February 2008

One nice thing about unpublished or non-precedential opinions is that judges feel free to have fun when writing them. When your words aren’t going to be memorialized in the august pages of F.3d or F. Supp. 2d, you can take some stylistic liberties. A source drew our attention to Vitaich v. City of Chicago, No. […]

Here’s some follow-up on last week’s post about bonuses at Heller Ehrman. We don’t mean to pick on them, but we have talkative sources over there, it’s been a slow day (even setting aside earlier technical difficulties that took the site offline for a while), and this is what we happen to have in the […]

Here is today’s ATL / Lateral Link Job of the Week. In 2007, Lateral Link secured attorneys offers at more than half of the Vault Top 100 firms and numerous corporations and funds. Position: Senior Vice President and Counsel Location: Orange County, California Description: Investment firm focused on growth companies in both the US and […]

This morning we’ve been hearing rumors of associate layoffs at Thacher Proffitt & Wood. As you may recall from ATL’s prior coverage (scroll down), TPW has reduced its ranks over the past few months, through voluntary departures. But those departures took place after the firm warned that it might have to resort to layoffs. Apparently […]

Here’s some interesting follow-up to yesterday’s post about the new mandatory arbitration policy that Kirkland & Ellis has imposed upon its associates. From Karen Donovan, over at Portfolio.com: There have been many stories about how the big law firms coddle associates with lush perks and big bonuses. Now there is some tough love. Kirkland & […]

On Fridays, we like to poll our readership on random subjects. Often these reader polls relate to matters of style and usage. Past polls have covered such important topics as favorite email sign-offs and whether to use “pleaded” or “pled” in legal writing. Here’s today’s topic. It’s about what to call a version of a […]

* Time magazine will take one final appeal in the Indonesian defamation case that awarded former President Suharto over $100 million in damages. [New York Times] * A third West Virginia Supreme Court justice refuses to recuse in the Massey Energy case. [Charleston Gazette via How Appealing] * Duke lacrosse team players — not the […]

Faced with a challenging job market, law school students are turning to the web. See, e.g., 3L for Hire. And now they’re advertising on… craigslist? Well, if it’s good enough for law firms — at least the kind that require the ability to lift 25 pounds — it’s good enough for students, too. From the […]

Tonight’s theme: presidential politics. * John Edwards could end up being the next Attorney General. Ted Frank takes a tough look at one of Edwards’s most celebrated cases. [The American] * Random factoid: “Obama’s vol. 104 is the least-cited volume of the Harvard Law Review in the last 20 years.” [Volokh Conspiracy (comment by LawStatMan) […]

As recently mentioned in these pages, the internal slogan of the post-merger Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell is “One Firm, One Future.” Some firms, however, take the opposite view. We’ve just discovered a Southern California boutique whose motto might as well be “Two Firms for the Price of One.” Or maybe “Corporate Work and Plaintiffs’ […]

Since we’ll be speaking at the University of Chicago very soon, we thought it would be topical to share with you the interesting responses we received to our earlier request for stories about presidential candidate Barack Obama as a U. Chicago law prof. The general consensus: he’s awesome, as beloved in the classroom as he […]

Here’s some quick follow-up to yesterday’s post about Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell (which has a nice new logo — kudos to their graphic designer). An unhappy tipster tells us: Jerry Clement’s compensation memo is attached. Also attached is an email from Jerry announcing the departure of eight partners from LLBL’s Chicago office. These eight […]

So far, we’ve posted three sets of results from last week’s ATL / Lateral Link survey on leave and part-time arrangements:  • your thoughts on whether you would rather work fewer hours for less pay,  • a running table of firms’ paid maternity leave policies (mirrored here and updated today to add King & Spalding), […]

We bring you two interesting updates on our friends at Kirkland & Ellis — one important, and one silly. Let’s start with the trivial, and work our way up. First, from a tipster: The balkanization of Kirkland & Ellis continues. Why should an “informal, visible network for attorneys to exchange ideas, provide support, and develop […]

Gotta love an elected judiciary. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune: A Shreveport judge’s excessive use of prescription drugs led her to disgrace the judiciary by missing work, falling asleep on the bench, and at times talking gibberish to convicts, the Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled in a 7-0 decision that permanently removed her from office. […]

We’ve confirmed the news, which surfaced previously in the comments, about the pay raise announcement by Seyfarth Shaw. Here’s what one source told us: The Chicago office had an all-associate meeting [yesterday]. First- and second-year associates will stay lockstep — $145K for first years, $155K for second years — while third- through eighth-years will get […]

* Supreme Court, in nearly unanimous decision (RBG dissent), protects medical device makers from lawsuits, finding suits preempted by FDA approval. [New York Times; Drug and Device Law; Riegel v. Medtronic (PDF)] * NYT report links John McCain to a comely female lobbyist, Vicki Iseman (who bears a resemblance to his wife Cindy; see picture). […]

From a blast email we received yesterday from Sullivan & Cromwell (yes, we’re on the S&C distribution list): Please note Sullivan & Cromwell LLP’s representation of Microsoft (U.S.) in its proposed US$ 44.6 billion acquisition of Yahoo! (U.S.), announced February 1, 2008. The S&C team on the transaction includes corporate/M&A partners James Morphy, Duncan McCurrach […]

Programming note: For those of you in Chicago, we’ll be having a little ATL “happy hour,” starting in about half an hour. We’ll be hanging out in the Loop, at Miller’s Pub (134 S. Wabash btw. E. Adams and E. Monroe), from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Swing by and say hi if you’re in […]

Results are still flowing in from last week’s ATL / Lateral Link survey on leave and part-time arrangements. So far, we’re up to almost 700 responses, and we have received quite a few tips about maternity leave. The running table of firms’ paid maternity leave policies that we posted yesterday has now been updated to […]