We’ve written a fair amount about D. Marvin Jones, the University of Miami law professor who has been accused of soliciting an undercover officer for sex. He allegedly offered her a tantalizing $20 for her services.

But a picture is worth a thousand words. And a picture is what’s been making the rounds among UM students and alumni, via email. The tipster who sent the graphic to us introduced it as follows:

I graduated from UM Law (embarrassing, I know)…. [But] I actually have a job.

I hate UM. After [redacted] for undergrad, UM Law was a joke. I’m embarrassed that I went here.

Anyway, this pic is amazing. Please publish it. I don’t know where it came from, but it’s awesome.

Now, we realize that Professor Jones is a popular figure on the UM Law campus. We acknowledge that he merely stands accused of wrongdoing; he hasn’t been convicted of anything. And we know that many ATL readers have rather delicate sensibilities, especially for the readers on an online legal tabloid. If you’re highly sensitive to criticism of Professor Jones, or if you are easily offended, then please stop reading here.

But if you have no particular attachment to Professor Jones, and if you have a reasonably high tolerance for irreverent, crass, politically incorrect humor, then check out what lies after the jump.

How quickly times have changed. A little over a month ago, Thacher Proffitt & Wood couldn’t hire people fast enough. At Boston University School of Law, they relaxed their traditional on-campus interview standards, to try and get people through the door. From a BU tipster:

“Thacher Proffitt & Wood’ lowers standards — see below. Maybe Loyola 2L can get an interview with them, if he has a 3.9 at Loyola.”

Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:38:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: [BU recruiting]
Subject: Thacher Proffitt & Wood Resume Collection Still Open

There is still time to submit your resume to Thacher Proffitt & Wood’s resume collection on Symplicity. Hiring criteria: Minimum of a 3.4 and a journal is preferred. Only hiring in Structured Finance and Real Estate. New York Office only. If interested, please submit your resume, transcript and cover letter by NOON on Monday, September 17th through their resume collection in the “2007 Late OCI” session under the OCI tab on Symplicity.

Thanks and have a great weekend!

Now, of course, structured finance and real estate ain’t looking so hot, thanks to the mortgage mess and credit crunch. Firms that are big in structured finance are struggling to keep their lawyers busy. See, e.g., McKee Nelson (previously discussed here).

More about Thacher Proffitt, after the jump.

This “news” is from last week. But we did want to mention it briefly, just for the record, since ATL strives to be a fairly comprehensive compilation of lawyer misbehavior. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Robin Meredith “Robbie” Levin, 36, of Jonesboro is charged with felony sexual exploitation of children and misdemeanor criminal attempt to contribute to the delinquency of a minor and electronically furnishing obscene materials to a minor. He faces 10 years in prison and disbarment if convicted of the felony….

Clayton County police Chief Jeff Turner said the alleged victim is the 16-year-old daughter of an employee in the county’s Indigent Defense Administration which has assigned court-appointed cases to Levin. The girl told her mother that she’d been having sexually-explicit conversations with Levin through the Internet. Turner said the girl reported the contact because she was afraid of where it was leading.

An undercover officer took on the identity of the girl to continue conversations with Levin, Turner said. The Internet contact soon included Levin performing a sexual act through a Web cam, Turner said. Levin was arrested Tuesday when he showed up at the Steak and Shake [sic] on Mt. Zion Road in Morrow to meet the officer posing as the girl, Turner said.

It’s a surprising turn of events, considering that Levin is described as a “good guy and a great lawyer” who has “represented several high-profile cases, including a gang member accused in the July 2004 shooting death of 4-year-old Travon Wilson.” Then again, it’s not inconsistent with other alleged actions of lawyers in the news lately.

(Also surprising: that Levin looks much better in a prison jumpsuit. Who would have thought that orange could be so flattering?)

Lawyer charged with sexual exploitation of colleague’s daughter [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
Attorney Arrested for E-Mails to Teen [11Alive.com]
Attorney Held in Internet Sex Case [11Alive.com]

* Genarlow is school shopping. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution via How Appealing]

* She judges you when you use poor grammar; she has that in common with a lot of ATL readers. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Defendants in China now actually get to meet with their defense lawyers; better than Gitmo. [Jurist]

* Lawyer, Senator, President, woman. Hillary Clinton? No, not yet, but it looks like this Argentine woman is now all of those things. [BBC]

* Death sentence for fetus snatcher. [CNN]

Earlier today, King & Spalding announced the rest of its new associate pay scale, which will take effect on January 1, 2008. The firm had previously announced a starting salary for first-year associates of $145,000.

In terms of base salary, the K&S scale is similar to the Alston & Bird scale, but slightly better from year 4 through year 7 (to the tune of a few thousand dollars a year). The KS scheme also provides for a fixed bonus at 2050 billable hours (including up to 50 pro bono hours), starting at $7,500 for first years and going up to a range of $30,000-$55,000 for seventh years.

Additional bonuses, both for hours and for “significant non-billable contributions to the firm,” remain available. Memo and table, after the jump.

* Happy Birthday, Mrs. President! Scott Shrake conducts an astrological analysis of Hillary Clinton. [Huffington Post]

* Speaking of witch, is Stephen Colbert “the best-scripted candidate this side of Hillary Clinton”? [Radar Online]

* “‘Terrorism,’ Censored Legal Briefs & The Blogosphere: Awesome Together.” [Fishbowl NY]

* Lawsuit of the Day: Mom of “Let’s Go Crazy” Baby fights back. [ABC News]

* Benchslap of the Day: federal judge tells SEC lawyer, to “sit down” and “shut up.” [WSJ Law Blog]

This email was sent around Cleary Gottlieb earlier this afternoon:

There has been a bomb threat received by one of the tenants of OLP [One Liberty Plaza] that is not specific as to details of the threatened event. The police have been conducting an investigation of the premises, including with dog squads, and have turned up nothing. No recommendation has been made by the police or other authorities that we evacuate the building, although one or two tenants have taken it upon themselves to do so.

The police do not believe this is a credible threat, but we felt that our employees should have the benefit of this information nevertheless.

If you have any details about the incident, please add them in the comments, or email us. Thanks.

Cadwalader isn’t the only New York law firm with a sideline in serving as a film location. As previously reported in the ABA Journal, the recent George Clooney film, Michael Clayton, was filmed in the offices of what was then Dewey Ballantine (now Dewey & LeBoeuf).

But did Davis Polk & Wardwell also get a piece of the action? This email was recently sent to an internal email group at the firm:

“A couple of friends of mine saw ‘Michael Clayton’ last night and said they saw a credit to Davis Polk at the end. Any idea why?”

Find out, after the jump.

Actually, as it turns out, Judge Jeffrey Levenson DID say he was sorry — immediately after making the ill-considered gay football / “wide receiver” crack that made him our Judge of the Day. And he apologized repeatedly during the course of the hearing, too.

But that hasn’t stopped the hue and cry. From the Daily Business Review:

Bar leaders and the public defender issued new calls Thursday for sensitivity training for Broward judges after Circuit Judge Jeffrey Levenson made an off-color joke in his courtroom about a teenage boy who allegedly had sex with an adult male defendant.

“If this incident doesn’t scream loudly how desperately we need diversity and sensitivity training in this circuit, then I don’t know what will,” said Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein. “In a matter of a year or two years, we had a judge insult Haitian-Americans, another insult African-Americans, had a third judge insulting blacks, Hispanics and Catholics, and a fourth judge insulting gay people.”

Maybe Judge Levenson should skip the sensitivity training and become a television judge. After all, TV judges get PAID to insult the litigants.

Food for thought: Why does Florida produce so many TV judges? It is because of their penchant, noted by PD Howard Finkelstein, for being rude and abusive?

The following are former Floridian jurists who left the state bench for the boob tube: Marilyn Milian, of the People’s Court (previously discussed here); Alex Ferrer, a/k/a “Judge Alex”; David Young, the gay TV judge; and the notorious Anna Nicole Smith judge, Larry Seidlin (not on air yet, but rumored to arrive in fall 2008).

Broward Courts: New chief’s honeymoon over [Daily Business Review]

Earlier: Judge of the Day: Jeffrey Levenson

Earlier this month, it was reported that Heath Ledger is in talks to appear in a sequel to Brokeback Mountain. From Defamer:

Who could ever forget the final scene of Ang Lee’s tragic Brokeback Mountain, in which Heath Ledger’s Ennis Del Mar clutches a shirt belonging to the gay-sheepboy love of his life, as if touching him for the very last time? As shattering as that moment was, however, something called for a coda — perhaps just a brief shot of a smiling Ennis, finally at peace, serving daiquiris to vacationing tourists at the Key West bed n’ breakfast he opened after Jack Twist’s death.

We may not have to rely on our imaginations for that kind of closure, however, as OK! Magazine reports that a Brokeback sequel is on the way.

Is life imitating art? Aaron Charney and Sullivan & Cromwell have just settled the litigation between them. But a sequel to Brokeback Lawfirm may be in the works.

Remember Gera Grinberg — the former S&C associate who worked closely with Aaron Charney, was rumored (incorrectly) to be Charney’s gay lover, and left the firm under mysterious circumstances? A reliable source — we use the source “reliable” intentionally, since all ATL sources should be presumed unreliable, unless otherwise indicated — tells us a lawsuit by Grinberg against S&C is a distinct possibility.

This source informs us that Gera Grinberg has filed “numerous complaints with S&C,” which have not yet been resolved. The former M&A associate hasn’t heard back from them regarding the results of any investigation that they may — or may not — have undertaken. In terms of pursuing further action against the firm, Grinberg has ruled nothing out.

Very interesting. Stay tuned.

Finally, in happier news for S&C, the firm just announced the election of its new partners. The timing, in the same week as settlement of the Charney litigation, is fitting. The firm is turning a new page in its history.

Check out the memo, and see if you know any of these future (or maybe current) millionaires, after the jump.

If you’re an employee of the U.S. Department of Justice, and your name isn’t Susana Lorenzo-Giguere, your job probably doesn’t have many perks. They toss a few four-dollar meatballs your way, and public outcry ensues.

