In California there is definitely not a nurse shortage. Most temp nurses went ahead and took permanent employment when the economy started to drop. Last summer’s crop of nursing grads are having some difficulty finding jobs in this market. My understanding is that the job fairs for nurses are looking at 10-1 applicant to position ratio if not higher.
Someone asked about IP law. Patent litigation is very expensive so it’s still a wait and see if folks will engage in more IP litigation. I know that Google has taken a stand that they will not settle patent lawsuits and will fight. They’ve hired more litigators and my expectation is that this will decrease the number of lawsuits filed against them since there will not be the expectation of a fast settlement.
IP transactions has slowed (hand in hand with M&A work).
Patent prosecution is interesting. I think a lot of folks have taken parts of this in-house. The big boys (Intel, Compaq, Cisco, etc.) that threaten each other based on the breadth of their IP portfolio (versus the quality) might still be filing 2-3 patent applications a week, but for these “low quality” apps, they’re negotiating heavily to lower the prosecution costs.
In general, you have to think that the budget for legal work of all sorts has shrunk at a number of corporations and that will influence the IP legal work accordingly.
