Legal Profession Blog

Summer Job?

I was sitting in the examination room at the MedSport Clinic in Ann Arbor with my son, and he objected to my reading People.  He handed me instead a magazine with the enticing title of Successful Farming (it was that or Teen Vogue).  I thought the classifieds had some interesting entries.  One was for "After Dinner Speaker", guaranteeing "overall wit and wisdom."  I thought I could do that.

There was also this:

Wanted JD Combine Operators, and Kenworth Truck Drivers for 2007 harvest.  May to November.  Willing to train.  Grove Harvesting.  [phone numbers].

I'm assuming JD equals John Deere, but I thought it was cool anyway.  (When I showed it to my son, he said "Soylent Green is lawyers!")

ADDENDUM:  One other thing.  I have typical male-pattern blindness (ask my wife), but in some circumstances I can get hyper-observant.  There was a "pain guide" on the wall by which you were supposed to estimate pain level.  Zero pain was signified by a full grin Smiley Face.  At full bore pain of ten, the Smiley Face was in sheer torture, its mouth shaping a scream and tears running down its yellow visage.  But the neutral Smiley Face was at about six, and even at two, which was "moderate pain," the Smiley Face still had a half-grin.  I thought there was something wrong with a chart that had the Smiley Face smiling at any pain.

[Jeff Lipshaw]

Public Service Announcement: Moving

Chances are that boxes were not included in the estimate.  Ask your mover if there are used boxes you can get for free.  In any event, buy wholesale from the mover and not retail at a self-storage facility.  The big wardrobe boxes were almost $16 at the storage facility where I have kept stuff for a couple years; the moving company didn't have any used, but the new ones were only $7.50.

Also, chances are that you have a moving allowance and not an all-expenses paid deal.  I had one of the latter once - de rigeur in the corporate world.  If you have ever watched the movers pack, it's amazing how much paper and how many boxes they can pull out of the truck.  Doing it yourself (and, say, packing the fragiles in towels or clothing or whatever) saves a lot of money and is safer.

You cannot move a propane tank.  I wonder if there is a business in being a clearinghouse for the exchange of gas grill propane tanks for moving professors.  There must be somebody moving to Indy who needs a 3/4 full tank, and somebody who is leaving one behind in Boston.

[Jeff Lipshaw]

Landers on Diversity Hiring in Boston Law Firms

Posted by Alan Childress

Renee Landers (Suffolk--Law), right, has posted to SSRN her article, "Pluc Ca Change, Plus C'est La Meme Chose: The Representation of People of Color (and Women) in Boston Law Firms."  It is also in 50 Boston  Bar Journal 15 (Nov./Dec. 2006), and her abstract is:

In this short article the author analyzes the reasons why increased representation of people of color  and women among law school graduates has not been matched by proportional increases in the representation of women and people of color in the ranks of large law firm partners in Boston and nationally. The article attributes this lack of progress to the factors identified in the recent report of the ABA Commission on Women on the situation of women of color in law firms and to other deeply imbedded structural and economic practices of firms, such as the highly leveraged structures and the ever rising demand for billable hours. Pipeline issues may further impede progress of lawyers of color.

The article concludes by challenging law firms to realize the investment they have made in diversity programs and in recruiting and training associates by examining assumptions about law firm cultures and practices that erect barriers to the achievement of women and people of color.

Update:  while perusing the Suffolk website, I came across this announcement of new hiring coups, featuring our own Jeff Lipshaw.  Oddly, it does not mention either his available vacation rental home in partial Michigan, or even the nearby bigger house one can rent as a better deal especially when subsidized by Jeff and Alene.  But the school otherwise seems proud to have snagged him.