And now you can’t even go to the office gym, thanks to a potential outbreak of staph infections, aka “Staphylococcus aureus.” All three DOJ fitness centers are being closed for “a thorough cleaning” (which makes you wonder how “thorough” the regular cleanings are).

First the rat-ridden day care center, and now this. What next for the DOJ’s beleaguered employees?

These are not the easiest times to be at the DOJ. In the wake of the U.S. Attorneys firing controversy, the Justice Department has been plagued by a leadership vacuum (not just in terms of no Attorney General, but a very high number of acting AAGs). It has also suffered from a loss of public respect and low employee morale.

But no gym? To quote Justice Scalia, “this is really more than one should have to bear.”

The memo, which includes tips for preventing infection that everyone should read, appears after the jump.

Here is the latest Job of the Week, courtesy of ATL’s career partner, Lateral Link. To refresh your recollection:

“Because Lateral Link does no cold-calling and is more efficient than traditional recruiting firms, successful candidates receive $10,000 upon placement.”

Position Title: Trial Attorney

Position Description: An innovative, New York-based litigation boutique seeks a well-credentialed, mid-level litigation associate. This firm has 14 attorneys and is well-known for its select group of prestigious private and institutional clients, including celebrities, executives and directors at Fortune 100 companies, top-tier investment banks, and prominent private equity firms. The scope of the firm’s work includes complex civil litigation as well as regulatory and criminal investigations.

Requirements: Top 10 law school; law review and/or federal clerkship is a plus.

To apply for this position, or to learn about other career opportunities, please visit laterallink.com.

Earlier: Prior Job of the Week listings (scroll down)

The celebrated case of Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell was fun while it lasted. As we mentioned last night, the fun is over: the parties have reached a settlement.

But the case was good to us — and we intend to give it a proper sendoff, with several post-mortem posts. If you have any info or gossip about the case that you’d be willing to share, please email us.

This post is the obligatory linkwrap. We’ve collected and read various reactions to the settlement news, so you don’t have to.

Links and excerpts, after the jump.

Thanks to recent instability in the credit, stock, and real estate markets, don’t look for $190,000 associate starting salaries anytime soon. But a raise to a somewhat lower figure — say, $175,000 — may be possible.

In fact, it may be likely. From the ABA Journal:

Average starting pay for lawyers is projected to rise 5.4 percent next year, according to a legal recruiting agency.

First-year associates at large law firms with 75 or more lawyers will see the biggest gain, with base annual starting salaries expected to rise about 9.1 percent and range from about $112,000 to $137,000, according to a press release by Robert Half Legal. The legal placement company says its salary projections are based on thousands of job orders and placements handled by its account executives.

Salaries for more experienced lawyers at large law firms are projected to be between $114,000 and $147,500 per year for those with up to three years of experience, an 8.2 percent increase, and $167,500 to $234,000 for those with more than 10 years of experience, a 7.9 percent increase.

Additional discussion, after the jump.

This just in, from the AP:

The Georgia Supreme Court upheld a ruling that Genarlow Wilson’s 10-year prison sentence for having consensual oral sex with a fellow teenager is cruel and unusual, and ordered him released from prison.

Wilson was convicted of aggravated child molestation for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. He has served more than two years of a mandatory 10-year sentence.

Attorney General Thurbert Baker appealed a Monroe County Superior Court judge’s decision to reduce Wilson’s felony conviction to a misdemeanor and free him from prison.

Baker said the judge overstepped his authority when he granted Wilson’s motion last month. Wilson’s attorney argued his 10-year prison sentence is cruel and unusual punishment.

Update: From an insightful tipster:

Regarding the Georgia case, it may be worth noting that the U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing argument on a related issue on October 31: whether state Supreme Court decisions must use the U.S. Supreme Court’s standard in applying criminal law decisions retroactively or instead may expand retroactive application of those decisions to a broader class of criminal defendants.

Georgia Supreme Court Rules Prison Term for Sex Crime Cruel and Unusal [AP via Fox News]

Earlier: We Sure Hope It Was Worth Two Years in Prison

* White House offers to share secret documents on the NSA surveillance program with the Senate Judiciary Committee. [New York Times]

* Mandatory arbitration clauses affecting litigation? [Red Tape]

* U.S. soldier acquitted in Italy. [CNN]

* Seventh Circuit refuses to rehear Gov. George Ryan’s appeal en banc; three judges dissent. [How Appealing (linkwrap)]

* Innocence Project frees innocent man incarcerated for 20 years. [CNN]

Yes, the Brokeback Lawfirm litigation has come to an end. No, this is not an April Fools’ joke.

Sullivan & Cromwell and Aaron Charney ride off into the sunset, with Charney a little sore in the saddle — from all the money he’s sitting on. No more “bending over” for this cowboy.

The scoop, from Anthony Lin, appears in the New York Law Journal:

Sullivan & Cromwell said Thursday it had reached a settlement with former associate Aaron Charney, who sued the New York law firm earlier this year for sexual orientation discrimination.

“Aaron Charney and Sullivan & Cromwell have resolved their differences in connection with all pending disputes between them,” the firm said through a spokesman.

Charney’s lawyer, Daniel Alterman of Alterman & Boop, did not return a call for comment.

The settlement, the terms of which are confidential, brings to a close a dispute that had fascinated the New York legal community over the past several months, both with its allegations concerning partners at one of the city’s most prestigious firms and its bizarre twists and turns in the courtroom.

The rest of the piece recites the facts of the case and its procedural history, which will be familiar to ATL readers. But it’s a clear and cogent summary, and you can read the rest of it here.

We’ll have more to say in the morning. In the meantime, have at it in the comments.

Aaron Charney, wherever you are: Good night, and good luck. And if you need any help spending those settlement proceeds — call us.

P.S. Anthony Lin’s article was linked to by Howard Bashman at 10:58 PM, but we’re not exactly sure when the news broke. (We just got home from the Georgetown Law EJF auction, which was great fun.)

Sullivan Settles With Former Associate Who Sued Firm for Discrimination [New York Law Journal]

* Professor Eugene Volokh wonders: Does engaging in a three-way with a current client and the client’s girlfriend count as having sex “with a current client” — a practice forbidden by state bar rules? [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Professor Ann Bartow wonders: Why call it “law porn”? [Feminist Law Professors via Blawg Review]

* Paralegal of the Day? [TPM Muckraker]

* A way for that Cleary Gottlieb Glamour editor to earn some extra cash on the side? [City Room]

* “Law school grads: burnt by the job search process? A journalist wants to hear about it.” [JD Underground]

If you’re thinking of moving from private practice to government, you should be prepared to take a hit in perks as well as pay. Sure, your hours will be better — just avoid the S.D.N.Y. — and you might even get a free flu shot. But you won’t have the fancy offices, the swanky lunches, or round-the-clock support staff. Sometimes you’ll have to make your own photocopies.

It is not, however, all doom and gloom. In the past, Department of Justice employees got to enjoy four-dollar meatballs (plus $13,000 in brownies). And now we hear that for at least one DOJ diva, work was a day at the beach — quite literally.

From Al Kamen of the Washington Post:

[T]he acting deputy director of the [voting rights] section, Susana Lorenzo-Giguere, has been accused of collecting a $64 per diem, including on weekends and the Fourth of July, while spending half of June and most of July and August with her husband and kids at their beach house on Cape Cod.

The allegation, made to the department inspector general apparently by someone linked to the Boston regional office, was that Lorenzo-Giguere made “multiple” government-paid trips to the Cape and that she improperly said that “her presence on Cape Cod was necessary pending litigation in Boston,” which was in the courts over the summer….

The complaint also alleged that Lorenzo-Giguere “spent little time in Boston” this summer and did little work on the case. Also, what supervision and oversight she provided was done by phone to Boston while she “remained on the beach,” and she would have been able to do this from her office in Washington.

C’mon, folks — cut Susana some slack. Her kids needed her; building sandcastles is no easy task. And she probably looks great in a swimsuit, too.

More about Ms. Lorenzo-Giguere, after the jump.

Our parents keep reminding us to get a flu shot (which we haven’t gotten yet this year). If we worked for a law firm, maybe we wouldn’t have to worry about this. From a tipster:

My firm provides flu shots for all of its employees every flu season. I was wondering if this was typical.

The idealist in me wants to think that the firm actually cares about my health and well-being. On the other hand, the skeptic in me believes the firm doesn’t want me to get sick so that I won’t miss work.

They make you sign a consent form (of course).

Forget about the free iPhones and subsidized gym memberships. Flu shots are clearly what separate the men from the boys.

So… does YOUR firm furnish free flu shots? Please discuss, in the comments.

The headlines say it all, over at the Drudge Report:

We previously wrote about the incident here. The report exonerating the officers is not flattering to the tased bro, Andrew Meyer:

In the 17-page summary of the report, FDLE said it spoke with several witnesses who said that days before the event Meyer vowed to put on ”a show” at the Kerry event.

According to the report, during a Sept. 11 Gators for Rudy [Giuliani] rally, Meyer got into an argument with another student and told a friend that “if he liked what he had seen that he should go to the Kerry speech and he would really see a show.”

In addition, the report said that after his arrest, when Meyer was out of view of the cameras, he told officers that they did not do anything wrong and then asked “if cameras will be at the jail.”

UF police cleared in ‘Don’t Tase me, Bro’ case [Miami Herald]
President Machen comments on FDLE review of student arrest [University of Florida]
Andrew Meyer [official website]

Earlier: Sadly, John Kerry Wasn’t Tasered (But He Could Have Used the Electricity)

Reward Schools that Prepare Students Well for Practice
For more, see www.racetothetoplaw.com.

It’s time for a brief update on the possibly propositioning professor, D. Marvin Jones of the University of Miami School of Law. We first reported the news of his arrest for allegedly soliciting a prostitute last week.

Now it’s in the Miami Herald. Most of the piece will be familiar to those of you who read our coverage. But the article does include some new material, including comment from the law school:

A law school spokeswoman declined to comment on the arrest Thursday, but the school’s dean, Dennis Lynch, told The Miami Hurricane student newspaper he was aware of the charge against Jones.

