[Ed. note: Today is still a holiday in the blogosphere. High chance of low-frequency posting. If you are stuck at work today and in need of distraction, check out ATL Courtship Connections or think about what you want to wear to Tuesday’s ATL Meet the Editors night.]

* “I love you. You love me…” Those who violate noise ordinances and find themselves before Colorado Judge Paul Sacco will face a sentence of Barney the Dinosaur and Barry Manilow. [Rocky Mountain News]

* New middle class trend that’s hotter than flat screen TVs: nixing legal fees by serving as one’s own attorney. [Boston Globe]

* The government still needs lawyers though. Here are tips on landing a BigGovernment job. [Building a Better Legal Profession/Lexis Hub]

* Legal aid facing shortfalls around the country. [Seattle Post Intelligencer]

* The 20 must-read legal stories from the year. [InsideCounsel]

[Ed Note: Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by the tragedies in Mumbai yesterday. The events are just another reason to be thankful for what you have this holiday season.]

If you’re working today — I’m so sorry. But ATL is with you, even though I’m still reeling from being RickRolled by Santa Claus and Macy’s.

If there are Half-Skadden or Skadden-Mart associates working hard over Thanksgiving weekend, I admire your professional commitment. For the rest of Biglaw associates spending Thanksgiving chained to a BlackBerry, I hope your work is rewarded.

But while we wait for additional firms to announce bonuses, we’ve gotten some additional information about another Biglaw “perk,” holiday parties.

We’ve covered firms like Orrick that are scaling back on holiday festivities, and firms like Kaye Scholer that are going full speed ahead. Are holiday parties an early indication of which firms will be in the spirit of giving come bonus time? We don’t have good information about the holiday plans at Cravath or STB.

But we do at Skadden. A Skadden tipster gleefully reports:

[W]e were just told that the annual Holiday Party is on December 11. Aren’t most firms canceling parties?

I can only imagine that the tipster sent us the email and then took a gold-plated bath.

Another holiday announcement, after the jump.

[Ed. note: Happy Thanksgiving, ATL readers. We’ll be posting sporadically today and tomorrow, as the spirit of the turkey moves us. Singles, if you’ve got holiday down time, check out ATL Courtship Connections.]

* MySpace cyberbully verdict. Lori Drew found guilty of three computer fraud misdemeanor charges, with deadlock on the conspiracy felony. [New York Times]

* Being an attorney won’t protect you from being tased. Tampa lawyer Carl Roland Hayes became irate and verbally abusive at a community board meeting, slapped an officer in the face, started fightin’ and flailin’, and then got the taser. Twice. [Tampa Tribune]

* “More legal work moves to India, including ‘sexy stuffs.” [Wall Street Journal Law Blog]

* U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mosman gives the death penalty to sea lions in Oregon. [Seattle Times]

* Heath Ledger “Law and Order” episode in the works. [Boston Herald]

If the photos of this week’s contestants look a little stiff, please understand that it’s because the NYT didn’t run pictures of any lawyer weddings this week, forcing us to Photoshop them from the attorneys’ firm bios. You’re welcome. And Happy Thanksgiving!

Here are this week’s Legal Eagle Wedding Watch finalists:

1. Elizabeth Raizes and Kayvan Sadeghi

2. Amy Stutius and Adam Slutsky

3. Sara Rubenstein and Yariv Ben-Ari

Read our assessment of these couples, after the jump.

Everybody deserves a competent legal defense, including Big Tobacco. And everybody who wants to work should be able to work. This week’s Job of the Week looks like a “match.” As always, the Job of the Week is brought to you by Lateral Link. This position is one of over 1,000 active openings available on Lateral Link. Because of Lateral Link’s outstanding reputation with legal recruiters, Lateral Link members have a significant advantage when seeking a new position. In fact there are over 60 Lateral Link members currently interviewing for positions or with offers outstanding. Membership in Lateral Link is free and you can apply at www.laterallink.com.

Position: Litigation Counsel

Location: Winston-Salem, NC

Description: A top tobacco company is seeking an In House Litigation Counsel to join their Legal team in Winston-Salem, NC. The Litigation Counsel assists in the management of the corporation’s defense of complex litigation - including the development and management of annual budgets. The company is seeking an attorney with 5-7 years of experience and demonstrated expertise in management
of complex litigation The candidate should have strong in-house litigation experience (i.e., management of outside counsel) and in-house experience in the development of and meeting departmental budgets.

For more information about this position or to apply, please see Position 10114 on Lateral Link. Current members can also contact their personal search consultant directly to discuss this position.

[Ed. Note: We’ll be posting here and there over Thanksgiving. So check back in with us once Dad and Uncle Tommy start fighting over why we lost in ‘Nam. Happy Thanksgiving!]

* The great Biglaw Pyramid is collapsing. Some people are actually pretty happy about this. [The Greatest American Lawyer]

* The firm United, States & America is still hiring. Here are some tips for landing the government job you could have scored straight out of law school. [BBLP via LexisHub]

* Blawg Review’s upcoming blue ribbon lineup. There’s not a turkey in sight.
[Blawg Review]

* Lawyers get laughs from the SCOTUS gallery. I bet there’s no bonus for that either. [Holy Hullabaloos]

* Outsourcing of legal work isn’t slowing down. I feel sorry for this year’s 1Ls. Next year’s 1Ls are just being silly. [WSJ Law Blog]

This story sounds like something written by Dr. Seuss, esquire. The city of Louisville, Ky., had planned to incorporate Seussian characters into its annual Christmas display this year. But the plans have been scrapped after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from DLA Piper’s Barbara Orr, who represents Seuss Enterprises.

From the Associated Press:

The city had planned to use “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” as part of its theme for the annual Light Up Louisville holiday celebration. The display called for an area called “LouWhoVille,” complete with costumed characters from the Dr. Seuss classic such as Cindy Lou Who and the Grinch…

The letter demanded the city and the Louisville Convention and Visitors’ Bureau halt any use of the characters for the Christmas display and agree not to use the characters in the future without permission. It threatened legal action if the city and tourism bureau did not comply.

The city is complying and renaming the display Lou-ville. “It appears these lawyers’ hearts are two sizes too small,” Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson told the AP.

We say shame on Abramson for perpetuating small-hearted lawyer stereotypes, especially given that he’s a Georgetown Law grad.

Seuss lawyers stop holiday Who-ville in Louisville [Associated Press]

On this, the day before Thanksgiving, our ATL / Lateral Link survey ponders just how many of you are actually giving thanks.

Back in April, we reported that many (but not most) associates were in decent spirits:

  * 25.8% of respondents said their morale was “good.”
  * 11.5% said their morale was “great.”
  * And 3.3% of respondents thought their morale “couldn’t be better.”

But those were relatively light-hearted days, when Bear Stearns had only just collapsed, and Heller Ehrman and Thelen were still looking forward to their respective 119th and 85th birthdays.

Now that AIG and Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers have fallen, and various layoffs have unfolded, and a sobering half-Skadden bonus structure has spread to STB, how are you feeling today?

Update: This survey is closed. Click here to see the results.

—
Justin Bernold is a Director at Lateral Link, the sponsor of this Associate Life Survey.

[Ed Note: Do you have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com]

Dear ATL -

I haven’t seen anybody commenting about this but I know for a fact I’m not the only one. I was recently laid off by my firm in a stealth layoff. Of course they said it was my “performance,” but that is complete bulls*** because they’ve never complained about me before and I made my hours this year. A bunch of other attorneys were also laid off at the same time - all “performance based.” I am terrified that I won’t be able to get a job anywhere, because no place is hiring and no place is going to hire an attorney who was fired for (false) reasons. What should I do?

Fired and Scared

Dear Fired and Scared,

Pack a suitcase. Walk toward the nearest window. Open the window. Jump out.

Just kidding. Don’t do that. Seriously.

Your first order of business should be to call up people at your old firm and secure professional references. If you really did good work, that shouldn’t be a problem. If a prospective firm asks you what happened, tell them the truth: that your termination was part of a bunch of allegedly performance-based layoffs, and that you cannot speak for anybody else who got fired, but that the circumstances surrounding your departure were puzzling at best and that you are happy to provide PLENTY of references and other confirmation that you did solid work and met your hours. Finally, if you’re anything like me, sob softly in the shower.

I feel your pain - yours is an unenviable situation and if in fact your firm was using a bogus review as a scapegoat to save face or be cheap, that is deplorable. Listen up, firms: IT IS NOT OK TO SABOTAGE ASSOCIATE CAREERS JUST TO CLAIM THAT YOUR FIRM DOESN’T “DO” LAYOFFS OR TO SAVE MONEY ON SEVERANCE PACKAGES. While firms might think that they can get away with it now, we’ll see what God thinks about all this, because FYI he’s watching. And so is Santa.

Good luck and have a happy Thanksgiving!

Your friend,

Marin

Elie solves the problems of the economy after the jump.

Judging from the number of Craigslist lawyer personal ads sent by tipsters, we gather that there are a lot of lonely lawyers out there. To do our little part to help fight the holiday tide of loneliness for singles, we’re launching something new, a legal iteration of Love Connection: ATL Courtship Connections.

Here’s how it will work. We’ve set up an extremely scientific survey to help us find your perfect match. Yes, this survey is the result of extensive research into the inner workings of love and the law, psychology, chemistry, romance… okay, it’s just the result of some quick e-mail brainstorming, but we think knowing your favorite Supreme Court justice might be enough to help us pair you up with “the one.”

Once we’ve gathered survey responses, the love gurus at ATL shall sort through them and match them using our patented legal love match system. The two lonely lawyers will be given a time and place to meet for drinks or dinner or what-have-you, on the condition that each sends us an e-mail on how the date went. Photos strongly encouraged.

So if you’re single, and interested in being set up with one of your own, fill out the Courtship Connections form. We hope to have the first date in the works before the end of the year.

Click Here to put your date fate in ATL’s hands

* They can’t marry, but gays can finally have kids in Florida. Circuit Judge Cindy S. Lederman overturns Florida’s 31-year-old law banning child adoption by gays. [CNN]

* The family of murdered D.C. lawyer Robert Wone sues the men in the house where he died. Arent Fox partner Joe Price and two others are the target of the $20 million wrongful death suit. [Legal Times]

* Jury nears decision on computer fraud charges against Lori Drew, the cyberbully MySpace mom. [Wired]

* Before U.S. AG Mukasey collapsed at the Federalist Society event, he had a heckler. Washington State Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders has owned up to yelling, “Tyrant! You are a tyrant!” while Mukasey discussed anti-terrorism policy. [The Olympian]

* Bad paralegal! She stole $200,000 from the estate of a Duke professor being administered by Charlotte law firm, Parker, Poe, Adams and Bernstein. [WRAL].

* “Don’t tase me because of B.O.” Chicago citizens sue nine police officers for tasering and pepper spraying them as they celebrated Obama’s victory on Election Night. [Courthouse News Service]

* Dec. 2. New York. Lat. Elie. Kash. Marin. Drinks. Sponsored by Major, Lindsey & Africa. [Above The Law]

* Brian Leiter corrects the record about Richard Epstein. [Law School Reports]

* Did you know that there was a Proposition 9 in California? With all these voter referendums, could somebody please explain again why California even bothers to have a state legislature? [Johnny California]

* A clients caring (about bonuses) roundup. [f/k/a]

* There’s an argument that law firms should double the bonuses from what were given last year. It’s not a good argument. But hey, until some firm steps up to stop the bleeding (please save us S&C) I choose to grasp at the elusive straw. [Law and More]

* How nerdy do you have to be to refer to lawyers as “non-nerdy?” I mean, at that point are you rolling at 1d10 to see if you can “score” with that woman at the bar? [Topless Robot]

According to Connecticut DUI lawyer James O. Ruane, I can’t breathe as well as white people. Based on this “analysis” Ruane has determined that the breathalyzer is a racist device.

Really. I’m not making that up. Ruane represents a black man who got busted for drunk driving:

A breath analysis administered at state police Troop G in Bridgeport found Brown had a blood-alcohol content of 0.188. The legal limit is 0.08.

In a motion filed Tuesday in Superior Court, Ruane asked a judge to suppress his client’s breathalyzer test results, contending the device used by the state police, and most other local police departments, the Intoxilyzer 5000, discriminates against blacks. Brown is an African-American.

I’m all for zealous defense of your clients, but I don’t see why you have to insult thinking people of all colors to make that defense. But Ruane argued:

[T]he lung capacity of a black man is 3 percent smaller than a white man and, therefore, black men’s test results vary from the sobriety standard set by the device.

He said Dr. Michael Hlastala, a lung physiologist at the University of Washington, examined research of other lung physiologists and, based on his studies, has determined the Intoxilyzer 5000 does not effectively test the blood-alcohol content of black men.

“He looked at all the research and came up with the bigger picture and found the common thread,” he said.

Mmm … blanket generalizations about an entire people. I wonder what Michael Jordan’s lung capacity is as compared to Alan Dershowitz?

Ruane gets more crazy after the jump.

Former Capitol Hill staffer/sex blogger/author/bankrupt babe Jessica Cutler has taken a husband. According to the Washington Post:

Jessica Cutler, 30, the Hill aide turned “Washingtonienne” sex blogger turned author, to Manhattan lawyer Charles Rubio, 28. … The couple plan to wed at New York City Hall on an early December weekday, followed by a happy-hour reception. (Not pregnant, in case you’re wondering.) How’d they meet? “Randomly in a bar,” Cutler told us. “I wish I had a more romantic story to tell you!”

