Law firm Fish & Richardson just deferred two-thirds of their incoming first-year associates. That's pretty bad! Though don't feel terrible for them. Half those kids are all getting paid $5000 a month for a year to not come to work. (The other half are only getting paid for six months.)
If I was only making 5k a month out of law school, I wouldn't be very happy.
That's nothing compared to what they pay Paula Abdul to sit around and do nothing.
This is beyond dumb. Any reasonable sort of corporation trying to make ends meet is not going to hire any law firm that can pay its lawyers to do nothing. And if it's a plaintiffs firm, no judge is going to allow them their fee request if they know of the overhead structure. So enjoy that $5K stipend while it lasts kiddos, because most likely you'll be a self-employed blogger when all is said and done.
This is what most major law firms (none of which are plantiffs/contingency firms) are doing. The problem is that law firms recruit their new hires two years in advance (I started at a firm in 2004. I interviewed for the job in 2002 and interned at the same firm in summer 2003).
The law firm structure is an "up or out" system where each fall new law school graduates come in and every class above them moves up one level. They've found in the past if they don't keep bringing in new recruits each year, no matter how shitty the economy is, in a few years when things are better there will be a hole in the pipeline.
So the solution is to pay associates that you essentially hired in fall 2007 a stipend to not show up to work for six months or a year. It's cheaper than paying them to sit around and not work (salary alone for NYC first years is 13k a month plus payroll taxes, benefits, etc.)
In the end, clients don't care because they pay for the billable hour so all this does is cut into the firm's bottom line profitability.
Clearly, the whole law firm recruiting system is poorly designed but I think most firms are doing the best with the situation at hand.
Short answer: It's all about the perception. The trial lawyer's nickel phrase in response: "These kids are getting paid to do nothing. Spare me the details." As a matter of fact, as the corporate lawyer who hires these firms, I'm on the first of 10 days of Fiscal Year 2009 furloughcation tomorrow, so the notion some 25 year old with with no skills is getting paid to sit and do nothing while I don't get paid to sit and do nothing can't really be obliterated with facts, no matter how cogent, although alcohol might help. More power to you though.
Actually, not two-thirds. Only one-third.
The remaining third were given "cold offers," which basically means "you can put on on your resume that you were given an offer, but if we ever catch your ass in the building again, we're calling security." So those guys weren't actually ever "hired" at all.