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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

EARLY EDUCATION - Law school applications are still sky high, but the legal industry seems to be growing less content with simply sitting back and waiting for future generations to find it. As we explore in the latest Law.com Trendspotter column, intense competition for talent, combined with a sharper focus on diverse hiring, has law firm and law school leaders increasingly talking about the need to take a more proactive approach to recruiting by engaging young people as early as high school and, in some cases, even grade school. The idea is to build future generations of attorneys who come from more diverse backgrounds and are better equipped for—and more interested in—a career in the law. The industry, in turn, could benefit from a wave of new lawyers who joined the profession because they wanted to and were prepared to, rather than because it was a family tradition or because law school was the "safe" choice for an otherwise aimless college grad. I'm interested to hear from you: What will it take for pre-law school pipeline programs to be effective? Let me know at [email protected].

CHECKS, PLEASE - It's become a time-honored ritual as predictable as the changing of seasons: Big Law jacks up associate salaries and everyone pretends to be appalled for a couple of weeks. But one group that is decidedly not all that offended by associates making more money is, well, associates. As Law.com's Dan Roe reports, while industry veterans took to LinkedIn and Twitter to grouse about the negative implications of the raises, many users on Reddit, Twitter and Fishbowl claiming to be Big Law associates eagerly traded notes on the firms that matched Milbank's $10,000 raise and exchanged predictions on the next firms to match or cover. To be sure, it's still plenty true that money can't paper over the mental and physical toll the last nearly two years of insane demand have taken on young lawyers. But the overall sentiment on social media seems to be that, while pay raises don't necessarily help in that regard, they don't exactly hurt either. As Reddit user LackEither4623 so poetically summed it up (in a post that garned 510 upvotes): "Going from making 190k to 215k without doing sh*t was the greatest stunt I have ever pulled."

COMBINATION LOCK - The Federal Trade Commission sued Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Tuesday in District of Columbia District Court to block the companies from consummating their $4.4. billion merger. The complaint, which is filed under seal, is assigned to U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss, who issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday pending a hearing on the government's motion. Aerojet is represented by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. Lockheed is advised by Hogan Lovells and McDermott Will & Emery. The case is 1:22-cv-00174, Federal Trade Commission v. Lockheed Martin et al. Stay up on the latest deals and litigation with the new Law.com Radar.  

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EDITOR'S PICKS

Fed. Judge Says Book He Published Not Grounds for Recusal From Redistricting Case By Allison Dunn 'We Are Recruiting the Next Leaders': How BU Law Strives to Increase Diversity in the Broader Legal Community By Christine Charnosky Attorneys of Color See Record Jump in Associate Representation By Dylan Jackson A Year Into Biden Administration, DOJ's Civil Division Remains Without a Permanent Leader By Andrew Goudsward Students With Disabilities Likely to Succeed in Challenging School Mask Bans, Appeals Court Says By Avalon Zoppo
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WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

THE HAVES AND THE HAVE-WAY-LESS - Ballooning salaries for young attorneys in the U.K. have been characterized by some in the industry as "unsustainable." But, as Law.com International's Jack Womack reports, most junior lawyers still only earn a small fraction of what the top earners get at the U.K.'s Top 50 law firms. On average, the highest-paid individual takes home more than 17 times what newly-qualified lawyers earn, according to pay data and Law.com International analysis of U.K. Top 50 law firm limited liability partnership accounts on Companies House, the U.K.'s registrar of businesses. At some firms, the pay gap is much wider than that. Fieldfisher, for example, pays its top earner 47 times what newly qualified lawyers earn. In a statement, a Fieldfisher spokesperson said: "Fieldfisher is run on meritocratic principles, not lock step, where advancement is based on performance. Our pay structure reflects this, with our top performing lawyers ranking among the highest earners in our sector." Meanwhile, none of top five most unequal firms—Fieldfisher, Macfarlanes, Clifford Chance, Eversheds Sutherland, and Mishcon de Reya—offered newly qualified lawyers more than 4% of their top earner's remuneration figure.

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WHAT YOU SAID

"If your heart is set on products from a market with a mask requirement and you can't or won't wear a mask, your choices are to get your food delivered, have someone else shop for you, or reconsider wearing a mask for your own health and the good of other shoppers."

— U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs of the District of Massachusetts, dismissing.a Boston-area man's complaint that Whole Foods' mask policy violated his religious beliefs that masks "are part of a satanic ritual."