Isn’t that always the way? You write stories about the exciting escapades of others while you yourself marry a lawyer you met in a bar. Yawn.

The lucky man after the jump.

Are we going to have a domestic auto manufacturing industry in 2009? Nobody knows. But just in case the government doesn’t bail out Detroit, law firms are jockeying to work on the bankruptcy.

AmLaw Daily reports that three firms are the early favorites to capture the bankruptcy work: Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Kirkland & Ellis, and Skadden.

Timothy Pohl, part of Skadden’s ruling class, sounds confident that his firm is in the running:

Pohl says Skadden has historically done work for former Chrylser owner Daimler, which sold 80 percent of Chrysler to private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management in 2007 for $7.4 billion. Skadden also does work for Ford, says Pohl, adding that the firm has yet to be contacted by either automaker.

“I’m not convinced that any [of the Big Three] are hiring advisers yet,” Pohl says. “But between us, Kirkland, and Weil, I’d say that the three of us have the largest [bankruptcy and restructuring] groups with a big falloff after that.”

Obviously both Skadden and Kirkland have the chops to handle the work, but isn’t the real question “Why not Weil?”

It’s uncertain whether a potential Big Three bankruptcy might present a similar problem for Weil—and how the firm would manage to juggle its Lehman, Lenox, and other client obligations in the event of such a resource-draining retention. That’s especially true given that it’s unclear whether a potential Big Three filing would proceed on a liquidation track (a la Lehman) or as an infinitely more complicated corporate restructuring.

At some point, Weil has to run out of bankruptcy lawyers. Right?

On Kirkland, after the jump.

[Ed. note: This post is authored by Ash Kalb and Dawn Robertson of Cypress Recruiting — an ATL advertiser. Cypress is the first and only US-based legal recruiting firm to specialize exclusively on law firm and in-house placements in the Asia and Middle East legal markets. You can reach them by email: atl(-at-)cypressrecruiting.com.]

An article published in this past Sunday’s New York Times is causing a a bit of buzz in the recruiting industry and amongst lawyers. The gist is simple: go abroad, young man (or woman). That’s where the work is.

Of course, this is not really news. We’ve know it for years: as the domestic legal market continues to underperform (or implode in slow motion, take your pick), the logical destination for the best and brightest legal talent is those markets that are still vibrant and growing, or at the very least not on the verge of imminent failure.

Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong (not to mention Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Doha, Riyadh and a host of other cities) may seem far-flung to the Times, but not to Cypress. For nearly eight years, Cypress Recruiting has been placing attorneys in in Asia, and more recently, in the Middle East. In fact, Cypress was the first U.S. firm to focus on these markets, and is still the only one that focuses on them exclusively; these markets are all we do.

As the Times notes, the credit crunch has resulted in a flood of applicants who might never before have considered looking abroad for the next stage of their career approaching the top offices in the Middle East and Asia. As the volume of applications these offices see goes up, their standards follow as a matter of course. This means that while these markets continue to represent some of the best opportunities out there for attorrneys, it is getting harder and harder for an applicant, no matter how qualified or distinguished, to get in the door.

More after the jump.

Is there a pattern developing in Pittsburgh? A few weeks ago we reported that K&L Gates laid off a number of staff. Today, Gina Passarella of the Legal Intelligencer reports that another Pittsburgh powerhouse, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, laid off between 15 and 25 support staffers.

Buchanan Ingersoll CEO Thomas L. VanKirk confirmed the cuts. But in a move that makes a mockery of the English language, VanKirk refused to call the layoffs, “layoffs.” Instead:

VanKirk said that the cuts were not layoffs, but that the positions were being eliminated in order for the firm to get more in line with its goal of a 3-1 lawyer-to-secretary ratio.

???

Here are some links for Mr. VanKirk, provided free of charge:

Layoff
Layoff
Layoffs

And of course: Layoff

Did your employees want to continue working at your firm? Are they currently allowed to do so? Do you have the slightest idea of what a moral and ethical principle is? Do you?

Having destroyed his own credibility, let’s see what else Mr. VanKirk has to say — after the jump.

Back in the Halcyon days of 2007, when banks existed and Charlotte was a “secondary market,” Cadwalader was having public picnics (instead of executions). Below is an example of the swag they offered:

Oh yes, Capital Markets did have a field day. Now Cadwalader says this about its Capital Markets practice:

The difficult economic environment and the severe dislocations in markets worldwide present unique opportunities, challenges and issues regarding fixed income securities, structured finance, synthetic, and hybrid products, whole loans, and derivatives. Now, more than ever, financial market participants need legal advisors with the knowledge and expertise to navigate the complex array of contractual rights, financial structures, and bankruptcy and regulatory issues associated with such financial instruments.

Well that’s a positive spin on a field of legal work that no longer exists. But hey, they’re Cadwalader. And you know what the firm motto was (from the other side of the T-shirt):

Cadwalader is a firm you can count on from the cradle to the grave (disclaimer: time and placement of the grave may not be of your own choosing). Our tipster reports:

This is a t-shirt (front & back) from Cadwalader (Charlotte)ʼs 2007 Capital Markets summer picnic. It is a size 3 toddler which makes it even more hysterical/ironic/classic.

There’s got to be more stuff like this floating around out there. Please send us your “ironic” firm swag to tips@abovethelaw.com.

Earlier: Law Firm Offer Swag: What Did You Get?

As 7th year associates at Half-Skadden and Skadden-Mart come to grips with the fact that they will be getting a smaller bonus than 1st years at Skadden, let’s take a look at a curious article that came out on November 20th. The same day Cravath announced their reduced bonuses (and threatened their people about 2009) Chairman Chesler spoke to American Lawyer:

Evan Chesler, the presiding partner of Cravath Swaine & Moore, stresses that firms do not need lots of offices to be diversified. “It is too easy to confuse geography with geographic reach,” he says. “It is not the same thing.” …

Although Cravath has just one small outpost in London, the firm is highly diversified, Chesler maintains. “We certainly do Wall Street work, but we always have done work for companies not on Wall Street, companies that make things and are located all around the world, and will continue to do so.”

Apparently, for Chesler “it is too easy to confuse” words with deeds. Either the firm is diversified and is in a good position to weather this economic storm, or it is not. I’m sure that Chesler’s employees do not really appreciate Chesler running around publicly talking about the health of the firm, on the same day he sends around internal memos warning:

[A]ssociates should be prepared for the likelihood that the economy and the Firm’s financial performance next year will not show a significant improvement over this year and they may receive significantly reduced or no year-end bonuses next year.

If you want to criticize Cravath associates, don’t call them “greedy and entitled,” instead call them “foolish” for believing their own management. Believing their own firm is a mistake I’m sure most Cravath associates will not make again.

After the jump, guess who else was talking.

* Covington & Burling’s Eric Holder is now definite as Obama’s choice for Attorney General. Look out for the official announcement after Thanksgiving. [Politico]

* Former Hunton & Williams partner Emerson Briggs gets 70 months in federal prison for doing very bad things with his firm laptop. [Legal Times]

* California AG Jerry Brown is doing what he can for the pocketbooks of Walmart shoppers. Look out for a $3 discount near you. [Business Week]

* What year is this? “Judge rules that suspects cannot be detained because of ethnicity.” Thanks to Judge Frederic Block, now it’s okay to be Egyptian on a plane. [New York Times]

* Considering a lateral move? Ask the tough financial questions first. [The Recorder]

* Exxon Shipping, Footnote 17. It’s so hot right now. [New York Times]

* New Yorkers, join the ATL editors for drinks and merriment on Dec. 2, courtesy of Major, Lindsey & Africa. [Above The Law]

Amid all of the wailing and gnashing about who President Bush might pardon during his last days in office, today’s grant of 14 requests failed to live up to any of the hype. The New York Times reports:

Mr. Bush has been relatively sparing in his use of pardons compared to past presidents, and the latest round of actions continued that pattern. …

Those issued reprieves had been found guilty of mostly garden-variety offenses, like Leslie O. Collier, who was issued a pardon for a 1996 conviction for the unauthorized use of a pesticide in killing bald eagles. Others receiving pardons had been convicted, among other offenses, for income tax evasion, unauthorized acquisition of food stamps, drug offenses and bank embezzlement.

“Stars” such as Michael Milken and Marion Jones (two people whom I never thought would be in the same sentence) have applied for Presidential pardons, but they continue to wait. Meanwhile, there has been a growing worry that Bush would pardon every counter-terrorism official in the land (for crimes not yet made criminal), but that massive Constitutional crisis issue will have to wait for another day.

In the meantime, Bush’s use of the pardon power continues to be more conservative and less objectionable than his predecessors.

… So that makes two sentences I never thought I’d write.

Bush Issues 14 Pardons and Commutes 2 Sentences [NYT]

“Not God Bless America, God-damn America.”

We are now able to report that Simpson Thacher & Bartlett has matched bonuses with Half-Skadden:

On behalf of the partners of the Firm, I would like to announce that year-end bonuses for associates in good standing will be as follows:

Class of 2008: $17,500 (pro-rated)

Class of 2007: $17,500

Class of 2006: $20,000

Class of 2005: $22,500

Class of 2004: $25,000

Class of 2003: $27,500

Class of 2002: $30,000

Class of 2001: $32,500

Class of 2000: $32,500

Cravath has doomed us all.

After the jump, more analysis and the full STB memo.

* An appeal for firms to be open and honest during this time of financial difficulty. We couldn’t agree more. [Adam Smith, Esq]

* Some people think Obama the Law Professor made a serious gaffe by looking at Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State given the apparent conflicts between her nomination and the Emoluments clause. I think (open Kool-Aid) that it was a brilliant move (gulp, gulp, gulp) because now he’s appeased the Clinton faction without actually having to deal with her as his chief diplomat (ahhh … tasty). [The Volokh Conspiracy]

* Former Covington & Burling staff attorney Yolanda Young (we’ve written about her before) has her own blog. Here, she discusses African-American attorneys in the orbit of Obama. [On Being a Black Lawyer]

* $500 an hour for doc. review? What kind of client would even contemplate paying that? I bring you the State of Louisiana. [WSJ Law Blog]

* It’s Evolution Day! Blawg Review takes a look at surviving these layoffs, I’m off to taunt woodland creatures with my opposable and dexterous thumbs.
[Lawyer Casting via Blawg Review]

An interesting debate has broken out on the UVA Law Blog in response to the tepid fall recruiting situation for UVA 2Ls:

[T]he truth is that many, many second-year students are struggling in the job search. I’m not privy to any official numbers coming out of Career Services (although I understand such numbers will be available soon), but the UVA Law Blog website (maintained by myself and others) ran an informal poll a few weeks ago that sheds some light on the situation. Of the nearly 100 local responses, nearly a quarter of respondents were voicing some degree of frustration with trying to get a job … . The legal market is contracting, large firms are cutting their summer class sizes, and some smaller firms are eliminating their summer programs altogether.

Well, it’s bad all over.

But students at the University of Virginia School of Law face a unique set of challenges compared to their T-14 brethren. UVA stands alone among the T-14 in having “prescreening” for fall on-campus interviewing slots:

Virginia is the only school ranked in the top 15 by U.S. News and World Report that continues to use this practice, by which employers select based on resume and grades which students they will talk to at OGI. Virginia’s peer schools have a different system by which interviews are allocated on the basis of student demand: you rank the firms with which you want to interview in order from most to least, and a computer system allocates available interviews accordingly.

Prescreening is loved by employers (and perhaps one of the reasons OGI is so popular) but has questionable benefits for students. A student at or near the top of the class will get most of his interview selections, a student more towards the bottom will not. A partial lottery system in place helps to rectify the situation somewhat, but most interview slots are still prescreened.

At first blush, it’s not apparent that abandoning prescreening would help anybody get a callback. If the firm got to look at your “stats” before they met you and still didn’t make you an offer, it seems like having lower grades would just be a waste of everybody’s time.

But UVA students express a wide range of opinions after the jump.

After two weeks of non-stop layoff and bonus news, it looks like we might finally make it through a whole day without anybody getting fired or jobbed out of their expected year end compensation.

This gives us an opening to bring you the finalists from last week’s caption contest. We’ve read through all 275 comments, disregarded the ad hominem attacks, and brought you the ten best caption ideas. First, here’s the picture again (courtesy of photographer Joshua Landau):

And now, the finalists:

A. Typical day for attorneys in the structured finance group.

B. Don’t move! They can’t lay us off if they don’t see us.

C. We’ll now hear oral argument in the case of Length v. Girth.

D. Too tall. Too fat. Go home, you’ll never be cut out for Project Mayhem.

E. So, I take it you asked about your bonus too?

F. It’s amazing what a CWT guy will do for a few bucks these days.

G. In contrast to the waterboarding at Guantanamo, under the Obama administration enemy combatants will be subjected to much milder forms of discipline.

H. Rather than suffer the negative publicity arising from associate layoffs, BigLawFirms now dress underperforming associates in symbolic black, line them up, and shoot them.