”He is a respected member of our law school community, and the validity of the charges will be determined through the appropriate judicial proceedings,” Lynch said, according to The Hurricane. “I mean, he’s only been charged.”

Jones pleaded not guilty to the solicitation charge last month and has requested a trial, court records show. If convicted of the second-degree misdemeanor, Jones would face up to 60 days in jail.

Dean Lynch, by the way, is stepping down (but related in no way to L’Affaire Jones). Considering the weird publicity the school has been experiencing lately — see examples collected here — we don’t blame him. We’ve been hearing about a fair amount of infighting over there, which we may report on in the future.

P.S. Speaking of UM, we’d love to interview the law students featured here and here. If you know either or both students, please convey our invitation to them. Thanks.

UM prof accused of offering money for sex [Miami Herald]

Is there such a thing as a “lifestyle” law firm? We’ve previously expressed skepticism: “[I]n every law school class, some people believe in kinder, gentler law firms. And lavender unicorns.”

Interestingly enough, we’ve been hearing that this recruiting season, New York’s top Biglaw shops aren’t placing much emphasis on “lifestyle.” While firms continue to talk about “collegiality” and say things like “there are no screamers here,” recruits report being told, even at the kinder / gentler firms, “You WILL work hard here.” Perhaps certain firms don’t want to get criticized for pulling the old bait-and-switch: brag about the “lifestyle” to 2Ls, show them a great time as summer associates, and then sling them over a barrel and have your way with them, once they show up full time.

But that’s at the largest law firms, in major markets like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Could smaller firms, especially in other markets, offer more options?

More discussion, built around the case study of a 10-lawyer boutique in Atlanta, after the jump.

Oh how the mighty have fallen. From the Miami Herald:

A Boston defense attorney once dubbed one of People Magazine’s Most Eligible bachelors was arrested for allegedly drugging and raping a college student he met at a Miami Beach nightclub.

Gary Zerola — already facing trial in two sexual attacks in Boston — was arrested last Friday night and booked into Miami-Dade County jail. Miami Beach police charged Zerola, 36, with sexual battery.

Once known for his work on behalf of foster children, Zerola was also a candidate to star in the first season of ABC’s reality hit The Bachelor,” according to Boston media reports.

More discussion, plus a photo of the handsome defendant, after the jump.

Maybe associates clamoring for yet another pay raise have a point. Maybe $160,000 is not enough.

Because, if certain Democrats get their way, a new surtax will be imposed that will hit even first-year associates at most large law firms. Under a tax plan proposed by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY), a 4 percent surtax will hit single earners with incomes over $150,000, or married couples with incomes over $200,000. For incomes above $500,000, which are increasingly common in Biglaw, the surtax would rise to 4.6 percent.

So, readers, what do you think? Many lawyers harbor progressive political views. Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is, and support politicians who will raise taxes on people like you?

Update: As noted by several commenters, the full plan has several other provisions. For example, it would lower the top corporate tax rate to 30.5% from 35%, and it would scrap the alternative minimum tax (AMT). For more details, see here.

Feel free to vote in our reader poll, after the jump.

Remember Chief Judge Edward Nottingham (D. Colorado)? We named him our Judge of the Day back in August, after he reportedly “was too drunk to remember how he spent more than $3,000 at a strip club in two consecutive days.” We subsequently honored him as our Paulie Walnuts Doppelgänger of the Day.

We are hereby declaring Judge Nottingham ineligible for future Judge of the Day contests. Like the Honorable Elizabeth Halverson, he has transcended the competition, joining the Judge of the Day Hall of Fame.

Read about his latest misadventures, in the ABA Journal:

A Denver lawyer has filed a complaint claiming the chief judge of the Colorado federal courts threatened to call authorities when she confronted him about parking in a handicapped space.

The lawyer, Jeanne Elliott, was paralyzed in 1986 when she was shot by an angry litigant. She told KUSA in Denver that she waited in her wheelchair behind the illegally parked SUV outside a Walgreens. Judge Edward Nottingham arrived and threatened to call the U.S. Marshals service when she didn’t move, according to her grievance (PDF) filed with the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He later called 911.

More after the jump.

* Dems to propose new surveillance bill? [Newsweek]

* Only a Garrison Keillor stalker would call it “transcendental love.” [CNN]

* Pearl drops lawsuit against terrorists. [MSNBC]

* Law firm World Series. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Today’s stupid crimes from Court TV. [CourtTV]

Maximilian Cordero believes the second time is a charm — with respect to (1) a gender and (2) suing rich guys. From DealBreaker:

In the grand tradition of trying to turn the (real or imaginary) sexual assault you suffered at the hands of a creepy old guy into stocks and bonds, everyone knows you don’t start at the top of the food chain. You get a few starter suits under your belt first, THEN you go to the top. Got to walk before you can run, got to allege “he put his hand on my knee and I didn’t like it” before you allege “he jerked off into a towel while I stood there awkwardly, and I think there might’ve been a purple vibrator in there, too” (those are just for instances).

A few years ago, Maximilia née Maximilian Cordero filed a $10 million lawsuit that accused her former lawyer, Glen Gentile, of statutory rape and endangering the welfare of a minor 2002, when she was “under the age of 17” (representing Cordero was her new—at the time—boyfriend/attorney, William Unroch).

Unfortunately, the case got thrown out when the court informed Cordero (yes, it informed her) that in 2002, she was over the age of 17, and, actually almost 19. For her part, Cordero said that she was “shocked” to find out how old she was.

As Barbie (née Ken) might say, “Math is hard! (And so am I.)”

(You can read the complete post over at DealBreaker.)

Jeffrey Epstein Accuser Attempting To Get It Right Second Time Around [DealBreaker]

Earlier: Lawsuit of the Day: Cordero v. Epstein
Cordero v. Epstein: She’s a Man, Man!

* If you received Jesse Wegman’s invitation to join Shelfari, please accept his apologies. [NYO]

* Yet another law professor who’s out of touch with the real world. [TaxProf Blog]

* Going north of Westchester = Going south of the Mason-Dixon line? [QuizLaw]

* Is Hillary a Commie? [Althouse]

* Eh, who cares? She’s unstoppable! Polls show Hillary picking up more momentum, especially among younger voters, while Obama is losing his mojo. [Marc Ambinder]

Time for a quick update on a past Lawyer of the Day Weekend. From New York Newsday:

A former Legal Aid Society lawyer pleaded guilty Wednesday to illegally using a hidden videocamera to spy on female co-workers as they changed clothes in their offices.

Peter Barta, 32, of Queens, used a camera hidden in a clock to videotape five co-workers in the public defense agency’s Manhattan offices, recording at least one woman with her breasts and buttocks bared….

Barta, 32, pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful surveillance, a felony, in exchange for a conditional discharge. The case will be dismissed and sealed after he completes a year of counseling.

Barta will be automatically disbarred. But clerking doesn’t constitute the practice of law, which is why you don’t need to be admitted to the bar to do it. Maybe Peter Barta can land a clerkship with this fine jurist?

Legal Aid lawyer plead guilty in coworker voyeurism case [New York Newsday]
Voyeur lawyer pleads guilty to oogling co-workers [AP]
Inside the Apartment of a Peeping Tom [Gothamist]
‘PEEP’ LAWYER HAD KINKY TOY TROVE [New York Post]

In the comments to yesterday’s post about Heller Ehrman, there was some debate about how grave the firm’s current problems are. Last night, more bad news broke, from Legal Pad (via the super-vigilant Blogonaut):

Another day, another Heller lawyer gone. Corporate partner Kyle Guse has jumped from the firm’s Silicon Valley office to McDermott Will & Emery. Guse told Legal Pad that the current rumblings at the roughly 700-lawyer Heller had nothing to do with his decision to leave….

Guse represents biotech and tech companies and said he’ll be bringing his clients with him to the new firm.

So tell us, loyal reader(s), what is going on at Heller? Are more partners going to leave? Will captain Matt Larrabee guide the firm to safety?

ATL readers: any thoughts?

For the record, we take no pleasure in Heller Ehrman’s difficulties; we’re just covering a story. When we were in private practice, our experiences with Heller Ehrman were quite positive. We attended several depositions defended by the diva-licious Nancy Sher Cohen, who protected her witnesses like a lioness protecting her cubs. We were most impressed by this badass litigatrix (who is also a community activist and cancer survivor; see this profile).

P.S. And the cookies served in Heller’s New York office were delicious! No matter what happens to the firm, we hope that the cookie recipe will be preserved for posterity.

Corporate Partner Exits Heller Ehrman [Legal Pad / Cal Law]
More Bad News for Heller: Yet Another Partner Defection [Blogonaut]
Sher Cohen’s Law & Order: Justice Unit [JewishJournal.com]

Earlier: Going to Heller in a Handbasket? (Part 1)

In case you haven’t noticed, we have thing for law librarians around here. We’ve given them their own category tag, and we previously held a law librarian hotties contest (male nominees here, female nominees here, and winners here).

In our recent New York Observer column about Cadwalader, we also tried to include a shout-out to their super-cool library staff, based on this New York Times article. It ended up getting cut in the editing process, but we thought we’d mention it here. From a tipster:

The “librarian at a law firm” who was profiled [in the Times] works at Cadwalader. I’d be curious to hear from the ATL posters which other Vault firms feature these alleged “hipster librarians.”

So, any takers? Having a team of crack librarians, ready to go to the ends of the earth to find some obscure treatise or track down elusive legislative history, is one of the nice perks of Biglaw life — as well as life as a law professor or government lawyer, too.

And you might end up getting more than just USCCAN volumes — you could end up finding love. Justice Samuel A. Alito, you may recall, ended up marrying his office’s law librarian. How neat is that?

If you’d like to praise (or complain about) the library staff where you work, please feel free to do so in the comments. Thanks.

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers [New York Times]
Jeffrey Howard Buckley [jehobu.com]

As noted recently in The American Lawyer, the credit market crisis isn’t good news for firms with big securitization / structured finance practices. We previously discussed the topic here.

