To Everything there is a Season

Obviously it has been a while since I have posted on this blog. Why is that? I suppose it is because I have accomplished much of what I wanted to with Law Career Blog as a solo blog. I felt I had important things to say on teaching and classroom etiquette; on law career decisions; on law firm practice; on mentoring, and more. And I have said many of them, so there you have it.

I am very pleased, though, that my posts continue to draw strong traffic month after month, year after year. What I have said here remains relevant, I think--but that does not mean I need to always rehash the same ground, all in the name of having new posts just for the sake of it.

So for now, my existing posts stand for what they are, and I am proud of them. Call me the Antiblogger, I suppose: I am blogging by not blogging.

In any event, the following is a list of posts that have generated the most interest from readers, some posts on subjects I think are particularly important, and some that are just fun. Enjoy!

Posts on Law School in General:

In a series of posts, I argued that if we want law schools to truly provide the academic and practical education that students (and employers) expect and demand, we should consider adding a fourth year to the law school curriculum. Not surprisingly, my proposal was universally condemned. Check out the comments.

See Is the Third Year of Law School a Waste of Time and Money? and Is Law School Itself a Waste of Time?

I think that too often, law students don't step back and think about law school and their future careers in a broader perspective. That's understandable given the workload in law school, but it's still unfortunate. My friend and colleague Gene Theroux visited Mississippi College School of Law once to speak to students about his storied career--he opened the first western law firm offices in China and the Soviet Union--and he had wonderful advice for them. Ostensibly the talk was about globalization, but the heart of his message was to follow your heart and practice law the right way and for the right reasons. Sometimes we need to put our cynicism aside and hear things like what he said that day.

See Theroux Part Deux

Posts on LL.M. Degrees:

This trilogy of posts is perhaps the most popular series of posts on this blog--which proves that good things really do come in threes. Lots of discussion in the comments. See The Pros and Cons of LL.M.s, LL.M. Redux and LL.M.s Part 3.

Posts on Law School Exams, Teaching, and Class Strategies

Bainbridge v. Bowman. I wrote a law review article entitled The Comparative and Absolute Advantages of Junior Law Faculty: Implications for Teaching and the Future of American Law Schools--a piece I am quite proud of. In it, I use traditional neoclassical trade theory to analyze the advantages of junior and senior law faculty and make some recommendations regarding law school teaching. Professor Stephen Bainbridge of UCLA saw it, and he absolutely hated it. This posts includes our dialogue.

How to Improve your Law School Exams Grades. This wasn't a terribly controversial post--or so I thought until I received scathing comments two years after I posted it. Some fun back and forth on that one. Maybe I should've retitled the post Bowman v. Someone Very Angry.

Law School Orientation Advice. Pretty self-explanatory. My own favorite piece of advice: Don't spill a plate of food on your law school dean at the welcome reception. I actually did that--but lucky for me, I still graduated.

Computer-Free Week and Computer-Free Week, Part 2. There is a good deal of concern in the legal academy about computer use in the classroom. Is it beneficial? Is it harmful or disruptive? So one time I asked students not to use computers for one week to see what would happen. The results were pretty interesting, and as a teacher I found the feedback via the comments very useful. Perhaps the most interesting result was that student comments revealed just how prevalent the consumer mentality is among students--namely, I paid my tuition, so I can do what I want in class.

The Dilbertic Method. I definitely like this post about parallels between Dilbert's boss and the Socratic method. If you want to see the Dilbert cartoon I am talking about, you have to click the link in the article and then enter in the cartoon's run date on the Dilbert site.

Posts on Law Firms:

Much of the attraction to, and frustration with, big law firms has to do with the money they pay their associates. So I wrote some pieces on that subject--something I have firsthand knowledge about.

See Of Law Firm Culture and Compensation Schemes, The Problem of Law Firm Salary Distributions, and Big Firm Economics 101.

In another post, I wrote about associate pay and stress levels. In light of the recent savage downturn in the employment market, this post is perhaps more relevant than ever. See Why Associates Have More Stress than Partners.

On Interview and Job Strategies and Techniques

Job Interview Do's and Don't's. The name of the post says it all.

What NOT to do as a Summer Associate. You'd be surprised what some people do. Don't be one of them.

Posts on Movies:

Finally, I have had some fun with movies on this blog, and for some reason they were always movies starring George Clooney. First, I blogged about Syriana--see Syriana Misrepresents International Lawyers.

Then I wrote a whole slew of posts on Michael Clayton--a movie that had a lot to say about what it is (and is not) like to be a lawyer. I was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune about the Michael Clayton series of posts. See the following (not too originally entitled) posts:

Clooney v. Clayton, which is my review of the movie

Clooney v. Clayton, Part 2, about hyperbole in legal dramas

Clooney v. Clayton, Part 3, on whether there is such a thing as a law firm "fixer"

Clooney v. Clayton, Part 4, on the perverse incentive/reward structure of law practice

Clooney v. Clayton, Part 5, on how law practice affects your family life

Clooney v. Clayton, Part 6, regarding legal ethics

Clooney v. Clayton--Again, regarding my Chicago Tribune Interview

* * * *

So for now, that is where things stand. I hope you enjoy reading these posts as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Greg

Revenge of the Temps

In February 2008, I wrote a post about temps entitled Attorneys Suitable for Everyday Use. It was one of the posts I was particularly pleased with at the time--and I was pleased to receive a very interesting comment on that post earlier this week. The full comment is as follows. My comments are interposed in brackets.