I. In bad job market, law grads meditate to seek enlightenment, loan forbearance.

J. umm did the Kool-Aid taste funny to you?

Vote in the poll below. Once again we ask that you not reveal that backstory for this picture, and we demand that you do not out the contest’s (unwilling) participants.

‘Tis the season — not just for getting your holiday shopping started, but for many law firms to announce their new partners. Earlier this month, we commented on the announcement by Wachtell Lipton of six new partners. Given the firm’s relatively small size, six is a robust number, suggesting that all is well at WLRK despite the downturn.

Partnership announcements can shed light upon the financial health and practice-group priorities of law firms. Many firms like to say that they pick partners based solely on the talents of the lawyers in question, independent of such factors as the economy. Then again, many firms also like to say that dismissals of lawyers are strictly “performance-based.”

In our Wachtell post, we invited you to share your firm’s new-partner news with us (by email). A few of you did. E.g., Cleary Gottlieb (eight new partners); Cravath (three new partners).

Some tipsters were even more helpful, offering analysis of what the partnership news says about the firm. For example:

Not sure if you’re are keeping track of how many partners firms are making, or if it’s even a good metric, but Ropes & Gray made 12 new partners, several in corporate and private equity — the press release is on their website. Also, their start date [as partners] has been confirmed and is not pushed back. Thanks for all the good work.

So it sounds like Ropes Gray is faring relatively well. But then again, we already knew that.

A dissection of the Wilson Sonsini partnership announcement, after the jump.

California bar results are now available for viewing by the general public. As we noted when the private results first went up Friday, the California bar passage rate was 61.7%. Our thoughts:

The NY passage rate was 74.7%. So either the California bar is harder or New Yorkers are smarter.

In fact, the California State Bar notes that the pass rate is “the highest it has been since the July 1997 administration of the examination.” The pass rate in California is usually [PDF] in the 40s and 50s. So were California lawyer wannabes smarter this year?

Perhaps. Or maybe the earthquake that struck on day one of the exam was a godsend instead of a disaster. According to the California State Bar, extra points were doled out to certain test centers. See the matrix and more wild speculation, after the jump.

How do you make really good news come off as really bad news? When a major independent study puts you at the top of the list for litigation profits per partner two business days after you announce half the bonuses of a peer law firm.

That is what happened to Cravath, Swaine & Moore today. On Thursday, we reported that Cravath will be paying out half the associate bonus announced by Skadden. Today, The Lawyer reports that Cravath’s litigation practice was the top earner in terms of PPP:

In what is arguably a more revealing yardstick than total revenue, Skadden’s revenue per lawyer (RPL) was $1.33m (£665,000), a figure that sees its ranking drop to the number five spot. In contrast, New York elite firm Cravath Swaine & Moore snared the top spot both for RPL and revenue per partner (RPP), posting $1.69m (£845,000) and $8.45m (£4.22m) respectively.

It seems that there are two ways to interpret the latest news about Half-Skadden: A) Cravath is cheap, B) Cravath corporate is in the toilet.

Which option do you believe?

How murderously angry do you think Cravath litigation associates are right now? The “revenue per lawyer” metric is particularly interesting. Cravath is generating $1.3 million per litigation attorney, but associates are getting a bonuses that would make a (less profitable) Skadden first year laugh.

As one friend who doesn’t even work at Cravath anymore told me over the weekend (The Lawyer’s story was available to media types on Friday):

I’ve been spending a lot of time apologizing to people who went to Cravath on my recommendation. The bonus announcement was embarrassing, maybe this will make them change course?

More tidbits from The Lawyer after the jump.

In the two weeks since our ATL / Lateral Link survey on bonuses, we’ve talked about when bonuses were and will (or won’t) be paid, how your billable hours look this year, and what you expect bonuses to be for 2008.

Or, at least, what you expected them to be before the Skadden and half-Skadden bonus announcements late last week.

But we haven’t yet reported on your answer to the following question: “If getting a lower bonus this year meant that your firm could completely avoid layoffs, what’s the minimum bonus that you would consider fair?”

Some initial comments were a bit dismissive of the question, and were more than happy to dismiss a few associates, too:

Don’t care about layoffs, and so wouldn’t sacrifice a nickel in bonus to avoid them. Layoffs, if any at my firm, won’t reach my class (2004). If they do, they won’t reach my practice area (litigation). If they do, they won’t reach me.

lay off the lazy a-holes. I billed 3000 this year.

Would prefer higher bonus with layoffs

But as a severe rash of layoffs followed, hearts began to soften, much like the market for structured finance associates:

  * Almost one fourth of practicing respondents would accept a bonus of zero this year to avoid layoffs.

  * More than half would accept a bonus of $20K or less.

  * Only about 5% still insist on bonuses of at least $75K.

Results: What were your hours and bonus in 2007, and what do you expect for 2008?

See breakdowns of morale by seniority, market and practice, as well as a Cravath vs. Skadden comparison, after the jump.

[Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting—sponsor of the Asia Chronicles, and an ATL advertiser. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past two years. You can reach them by email: asia at kinneyrecruiting dot com.]

Robert here. Evan had intended to follow up on his article from last week regarding expat packages, but he’s stuck in a hotel in Hong Kong that our travel people chose, called the Garden View, which has a great location on MacDonnell Road but nothing else to recommend it. Not only is the internet down, but the toilet was not even flushed when Evan arrived. Once he’s flushed and reconnected, we’ll get the expat discussion back up on the web…

In the mean time, for this edition of the Asia Chronicles, we’d like to point any of you who do not read the Sunday New York Times to the following article, which discusses our work in Asia—”Lawyer Wanted: Abroad, That Is.” Kinney Recruiting moved heavily into working in Asia three years ago and, at least from the tenor of this article, we’re doing a good job.

I think we’re a little different from a lot of recruiting firms. Our focus is on serving the candidates, who are the readers of this column, by knowing as much as we can possibly know about the markets we cover and sharing as much as we can possibly share with the people who consider the jobs on offer. We don’t make every placement in Asia or our other major market, Texas, but we make a lot of them. If we can’t get you a job we’ll still talk to you (or at least email - volume of calls has gotten pretty high) and try to assist in any way we can.

So read the New York Times article, contact us at asia at kinneyrecruiting dot com, and look forward to a continuation of the expat packages article on Wednesday.

Like so many of you, I woke up Sunday morning afternoon, took off my shoes, poured myself a bloody mary and opened the New York Times.

A few Kindle-clicks later I learned that ATL friend and Law.com editor John Bringardner was letting the world in on the secret escape option smart lawyers have been using.

When work was plentiful at home, it was often a tough sell to get lawyers to move halfway around the world. But since the financial unraveling in September, that’s all changed. In the last two months, recruiters in Hong Kong and Dubai say they’ve seen a record number of New York résumés from candidates looking for law-firm or in-house legal work overseas.

Ssshh!

Seriously, is there any market anywhere that is not flooded with New York résumés?

Evan Jowers is quoted later in the article, talking about the new difficulties for lateral hires looking to make the move overseas:

A year ago, a lawyer looking for work in Hong Kong could have gone on eight interviews and had seven offers, Mr. Jowers says. But in this market, firms can afford to be choosier.

“In 2006, firms in Hong Kong were panic-hiring because they knew that if they didn’t hire a guy, the next firm would,” he says. “Now they can afford to be more selective because there are more highly qualified candidates coming over.”

Competition overseas. Yay. ( /weeps softly).

More NYT nuggets after the jump.

Lawyer layoffs. Lousy bonuses. Recent news has been grim.

You need something to take your mind off worldly woes. It’s time for a party!

Next Tuesday, December 2nd, we invite ATL readers to join us at Professor Thoms’ for revelry and fun. The party starts at 6:30 p.m. and goes all the way until 11 p.m. We’ll be upstairs at Professor Thoms’ (219 2nd Avenue — just south of 14th Street).

All of your favorites will be there: Lat, Kash, & Marin. I’ll also be there, brooding drunkenly in the corner. No rotting fruit allowed.

Professor Thoms’. Booze. Kash! If you’ve got a better way to spend a Tuesday night, you’re holding on a little too tight.

Please RSVP at rsvp@breakingmedia.com and on Facebook.

Sponsored by Major, Lindsey & Africa.

* Pardon me, please. [Washington Post]

* Musical chairs: University of Chicago’s legal great Richard Epstein will leave the windy city for the big apple in 2010. [NYU Law]

* In honor of Evolution Day, the theme of the Blawg Review is “survival.” A round-up of advice for attorneys during the economic downturn, with shoutouts to ATL’s layoff and “Goat” coverage. [Blawg Review #187/Lawyer Casting]

* FEMA hates poor people. [Courthouse News Service]

* Outgoing VP Cheney indicted. [Associated Press]

* Disturbing news from the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office in California. A deputy DA (responsible for prosecuting sex crimes) has been accused by a colleague of rape and sodomy. [San Francisco Chronicle]

* Happy early Thanksgiving from the federal government, Citibank. [New York Times]

I know it’s not exactly “legal” news, but U.S. News and World Report just released their rankings of the top 200 Colleges and Universities in the World.

Thanks to Paul Caron at TaxProf Blog, I’m bringing the information to you instead of enjoying the company of my wife, or friends, or dog, or PS3.

Here are the T-14 top 10 schools on the list:

1. Harvard

2. Yale

3. Cambridge [Harvard’s on here twice. WooHoo!]

4. Oxford

5. Cal Tech

6. Imperial College London

7. University College London

8. University of Chicago

9. MIT

10. Columbia

The highest ranked non-U.S., non-U.K. school on the list is the 16th ranked Australian National University. University of Tokyo clocks in at 19, and McGill is 20th.

To be honest, I have no earthly idea how you compare Boston University (ranked 46) against Trinity College Dublin (ranked 49th), but that’s why the U.S. News people get the big bucks I guess (assuming of course that U.S. News still pays people).

U.S. News Top 200 Colleges & Universities in the World [TaxProf Blog]
World’s Best Colleges and Universities: Top 200 [U.S. News]

Earlier: Top Law Schools Based On Top Lawyers
Princeton Review Ranks Law Schools Too

According the State Bar Association of California, results for the July 2008 bar exam should be available to individual test takers at 6 p.m. PST. Public mockery will have to wait until Sunday, so don’t blame ATL if the site crashes.

It’s really an appropriate way to end the week. Biglaw takes intelligent, well educated, and highly motivated people and turns them into good little worker bees that don’t make nearly as much as I-bankers. In return, the profession offers job security for all those who can eat the hours.

Except when it doesn’t.

And yet, the next generation keeps on coming. California is going to mint a whole bunch of new lawyers in a few hours. Where are they all going to work? Who knows? Who cares? “Supply” is never a problem anyone has when looking to hire an attorney.

If there is a problem with our system, it’s not at our level. The problem really isn’t with partnerships that want to have the highest PPP possible, it’s not really with grumpy senior associates who want to be paid like partners even though they don’t generate any business. It’s not with entitled juniors or law student dauphins.

The oversupply problem starts with a circa 22-year-old kid who can’t figure out what to do with his life. Ph.D? No money. Med-School? You actually have to know something before they let you in. B-School? “I was told that there would be no math.”

When the economy turns back around, most of the people feeling the pain this month will land on their feet. Alternatively, if the economy never turns around again, people who have been laid off will have a head start on the Waterthunderdome economy of the future.

But that pipeline of new attorneys? That’s just not stopping.

Update (10:56): Welcome to over 5,000 new attorneys (if they want to be). From the State Bar of California:

The State Bar of California’s Committee of Bar Examiners reported today that 61.7 percent of the applicants passed the July 2008 General Bar Examination (GBX). If the 5,330 people who passed the July 2008 exam satisfy other requirements for admission, they will become members of the State Bar.

Preliminary statistical analyses show that of the 8,637 applicants who took the GBX, 72.4 percent were first-time takers. The passing rate for 6,257 first-time applicants was 75.0 percent overall. The passing rate for the 2,380 applicants repeating the examination was 27.0 percent overall.

The NY passage rate was 74.7%. So either the California bar is harder or New Yorkers are smarter.

Congrats to those who passed and good luck to all.

Earlier: New York Bar Exam Results Are Up (But the page appears to be down)

* Making career services useful. Or at least trying to make career services useful. Or maybe … trying to make yourself think that career services will become useful at some point before you end up living in a van down by the river. [BBLP via LexHub]

* Looks like Tim Geithner will be the new Treasury Secretary. Apparently, this job is not so easy a caveman could do it. Sorry Larry. [Dealbreaker]

* It looks like the EMS response time to the Mukasey situation last night was really slow. [Suits & Sentences]

* Are “legacies” illegal? Should they be? Would it be possible to fill a crew team without them? [TaxProf Blog]

* Mark Cuban’s lawyer-blogger-brother Brian once again rises to the defense of his sibling. [The Cuban Revolution]

* Pamela Anderson (esq. I’m sure) is in favor of castration for every “molester or potential molester.” Apparently, Pam doesn’t know that “Everybody who Cares about Pam Anderson” is a wholly owned subsidiary of “Potential Molesters.” [Popsquire]

LEWW had planned to bring you a dishy red-carpet post on last night’s Federalist Society bash, but it turned out that the festivities ended early and very un-festively.

We’re relieved to hear that Attorney General Mukasey appears to have made a speedy recovery and is already back at work. Given this good news, we think it’s appropriate to lighten the mood around here with some news from the weddings page.

