We’ve reached the end of another exciting day in the salary wars.
Okay, exciting may be an overstatement. But it’s obvious that reader interest in this subject remains high.
After the jump, we reprint a pair of non-announcements — or perhaps they could be called “placeholder announcements” — from DLA Piper and Morgan Lewis & Bockius. We also provide space for you to chime in on the latest compensation news, argue over pay differentials in different cities, and bitch about your hours.
To quote Hillary Clinton: “Let the conversation begin!!!”
* The point of this fluff piece feature is that Ferraris are not always penis substitutes. [Legal Times]
* Is there actually a rental market (Netbux?) for books-on-tape? [Patry Copyright Blog]
* New York fashion week starts soon, and I will yet again be reminded that as a woman living in the cultural capital of the world (arguably), I will never amount to anything because I am not 6 feet tall and 105 pounds. So would I really care if they keeled over and died? [Access Hollywood]
* She also claimed to have coined, “I’m listening.” [New York Law Journal]
* Must-see TV, PBS-style. Those of you who know me also know I only discovered PBS when I got to college. And then, I just didn’t care. (Nah, just being obnoxious — I’ll occasionally watch a well-intentioned documentary or a live concert by some 60s band). [Legal Blog Watch]
* Defense should probably open with a clip of The Birds. [Los Angeles Times]
We haven’t seen as many films this year as we usually do. But one of our favorites, either our #1 or #2 pick for the year, is The Queen (directed, and brilliantly so, by Stephen Frears).
Here’s a decent plot summary:
In late August 1997, just as Prime Minister Tony Blair was moving into 10 Downing Street, Princess Diana died in a Paris car wreck. England went into traumatized mourning deeper than anyone could have predicted, while the royal family — Diana’s estranged former inlaws — offered no public reaction at all.
As resentment toward the royal cold shoulder built into a monarchical crisis of public opinion, young Mr. Blair [attempts to intervene] with the Queen, [urging] the House of Windsor [to make] a public demonstration of something like humanity.
But Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) resists Blair’s call for a more public show of empathy. She is a deeply traditional woman, and as far as she’s concerned, Diana’s death is a “private matter” — since Diana, divorced from Prince Charles some time ago, was no longer a “royal” or “HRH” at the time of her death.
The Queen’s commitment to tradition makes her tone deaf on the public relations front. She does not know how to navigate the complex and challenging world of the modern mass media. The Queen fails to see the crisis in confidence that is looming — a crisis that threatens the institution of the monarchy, which she loves above all.
What we must now ask is:
Is H. Rodgin Cohen, the chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell, the Biglaw version of “The Queen”?
Cahill Gordon & Reindel has raised base salaries for its associates. The memo — posted on Infirmation, verified to us by one source at the firm, and emailed to us by another — appears after the jump.
The story we’re about to share with you is great, gossipy fun. But we must warn you that it’s not for everyone. It’s on the long side, and it’s aimed at a rather narrow demographic.
It’s most likely to entertain (1) current or former Ninth Circuit clerks and (2) people who follow the federal judiciary very, very closely. If you were a reader of Underneath Their Robes back in the day, then this story is for you.
In recognition of its “inside baseball” nature — and so as not to inflict it upon people who just want Biglaw salary info — we’ve placed the complete story after the jump.
The Justice Department’s Shanetta Cutlar isn’t the only idiosyncratic manager in the legal profession. The WSJ Law Blog offers up some interesting blind items about bosses from hell challenging supervisors in the world of private practice.
From the main post:
[Wall Street Journal columnist Carol Hymowitz] interviewed Gary Hayes, a psychologist and consultant, who says he worked with a New York law firm where a senior partner flung heavy law books across the room at an associate.
“The associate told me it was all right since the partner intentionally threw to miss — not hit him,” says Hayes. “But the associate soon moved to another firm.”
It’s okay to hurl F.3ds at your underlings, as long as you have crappy aim.
And from the comments:
“In the eighties there was a story making the rounds about a partner at a major firm (yes I do know which one) who punctuated a heated discussion by ripping a telephone out of the wall and flinging it across the room at another partner. Does partner v. partner mean it’s ok?”
“There is a certain partner at a certain well-known firm who is reputed to have hit her secretary in the head with a phone.”
“It just happened to me on Monday. A partner started yelling at me, reaching a high-pitched crescendo, because I handed him a photocopy of the wrong e-mail in an informal discussion. I almost started laughing, which infuriated him even more. The guy was on the verge of a stroke. I pity the man. He is a punishment to himself.”