Begin Comment:

I quit my associate job a few years ago and have been temping ever since.

I love it and hope the pattern continues.

I work 3-4 months out of the year and then spend the rest of the time out of the US (where the local wage is much lower -- preferably by a factor of 3 or 4 times cheaper) doing what I want to do (e.g., ski instructor, language study, intensive yoga retreats in India, or hanging out on a beach enjoying life. [I had a number of friends in Europe who lived like this and loved it. Their philosophy was, "why work like a dog to retire early in your 50s and live on the beach, when you can do it right now? You might be dead before 50 for all you know.] In effect, legal temping has allowed me to do now what the average associate is planning to do when they retire at 40 or 50. [News flash: No one retires from law practice at 40. You may change careers, but you don't retire. And virtually no one retires at 50--and certainly no one I know.]

Moreover, every time I come back the temp salaries are higher and the market becomes more specialized. This is great for me, now I can make more money in a shorter period of time. [Law temping is certainly more lucrative than the teaching and table-waiting jobs my Eurofriends did in between their stints leaving in cheaper locales.] Additionally, the firms generally offer full time positions (litigation assistants) to temp attorneys who perform well. So, when I decide to go back to a career, I can get a job as a litigation assistant and then after a year or so, get an associate position at a mid-sized firm. Or, if I decide to go [and] open a law firm with a partner, temping allows one of the partners to work and fund the firm while the other one takes care of the clients. [The only downside with this approach to going back to a firm is that it is harder to get into blue-chip law firms from temping positions--although I have in fact seen it done. But if you don't want to do that to begin with, that's not really a downside, is it?]

Also, even though the salaries are lower than what an associate would make, you have to figure the associate is paying huge amount of taxes. By temping 3-4 months out of the year, I pay a lot less in taxes. [This point actually does not make much sense to me--you're still keeping more of the money, right? But I suppose the point is valid from a Laffer Curve perspective.]

I'm very happy as a temp attorney and hope the legal temping trend will continue. [I love happy endings, especially when they concern legal careers. Too often we end up griping about law careers--me included. It's nice to hear a happy story from a satisfied and fulfilled attorney. Thanks for sharing your story.]

More on the College Cost Reduction and Access Act

So after a very busy April and de facto blog holiday (blogiday?), I'm back to posting. Among other things, I will be taking a group of law students to Seoul, Korea to study this summer. That will be a lot of fun and the source of posts over the summer. But today's topic is something I have posted on in the past: law school debt and the College.

In September 2007 I blogged about the College Cost Reduction and Access Act (CCRA), which has been hailed in many quarters as "the single largest investment in higher education since the GI Bill." There's been a lot written about it; a good place to start, I suppose, is my September post, which gives a summary and links to some other very useful information online.

And then there's the recent post on the CCRA by nonprofit lawyer and blogger Fannie, who runs the blog Fannie's Room. Her comments on the CCRA are great (and more than a little frustrating. Anyone interested in the CCRA and student debt loads definitely needs to check it out.

More posts soon.

Interviewing Techniques Talk

I recently gave a talk at Mississippi College School of Law on interviewing techniques. The video is available online here. It's been broken into chapters for ease of viewing; it also can be viewed in its entirety if you prefer. I've used these techniques myself on the legal job market, and I really do believe they make a big difference.

Previously I posted similar advice on this blog in written form. That post, Job Interview Do's and Don't's, can be found here.

As always, I appreciate any comments, suggestions, and/or war stories from your interviewing experiences that you may have, and I am sure other readers will too.

Partner Pay

In my last post, Attorneys Suitable for Everyday Use, I wrote about the growing prevalence of contract attorneys at U.S. law firms. It's my position that the use of such temp workers is part of a larger trend at major U.S. firms. That is, it appears to me that law firm employment at all levels--including equity partner, non-equity partner/of counsel, and associate positions--is becoming less financially lucrative than it has been for the past two decades.

An article in the February 5, 2008, ABA Journal backs this view up. The article reports that at the law firm of Greenberg Traurig, equity partner compensation is being frozen for the time being. In one sense, this is nothing new: as part owners of the firm, equity partners reap the rewards of huge profits when they occur, but they bear the risk of shortfalls. On the other hand, the fact that clients are increasingly conscious of legal costs means firms are increasingly constrained in terms of raising billing rates or billing their clients for more hours. The fact that mid-sized regional firms can increasingly compete with national firms in many areas of practice (e.g., corporate M&A, major projects, litigation, even international trade law) puts further downward pressure on fees. And as I said in my previous post, one way to reduce costs (and thus maintain profit margins) is to use cheaper lawyers. Enter the contract attorney.