Behold, this week’s couples:

1. Catherine Casteel and Peter Olasky

2. Rebecca Brogan and Tyler Morse

3. Emily Lawson and Tom Amis

Read our expert analysis of these couples’ pedigrees, after the jump.

While the world waits for S&C’s bonus memo, here’s some interesting news from a person with a ground-level view at Sullivan & Cromwell: a contract attorney.

The blog Temporary Attorney has a post up about how the other half is living at S&C. An excerpt:

The economy is bad, so that means that down here at S&C, the clients are starting to dwindle, and the ones the firm has are having trouble paying their legal bills. New cases aren’t starting, which means that associates and litigation analysts don’t have anything to do. That means they’re starting to get the work that contract attorneys usually get.

This means that even “lifer” temps who have been working at S&C are being summarily dismissed, usually with little to no notice that we could lose the steady source of income that we’d come to expect. No notice, no severance. Your last day of earning is today. If you discuss this with lawyers not trapped in the temp system, or with basically anybody not on the inside, the situation smacks of outrageous and patent injustice.

Read the full post over here.

Even during good times, the work of a junior associate doesn’t differ much from the work of a contract attorney. When things are slow, it makes sense to funnel even more grunt work to your highly paid juniors — who have nothing else to do.

And we expect that work is slow all over.

But work is not so slow that it’s going to make S&C think about pulling a Half-Skadden?

Right?

P.S. Speaking of S&C contract attorneys, as we mentioned previously (see the “P.S.”), we’re also working on an item about a former contract attorney supervisor at the firm. We already have multiple sources but would like a few more. If you can help, please email us (subject line: “Sullivan and Cromwell”). Thanks.

Sullivan & Cromwell Update [Temporary Attorney]

Our last round-up of Supreme Court clerk hiring was published back in August, before the start of October Term 2008. Now that the justices are back in the country and back on the bench, they’re back to interviewing clerkship applicants.

Over at the Clerkship Notification Blog, there was buzz about Justice Stephen Breyer interviewing and hiring clerks for October Term 2009. That intelligence was correct. Here are his hires:

1. Christopher Fonzone (Harvard 2007 / Wilkinson)

2. Jennifer Nou (Yale 2008 / Posner)

Fonzone appears to be the “2007 Harvard grad” referenced in the comments. With Chris Fonzone and Jen Nou on board, Justice Breyer is all done for OT 2009. (We also hear that he’s started to hire for October Term 2010, but we have no details.)

Update (3:40 PM): We now know one of SGB’s hires for OT 2010:

Erika Myers (Stanford 2008 / Kozinski)

Interesting — although Chief Judge Kozinski is a big-time feeder, he tends to feed more to the right side of the Court. So he may be expanding his range as a feeder judge.

The updated list of Supreme Court clerks, with Fonzone and Nou and Myers added, appears after the jump.

Yesterday, we received a number of reports that 11 Dewey & LeBoeuf associates were fired from Dewey’s NYC office.

This is lower than the casualty rate that some have mentioned in the comments.

In fact, as we’ve mentioned before and saw earlier today, 11 associates in a firm of 1400 worldwide attorneys probably wouldn’t be termed as “layoffs” during normal times.

Of course, these are not normal times.

Dewey’s response after the jump.

Last night, Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed while addressing the Federalist Society. Some feared the AG had suffered a stroke.

Today brings good news about his condition. This morning we reported (see the 10 AM update): “The AG is fine and will be released from the hospital later today. No word yet on what the diagnosis was. He will be taking a few days off.”

A few days off? Scratch that. He’s heading back into work, perhaps as you read this. Here’s the message he just sent to all Justice Department employees (via the BLT):

As you may have heard, I collapsed briefly last night at the conclusion of a speech. All tests at the hospital have come back with good results, and I feel fine. Accordingly, I plan to report to the Department this afternoon and to continue doing the work I swore to do last November and which it has been an honor to do with you ever since.

Thank you for your good wishes and your good work. It has been and remains an honor to serve with you.

We’re glad to hear that Attorney General Mukasey — widely respected among DOJ lawyers, especially compared to Alberto Gonzales, whose job performance even conservative lawyers won’t defend — is doing well and back on the job.

Feeling Fine After Collapse, Mukasey Returns to Work [ABA Journal]
Mukasey Says He’s Ready for Work Again [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]

Earlier: Breaking: Attorney General Mukasey Collapses at Federalist Society Dinner

Layoffs make people feel powerless, but this week’s Job of the Week will make you feel powerful. And helping to save the planet comes as a fringe benefit. As always, the Job of the Week is brought to you by Lateral Link. This position is one of over 1,000 active openings available on Lateral Link. Because of Lateral Link’s outstanding reputation with legal recruiters, Lateral Link members have a significant advantage when seeking a new position. In fact there are over 60 Lateral Link members currently interviewing for positions or with offers outstanding. Membership in Lateral Link is free and you can apply at www.laterallink.com.

Position: Counsel

Location: Philadelphia, PA

Description: This Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) which operates the electric transmission system serving the mid-Atlantic is seeking a Counsel to develop, communicate and implement effective regulatory communication to advance the Company’s business agenda before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”). The Counsel will have primary responsibility for executing the Company’s regulatory strategies; managing outside legal resources and non-lawyer professionals and engaging in hands-on regulatory practice before FERC. In addition the Counsel will assist the General Counsel and executive management in formulating the Company’s regulatory strategies and will counsel business managers, executive management and the Company board on regulatory developments. The ideal candidate will have at least 4 years of related experience, including experience with FERC practice and procedure.

For more information about this position or to apply, please see Position 10115 on Lateral Link. Current members can also contact their personal search consultant directly to discuss this position.

Are you still trying to catch your breath from the bonus announcements at Skadden and Half-Skadden (f/k/a Cravath)? Or are you waiting patiently for S&C to “settle” this bonus debate among top firms? Either way, most people are still just trying to understand why Cravath low-balled the market yesterday.

A couple of days ago we mentioned a theory that has become very popular over the last 18 hours: firms are going to give low bonuses to look responsible to their clients. On Tuesday, we explained the theory like this:

So, reason one: If they give you a bonus, you might tell someone, um, like Above The Law. And reason two: pressure from clients to control costs. Anonymous firm leaders say they fear the effect a big bonus announcement would have on their fee negotiations with belt-tightening clients, especially those in the financial sector.

Some people really believe this is happening, and are using Cravath’s bonus announcement as Exhibit A. One tipster even asked ATL to “stop reporting bonus information.”

But while we can’t know what kind of paranoia is gripping law firm leaders at the moment, we’re pretty sure that clients don’t actually care about associate bonuses.

Our friends at What About Clients attacked this issue yesterday:

So ATL also asks in the post, what about clients? Should great clients care about associate bonuses this year—this evil and financially difficult one of 2008—more than any other year?

The answer: absolutely not.

More analysis after the jump.

We’ve gotten credible information that Fried Frank has laid off at least 15 associates from their corporate department, including 6 in the real estate practice group. A tipster collects the information in a clear way:

They are veiled as performance-based reviews, but virtually everyone is getting a negative review (mostly, it seems, to justify in a paper-trail [a decision] to not give bonuses)….

There has been no formal review process announced, and no one knows what directive came from management last weekend at the partner retreat, but it seems that each group was told to make cuts. People were completely taken off guard when they started getting calls earlier in the week calling them in for their reviews, some of which dredged up years-old information to use as justification for lay-offs, and many of which lasted only 5 minutes or so. Most of the layoffs have been mid-level associates and up, but most junior associates have not yet been reviewed.

The axe is expected to fall on the litigation side of the firm today.

The firm has not responded to voice messages or emails left earlier today. The number of layoffs could be higher than what we are reporting, but right now the best number is 15.

We understand that a three-month severance package has been offered.

Every single tipster (and there are a lot of them) said that the laid-off attorneys were told that they were being let go for performance reasons.

But that’s not all they were told. Read the rest, after the jump.

ATL has been providing in-depth coverage of firm layoffs, but we haven’t written much about public defenders suffering the same fate. With state budgets experiencing big squeezes, public defenders’ offices across the country are getting downsized, while their caseloads are getting upsized.

We wrote about layoffs in Kentucky, Minnesota, Florida, and Georgia back in July. In at least seven states, “public defenders’ offices are refusing to take on cases or have sued to limit them,” says the New York Times in an editorial today. It suggests that the constitutional right to counsel in state criminal proceedings is “hanging by a tattered thread:”

In a disturbing example of legal triage, a Florida judge ruled in September that the public defenders’ office in Miami-Dade County could refuse to represent many poor defendants arrested on lesser felony charges so that its lawyers could provide a better defense for other clients. Behind the ruling were some chastening statistics: Over the past three years, the average number of felony cases handled by each lawyer rose from 367 annually to nearly 500. Misdemeanor case loads rose from 1,380 to 2,225.

Public defenders’ offices all over the country are reporting similar problems. The immediate result is that innocent defendants may feel pressure to plead guilty. There also is an increased risk of wrongful conviction, which means that the real offenders would go free.

The NYT recommends meeting the budget shortfall by increasing the state registration fees for lawyers and expanding pro bono representation by the private bar.

Another out-of-the-box solution would be to get rid of all those pesky drug laws.

Remember to send in all of your layoffs stories and worries to tips@abovethelaw.com.

Hard Times and the Right to Counsel [New York Times]

Earlier: D.C. AG Office Faces Lawsuit After Firing Attorneys (And News of Layoffs For Public Defenders in Other States)

* Mukasey is going to be okay. He’s telling jokes and talking to the President. A GW doctor said “”The attorney general is conscious, conversant and alert.” [CNN]

* Do you feel sorry for sex offenders? The California 4th district court does. They ruled that Jessica’s law, a law that prohibits sex offenders from living within 2,000 feel of a school or park constitutes “banishment under another name.” [San Francisco Chronicle]

* “A U.S.-triggered spate of global carmaker-bailout proposals may spark trade disputes over whether the Americans are unfairly trying to subsidize their industry or just making up for state aid foreign rivals already enjoy.”[Bloomberg]

* Meanwhile, the EU’s antittrust chief says the EU should resist an auto-industry bailout. [Bloomberg]

* On Thursday, a federal judge ordered the release of five Algerian prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. [Los Angeles Times]

* If you’ve been following Proposition 8, you may want to watch an upcoming gay marriage case that will be coming before the Iowa Supreme Court. [Iowa City Press Citizen]

ATL correspondent Laurie Lin, on the scene at the annual dinner of the Federalist Society, reports that Attorney General Michael Mukasey “literally collapsed mid-sentence at the podium,” while delivering a speech at the Society’s National Lawyers Convention. It is not clear what AG Mukasey suffered, but a stroke is possible.

“Medical people are working on him now as he lies on the dais,” according to Lin. “Secret Service FBI says no one can get up. Entire hall is shocked and silent.”

Update (10:38 PM): “They appear to have an IV in. They have taken him out. Now people are praying…. Everyone is saying it looked like a stroke. People are very somber. Some people from the DOJ are visibly shaken.”

Update (10:47 PM): According to radio reports, Mukasey did not immediately regain consciousness after collapsing, and was taken to an area hospital. More from Politico over here.

Update (11:03 PM): According to a different source, Mukasey had regained consciousness by the time he was taken out of the room.

Update (11:06 PM): People are now being allowed to leave the room. From Laurie Lin: “The party ended abruptly, needless to say. The tone of the man [perhaps David McIntosh] who prayed after they took out the AG seemed pretty grim. He asked for prayers for Mukasey’s wife, who was there according to the program, and the Mukasey family.”

More updates after the jump.

* “Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.” Just take a look at Cravath’s bonus memo from last year and read the happy comments. [Above The Law]

* A Houston based law firm is getting Miley Cyrus to perform at their holiday party. Yes, “harvest” should be even better next year. [Legal Blog Watch]

* A lawyer found a job! Sure, it was Paul Clement, and the job was at King & Spalding. But hey, a job’s a job. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Janet Jackson. Boob. Court. Holy crap did you guys see that Skadden is paying double bonuses compared to Cravath? [SCOTUSblog]

If you work at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, prepare to be very, very angry. From the bonus memo just issued by presiding partner Evan Chesler:

Both 2006 and 2007 were extraordinary years for our Firm. In 2006 we paid large year-end bonuses to our associates, and in 2007 we further supplemented those bonuses. As a result of the deterioration of the business environment, the Firm’s financial performance in 2008 will not be in line with those earlier years. While the Firm believes that we should pay year-end bonuses this year, in light of the current business climate we do not think it is appropriate to pay the full bonuses that were paid in 2006 and 2007 or the additional supplemental bonuses paid in 2007.

Just yesterday, Skadden announced that they would match the 2006/2007 bonuses less the “special” bonus paid in 2007. For Cravath to come in under that number is pretty surprising. The official Cravath bonus structure for 2008 is as follows:

Class of 2008 — $17,500 (pro-rated)

Class of 2007 — $17,500

Class of 2006 — $20,000

Class of 2005 — $22,500

Class of 2004 — $25,000

Class of 2003 — $27,500

Class of 2002 — $30,000

Class of 2001 — $30,000

Suddenly, the question is no longer “Is Skadden the ceiling?” Instead, we must ponder “Is Cravath the floor?”

