Tony Chiaramonte, a Drexel University law school graduate, is one of the fortunate ones.
He landed a coveted clerkship with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin at the start of his third year in school. To get the job, which he will start in September, Chiaramonte sent out 200 to 300 applications.
Total yield? Two return calls.
"I think I hit every state," said Chiaramonte, 29, who graduated May 17. "I was not discriminating against any state."
Even as a robust employment market has emerged for lawyers with several years’ experience, a sobering new reality awaits this year’s crop of law school graduates: The market for those fresh out of school has rebounded only slightly from its recessionary lows and remains very weak.
Big law firms in Philadelphia and across the nation report that hiring of graduates is well down from its peak of just a few years ago, when legal work was plentiful and firms competed for first-year lawyers. This year, firms are showing a little more flexibility in hiring summer interns and first-year lawyers, but the change is incremental. Most important, law-firm leaders who once hoped that the hiring of young lawyers would return to its past peak now say it will likely stay down for years.
The struggling economy, continuing downward pressure on rates, and insistence by clients that their matters be staffed with experienced lawyers all are playing roles.
"I have a stack of resumes on my desk and a number of phone calls that I have put off making," said Stephen A. Madva, managing partner of the Center City firm Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads L.L.P.
In years past, the firm brought in eight or nine new graduates each fall and hosted a class of about a dozen summer interns. This year, Madva doesn’t anticipate hiring any first years, and the firm has only two summer interns. Instead, it has been recruiting lawyers with several years’ experience and established client relationships.
"Our clients are not willing to pay us to train [young lawyers], and the numbers in the firm now are a pretty good match to the amount of work we have," he said.
Most law schools still are collecting employment data on this year’s graduates, so the best information available is for the job search of last year’s class. Figures compiled through February showed that, except for graduates of the very top schools, a great number of law school graduates hadn’t found jobs as lawyers.
Law schools say they expect this year’s results to be about the same. The hiring plans of law firms back up that assessment.
"It is not so terribly different from the way it has been for the past few years," said Drexel law school dean Roger Dennis. "We are about even in absolute numbers with last year, and our sense is that the quality of the jobs is somewhat up."
Yet it is an extremely tough market. Through Feb. 15, Drexel reported that 57 of its 131 graduates had full-time permanent work as lawyers, with nine more employed in full-time jobs in which a law school education was deemed to be an advantage. Others had found work in non-law jobs, while 17 still were looking for jobs.
At Villanova University, 132 graduates out of 252 were employed full time as lawyers, with 19 more in full-time jobs for which a law degree was an advantage. Fifty-nine graduates still were seeking employment at the time of the survey’s conclusion.
At Temple, 177 graduates were employed full time as lawyers out of total of 319 graduates, while 32 had full-time jobs in which a law degree was considered an advantage although not required. About 18 were without jobs.
Even for graduates of the University of Pennsylvania law school, who typically enjoy a high rate of success, the battered economy has exacted a price. The overwhelming majority of last year’s class found employment, 95 percent of the 274 graduates. Yet there was a slight downward trend in the number of graduates employed in sought-after jobs with big firms, those with 500 or more lawyers. That number went down from 152 in 2008 to 125 last year, even though the class size had gone up.
The city’s major law firms report hiring plans that track closely with the law-school statistics. Drinker Biddle & Reath L.L.P. will take on 23 first-year lawyers in the fall, up from 19 in 2010, when the legal world was still adjusting to the financial collapse, but still down from 37 in 2009. Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis L.L.P. plans to hire three first-year lawyers in the fall, down from nine in 2009.
Cozen O’Connor has increased its hiring of first years slightly, from 13 in 2009 to 19 this year, but for a 575-lawyer firm, its program is relatively small.
Though big firms remain highly profitable, it has come in part through severe cost-cutting and layoffs. At the same time, competition among firms for work has sharpened, placing even greater pressure on hourly billing rates. The unraveling of New York-based Dewey & LeBoeuf, which filed for bankruptcy Tuesday, reinforced the idea that the business remains fragile. Dewey once was a global powerhouse.
"The Dewey collapse put a chill in the air and fear in people’s hearts," said James Leipold, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement, which tracks the legal-employment market.
This deep anxiety appears not to be a momentary blip. In a survey of managing partners and chairmen at 238 U.S.-based law firms conducted in March and April, Altman Weil, a Newtown Square-based legal-consulting firm, reported that those firm leaders overwhelmingly said the profession faced long-term financial pressures, and that firms would adjust, in part, by outsourcing work and hiring fewer inexperienced lawyers.
About 55 percent of respondents said they expected that smaller classes of first-year lawyers had become a permanent trend; in 2009, just over 10 percent said they anticipated hiring fewer new law school graduates. There were similarly large increases in respondents who said they expected that outsourcing of legal work, hiring of more contract lawyers, and lower law-firm profits all were part of the new normal.
"The prerecession associate-hiring binge is over, replaced by much more cautious and conservative hiring policies," Altman Weil said.
With such a grim employment market, it likely helped that Chiaramonte, who plans a career in public-interest law, kept a positive outlook. When he started his job search, he didn’t focus on the odds, and he was willing to go anywhere.
"I felt I would go wherever the job was," he said. "I was pretty lucky, and this job came around."
