, and
OSCAR plays a valuable role in ensuring transparency. OSCAR’s online application process
eliminates paper and saves court staff time. Using OSCAR adds diversity to judges’
applicant pools and enables judges to electronically manage a large volume of applications
through search and sort features. I encourage you to use OSCAR to post your hiring
practices. To register for an OSCAR account, please visit the OSCAR registration page.


HT: Catherine Rampell

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Congestion in the market for law internships in Israel

Aviad Heifetz points me to an article in the Haaretz magazine, on law clerks (in Hebrew, but Google Translate makes it clear enough that they are talking about congestion (apparently after a period of unraveling): http://www.themarker.com/law/1.2151631

"The new rules stipulate that law firms will not be able to interview candidates to specialize before 15 March in the third year of undergraduate law students.
In March the new rules came into effect and the change was felt immediately. That day open all major law firms in the competition for employment outstanding students. Race interviews lasted for a few intense days. Although March 15 falls on a Friday this year many offices were assembly-line interviews and ambitious students frantically moved from office to office.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Law firm hiring bonuses for supreme court clerks

Above the Law has the story:
There hasn’t been much major good news on the associate compensation front over the past few years — since, say, January 2007. But recent weeks have brought pockets of minor good news for limited constituencies. Green shoots, anyone?
In Miami, Greenberg Traurig raised starting salariesby 16 percent, from $125,000 to $145,000. In New York, Sullivan & Cromwell and Skadden Arps started offering $300,000 signing bonuses to Supreme Court clerks.
And now $300K bonuses for SCOTUS clerks have spread, to other law firms in other cities. Consider this the new going rate for top-shelf talent….
Multiple clerks from the October Term 2012 class have received offers of $300,000 signing bonuses, from the following firms:
  • Gibson Dunn
  • Jones Day
  • Munger Tolles
  • Paul Weiss
  • Skadden Arps
  • Sullivan & Cromwell
And The Economist follows up: The curiously strong market for Supreme Court clerks

AMERICA’S chief justice earns $224,618 a year. The other eight Supreme Court judges pocket $214,969. Nice work if you can get it, but paltry compared with the sums law firms are offering to the judges’ clerks—lawyers in their mid-to-late twenties who take a year-long post—to secure their services.

Earlier this month two big firms, Skadden Arps and Sullivan & Cromwell, set a new record in the bidding war by offering signing bonuses of $300,000. Combined with the base salary for third-year “associates” (the rank at which they typically enter a firm) and a modest end-of-year bonus, clerks can now take home $500,000 in their first year of private employment.
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Perhaps the main reason for the ongoing bidding war is the inflexibility of pay scales at the law firms. The industry has barely budged from an age-old practice in which those on the lower rungs of lawyerdom are paid strictly according to their years of experience. This rule does not apply to court clerks’ signing bonuses, so these are a means of buying in talent without breaking a professional taboo. It would of course be more sensible to scrap such “lockstep” pay scales entirely. Jones Day, a prominent Washington firm, has done so. But lawyers are creatures of habit, and few other firms have followed.