So far, firms that have deferred their 2009 summer associates to 2011 have been noncommittal about whether they will be giving a deferral stipend. Many class of 2009 graduates received money from firms for the year long wait. It’s not clear that class of 2010 graduates will be as lucky.

With the market still up in the air, Shearman & Sterling is giving its incoming class of 2010 the same offer it gave to its incoming class of 2009. A tipster reports:

Shearman NY has announced deferral stipends of $65k.

After the jump, we compare Shearman to itself.

Could transatlantic law firm mergers become the hot new trend? Last week brought news of merger talks between Hogan & Hartson and Lovells. And now we’re hearing rumors of a possible merger involving Allen & Overy, a top U.K. firm and a member of the prestigious Magic Circle.

This is not, of course, the first time we’ve heard such buzz. A year ago, the word on the street was that A&O was thinking about getting with Shearman & Sterling.

For the record, Allen & Overy denies the latest rumors. Here’s the firm’s official statement, responding to an inquiry from Above the Law:

As a global player who has been quite open about the importance of the US market, we are often subject to such rumours. We have openly stated for a number of years now that we have the desire to expand in the US market and as such we would consider any opportunities that may arise with a suitable US partner. That remains the case, but at the current time we are not in any merger talks whatsoever with a US partner. Your [reports seem] to refer to a global call our management held with all partners recently on our current view on strategy, though your questions below do not reflect the content of what was said whatsoever.

Find out what they were reacting to, after the jump.

In these difficult times for the legal profession, it’s more important than ever to know all your options. So we resume our series on career alternatives for attorneys — jobs for J.D. holders that don’t involve working as a Biglaw associate or contract attorney.

In a prior post, we discussed the career alternative of entrepreneurship. If you’re tired of working for a boss, then become the boss: start your own company.

Today we focus on two lawyers who, interestingly enough, have started their own businesses in the same area: admissions consulting and academic coaching. Perhaps this is the start of a hot new trend? Cf. the cupcake craze sweeping the nation, which another lawyer is capitalizing on.

Adam Nguyen, formerly of Paul Weiss and Shearman & Sterling, is the president and CEO of Ivy Link. Jon Palmer, formerly of Schulte Roth & Zabel, is the president and founder of The Admissions Experts.

Both businesses are headquartered in New York — which makes sense, given how obsessive Manhattan parents can be about getting their offspring into elite educational institutions. NYC ≠ TTT!!!

Read more about these gents and their new enterprises, after the jump.

Yesterday the news broke that Steven Molo, of Shearman & Sterling, and Jeffrey Lamken, of Baker Botts, were leaving their respective firms to start a new litigation boutique. It will be called MoloLamken and start out with offices in New York and D.C. Am Law Daily reports that the firm represents the new recession model for business generation:

If there is a firm model built for the dawning post-recession era, it’s probably a litigation boutique with low overhead and a flexible billing structure….

The firm will start with four partners and two associates, and will work on both plaintiffs and defense cases. Within five years, Molo says he hopes to have around 50 lawyers. “Over time, clients have become far more sophisticated in hiring firms,” he said. “They understand how a firm like this can be small but every bit as efficient or even more so than a larger firm.”

But are they hiring? Details after the jump.

We suppose it’s fitting that on Yom Kippur, when our Jewish friends are fasting at home, today’s Legal Eagle Wedding Watch is a total WASP-fest. (Last weekend was Rosh Hashanah, which explains the unusual dearth of Jewish nuptials in the NYT announcements.) We look forward to receiving plenty of tasteful feedback about how there are “too many gentiles” this week.

Here are your six finalists — all Biglaw associates, as it happens:

1. Elisabeth Madden and Wesley Mullen

2. Ann Parker and Robert McKeehan

3. Emily Harris and Matthew Mauney

Read all about these couples and evaluate their credentials, after the jump.

Supreme Court clerks continue to flood the NYT wedding pages this month, creating grim LEWW odds for mere-mortal Cornell grads and Skadden associates. Like Troy playing Florida or North Texas playing Alabama, these folks are welcome to suit up, but the only question is how bad their whuppin’ is going to hurt.

Here are your three finalist couples for the week:

1. Rebecca Mancuso and Andrew Brunswick

2. Erin Gustafson and David Curtiss

3. Kathleen Devine and David Newman

Evaluate these newlyweds, after the jump.

