Who exactly is going to pay the deferred associates?
Questions are rising about who exactly will cover the hidden costs of those new graduates who have been deferred from their law firms for a year. While many law firms have agreed to subsidize their these new lawyers upwards to $75,000, and the non-profit and public interest organizations are in many instances happy to take on the new staff, there is the issue of cost that still needs to be answered. An article in the American Lawyer Daily, quotes Mitchell Kamin, the president and CEO of Bet Tzedek Legal Services in Los Angeles, who explains some of the less obvious costs associated with bringing on a new attorney “Kamin estimates the added cost of taking on an intern for one year at his organization will come to roughly $10,500 to cover office supplies, parking, and postage (an additional $3500 will be necessary for the added training and supervision costs for these newbie lawyers).”
Some employers believe the firms had not anticipated some of the costs involved in bringing on a new associate. Non profits have reacted to the situation, in some instances, by asking firms to provide funds to cover training fees which the non-profits believe could benefit the firms long term and also step-up their fund raising efforts to cover other costs like medical benefits or malpractice.