Done being angry? Okay. Now prepared to get very, very frightened:

Given the uncertainty of the economy and the business climate going forward, we will not be able to address the issue of whether there will be any year-end bonuses in 2009 until this time next year. However, associates should be prepared for the likelihood that the economy and the Firm’s financial performance next year will not show a significant improvement over this year and they may receive significantly reduced or no year-end bonuses next year.

Update (6:22 PM): Of all the tips that have crashed ATL’s inbox in the last 45 minutes, this one best captures the raging rage people are feeling:

WTF does Cravath think it’s doing? They’re basically threatening no bonus for NEXT YEAR? They’re not being Nostradamus, they’re trying to force people out. Cravath associates will get that memo, collect their garbage 2008 [bonus] and lateral the hell out before they get screwed again.

Why not just conduct stealth layoffs? Forced attrition is the same thing. Go home, Cravath. You’re embarrassing yourself.

Read the full memo after the jump.

Having had the opportunity to tell all affected associates, Mayer Brown is ready to publicly confirm the extent of the firm-wide layoffs that took place today:

Despite the current conditions in the worldwide financial markets, Mayer Brown is having a strong year, with an increase in gross revenues. Most of our practice areas are performing well. We have benefited greatly from our practice area and geographic diversity, including our recent merger with JSM in Asia. However, as is the case in all other comparable law firms, some of our practice areas have been adversely affected by the slowdown in economic activity.

Accordingly, we have asked 33 lawyers and some support and administrative staff in our US offices to leave the firm. This reduction does not include lawyers who were asked to leave this year through our performance review process.

Those affected by this decision are good lawyers who have made valuable contributions to the firm. We intend to give them access to outplacement services and other benefits and a substantial period of time to find another job.

How many lawyers have left during the performance review process? The firm declined to say.

The firm also declined to break down the layoffs by office, but we’ve learned that New York and Charlotte were the hardest hit.

Multiple tipsters have reported that the decision was driven by Chicago management, not the branch office partners.

More after the jump.

More bad news today, this time from Squire Sanders.

Multiple sources reported massive layoffs at Squire Sanders yesterday. The firm has confirmed that 30 associates and paralegals were let go:

We have completed annual reviews of all of our associates and, as a result of that process and with regret have advised some of our associates that they should explore career opportunities elsewhere and we are giving them time to do so. About 30 associates and paralegals will be affected firmwide,including three associates in Phoenix. This is a higher number than usual leaving following performance reviews. Admittedly, current and projected business conditions influenced the timing of these decisions. Like all firms, we are forced to align our resource capabilities with project client service levels and make some hard personnel decisions. That may sound harsh to some and sound like a ‘lay off’ to others but we are working closely with all professionals affected and providing support and assistance.

The Phoenix news is significant. Markets like Phoenix (and Tampa, another Squire branch location) are hurting (because of the housing market) but have not yet felt the brunt of Biglaw layoffs.

We understand that the targets of the cuts were more expensive senior associates. We don’t have any word on what severance package Squire Sanders is offering.

From the firm’s statement, it looks like another case of “forced attrition.”

After the jump, we look into the recent past of Squire Sanders.

It has been a while since our last Eyes of the Law legal celebrity sighting, so here’s a fun one for your consideration. A D.C. tipster tells us:

We saw Sandra Day O’Connor in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s exhibit on Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams. She had on the same red sweater she can be seen wearing in photos dating from the late ‘90’s hanging on the wall at Georgetown. I guess the retired justice pension package isn’t as generous as I thought. Or she just really likes that sweater.

SOC was accompanied by two women in their late 20’s or early 30’s… possibly granddaughters, possibly ex-clerks. We didn’t detect any particular resemblance — neither was wearing a red sweater that looked as though it might have been knitted or handed down from grandma.

Old people and museums: perfect together. Please pass the Bengay.

Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities [Smithsonian American Art Museum]

The Boston-based law firm Brown Rudnick is the latest to sacrifice associates to the global economic crisis. Yesterday they parted ways with 20 attorneys, 3 paralegals, and 20 other staffers.

But the anticipation might have been worse than the hammer. Brown Rudnick told associates they were laying people off before anybody was actually laid off. This firm-wide email went out yesterday:

I regret to inform you that today we are having a layoff. Layoff notifications have begun this morning and will continue until approximately 4:00 PM ET today. This action will affect just under 10% of our attorneys, paralegals and staff….

Out of respect for those who are being laid off, we are unable to share more information with you at this time, but we will answer your questions when the notification process is complete. Please refrain from approaching members of the Management Committee, Managing Directors or Administrative Directors, prior to 4:00 PM ET, with questions about the layoff, as they, too, need to honor the privacy of our colleagues.

Everyone who is impacted by today’s action will be receiving severance and outplacement assistance. No other layoffs are planned after today.

The Firm remains strong. Today’s action is intended to better align our staffing with current work levels at the Firm and to position the Firm to be successful in this challenging economic environment.

… [W]e will be holding two meetings in the Boston Event Center later today with video connection to Hartford, New York, Providence and Washington. I encourage you to attend these group meetings. I will answer your questions at that time.

That’s a tough day. Waiting by your phone to learn if you still have a job.

After the jump, it was all over by 4:00 p.m.

In July, we wrote a post on How Not To Spend the Week Before the Bar Exam. A University of Minnesota law grad, Nick “The Goat” Thompson, had been featured in a Sports Illustrated article on an ultimate fighting EliteXC tournament broadcast on CBS. Thompson had lost his match, but had a good excuse: studying for the bar exam had likely cut into his training time. He took the Minnesota bar two days after the match.

We forgot about this article until last month, when his wife e-mailed us to share the good news that Thompson had passed the bar (as did 89% of test takers.)

We talked to Nick last weekend about what’s it like to be a professional mixed martial arts fighter, esquire. Find out how he’s combining ultimate fighting with a law degree, after the jump.

Many otherwise talented professionals are not good interviewers. When particularly busy or having a bad day, it is not unusual for an interviewer to lose sight of what is at stake for the person they are interviewing and consider the whole thing to be a waste of their time. Some interviewers see their role as weeding out candidates who “can’t take the pressure” and are purposefully challenging, and still others—especially if they will not be working directly with the person hired— just don’t care.

Bad interviews happen, and over the course of a job search, tough interview questions are likely to be asked. As a candidate you are not in a position to control the situation, but what follows are some tips to help you leave a good impression from the other side of the table.

Guidelines

* Do your homework . Anticipate obvious questions, such as “What do you know about the company?” and “What did you think of that article in the Times yesterday?” and do research that lets you answer them. Beyond reviewing the company’s website, Google them and the names of prominent clients to see if they have been in the media recently.

* Prepare fallback answers. It is of course always best to answer an interviewer’s question directly, but if that’s not possible, answer the question you wish they’d asked. (The presidential candidate debates provide a model for this strategy.) Bullet out points in advance about your skills and experience that you want to be sure you make, and segue to talk about what you bring to the table.

More guidelines after the jump.

When we last saw Bryan Cave, the firm was busy acquiring Powell Goldstein, and saying great things about their long-term future and financial health.

Having just added so many new attorneys, the message ATL received this morning was surprising.

Two pieces of news for Bryan Cave associates today: they’re deferring salary increases by three months and eliminating the associate shared fee program (where associates got bonuses for bringing in new clients)….

The spin on the deferrals is that they’re a better option than layoffs and less drastic than an all-out salary freeze.

Shortly after this first report, we received the full firm-wide email announcing the changes:

In light of the continuing volatility in the economy and the uncertainties in the marketplace as we move into 2009, we believe it is now prudent to implement the following actions with respect to our compensation programs:

* Deferral of Consideration of Increases for Counsel and Associates. Consideration of increases for counsel and associates will be deferred in all offices. For example, for those cities where increases were previously effective January 1, the date for 2009 will be April 1. Offices with different compensation consideration dates will

Occasionally, commenters in our layoffs posts suggest that they would be willing to give up some of their salary in exchange for keeping their jobs. So … here’s a chance to do just that, at least for a period of time.

But most Bryan Cave associates will be pissed. Because you know what would have been even more “less drastic” than an all-out salary freeze? Not acquiring the debts and liabilities of Powell Goldstein.

More tipster reaction and the full Bryan Cave memo after the jump.

Seven members of the Morton Ranch High School cheerleader squad were indicted for hazing. This marks the first time minors have been charged under the 1995 Texas anti-hazing statute.

Their crime? Blindfolding junior cheerleaders and throwing them into a swimming pool.

That’s it:

“This is what we’ve been waiting for,” said Diane De La Cruz, mother of Laura De La Cruz, 15, one of the junior varsity cheerleaders. “We are thankful that the grand jury came up with an indictment because we have known all along that the (varsity) girls were guilty of hazing.”

Diane De La Cruz and her husband had a premonition that high school girls might start acting like high school girls:

[De La Cruz] said her husband had an uneasy feeling when the older cheerleaders arrived about 4 a.m. on July 25 to take the couple’s daughter to the ritual breakfast.

“He said, ‘I hope this is not going to turn into an initiation,’ ” De La Cruz recounted. “We trusted them to just drive our girls to IHOP.”

An initiation? In Texas? By high school students? Who could have possibly seen that coming?

Hazing is serious business … to people with no friends who’ve never been a part of anything:

Chicago psychologist Jean Alberti termed hazing “child abuse by children.” …

“(Youths) think it’s funny, parents think it’s funny. They think it’s normal adolescent development, but this is an aberration. It didn’t happen 30 or 40 years ago. Now we have video on YouTube showing girls kicking other girls in the head.”

No we didn’t have YouTube 30 or 40 years ago, but I’m pretty sure that if we did “girls kicking other girls in the head” would have been “tame” for the times.

But after the jump, the law is on the anti-hazing side.

Last month, we reported that K&L Gates would stop paying bar association fees for their attorneys.

Now, we’ve learned that Kaye Scholer has decided to stop paying membership fees for the New York Intellectual Property Law Association:

As announced in October, each individual attorney now is responsible for maintaining his or her membership in NYIPLA. Both new membership and renewals for 2009 should be paid in full and received by NYIPLA no later than December 31, 2008.

I thought IP attorneys were a golden goose in this rapidly declining legal market? Why would you piss them off?

The annual membership dues are $200 for lawyers with more than five years experience, $130 for attorneys with less than five years under their belt.

Based on figures we’ve received, Kaye Scholer stands to save (wait for it …) $9,920.

Keeping your associates enrolled in an organization that helps them enhance their skills < $9K?

Really?

Well, at least the holiday party is still on.

Earlier: K&L Gates to Nickels and Dimes
Kaye Scholer to More Cowbell

* California’s Supreme Court agreed to hear the case against Prop. 8. [Reuters]

* For all the associates who go crazy working late into the night in dark conference rooms dreaming of embezzling money from the firm—let this be a lesson to you. Employee Angela Marie Dees was arrested for stealing 1.67 million dollars from the California law firm Moore and Waxler. The crazy thing? The firm didn’t even notice until they did an audit. [mysuncoast.com]

* “Stung by outsize investment losses, some of the nation’s biggest companies are pushing Congress to roll back rules requiring them to put more money into their pension funds, just two years after President Bush signed a law meant to strengthen the pension system.” [NYT]

* A jury heard opening statements yesterday in the MySpace hoax case, the one where the suburban mother used a fake alias to terrorize a 13-year-old who killed herself as a result. [ABC]

* Even though bankers basically caused a world-wide recession causing thousands of lawyers to lose their jobs (thanks a lot), at least Barclay’s is giving the litigators some love. Barclay’s is suing a hedge fund for hiding $150 million in investments. [Bloomberg]

* Yesterday was National Toilet Day. Everybody who works on Wall Street already knew that. [UPI]

Former Cadwalader chairman Bob Link is being left off of the firm’s 2009 management committee. The news was told to the partnership during a meeting today. Link himself confirmed the news to AmLaw Daily:

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft’s former chairman and current managing partner Robert Link Jr. was not included on a recommended slate of candidates for the firm’s management committee given to partners today, a source at Cadwalader says.

The slate, recommended by the management committee, will not be acted on for another few weeks, the source says. Link, reached by phone, confirmed his name was not on the list.

“It really is part of our normal succession,” Link says. “It’s not something I’ve been part of planning for.”

Charlotte managing partner Jim Carroll is also out of the 2009 management loop.

The Lawyer, which first broke the news of Link’s ouster on Monday, reports that Cadwalader’s future is still very much up in the air:

But Link’s removal from power is far from the end of the story. Cadwalader has been reeling for months. Collapsed core markets, major lawyer layoffs and now a palace revolt, 2008 will go down as arguably the worst in Cadwalader’s 216-year history.

Inevitably, questions have been raised about the long-term future of the firm. How things play out later this week may offer some clues as to its shape, whatever that may be.

But one parting shot from CWT to the associates they laid off, after the jump.

The economy is in the toilet and law firms are scrambling to adjust. Usually this means “firing associates,” but DLA Piper has done something really interesting and brought changes to the partnership instead of firing associates:

Some 275 “income” partners who don’t have an ownership stake will be invited to join the ranks of 300 equity partners, provided each makes a capital contribution that could range up to $150,000, according to legal industry sources.