One firm mentioned in Ben Hallman and Aruna Viswanatha’s AmLaw article was McKee Nelson. Hallman and Viswanatha wrote: “[S]maller niche firms are more vulnerable [to credit market problems]. About half of McKee Nelson’s 200 lawyers, and almost forty percent of Thacher Proffitt & Wood’s 350 attorneys, work in structured finance.”

Today we received this tip about McKee Nelson:

Name partners Bill McKee and Will Nelson had a meeting with all associates and counsel on Monday afternoon. While the mantra “we are not going to have any layoffs” was repeated over and over, lawyers were encouraged to take sabbaticals, consider changing practice groups to tax or litigation, or “self-identify” to take a “change of venue” to another firm or field. They announced that each associate and counsel would meet individually with hiring partners in New York and DC.

At one such meeting, held yesterday, a first-year was told that, while there was no timeline required, the firm would help the associate find another job and was given the name and web address of a recommended recruiter to work with.

Sounds like a layoff to me! Oddly, despite encouraging these “changes of venue” the firm still intends to follow industry standard for bonuses for this year (whatever that means).

We reached out to the firm for comment. Founding partner William Nelson responded promptly to our inquiry:

The difference between a layoff and what we are doing is that no one is losing their job. As a result of the fundamental disruption in the credit markets, we do not have enough work to keep all of our structured finance lawyers fully busy. We want to keep these lawyers productively engaged while the market sorts itself out.

To do that, we have given people options that include moving into other areas of our practice where we have significant need for additional lawyers, possible secondment to clients, or taking sabbaticals (which many associates have requested in the past). In addition, we asked any lawyers who already are planning a near-term career change or change of venue (meaning moving to a different firm or in-house) to please let us know and we would help them make that move.

We thank Mr. Nelson for his response. While the credit slowdown and its consequences for law firms are certainly regrettable, McKee Nelson is taking reasonable and sensible steps to address a difficult situation. Nobody is being forced to leave the firm; people are just being encouraged to consider all their options.

A special request: please go easy on McKee Nelson in the comments. The firm should be commended for (1) its openness and transparency with respect to its current situation, and (2) responding to us so promptly and in such detail. We would like firms to feel “incentivized” to come forward with such information and to cooperate with ATL’s inquiries. Thanks.

P.S. Please note that our filing of this post under the Layoffs category should not be construed as a statement that layoffs are taking place. We use this tag rather liberally, applying it to any post that arguably falls within the penumbra of layoff talk (which may or may not be founded).

Earlier: More Woe Ahead for Private Equity and Mortgage-Backed Securities Lawyers?

We’re rather late on this, but better late than never. Some time ago, one of you sent us this tip:

Fish & Richardson has asserted ownership over patents secured by a former principal who, in addition to being an attorney, also is a prolific inventor (and alleged “patent troll”).

Interestingly enough, Fish appears to have made its claims only after Google, one of its clients, was sued under a patent claiming a technology that Harris invented while at Fish. See Patently O, which has a copy of the Complaint.

What a mess. Anyway, we were reminded of the case yesterday, when it was picked up by Overlawyered:

Annals of creative patent lawyering: Highly placed attorney with intellectual-property specialists Fish & Richardson accumulates his own portfolio of patents, quits the firm, begins suing Fish & Richardson clients, things get messy fast (Patent Troll Tracker, Oct. 21).

We expect to be following this case for a while. If you have some inside info to share, please email us. Thanks.

Annals of creative patent lawyering [Overlawyered]
A Tangled Web of Patent Rights [Patently O: Patent Law Blog]
Fish & Richardson Strikes Back at Scott Harris [Patent Troll Tracker]
Patent Troll Sues Fish & Richardson [Patent Troll Tracker]

One of the perks of being a judge is that everyone has to laugh at your jokes. Except when they’re in poor taste and arguably offensive.

If you’re going to make an attempt at humor in the courtroom, proceed with caution — even if you’re the one wearing the robe. From Rumpole (via S.D. Fla. Blog):

Well, those fine folks North Of the Border have done it again.

This time it is Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Levenson, who put his robed foot in his mouth by making an inappropriate joke about the Defendant in a sexual battery case during the charge conference….

To summarize, apparently the Defendant is a high school football player, and the case involved the allegation of illegal sexual contact with another male. Judge Levenson asked what position the defendant played. He was told “linebacker” and another person in the courtroom said “Tight End” at which point Judge Levenson said “Wide Receiver?”

A little bit more, after the jump.

* Mistrial in case against Muslim organization; retrial likely. [AP; New York Times]

* California wildfires lead lawyers to flee from their homes and offices… [The Recorder via Law.com]

* … and may give rise to insurance battles, too. [CNN]

* Ex-stripper convicted in “Last Seduction” trial. [MSNBC]

* White House accused of doctoring environmental testimony. [MSNBC]

* Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) retracts her expressions of concern over the prosecution of an L.A. councilman. [Washington Briefs]

The voting was closer than we expected it to be, but the result was no surprise: Deecy Gray and her new hubby, Judge Douglas Ginsburg (that distinguished chap on the right), beat out two sets of Stanford whippersnappers to win ATL’s Couple of the Month honors for September.

The full vote tally appears after the jump. A 42-glass champagne toast to the happy couple, and thanks to all the readers who voted!

* Remember the Mystery Pimp from our recent column about Cadwalader? Peter Lattman, who works in the same building as CWT, has solved the mystery. Fantastic! [WSJ Law Blog]

* “Despondent Microsoft Has Nervous Breakdown; Jumps Into Elliott Bay To Live With Alien Sea Creatures.” [What About Clients?]

* New digs for The American Lawyer. Their landlord is now Larry Silverstein, who was recently featured on the magazine’s cover. Did they get a break on the rent for that kind of publicity? [The Real Estate]

* Brilliant Harvard Law professors rush to the defense of… online poker! Charlie Nesson and Alan Dershowitz? Now that’s what we call a full house. [Conglomerate]

* “Is Dumbledore gay simply because Rowling says he is?” Discuss. [PrawfsBlawg]

During past disasters, such as the steam pipe explosion and the subway flooding in New York, ATL served as a clearinghouse for interesting stories about how lawyers and law firms were dealing with those emergencies.

Today the headlines are dominated by news of the devastating California wildfires, which have burned 269,000 acres and caused the evacuation of an estimated 500,000 people. From a reader:

San Diego is burning, and Los Angeles is not far behind. I’d be interested to hear the impact on law firms in those cities and what, if anything, they’re doing to help their employees and clients.

A good suggestion — we’d like to give the West Coast equal treatment. If you can respond to this reader’s query, and if you’re sitting in front of your computer rather than evacuating, please share your experiences in the comments.

Massive evacuations ordered as onslaught of fires spreads [Los Angeles Times]
Calif. Fires Destroy Hundreds of Homes [AP]

When we recently wrote about the case of Cordero v. Epstein, in which model Maximilia Cordero alleges that high-profile financier Jeffrey Epstein took advantage of her when she was underage, one of you wondered: “[H]ow many of [Cordero lawyer William] Unroch’s models do you think are really trannies?”

One possible answer: at least one. Namely, Maximilia Cordero herself — who allegedly was “born Maximillian Cordero in 1983.”

Read the original Dealbreaker post, which has a wealth of other details, over here.

For What It’s Worth, Jeffrey Epstein Has Been Known To Spend A Lot Of Time In Scotland [DealBreaker]

Earlier: Lawsuit of the Day: Cordero v. Epstein

Whenever something like this happens, people speculate that perhaps the poor associate was sleep-deprived. Now there’s some scientific research to support such speculation. From the BBC:

Brain scans can show how the brain gets “tired and over-emotional” when someone is deprived of sleep. US researchers kept volunteers awake for 35 hours and found huge increases in brain activity when shown images designed to make them angry or sad….

The researchers found that the parts of the brain linked to emotional reactions - the amygdala - showed bigger reactions (over 60% more) to the cards compared with a normally-rested volunteer.

Researcher Matthew Walker said: “The size of the increase really surprised us.”

“It is almost as though, without sleep, the brain reverts back to a more primitive pattern of activity, becoming unable to put emotional experiences into context and produce controlled, appropriate responses.”

Do you feel you get enough sleep? Take our reader polls, after the jump.

Okay, it’s not a “layoff,” since it’s not due to economic pressures. Rather, it’s due to his being a total asshat judicial record and temperament — and maybe a certain infamous lawsuit he filed.

From the Washington Post:

Roy L. Pearson Jr., whose $54 million lawsuit against a Northeast Washington dry-cleaning shop was rejected in court, is about to lose his job as an administrative law judge, sources said last night.

A city commission voted yesterday against reappointing Pearson to the bench of the Office of Administrative Hearings, which hears cases involving various D.C. boards and agencies. Pearson, who was up for a 10-year term, had tried to hold on to the job.

Expect the litigious Pearson to fight any refusal to reappoint him:

If the panel carries out its decision against reappointing him, Pearson, 57, could take the case to the D.C. Court of Appeals. In a separate filing, he is asking the appellate court to overturn the decision in the dry-cleaning case.

The sources said that had Pearson’s term not ended this May, at the height of his battle with the dry cleaners, he might have kept the job. His term has expired, but Pearson has remained on the payroll, making $100,000 a year as an attorney adviser for the Office of Administrative Hearings.

Judge Set to Lose Job, Sources Say [Washington Post]

It appears that lots of things are going up in smoke out west. From Blogonaut:

Two weeks ago the 700-lawyer San Francisco firm announced 65 staff were laid off. Now Heller has lost two leading and loyal partners to rival firms.

Patricia Gillette, a co-chairwoman of Heller Ehrman’s the labor and employment practice has defected to Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe along with another labor partner and four associates, the Recorder reports.

This defection in San Francisco comes at the same time that Jerry Marks, Heller’s Los Angeles managing partner and a well-known securities litigator, is jetting for Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy.

