Lat here. Earlier this month, I wondered: could the bumper crop of new partners at Cravath bode well for bonuses? Although firms like Cravath generally make partnership decisions with a focus on the longer term, as opposed to based on short-term financial performance, a class of five partners is one of the largest Cravath has had in years. It certainly seems to reflect a good degree of confidence about the firm’s future.

Now we have our answer as to the size of Cravath bonuses. The firm just announced its year-end bonuses for 2012, and they’re not simply a cut-and-paste of last year’s numbers. This year’s bonuses are more generous than last year’s, which is great news (at least for associates trying to pay off their law school loans; partners might be less enthused).

Sit up and take notes, since the Cravath bonus scale sets the bar for most other major law firms….

Read more on Abovethelaw.

Today brings us more evidence that the number of people applying to law school is dropping. A new Kaplan survey shows that 51 percent of law schools have cut the size of their incoming classes. Of those schools, 63 percent claim they are cutting in response to the weak legal job market.

While the job market is certainly a factor, we know that schools are also struggling to keep up their admission standards as fewer and fewer people apply to law school. Some people think this is a temporary trough and that applications will pick back up once the economy gets better.

But some people see a crash coming, one that will force a few law schools out of business…

Read more on AbovetheLaw.

Unless that’s a butler coming down the track, this family is going to struggle.

Last week, we published a departure memo from an associate at Clifford Chance who could no longer juggle parenting and Biglaw.

Since we published, the story has gone everywhere. The Huffington Post weighed in, and so did the New York Times. I’m glad so many people are finding out that working at one of the top law firms in the world is really difficult. Welcome to our world — they’re not paying people $160,000 and up to work from 9 to 5.

But one disturbing trend in the coverage of this story is the move to blame the husband. Ms. X’s husband only appears once in her tick-tock:

7:45pm: Negotiate with husband over who will do bathtime and bedtime routine; lose

That line has led to rampant speculation about the deadbeat loser Ms. X must be married to. Vivia Chen of The Careerist had one of the more restrained slams on this guy: “Not to be presumptuous, but I think we should all chip in for some negotiation courses for this poor woman. I realize we don’t have all the facts, but her husband seems to be getting away with murder.”

Well, you know what? I’ve been a Biglaw associate, and a Biglaw spouse, and let me tell you, it’s not as easy as it looks. Just because a lady “loses” the negotiations on domestic chores doesn’t mean that she’s married to a sexist pig, and it doesn’t mean the guy is “getting away with murder”….

Read more on Abovethelaw.

I’ve read this departure email three times this morning, all while a sleeping six-week-old snores up at me. It’s a departure memo where a Biglaw associate kind of admits that she can no longer juggle the demands of parenthood and the demands of being a Biglaw lawyer. In a way, it’s heartbreaking. I don’t know this woman, and I don’t know what her hopes and dreams are or might have been, but it shouldn’t be so damn hard — in the richest country on Earth — to have a big-time job and be a loving parent. The struggles highlighted by this woman make me sad as a new parent myself.

In another way, this memo is uplifting. You can’t have it all. When you finally come to accept that, it’s liberating. You don’t have to feel like a bad employee or a bad parent for not being able to do it all. As Al Pacino says in the Devil’s Advocate: “Guilt is like a bag of bricks, all you gotta do is set it down.”

So, take a look as one woman bows out of the rat race….

Read more on AbovetheLaw.

Hey, don’t blame us. We didn’t make this list of the worst law schools in the country.

In the Above the Law Career Center, we just give law schools letter grades, based on user surveys completed by ATL readers. But the Daily Caller has compiled a list of the ten worst ABA-accredited law schools. Mwahaha.

One really strong point about this list is that it’s more outcome-oriented than other rankings. It’s not looking at LSAT scores and GPAs; it’s looking at bar passage rates, cost, and employment data.

So, send your angry emails to the Daily Caller, or your own administrators, if you are unlucky enough to be going to one of these schools…

Read more on AbovetheLaw.