This ABA Journal article is just one piece of evidence, and it can be dangerous to reason from the specific (Greenberg Traurig's decision) to the general (the legal market at large). But this piece of evidence does support my view that the times they are a-changing. And it is my belief that similar decisions are being made at other U.S. law firms--they're just not making headlines.

Attorneys Suitable for Everyday Use

Over at JDWired, blogger Joe Miller has a post about a contract attorney survey he recently conducted via his blog. For the uninitiated, a contract attorney is not a lawyer who practices contract law. Rather, it's someone who is hired on a temporary basis to help with a particular project. Synonyms include "document review attorney" and "temp(orary) attorney." Contract attorney work is not all that glamorous, it pays less, and there is (by definition) not a lot of job security involved. But it's work, and in a tight job market that's something. I previously blogged about contract attorney work here.

The findings of Miller's survey are interesting. Here's the gist of his post and his findings.

(1) 44% of contract attorneys (responding to the survey) were minorities. By contrast, only 16.72% of the associates and 5.01% of the partners at the firms these contract attorneys were working at were minorities. That's disturbing.

(2) Almost all said that their staffing (temp) agencies provide no access to professional development programs. Not so good for the attorneys, and potentially bad for the agencies as well.

(3) About half said they had worked as contract attorneys for more than one year after graduating from law school, and that the work was their "primary source of income."

(4) Staffing agencies typically do not provide health care. And since contract attorneys are temps, they generally won't get healthcare through the firms they work for either.

Miller concludes that "[c]ontract attorneys are an untapped resource both for improving diversity and reducing skyrocketing client costs." He then notes that "[t]he ABA’s 1992 MacCrate Report urges the legal profession to invest in all lawyers. So far, we are not seeing that."

In a sense, what Miller's survey points out--to me anyway--is that the phenomenon of the contract attorney is part of a larger restructuring of the U.S. legal job market. That is:

(1) Partnership is becoming ever harder to get, with billable targets being raised. At the same time, it is perhaps getting less lucrative. So fewer people seem to be going that route--either by choice, or because they are denied full partnership.

(2) Non-equity partnership positions (and Of Counsel positions, which are much the same thing) are becoming more attractive long-term positions. They are attractive both for people who want to avoid the equity partner rat race as well as (by default) those do not win it. But many of these positions are also getting less lucrative, as firms restructure their non-equity partner/Of Counsel contracts.

(3) Associates at big law firms make scads of money, but the positions can be hard to get in this tight job market. There's ever-increasing pressure to bill more hours, and there are reduced chances at partnership (see above), so people tend to rotate out of associate jobs after a few years.

(4) All of the above mean that contract attorneys may have a larger role to play in contemporary law firms. Contract attorneys are of course cheaper than any of the above. Firms can lower their bottom line by hiring contract attorneys to do the "lower end" legal work that needs to be done. (For insight into such work, see this post on My Attorney Blog.) And as Miller points out, not only can firms lower their own wage costs (read: increase their profits), but they also can bill these contract attorney out at lower rates--which will help keep these firms price-competitive vis à vis the competition. With an economy teetering on recession and legal work being not only outsourced but even offshored, this is no small consideration.

Sinking and Swimming

There is a good deal of discussion these days about the “death of mentoring” in law practice. I have blogged about this subject previously (see here and here). Discussions about mentoring generally assume that while there used to be mentoring, there there’s not much anymore—with the effect being that associates are left to sink or swim on their own in practice.

That would be bad enough. But a recent article in the NY Lawyer points out that not only are associates often thrown into the deep end of the law practice pool, without any real mentoring or assistance, but that sometimes mentors actively try to try to sink associate careers. (Note: You need to register in order to view NY Lawyer articles, but registration is free.)

This sort of sacrificial phenomenon is not new. It is human nature for people to take credit and pass blame. To analogize to economic wage theory, one might say that in the employment context, credit is sticky downward (in that it tends not to flow down the chain of command from supervisors to underlings), while blame is sticky upward.

So if all of this is nothing new, why was this article written, and why does it resonate with readers? A cynical answer is that news topics, like history, tend to repeat. And in fact the NY Lawyer article itself is a reprint from Texas Lawyer and is also reprinted in the ABA Journal.) A more satisfactory explain, however, is that the economics of modern law firms—especially large ones—tend to mask this age-old problem. Perhaps we implicitly assume that since associates can make partners a lot of money, they are less likely to be sabotaged. And maybe that assumption is flawed. So this is a topic worth exploring more.

Law Firm Economics 101

I have blogged about the economics of modern law firms before (see for example here, here and here). There is a lot of money to be made in the modern practice of law, at least at large law firms. At the right firm, in the right market, in the right practice area, lawyers can become very, very rich by working very, very hard. And we more or less have bought into the notion of the “sweat shop” law firm. (By “bought in” I certainly do not mean “approve of”; rather, I mean that this conception of the large law firm is generally accepted as a standard one by many observers.)