Not good news. A slowdown in work, staff layoffs, and partner defections are the hallmarks of a law firm implosion. They’ve foreshadowed the demises of several firms over the years, such as Brobeck and Testa Hurwitz.

Remember how the Heller Ehrman summer associates were grumpy over not getting paid at the $160K level? At this rate, they should be grateful to have somewhere to go after graduation.

Speaking of the Heller Ehrman summers, we have a summer associate story not previously posted, after the jump.

In our latest column for the New York Observer, we shine the spotlight on a firm that has figured prominently in these pages lately:

Founded in 1792, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft is “the oldest continuing Wall Street law practice in the United States,” as its website proudly notes. Name partner George Wickersham was attorney general under President Taft, and name partner Henry Taft was the president’s brother.

In addition to being one of New York’s oldest firms, Cadwalader is also one of the most lucrative. Last year, it was the city’s third-most-profitable law firm, behind perennial leaders Wachtell and Cravath.

But in the past few months, CWT has hosted some rather surprising visitors—at least by the standards of a prestigious, white-shoe law firm.

Some of these visitors will be familiar to ATL readers, but one will not. You can read the whole piece — and view a rather odd photo of Cameron Diaz and CWT litigation chair Gregory Markel — over here.

Update: If you’re wondering about the identity of the Pimp, the mystery has been solved! Peter Lattman has the scoop over at the WSJ Law Blog.

Cadwalader’s Strange Visitors [New York Observer]

That’s the question posed in this very interesting article, by Leigh Jones for the National Law Journal. It begins:

In recent weeks, some midsize firms have implemented drastic reductions to their billable-hour requirements for first-year associates in order to enhance training and to appease clients who are increasingly resistant to paying for new lawyers’ starts and stumbles.

Such a strategy is something other law firms say they are contemplating and could represent the advent of a change in the industry that many contend is long overdue.

The piece is an excellent round-up of the new approaches being employed by midsize firms, as they try to deliver cost-effective legal representation while remaining attractive places to work for associates. The strategies include reducing billable hour requirements for first years to 1600 hours, to allow for more training; abandoning billable minimums for first-years altogether, previously discussed here; and greater use of two-track systems, in which associates can choose to work fewer hours for somewhat less money.

And there’s a shout-out to ATL (which we’re vain enough to speculate was linkbait for us — if so, it worked):

As law firms have become bigger, so have associate salaries. First-year compensation jumped to $160,000 from $145,000 in January at many of the largest law firms, and law firm leaders are watching to see if speculation about pending increases to $190,000 reported on the blog Above the Law prove true.

NY to 190? Stay tuned. You can check out the full article over here.

P.S. Jones’s NLJ piece does remind us a bit of this recent post, by Amir Efrati, from the WSJ Law Blog. But then again, Efrati’s widely read Wall Street Journal story reminded us of Leigh Jones’s earlier National Law Journal article.

Maybe every story about law-firm associate life has already been written before. Maybe Efrati and Jones should just keep rewriting each other’s articles — and then have them rewritten again by the Des Moines Register, just for good measure.

Midsize Law Firms Go for Big Changes [National Law Journal]
Tinkering with Billable-Hour Requirements [WSJ Law Blog]

* Some Fahrvergnügen for Porsche, courtesy of the European Court of Justice. [How Appealing (linkwrap)]

* Surprise surprise: a Yale law professor has issues with Michael Mukasey. Professor (and novelist) Jed Rubenfeld questions the nominee’s views of executive power. [New York Times via WSJ Law Blog]

* If confirmed, Mukasey has his work cut out for him. “Clearly the Justice Department has lost its mojo,” said WilmerHale partner Reginald Brown. [Legal Times]

* Obama criticizes Hillary in Iowa mailing. [Politico via Drudge Report]

* A (very close) vote is expected this week on Leslie Southwick’s Fifth Circuit nomination.
[Fox News via How Appealing]

Additional links, after the jump.

“There she is… Miss S&C Bonsai!”

Just to close the loop on last week’s contest, the bonsai tree pictured at right is the winner of our Sullivan & Cromwell bonsai beauty pageant. Congratulations, Bonsai #2!

Of course, as with any matter of taste, there was disagreement. Some viewed Bonsai Two as tawdry:

Bonsai Contestant 2 is a pageant patty: the garish lighting, the big contestant badge, the pose. Bonsai Contestant 6 is fresh, unscripted, and beautiful, and therefore gets my vote.

But in the end, more voters agreed with these views:

“The lighting for Number two makes it classy, and yet ever so slightly risque. It gets my vote hands down.”

“The garish lighting makes it. So stark, so ironic. Number two (the existential bonsai) has it all the way.”

Wait a sec — is the lighting scheme “classy,” or “garish”? Eh, who knows! All we know is that you like it, you really like it.

For anyone who cares, the full tally appears after the jump.

Earlier: An S&C Bonsai Beauty Pageant!

* Princeton Reviews Top 50 Law Schools [TaxProf Blog]

* Indiana Law Student Shoots Real-Estate Finance Casebook [Law Blog]

* Blawg Review #131 on business blog, Passion, People and Principles [David Maister via Blawg Review]

* Joe Torre and Contract Incentives [Conglomerate]

* Seen in White and Case’s NY boardroom last Thursday… [The Adventure Of Strategy]

* A Great Law Firm “Driven to [Self-] Destruction”? [Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices]

* The Boy Who Cried “National Security”: The Need for Greater Skepticism About Government Secrecy [Concurring Opinions]

* IntLawGrrls In Our Own Names [IntLawGrrls]

* Female Teachers Who Have Sex With Minors [Feminist Law Professors]

* Which Came First, the Lawyer or the Stable Boy? [New York Times]

* Gov. Spite-zer needs more EQ [f/k/a]

The ABA Journal has put together a well-intended list of 50 ways to market your [father’s] law practice. Here’s just a few to get a conversation started with the older partners in your firm:

1. Join your local chamber of commerce. It’s great for networking and community credibility.

5. Offer to write an article for your local paper on a topic such as why everyone should have a will or questions to ask a contractor. Make sure the byline includes the name of your firm and, if possible, your e-mail address.

7. Try to get a local reporter to use you as a legal expert. Send an e-mail offering commentary on a court case. Learn to translate legalese into English and reporters will love you.

18. Advertise in school and church newsletters and local marketer newspapers. This sort of advertising is usually cost-efficient and such publications are surprisingly well-read by their target audiences.

19. Post your business card on the bulletin board at your barbershop, beauty salon, grocery store, community center and house of worship.

22. Donate last year’s Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory or other slightly outdated law books to your local library with a bookplate bearing your name and firm name.

23. Donate magazines to your local jail, nursing home or school and hand over your business card when you drop them off.

32. Send out press releases. Small local newspapers are especially interested.

38. Write down a 30-second description of your practice and commit it to memory. This is called the elevator speech. Use it whenever someone asks, “What type of law do you practice?” Everyone in the firm should have a copy of the description.

And my favorite way to market a law practice:

50. Give vinyl or nylon briefcases to clients at their first visit. This will encourage clients to keep important papers for their case in one place and to bring everything to each office visit. Add a pen, key chain, pad of paper and some business cards to the case.

Read all fifty and let us know which ones you think are the most ridiculous. To be fair and balanced, do let us know if you find any of them worthwhile.

Oh, here’s a tip you won’t find anywhere in that list of 50 ways to market your practice: blog.

While you’re visiting the ABA Journal’s website, check out their Blawg Directory, which the authors of that list of fifty ways to market your practice failed to notice.

David didn’t expect me to get the scoop. No doubt, he’s been reading the reviews of Dan Solove’s new book, The Future of Reputation Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet.

I downloaded a free copy of Chapter 1.

Don’t know if Lat has read this review by PajamasMedia’s culture critic, David Freeman, who writes:

Shame and gossip and questions of personal reputation have been with us for millennia. In our time, however, they’ve gone electronic. The resulting change in the way the world communicates with itself is as significant to speech as anything since the invention of moveable type.

David probably noticed that Frank Pasquale posted a mini-review of the book he calls “a fun read that also manages to be a scholarly work on cyberlaw.”

Solove draws us in with the old classics of humiliation–South Korea’s infamous “dog poop girl,” Jessica Cutler’s embarrassed paramour, and the Star Wars kid. Each sparked an avalanche of comedy, critical comment, spoofs… . and, like hope at the bottom of Pandora’s box, a tiny bit of sympathy as we wonder: will we be next?

Pace Andy Warhol, that’s not likely, but Solove uses the titillating stories to explore a deeper question: do we have any right to control true information about ourselves? Or influence the way we are portrayed? If somebody posts a vicious lie, they can be liable for defamation. But what about disclosure of private facts–should we have any right to stop that?

Okay—titillating stories—we’d buy the book to read more of that, but when do we get to read about David Lat?

“The parts about David have not been excerpted or discussed elsewhere,” teased Solove, in an exclusive interview with Above the Law. “It basically tells his story – then the rest of the chapter launches into a discussion on the good and bad aspects of anonymous blogging! In the same chapter I also discuss the legal protections on anonymity, Wikipedia, the trade-off between anonymity and accountability, how anonymous bloggers can be unmasked if not careful, and the clash between privacy and free speech.”

“If only I could get the poop on David Lat, I’d be able to write a preview for the book,” I cajoled, “It’s a tough audience! Gimme something to placate the fanboys.”

Okay, after the jump…the excerpt about David Lat…

“Put Life on Your To-Do List and consider McInnes Cooper. In a nation-wide survey, McInnes Cooper was rated by its associates as one of the top firms to work for in Canada.”

You’ve got to give McInnes Cooper credit for using real lawyers in their video, unlike Allen & Overy.

The video has two story lines interwoven; a serious look at the firm and comedic episodes of the prospective student interview. Does it work?

They’ve got comments disabled on the YouTube page for the video, so it’s hard to know what the feedback might be from students they’d like to recruit. I suppose the agency that produced this video must have run it by some focus groups.

I think the firm comes off looking good in this one. And the interview scene where the lawyer takes a hair blower to the student’s… I won’t spoil it for you.