You can still call yourself prestigious if you work at the firms that make up today’s fall recruiting open thread. But once you are outside of the Vault top 20, people start talking about “firm culture” at least as much as they talk about prestige.

Here’s the next batch:

21. Shearman & Sterling
22. O’Melveny & Myers
23. Quinn Emanuel
24. Ropes & Gray
25. Hogan & Hartson
26. Clifford Chance
27. Morrison & Foerster
28. Mayer Brown
29. Linklaters
30. Boies Schiller & Flexner

The slide continues for Shearman & Sterling. The firm was ranked #19 last year, and is down two spots this year. Is there any specific reason for the fall?

After the jump, let’s look at the firms rising up through the rankings.

Gentleman, how emasculated would you feel if your future father-in-law shuttled your bride down the aisle, and then, instead of pecking her on the cheek and handing her over, actually turned around and performed the wedding ceremony? Talk about control issues. That’s exactly what this groom endured last Sunday, as he was married by his father-in-law, United States Federal District Judge Jed S. Rakoff.

The Rakoff wedding didn’t make our final three. Neither did a couple of lesbian unions, a WGWAG, and several other worthy contenders. Here are the three who made the finals:

1. Devon Quasha and Jeffrey Thorn

2. Saralisa Brau and William Van Horne

3. Linda Cho and James Brennan

More about these impressive legal-eagle newlyweds, after the jump.

We’ll bottom-line this week’s contest, folks: The SCOTUS clerk wins. Yep, after a long absence, LEWW’s favorite credential makes a welcome appearance in the NYT weddings section, and we’ve got the details for you.

But first, congratulations to Sabrina Charles and Jamie Dycus, who readers overwhelmingly voted Legal Eagle Couple of the Month for May, demonstrating that — in the words of one commenter (and apparently, in the minds of ATL readers) — “Wachtell > Sotomayor > Olympic medal.”

Here are our finalists:

1. Kathryn Whitfield and Adam Fotiades

2. Christina Krause and Peter Henderson

3. Pamela Bookman and Jeffrey Perlman

More about these couples, after the jump.

Incoming first years at Shearman & Sterling have been trying to figure out when they can start at the firm. A couple of months ago, the firm said that December 2009 would be the earliest start date. But Shearman also encouraged its incoming first years to defer until September 2010, while promising those deferrals that the incoming class of 2010 would not be starting on time.

Was the firm’s ambiguity about its regular start date a subtle attempt to get more people to take the year long deferral?

We don’t know how many incoming first years took the year long deferral option. But today, we have news that Shearman has confirmed its regular start date(s). But you’d better hurry to secure your space now.

More details after the jump.

Six impressive lawyers headline our survey of this week’s NYT wedding pages. Even more impressive is that four of them are still clinging to Biglaw jobs — assuming, of course, that bad news does not await any of our returning honeymooners.

Here are the finalists:

1. Neda Karamouz and Stephen Vander Stoep

2. Danielle Cohen and Bradley Friedman

3. Leslie Tobin and Nathan Ostrander

Click on the link below to get the story on these newlyweds’ degrees, jobs, and china patterns.

Shearman & Sterling has decided to mimic the Skadden Sidebar program and offer all of its associates the option to defer for a year. The program is essentially the same set of options that Shearman offered its incoming first year associates a month and a half ago.

The money from Shearman’s “External Development Program” is not as good as what Skadden offered:

Participants in the External Development Program will receive a stipend of $65,000. Associates participating in the program will not be employees of the firm during the program year, but the firm will pay for medical benefits during the program year.

That works for junior associates. But Skadden offered all associates one third of their salary, making the option more viable for mid-level and senior associates.

Shearman’s health care benefits are a nice touch (Skadden made COBRA contributions). But one of the nice perks from Skadden’s program was overlooked in the mainstream media gushing over “$80,000 to do nothing!” Skadden also offered $1,000 a month for student loan repayment. Shearman does not.

Some additional details and the full memo, after the jump.

Stealth layoff rumors have been swirling around Shearman & Sterling for months. We’ve reported on the quiet cuts before. But today, it looks like the firm cut a little too deep to keep it under the radar.