The idea is that there is a pyramid structure to most law firms, with multiple associates for each partner. En route to partnership many associates will be weeded out, either through self-selection or by the firm, so that at the top of the pyramid we generally find a small number of partners who reap the benefits of a large number of toiling associates. If you do the math, it becomes apparent that partners at the top of the heap can do quite well compensation-wise. And with a steady stream of newly-minted law school graduates coming into practice, new lawyers can be worked very hard until they burn out, and then be replaced. This is neither a pretty nor happy model, but from the perspective of senior partners it works well financially.

The Phenomenon of "De-Mentoring"

So we can complain about this system, and we can bemoan the lack of mentoring at law firms. But why on earth would a law firm partner actively work to skewer a junior associate? Why would the partner steal the junior associate’s business, or pass blame, or take credit for the junior associate’s work? Don't partners make more money if associates are left alone to work hard, instead of actively impeded? Doesn’t it behoove partners to let some of the associates win the game? After all, if there is no chance of upward mobility, there is little incentive for associates to buy into the system.

There are many answers to these questions, and the answers will vary somewhat from firm to firm. But I have two general observation about such “de-mentoring.”

First, law firm partnership is not Shangri-La(w). The perception of some associates is that once you achieve partnership, your new address is “123 Easy Street.” Not so. One former colleague of mine described making partner as a twelve year-long pie-eating contest in which the prize for winning is a lifetime supply of pie. That’s a very apt description. Partners in big law firms work very, very hard, and they typically are expected to bill and bring in a lot of new business even after making partner. Those who do not are at the very least politically marginalized in their firms, and at most are forced to retire or resign.

So what if you are a senior partner who cannot keep up with the workload, for whatever reason? You do whatever is needed. The law firm may benefit more from rewarding hardy survivalist associates—but you benefit from surviving yourself, even at the expense of the firm and some associates. And since modern law firms, with their revolving door of junior associates, tend to discourage long-term working relationships and encourage (by default) an “us versus them” mentality amongst colleagues, too often there is little to prevent such behavior.

Second, how do you winnow the wheat from the chaff when there is no chaff? Large, blue chip firms attract an enormous number of highly talented and ambitious young associates. A process of natural selection, via survival of the fittest, is not a good way to weed out associates when all of them are fit. (Figuratively fit, of course—who has time to go to the gym when practicing law?)

So while there are surely instances of overt backstabbing or betrayal (see above), I think a more common event is the use of a minor mistake—or even ordinary performance (instead of extraordinary performance)—as a pretext for distinguishing between two equally qualified and deserving associates who are working pretty much equally as hard. In some cases, partners might even create artificial distinctions between associates—such as by talking down one associate’s work—in order to justify such an artificial choice.

These factors go to show that the interests of partners and associates often diverge, and that this can have an effect in the mentoring context. In fact, the labor-versus-management dynamic and the endless hours worked by associates suggest very strongly that the Marxist critique of capitalism is quite relevant in this context. (For excellent discussions of this very topic, see posts by David Luban at Balkanization and by Paul Secunda at Workplace Prof Blog.) For now though, it is simply important to bear in mind that when you are a junior associate, the worst your mentor can do is not just to ignore you. Rather, the worst is that your mentor might actively de-mentor you.

Law Firm Partnership: What's in a Name?

I received a comment to my last post that was way off point, but which had two virtues: one, the commenter admitted it was off topic; and two, it was on an interesting subject that is important for law students to understand. So I have made this question the subject of today's post.

Here was the commenter's question:

While off topic, I heard something that is law career material--Is it true that once you make partner you have to pay your own benefits?

The short answer is "Yes." Once you are a full partner at a law firm, you pay your own benefits. But short answers are boring, and the reasons behind this answer are quite interesting. So let me explain.

When you are a law firm partner, you are a part-owner of the firm. That's true regardless of how the firm is structured--be it a regular partnership or something else (limited liability partnership, limited liability company, corporation, etc.). Law firms are structured in all different ways, and in fact calling law firms "partnerships" is increasingly inaccurate, as many (including my old firms) restructure for liability purposes. So the term "partner" is often used solely for the sake of convention. In fact, some firms even forgo the term and call their partners "shareholders."

When you work at a company, who pays your benefits? The owners, that's who. So as a law firm partner, you pay your own benefits. Bear in mind, however, that you also reap the rewards of high profits when times are good. Of course, you also share the risks/losses when times are bad--and this sharing of loss is one of the reasons that many larger firms have restructured as non-partnership entities that allow for limitation of liabilities. Remember that general partnerships are pass-through entities, so that all risks pass, jointly and severally, to the partners. That means that if a true partnership law firm goes belly up, the associates get fired--but the partners can lose everything. I know people who have experienced that.

Another very interesting thing to bear in mind about law firm partnership is that a lot of people who carry the title "partner" are not really partners or owners of the firm. This is the phenomenon of the two-tier partnership. These people are held out to the public as "partners," and they do partner-level work, but they do not (yet) own a stake in the firm. Instead, they have employment contracts with the firm (unlike associates, who are "at will" employees).

