We know a lot of our readers come here via a desperate attempt to put off billing hours. We encourage so-called “procrastination” on the “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” theory.
But we must ever be vigilant against those who would intrude on our precious zoning-out time with false promises of increased productivity and happier living. Stanford philosophy professor John Perry is one such individual. He has a website devoted to making the most of your procrastination time. The Wall Street Journal reports Perry’s core message:
[S]tructured procrastination involves doing small, low-priority tasks to build a sense of accomplishment and the energy to tackle more important jobs. Mr. Perry, a chronic procrastinator, suggests followers choose an important task, but defer work on it while tackling others. “Don’t be ashamed of self-manipulation,” he says.
If Perry really is “a chronic procrastinator” then how the hell did he motivate to publish his own website? Sounds like Perry needs to do a little more work, and a little less butting into other people’s free time.
Unfortunately, Perry is not alone. After the jump.
We offer those who passed the Illinois bar (and those that sadly did not) a chance to come together to share their stories of triumph and consequence.
Find out your score (or the scores of your friends or enemies) here. Though be forewarned, the site will not load until the exam takers have been notified over email.
* Would somebody please design an appropriate scoring system so we can gamble on this bracket? [TechCrunch]
* Corporette continues their ongoing series of things every girl needs in her office. Apparently, one pair of panties isn’t enough for today’s working woman. [Corporette]
* Congratulations to Allyson Newton Ho, a member of the Elect (OT 2002 / O’Connor) and wife of Texas Solicitor General Jim Ho, who joins Morgan Lewis as a partner — the latest addition to former Texas SG Ted Cruz’s appellate litigation dream team. [Morgan, Lewis & Bockius]
* The first duty of an in-house counsel really needs to be CYA. [Law and More]
If you’ve been reading ATL for a while, you may recall our copious coverage of Shanetta Cutlar. She’s the high-powered chief of the Justice Department’s Special Litigation Section, and she has a reputation — perhaps deserved, perhaps not — for being challenging to work for.
In case you don’t remember Ms. Cutlar, this message from a former underling, not previously published, sums things up nicely:
I laughed when I saw Shanetta on your blog. Of all the bosses that I have ever had, I probably could not remember any of their names — except for Shanetta. On the first day, [one female intern] got on the elevator with several people, including Shanetta. She had not yet been introduced to anybody except for the intern superivisors. When she got back to her cubicle/office, she was called to Shanetta’s office, where she was thoroughly reamed out by Shanetta for not acknowledging her presence in the elevator. The poor girl was practically traumatized and afterwards was crying at her desk….
The entire office — and it was a large one — had a childish atmosphere that was similar to an elementary school playground. Shanetta was the bully/popular girl who was constantly surrounded by her clique, and who was constantly embarrassing other people merely for her own amusement. She called an entire staff meeting in order to publicly reprimand one person for going shopping during their lunch break.
She called [another intern] into her office once in order to berate him about not filling out a form correctly in preparation for an out-of-state trip…. Is it really necessary for the Section Chief to micromanage intern travel forms? All-in-all, Shanetta has something akin to the “little man syndrome,” only it would be more aptly named entitled “big-mean-ass-woman syndrome.”
Anyway, in response to reader requests for updates on SYC, we finally have some news to report. Shanetta Cutlar has been sued by one former DOJ employee, Ty Clevenger, in federal court (D.D.C.).
Clevenger’s pro se lawsuit, filed against Cutlar and several other current and former Justice Department employees, makes claims under Bivens, the Rehabilitation Act (disability discrimination), RICO (a DOJ section as a RICO enterprise = awesomeness), invasion of privacy, libel, and civil conspiracy.
Our favorite part is this tidbit from paragraph 15: “Defendant Cutlar publicly berated a new attorney…. [because that attorney] used a paperclip on a document instead of a binder clip.” You can check out the full complaint via the link below.
Mock in-house counsel if you want to (and apparently many of you “want to“), but those jobs still pay great money. A new study says that the average pay for in-house attorneys is $236,000.
Maybe that is what CNBC was talking about when they promised aspiring law grads $200K salaries.
The numbers were even better at the top. According to the ABA Journal:
The average cash compensation, including bonuses, amounts to about $700,000 for general counsel and more than $900,000 for chief legal officers, according to a survey by the legal consulting firm Hildebrandt International. Long-term incentives increased the average total compensation to nearly $1.5 million for general counsel and nearly $2 million for chief legal officers, according to a press release summarizing the survey.
It seems that even as companies are shedding in-house counsel jobs, the attorneys that hang on are making good money.
Unfortunately for those working for law firms, corporations might look to save money by decreasing their reliance on outside counsel. The National Law Journal reports:
Most companies — 67% — said they expect no change in the number of law firms they plan to use in 2008, but nearly a third — 29% — said they anticipate decreasing that number.
The report doesn’t contain an analysis of the hours in-house counsel have to work for their salary. But law firm associates usually cannot claim that they work less than their in-house counterparts.
So while the jobs might be harder than ever to get, in-house still seems to be a great exit option. Unless you were in-house at: Bear, Lehman, WaMu, AIG, or whichever company spits the bit next.
Regardless, the campaign is set to “re-introduce” Sarah Palin. Palin, and McCain this time, sat down with Katie Couric again. (I guess Mel B was unavailable.) The new interview that will air sometime after the debate.
The McCain-Palin ticket is apparently pumped about how the new interview went. They want CBS to air the full interview, unedited. But the campaign is mad that CBS leaked a snippet of last week’s Couric interview that did not air:
Of concern to McCain’s campaign, however, is a remaining and still-undisclosed clip from Palin’s interview with Couric last week that has the political world buzzing.