Merit Promotions In Illinois

Congratulations to Jerry Larkin on his appointment as Administrator of the Illinois Registration and Disciplinary Commission("ARDC"). Jim Grogan was named Deputy Bar Counsel. These two longtime bar prosecutors will continue the fine work of the ARDC. I had the privilege of working closely with both Jerry and Jim during my association with the National Organization of Bar Counsel. (Mike Frisch)

HALT Internships in DC: Application Process + Promises No Photocopy Work

Well, actually, the work promises to be very substantive but not entirely Xerox-free:  "Minimal grunt work! ...You won't make copies for anyone but yourself."  The attorney-watchdog and law-reform group HALT has a revolving internship program, for college and grad students.  It's in its Washington, D.C. headquarters on K Street.  This link explains the advantages (including "Food!" and nearby Metro) and application process. 

We have posted here and here on some of HALT's important work, including their letter grades for states' lawyer disciplinary processes.  Michigan gets a C, unsurprisingly--though even then that mark is based on Incomplete "promptness" information due to the state's failure to report such stats to the ABA, and it appears the score would be lower if its actual MPH were considered.  Anyway, I like the fact that the group's name does not appear to be an acronym for anything.

[Alan Childress]

Porter on Vaulting the Maternal Wall in Law Firms and Law Jobs

Posted by Alan Childress

Nicole Porter (St. Louis Univ.--Law) has posted to SSRN her essay, "Re-Defining Superwoman: An Essay on Overcoming the Maternal Wall in the Legal Workplace."  It is also published in 13 Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy 55 (2006).  Its abstract:

In this Essay, I discuss the work/life balance challenges facing women lawyers who are mothers. Despite these challenges, I believe that mother-attorneys can successfully manage a career and a family. In reaching this conclusion, I attempt to dispel the myth that mother-attorneys need to be “Superwoman” in order to succeed in this profession. The essay first discusses the obstacles women face - from stereotypical views of their competence (both in the workplace and at home), to the difficulty of maintaining a successful and meaningful law practice while working a reduced-hours schedule, to managing the guilt that inevitably accompanies the fact that it is impossible to be everything to everyone, all at once.

While I examine the many possible legal and structural solutions to the problem of the “maternal wall,” I ultimately conclude that major change is unlikely to occur in the near future. Accordingly, in an effort to adopt an optimistic view of being a mother-attorney, I conclude this essay with my advice on changing what is in women's capacity to change immediately - their own actions and attitudes. In my opinion, the key to being successful is to focus on the goals and expectations that matter to you - rather than the goals perceived to be set by society. I do not advocate mediocrity; quite the contrary, I suggest women strive to do the highest quality work possible while focusing on the aspects of work and home that really matter to you, your family and your career. Feeling guilty that you cannot be both “mother of the year” and “superstar attorney” at the same time is a fruitless waste of energy, and will ultimately keep women from being both happy and successful as attorneys who have the joy of also being mothers.

Michigan State Bar Seeks Executive Director

The State Bar of Michigan has posted this job announcement for a new Executive Director, to oversee the bar organization, presumably in Lansing and governing both pieces of the state.   Deadline:  February 15.  [Alan Childress]

WSJ Reports, "White House Lawyers Up"

That from the WSJ Law Blog's Peter Lattman, here.  Not a really monumental hiring 'moment,' I assume, at the halfway mark of the administration's current term.  But the headline gives me the opportunity to congratulate GW-grad, Lovettsville co-resident, former Marine, and all around good-guy Chris Oprison for his new position as Associate Counsel to the President.  If I get a parking ticket near the White House, or have a relative in Armenia needing a visa...?   [Alan Childress]

Moving Laterally, Out-House to In-House

Julie Goldberg, right, a recruiter from Korn/Ferry, has a post over at Law.com on what it takes for an in-house law department to recruit lawyers away from law firms, particularly given the escalation in salaries at big firms in large financial centers.

I agree with most of it - though there is a certain irony to reading about the attractiveness to lawyers of precisely the stock-based compensation that academic corporate lawyers are wont to debate - but one paragraph caught my eye as being wrong:

Although in-house lawyers put in long hours, their schedules have one big advantage over those of lawyers working in firms -- predictability. Do not underestimate the appeal of knowing that weekend and vacation plans will not be ruined. Work/life balance is now openly acknowledged as a factor in employment decisions, and top-notch lawyers demand time for life outside the office.