Cynical readers might think that the two-tier partnership structure is a way to lengthen the track to partnership. They might also view it as a way for a firm to get all of the benefits of calling non-equity (non-owner) attorneys "partners" so they can charge their clients more, but not have to pay those lawyers full partner rates. In my opinion, those cynics are exactly right. It is no accident or coincidence that as the practice of law became much more profitable in the 1980s and 1990s, partnership became harder to get at many firms. During my years in practice I saw things change dramatically. Partnership tracks became longer, and the requirements to make full partner became more and more onerous. So onerous, in fact, that more and more non-equity partners (read: partners who are not really partners) are opting to stay that way. They are, in other words, lawyers with long-term contracts with their firms, and they do excellent work and get paid very well. But they are not partners. (Which means, of course, that they do not have to pay their own benefits.) Personally, I think that if law firms could do it, we'd be seeing "three-tier" partnership tracks.

So my advice to any law student on the job market--in any job market, big or small--is to ask, during interviews, about the firm's partnership structure. Pick your moment carefully. Perhaps you shouldn't ask during a screening interview, when you are gunning for the call-back interview at the firm's office. But if the moment seems right during the call-back, ask. Be polite and genuinely curious--after all, you want to work there, so you want to know how the place works, right? And if the answer contains descriptions like "two-tier partnership" or "non-equity partners" or the like, you'll know you are dealing with a firm with a protracted partnership track that has two steps. In many markets, that is the industry standard. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, however, is probably the subject of a separate post.

Interesting New Career Blog

In my last post I talked about contract attorney career options and a blog called My Attorney Blog. This post is about another interesting new blog on the subject of alternative career options for lawyers. Making the Jump is a blog run by recent law school graduate Karen Eaton, and it is devoted to the subject of law career changes. So it is definitely up my alley, and so far Eaton has written some interesting posts. It's a blog I'll be keeping my eye on, and I have added it to my blogroll.

Contract Attorney Blog

I recently became aware of a relatively new blog called My Attorney Blog. It's written by a contract attorney in Washington, D.C., and it provides an on-the-ground view of life as a contract attorney. As one post on the blog points out, there aren't many blogs written by contract attorneys for contract attorneys, so this is a nice resource on the subject. For those unfamiliar with the term "contract attorney," it means a lawyer who is hired on a per-project basis. When the project is done, the lawyer does not stay with the firm. In essence, it is temp work.

On the one hand, this might sound like not very attractive work, and it might not be your cup of tea. The work stream is unpredictable (see this post), and the work is not always terribly glamorous (see here). And a commonly asked (and unfair) question is, "why don't you get a real job?" (see here) So why might someone consider a career as a contract attorney--either as a stop-gap option, or as a more strategic career choice?

The value of the stop-gap option is pretty easy to figure out. Jobs are scarce, and food and rent cost money. But contract attorney work also can be a good strategic move, as well as a good move from a work-life balance point of view. You have the option (assuming you have the money) to say no to an unattractive project. If you want experience in a particular area of the law that uses contract attorneys on a regular basis--such as large-scale litigation--then contract attorney work is a way to gain such experience. Also, sometimes contract attorneys get hired permanently by the firms or companies that use them on a temp basis; I have friends who have successfully gone that route.

I also think that working as a contract attorney can be a way to break into an unfamiliar market. What if you recently graduated from a regional law school and want to move to an entirely different area of the country, but have few or no contacts there? Contract attorney work can enable you to make the move. You can pay the bills, get situated in your new location, and try to make some contacts. It might not be easy, but it is virtually impossible to make contacts when you are located thousands of miles away. It takes more than a little courage to make that sort of leap, and there is no guarantee of success--but if you don't make the leap, then failure is guaranteed.

I have added My Attorney Blog to my blogroll and recommend it as a good source of anecdotal insight into the contract attorney world.

Of Globalism and Localism

This past week was an interesting one for me--a study in contrasts. In my 1L class we had a computer-free week, which was something different (and not necessarily popular--more on that in my next post). Outside the classroom, I participated in two very different events that struck deep chords in me, and they are the subjects of this post.

The first event took place the evening of Thursday, October 11, 2007, at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. I spoke there as part of a panel of international law and international trade practitioners and scholars. The panel addressed the subject of international law career options. Other members of the panel included Loyola NO alumns and other practitioners, including Tom Morante of Jones Walker in Miami, as well as Professor Günther Handl of Tulane University Law School and Professor Larry Catá Backer of Penn State's Dickinson School of Law (currently visiting at Tulane). (Check out Professor Catá Backer's excellent blog, Law at the End of the Day, and his "About Me" page.) This panel, entitled Jus Gentium ("the law of nations"), was hosted by Loyola NO's newly re-formed student International Law Society (the society fell by the wayside after Hurricane Katrina).

