JD Journal » associate start dates

Hard Times at Seyfarth Shaw

joshua — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:14:47 +0000

Seyfarth Shaw has told half of its deferred associates that they will not be starting in January as planned. Instead, they are being redeferred to October 2010, and will receive a stipend of $2000 dollars per month starting in January. If that wasn’t enough bad news, Seyfarth is also cutting the salaries of first year associates by five to ten percent. One can only hope that the deferral stipends aren’t subject to those cuts.

Yes, it’s nice to get paid $2000 a month to do nothing, and yes, it’s possible in some parts of the country to live on that kind of money, but in general biglaw doesn’t have offices there. Keep in mind that we’re talking about lawyers that graduated in June, got a job, and are now having to wait almost a year and a half to start working – assuming that things improve enough to start at all. With more firms pushing start dates back to October of next year, are there going to be jobs available for the 2010 grads?

Incoming Associate Class Split, Half Will do Pro Bono Work at Reduced Salary

joshua — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:47:35 +0000

Incoming associates at Kaye Scholer will all start in January, right on (deferred) schedule. The only thing is, half of them will be paid $100,000 less per year than their colleagues. The class was divided based partially on practice group preference and to a certain extent, arbitrarily. Instead of extending the deferrals for half the class, Kaye Scholer is putting them to work in the pro bono department and paying them $60,000 per year plus benefits. This mirrors the stipends being paid by several other firms, who are turning the deferred associates out on the street to do public service law.

Is this an improvement? Tell us what you think.

More Deferrals at Foley & Lardner

joshua — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:31:30 +0000

Earlier this month tipsters alerted us to layoffs at Foley & Lardner, which the firm later confirmed. Like many firms, Foley & Lardner deferred its incoming associate class, but now it appears that some of those associates are being deferred again. Incoming IP associates have been pushed back to September of next year, and will receive a $5000 per month stipend, but no health care, in the mean time. Some litigation associates will start in February, the date of the original deferral, while the rest will start this December, earlier than planned.