I don't know which corporation Ms. Goldberg is thinking about.  I'm pretty sure that if you counted up all the hours I would have billed, had I been billing them, in the first year after I left the law firm to go in-house, it would have been somewhere in the 2,700 hour range (compared to my high water mark, as I recall, in the law firm, of about 1,950).  That year also included something like eleven trips to Germany in ten months negotiating a joint venture, one of which was on about four hours' notice in the middle of a vacation - on a Tuesday morning, I was sitting by a beach in northern Michigan, and at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, I was in a conference room in Munich.

The great difference, to me at least, was the primacy of the result versus the primacy of the clock.  I know there are lawyers who can generate passion around what they do for others in the big firm context, but I couldn't.  The billable hour clock was always ticking in the background.  The 2,700 hours were fulfilling in a way the law firm hours never managed to achieve, and became something like the sense of time when you are fully engrossed in something other than watching the clock.

[Jeff Lipshaw]

Washington State Bar Seeks Executive Director

The Washington State Bar Association posted a  job announcement for a new Executive Director, to oversee the bar organization, in Seattle.
Deadline:  December 1.                   [Alan Childress]

Texas Center for Legal Ethics Seeks Executive Director

The non-profit Texas Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism posted this announcement for an Executive Director to run its office (in Austin).  "The Executive Director is responsible for the professional, administrative, and financial work...and to develop new programming opportunities for education and training in the areas of legal ethics, professionalism, and grievance avoidance."  Complete job description here from the state bar site.  Deadline: Dec. 15.   [Alan Childress]

Tracking the Diversity Talk/Actions of the Profession and Especially Law Firms

There is a blog, named Law Firm Diversity:  A Rational Discussion, that follows diversity in law firms, even specific named ones, as well as the issue of diversity of race and gender in the profession generally.  For example, a post links this article from the Boston Herald on whether what law firms say about diverse hiring and promotion matches what they do--and how minority job applicants should research and detect that.  And a series of posts from November 9 link specifically to stories on Indianapolis's Ice Miller, the head of NY's Weil Gotshal, and the University of Michigan's first response to the state's constitutional amendment on affirmative action.  It seems to be an updated source to track the reality of such programs in the profession and particularly in law firms beyond their public relations.  Although one may not necessarily agree with the political premises of the blog, it does seem to be a useful resource for such links and it helpfully follows the firms' public pronouncements about diversity. 

UPDATE:  The site Feminist Law Professors by South Carolina law prof Ann Bartow is a similarly useful blog resource to follow events and especially theory related to the gender diversity of the profession.  Here is a link to its subcategory on "the legal profession." [Posted by Alan Childress]

Are the Low Numbers of Female Supreme Court Law Clerks a Statistical Blip? (Or: 'Let's Ask Justice Thomas to Check')

Posted by Alan Childress

David Kaye (Ariz. State, Law) and Joseph Gastwirth (GW, Arts & Sci. [Stats Dept.]) have just posted on SSRN Law & Soc'y: Legal Prof., their new article, "Where Have All the Women Gone? 'Random Variation' in the Supreme Court Clerkship Lottery." Only 7 of 37 of this year's Supreme Court law clerks are women, a drop nearing 50%, leading to a popular-media outcry.  Justices Breyer and Souter have publicly defended the low numbers as the product of "random variation in the applicant pool," but apparently did not convince many onlookers, some of whom assert "insidious discrimination" in the drop.