The Palin aide, after first noting how “infuriating” it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.
After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.
There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.
I’ll pause for criticisms about the liberal media, northeastern elites, and my mother.
Last week we brought you the rumor that Seyfarth Shaw and Squire Sanders were thinking of merging into “The Super S4 League of Justice.” Seyfarth has declined to comment on the rumor, but they have added a whole slew of attorneys in Los Angeles. Ken Youmans, managing partner of Seyfarth L.A., announced the new hires:
We are pleased to announce that our partnership voted today in favor of welcoming a group of attorneys to join our LA office. The group includes three equity partners, three income partners, four associates and two secretaries. While the group needs to act upon the partnership offer and the associates need to be offered an opportunity to work with us, the group is expected to start October 1, or soon thereafter. With the addition of these attorneys, we continue to strengthen our Corporate and Real Estate presence on the West Coast. We will share more specific information about our newest Firm members in the days and weeks ahead.
But where did these equity partners come from? Unfortunately all we have for you is more rumors, but tipsters tell us that Seyfarth’s new hires are Sonnenschein’s defectors.
As we know, it’s not a great time to be losing equity partners in California.
Seyfarth offered the following about the various rumors surrounding the firm:
In the course of running our business, we regularly explore a variety of strategic options for the firm. As a matter of policy, we do not comment on these matters.
There is a whole lot of whispering concerning Seyfarth. If you’d like to add your rumor to the mill, please feel free.
We reported last month that the ABA made it easier for law firms to outsource legal work. But as many commenters pointed out, there would need to be a reason for firms to do that and risk a reputation hit.
Perhaps the market crisis has given firms the perfect opening to begin using low cost legal workers outside the United States.
The Hindu Business Line reports that India is “lawyering-up”:
At a time when the off-shoring industry is plagued with instances of employee lay-offs, companies providing legal process outsourcing (LPO) services are on a hiring spree as demand for litigation services from the US rises.
In the next six months to a year, several LPOs have plans to at least double headcount in order to cater to the increased work flow resulting from the recent turmoil in the US that has seen several financial institutions collapse.
The Wall Street crisis has resulted in increased litigation related to bankruptcy, mergers & acquisitions and other related aspects.
We’ve said before that the first front of this outsourcing battle would be fought over document intensive litigation, when clients demanded the lowest possible costs. Does that sound like a bankruptcy proceeding to anybody?
Indian businesspeople watch CNBC too:
For US companies and law firms, the pressure to put a throttle on costs is immense. By outsourcing to Indian vendors, companies can save about 70 per cent in costs vis-À-vis law firms in America.
After the jump, how Indian firms save 70 cents on the dollar.
Last week we told you that Harvard and Stanford law schools were enacting sweeping grade reform. Reactions came in from students and alumni from many top schools. One close friend emailed:
If Harvard had this when we were in school, I’d be emailing you from DPW right now.
Suffice it to say, the friend emailed from a little further down the Vault list.
But to be clear, HLS doesn’t have anything just yet. Dean Kagan announced, “the new classifications, much as at Yale and Stanford, will be Honors-Pass-Low Pass-Fail.” She did not speak on the crucial question of how honors would be determined.
On the other hand, Stanford did announce precisely how their honors would be determined (“book prizes”). Some commenters criticized the decision because it could not be mapped onto a traditional four-point system:
The important issue with any grading system is whether the grades can be aggregated into one number–the GPA–and the students ranked on that basis. The A-F system is mapped onto the 0-4.0 scale (or 0-8, at HLS, until now). The HP-F system is not mapped onto any numerical scale. This makes it impossible to precisely rank students (without developing your own formula).
HLS could still end up with a four-point system of some description. As one reader pointed out:
Honors = A
Pass = B
Low Pass = C
Fail = Elie
Unless you believe the deans’ quest for “pedagogical excellence,” there is an open question as to why two top institutions would radically change how law students are judged.
Those of you who follow science news are likely well aware of the Large Hadron Collider deep beneath the earth near Geneva. For the uninitiated, it’s a scientist’s wet dream: an $8-billion particle accelerator built to test the Big Bang Theory by smashing protons together at the speed of light. They fired it up this month, but it malfunctioned and is out of commission until next year.
For some, the machine is more nightmare than wet dream. Critics worry that it could create a sub-atomic black hole ending the world as we know it. In March, two guys filed suit in Hawaii to save the world. From the New York Times:
Last spring, Walter Wagner, a retired radiation safety officer who lives in Hawaii, and Luis Sancho, a science writer and professor in Barcelona, filed the lawsuit, claiming that the collider could produce a black hole that could eat the Earth or cause some other calamitous effect.
The federal judge who got the case chose to punt, “dodging the issue of whether it could actually cause the end of the world.”
The judge, Helen Gillmor, said in her ruling Friday that the court lacked jurisdiction over the Large Hadron Collider, which is located on the Swiss-French border and was built by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, with help from the United States and dozens of other countries…
Mr. Wagner and Mr. Sancho sued CERN, the United States Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Federal District Court in Hawaii. The Energy Department and the science foundation have contributed about $531 million of the collider’s estimated cost of $8 billion.
Judge Gillmor decided that the fraction paid by the United States was too small for the collider to constitute a “major federal action,” as defined by the National Environmental Policy Act, and so the court lacked jurisdiction on environmental grounds.
We hope someone else steps in to consider the possibility of a “planetary apocalypse.” At least it puts the cosmic crisis on Wall Street in perspective.
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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We know a lot of our readers come here via a desperate attempt to put off billing hours. We encourage so-called “procrastination” on the “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” theory.
