Students Pay To Work

General, Law School

Did you graduate in the past two years? Has your law school done anything to help you find a job? Probably not, but AM Law Daily reports that Duke Law School is making an effort, albeit pathetic, to help a few students find jobs:

Duke Law School is now offering stipends to some of its unemployed graduates, enabling them to work for a couple months and get some experience at no cost to employers.The “Bridge to Practice” program started in 2008 with nine graduates; last year it had 15. This year, Duke expects 30 graduates to participate.

And then there are those who try to profit even more from their recent graduates misery:

Washington University School of Law has started a summer program called “Associate in Training” for 1Ls and 2Ls who don’t have jobs. The six-week program “is loosely modeled on law firm summer associate ships, and includes attorney shadowing, networking, instruction on the business of law firms and other skills training.” The program isn’t free–it costs $8,520.

Hey, what’s another $8,520 when you’ve just flushed $120,000 down the law school toilet? Sallie will lend it to you, and she’ll even compound it for you in a couple years.

I see the solution to the debt and job market as being quite simple: If a student entered law school in part because they relied on the false employment statistics that the schools handed out to lure them in, then the schools need to refund the money if the students are not employed in the legal profession after a year of graduating.

In a perfect world, the law schools would behave responsibly and shut down for a few years, or simply put out accurate employment statistics. But if they want to lie to lure students in, then they need to refund the money. If you bought a car and the dealer promised you 30 mpg, and the car got 10, you’d get a refund and the dealer would do some time. Why should the law schools have a fraud exclusion?

If the law schools are not going to do the right thing and shut down and start refunding tuition, then at the very least they should not be permitted to profit by sinking students deeper into debt with a worthless $8,500 “associate training program.”

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Attorney Sleeps With Client’s Wife

General

Good news! It’s OK to sleep with your client’s wife in Mississippi! The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that slipping your client’s wife the salami doesn’t establish a breach of fiduciary duty. The client was also the attorney’s “best friend.” Oh, yes, this attorney has that necessary snark factor I blogged about yesterday.

“I was surprised that an attorney can have sexual relations with a client’s spouse and that it’s not a breach of fiduciary duty,” said attorney Phillip Brookins of the Walker Group, who is representing the ex-client. I was surprised too, but under the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, you can even f*ck a client, as long as the relationship started before the matter did:

Model Rules of Professional Conduct Client-Lawyer Relationship
Rule 1.8 Conflict Of Interest: Current Clients: Specific Rules (j) A lawyer shall not have sexual relations with a client unless a consensual sexual relationship existed between them when the client-lawyer relationship commenced.

The rule is silent as to a client’s spouse, so I say they’re fair game. However, it wasn’t a total victory:

Although the supreme court decision (PDF) yesterday reversed a trial court’s denial of summary judgment to the defendants concerning the affair-related breach claim, the case is continuing to move forward concerning additional claims of alienation of affection and negligent infliction of emotional distress against the partner, who is a former president of Baker Donelson.

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What An OL Needs To Succeed

General

Readers write in constantly and ask me if they should go to law school. While I always appreciate mail from readers, this question drives me insane. My blog is called The Jobless Juris Doctor; I rarely say anything positive about the legal profession. Do you really have to ask?

However, there are two questions you should be asking yourself. I believe the answers to these two questions are what determine whether or not you have what it takes to succeed as a lawyer.

The first is: Was your LSAT score above 165? If not, you’re not getting into a decent law school. No, it’s not fair, but that’s how it is. Without a high LSAT, you go to a toilet. Employers do not hire from toilets in this economy. You will not get to practice the law you are dreaming of. It’s like a person who is 5’2” trying to get into the NBA. Maybe Shorty has a lot of heart, maybe he wants it more than the 6’5” guy, but it’s not going to happen.

You need a certain personality to be a lawyer, and it’s not nice people who make the best lawyers. So the second question is: Are you both street smart and snarky? It’s not enough to be snarky; you have to be smart about it. A Smart Snark is someone who can defend a murderer, mislead a jury without them realizing they’ve been manipulated, know that they guy he just got off will probably go out and kill again, and still get a good night’s sleep.

Someone who is snarky, but not street smart, won’t make it. Take my ex-friend SS (Stupid Snark). SS hadn’t talked to me in years, and she’d let me down the last time I had contact with her, so she had to know I was still pissed. She recently moved back to NY and heard that I had graduated from law school. Figuring I would have some contacts for her, she sent me an email about her recently deceased dog.

Anyone who reads this blog knows I am a major animal lover, and she was trying to suck me back in. She immediately began trying to “work” me on the first call. I let her know that I had no contacts for her, and the disappointment in her voice came across loud and clear. Never heard from her again. Stupid Snark, no one likes being manipulated and if they catch you doing it, game over.

If you have a high LSAT score, no conscience, and the ability to manipulate others without them realizing they are being used (Smart Snark), then by all means, go to law school.

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Clients Balk At Paying Summer Associates

General

It’s bad enough that no one in or out of law school is getting work, but now many clients are telling firms that they won’t let summer associates work on their cases. Citigroup announced that as of July 1, it will no longer pay for summer associates time.

There is a growing reluctance by clients to pay for the training of associates. I have to agree with this; if I were paying a law firm, I’d really like to be paying someone who had taken the bar and had already graduated from law school. A client not wanting to pay to train students isn’t new:

J. William Dantzler Jr., a tax partner at White & Case who oversees hiring in New York, said with regard to billing clients for summer associates, it has been “a slide for 10 years. More and more clients don’t want summer associates to bill to them. When I started almost all clients would accept it. And it’s evolved to where a lot of clients don’t.”

The article notes that some firms don’t even bother to bill for the rising 3Ls time:

Law firm partners generally say they tend to write off much of the billable hours summer associates submit in recognition that, as lawyers in training, they are not as efficient as mid-level or senior associates. But when top-tier New York firms do bill for their work, the rate can go as high as $225 an hour.

There is good news for the few associates that got work; because the class sizes are so small they might actually learn something instead of just going to lunch with the partners:

This year’s summer associates “have the ability to get a greater proportion of substantive work than if they were competing with a larger class, and they get more individualized attention from partners and associates,” said Jonathan Schaffzin, co-administrative partner at Cahill Gordon.

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