The authors test the claim using their experience with statistics (David Kaye, for instance, is one of the most respected statisticians in the law school world and coauthor of the book Prove It With Figures; and Gastwirth edited Statistical Science in the Courtroom).  They conclude that the numbers are not improbable and within an expected range, given the applicant pool.  [Elsewhere they have reported, similarly, that this year's drop is not "statistically significant," adding "that for all the raised eyebrows, the numbers are not so dramatic as to establish that this year's decline is anything other than the 'random variation' asserted by Souter and Breyer."]  But this relatively clean bill of health only works, they note in the SSRN article, court-wide.  Some individual Justices have numbers so low that it is hard to explain them by chance or fluctuations.

In any event, all the statistics-crunching and the conclusion, they point out, depend to some extent upon the foundational truth of public assertions about who applies and particularly the claim that women are underrepresented in that source pool.  The authors do not claim, of course, that the numbers may be chance when compared to the larger population of women law students or even students with particular credentials.  That was not their investigation.  And they ackowledge that their job was hampered by working from public statements rather than disclosed real data about the applicant pool.  They call for public disclosure of information on applications and hiring.

The full abstract is below the fold.  Also find my take on the matter, especially the problem of using the 'pool' as the reason for this year's dip, or generally for such inquiries.

Continue reading

Lawyer Career Tracks, Disparities, and Other Stats in Western PA

Over on Empirical Legal Studies blog, William Henderson (Indiana) posted this interesting summary of the Allegheny County Bar Association's comprehensive study and survey of its members.  It echoes some great earlier work with data sets from Chicago lawyers and both University of Michigan and Indiana law grads.  He notes that "[s]ome of the most significant findings involve large gender disparities."  A few highlights, quoted or paraphrased from his post:

• Education. Fully 38% of respondents attended the two local Pittsburgh law schools (Pitt and Duquesne).
• First employment. The most common first employment was at a smaller firm, though women were more likely to start at larger firms (consistent with earlier findings from above studies).
• Fulltime or part-time. 87.5% of the members work full-time; 7.9% part-time (women are twice as likely to be part-time); 4.7% not currently employed.
• Practice setting. Women are more likely to start in private practice, but also more likely to eventually move into a non-private practice setting. 
• Choice of employment. Respondents reported type of practice was the most important factor in choice of employment, with work/life balance and independence/flexibility coming in second. However, female attorneys were more likely to favor work/life balance while male attorneys were more likely to prioritize compensation and prestige.
• Billable hours. 28% of respondents reported a billable hour requirement in their current setting. The mean billable hours was approximately 1900 hours.
• Income. 20% of male attorneys and 5% of the females earned over $250,000 per year; at least some of this was driven by age differences.
• Job satisfaction. Females are also twice as likely to be dissatisfied with their employment situation (earlier studies contained similar but more nuanced findings).  Female respondents reported higher incidents of job discrimination and lower pay for similar of-counsel work.
• Personal household duties. Female attorneys reported more hours devoted to household chores (10.5 hours/wk for females versus 8.55 hours/wk for males).
• Enter practice again.  70% percent of the men versus only 54.7% of the women stated that they definitely or probably would practice law again.

Bill has more details and links on this and similar previous studies.  I would add that the "household duties" statistic is proof that males are significantly more likely to overreport their weekly time devoted to household chores, possibly by defining the watching of Lifetime Channel or HGTV as housework.  [Posted by Alan Childress]

Where Have All the Law Clerks Gone?

A little while back, I asked where those law review editor/Coif/Supreme Court clerks types were going, if they weren't going into academia.  Accordingly to Law.com today, they are going to Latham & Watkins.

[Jeff Lipshaw]

Caron Posts on Ethics Treasury Job, and Tax 'Ethics' Paper

The TaxProf parent company and LPB honcho Paul Caron recently made two ethics-related posts.  One announces a job opening in Treasury (in DC next to the White House) for an ethics attorney; apply by Nov. 13.  The other post links to an SSRN paper called  "The Ethics of Tax Evasion: A Comparative Study of Germany and the United States," and has its abstract.  It involves comparative surveys of populations in the U.S. and Germany, so it is not about legal ethics as such, but rather public compliance.  Finally, Paul announces he is a 1 in a 100 guy.   That leaves 99 other Paul Carons wishing they'd thought of LPB.  [Alan Childress]

How Recruiters Rank B-Schools and Their Students: Is Law Different?

