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14 ¦ JULY 20, 2020 NEWS

¦ From INCOMING on PAGE 13 fellowships give recent graduates
rescinded offers for incoming as- the opportunity to take temporary
sociates, in part because those legal jobs while getting paid by the
firms faced significant shortages school.
of midlevel associate talent for A new survey by the Nearly half of law school re-
five years or so after gutting new spondents—49%—said they have
associate classes during the 2008 National Association for invested in new technology to
recession, he noted. Instead, many Law Placement found that facilitate virtual counseling, in-
firms are taking a wait-and-see half of law firms have yet terviews and meetings. Another
approach to when new associates to set start dates for their 21% of schools are considering
new associate classes, in

come on board. part due to uncertainty making such investments. Among

“The other piece of the puzzle is over when the bar exam career services offices that have
the uncertainly about the volume will be given. established operational plans for
of work, and wanting current as- the coming academic year, 61%
sociates to have the work now,” plan to offer a combination of
Leipold said. “It seems that most virtual and in-person services,
firms that have deferred start dates the survey found. But half of the
have provided some sort of stipend—not a salary responding law school career services said they ex-
obviously—but some monetary compensation to perienced budget cuts between March and June of
help tide incoming associates over until January.” this year, and 58% anticipate more cuts in the com-
More precisely, 69% of the law firm offices that ing year.
have deferred their incoming associate start dates ¦

are offering stipends or other cash payments, ac- Karen Sloan is the Legal Education Edi-
cording to the survey. tor and Senior Writer at ALM. Contact her at
On the law school side, 13% of career services of- [email protected]. On Twitter: @KarenSloanNLJ
fices reported that their schools had increased the Sign up for Ahead of the Curve—her weekly
amount of post-graduate fellowship funding avail- email update on trends and innovation in legal
able for the class of 2020 from the previous year, education—here: https://www.law.com/briefings/
while 69% said that funding remained flat. Those ahead-of-the-curve/

The People Problem: How States Try to Limit
Risk Assessment Inaccuracies, Misusage

By Rhys Dipshan, Victoria Hudgins, Frank Ready
In hands of court or correctional officers, risk and/ others, it can mean extensive training, and constant
or needs assessment tools can have a significant monitoring, of the court and correctional officers
impact on the lives of those in the criminal justice tasked with collecting, interpreting and managing
system. But whether the impact—such as a harsher the data required by assessment tools. The differ-
or more lenient sentence—was intended or not can ence comes down to not only a state’s preferences,
sometimes come down to whether an assessment tool but what resources it has at its disposal and the de-
was properly used. mands of the particular risk assessment tool in use.
For some states, ensuring these instruments are Most of the assessment instruments Legaltech
appropriately deployed takes minimal effort. But for News found in use across the U.S., save for the the

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