Anyway, you’ve got to give McInnes Cooper full marks for closing the pitch with a real hot Asian associate giving the ol’ “come-on and call me” in French!

Allen & Overy in the UK has over-produced a hiring video that uses real actors to portray A&O solicitors engaged in really interesting work for global clients.

Watch the video here at RollOnFriday, which offers this take on it:

Presumably the prosaic reality of 15 hour days drafting intercreditor deeds and dealing with IT problems would not make great TV. And my, what a lot of TV there is: it goes on for an age, and watching it is like wading through treacle as cast members mention “the deal” every five seconds.

The film laboriously tracks “the deal” in minutes, hours, and days, walking us through the boring lives of A&O partners, associates and trainees in the split-screen style of 24. The performance of the associates falls well short of the drama of Boston Legal. In the end, it would have been a more believable if the deal had collapsed in the last-minute negotiations, like in the real world, where heads would roll on Friday.

Anyone seen better—or worse—law firm recruitment videos?

This just in from a tipster. It can’t possibly be true, so we’re taking it as a joke.

If you’re an associate at the firm, or work for Mr. Grinch at Biglaw, please let us know in the comments below. Tell us this can’t be true.

Tell us you’ve seen worse. What is your firm’s policy for the upcoming holiday season?

Ladies and Gentlemen:

We have had an unprecedented number of lawyers requesting vacation during the Christmas week this year (24-28 December). Although it is always difficult to predict what our respective work levels will look like so far in advance, given the number of vacation requests received to date, it is unlikely we can accommodate them all.

To those of you who have requested time away during this period, to those of you planning to do so, and to those of you who have received a tentative approval to be away during this particular period, I would ask that you consider taking your vacation at another time or being both patient and flexible as we determine as we get closer to Christmas, how best we can meet the needs of the firm and of our clients - which are paramount - while trying to accommodate, as we would very much like to do, our associates.

Please feel free to call me should you wish to discuss.

Regards,

Neal
Neal F. Grenley
White & Case LLP
1155 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036-2787

You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

A few of the more-alert readers here have noticed there’s an unusual name in the byline, today.

Let me introduce myself. My nom de plume is Piercie Shafton, an evocative moniker for a guest-editor of Above the Law, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Don’t bother to Google me. I’m not that Piercie Shafton: “the meddling tool of wise plotters—a hair-brained trafficker in treason—a champion of the Pope, employed as a forlorn hope by those more politic heads, who have more will to work mischief, than valour to encounter danger.” But I imagine that, in another time and place, I may well have been a figment of the imagination of a lawyer who published controversial writings under an assumed name.

And so, I find myself at the keyboard, today, unexpectedly blogging away about stuff that is none of my damn business.

I feel this inordinate amount of social pressure to be a bastard.

Comments are open for suggestions…

* Who, Exactly, Is A Journalist? [Concurring Opinions]

* Law Student May Have Shot At Textbook With Assault Rifle [JournalGazette]

* Nixon Peabody Links Up With Boutique for London Launch — Everyone’s A Winner! [Law.com]

* Man gets life in ‘Curious George’ killing [CNN]

* “I’m not a morning person.” Child Abuse Excuse Riles Judge [New York Times]

* Courts and the Law: Justice’s Blind Trust [CQ Weekly]

* Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama: When They Were Young [New York Magazine]

* The Carnival of the Capitalists #211 includes law blogs this week.

Yesterday’s tip about K&L Gates no longer making contributions to attorney 401k plans has been confirmed. We’ve obtained the memo, which our source introduced as follows:

Here’s the memo re: today’s post on K&L Gates. No further materials or communications have since occurred, save a videoconference from firm Chairman [Peter] Kalis, where in response to an associate questions as to why this benefit was cut, he essentially said that it was to make partners’ compensation packages more competitive due to required combined firm IRS changes.

I like how it says firm compensation remains competitive. Check out what the firm pays in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. How is that competitive?

In case you’re wondering, K&L Gates is not at the market rate of $160,000 in San Francisco and L.A. They instead pay associate starting salaries of $145,000 in those cities. See here and here.

The 401(k) memo appears after the jump.

Earlier: Biglaw Reversed Perk Watch: K&L Gates Cuts off 401(k) Contributions?
Biglaw Perk Watch: Retirement Benefits and Financial Planning

* “Jesus, He’s a Quadripeligic, Not an Opossum.” [QuizLaw]

* On Michael Mukasey’s “top ten” list: Dial-A-Porn? [Washington Briefs; Washington Briefs]

* Peter Lattman has gotten a hold of Elana Elbogen’s complaint in the Case of the Pastel Hydrangeas. Still at large: a copy of the “Party Pants” article. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Not yet legal, but quite the legal eagle. [Los Angeles Times via Blogonaut]

* NY to 190K — Canadian! The Canadian dollar is now worth more than the U.S. dollar. Is that loonie, or what? [Soloway]

* TV Links, a Napster of sorts for television and movies, RIP. [Guardian Unlimited]

For the limited but passionate segment of the ATL readership that avidly follows the federal judiciary and clerkship news, the past week has been a good one.

First, there was this very interesting Legal Times article by Joe Palazzolo, about the debacle known as the law clerk hiring process. Executive summary: “As in most family feuds, it’s the kids who suffer most. In interviews, newly hired law clerks rated this year’s hiring frenzy on a scale from ‘unfortunate’ to ‘an utter mess.’”

At the D.C. Circuit, lights shone in the windows of some judges’ chambers before dawn on Sept. 19. They had scheduled their first interviews between 6:45 and 7 a.m.

[Yale Law School Professor Christine] Jolls, who is a member of a committee of professors and deans that advises the Judicial Conference on the hiring process, says she got a 2 a.m. e-mail from one of her students who had just emerged from an interview with a 2nd Circuit judge. The judge had scheduled the interview for Sept. 19 at 12:01 a.m.

If you know, feel free to identify the judges who scheduled these insanely early interviews, in the comments.

Second, for those of you follow clerkship bonus developments, on Tuesday the ever-helpful Law Clerk Addict posted an updated Vault 100 clerkship bonus chart. You can access it here.

Third, today the National Law Journal serves up a delightful profile of the nation’s #1 judicial superhottie (male), Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit. As of December 1, make that CHIEF Judge Kozinski. Congratulations, Your Honor!

Links to the aforementioned sources, plus excerpts and commentary on the Kozinski profile, appear after the jump.

Update: Also after the jump, some scuttlebutt about which judges were conducting the midnight and early morning interviews.

Readers of ATL are obsessed with lawyer compensation. But so is the mainstream media, it would appear — even in places outside New York, Washington, and Los Angeles.

From a piece by John-Laurent Tronche in the Fort Worth Business Press:

While local law firms are staying competitive, it doesn’t always pay to follow the nationwide trend to raise salaries for first-year associate lawyers.

A Texas pay raise explosion was sparked in mid-July when Houston-based Vinson & Elkins raised its first-year associate pay from $135,000 to $160,000, part of a nationwide move to match New York salaries. The firm’s pay hike prompted fellow Houston firm Andrews Kurth to raise salaries the next day, followed by a host of other big Texas law firms, including Dallas firms Haynes Boone and Thompson & Knight….

The move to match New York salaries is a matter of reputation, said David Lat, editor in chief of abovethelaw.com, a Web site that has been tracking the nationwide pay raise. But that reputation to “play ball with the big boys,” he said, isn’t always economically sound.

You can read the rest here. And a few days ago, the Des Moines Register “rewrote the WSJ story about lawyer salaries,” as one of you put it. (Well, Amir Efrati, remember what Coco Chanel once said: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”)

The Register article begins:

Jason Fernandez never expected to be delivering flowers six months after he graduated from law school. But there he was - a graduate of the top-tier University of Iowa College of Law - navigating Washington, D.C., streets to deliver bouquets at $8 a pop.

Hey Jason: as long as you don’t deliver flowers to this gal or this guy, you’ll be fine.

(As it turns out, Jason won’t have to worry about sending flowers to difficult customers. He subsequently made the leap up from flower delivery to personal injury law.)

Sometimes dollars don’t make sense [Fort Worth Business Press]
Law school graduates finding soft job market [Des Moines Register]

Dean Christopher Edley, listen up. The people have spoken, and here is their verdict. UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall should be renamed… the White Guys With Asian Girls School of Law!

Don’t like this idea? That’s okay. At least we didn’t charge you $25,000 for it.

UC Berkeley dropping Boalt Hall from law school’s official name [San Francisco Chronicle]

Earlier: Renaming Boalt Hall: Please Cast Your Vote
Hey ATL Readers: Help Rename Boalt Hall!

As we previously wrote, there appears to be no truth to rumors of possible layoffs at Latham & Watkins. But even mentioning the words “layoff” and “Latham” in the same post got some people upset. We’d like to share some of the responses we received:

[T]he idea of layoffs [at Latham is] ridiculous. NYC M&A is still busy as hell, and on the whole the pace numbers, despite the traditional August lulls (read: not just credit market, it’s AUGUST) are very solid. They’re still bringing in laterals and still printing money.

And here’s a correction to the suggestion of possible slowness at the firm:

[O]ne of the comments you posted had incorrect data. The New York office was only at 90 percent pace for September, as some of your commenters noted. But for the year to date, even after a very slow August and September, New York’s pace is well over 100 percent. In fact, the office is about where it was last year, so things are nowhere near as bad as the doomsayers would have you think.

Plus, in the last week, things have began picking up substantially. In a few months, maybe we’ll be back to “NY to 190!”

Finally, we got our hands on firm-wide memo from Chairman and Managing Partner Robert Dell, discussing “firm culture.” It’s not very exciting, and it’s probably best read as a welcome to new associates, as opposed to some veiled discussion of layoffs.

If you’re curious, you can check it out after the jump.

When it comes to offeree swag, is the arms race among Biglaw shops heating up?