Source: www.philly.com
Law that stopped voter sign-ups blocked by judge - Daytona Beach News-Journal
A law that tripped up a New Smyrna Beach teacher registering students to vote, snagged a Daytona Beach community activist registering new voters at her church, and was scored by Volusia County Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall as "unenforceable" no longer is in force. A federal judge granted an injunction Thursday halting enforcement of much of the state's controversial new elections law.
And not a moment too soon. The law, passed last year by the Legislature, stopped most volunteer voter-registration efforts across the state.
The League of Women Voters, which had been helping sign up Florida voters for more than 70 years, suspended its usual registration operations and went to the courts. The group complained that the law's strict deadlines, new demands on volunteer organizations and harsh penalties made signups outside of election offices all but impossible.
And a federal district court judge in Tallahassee agreed.
"The statute and rule impose a harsh and impractical 48-hour deadline for an organization to deliver applications to a voter-registration office and effectively prohibit an organization from mailing applications in. And the statute and rule impose burdensome record-keeping and reporting requirements that serve little if any purpose, thus rendering them unconstitutional," wrote U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle in a 27-page opinion.
The "harsh and impractical" 48-hour deadline was what got Midtown community activist Norma Bland into trouble last December.
She collected signatures at a church event on a Friday afternoon and turned them in on Monday. That violated the 48-hour deadline even though the elections office was closed on Sunday.
One of the things the judge complained about in Thursday's order was that the law and the rules for applying it are "virtually unintelligible" when it comes to the 48-hour deadline clock.
"The short deadline, coupled with substantial penalties for noncompliance, make voter-registration drives a risky business," he wrote.
Like Bland, New Smyrna High School civics teacher Jill Cicciarelli found herself potentially facing those substantial penalties last October. She fell afoul of the law not just because of the 48-hour deadline but because she failed to register with the state as a "registration agent."
Under the law, everybody associated with voter registration is a registration agent. The example the judge gave was if you had a person with voter-registration forms on a folding table and a person handing out fliers encouraging people to vote, both would need to register ahead of time.
Yes, even a person doing no more than handing out pamphlets.
And becoming a registration agent involves signing a scary-sounding sworn statement promising to obey the elections laws and laying out harsh penalties for even inadvertently running afoul of the law. The statement incorrectly says the volunteers could be criminally charged for unwittingly passing along false information.
"The form is just wrong," wrote the judge.
So, now it looks like customary voter-registration drives can get up and running again in time for the Aug. 14 primary. The registration books close July 16.
Remember: If voting didn't matter, the Legislature wouldn't be going to all this trouble to discourage potential voters.
Source: www.news-journalonline.com
London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - The Independent
Age: 116
History: LSE was founded in 1895 by four Fabians: Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Graham Wallas and George Bernard Shaw, for 'the betterment of society' through the study of poverty and inequality. In 1902 the school moved formally to its present site, and in May 1920 King George V laid the foundation stone of the Old Building.
Address: In the heart of London, between the Strand and the beginning of Fleet Street.
Ambience: Forget the cramped site, feel the intellectual buzz. LSE is an international powerhouse. Where there were cruddy buildings, you will now find a fantastic new Foster-designed £30m library, a new research laboratory, a student services centre and the new Plaza café. LSE's eco-friendly £71m academic building was opened by The Queen in 2008. It provides state-of-the-art teaching facilities, including four lecture theatres, classrooms and academic offices spread over eight floors.
Vital statistics: Around 4,000 full-time undergrads and 4,400 postgraduates. Nearly half come from outside Europe.
Added value: Academics interact with the worlds of politics, business and industry. Houses more than 30 research centres and institutes, including the Grantham Research Institute on climate change economics and policy headed by Lord Nicholas Stern, and the new International Growth Centre which helps developing countries strengthen their economies.
Easy to get into? No: LSE does not use the UCAS points system but only the top grades will be accepted, and it is very particular about which subjects are studied at A-level. Particularly difficult for law, economics, accounting and finance, government, international relations and management. but new effort is being made to recruit disadvantaged youths from state schools in London through Saturday, winter and summer school schemes with help from external funds.
Glittering alumni: 31 members of today's House of Commons and 42 members of the House of Lords; 34 current or former heads of state, including John F. Kennedy; 16 Nobel Prize winners; Lord Saatchi, advertising baron; Mick Jagger; DJ Judge Jules.
Transport links: Excellent. London is an international hub, and LSE is right in the centre.
Who's the boss? Professor Judith Rees CBE is director.
Teaching: 78th out of 116 in the Complete University Guide.
Research: 3rd out of 115 in the Research Assessment Exercise.
Overall ranking: Came 4th out of 116 in the Complete University Guide.
Nightlife: Has the Peacock theatre, a cinema and several clubs. Pubs include the Underground for its Friday night discos and the popular Three Tuns, which does a weekly comedy night.
How green is it? Good – joint 22nd out of 138 universities graded by People and Planet for their 'Green League 2011'.
Any accommodation? Yes, in a big way. More than 3,400 students can be housed but weekly costs start at £110 for a single room.
Cheap to live there? Nope – it's London. Private rents start from around £100 per week.
Sports Ranking: 63rd in the BUCS league table.
Fees: £3,375 per year for full-time home udnergrads starting in 2011. LSE plans on charging the maximum tuition fee of £8,500 as of 2012.
Bursaries: A bursary of up to £2,500 per year is available to students from low-income families.
Prospectus: 020 7955 6613; www.lse.ac.uk
UCAS code: L72
Source: www.independent.co.uk
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