This was a Texas Lawyer piece Levaquin 750mg, from early 2009 concerning an interesting development at the beginning of my legal career in 1991-92, as a result of the last recession. Wait, make that three recessions ago. This explains how I ended up getting an LL.M. in London.
Past, Present and Future: Survival Stories of Lawyers
By Brenda Sapino Jeffreys and Miriam Rozen
Texas Lawyer
April 27, 2009
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="128" caption="Thompson & Knight partner Paul Comeaux Image: Mark Graham"]
[/caption]
Editor's note: These are grim times for law students and associates, with Texas firms laying off lawyers, Levaquin 500 mg dosage, cutting summer associate programs and deferring start dates for incoming first-year associates due to a troubled economy. So Texas Lawyer decided to talk with attorneys who have experienced tough economic times in the past and those dealing with the current fallout to put a face to what's happening in the legal employment market.
BigTex firms have scaled back before because of economic conditions, levaquin 750mg. In 1991, for instance, Dallas firm Jackson Walker asked a number of its incoming first-year associates to consider a one-year deferment in
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="128" caption="Stephan Kinsella, general counsel at Applied Optoelectronics Inc. in Sugar Land Image: Courtesy Stephan Kinsella"]
[/caption]
exchange for a stipend. Two lawyers who took the firm up on that offer say it turned out to be a positive experience and helped boost their careers. But does the past offer lessons for today's associates. We talked to a lawyer laid off from a BigTex firm
Levaquin 750mg, who's hunting for a new job, as well as to a Bracewell & Giuliani associate who transferred to the New York City office when she noticed her Houston corporate practice was slowing down. Here are their stories.
Europe or Bust
Friends Paul Comeaux and Stephan Kinsella were preparing to graduate from Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University in 1991 and start work as first-year associates at Jackson Walker in Houston when they received a tempting offer from the firm: If they deferred their start date for a year,
levaquin 150 mg, the firm would pay them $21,000.
While $21,000 doesn't sound like much today — and it was only a net of $14,000 because it included a $7,000 acceptance bonus — Comeaux notes that his first-year starting salary was $55,000. That's about a third of the current starting salaries for first-year lawyers at BigTex firms.
"They had too many lawyers coming in," Kinsella says, noting that Jackson Walker wanted up to 15 of the incoming associates to take the deferment, and he recalls that about a dozen did, levaquin 750mg. Levaquin 5 mg, Kinsella says he and Comeaux discussed their options, and both decided to take the deferment and use the time to get an LL.M. degree in international law from King's College at the University of London.
"We both jointly decided to take the deal, but we were afraid for our jobs. We were afraid that if we didn't do something productive, we didn't know what would happen," Comeaux recalls. "What finally made the decision for me was, 'Do I want to be a lawyer 20 years from now, or practicing for 19 years and having spent a year in London?' "
After graduating from law school, buy levaquin 500 mg, Comeaux says he and Kinsella spent a month backpacking around Europe and then took classes in London from September 1991 through July 1992. Levaquin 750mg, They both took out extra student loans to pay for the advanced degree. Comeaux recalls it was about $15,000.
"It was a great year. I made a lot of friends," Comeaux says.
Both lawyers started work at Jackson Walker in the fall of 1992. Comeaux, a real estate lawyer, says he left the firm after he started dating a lawyer at Jackson Walker's Dallas office who later became his wife, levaquin 750mg. Because of the firm's anti-nepotism policy, Levaquin 5, he took a job in 1996 at Thompson & Knight, where he is now a partner.
Kinsella also started at Jackson Walker in 1992. But after moving to Philadelphia in 1994 where his wife had a job offer and eventually working as an associate with Duane Morris there, he moved back to Houston in 1997 and opened Duane Morris' Houston office. In 2000, after making partner at Duane Morris, Kinsella, an intellectual property attorney, became general counsel at Applied Optoelectronics Inc, levaquin 750 mg uses. Levaquin 750mg, in Sugar Land.