Nancy Rapoport's post over at Money Law on the Business Week ranking of business school reminded me that back at the end of September I started to write the post that follows, and left it sitting back in the dusty cybervaults of TypePad.

Here, unabridged and unedited from about a month ago is additional fuel for Nancy's fire:

The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 20) ran its annual special report on business schools as ranked by  corporate recruiters.  The most interesting thing about it was not the result, but what attributes in students the recruiters said they most valued. According to the WSJ, the following percentages of corporate recruiters considered these attributes important in evaluating business schools and their graduates.

89.0%: Communication and interpersonal skills
86.9: Ability to work well within a team
86.2: Personal ethics and integrity
84.3: Analytical and problem-solving skills
82.9: Work ethic
74.5: Fit with the corporate culture
74.0: Success with past hires
72.5: Leadership potential
67.1: Strategic thinking
64.9: Likelihood of recruiting "stars"

Here are the questions that keep coming back to me:

1. How would law firm, corporate, and government agency recruiters rank the important attributes for law schools and their J.D. graduates (as opposed to M.B.A.s)?

2. Do business schools and their faculties address these attributes as part of teaching and research?

* * *
I know I had more questions, but I can't remember them anymore.

[Jeff Lipshaw]

Quick Advice on Firing Associates

Over at LawBiz blog, law firm consultant (and attorney) Ed Poll has some quick tips on firing an associate in such a way, apparently, as to avoid his or her going postal.  It is clear that he ultimately advises having a real severance policy, and marvels at law firms and law offices that do not, but short of that his advice seems useful for employers in this prickly situation.  [Alan Childress]

Teaching-job postings in legal profession/legal ethics

I noticed in an SSRN email (Legal Scholarship Network) that Michigan State University's law school is looking to fill a chair in "Professional Responsibility, where a nationally significant scholar would be eligible for appointment to the Frank J. Kelley Chair in Ethics," among other openings they list.  That chair is for "experienced teachers."  Their list of openings for entry-level positions also names professional responsibility as a desired subject, along with commercial law, contracts, and civ pro.  (Here is their general website.) In either event, the application is made to:    

                     Prof. Kevin W. Saunders
                     Senior Associate Dean
                     Law College Building
                     Michigan State University
                     East Lansing, MI 48824

Any chair of an appointments committee who would like to post similar information on this blog about hiring needs in the legal profession, ethics, or professional responsibility should feel invited to do so as a Comment below this post. 

A useful, and fairly complete, listing of the various Chairs of Appointments at several law schools (for both lateral and entry level positions) was blogged over the summer on PrawfsBlawg and is linked here.  Sometimes it is especially hard to find information about lateral hiring, so I recommend the posting for that distinction and contact information. That site also indicates that Temple may hire a tenure track (entry level?) person in PR.  (I also recall that the University of Tennessee was looking to fill a need in legal ethics, I believe by an entry-level or experienced person, but don't see it listed on that post.) Finally, Jeff has already recommended Brad Wendel's excellent and wry essay on the appointments process and its resume requirements. Good luck, everyone.  [Posted by Alan Childress]

"We Thought They'd Be Busy Filing Their Returns Until April 15"

Today's Wall Street Journal features a story about the efforts of the Internal Revenue Service to recruit top law grads.  Already outgunned by the ability of private firms to pay the big bucks, the IRS (this is no joke, read the article) recently discovered, after years of recruiting in the spring, that the prime season for recruiting law students is the fall.  Even now there are glitches.  One student reported that it took the Service five weeks to get around to arranging a callback, and then it was for a different job than originally advertised.  Not to worry, however.  The Service is rolling out a new line of slick marketing and recruiting material.

[Jeff Lipshaw]