Shearman & Sterling has not responded to our multiple requests for comment, but several sources independently confirm that Shearman is laying off roughly 5% of its litigation associates and some associates in other practice groups.

According to our sources, all of the cuts are coming in the guise of an April performance review:

Shearman & Sterling has started another round of “reviews.” These reviews are resulting in so-called merit-based probations and firings and do not seem to discriminate by class year.

Generally, litigators have been more safe than their corporate brethren. After the jump, we try to explain why Shearman is disproportionately firing litigators now.

This week’s contestants are not our strongest crop ever, but they’re evenly matched — so much so that we were unable to choose a winner. So we’re taking the unusual (but not unprecedented) step of opening this week’s contest to a reader vote. The poll is below, after the jump.

Here are your finalists:

1. Elissa Bassini and Jeremy Pick

2. Julia Bartolf and Gregory Milne

3. Valerie Durollari and Ken Biberaj

Read all about these couples and vote for your favorite, after the jump.

Last month, we brought you Open Thread: Nationwide Start Date Round-up. After a flood of tips in response to that, we brought you an Expanded Nationwide Start Date Round-up. After that post, we got another deluge of tips. So now we bring you the latest and greatest round-up: more firms, more 2010 start dates, more pro bono deferral opportunities, more great taste, less calories…. whoops, wrong post.

Proskauer Rose announced start dates yesterday. Incoming associates have got some time to kill and some money to spend, says a tipster:

Proskauer [is] pushing their new associates back to March 2010. They’re offering a $20K stipend, or the option to get a public interest job, start Jan. 2011 and get a $60K stipend. They’re also still honoring a $10K salary advance they had previously offered.

Most firms, like Proskauer, have offered baby associates deferral stipends when pushing back start dates. However, a few disgruntled 3Ls have written to ATL saying that stipends are not forthcoming at their firms. Here are reports from tipsters:

Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell not offering any stipends [not even salary advances] to deferred Class of 2009 associates. Deferred Associates are still receiving their graduation bonuses ($1500), I guess that’s supposed to carry them through until January 2010.

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You guys got to say something about the fact that Shearman, unlike most of the other firms, isn’t paying any kind of a stipend to those it is deferring until January ‘10.

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King & Spalding, all offices, has been pushed to January 19, 2010. Incoming associates were informed in late March. No stipend, and the salary advance is also not an option anymore.

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Goldberg Kohn gave their incoming associates a $7500 bar stipend (which was reduced from the originally promised $8,000); they paid for Bar Exam fees; and they gave them a hand wave goodbye. As for their reported “pushing back start dates”, Goldberg Kohn has told their incoming associates that their start date was INDEFINITELY deferred. They said that March 2010 was a possibility but that the date was arbitrary and they are making no promises at all….They have offered no deferral stipend.

We would like to note that Shearman is paying a $65,000 stipend to those deferred to September 2010.

We wanted to call this post “The Final Round-up,” but that seemed overly optimistic. Check out the newest additions to the nationwide start date watch, after the jump. This time around, we’ve included firms (that we know of) that have not yet announced start dates.

Shearman & Sterling is the latest firm to ask incoming first years to voluntarily delay their start dates. According to a firm wide memo that went out today, the firm is offering $65,000 (plus the standard bar stipend) for incoming associates who are willing to start in September of 2010.

But there’s an interesting wrinkle. According to the memo:

Incoming Class of 2009 associates who choose to participate in the Delayed Start Program will have an offer to join the firm as a first year associate in the Class of 2010, with the option to start on the first start dates for Class of 2010 associates.

So, officially now, Shearman is asking people not just to give up a year of Biglaw salary, they are also asking them to lose a full class year. That will affect their raises (assuming those will still exist at some point), bonus payouts, and put even the superstars a year behind in their quest for partnership.

According to NALP, Shearman made 128 offers to its 129 participants in the 2008 summers program out of its New York office. This year, the firm expects just 54 summers. But it certainly looks like those 54 people are now directly competing against a significant number of the 128 people the firm now hopes will defer until 2010.

I think it’s safe to assume that the firm doesn’t want 182 people starting in September 2010, so something will have to give.

More details from the Shearman memo, after the jump.

