October 2008

* A head-to-head comparison suggests that Northwestern has a better J.D. program than Penn. But if Northwestern students ever meet a Penn kid with an épée, they’d better run. [Prawfs Blawg] * Boston lawyer hottie interacts with her adoring stalkers fans. [f/k/a] * Ex-Thelen Chairman Richard Gary seems to lay the blame squarely at the […]

You never know where you’ll find sexism in our society and our profession. It knows no party or ideology. But it has no place in court. In a decision yesterday, 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner took a shot at a plaintiff’s attorney who thought this was still 1950. The case, Thorogood v. Sears Roebuck, was […]

Chicago firm Freeborn and Peters has upped the stakes in the crazy, fun website competition. Their career site promises associates the opportunity to “thrive in an open, supportive, collegial culture.” A series of recruitment videos have firm attorneys and partners in starring roles and are a testament to the firm’s unorthodox culture. Check them out […]

Over the weekend I suggested that Harvard Law students were not taking the fall recruiting “crisis” seriously enough. The school’s comments suggested to me that HLS saw itself as above the fray. But whatever public face HLS is putting on the recruiting season, behind the scenes HLS OCS seems to be working harder than ever. […]

As we mentioned in Morning Docket, Google reached a settlement with publishers and authors to finally bring the Dewey Decimal System into the digital age. Most lay people think that lawyers serve an annoying, anti-common sense role in society. But every now and again lawyers perform the important function of keeping “the law” safe from […]

[Ed Note: This post was written for ATL by “Heller Drone,” who created the blog Heller Highwater in response to a lack of information concerning Heller Ehrman’s dissolution. We asked Heller Drone for helpful advice to offer Thelen associates and staff. Good luck to everybody dealing with these difficult circumstances.] Being capsized is often something […]

We received 836 responses to Monday’s ATL / Lateral Link survey on whether you’ll be volunteering your services on Election Day, and the results are pretty remarkable. Over 40% of practicing attorneys who took the survey said that they would be helping out:   * 23% will be working as election monitors.   * 11% […]

[Ed Note: Do you have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com] ATL – I’m new at my firm (small firm in Midwest, not BigLaw), and apparently people here dress up for Halloween. The head partner has sent a bunch of emails reminding everyone to wear their costumes on Friday, Oct. 31 […]

* Google Book Search is now on the path to officially kill the public library. Google will pay $125 million to settle two copyright lawsuits, and will move forward with making millions of books available online. [Bloomberg] * A Nevada judicial candidate has sued the Las Vegas Review-Journal, claiming the newspaper defamed him and cost […]

* A little bankruptcy humor seems appropriate today. [Bankruptcy Bill] * HLS student sets his law degree on fire. Actually, I’m not talking about myself. [Legal Blog Watch] * Should M.B.A candidates receive a deduction for the cost of their degree? [TaxProf Blog] * If you’ll be in New York on Thursday night, and if […]

Thelen has officially announced they will dissolve. According to the release, Thelen: [B]reached a partner departure covenant that restricts the number of partners who may depart the firm within any twelve month period. In other words, the bank pulled Thelen’s line of credit, much like they said was not going to happen. Most disturbingly, Thelen […]

After yesterday’s news that Thelen Chairman Stephen O’Neal was in talks to move to Howrey, the Thelen partnership met today. That meeting is still ongoing, but early reports are that a partnership committee recommended dissolution to the full partnership. The firm has been maintaining that they had a plan that would avoid dissolution ever since […]

With all the attention focused on the 2009 summer class, and current associates getting laid-off, and full service law firms dissolving, we’ve kind of lost sight of the 2008 summer class. Many of them have still not made a decision about their future employment. We’ve received reports from multiple tipsters that say Locke Lord’s Houston […]

This is not the best time to be losing Bankruptcy rainmakers. But according to the ABA Journal, that is exactly what is happening to Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel. The three partners are: David Feldman, Eric Wise and Matthew Williams. David Feldman was formerly the co-chair of Kramer Levin’s bankruptcy group. Gibson Dunn’s press release […]

We previously discussed Maryland’s Halloween sex offender ordinance, which requires convicted sex offenders to turn off their lights and display the sign (shown to the right) warning children to stay away on Halloween. Missouri has a similar law. They require sex offenders stay inside between 5 and 10:30 p.m., prohibits them from participating in Halloween […]

A firm-wide memo from Charlie O’Neil, managing partner of Chadbourne & Parke, announced that the firm was instituting a legal and non-legal hiring freeze in response to the economic downturn. The lengths O’Neil went to try and bury this important piece of firm information are slightly amazing. The firm-wide email was entitled “How Are We […]

A piece of general advice for judges, lawyers, presidential candidates, and almost everyone else: avoid using the terms “you people” and “that one.” They tend to raise hackles. And get you removed from the bench. From Courthouse News Service: The North Carolina Supreme Court removed Judge Mark H. Badgett from the bench after he ordered […]

When Harvard law school announced that they would be dropping their letter-grading system in favor of a pass/fail system, we noted that the school had not yet decided how to apply the new system to current law students: But the crucial question is whether this new system will be applied retroactively to the classes of […]

A year ago tomorrow (Wednesday), Cravath kicked off the 2007 bonus season by announcing bonuses which ranged from $35K to $60K and “special” bonuses that ranged between $10K and $50K. Don’t expect Cravath to come out of the gate early this year. We asked Cravath whether they would be bonus leaders this year, but they […]

* A Guantanamo prisoner and his attorney are boycotting their own trial. They have to be in court, but they aren’t saying a word. It was not the best strategy for voir dire. [Associated Press] * Musical chairs: Colorado Assistant U.S. Attorney Haley Reynolds to head to Iraq. [Denver Post] * Edward “frying pan” Halverson […]