FROM THE JOB FRONT is EmplawyerNet's monthly newsletter covering the latest developments in the area of legal employment -- and a few other things. FROM THE JOB FRONT is published as a service of EmplawyerNet, the online interactive legal employment network.
September 2010
NEWS FROM THE JOB FRONT
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Women Make Progress at IP Bar
Firm Freezes Associate Salaries
New York's Highest Paid Partners
UT Ranked Best in Texas
OTHER FEATURES
Legal Trivia
Quote, UnQuote
One More Thing Before You Go
WOMEN MAKE PROGRESS AT IP BAR
According to a year 2000 survey of America's largest 100 law firms, only 8 percent of intellectual property partners are women. However, it does look like those numbers are about to improve largely due to advancements by women lawyers in the biotechnology field. Women actually make up a disproportionate number of biotech partners. At some of those same 100 law firms, thirty and forty percent of the biotech partners are female. In addition to biotech, women have taken advantage of a US Supreme Court ruling that has lead the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to relax its requirement that practicing patent attorneys need engineering or physics backgrounds. The office now allows attorneys with biology backgrounds to sit for its qualifying exam.
Law.com
FIRM FREEZES ASSOCIATE SALARIES
San Francisco's Cooley Godward has announced that it is freezing associate lock-step salaries this year at 2001 levels. Cooley Godward is the third large law firm in the San Francisco Bay Area to freeze salaries in recent months. Last August, the firm laid off 86 associates. Salaries have also been frozen by Northern California firms Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison and Gray, Cary & Ware & Freidenrich. Gray Cary also reduced first-year associate pay by $10,000 a year so that first-years will earn less than senior associates whose pay has been frozen. Following suit on the $10,000 reduction is Pillsbury Winthrop. Meanwhile, the Venture Law Group dropped first-year salaries from $125,000 to $100,000.
The Recorder
NEW YORK'S HIGHEST PAID PARTNERS
Lawyers less concerned with having their salaries frozen are partners at New York's most profitable law firms. According to American Lawyer, the highest per-partner profits were earned by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz at $3,285,000 a year per partner. Wachtell, Lipton was followed by Cravath, Swaine & Moore at $2,245,000; Davis Polk & Wardwell at $1,740,000; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett at 1,740,000; and Sullivan & Cromwell at 1,715,000 per partner. Rounding out the top ten at between $1.6 million and $1.2 million per partner are Skadden Arps, Cahill Gordon & Reindel, Milbank Tweed, Cleary Gottlieb and Debevoise.
American Lawyer
UT RANKED BEST IN TEXAS
If you were wondering which Texas law school is considered the best when it comes to recruiting, you now have an answer. A survey of lawyers and recruiting directors at the state's 25 largest law firms were asked to grade local schools. The University of Texas School of Law came out on top. The categories where UT excelled were the firm's general "like" of the school, students' communication and interpersonal skills and efficiency and helpfulness of its law school's career services office. SMU's Dedman School of Law came in second with high marks in categories involving resources at the career services office and preparedness of students to practice law. Other Texas law schools came out of the survey in the following order: Baylor, the University of Houston, St. Mary's, Texas Tech, South Texas and Texas Southern.
Texas Lawyer
LEGAL TRIVIA
According to the Santa Clara Law Review, what percentage of Americans include something for their pets in their wills?
| | |
| (a) | 10 percent |
| (b) | 20 percent |
| (c) | 30 percent |
| (d) | 40 percent |
(Answer at the end of the newsletter)
QUOTE
"This trial is a travesty; it's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. I move for a mistrial."
--Woody Allen in "Bananas"
UNQUOTE
ONE MORE THING BEFORE YOU GO...
A candidate for a job with the Baltimore Police Department checked "Yes" where the job application asked if he had ever committed a crime. When an investigation asked about this, the applicant explained that he had recently committed a carjacking in Texas. That led to a search of the man's storage unit where a gun used in the carjacking was found. An arrest followed.
Trivia Answer:
(b) 20 percent
