If things had gone according to plan, Lindsay Murphy would be a big-city tax lawyer by now. Instead, the recent law school graduate found herself doing legal aid, listening to complaints about raw sewage bubbling up into the bathtubs of a Mississippi Delta housing project.

Murphy is among hundreds of newly minted lawyers who've been forced by the recession to take a detour on their way to the nation's top firms, spending up to a year helping out nonprofits for as little as a third of the salary they'd expected.

From San Francisco to New York, high-powered firms are postponing the start dates of new hires they recruited before the economic meltdown. Many are paying the "deferred associates" stipends to spend a year doing public interest work until the business slowdown ends.

For cash-strapped nonprofits and government law offices, the free help is an unexpected silver lining. And the young lawyers and the firms that pay them say they are benefiting from valuable training and hands-on experience.

Murphy, 25, started her public interest fellowship at the University of Mississippi's Civil Legal Clinic in August. She has helped poor clients with housing and tax problems and traveled this month to the poverty-ridden Delta with other attorneys and law students to investigate one low-income neighborhood's sewer problems.

"This is what this profession is for — it's for helping people," said Murphy, who focused on corporate tax early in law school at Ole Miss. "I had lost sight of that."

Nobody has an exact count of how many law firm associates have been deployed to public interest law offices, but experts say it's likely in the high hundreds.

The list of firms paying such stipends include some of the biggest legal names.

Murphy, for example, is one of 59 public interest fellows from Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, whose Dallas office she plans to join next year. Ropes & Gray is paying 51 incoming associates to do public interest work. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe has 45 participants. All are international firms with large offices around the country.

The economic downturn has meant less work for law firms, fewer experienced attorneys leaving jobs and thousands of lawyers laid off. From August 2008 to August 2009, total law office employment fell by nearly 26,000 jobs, a mere 2 percent but striking for an industry accustomed to constant growth.

In Minnesota, bong water can count as an illegal drug.

That decision from Minnesota's Supreme Court on Thursday raises the threat of longer sentences for drug smokers in that state who fail to dump the water out of bong — a type of water pipe often used to smoke drugs

The court said a person can be prosecuted for a first-degree drug crime for 25 grams or more of bong water that tests positive for a controlled substance.

Lower courts had held that bong water is drug paraphernalia. Possession of that is a misdemeanor crime.

The case involved a woman whose bong had about 2 1/2 tablespoons of liquid that tested positive for methamphetamine. A narcotics officer had testified that drug users sometimes keep bong water to drink or inject later.

The Kentucky Supreme Court is deciding whether the state has the power to seize Internet domain names involved in online gambling after hearing arguments Thursday from lawyers on both sides of the issue.

At issue is whether the more than 100 domain names the state has tried to seize are tantamount to gambling devices such as slot machines, and whether the state has authority for the seizures.

An appellate court has previously ruled that the state can't seize the domain names.

"They have been using these to violate the law in Kentucky," Eric Lycan, a private attorney representing the Kentucky Justice Cabinet, said. "They are subject to forfeiture."

The state previously sued 140 Web sites after determining that they allowed Kentuckians to gamble illegally and asked a judge to either force the sites to block Kentucky users or allow the state to take possession of the domain names — essentially shutting them down. Most of the sites are offshore and serve gamblers in and outside of the state.

Kentucky already allows gambling on horse racing and bingo and has a state lottery.

NAME — Kenneth R. Feinberg.

AGE — 63, born Oct. 23, 1945, in Brockton, Mass.

EXPERIENCE — Obama administration "pay czar" for financial bailout program, June 2009 to present. He is serving without pay, as he did as special master of Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund of 2001; founded the Feinberg Group LLP, law firm specializing in mediation, in 1993; partner at Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler law firm, where he began mediating conflicts, 1980-93; administrative assistant to Sen. Edward Kennedy, 1977-79; special counsel to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, 1975-80; assistant U.S. attorney, Southern District of New York, 1972-75; law clerk for Chief Judge Stanley H. Fuld, New York State Court of Appeals, 1970-1972.

EDUCATION — Bachelor's in history, University of Massachusetts, 1967; law degree, New York University School of Law, 1970.

FAMILY — Wife, Diane Shiff; three children.

QUOTE — "My grandmother in Lithuania would be a little shocked. I'm no czar issuing imperial compensation edicts. We have been working daily to come up with actual dollars that can be endorsed by these seven" companies.

The Arkansas Supreme Court said Thursday it will review a case involving Southwestern Electric Power Company's planned coal-fired power plant in south Arkansas.

The state Court of Appeals had overturned a permit that was issued by the Arkansas Public Service Commission for the $1.6 billion John W. Turk Jr. plant in Hempstead County. SWEPCO appealed that decision, and now the Arkansas Supreme Court is going to review the case.

The Appeals Court ruling, issued in June, said the Public Service Commission's process for considering such permits has been flawed. If upheld, the ruling would require the plant to start that process over.

SWEPCO said Thursday it was pleased the high court was to review the case.

"This is an important case — both for the Turk Plant and for the process used to approve major utility projects in Arkansas for more than 30 years," said Paul Chodak, SWEPCO's president and chief operating officer. "We believe the record in the case will show that the approval process was correct and that the Turk Plant approval should stand."

SWEPCO said that as of Sept. 30, about $830 million had been spent on the Turk project.

Opponents have argued that the plant would violate the federal Clean Air Act.

Legislative budget analysts raised their estimate of Arizona's midyear budget shortfall to nearly $2 billion, up from approximately $1.5 billion. The growing shortfall, roughly a fifth of the budget, prompted calls to cut spending, increase taxes and raid voter-mandated programs.

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee staff on Thursday cited the latest drops in tax collections, increased spending for safety-net programs and newly reduced expectations from some budget-balancing maneuvers as it boosted its shortfall estimate on the current state budget.

Other elements of the shortfall already included a nearly $500 million deficit carried over from the last fiscal year and about the same amount of budget savings lost when Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed parts of the budget on Sept. 4.

The budget has roughly $10.1 billion of state spending, including $1.1 billion funded by federal stimulus dollars. Before being augmented by the federal money, borrowing and other maneuvers, regular state tax collections provide only $6.4 billion.

Arizona's economy has been hit hard by the recession, and economists said Thursday the recovery will be slow and long.

A New Jersey man faces up to 40 years in prison when he's sentenced for twice traveling to western Pennsylvania to have sex with a teenage girl he met on the Internet.

Twenty-nine-year-old Andrew Luko, of Bridgeton, N.J. pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts each of statutory sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault.

Cambria County prosecutors say Luko came to Pennsylvania twice in 2007 to have sex with the Johnstown-area girl in motels. She was 14 when he first visited in March of that year, and she had turned 15 by the time he visited for three days that July.

Police tracked Luko using motel records and his vehicle registration.