As I listened to questions posed by the very diverse and accomplished students in the audience, and to the answers and comments from other members of the panel, I was struck by how extraordinarily complex, nuanced and rich the field of international law practice is. I know this, of course, and yet I still find myself moved by it. The feeling flashed me back to occasions in my law practice when I would be struck unexpectedly--and quite hard--by how rarified the intellectual atmosphere was where I worked.

The second event took place the very next night in Jackson, Mississippi. It was the Mississippi Center for Justice's 2007 Champions of Justice Dinner, and I was in attendance as the faculty adviser for Mississippi College School of Law's student Public Interest Law Group. The dinner drew public interest attorneys and supporters from all over Mississippi, and indeed the nation; from public interest organizations involved in Mississippi (much of it being post-Katrina relief work); from law schools (including Mississippi College School of Law and the University of Mississippi School of Law); and from law firms. The dinner was in honor of two strong contributors to public interest and social justice in Mississippi:

• Professor Deborah H. Bell of the University of Mississippi School of Law, who runs that school's well-respected Civil Legal Clinic. The clinic has been particularly active since Hurricane Katrina, and Professor Bell was honored for her many contributions to public interest law in the state.
• Hon. Rueben V. Anderson, who was the first African-American to graduate from the University of Mississippi School of Law and was Mississippi's first African-American Supreme Court justice. The program for the dinner aptly noted that while Justice Anderson "has been called a witness to history, [ ] his true role has been as a maker of history."

The dinner also featured an excellent slide show on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the many legal and personal challenges faced by the storm's survivors on the coast and elsewhere.

I think the Champions of Justice Dinner was moving for everyone, but for me the contrast between the themes of this event and the Loyola NO forum could not have been starker. On Thursday, I was discussing the richness and complexity of international legal practice. On Friday I was talking about people who need help getting legal representation to obtain enough food stamps. Quite the contrast.

Obviously, the contrast between these two events is a good reminder of why it is so important for lawyers to do some public service work, no matter what they do in practice. It keeps us grounded, and it gives us better perspective on the law and our legal practices. But it also served to remind me, again, of the importance of doing things in your career that you believe in.

I believe in the richness and the potential of international law. Globalization has its perils, but it also has its enormous upsides, and we are in need of responsible, dedicated lawyers who believe in what they are doing, and why. It's global service, if you will, and if that sounds quixotic or overly idealistic, so be it.

I also believe in the importance of local service. There are many, many people who need our help as lawyers, and there are many ways to get involved. And even for overly busy people, it is quite possible that taking on even more obligations of this sort can be a way to soothe the soul, not aggravate it. A way to meaningfully give back of our talents.

So for me, the global and local activities I am involved in are the best of two very different worlds. They are a study in contrasts, but when juxtaposed as they were last week, they fit together quite well.

Law Firm Salary Distributions, Part 2

The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog had a good post today entitled The Dark Side of the Legal Job Market. It concerns law firm salaries and the disparity between the top of the class and the rest of the class--and also between top schools and regional schools. The gist is that the top grads get great salaries, but the rest don't--and that when this is combined with mounting student debt loads, it's a structural tension that will have to be resolved in one way or another. In other words, the message is that things can't go on as they are now, and that changes may be substantial.

I blogged about law grad salary disparities in another recent post. As I discussed in that post, these figures have interesting implications for the future of law schools beyond mere graduate salary distributions.

When reading the WSJ Law Blog post above, bear in mind that it blends two points that are actually distinct:

1. Grads of top law schools tend to get more of the "Big Law" (read: Big Money) jobs.

2. Top grads at any law school tend to get more Big Law jobs than their classmates with lower class rank.

In other words, if you go to a national school, you have improved your odds of landing the big paycheck, but you have not guaranteed it. Conversely, if you go to a regional school, fewer people from your school will land these big jobs. But some will. These are obvious points, perhaps, but I think they are worth making, since the WSJ article jumps between the two without distinguishing them.

The Problem of Law Firm Salary Distributions

In a recent post I discussed concerns over the latest big law firm salary hikes and concurrent slowdowns in the legal job market. On the heels of this, the Empirical Legal Studies blog (elsblog) has a post about NALP salary data for first-year lawyers. The results are fascinating, and they comport with a lot of the comments received on this blog by readers--namely, that lower end legal salaries stay relatively static, while upper end salaries grow faster than inflation. So in a sense, the salary problem is two-fold: the upper end may grow fast and result in layoffs in a downturn, while the lower end suffers from a lack of growth that makes repayment of debt--and pursuit of careers at the lower paying end of the spectrum (including but not limited to many public interest and government jobs)--not very feasible.

The elsblog post, which is by Bill Henderson, is excellent. Make sure you read the reader comments. Henderson's comparison of the law school market to ordinary markets is quite insightful. He is right that institutional actors in the law school market--in which the economic utility pursued is often prestige--certainly will behave quite differently than institutional actors in a market in which monetary profit is the goal. In fact, I might add that the law school market can be broken down into several separate smaller markets--namely, (a) the nonprofit national schools, (b) regional nonprofit schools, and (c) proprietary schools. Each of these should have different business models. In fact, it is pretty clear to me, based on my anecdotal experiences talking with administrators from these different types of schools, that what they seek to maximize is indeed different, and that they thus behave very, very differently.