Comeaux and Kinsella each say they made the right call in 1991. Both also say they would advise lawyers facing a mandatory deferment today to take advantage of the time to improve their skills.
But Comeaux says he probably wouldn't do the same today, because the economic conditions are different from the early 1990s recession, and many firms are suffering more than Jackson Walker did back in 1991 when too many students accepted first-year associate offers at the firm. Back then, Comeaux says, firms were feeling the pinch of a slowdown in real estate work, Levaquin 750 mg lawsuit, but other sections were busy then, which isn't necessarily the situation today with the tepid lending and deals market.
"My advice would be [do] not take the deferral, and take the job, and work real hard, levaquin 750mg. . . . It's hard to tell whether a big law firm is going to look the same three or four years from now. Levaquin 750mg, It makes more sense to jump in and get the experience now," he says.
Kinsella says, "Well, when you get the call from the firm, you kind of freak out, levaquin 750 mg iv. You have the choice: Do I start work on time and let 10 other people take the offer. Or do I take the offer and take a year off and make myself more marketable. . , levaquin 750mg. . In my mind, if you can afford it, you definitely should do it, but you probably should do something to make yourself a little more marketable."
From Maternity Leave to Layoff
When an associate with more than five years of experience took maternity leave from her BigTex firm in Dallas in September 2008,
Levaquin 500 mg and alcohol, the nation's economy didn't prompt worries for her growing family. Just a month earlier her lawyer-husband had felt secure enough about their household finances that he had quit his job at a smaller firm and launched a solo practice.
But by November 2008, when she was still on maternity leave with her new baby and also caring for her first child, a 2-year-old, the associate heard disquieting news from the office: Associates were being asked to leave. Levaquin 750mg, By the time she completed her maternity leave and returned to work in January, "The environment was very different than when I had left," recalls the associate, who requests anonymity.
On her first day back at work, colleagues told her about rumors of additional layoffs. "Several people told me that hours were being looked at very carefully," she says, levetiracetam 1000 mg.
Some of the firm's lawyers who previously were laid off warned her, "If there is some work, you best be the first one in line to get it."
Then, in early March, two partners from her finance and banking practice group came to her office door to tell her the firm no longer needed her services. Not entirely surprised by the layoff, the associate says, she recalls saying to the two partners: "Thank you for the information, Levaquin 50 mg, " followed by, "Do you know of anybody who is hiring?"
She had a month's pay coming, and the firm didn't care if she came to the office during that month or just stayed home. She decided to go to the office because she thought it would be a good place from which to network and look for work, levaquin 750mg.
As of Texas Lawyer 'spresstime on April 23, she had finished her last day at the firm and gone to five interviews. She has no full-time, salaried job yet, but she is working part-time on an hourly basis for a solo practitioner who handles hedge fund regulatory matters, a growth practice these days.
Her story resembles that of other laid-off lawyers in Texas, levaquin 500 mg price, where firms such as Houston's Andrews Kurth and Dallas' Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell, Gardere Wynne Sewell, and Winstead have sent attorneys packing over the past four months.
But long before she was laid off, the associate says she had developed a realistic view of her future at her firm, one of the largest in the state, and one which had its financial fortunes slip in 2008. Levaquin 750mg, "I knew I wasn't on the fast track for partnership," she says. She had spent her entire career at the firm, Cost of levaquin 500 mg, working in the finance and banking department. She liked the transactional work and "the people in her section," but she knew the practice historically had been slower than others at the firm.
"Through my career, we have been light on hours," she says. "We had a lot of clients, but that doesn't mean they send us a lot of work."
At present, her full focus is on finding employment.
"I have two very young children, and I am the primary breadwinner, and I supply the health benefits," she says, levaquin 750mg.
The evening after her layoff, levaquin 500mg uses, she began polishing her résumé. In the past, she had talked to headhunters who called, even though she wasn't looking for a new job, but she says she had noticed since about January that the headhunters had stopped calling. Now she was calling them.
