Cooley Offers $100,000 to Delay Some First-Year Associate Start Dates

Cooley LLP is asking some of its incoming first-year associates to defer their start dates for another year in exchange for a $100,000 stipend.

The Silicon Valley-founded law firm recently reached out to incoming corporate associates, offering them three options ahead of their scheduled January start dates. First-year corporate associates can push their start dates to next year and get a stipend. They can instead opt to start in the corporate group in January, as previously planned, or switch to another practice area that has more work to go around with the same start date.

The moves are designed to shrink the firm’s incoming corporate class amid a slowdown in demand.

Last week, Fenwick & West postponed their start date for its first-year corporate and technology transactions associates to Jan. 16, 2024.

Wall Street’s Davis Polk Moves to Four Days a Week in Office

Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP is ramping up in-person work requirements, forcing lawyers to hit the firm’s offices four days per week.

Lawyers and business services personnel at the Wall Street firm will be required to be in the office Monday through Thursday after Labor Day. The firm had previously required its attorneys to be in the office Tuesday through Thursday each week. Davis Polk is also implementing a new annual remote bank, allowing lawyers to choose 16 days annually to work remotely.

Davis Polk is just the latest law firm to opt for more in-office time for its lawyers after the pandemic.?Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom?announced late last month that it was requiring its lawyers to show up in the office four days per week. Simpson Thacher & Barlett and Sidley Austin have threatened to withhold bonus money from associates who do not show up to the office three days a week.

These moves highlight that law firms have regained leverage from associates who held significant power during the recent recruiting wars, said Stephanie Biderman , a New York-based legal recruiter at Major, Lindsey & Africa .

Paralegals Race to Stay Relevant as AI Threatens Their Future

Since ChatGPT’s release six months ago, legal professionals have navigated the world of generative artificial intelligence. Nowhere might the anxiety be more acute than among the 353,000 US paralegals and legal assistants, whose work includes legal research, preparing documents, helping lawyers prepare for trial and arranging depositions.

For all the errors and fake information that generative AI throws up, it’s undeniable that it can identify and categorize documents much faster than a paralegal, sometimes within seconds, said Sharon Nelson , who travels around the country teaching attorneys, paralegals and legal assistants. “It’s got a lot smarter, a whole lot smarter, really, really quickly,” she said.

“There is no doubt that it is going to make it more efficient, and in some cases, better quality to do lot of tasks in the legal sector, and some of those tasks are currently done by paralegals,” Ben Allgrove , a chief innovation officer at Baker McKenzie in London said. “The question is does that affect paralegals and make them much more efficient so that the market can absorb more work?”

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