Look, for all we know associate layoffs could be right around the corner at DLA or any other Biglaw firm. But almost doubling the number of equity partners means that profits per partner will be squarely in the hands of each individual partner to generate business.

Legal industry recruiter John Cashman of Major Lindsey & Africa LLC says DLA’s move is unprecedented and likely to turn up the heat on attorneys to bring in clients — a crucial factor in partner compensation.

“It’s very clear to their (junior-level lawyers) it’s either up or out: We want business generators or worker bees. They want to send that message,” Mr. Cashman says.

Real cost savings for DLA after the jump.

* The ABA Journal bans a commenter and she immediately starts her own blog. I ban a commenter and he immediately sends me emails suggesting that I have an inappropriate relationship with my mother, but the grammar is perfect. Banned ATL commenters 1, banned ABA commenters 0. [Legal Blog Watch]

* Wow. I expect this from partners, but apparently clients also think that associates are fatted sacks of meat that are only good when they’ve been sliced, grilled, and served with a nice chianti. And that was before Skadden announced bonuses. [What About Clients?]

* Woman thinks women should stop acting like girls. [Law and More]

* Apple wins. ( /nods in silent deference.) [Legal Pad]

* Spitzer! Hooker! Talking! [Gawker]

Look, I’m the last person on Earth to criticize somebody for getting out of the law firm life and following a dream. But I’m a little worried that “Jack,” who writes the blog Adventures in Voluntary Simplicity, might have lost a little bit of his grip on reality. I spent most of the morning reading Jack’s missives. It’s a bit like reading a Walt Whitman poem that’s been printed with letters cut out from various magazines.

But, despite his apparent madness, Jack is still gainfully employed as an attorney (he doesn’t say where). Law firm employment is of course something that Jack intends to discontinue. He’s got a whole plan he wants to execute so that he can leave his job by the end of 2009:

There is nothing inherently wrong with my job as a lawyer. In fact, for several years, I really felt that it was interesting and intellectually challenging. On the other hand, coming into work was a wonderful way to play adult and pretend that I knew all the answers that really mattered. Putting on expensive suits, traveling all over the world, representing important clients, knowing the location of expensive restaurants, etc…were all just a way for me to tie additional knots in an ever-expanding invisible chain of hopeless materialism. …

And then I started getting…well…bored. The mind-numbing effects of sitting in front of a computer for 12, 13, 14 hours a day 6, sometimes 7 days a week making very rich people even more rich definitely caught up with me. …

So here I am. Making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in a job that infuriates me and gets me no closer to fulfilling my potential.

Okay Jack. I’m with you buddy.

But the plan gets weird after the jump.

We expected this. Skadden has announced that they will discontinue the “special” bonuses from last year. Instead, they’ll be giving out the 2006/2007 standard package. From the memo, sent out by executive partner Bob Sheehan:

[W]e will pay the year-end discretionary bonus at the same levels by class seniority which associates received in 2007 and 2006. However, we do not think it is appropriate to repeat the “special” supplemental bonus that was instituted last year. That bonus reflected a strong and growing economy that contributed to a record level of profitability.

The Firm has historically paid its associates at the “top of the market” in their respective local markets. While we do not know what other firms will do this year with regard to paying a supplemental bonus, we believe that our bonuses this year should be limited to the year-end discretionary bonus. What we will do in the future years, will, of course, depend on business conditions at the time and competitive compensation.

You will receive a memo early in December discussing your individual bonus. We appreciate the efforts you have all put in this year. You have contributed enormously to the success that we have achieved.

That should pretty much set the market.

The 2007 bonuses weren’t bad. And Skadden isn’t laying people off. It’ll be pretty hard to complain if this is where the market ends up.

And, not for nothing, it shows good form by Skadden for telling people what to expect before the holiday season starts. That winter vacation to the Dominican Republic can now proceed full speed ahead.

Read the full memo after the jump.

A tipster reported a rumor today that we’ve heard a couple of times over the past week and a half:

Word on the street is that Mayer Brown had big layoffs today.

The problem is, that was the word on the street yesterday. And Tuesday. And last week the word on the street was that Mayer Brown associates would be on the street by Friday.

We’ve spent a lot of time sleeping on the street. At this point, we haven’t yet talked to one associate who has actually been laid off from Mayer Brown. Still, there’s an awful lot of chatter out there.

Mayer Brown weighs in, after the jump.

The homepage of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher asks: “What makes Gibson unlike any other firm?” One of our tipsters offers one possibility: Gibson summer associates have moonlight careers.

Found it funny that the model on the front page of this support site for adult websites is also the model on the Gibson Dunn career site (go to Hiring, then Law Student).

Tough Market, j/k.

We find it funny that you are on the support site page for adult websites, tipster. The support page links to such delightful sites as “Arab Street Hookers,” “Human Toilet Bowls,” and “The Amputee.”

We’ve gone back and forth between the Gibson and Porn Support site photos, and there is a strong resemblance. What do you think?

We’ve received over a thousand responses to last Monday’s ATL / Lateral Link survey on bonuses, and so far we’ve talked about when bonuses were and will (or won’t) be paid and how your billable hours look this year.

Today, we get down to the hardest numbers of all: what do you think you’ll actually get paid?

2007 was a very good year for bonuses, with over 90% of respondents (not counting stub years) reporting a bonus even though only 70% made 2000 hours.

Roughly half of you reported bonuses of at least $45,000. About 15% of you made $70,000 or more, and 7% of you claim to have broken six figures.

This year, well … not quite so much.

Details after the jump, so nervous T-10 1L can take a moment to prepare himself.

The state of New Jersey has reached a settlement with the popular online dating website, eHarmony. Under the settlement, eHarmony agrees to provide its proprietary online matching service to same sex singles.

In return, the state of New Jersey will not pursue a civil rights action against eHarmony that the state would surely win:

The company also agrees to ensure that same-sex users are matched via the same or equivalent technology as that used for heterosexual match-seekers, agrees to charge same-sex users the same fees, and agrees to offer the same service quality and terms of service as heterosexuals.

Unless somebody wants to argue that eHarmony is a religious institution, I think the law is pretty clear on this one.

More information about the settlement after the jump.

A law student at Case Western Reserve is suing an upscale Cleveland apartment building because bedbugs drove him from 2 units in the building.

Gnats drove him from a 3rd unit before he learned the definition of “insanity” and moved into another building:

In his lawsuit, Joshua Bobrowsky said the blood-sucking vermin in three Reserve Square apartments left him with painful welts and months of psychological and emotional distress. He seeks $142,000 in damages.

Apparently, Cleveland’s bug population is stepping it up a notch:

Robert Friedman, a lawyer for the apartment owners, the K&D Group, said the allegations are being investigated. …

“I represent a number of apartment owners around the Greater Cleveland area, and I can tell you that bedbugs seem to be a recurring issue,” Friedman said. “Certain tenants bring them in and they seem to get around. Unless the management is informed immediately, they can become a problem.”

Yeah, LeBron is totally staying in Cleveland when his contract is up.

More information about law student Bobrowsky after the jump.

[Ed Note: Do you have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com]

Dear ATL,

As a 3L, coasting through his last year of school, I find the occasional moment to partake in a bit of “relaxation” by way of an unmentioned illegal plant.

I’m wondering though, other than a question about this on the Bar application, would I be subject to any type of drug testing for the bar or at my post-bar big law firm? Do firms ever drug test their employees?

— Panama Red.

Dear Panama Red,

If you show up to work with bags of White Castle or pester secretaries with questions about where your car’s at, firms may demand a drug test (based on boilerplate paperwork you fill out at the outset of your job permitting them to do so), and they can fire you without cause anyway. But as far as I know, no law firms routinely test associates for drugs, and neither does any bar-related process.

However, firms do prohibit associates from moonlighting or engaging in activities that would be detrimental to the business or reputation of the firm. Practically speaking this means you’ll have to get off Phish tour (editor’s note: they’re not reuniting, give up the ship) and turn in that ridiculous shell necklace from Hollister. The hemp one, too. God, this is embarrassing.

Since it would have only taken a Google search for you to have answered your own question, I’ll take your email as a cry for help and give you some actual advice. You need to lay off the weed and focus on passing the bar and keeping your job. Also, I see you didn’t get the memo about how everybody switched over to coke. Um, yeah. AWKWARD.

Your friend,

Marin

After the jump, Marin passes the blunt to Elie, who’s wearing a “Take Me Drunk I’m Home” t-shirt.

* Former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who lost his bid for re-election on Tuesday, says he will not seek pardon from President Bush. [CNN.com]

* MJ says he is too sick to fly to testify at High Court in London in a breach of contract case. His opponent in the case, the son of the King of Bahrain, doesn’t buy it and says Jackson can be “bandaged up.” [BBC News]

* A Chicago federal court introduced a preliminary injunction that will put pressure on unionized pilots not to engage in the “sick outs” that led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights last summer. [Chicago Tribune]

* Clients choose boutique firms to sue big banks like UBS because the “Magic Circle” law firms won’t accept cases that could hurt the banks they represent. [Bloomberg.com]

* Wrestling gives you STD’s! Three wrestlers are suing York College of Pennsylvania coaches for letting players wrestle with active lesions. “Herpes simplex 1 is sometimes called herpes gladitorium because it is spread in athletics contests.” [Courthouse News Service]

Thanks to the voters of California, we now live in a time where previously granted rights can be snatched away from law abiding citizens on the strength of majoritarian domination.

If you didn’t think that was going to spark a whole bunch of legal arguments (on both sides of the issue), you’ve never been oppressed by an otherwise “free” society.

So, let’s take a look at all the crazy things dribbling out of California right now. For my money, here’s the most ludicrous argument:

If opposition to same-sex marriage is to be understood as pure bigotry, then no accommodation for religious believers will be made. This is what people have got to understand is at stake in this conflict. It is not a scare tactic, or a made-up charge: there really will be a substantial effect on traditional churches, synagogues, mosques and religious institutions if gay marriage is constitutionalized.

As usual, the argument ends there. People like to talk about the “substantial effect” on religious institutions, without naming one concrete effect. See, in this country, we have civil marriages and religious marriages. I’ve yet to talk to a supporter of gay marriage who wants to the state to force a priest or a reverend or a rabbi to perform a gay marriage in a house of worship. Heck, in the Catholic church at least, you can’t get straight-married by a priest in a church unless you submit yourself to hours of religious indoctrination and lie about your relationship with contraceptives.

(Christ, did I just say that out loud? Now I have to go to confessional again before Christmas. Damnit.)

Nobody is going to mess with the right of religious people to “not condone the gay lifestyle.” America reads you loud and clear. You’re not gay, you have a huge penis, and that one time in college you were just really drunk. The private feelings of religious people towards gay people are strictly between religious people and their Jesus (who preached a lot about love and tolerance, but whatever).

The impact of gay marriage on the 1st Amendment is nil. As many (many, many) people have pointed out: if you don’t like gay marriage, then don’t get gay married. Thank God we have an entire constitutional amendment that allows churches to marry whomever the hell they want to without interference from the state. It’s a good thing that all gay rights advocates want is for gays and lesbians to have a legal bond commensurate with what straight people can achieve on a pirate ship.

Okay, but the 1st Amendment argument against gay marriage is a total red herring. After the jump, California drags us into some more complicated legal issues.

* Are you a lawyer and a vegan? If you’re not too weak, click on the link. [Professional Vegan]

* It turns out that the guy who started this company used to be a lawyer in Dallas. [World Beer Company]

* I can’t wait until Wendy Savage gets to play Wendy Savage in the Wendy Savage Story that is sure to be coming to a theater near you. [f/k/a]

* International tax rates on individuals are falling, in case Republicans are looking for some exit options before Obama takes office. [TaxProf Blog]

* There are many sides to the SEC v. Mark Cuban case. It’s not our place to judge, we just bring the popcorn. [The Cuban Revolution]

Generally, it is not cool to make fun of people who don’t pass the New York Bar Exam.

Generally.

However, Elizabeth Wurtzel puts us in a difficult position. A) She’s a public figure, B) She really doesn’t seem to care. When the New York Observer approached her with the news that Gawker alerted the world that she failed the bar, Wurtzel responded:

“Wow, really? I had no idea. I didn’t even see that. That’s interesting,” Ms. Wurtzel said of the report, with an awkward half-smile.

Well, what was she supposed to say?

I’m so ashamed and embarrassed, and Gawker has compounded my misery. I wish I could cry but I have no more tears left. I wish the public would just leave me alone so I can hang myself in the privacy of my own bathroom.

Why give the haters any opening? Going quietly into the night is a fine option.

So, why isn’t ATL just leaving her alone? After the jump.

Newsweek is reporting that Covington & Burling partner Eric Holder will be picked as the new U.S. Attorney General:

Holder, who served as deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration, still has to undergo a formal “vetting” review by the Obama transition team before the selection is final and is publicly announced, said one of the sources, who asked not to be identified talking about the transition process. But in the discussions over the past few days, Obama offered Holder the job and he accepted, the source said. The announcement is not likely until after Obama announces his choices to lead the Treasury and State departments.

Holder would become the first African-American to head the Department of Justice.

