RECRUITING ON A SHOESTRING
Some of the job “perks” don’t sound too enticing: no pay, and a field trip to the California Youth Authority in Stockton. But every year the National Center for Youth Law still gets deluged with applicants seeking summer clerkships at the Oakland nonprofit.
This year was no different. One undergraduate and eight law students from schools like Boalt, Stanford and Michigan beat out more than 150 applicants to earn one of the coveted summer jobs that end this week.
They work long hours without the imprimatur of a big-name firm � and without any salary. Although NCYL helps its clerks find outside stipends and fellowships, it doesn’t add up to much compared to the $25,000 or more that fellow debt-ridden students can earn at some private-sector firms.
Still, second-year Boalt Hall School of Law student Robyn Gould said, “My summer experience has exceeded all my expectations.”
Gould worked firsthand on a class action, Katie A. v. Bonta, where NCYL won a court order that will require the state to expand mental health services for foster children.
“From the moment we walked into the door we’ve been treated as colleagues,” Gould said. “There was nothing that we were left out of, and it provides a sense of ownership. It’s different from typical internships where you’re doing somebody else’s work.”
NCYL has competed successfully � and on the cheap � with top law firms by combining creativity and the promise of work on high-profile cases “with real significance,” said director John O’Toole.
“These are not people who are coming here because they have nowhere else to go,” O’Toole said. “They come here because they want to be child advocates and poverty lawyers. But they’re also attracted because they know we have a really organized program and they’re going to learn something.”
This summer’s clerks got to meet with Senior U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson and quiz him about California’s prison reform case, and have lunch with the presiding judge in Alameda County.
NCYL staff also hosted the occasional after-work social hour, karaoke night, wine-tasting trip and whitewater rafting.
In exchange, O’Toole said, the center receives a burst of energy. “We have 11 lawyers here and all of a sudden we bring in nine very enthusiastic, energetic people, and we get almost twice as much done.”
Total cost for NCYL’s summer program? About $2,500, O’Toole said � with most of the cost coming from the rafting excursion.
� Cheryl Miller
AU REVOIR TO M&A
Four years after his first conference in Paris, Cooley Godward partner Richard Climan said his goodbyes in Honolulu to the American Bar Association’s M&A committee earlier this month.
He steps down as chairman of the Committee on Negotiated Acquisitions on Aug. 31, when he’ll be replaced by Kaye Scholer’s Joel Greenberg.
The committee, part of the bar association’s business law section, addresses not only the legal substance of negotiated M&A transactions, but also the process of negotiating and documenting them.
“It’s been a particular challenge to run this committee during a period of dramatic change in the M&A marketplace,” Climan said. Among the most significant new factors affecting that market are the expanded role of private equity and hedge funds, and major regulatory changes, including Sarbanes-Oxley.
Former committee chairman Karl Ege, Russell Investment Group’s chief legal officer, said Climan took the committee to a new level, both in terms of programming and its international reach.
When Climan took over in 2002, the group had about 750 members. Since then, he’s held meetings outside the continental United States and helped expand membership to more than 2,000.
He also broadened the committee’s offerings beyond model documents of acquisition agreements to include an in-depth analysis of legal documents, Ege said.
“Although only 20 years old, it’s become the second largest committee in the business law section of the ABA, second only to the federal regulation of securities committee,” Ege said.
Climan also introduced several new programs as chair. The most recent, a private equity subcommittee, was rolled out in Honolulu. A dealmakers’ dictionary of M&A terms that’s been in the works for several years is slated to come out in 2007. And Climan also named the committee’s first judicial liaison, Chief Justice Myron Steele of the Delaware Supreme Court, because of the significance of Delaware jurisprudence to M&A practitioners.
Among his most memorable moments as chair, Climan remembered lecturing at the International Institute on Mergers & Acquisitions in Paris, “in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower,” where he had a chance to rub shoulders with pre-eminent European M&A lawyers. “This conference,” Climan recalled, “helped establish the committee as a truly international forum for debating significant M&A issues.”
� Petra Pasternak