If you’d like to enlighten us about these blind items, or speculate as to the individuals involved, you may do so — at your own risk — in the comments.
We will remind you, as we’ve done before, that under Section 230, YOU are responsible for any defamatory comments you post. We are providing the forum for discussion, but YOU are the speaker or publisher of your own remarks.
(And only YOU can prevent forest fires.) The Scream [WSJ Law Blog]
For those of you who are new to ATL, welcome to Legal Eagle Wedding Watch. In this recurring feature, we review the wedding announcements in the storied society pages of the New York Times, pick out three couples in which one spouse is a lawyer, and then score them numerically — on their credentials, families, looks, and “couple balance.” Each week, we declare a winning couple. The winners then square off in our “Couple of the Month” contest.
Due to competing claims on our attention — e.g., associate pay raise news — we’ve fallen a few weeks behind in LEWW. If you can think back that far, please cast your mind back to early January….
The weekend of January 6-7, the first wedding weekend of the new year, was a busy one. The most notable nuptials: the marriage of Ann Leventhal and Judge Jon O. Newman, of the Second Circuit. Numerouslegalblogs took note of it.
But there were other lawyer weddings that weekend. Here are the three that we will review and score:
We’ve confirmed the fact that Wilmer Hale has raised associate base salaries, in Washington and New York. We don’t have a memo, though, because associates received personal latters.
More about what we’ve learned, plus an open thread for your comments, after the jump.
And he was VERY prestigious…
In case you don’t visit ATL in the evenings (even though we post at all hours), please check out this post from last night: Please Stop Forwarding the Gallion & Spielvogel Link To All Your Friends, While Laughing Your Ass Off.
It concerns the website of Gallion & Spielvogel, a highly esteemed boutique law firm founded by former associates of the extremely well-regarded, exceptionally international law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. G&S is now representing associate Gera Grinberg — y’know, the guy who allegedly had an “unnatural relationship” with Aaron Charney — in connection with Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell.
As one of you suggested, we reached out to Edward Gallion and Steve Spielvogel. We inquired into the death of their delightful website.
Check out our correspondence to them, after the jump.
We’re so excited. Our girlfriend SYC has made the big leagues! Shanetta Y. Cutlar, the successful and high-powered lawyer who oversees the Justice Department’s Special Litigation Section, is the subject of an article in today’s Legal Times. We’re praised her profusely in these pages; but we’re glad that she’s finally getting her due in the mainstream media.
Some excerpts:
Ty Clevenger, 37, a former Washington Times reporter and line attorney in the section who was fired in October, has accused veteran Section Chief Shanetta Cutlar of being “abusive toward attorneys and support staff,” specifically those hired by Schlozman.
Among Clevenger’s allegations: Secretaries were ordered not to assist him with an eight-hour typing project, another attorney was publicly berated for using a paper clip rather than a binder clip on a document, and an intern was reprimanded for not greeting Cutlar while passing her in the hallway.
In his whistleblower complaint, Clevenger included a copy of a statement by the intern, Deborah Meiners, 24, to a DOJ ombudsman about the hallway incident.
“I did get the sense that this was a common occurrence,” says Meiners, now a third-year law student, of her treatment.
For those of you who have been wondering if Shanetta Cutlar is aware of her newfound celebrity, the answer is probably yes — now that the Legal Times has contacted her office for comment:
Cutlar’s office referred questions to a DOJ spokeswoman, who issued a statement saying the department is looking into the allegations.
Interesting. Does anyone know what “looking into the allegations” entails?
Is the DOJ conducting a full-blown internal investigation of SPL? Or is it just AAG Wan Kim getting on the phone to Shanetta and saying, “This is all silliness that I don’t need to pay attention to, right?”
We hope the latter. As we’ve previously pointed out, Shanetta Cutlar is just doing her job — and exceptionally well, at that. We hope that a bunch of whiners and crybabies don’t interfere with SYC’s longstanding efforts to vindicate federal civil rights laws on behalf of the disabled, prisoners, and other groups who can’t stand up for themselves.
To Shanetta Cutlar: Congratulations on your shout-out in the Legal Times! Whistleblower Complaint Filed Against DOJ Civil Rights Division [Legal Times]
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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We’ve reached the end of another exciting day in the salary wars.