Holder received his B.A. and J.D. from Columbia. Obama’s transition team is still debating Holder’s deputy:

One top candidate, favored by Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and other former Clinton White House officials, is Elena Kagan, dean of the Harvard Law School and a former lawyer in the White House counsel’s office under Clinton. Another top candidate, favored by other Obama advisors, is David Ogden, a former chief of staff to Attorney General Janet Reno, who is currently heading Obama’s Justice Department transition team. Kagan brings legal policy credentials; Ogden has more experience in the Justice Department trenches.

Will Holder depoliticize the DOJ? We hope that is near the top of his agenda.

Obama’s Attorney General [Newsweek]
Newsweek: Holder is Next Attorney General [The BLT: Blog of the Legal Times]

Earlier: Legal Stars of the New Administration
Lawyers Poised To Rule The World

It’s time for an ATL caption contest! Since there are so many new readers since the last time we ran one of these, here are the rules: post your caption entries in the comments. We’ll take our favorites, incorporate them into a poll, and allow you to vote for your favorite.

We present the picture below without comment or back story, so as not to limit your creativity. If you know the back story, please refrain from posting it.

We’ll tell everybody the real story behind the picture when the contest is over.

Enjoy. And for the love of God, with so many people out there who are sure they can do this job better than me, y’all better bring the funny.

Earlier: ATL Caption Contest: Tighty-Whities
‘Tighty-Whities’ Caption Contest Winner

Avvo is a legal website that rates practicing attorneys. They have now released a set of law school rankings based on which schools generate the highest average rating of alumni. The top five are pretty standard. The highest average rating belonged to Yale:

1. Yale Law School: 7.6

2. Stanford Law School: 7.5

3. Harvard Law School: 7.4

4. University of Chicago Law School: 7.4

5. Columbia Law School: 7.4

Sorry NYU Law alumni. Your average rating was only 7.34.

It’s somewhat surprising that Yale rated so highly. So many people complain that Yale students aren’t very good at legal practice, despite their theoretical strengths.

Still, it’s Yale, so we’re talking “mild surprise” as opposed to “galloping shock.”

Anyway, unlike so many rankings, Avvo also released the figures of the five worst law schools in terms of the ratings of their alumni.

See the worst, after the jump.

Whenever we do a post on gender inequality in the legal profession, some readers insist on finding arguments to make the income gap “acceptable.”

Another survey was released yesterday, this time from the National Association of Women Lawyers, that shows pay and promotion inequality is still the norm.

The WSJ Law Blog puts the facts plainly:

There is also a considerable pay gap. At 99% of the firms, the top-paid partner is a man; on average, male equity partners earn more than $87,000 annually than female equity partners. (Fifty-nine firms in the AmLaw 200 reported compensation data.)

Can you imagine what those numbers would look like if the other 141 AmLaw 200 firms had bothered to report their compensation data?

The survey itself deals straight-away with one of more common justifications for continued inequality:

In spite of more than two decades in which women have graduated from law schools and started careers in private practice at about the same rate as men, women continue to be markedly underrepresented in the leadership ranks of firms. Women lawyers account for fewer than 16% of equity partners, those lawyers who hold an ownership interest in their firms and occupy the most prestigious, powerful and best‐paid positions. The average firm’s highest governing committee counts women as only 15% of its members - and 15% of the nation’s largest firms have no women at all on their governing committees. Only about 6% of law firm managing partners are women.

Let me access my inner Joe Biden and repeat that: two decades, starting careers in at the same rate as men, 16% of equity partners.

More survey results after the jump.

The Nevada Judicial Discipline Commission has done a great public service. They have collected all of the faults of (former) Judge Elizabeth Halverson into one 28-page document.

The commission found:

No employee, even those inured to a judge’s mercurial temperament and foul mouth should have to experience what Judge Halverson made her immediate staff live and work through on a routine basis.

Halverson — who maintains her innocence — has 15 days to appeal the decision.

Could this be the end of the public’s fascination with Judge Halverson? Unlikely.

But what is she going to do now? She’s going to need food, shelter, and most likely a pliant slave with massage expertise. Any ideas on an alternative career for ATL’s favorite judge?

DISCIPLINE COMMISSION: Halverson removed from bench [Las Vegas Review-Journal]
Discipline Body Removes Judge Halverson, Citing ‘Bizarre’ Staff Treatment [ABA Journal]
In re Elizabeth Halverson.pdf

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Judge Halverson

We’ve tentatively started the Associate Bonus Watch for 2008, with news of Orrick’s and McDermott’s bonus plans, and the not-really-news that Morgan Lewis will not make bonus decisions until after the holidays.

With the dismal economy and the widespread law firm layoffs, we speculated last month that regular bonuses may be less than last year, and “special” bonuses would likely disappear. The New York Law Journal agrees with us, and suggests two other reasons for it:

The scale of the expense and the almost compulsory nature of the market are widely resented by partners. But they also realize bonuses play a huge role in associate morale, recruitment and retention. Most managing partners who spoke to the Law Journal about bonuses cited potential problems with associates in requesting anonymity. But this year they all also mentioned another interest group keeping a watchful eye on bonuses: clients.

So, reason one: If they give you a bonus, you might tell someone, um, like Above The Law. And reason two: pressure from clients to control costs. Anonymous firm leaders say they fear the effect a big bonus announcement would have on their fee negotiations with belt-tightening clients, especially those in the financial sector.

Orrick chairman Ralph Baxter notes that while Orrick will still pay bonuses, “performance factors, including billable hours, will reduce the number of associates at the firm” who actually get a bonus.

The article suggests that the dismal economy could provide the opportunity that some firms have been looking to escape the bonus bidding war, and eliminate associate bonuses all together. We know you’re worried. In a recent Lateral Link survey by Justin Bernold, one out of every thirteen respondents was unsure when, or if, bonuses would be paid. But as The New York Law Journal notes:

Of course, much will depend on what Cravath and Sullivan & Cromwell do.

As always, we welcome bonus news and memos via email (subject line: “Associate Bonus Watch”).

Firms Rethink the Value Of Associate Bonuses [New York Law Journal]

Earlier: Associate Bonus Watch: McDermott Will & Emery is Sticking to the Plan … For Now
Associate Bonus Watch: Orrick Stands Behind Bonus Structure
Associate Bonus Watch: Morgan Lewis Pushes Back Bonus Decisions
Open Thread: Associate Bonus Speculation

* Change you can believe in? It looks like Obama has recruited a few “washington insiders”: 8 of the 10 top lawyers he has hired for his transition team are veterans of the Clinton administration. [Bloomberg.com]

* After his hunt yesterday, Justice Antonin Scalia told a room full of big-time Texas lawyers that he disagreed with judges who used foreign law to interpret the constitution. [Houston Chronicle]

* “Protesters galvanized by a dragging death that has stirred memories of the notorious James Byrd case rallied twice outside an eastern Texas courthouse to speak out against a judicial system they consider racist.” [Associated Press]

* Are you ready for your close-up Mr. Rehnquist? The Hoover institution released files documenting Rehnquist’s first three years on the Court, years filled with land-mark cases like Roe v. Wade and United States vs. Nixon. [New York Times]

* California Attorney general is pushing the Supreme Court to decide the legality of Prop. 8. The Court could begin to act as soon as Wednesday, when they have their weekly conference. [San Jose Mercury News]

* Say it ain’t so! Washington regulators have finally opened up the doors on Belgian-based beer company InBev’s acquisition of Anheuser Busch, which monopolizes
50% of the US beer market. The merger will make InBev the largest beer company in the world. [Courthouse News Service]

* Sorry Ohio…President-elect Obama is probably going to wait a while before overhauling NAFTA. [Bloomberg.com]

Thelen attorneys in NYC and Hartford have a new landing spot. Robinson & Cole picked up 30 displaced Thelen attorneys. According to the Connecticut Law Tribune:

The move adds heft to Robinson & Cole’s construction, real estate, employment and finance practice groups, among others.

“It’s a smart move and good pick-up,” said Connecticut-based law firm consultant Peter Giuliani, but not one that challenges Day Pitney’s status as the leading law firm in the state.

Of course, the Robinson & Cole press release shows no signs of Pitney envy:

The addition of these accomplished attorneys to Robinson & Cole speaks to our strength as a regional firm and will add considerable value to expansion of our New York City office, expansion of our intellectual property practice, and the addition of a prominent construction practice, all goals of the firm’s strategic plan,” said Robinson & Cole’s managing partner, Eric D. Daniels.

Meanwhile, back at the artist formerly known as Thelen, the situation continues to be fluid and confusing:

“At this point it is every group for themselves and not a coordinated top-down plan,” said San Francisco-based Thelen spokesman Kevin Livingston. “Thelen really doesn’t exist anymore. I barely know what is going on in San Francisco.”

Heller Drone comes to the rescue of a disorganized Thelen response, after the jump.

* The Pittsburgh Steelers owners supported Barack Obama. Now they’re trying to sell before the tax rates rise. Steelers pwns Bills. [TaxProf Blog]

* Finally, somebody is offering Nervous T-10 1L a job. [Legal Antics]

* A few tips for older people being pushed around by their law firms. [Law and More]

* I don’t see Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel’s name on the NY BOLE website either. That makes me sad. [Gawker]

* Yes. To your friend Lat, you listen. [BBPL via Lexis Hub]

* Justice Antonin Scalia in, The Deer Hunter. [Tex Parte Blog]

* Twitter was invented by manatees who live in a tank full of idea balls. Trust me, I’ve met them. [Res Ipsa Blog via Blawg Review]

One of the stranger events during our time in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey was when U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie called an all-hands meeting to announce he was NOT resigning to run for governor. It was a bit odd to announce a non-event, but considering all the water-cooler gossip over the possibility, it made sense to squelch the speculation.

Today Chris Christie convened another all-hands meeting, this time with a different message. From the Newark Star-Ledger:

U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie today resigned his post effective December 1. Christie, 46, a leading contender for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, announced his resignation during a staff meeting at 11 a.m. Christie was not available for comment. His office released a copy of his resignation letter [PDF].

A tipster who attended the meeting said that Christie didn’t mention where he’ll be going. One good guess: Republican holiday parties.

Christie served as U.S. Attorney for almost seven years. In the near term, he will probably be replaced by first assistant Ralph Marra, Jr. (as Acting U.S. Attorney). In terms of who might get the nod in the Obama Administration, some mention the politically well-connected Joe Hayden (husband of Judge Katherine Hayden). Others talk about Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow, who previously served as an AUSA in Newark, and who would bring diversity to the table (as an African-American woman).

Today seems to be resignation day for New York area U.S. attorneys. Here’s some S.D.N.Y. news, from the WSJ Law Blog:

[P]eople close to the Southern District of New York U.S. attorney’s office tell the Law Blog that USA Michael Garcia will notify prosecutors of his departure during a 5 p.m. meeting.

That’s in five minutes. If anything unexpected comes out of the meeting, we’ll let you know. Unlike Christie’s, Garcia’s next destination is known: Kirkland & Ellis.

U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie steps down [Newark Star-Ledger]
Christopher J. Christie resignation letter (PDF) [Newark Star-Ledger]
Chris Christie coverage [Politicker - NJ.com]
N.Y. federal prosecutor stepping down [AP]
NJ USA Christie Resigns, SDNY’s Garcia to Announce Resignation Today [WSJ Law Blog]

Earlier: Legal Stars of the New Administration

[Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting — sponsor of the Asia Chronicles, and an ATL advertiser. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past two years. You can reach them by email: asia at kinneyrecruiting dot com.]

This is Evan from Hong Kong, writing on the fly for about 20 minutes, at 2am, after a long day of meetings, late client dinner and before an early flight to Jakarta. We have recently been asked, by both firms and candidates, whether the downturn is changing the landscape of cola / housing / expat allowances (“expat allowance”) in Asia and the Middle East. I have been hit with this question several times this week in meetings and Robert heard it as well two weeks ago in his meetings as well. So this post will deal with the basic expat allowance rates for associates without children. A follow-up post on Wednesday will deal with school tuition subsidies / reimbursement, expat allowance increases for children, and tax related windfalls (in some markets), as well as some commentary as to whether the current high expat allowances are sustainable for the long-term in Hong Kong and Tokyo, as firms expand in Asia and considering the reality that profit margins can be lower in Asia per billable hour than in US markets.

Please feel free to follow up in comments with any detailed questions on this subject, as we can only go so far in 1000 words here. Many top US and British firms in Asia and the Middle East have routinely asked us to advise them on various details of their expat allowance policy and we have also helped a number of firms draft come up with set expat allowance packages for the first time (rather than continue on case-by-case basis for each new hire). We have the expat allowance numbers for all firms in Asia (but are not going to give out such specific firm information in a public forum).

Hong Kong: The US associate expat allowance for Hong Kong have remained steady, with most top US firms paying in $60,000 to $80,000 range, for associates without children (only three firms are at $80,000 and most are in the 60s). A firm not paying at minimum a $60,000 allowance is simply not paying a competitive rate in the market. However, there are a handful relatively big name US firms that do not provide any expat allowance, or provide very low allowances, in Hong Kong. Such firms are still able to compete for solid candidates in today’s market because the market is flooded with solid candidates, although we find that most of the firms that pay little or no expat allowance are small and not hiring at this time. The majority of the magic circle firms, as well as a handful of other top British firms, pay expat allowances for their US associates in the competitive $60,000 to $80,000 range, with a couple of notable exceptions.

Other cities after the jump.