Henderson's post also is a good (if indirect) reminder that law schools are comprised of faculty who are rational actors, and that they will seek to maximize their utility--which is not always the same as maximizing societal utility. So the trick, then, is to design a system of incentives and rewards that result in law school actors' utility coinciding with a reasonable conception of public utility or welfare. That is admittedly difficult in any market, but perhaps especially so in a market in which many of the actors are well-entrenched (read: tenured).

Many of the comments in the past on this blog have bemoaned this very fact. The irony, perhaps, is that applying academic tools to the subject of law schools identifies these very same problems. Which is not to say that I doubted previous commenters. But it is to say that if law professors and other academicians pride themselves on using scholarship to identify problems and search for solutions (which is much of what legal scholarship tries to do), then it's entirely appropriate to turn these tools on ourselves.

Many scholars have already done that. A search on Google Scholar for "law school teaching," for example, turns up scads of law review articles on the subject. But it's interesting that a single set of data on law school salaries leads off in so many interesting directions.

The Associate Crisis

Canada's Globe and Mail ran a story last week about skyrocketing US associate salaries and their effect on clients. Much of what the story has to say is not new, although it is interesting to see the same concerns being voiced from a Canadian perspective, and to see discussion of how these salary increases are spreading to other countries as well. Everything's global these days.

Several points the article makes are very good, and they tie into subjects of previous posts on this blog (relevant earlier posts are listed at the end of this post).

First, who foots the bill for associate pay increases? In direct terms, the clients do--but associates pay a hefty indirect cost in terms of additional demands on them, as well as the death of mentoring (as projects become more high-stakes). As the article notes, in-house counsel are more likely to say, "If a firm wants to give us a green, first-year attorney who charges out at $300 an hour, well, sorry. We'd rather have someone more senior who charges $525 an hour but can do the work in a third the time because they know what they're doing." Can you blame the clients? Of course not.

A significant side effect is that associates have less work to cut their chops on, and the senior people are busier doing that billable work, so there is a disincentive to mentor the juniors. And if a junior associate does get the work, there is far less margin for error, and often no safety net.

I once was told by a senior partner that in the "old days," meaning the 1970s, clients were far more willing to pay for junior associates to accompany/assist senior attorneys on projects for that client, because (a) the billing rates were not as high, and (b) because those junior associates would be inheriting this client's business. In other words, the clients were paying to train their future lawyers, which made some economic sense. Yet in today's market, that's a more expensive proposition--and even more importantly, those junior attorneys are likely to jump ship to another firm before they ever inherit that business. In the 1970s, lawyers were far more likely to stay with a single firm for their career than today, when inter-firm mobility is the norm.

Plus, clients are less loyal to their law firms than they used to be, and with good reason. There's more competition out there from firms who can do the work, and there's more opportunity to shop around (and even play law firms off one another). So, why would a company pay to train a very expensive junior associate who is unlikely to ever be in charge of the company's work? Rhetorical question, of course.

Second, we are seeing "a fundamental shift in the traditional law firm paradigm." According to the Globe and Mail article, Susan Hackett of the DC-based Association of Corporate Counsel believes that "general counsel will stick with long-standing advisers for bet-the-company work, but increasingly look to firms with lower cost structures for everything else." In other words, a multi-tier market for legal work is--indeed has--emerged. I experienced this first-hand in practice. Between the time I started law practice in the mid 1990s and when left for academia in the mid 2000s, my overall workload got much, much harder. This happened because clients pushed the easier work to smaller firms, and even in some cases to non-law firm consultants. And if these competitors could do the work for less, well, why not? So, we now have a legal market in the US in which many of the more standard areas of practice are experiencing growing competition (which hopefully keeps prices down to an extent), and only that work which is most difficult can be billed out at top rates.

The silver lining for top-end practitioners, of course, is that the work can be phenomenally interesting and challenging. I practiced international trade regulation in practice, and in my last several years of practice I confess to never being bored--and not just because I was overloaded with work. The issues and problems were fascinating, enormously challenging and intellectual. The easier work had melted away, and all that was left was a core of really tough projects. Once I was able to get myself inserted into the work stream (that is, once clients were willing to have me working on the project on a daily basis instead of a senior partner), that made things quite fun. Of course, I saw a number of associates who never got over that "no work" hurdle, and they fell by the wayside. And they were all smart people who could do the work.

I could go on and on about this subject, but I will stop here for now. Read the Globe and Mail article, and check out some of my previous posts related to this subject:

• Law Firm Salaries from the Client's Perspective
• Baumol's Cost Disease and the Practice of Law
• Baumol's Cost Disease and Lawyers, Part 2
• Beauty Contests and Legal Fees
• The Advantages of Flat Rate Billing
• Big Firm Salaries Going Up (Again)
• Why Associates Have More Stress Than Partners
• Law Firm Salary Wars
• Of Law Firm Culture and Compensation Schemes
• Why Law Firms Play "Hide the Associate"
• Law Firm Training is a Sham
  

And as always, I look forward to any comments from readers.