Given the glut of attorneys being pumped out into the market on a yearly basis, recent graduates are being told to consider applying for employment in places that they normally wouldn’t — rural places like the cities in the Midwest or the Deep South. And for some, it’s been working out, but for others, the experience has been less than enjoyable.

Enter the latest set of rankings. Last year at about this time, the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) released its Buying Power Index for the Class of 2010. This year, National Jurist has presented a list of the Worst Cities for Young Attorneys, based, in part, on NALP’s figures. Unsurprisingly, many of those cities fall near the bottom of NALP’s buying power list, and one was even in second-to-last place. If you have other options, you may want to seriously consider them.

So where are the worst cities for young attorneys?

Read more on AbovetheLaw.

Ed. note: Gradenfreude is a new series chronicling a recent law school graduate’s life after attending an unranked school. Feel free to email the author at TristanTaylorThomas@gmail.com, and he’ll respond ASAP. After all, it’s not like he has anything better to do.

Hello my loyal readers — oh, and you commenters, too. A lot has happened since we last met. I had a job interview last week. How did it go, you ask? The words embarrassing and atrocious come to mind. Think about getting mugged on the way to your car, getting a flat tire in the rain, and then having your credit card declined at McDonald’s. Yeah, that would have been a much better day than I had.

Looking back at the day as a whole, I really should have known that it was going to be a bad time. First, my power went out in the middle of the night, but luckily for me, I was so excited and nervous that I woke up every couple of hours and noticed early on that I needed to turn on my cell phone alarm to make sure that I woke up. But then, of course, I couldn’t go back to sleep because my anxiety level was at an all-time high.

While I lay in bed and waited for my alarm to go off, I practiced going over interview questions in my head. My alarm finally went off, and I felt like I did before most of my law school exams: “Oh sh*t, I am not nearly prepared for this. Why the hell did I do this again?”

Read more on AbovetheLaw.

Good news, everyone! Princeton Review — the other, other white meat U.S. News — has released its very own law school rankings. This year, we are treated to the Best 168 Law Schools Rankings. As usual, the rankings are divided into 11 categories filled with mostly nonsensical results. After all, where else will you find Cooley Law on a list for having the “Most Competitive Students”?

But nonetheless, in this kind of a down market, everyone’s been itching to see a rankings list of the law schools that will verily ensure graduates’ employability (except for the purposes of suing over employment statistics, of course). Honestly, why go to law school in the first place if as a result you’re only qualified to stock shelves at the local convenience store?

That’s why everyone breathed a sigh of relief when Princeton Review released its somewhat-ridiculous “Best Career Prospects” rankings list. Because any list that doesn’t include Yale is sure to be worth reading….

Read more on AbovetheLaw.

Back in 2010, we brought you some news about a photo shoot that took place in a highly sexualized law library, with models getting hot and heavy between the stacks. That sexy shoot came courtesy of the No. 67 law school in the nation.

Today, we’ve got even hotter news from an even more prestigious law school. It looks like an internet cam girl decided to film herself masturbating with a variety of sex toys inside a leading law school’s library. Poor girl must’ve had a really case of Blue(book) Balls.

Which T14 law school library did this activity take place in? And what does this woman look like?

WARNING: The pictures after the jump should be safe for work — there’s no nudity, we’ve redacted it — but they are mildly risqué. Read on at your own risk.

Read more on AbovetheLaw.

Depositions usually aren’t very exciting, but every now and then, you get a gem that’s worthy of public fanfare from the legal world. Take, for example, a deposition that we came across last year, in which a lawyer asked the deponent whether his “jurisprudential hymen [was] being ruptured.”

Today, we’ve got some deposition fun for you with the assistance of rap artist Lil Wayne, and it turns out that he’s just as entertaining in a legal setting as he is on stage — and by “entertaining,” we mean he acted like a complete tool. He’s currently suing Quincy Jones III over a documentary about his life, claiming that he was portrayed in a “scandalous” manner.

Let’s check out the clips from his leaked deposition….

Read more on AbovetheLaw.