Socialnetworking is the IT thing and now the American Bar Association wants a bite. Starting a networking site of their own called Legally Minded, they say they are like no others.

“We set out to do something different,” said Fred Faulkner, the ABA’s manager of interactive services in Chicago. “We looked at a lot of the professional and personal networking. We’re filling that gap by offering the best features of sites like Linkedln and Facebook and adding a bunch of content from the ABA and other high-quality content sources.”

Now, there are other lawyer-networking sites but according to Law.com, one main difference between them and Legally Minded is that it is not just for lawyers, but for any legal professional including paralegals, law librarians, and law students.

“LegallyMinded also has an interactive people map that puts you in the center,” Faulkner says. “All the people whose interests closely align with yours will appear near you so that you can identify them and begin building relationships.”

Popularity: 2% [?]

With Hurricane Katrina’s legal drama winding down, lawyers in New Orleans are starting to lose their jobs and must now search for more work. As the mass of litigation spawned by Katrina is ending, it’s time to move on to greener pastures.

And along with lawyers, some staff are being layed off, as well. “There are firms that took Katrina work right after the hurricane and that helped them bridge the last three years,” said Darnell Shuart of Shuart and Associates, a New Orleans legal headhunter. “If they have done nothing else but that work, and haven’t marketed themselves for other things, they’re in trouble right now. Some of them staffed up just to do that work.”

Popularity: 8% [?]

The ongoing financial crisis has sent many lawyers packing. To cut corners, law firms are laying off lawyers. At AmericanLawyer.com, a list of firms in the “layoff” red zone are displayed - (see below).

Therefore, if you work at one of these firms, beware!

The List

Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll
Bell Boyd & Lloyd
Bingham Mccutchen
Blank Rome
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft
Clifford Chance
Dechert
Dewey & Leboeuf
DLA Piper
Duane Morris
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson
Heller Ehrman
Holland & Knight
Hunton & Williams
Jenner & Block
Katten Muchin Rosenman
Kaye Scholer
Loeb & Loeb
McKee Nelson
Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy
Moore & Van Allen
Morgan & Finnegan
O’Melveny & Myers
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe
Patton Boggs
Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman
Powell Goldstein
Reed Smith
Seyfarth Shaw
Shutts & Bowen
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett
Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal
Sutherland Asbill & Brennan
Synnestvedt & Lechner
Taylor Wessing
Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner
White & Case
Winstead

Popularity: 7% [?]

The Prop 8 controversy continues…After California’s state constitutional ban on gay marriage shockingly passed on November 4 by a 52.3% to 47.7% vote, many groups of people are in an uproar. Protesters are flocking the streets and lawyers are getting involved. Filing court briefs on Monday in support of a petition seeking to overturn Proposition 8, the petition was filed on behalf of six same-sex couples by Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, and Gregory D. Phillips, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Munger, Tolles & Olson.

On behalf of 44 state legislators, one brief filed by a team of LA-based lawyers, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, argued that Prop 8 “constitutes a change in the constitution that discriminates against a minority group–something that requires a two-thirds vote of the legislators, not a simple majority vote.

According to a brief written by Ethan Dettmer, a partner in the San Francisco office of Gibson Dunn, Proposition 8, which defines marriage between a man and a woman, “purports to strike at the heart of” the equal protection guarantee and should be invalidated because it was enacted as an amendment, not a revision.

Popularity: 3% [?]

OK…so, the economy is crashing but hope is suddenly among us. A handful of law firms, for example, are enthusiastic about using this financial slump to their advantage. With California’s alternative energy generation growing and the new state toxic chemical regulation, Cali’s “green rush” means new jobs for lawyers.

“California is a great market,” said Richard Gittleman, who moved from Washington six weeks ago and orchestrated the plan to bring five lawyers with him by the end of the year to help Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld’s large utility clients get into some of the renewable energy developments.

“The need is there, and we recognized in our own large client base a reluctance to jump into the renewables swimming pool because they didn’t understand it,” he said. Akin Gump also brought on Vic Fazio, a 20-year Democratic representative who represented the Sacramento, Calif., area, to lobby in Washington on energy issues, as well as Bill Paxton, a former Republican representative who represented the Buffalo, N.Y., area.

Many more firms are going to follow in Akin Gump’s footsteps. Change is in the air as doors are opening.

Popularity: 4% [?]

The legal fight is on…if needed. Republicans and Democratic lawyers are on stand-by. Worried that there will be a 2000 election battle, democratic lawyers went to a Tallahassee court Monday morning, telling a judge that they feared Republicans planned wide-scale voter challenges.

Filing a lawsuit last week in Leon County, the Republicans are being accused of challenging 300 voters in Glades County. In Florida, since a law has passed allowing anyone the ability to submit a list of voters with questionable addresses to supervisors of elections throughout the state, those folks can be barred from voting.

With a pre-emptive challenge under their belt, Democrats feel better protected. According to Chuck Lichtman, statewide counsel of the Florida Democratic Lawyers Council, “Republicans plan to challenge voters throughout the state in an attempt to suppress voters.”

However, a lawyer for the Republican Party of Florida and a partner at Greenberg Traurig in Tallahassee said in an interview: “There is no plan to challenge voters.”

“It ain’t going to happen.”

Popularity: 3% [?]

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a smart man. He has strong opinions on certain topics and never sways from what he passionately believes. Recently, he spoke out to a crowd of 200 lawyers gathered in Atlanta and this is what he had to say:

“I believe quite strongly we, as judges, need to take the approach we’re here to solve difficult problems, not debate with lawyers.”

Being that it was the 17th anniversary of the day he took his seat on the court, when Justice Clarence Thomas talks, we should listen.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Our economy is melting away jobs for lawyers. Slow practice areas include real estate, mergers and acquisitions and capital markets. If you are a lawyer working in that area, beware. For example, at Chicago based Bell Boyd & Lloyd, 10 associates were let go.

“Like many firms, Bell Boyd is facing unprecedented market conditions and we are taking measures to ensure the firm’s efficient operation and growth,” said Managing Partner Nancy Bertogio in a prepared statement. “This is a belt-tightening measure that will put us in a better position to ride out the economic storm and remain competitive in what we expect will be a challenging business environment for law firms and our clients.”

Popularity: 4% [?]

Trust funds are under attack when a bank fails. With high funds at stake, when a bank falls down the financial hole, so do their client’s funds and that could leave people in despair. Having millions and getting back $250,000 can be a big chunk of change to say farewell to and lawyers representing the fund are usually held responsible for such a devastating loss.

Recently, lawyers have flooded bar associations with questions about how much responsibility belongs to them. Ethically, reported the associations, “lawyers must be cautious about where they hold clients’ funds, making sure they’re in Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC)-insured, solid banks.”

Should funds be split in different banks to insure deposits then? Yes.

Research indicates that lawyers shouldn’t be worried about disciplinary actions if a bank fails UNLESS the lawyer DIDN’T choose an FDIC-insured, stable bank. Still…the bar association is advising lawyers to “take reasonable precautions,” and consult their insurance carriers.

“There’s no specific ethics opinion concerning what to do if a bank fails,” said Elizabeth Tarbert, ethics counsel for the Florida Bar. “Nevertheless, lawyers must act prudently and determine what kind of institution [they are] dealing with, what its reputation is and it’s financial stability, to the extent they can. Unfortunately, sometimes bank failures are very sudden. They keep them pretty quiet.”

Popularity: 5% [?]

There are many reasons why people quit law school - it’s a difficult and taxing time for any students, and thousands quit at the start of their first year. Let’s look at the top 10 reasons why students drop out of law school.

1. Cost - The primary reason that people leave law school is because of the cost. It is very expensive to go to law school. Law school students will amass over $100,000 of student loan debts that they will be paying back for quite some time. While it’s true that lawyers do make a lot of money, they don’t start out that way and these debts can be a little overwhelming.

2. Job competition - Finding a job after law school is very difficult and there is a lot of competition for the best jobs. Jobs at top law firms throughout the country are highly competitive for students just out of school. This is something that even first year law school students learn quickly. Coupled with the massive debt, students are all the more deflated when they find out they will likely be making under $40,000 for the first five years after they are out of school - put this up against more than $100,000 in student loans and you find many students dropping law school for cheaper schooling careers.

3. Hours - Law school takes a lot of time - not only do you have to attend classes, you have to spend hours upon hours cramming the information into your head for the examinations and, eventually, the bar. Many law school students still want to have a social life and find that they don’t have any because of the studying and homework they have to do. As a result, this cycle doesn’t end out of law school - the hours in a law firm are long and arduous too.

4. The Bar Exam - The bar is a brutal exam - two to three days of testing of questions that are hard to answer because it seems a real answer doesn’t exist. The preparation for the bar exam is intense - months of studying and cramming. Over 40 per cent of law students fail the bar on the first try which means doing it all over again in six months. Over 33 per cent of law students fail the bar on the second try.

5. Lack of Applicable Knowledge - Law school focuses on how to make you think like a lawyer, which doesn’t really translate well to the work you will be doing. Many students figure this out in the first term of law school and find out that this isn’t what they want to be doing.

6. The Need for Money - Most law school students need to have a part time job to help pay for school, and work full time during the summer. Breaks aren’t spent having fun partying with friends, rather they are spent working to improve a resume and the time off from work is spent studying and reviewing material.

7. Brutal Competition - Most law school students figure out before they even get to law school that college will be a time of buckling down to get the work done. All students know that it’s imperative to be near the top of the class - those are the students that land the high paying jobs. However, not all students can be at the top of the class so the competition in class is brutal, resulting in a lack of social scene; not to mention the long hours of working and studying that are also cramping their social life style.

8. Difficult Teaching Styles - Many law students can’t take the heat from their professors, who are arrogant and pretentious while they are trying to drill a bunch of information into their heads.

9. Final Examinations - The final exams for any semester are almost as grueling as the bar exam itself.
10. Dealing with Others - many people will ask a law student about law, trying to get lawyer information for free on an issue they are having. Law students can do nothing to stop this endless harassment - it is something they will cope with from friends and family forever. Many can’t take the constant barrage of questions and queries and thusly drop out of law school before it becomes a life long nightmare.

This is just the tip of the iceberg for reasons why law school students leave law school. If you are a law school student, you need to seriously weigh your options - school loan officers don’t care if you drop out - you’ll still have to pay those back. Is dropping out worth it?

Click on one of these links to check out sample legal documents drafted by Amlaw 200 Law Firms for Fortune 500 Companies.

Popularity: 11% [?]