Yesterday, we mentioned a NALP “glitch” that allowed users to get a sneak peak at the organization’s 2009 statistics about law firms. The problem, whatever it was, was fixed soon after we alerted NALP to the problem. Here’s the quick statement we obtained from NALP:

Legal employers provide this data to NALP each winter. NALP is pleased to be able to publish this free online searchable database each spring once the data submissions are finalized.

Excellent. It’s a great resource.

As promised, today we take a look at some of the overall summer program numbers from the firms that are ranked 11 through 20, according to Vault (check out firms 1 - 10 here).

The moderately surprising fact is that this next batch of firms didn’t decrease their overall summer associate offers as much as the Vault top ten. Looking at the firm’s New York offices, there was a 14% decrease in offers to 2Ls, compared with a nearly 20% decrease in the V10.

But, one firm really does skew those numbers. More details after the jump.

* What is up with judges behaving badly? There was Nottingham, Kent (who sexually harassed court employees) and that judge who was taking bribes to send innocent juvenile delinquents to jail! Now, New York Judge James M. Peck was arrested for hitting his wife, who called 911 from their Park Avenue apartment. Get it together guys. [The New York Times]

* A New York judge threw out a lawsuit accusing “Family Guy” of copyright infringement for spoofing “When You Wish Upon a Star” with a song entitled “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein” about hiring a Jewish person to help with the family finances. The song may be anti-Semitic, but the judge said copyright does not protect against parody. Sorry guy. [The Associated Press]

* Did Madoff swindle you? You probably won’t get your money back, but you can get some free veal osso bucco. Restaurant Nino’s 208 in New York a few blocks away from Madoff’s office is giving away free meals—customers must show the restaurant manager monthly statements from Madoff to cash in. [The New York Times]

* Protesting lawyers were ecstatic yesterday when Pakistan agreed to re-instate an ousted Supreme Court Justice. [The Associated Press]

* Some laid-off lawyers and law students whose offers have been rescinded have found jobs in public works. [CNN.com]

Daylight savings is on. The weather keeps flirting with the idea of getting warmer. And area stores are starting to put miniskirts on display in their front windows. You know what that means: Summer’s a-coming. Law students bound for BigLaw summer associate gigs may already be packing their bags. Except it looks like many will be able to pack less clothing, because this year’s summer gigs are going to be a little shorter.

Firms won’t comment on this E-mails are pouring in from law students across the land telling us that a 12-week program is just a summer dream now. According to tipsters, Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; and Kirkland & Ellis are shortening their summers to 10 weeks; and Shearman & Sterling has confirmed that it is rolling it back to just nine weeks. Here’s what we’ve heard:

Cravath just called all of their upcoming 2L Summer Associates and informed us that the summer program would be cut to 10 weeks. They asked that we go online and reschedule our dates accordingly. No explanation given. I’m sure that they made calls rather than emails to avoid a paper trail.

We think the explanation is likely a financial one. Firms are cutting back, and they can get to know you just fine in 10 weeks rather than paying to have you stick you around for 12. Gibson-bound 2Ls got calls as well:

I received a call from the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher summer coordinators today, as did many of my soon-to-be colleagues. The start date moved up to May 18th (instead of the 11th) and the end date moved back to July 24th (instead of the 31st). They tried to sell it as a “good move” for everyone because the recruitment season start so early now (August); they think both the firm administration and the summer associates will appreciate some time to prepare for recruitment season. Is this some sort of signal? Should 2L summers be planning to interview in the fall?

C’mon now. Let’s not totally freak out. Or let’s, but in the comments. Here’s an open thread to discuss which firms are scaling back their summer programs.

Yesterday, we told you that Shearman & Sterling was laying off staff. Today, the firm made an official announcement about its reductions. According to the firm, 60 people have been let go in the U.S., and the firm plans to let 18 people go in the U.K. (once they comply with various European employment laws).

The staffing cuts will hit a number of departments:

In the US, approximately 60 secretaries and other administrative personnel from various groups, including Finance, GTS, HR, Marketing, and Office Services, will be leaving the firm today. In London, we are commencing a formal redundancy consultation process, as required by UK law, which will result in the loss of approximately 18 secretarial and administrative staff positions at the end of this process.

The firm did not share the details of the staff severance package, but the statement does mention that the laid off employees will be receiving a package. The firm does not mention any attorney cuts.

Read the full statement after the jump.