She also received help from soon-to-be former colleagues. Levaquin 750mg, The day she was laid off, one of the partners at her firm called a friend who is a partner in another firm to ask about opportunities there for the associate. The other firm's partner called her back the next day and said, What is levaquin 750 mg used for, "What are you doing right now?"
"Working," she told him.
"No, you are not," he replied. "You are worrying. Why don't you come over here right away, so we can talk about a job?"
Believing she couldn't afford to turn him down, she agreed to make the appointment, hung up the phone, levaquin 500 mg iv, then panicked.
Wearing clothes appropriate for casual Fridays, she wasn't dressed for a job interview at a firm, levaquin 750mg. She decided to improvise and popped her head into a colleague's office to ask if she could borrow the black jacket hanging on the back of her door.
The colleague agreed and several other female co-workers, including one partner, offered to swap clothes. One took the dress shirt off her back to give to the associate, another loaned her the dress pants she was wearing and a third offered jewelry.
"There really are a lot of really great people that have helped me, Levaquin 500 mg uses, " she says. Levaquin 750mg, The interview did not lead to a job. Now the former associate is looking for an in-house position. She has had four interviews and has been called back for a second interview at one company. She hopes to get an offer soon.
At her interviews, she has relied on the truth.
"I have been very honest about the fact that I was laid off and why," she says, levaquin 750mg. "Just about everybody has been very receptive to that. I don't think people have held that against me."
Her husband, she says, has tried to pick up the slack, buy cheap levofloxacin, taking cases as a solo that he might have rejected if she hadn't lost her job. "He is looking at everything," she says. So is she.
In a New York Minute
Levaquin 750mg, Shannon Weinberg, a fourth-year associate with Bracewell & Giuliani, is a Texan who had never lived anywhere else until the economic downturn. She graduated from the University of Texas in Austin in 1997 and earned her law degree from South Texas College of Law in 2005. After graduation, she joined Bracewell's Houston office.
But a slowdown in her corporate practice area in February made her think about creating a different future in New York City. Levaquin 750 mg dosage, Mark C. Evans, Bracewell's managing partner, says a combination of the slow times recently in Houston's corporate practice and the still-robust work in the firm's New York office led him to agree to Weinberg's request that she move north, levaquin 750mg.
"She had expressed an interest in moving to the people she worked with, and they were busy there and slower here. I think it's working out very well," he says. "Over time, she might recruit some others."
Weinberg says she has taken a shine to the Big Apple despite the snowstorm that greeted her on her first day. The firm gave her time to study for and take the New York state bar examination and gave her a pay increase to offset Manhattan's higher cost of living. Levaquin 750mg, She found a place to live easily, she says, which shows how much the financial crisis has changed the New York real estate market. She sold her car, which was useless in Manhattan, what is levaquin 500 mg prescribed for, and is using firm-subsidized Metropolitan Transportation Authority tickets on the subways.
In Houston, she worked largely on transactions for public companies in the capital markets. In New York, she has kept busy with private equity acquisitions of distressed assets. "It's extremely busy here," she says.
Will Evans send more associates from Houston to New York, levaquin 750mg. Maybe, but not immediately, he says. As it happens, the firm's corporate practice in Houston has begun to hum again. He has found that in New York, where many local firms laid off hundreds of associates, Bracewell has attractive hiring opportunities. He says the firm recently hired a former Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom associate who, like Weinberg, was a fourth-year associate. But lucky for Weinberg and her big-city dreams, Evans says, there is enough work in New York to keep Weinberg and the former Skadden associate busy.
Similar posts: Buy cheap stromectol online. Buy vibramycin. Buy suprax online. Where to buy levaquin. Suprax 400. Buy vermox. Uses for macrobid. Buy generic stromectol online. Avelox 400 mg dosage. Vibramycin chlamydia.
Trackbacks from: Levaquin 750mg. Levaquin 750mg. Levaquin 750mg. Levaquin 750mg. Levaquin 750mg. Vibramycin medication. Macrobid birth control. Avelox moxifloxacin hcl tablets. Order vibramycin. Avelox tab 400mg.