3L Job Searches

I recently was asked by a Law Career Blog reader if I have any job hunting advice for 3Ls and recent law grads. Here's the specific request I received:

I am a 3L . . . and I am in the unenviable (but not perhaps uncommon) position of being unemployed - still. As graduation and the bar approach, my stress level is rising to meteoric heights. . . . Is there any chance you could post something for 3Ls who are still looking for work? You know - something comforting, but realistic at the same time.

That's a very good topic to talk about. I have no easy answers. Here are some of my thoughts:

Keep your chin up. Law school does a number on a lot of students, who come in bright, eager and confident, and leave believing they are not as smart or as talented as they thought. Few things in academic life beat you down like continuously getting ranked against your peers in a pressure cooker atmosphere. And then you don't have a job at the end of it. You must be stupid, right?

Of course that's not right. The point is that you are just as smart--and a lot more educated--than you were when you got into law school. It's just a tough job market.

Be proactive. Keep working on the job hunt. Track down all possible leads. Use all possible connections. I know this is obvious, but it is surprising how many people do not do it. It's too much work; they're busy; perhaps they are a bit in denial; they don't want to appear desperate. Don't be ashamed of not having a job, but also don't be too proud to not do what it takes to rectify the situation.

Build your list of contacts. The job hunt is a great way to meet people who might help you in the future, even if they cannot now. Keep a contacts list. Send thank you notes. Go to functions where you might see them. If you convey the impression that you are professional and a potentially good hire, these contacts may lead you, directly or indirectly, to a job.

Remember that the worst that can happen if you seek a job is to be told "No." Which means you are no worse off than if you did not try. I don't mean you should be a pest, but I do mean that you should never let the fear of rejection keep you from applying for a job.

Be less picky. Are you only willing to work at a large firm with a well-established corporate or litigation practice? Think again. There is no shame in taking a job because you need a job. Now, there are some things you may simply be unwilling to do, and that's fine. Admirable. But if your concern is, "What will other people think?" or "Will it hurt my chances at future jobs?", then try the following exercise. First, pretend you are at an interview for your next job after the one you are trying to get right now. And the future employer asks you about your current job, and why you are leaving. What would you say? Think about it. If part of your answer is, "It was a good place to start," or "It was really great experience, but not what I want to do long term," what on earth is wrong with that? Any lawyer out there is going to understand that. We all have bills to pay, and we all know it is a tight job market.

On that same note, consider contract attorney positions. Contract attorneys are in essence temp lawyers who are hired by law firms for temporary demand. They typically are hired through a job placement service, and they get paid less than associates. But they get paid. And they get experience. And sometimes, if they do good work, they get hired as full-time attorneys by the firms where they are working. I have seen it happen, even at big firms. Also, if you are moving to an entirely new area of the country and have no contacts or job prospects, this is an option to consider.

Be more creative in your search. Law firms are not the only place you can practice law. Think about inhouse positions, although the good ones can be hard to find. Think about public interest law--there are public interest fellowships available through organizations such as Equal Justice Works that allow you to gain some experience, even if public interest work is not your long term goal. I submit that the experience will make you a more well-rounded and empathetic lawyer. And what about non-legal positions? If you are thinking about business law, and there is a company who needs a non-legal position filled, why not look into it? You may not qualify, but then again, you might. And it might be very good experience, too.

Keep trying for judicial clerkships and internships. There are many, many judicial clerkships out there--not just for federal judges and state supreme court justices. State appellate judge and circuit judge clerkships can be excellent opportunities to gain experience, pay the bills, and add a strong reference to your resume. And they give you more time to get inserted into the legal market and keep making new connections and looking for that post-clerkship job.

Consider an LL.M. or MBA. It's a bit late in the game to think about this now, at the end of your law school career, but perhaps you can work for a year, and then go back. If you want to go into business law, or into business management, a JD-MBA combination is superb. And an LL.M. from a school more highly ranked than the law school from which you received your JD is a good way to make yourself more marketable too, especially if you are wanting to practice in a particular specialty. An LL.M. in tax is very valuable, and an LL.M. in intellectual property law, environmental law, or international trade/international business can be very useful too. (Link to my previous posts on LL.M.s here, here and here.) Such an LL.M. might even help you relocate to another, more lucrative job market. I know people who have done that quite successfully.

Remember that your first job does not = your career. In an article for the March 2007 National Jurist ("Don't be Scared by Unemployment"), Tony Waller, who is the University of Illinois College of Law's dean of career planning and professional development, advises that "your career is like a line, and not a dot." (Note: quote is of the article, not of Waller.) That's an apt analogy.

And finally . . . I want to end with the same advice I started with: Keep your chin up. You will have a hard time making a positive impression on the job market if you have a hangdog demeanor and attitude.

Good luck, and happy hunting!