Sullivan & Cromwell brought out what we dubbed the “heavy artillery”: bonsai trees. But perhaps S&C has been bested — and not even by a New York firm:

Talk about firms taking recruiting to a whole new level. Last night, Choate Hall & Stewart held its offer dinner at a super-fancy, old school establishment. Choate had goody bags ready for all its offerees, and while most of us were expecting a pen (a la Goodwin) or a water bottle, lo and behold, in our red shiny gift bags, were brand new 8GB red video iPod nanos (at $200 a pop).

Soooooo sweet. It’s a little ridiculous, but at the same time, something has to be said for the financial health of the firm for them to be giving away iPods.

In the comments to one of our S&C bonsai posts, it was reported that Shearman & Sterling gave iPod shuffles to its summer associates. That’s quite nice. But it’s even nicer to give a nifty (and costly) gadget to a mere offeree, who at the end of the day might just say, “Thanks anyway, hello Ropes & Gray.”

What’s the nicest gift you’ve received, or heard of someone receiving, from a law firm encouraging acceptance of its offer? Please discuss, in the comments. Thanks.

Here’s a quick follow-up to our prior coverage of the mysterious Under Armour briefs that somehow made their way into the hands, and onto the loins, of Guantanamo Bay detainees. From Reuters:

The U.S. military has ended an inquiry into who smuggled unauthorized underwear and a bathing suit to two prisoners at Guantanamo Bay without learning the source of the contraband skivvies, an attorney said on Wednesday.

The investigators concluded more vigilance was needed to prevent contraband from entering the camp that holds 330 suspected al Qaeda operatives, said Capt. Pat McCarthy, the military’s chief lawyer for the detention operation at Guantanamo.

Is the inability to solve the Riddle of the Briefs a sad commentary on the state of military intelligence? Or is this perhaps a mystery that they didn’t want to be solved?

Mystery underwear stymies Guantanamo investigators [Reuters]

Earlier: Guantanamo Bay Perk Watch: Under Armor Briefs!

When it comes to perks and fringe benefits, Biglaw giveth, and Biglaw taketh away. From a tipster:

Did you see the internal memo at K&L Gates announcing that the firm will cease contributions to attorney 401k plans? I found it interesting because it mentioned that similar reductions are occurring at other “major firms.” Which strikes me as stunning if true.

Of course, as noted in the comments to our earlier open thread on retirement benefits, many top law firms don’t contribute to attorney 401(k) plans in the first place. But if you know which “major firms” are being referred to in the memo, please share what you know, in the comments.

We received this information from a reliable source, but we haven’t seen the K&L Gates memo itself. If you have a copy to pass along, please email us. Thanks.

Earlier: Biglaw Perk Watch: Retirement Benefits and Financial Planning

* Clarence Darrow? How cliche. Anywho, this guy is now a New Mexico Supreme Court justice. [Albuquerque Journal (free trial pass required) and New Mexico Business Weekly, via How Appealing]

* Step 1: Stop killing monks. [Jurist]

* Death for the death penalty? [New York Times]

* Latham lawyer DQ’ed in KPMG trial. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Thomas in the ATL. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Some sources at Kirkland & Ellis have been upset by our recent coverage of layoff rumors. These rumors were focused on K&E’s office in Chicago, but New York was also implicated.

As we’ve repeatedly noted, these rumors are just that — rumors. We were reporting more on the existence of the rumors, as opposed to offering them for their truth value.

But let’s say the rumors are true, and K&E has adopted more rigorous associate review standards this year, in light of growing economic uncertainty. Would that be such a bad thing? Consider this
comment:

Kirkland & Ellis is one of the nation’s preeminent and most profitable law firms. So it appears they have a sound strategic business sense and are watching the bottom line. What is wrong with that? Don’t a lot of us aspire to work for a preeminent, highly profitable firm?

A law firm feels economic cycles. I’d much prefer to work for a firm that aggressively manages staffing levels as opposed to letting underproductive people [stay on indefinitely].

Recall that K&E’s bonuses have historically been well above market. If K&E is trimming some fat, so it can once again pay generous bonuses to the associates who DO meet its standards, what’s wrong with that?

Remember, too, that K&E, unlike most other Biglaw shops, doesn’t pay lockstep bonuses. Bonuses at Kirkland are highly individualized. In this sense, could K&E be the law firm of the future? Evaluate associates according to their individual merits, richly reward the superstars, and dump the underperformers? Might this be a better business model than the traditional “treat unequal associates equally” model of Biglaw?

Nevertheless, some Kirkland lawyers resist even this favorable characterization of the firm. They claim that K&E’s associate review process was conducted exactly as it has been in past years — that it was simply “business as usual,” and the same standards were applied this year as in prior years.

It’s only fair to give equal time to their views. Check out their rebuttals, after the jump.

* Holy Lawsuit, Batman! Professors sue Ave Maria. [AveWatch.org]

* TMI indeed; spare us talk of that burning sensation. Just say you have a doctor’s appointment, and leave it at that. [Nasty, Brutish & Short]

* Just because you’re a 46-year-old man who has never been married doesn’t mean you’re gay. Plamegate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald — whom we met earlier this month, btw — is engaged. Congrats, Pat! [WSJ Law Blog]

* Milberg Weiss and the Democrats: politics makes for not-so-strange bedfellows. [Overlawyered; Overlawyered]

* Some undergraduates earn cash by selling their class notes online. How long before this trend takes hold in law schools? [Conglomerate]

* Who says Yale Law grads can’t be funny? [Wonkette]

As we first reported yesterday, Professor D. Marvin Jones, who teaches constitutional law and criminal procedure (!) at the University of Miami law school, has been arrested for solicitation of a prostitute. Here’s an interesting tidbit, from Blogonaut:

Professor Jones is the author of Race, Sex, and Suspicion: The Myth of the Black Male. Dare we predict a racially based defense? Or perhaps the good professor was merely researching a new book?

Some of you asked for more details about the alleged conduct. We’ve gotten on our hands on the incident report, which appears below. Note the tension between (1) Professor Jones’s pimpin’ ride, a Mercedes SL500, and (2) his alleged offer of a mere $20 to the “undercover officer possing [sic] as a prostitute.”

Law professors don’t make as much as Biglaw partners. But surely the driver of a Mercedes could be a little more generous!

University of Miami Law Professor Arrested for Soliciting Prostitution [Blogonaut]
Race, Sex, and Suspicion: The Myth of the Black Male [Amazon]
D. Marvin Jones bio [University of Miami School of Law]

Earlier: Lawyer of the Day: D. Marvin Jones

Getting rejected by a law firm and having lots of your classmates learn about it: embarrassing.

Getting rejected by a firm you didn’t even apply to: priceless.

I’m afraid I must reject your rejection [TJ’s Double Play]

Earlier: Public Humiliation, Courtesy of Your Friends at Wilson Sonsini

During one of our darkest hours as a law firm associate, when we were at our most stressed and depressed, we tried to boost our morale by typing up a Word document entitled “Things I Like About My Job.” Here’s an excerpt:

— My Blackberry and (free) cell phone.

— My laptop.

— Really good health insurance.

— Having a secretary.

But in reality, we didn’t use our secretary very much. Her primary duty was to assist us in printing out correspondence so that the text of letters fell below the sprawling firm letterhead.

We didn’t know how to best utilize our secretary. And based on your emails, it seems we’re not alone:

“You should do a post on secretaries. I have no idea what to do with mine other than expense reports. I think junior associates would appreciate it!”

“How about an open thread on what attorneys have their secretaries do? A lot of us first-year associates starting now have no idea how to use them. This applies to both transactional lawyers and litigators.”

We’re guessing our correspondents don’t have this secretary.

Here are a few other topics to add to the mix:

“You really should do an ATL piece on secretaries. E.g., how many high-powered partners are run by their secretaries, with their secretaries as the gatekeepers; how many leading lawyers couldn’t live without their secretaries, taking them from one position to the next.”

So here’s an open thread for discussion of Biglaw secretaries / administrative assistants. Any secretaries who are reading this site should feel free to chime in too — we know you have a lot to say about your bosses. In fact, some of you could even fill a book with your gripes (see link below). Thanks.

The Diary of a Mad Legal Secretary [Amazon.com]

Our colleagues over at DealBreaker have been extensively covering one heck of a lawsuit. It’s our Lawsuit of the Day, but it really ought to be our Lawsuit of the Week — it’s that good.

The defendant is wealthy New York financier Jeffrey Epstein, who already stands accused, in Florida state court, of sex crimes involving underage girls. This latest case is a civil action filed in New York. Here’s a teaser:

[W]e’re knee-deep into the latest sex suit against Jeffrey Epstein, brought by a girl who, at the time, was whatever the opposite of over eighteen is. This one’s from Maximilia Cordero [at right], an aspiring model, who claims that in 2000, Epstein lured her to his Upper East Side apartment on the promise that “he and his wealthy friends would help…with her modeling career.”….

Epstein, in order to quell the girl’s fears as to what people would think of her blowing a man old enough to be her father, swore that he “wouldn’t tell anyone.” Bet he’s wishing he’d gotten her to do the same! Ah, well, hindsight.

Then he came in her mouth and requested that she return with her “14, 15, and 16 year old girlfriends next time.”

More — ‘cause you know you want it — after the jump.

What’s the hot new trend in Biglaw? Two-track systems for associates. They’re regarded as a sensible way for law firms to address the twin challenges of (1) higher associate salaries and (2) associate attrition (often due to a frustration with long hours).

Here’s word of the latest law firm to join the party, from NYLawyer.com (reg. req’d):

Chapman and Cutler, a Chicago-based firm with three offices and about 220 attorneys, has joined the parade of firms boosting first-year associate pay to $160,000, but the firm is taking a new path once associates reach their second year.

Second-year associates can opt for one of two compensation tracks at the firm under a new system that took effect last month, said Rick Cosgrove, who is chief executive partner at the firm. They can choose to work fewer hours at a lower pay level or more hours at a higher salary level, he said.

Cosgrove declined to specify the hours required and related pay rates under the new pay program for competitive reasons.

If you have info on the Chapman and Cutler scale that you’d be willing to share, please email us. According to a poster at Greedy Chicago:

The higher track is essentially Biglaw market, so long as you hit 2000 billables/year. The lower track is compressed to about $5k-$10k/year, depending on class year, and you need to hit 1850.