As most of my libertarian friends and readers know, I've published for a number of years books and articles in the area of political and legal theory. I've also engaged over the years in more practical legal writing, from law review articles to authored and edited books (I maintain a separate website, KinsellaLaw.com, for my legal practice). My legal writing has primarily covered intellectual property and patent law, and international law topics. I started writing in both areas--libertarianism and law--at the beginning of my legal career, in the early 1990s.
The way I got into legal publishing may be of some interest to aspiring legal scholars and law students. Some of my early legal writing was based in part on some of the international business law I learned during my LL.M. at University of London--many of these were published in the Russian Oil & Gas Guide and other fora, while I was an associate practicing oil & gas law at Jackson Walker in Houston, at the encouragement of my boss and mentor, Lanier Yeates.
These were all co-authored with my friend and colleague Paul E. Comeaux. We put a lot of this together into a more comprehensive law review article, "Reducing Political Risk in Developing Countries: Bilateral Investment Treaties, Stabilization Clauses, and MIGA & OPIC Investment Insurance (original version), 15 New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law 1 (1994). This piece was scholarly yet practical. Shortly after the piece came out, we were approached by Susan DeMaio, a project editor at Oceana Publications, an international law publisher. Susan suggested we turn the article into a book. Paul and I did this, resulting in Protecting Foreign Investment Under International Law: Legal Aspects of Political Risk (Oceana Publications, 1997). Years later, I co-authored International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford University Press, 2005), a successor volume to the 1997 book. This was published with Oxford which had by then acquired Oceana; my co-author was Noah D. Rubins, an American international arbitration attorney in Paris.
Shortly after the 1997 book, Paul and I were approached by Oceana to see if we wanted to take over the editorship of one of their multi-volume treatises, Digest of Commercial Laws of the World. Unlike a lot of professors and academics that legal publishers work with, who are often late, we had turned in the manuscript for the 1997 book on time, and were young and had lots of energy and ambition. This led to my co-editorship of other Oceana (later Oxford) treatises, namely World Online Business Law, Online Contract Formation, and Trademark Practice and Forms.
I co-edited the Digest for a number of years with Paul, then later by myself.
This year West/Thomson Reuters purchased these three treatises treatise from Oxford. So now I'll have yet another publisher. I decided to bow out of World Online Business Law, and to team up with my friend and fellow Austro-libertarian legal scholar Patrick Tinsley, to co-edit Digest. Pat, a lawyer with Avery, Dooley, Post & Avery in Belmont, Massachusetts, and I had co-authored a few law review and other articles previously. I had already gotten a trademark lawyer I know, Terry Tucker, to co-edit the Trademark treatise with me a couple years ago. I was just too busy with other pursuits to be a solo editor any more.
Another recent book also resulted from early legal writing. In 1994 I published the article "A Civil Law to Common Law Dictionary" (as published) in the Louisiana Law Review. A couple years ago another Austro-libertarian legal scholar friend of mine, the young lawyer Gregory Rome, now of Williams and Rome, and I teamed up to expand that article. This resulted in the recently published book Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary (Quid Pro Books, 2011).
Nowadays, of course, legal blogging is a widespread phenomenon, so this is another possible outlet for lawyers who want to write. I did start one of the earlier law blogs (see KinsellaLaw re-launches…), but now tend to blog more on libertarian topics, and publish more conventional articles and books for legal topics.
I've enjoyed the money, experience, and contacts I've gained from all this. It can also help with client development, and with making yourself stand out at a law firm--the partners know your name if you are a prolific and respected scholar. For law students and young lawyers with an interest in scholarship or publishing, or even teaching, take advantage of publishing opportunities when you can, even--especially--early in your career.
Update: I found some old pix from 1997 of me with my first and then-recently published book, Protecting Foreign Investment Under International Law: Legal Aspects of Political Risk, see below:
