Law Firm Hiring practices in the economic downturn

The economy continues to impact the traditional large law firm hiring cycle:

A NY Times article focuses on 2Ls waiting for the chance to interview in the fall: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/business/26lawyers.html?em Some famous firms have stopped interviewing at Yale...
Gerry Shih, Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools, NYT 8/25/09

There have also been reports of delays of offers to those students who were fortunate enough to have a summer associate position in 2009.
http://www.nylj.com/nylawyer/news/09/08/082709l.html?hbxlogin=1
Gana Passarella, Please Continue to Hold...Your Career will be Determined by the First Available Agent (published in the Legal Intelligencer) 8/27/09

--Greg.

Movin' On

To my faithful readers: After many happy
and productive years at the Barclay Law
Library, I will be moving on to become
Executive Director of the Dewitt Community
Library. This was a tough decision, but as
a former library director always told me,
change is good!

New Online Legal Magazine a "Refreshing Alternative" to Traditional Law Reviews

The Legal Workshop is a new online legal journal
that seeks to disseminate legal scholarship to a broad
audience of readers. The new endeavor is produced by
a consortium of academic law reviews: Stanford Law
Review, New York University Law Review,
Cornell Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law
Journal, Northwestern Law Review, and University of
Chicago Law Review.

According to the press release (4/21/2009), the new journal
"offers an engaging alternative to traditional academic articles
that run 30,000 words with footnotes," instead featuring short,
plain-English articles about legal issues and ideas, written by
an author whose related, full-length work of scholarship
is forthcoming in one of the participating law reviews."

Library of Congress on YouTube

The Library of Congress has a new YouTube site.
Currently, the site features 74 videos, organized
into the following playlists:

2008 National Book Festival (Readings by
authors from the National Book Festival, Washington DC,
Sept. 27, 2008)

Books and Beyond (Public talks at the Library of
Congress by authors of recently-published books)

Journeys and Crossings (Library staff provide
insights into historically significant materials in
the LC collection)

Early Films: Westinghouse, 1904
(Classic historic industrial films from the Westinghouse
Works, produced in April-May 1904)

Kluge Center Series: Prominent Scholars on Current Topics
(Prominent scholars present public lectures, book talks
and workshops)

Early Films: Edison Companies (Examples of popular
content filmed by Thomas Edison's labs in the 1880's)

Black's Law Dictionary Now Available for iPhone/iPod

West, part of Thomson Reuters, has launched a Black's Law
Dictionary on iTunes. The new application for iPod or iPhone
features the most recent edition (the 8th) of the dictionary,
edited by Bryan A. Garner. The iPhone version, which sells for
a whopping $49.99, features hyperlinked cross-references and
audio pronunciations for some terms.
Check it out at the iPhone App Store.

Hat tip to Robert Ambrogi.

Law Professors Seek Injunction Over 'Sham' West Treatise Supplement

Shannon Duffy (The Legal Intelligencer, 4/16/2009)
reports on a claim by two law professors that West
Publishing falsely identified them as authors of a
2008 supplement to their Pennsylvania criminal law
treatise.

According to the article, David Rudovsky of the University
of Pennsylvania and Leonard Sosnow of Widener Law School
"claimed that the December 2008 supplement...to their
book, Pennsylvania Criminal Procedure -- Law, Commentary
and Forms, was so poorly researched that it will harm their
reputations if allowed to remain on library shelves."

A lawyer for West, reports Duffy, "insisted that although West
was not proud of the first version of the supplement, it has
recently mailed out a new version that cures [the] defects
and includes a revised cover page that clearly explains
that Rudovsky and Sosnov ended their work on the updates
in 2007."

Senior U.S. District Judge John P. Fullam is expected to
rule soon the law professor's request for a preliminary
injunction.

National Archives to Release Reagan and Bush 41 Presidential Records

National Archives news release:

"Acting Archivist of the United States Adrienne
Thomas announced [April 10, 2009] that 245,763 pages
of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush Presidential
records will be opened for research on Monday, April 13,
2009, at their respective libraries. These records, which
were still pending with the George W. Bush Administration
as of January 20, 2009, today cleared the review process
established by President Barack Obama under
Executive Order 13489."

Hat tip to beSpacific.

Best Academic Presses in Law

Brian Leiter has posted the results of the poll here.

Internally Displaced Persons: Guide to Legal Information Resources on the Web

Elisa Mason has published a new annotated web guide
on internally displaced persons on LLRX.

According to the 1998 United Nations Guiding Principles on
Internal Displacement, internally displaced
persons (IDP's) are "persons or groups of persons who have
been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or
places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of
or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict,
situations of generalized violence, violations of human
rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have
not crossed an internationally recognized State border."

The web guide encompasses international and regional
legal instruments and national legislation as well as
institutional arrangements for IDP's, conflict and disaster
IDP's, development IDP's and additional resources.

AAUP Releases Annual Faculty Salaries Report

The AAUP (American Association of University Professors)
has released its 2008-09 Report on the Economic Status of
the Profession [PDF].

Paul Caron on the TaxProf Blog links to related data
and extracts faculty salary information for selected
top universities here.

Sources on the Law Review Submission Process

Brian Leiter (and commentators) have noted
several useful sources for law grads and new
law faculty looking for guides on how the law review
submission process works.

Avvo Law School Rankings

Avvo, the free web site that provides legal information,
rates lawyers and offers client reviews of lawyers, has started
its own law school rankings web site. The rankings are based
on Avvo's attorney ratings, which are gleaned from bar associations,
lawyers' Web sites, and lawyers themselves. This year, alumni
from 492 law schools are represented in the rankings. The
complete directory of law schools ranked may be found here.

U.S. News won't be getting nervous about the competition
from Avvo any time soon, but prospective law students
and their families will undoubtedly be checking out Avvo
as part of their research.

Hat tip to the Law Librarian Blog.

LSAT-Free Law School Admission

Paul Caron at TaxProfBlog points us to the following
articles on the subject of law schools offering selected
undergrads the option of applying to its law school
without taking the LSAT.

ABA Journal
National Law Journal
Tuscaloosa News

Tax Planning for Professors on Visits and Sabbaticals

Paul Caron on the TaxProfBlog brings our
attention to a practical article for law faculty
planning a sabbatical or visit to another
law school. Tax Planning for Professors on
Visits and Sabbaticals, by Myron Hulen (Colorado
State University, College of Business), William Kenny
(Portland State University, School of Business
Administration) & Anne L. Christensen
(Montana State University, College of Business),
was originally published in the Journal of Legal Tax
Research in 2005.

Social Networking Online & Criminal Justice

Ken Strutin (Director of Legal Information Services at
the New York State Defenders Association) has published
a new article on LLRX that "provides a snapshot of many
of the novel and varied uses of social networking evidence
in the field of criminal justice. The resources [listed
in this web article] explore basic concepts about social
networking online, the use of materials found on profiling
sites for investigation and their impact on criminal litigation."