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Never Too Early to Start Cultivating Patrons of the Arts There's a lot of marketing going on at law firm summer associate programs, though not in the way you might think. Sure, firms are wining and dining young law students and trying to sell them on all the benefits of working at the firm. But in New York, cultural and artistic institutes have been marketing themselves to summer associates, hoping that today's young law students will become tomorrow's patrons of the arts, as described in this NYT article, "For Top Law Students, A Sidebar with the Arts" (7/23/06). Kianga Ellis , founder of Avail Art, a for-profit company to support the arts, describes: "I hope to create a pipeline of new patrons for the arts. The challenge the arts are facing in terms of cultivating new patrons is how to make it interesting and relevant to the lifestyle of new professionals. It's about making it part of your lifestyle -- where you ate dinner, where you go on the weekend." Avail Art is not the only program to match lawyers with the arts. According to the article, last summer, the Appollo Theatre Foundation hosted summer associates for an amateur night at the Apollo, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland held a social networking party for local nonprofits and summer associates from Cleveland's top law firms.  The article asks whether "convincing young lawyers to buy art can ease the spiritual burden of 2500 billable hours a year." I wonder that myself. Will lawyers feel better about not having followed another passion, like art or writing, because they can afford to buy or sponsor it? Or does that simply make the longing worse? Posted by Carolyn Elefant on July 24, 2006 at 03:15 PM | Permalink 'Anonymous Lawyer' Hits the Book Stands Tomorrow July 25 , 2006 is the first day of the bar exam in most states, but it's also the day that Jeremy Blachman's novel, "Anonymous Lawyer," officially hits the bookstores. Though releasing a book about big-firm practice on the same day that the bar exam starts doesn't strike me as the best timing (particularly where the narrator expounds on the devastating consequences of failing the bar), the release date does allow AL to ride the coattails of recent movies like The Devil Wears Prada and other exposes of bad bosses. I was fortunate enough to have snagged an advance copy of "Anonymous Lawyer," which I've reviewed favorably, over at My Shingle. Posted by Carolyn Elefant on July 24, 2006 at 03:12 PM | Permalink Blawg #67 Is Out David Fischer of the Antitrust Review hosts Blawg Review #67. Not surprisingly, Blawg Review covers a range of antitrust topics, including a link to Fischer's co-blogger, Manfred Gabriel's analysis of Microsoft's Antitrust Principles and Fischer's post on the status of antitrust litigation against Bar Bri based on allegations of an illegal market division agreement with Kaplan. This week, notices to potential class members, i.e., those who took Bar Bri between 1997 and 2006, are being mailed out. But Blawg Review #67 contains much more than just antitrust; be sure to go over and take a look. Posted by Carolyn Elefant on July 24, 2006 at 03:10 PM | Permalink