Other firms with two-track systems (click on each firm’s name for a memo and/or details): Hogan & Hartson, Wiley Rein, Fenwick & West, and Thelen (formerly Thelen Reid, and FYI, “Thelen” rhymes with “wheelin’”; see here).

Do you have an opinion about this two-tiered approach? If so, vote in our reader polls, after the jump.

Here is the latest Job of the Week, courtesy of ATL’s career partner, Lateral Link. To refresh your recollection:

“Because Lateral Link does no cold-calling and is more efficient than traditional recruiting firms, successful candidates receive $10,000 upon placement.”

Position: M&A Associate (Media)

Description: This highly sought after media and advertising law firm is seeking a mid-level associate with a strong M&A background to work on media and advertising-related deals. Work primarily involves private transactions, but will have the occasional public transaction.

Founded over hundred years ago, this firm is renowned as the top marketing communications law firm in the world, representing four of the largest advertising agency holding companies. The firm is remarkable in the fact that it maintains worldwide leadership in a key field of law with only 100 attorneys, based in a single office in New York City. Having grown from less than 40 attorneys in the 1990s, the firm serves clients in a full range of practice areas, including corporate governance, litigation, M&A, employment practices and executive benefits and compensation, intellectual property, new media, real estate, taxation and estate planning. The firm also enjoys a sterling reputation among not only its major advertising and marketing communications clients, but among its attorneys as well. The firm has a one-to-one partner to associate ratio and is regarded as an unusually rewarding, reinforcing and humane place to work.

Position Requirements: Four to six years of experience. M&A background, top credentials, good personality.

To apply for this position, or to learn about other career opportunities, please visit laterallink.com.

Earlier: Prior Job of the Week listings (scroll down)

We’re long overdue to crown an ATL Legal Eagle Couple of the Month for September. Before the poll, we should mention that for once, our collective readership seemed to agree with us — last week’s Couple of the Week contest (we put the weekly pick to a vote, in a break from our normal practice) was a very, very close call. The aristocratic Team Boyd-Lockhart squeaked by the competition with 35.5 percent, but Team Schonmuller-Williams and Team Leung-Lin made strong showings with 33.9 percent and 30.6 percent, respectively. Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to all three couples for being so freaking awesome.

Now, on to September’s contest, which is basically Stanford versus Douglas Ginsburg. You can read all about the nominees, and cast your ballot, after the jump.

* So how did Michael Mukasey do yesterday? Here’s a collection of some coverage. [How Appealing (linkwrap)]

* He totally should have mailed it to himself before faxing it to the Ravens. Also, not a joke, just a fact: the caption is over half of this 37-page opinion. [U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (PDF) via How Appealing]

* How many businesses was Vick opening? Yet another bank sues him over a business loan. [Fulton County Daily Report]

* Speaking of Vick getting sued, he got sued by a South Carolina inmate again, and it’s not Jonathan Lee Riches. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

* Can’t we all just agree that a little less process is due in this case? [CNN]

* SCOTUS stays Virginia execution. [CNN]

We just finished watching America’s Next Top Model. So it’s quite appropriate for us to pass along this modeling montage video, which is amusingly bizarre. From a tipster:

I hate to pile it on, but you have to check out this YouTube clip of a University of Miami 1L. It’s a seven-minute clip of various glamour shots, set to the soothing sounds of flamenco guitar. I think my favorite photos involve her posing with a samurai sword.

We agree; nothing beats a samurai sword paired with fishnets. But the pics of her in a midriff-baring schoolgirl outfit, replete with pigtails, are also pretty great. As is the photo of her humping a white banister, which kicks off the whole thing.

You don’t need to watch the entire video, since the shots start to repeat after a while, but stick around at least until “Hotel California.” Enjoy!

Update (12:15 AM): Sigh. If you click on the video below, you’ll see that it has been pulled. We seem to have the anti-Midas touch when it comes to law school videos: everything we link to gets yanked. See, e.g., here (Harvard) and here (Columbia).

A little bit more, after the jump.

* It’s hard to believe this car was parked in Brooklyn, of all places. [Althouse]

* The law school hiring process privileges glibness — and is that a bad thing? Law professors are hired (1) to train lawyers, of all people, and (2) to write articles that sound like they’re saying a lot, even when they’re not. Glibness would seem to be a BFOQ. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Once our Surgeon General starts getting on our case about drinking, it’s time to leave the country. But don’t move to the U.K. [Charon QC: The Blawg]

* Speaking of emigration, Tonga says: “Give us your tired, your poor, your disgraced and disbarred lawyers, yearning to breathe free.” [Blogonaut]

* Good news, Pennsylvanians. According to Professor Orin Kerr, “you can scream at your overflowing john all you want without violating the state’s disorderly conduct offense.” [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Martindale-Hubbell ratings: Pay to play? We find them less useful than they might otherwise be because so many lawyers aren’t rated. Will charging a fee for inclusion exacerbate the problem? [Real Lawyers Have Blogs; HireTrade Blog]

* Thoughts on the Eighth Circuit fantasy baseball ruling (mentioned in Morning Docket), from Professor Neil Richards. [Concurring Opinions]

* Dionne Warwick is a tax deadbeat? Say it ain’t so! [TaxProf Blog]

* Have a favorite New York blawg / blawger? Vote for them here. [Sui Generis]

There seems to be a lot of hostility towards our coverage of layoff rumors. That’s fine — go ahead, shoot the messenger. But don’t say that we didn’t warn you. It would be irresponsible to write about “NY to 190” rumors while ignoring similarly reliable (or unreliable) layoff rumors.

Also, rumors — even when untrue — can be revealing. The very existence of a rumor reflects the state of the market and sheds light on the psyches of the participants. The fact that pay raise gossip has been supplanted by layoff gossip is telling.

We received many interesting responses to our recent post about layoff rumors at Kirkland & Ellis. Like this one, from someone at K&E (and not one of The Departed, so without an ax to grind):

Surprised it took you so long to pick up the layoff rumors, though I guess K&E has done a reasonably good job of keeping them quiet, even to its own associates.

(1) Associate reviews were just completed.

(2) 6-8 mid-level associates [in Chicago] have recently and abruptly left the firm. Rumor is that they were canned. I know two of them personally, and neither of them had ever indicated a desire to leave.

(3) As for causes, I initially heard that extraordinarily low hours were to blame. Other sources suggest that performance was an issue.

(4) At least one of the layoffs really has people baffled: good hard worker who appeared to put in reasonable hours…. [T]he response in the Chicago office appears to be a bit bewildered, especially with respect to the one associate who seemed to be very well-regarded.

More information, compiled from multiple Kirkland sources in different offices, appears after the jump.

As we mentioned last week, U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law hired a brand consulting firm to come up with a new name for the school. The effort ended somewhat anticlimactically. Boalt paid $25,000 to Marshall Strategy Inc., which came up with this brilliant new moniker: “UC Berkeley School of Law.”

Oh well. But since we already took the time to read through hundreds of suggested new names for Boalt Hall, we’re going to conduct this reader poll anyway.

Cast your vote, after the jump.

Earlier this month, rumors about possible layoffs at Latham & Watkins were making the rounds. We alluded to them briefly here (also noting the firm’s denial).

We continue to get asked about this gossip, though, so we’ve done a little poking around. Sources at LW report that layoff rumors have been circulating, but that they aren’t true — at least not yet. From one source:

The LW layoff rumors are untrue as far as I know. Nobody I know has been laid off. [But] things are very slow, and they have 50+ summers still to come [on board as permanent associates]. I think this is confined to New York, though; the rest of the offices seem plenty busy.

That’s consistent with what we’ve been hearing: no layoffs, but lots of slowness. Another LW source reports that the firm’s Washington office is “on pace” for everyone to hit 1900 hours, that Los Angeles is at about 95 percent, and that New York is “sucking wind” at 90 percent.

Internally, here’s how the firm has been dealing with the gossip:

We got a few days of nervous jokes about how layoffs weren’t imminent: “We’ll wait until Christmas…” Then we got an unequivocal denial at Latham’s First Year Academy this past weekend.

More discussion, including a guess as to the genesis of this gossip, after the jump.

After the jump, you’ll see six photographs of Sullivan & Cromwell bonsai trees. Some of these pics have been previously featured in these pages, and some are new. Based on subtle differences between the plants, it appears that S&C may be using different florists around the country to disseminate these gifts to its offerees.

We will now hold a bonsai beauty contest, allowing you to vote for your favorite example of S&C bonsai porn. The differences in the photos are interesting. Just like real pornography, some bonsai porn aims to titillate, some aspires to art, and some just looks fuzzy and low-budget.

Check out the bonsai pics, and cast your vote, after the jump.

Several commenters to our recent post about the University of Miami law student who got benchslapped on the People’s Court pointed out another news development involving the law school: the recent arrest and arraignment of a popular professor, D. Marvin Jones, on a misdemeanor charge of soliciting a prostitute. See here:

Check out his bio (which rather pretentiously describes Professor Jones as a “public intellectual”). He teaches Criminal Procedure, of all things. If there’s any technical defect in his arrest, we’re sure the good professor will be able to get himself off.

Professor Jones: If you’re looking to score some ass, why not stick to the U. Miami student body? At least they won’t charge.

Alas, we don’t have the dirty details of this incident. If you know more, please email us. Thanks.

D. Marvin Jones bio [University of Miami School of Law]

Earlier: Wherein Judge Milian Dispels the Stereotype of the Feisty Latina

And no, we’re not talking about their tough new standards for associate reviews, which have resulted in what might be called “soft layoffs” (and which we’ll be writing more about soon — we’ve received lots of great info after yesterday’s post).

We’re speaking more literally about Law & Order at Kirkland & Ellis. Check out this email from about an hour ago, which went out to the entire New York office:

From: Carolyn Marino
Sent: 10/17/2007 09:47 AM EDT
To: #NY All Personnel
Subject: Law & Order Filming Today

If you are on the 39th or 43rd floor today, you will notice that parts of the office