Here’s a little shopping rule that I live by. If Jack Thompson starts screaming about a video game destroying the moral fabric of America, I immediately go out and purchase that video game. Back in September, Thompson was disbarred for annoying and harassing the video game industry over “pornographic” titles. It was a great victory for those who enjoy shooting (virtual) Manhattan residents from stolen police helicopters.

But Jack Thompson, who blames the Grand Theft Auto series for teaching children how to kill cops, wants to avail himself of a “reset” button. He sent around the following — I don’t even know what you would call this — angry missive to members of the Florida bar:

I have just been permanently disbarred by The Florida Bar after being a lawyer in continuous good standing for 31 years. No client complained. My sin was accepting Ed Bradley’s personal request to go on CBS’ 60 Minutes to expose the reckless and harmful marketing of adult-rated, violent, and pornographic Grand Theft Auto video games to kids. One of these teens killed three Alabama cops after training to kill them on this “cop-killing” murder simulation game.

Just to be clear, Thompson was not disbarred for going on 60 Minutes with a stick shoved so far up his ass he could choke on it. Instead, Thompson was deemed too contentious to even be a lawyer. The referee’s recommendation for his disbarment said:

Over a very extended period of time involving a number of totally unrelated cases and individuals, [r]espondent has demonstrated a pattern of conduct to strike out harshly, extensively, repeatedly and willfully to simply try to bring as much difficulty, distraction and anguish to those he considers in opposition to his causes.

He does not proceed within the guidelines of appropriate professional behavior, but rather uses other means available to intimidate, harass, or bring public disrepute to those whom he perceives oppose him.

Just because Thompson learned his legal strategies from GTA doesn’t mean that American children are so addled as to think that they can pull off video carjacking skills in real life.

Thompson’s due process argument and his full email after the jump.

The 10th Circuit had an ugly case on its hands last week. While all psychotherapy seems mildly sadistic, this case is especially bad.

Per Wikipedia, psychotherapy is supposed to “increase an individual’s sense of well-being and reduce subjective discomforting experience.” A Kansas couple running a home for the mentally ill had a slightly different approach. It involved a stun gun and mutual shaving of private parts.

From Suits and Sentences:

[T]he Kaufmans forced residents to “perform sexually explicit acts and farm labor in the nude while maintaining that these acts constituted legitimate psychotherapy for the residents’ mental illnesses. Moreover, the Kaufmans billed Medicare and the residents’ families for the therapy.”

Investigators seized videotapes showing the schizophrenic residents masturbating and posing nude at Kaufman’s direction. “Eventually,” the 10th Circuit noted,”the Kaufman House developed rules that required some of the residents to be nude when engaging in certain activities—for example participating in group therapy sessions, eating dinner, and watching television.”

It’s like a twisted version of Green Acres. Psychotherapists Arlan and Linda Kaufman were convicted in November 2006 for “forced labor and holding clients in involuntary servitude.”

They appealed because the judge in the trial ordered them to avoid eye contact with the former clients who testified against them. The Kaufmans claimed this violated their constitutional right to confront their accusers.

The 10th Circuit “acknowledged the Kaufmans had ‘considerable support’ for their argument, but ultimately concluded their substantial rights were not violated.” They’ll be heading to prison for 30 years. On the upside, maybe they’ll discover some new psychotherapy techniques to add to their repertoire.

Don’t look now: Judge orders accused to avert gaze [Suits and Sentences/McClatchy]
Abuse convictions upheld;resentencing ordered [Examiner]

We’ve received about 1,000 responses so far to last Monday’s ATL / Lateral Link survey on bonuses, which is still open here.

On Wednesday, we told you about when bonuses were paid for 2007, and when (and whether) associates expect to receive bonuses in 2008.

Today, we’ll focus on another key component of the bonus equation: your hours.

In the past, we’ve asked you whether work was slowing down, but those surveys didn’t ask you what your billable hours would actually be at the end of the year.

Last week, we decided it was time to ask … and we’re, um, sorry.

Results: How many hours did you (or will you) bill in 2007 (and 2008)?

As you can see, 2007 was a pretty good year for killing time. Roughly 70% of respondents billed at least 2000 hours last year (not counting associates with stub years), with over a third billing at least 2200. And over 11% — almost one in eight associates — were in the 2400+ zone.

This year, the mighty have fallen, and so have their hours. While roughly 56% of associates still expect to hit at least 2000 hours in 2008, the number reaching 2200 is expected to fall from 35% to about 21%.

Meanwhile, the number of associates who won’t even make 1800 hours has roughly doubled, rising from 9.86% to 19.54%. Almost one in twelve associates don’t even expect to make 1600 hours, way up from 3.29% a year ago. (Remember, these numbers exclude stub years.)

See nervous breakdowns by class, by year, and by market, after the jump.

Given all of the terrible layoff news, Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft has been getting some love from our readers and commenters. Cadwalder’s 96 lawyer bloodbath this summer now looks like what many firms will have to do eventually.

Not so fast my friends.

In September, partner Andrew J. Perel defected to Steptoe & Johnson. At the time, we noted:

[T]here is just no way of knowing right now if the defection of Andrew Perel is an outlier or a precursor. Yet [chairman Chris] White talks about his departed partners in language usually reserved for junior associates.

Well, The Lawyer reports that the Cadwalader partner floodgates could be just about to open:

The partners of Wall Street’s fifth most profitable firm have revolted against their managing partner ­following a disastrous year that has seen their core ­markets collapse.

First on the chopping block could be former Cadwalader chairman Bob Link:

Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft managing partner and former chairman Bob Link will be removed from the management committee in an extraordinary meeting this Wednesday (19 November). He will remain as a partner at the firm.

A Cadwalader partner said: “Bob has to be the fall guy. His strategy failed and he has to go.”

A Cadwalader statement and additional speculation after the jump.

Maybe the disastrous Jason Kidd trade made Mark Cuban think that he needed better information before he pulled the trigger on a big deal.

Cuban was sued by the SEC today for insider trading. Embarrassingly, Cuban allegedly tried to game the market on a crappy stock that nobody’s ever heard of: Mamma.com. The company is now called Copernic, and its stock stinks.

The complaint alleges that Cuban violated an agreement to keep certain information confidential:

Despite agreeing in June 2004 to keep material, non-public information about an impending stock offering by Mamma.com Inc. confidential, Cuban sold his entire stake in the company - 600,000 shares - prior to the public announcement of the offering. By selling when he did, Cuban avoided losses in excess of $750,000.

CNBC is enjoying reminding people that Cuban made his fortune selling his company Broadcast.com to Yahoo just before the dot com bubble burst. But let’s also remember that lots of people have become rich by getting the hell away from Yahoo.

Still, even if true, things are better for Cuban than they could be. At least he’s not being charged criminally (yet).

Statement from Cuban’s attorney, after the jump.

Amidst all the depressing talk of layoffs and cold offers, here’s a little mergers and aquisitions news to brighten your Monday: Even in a bad economy, the wedding machine grinds on. In fact, we’ve noticed a slight uptick in the number of registries at Neiman Marcus. So how bad can things be, really?

Here are this week’s lucky featured couples:

1. Jordan Brudner and Daniel Gaspar

2. Randy Shapiro and Daniel Ripp

3. Rachel Turow and Benjamin Schiffrin

More about these newlyweds, after the jump.

Today, 50,000 Citigroup employees learned that their services would no longer be needed. I spent the weekend at the gun range working on the skills that will matter in the “new economy,” but law firms partners spent the time jockeying for business. Apparently, not everybody has accepted the post-apocalyptic reality staring us all in the face.

But let’s play their game; let’s assume that there will be “money” in the future that can still be traded for goods and services. Which law firms are positioned to pitch in with new Citigroup work?

Because it’s not going to be Wachtell. AmLaw Daily reminds us that Wachtell is representing Wells Fargo in litigation against Citi. And Sullivan & Cromwell is representing the Wachovia side of that Citi-Wachovia-Wells ménage à screwed.

Given today’s news, it’s not surprising that Citi’s board spent most of the weekend trying to pick a top law firm to cover their backside:

Citi’s board is apparently fighting over which Am Law 100 firm free of conflicts it should retain as counsel.

Quoting an anonymous “person close to the situation,” the Times reports that “Citigroup’s board has been bickering over seemingly small issues, including which white-shoe law firm will represent it. …”

The contenders, after the jump.

* SCOTUS will decide if it was constitutional to regulate a movie that negatively portrayed Hillary Clinton by classifying it as a campaign ad. [The LA Times]

* The son of the King of Bahrain is suing Michael Jackson for breach of contract. [The Telegraph]

* Hundreds of race crimes, from physical attacks to minor acts of vandalism, have occurred across the country since the election. [abcnews.com]

* Former president of Taiwan Chen Shui-bian, who is in prison for corruption, began a hunger strike last Wednesday, only hours after his arrest, and has now been rushed to the hospital. [BBC news]

* SCOTUS will hear a case concerning a West Virginia state judge’s decision to preside over a case involving his biggest campaign supporter. The case comes amid ethical questions over the financial backing of judge’s campaigns. [Associated Press]

* Bankers finally catch a break! Britain’s financial regulator may find it impossible to curb bankers big bonuses in January because of employment contracts. [Bloomberg.com]

* Okay, restaurant workers are suing their employers. Do you hear that Biglaw associates? I want everybody to stand up, go to the window, and scream … (Oh who am I kidding? If we try to blackmail them, they’ll just push us out a higher window.) [Midtown Lunch]

* Could Randy Moss become a SCOTUS justice? It depends on which one you are talking about. [Holy Hullabaloos]

* UT-Law is going to give a shout out to appellate lawyers. Perhaps Lawrence Sager will be there with a collection plate?[Tex Parte Blog]

* The irreplaceable Judge Judith Kaye will be missed. We hope she enjoys her well earned retirement. [New York Personal Injury Law Blog]

* If Tupac were still alive, he’d know how to handle Kanye West. [Popsquire]

Here’s some (more terrible) news that we don’t want to get passed over just because it’s late on a Friday.

We are hearing reports that a number of associates will be laid off from Greenberg Traurig today. As we understand it, the layoffs are focused in the New York office and are being conducted right now. They hope to be finished before the close of business today.

The firm declined to respond to an immediate request for comment, but our tipsters report that the Real Estate practice group is going to be hit the hardest. The numbers are too varied from our sources to be able to confirm how many associates are being let go today.

In terms of severance, tipsters have confirmed that the laid off associates will receive a two month package.

The new firm motto of Greenberg is: “We’re Built for Change.” We hope the same can be said of their former real estate associates.

Oh the irony, after the jump.

Thacher Proffitt and Wood has declined to comment on the latest reports coming out of their New York office, but we now have multiple tipsters that are reporting on layoffs in TPW’s structured finance practice group.

Today’s cuts appear to be directed at staff. Paralegals were informed throughout the day of management’s decisions.

Another tipster reported that attorney layoffs are expected to follow soon. They were expected by the end of the day, but as of this writing that does not appear to have happened.

These rumors bring together two forces most ATL readers are already aware of: the complete lack of structured finance work, and the difficult state of affairs over at TPW.

The knives have been out for TPW for months. Over the summer, they had to tamp down dissolution rumors. Then a potential merger with King & Spalding fell through. At the end of October, TPW abandoned its outpost in White Plains, NY.

Update (12/11/2008): Actually, as of this date, TPW and KS are still in talks (but not for a complete merger; KS may pick up roughly half of TPW’s lawyers).

More after the jump.

Here’s our best attempt to tie up a few loose ends on the strange saga of Columbia’s Career Services’ Dean, Ellen Wayne.

Many CLS students were, frankly, pissed to hear of Dean Wayne’s departure via ATL. This
was sent to the entire law student body earlier this week:

Dear Students,

As you may know, speculation has circulated the law school and the Internet regarding changes at Career Services. Your student representatives are aware of the situation and have been meeting with administrators throughout the day. In these meetings, we have stressed the importance of providing students with as timely and accurate information as events allow.

We anticipate more information will be provided as soon as practicable. In the meantime, we ask for your patience. Career Services is in full operation; 1L resume reviews will continue and the LL.M. job fair will take place early next year. It is unfortunate that many of us learned of this situation from sources other than the law school administration. Please know that we are aware of the situation, have been strenuously advocating on your behalf, and will strive to provide additional information as appropriate.

Sincerely yours,

The Student Senate

Apparently, “as soon as practicable” turned out to be Friday. But we’re not sure the following message contained the details that most CLS students were looking for:

From: Ed Moroni.

Dean of Career Services Ellen Wayne has resigned from her position after 14 years of dedicated service to the Columbia Law School. During this time the Office of Career Services delivered very high rates of job placement for our students - often 100 percent - in addition to advisement and placement services in support of our alumni. Over her long tenure, Dean
Wayne assisted and counseled literally thousands of students and graduates of the Law School. Among her many accomplishments, she also initiated a full-service program and multi-law-school job fair for LL.M. students, and enhanced and professionalized the EIP recruitment event for J.D. candidates.

We thank her for her service and wish her well in all of her future endeavors.

To ensure a smooth transition while we search for a permanent replacement, former director of career services Natasha Patel has agreed to serve as Acting Dean of Career Services. Natasha will return to Columbia on December 8, 2008. The Career Services Office remains in full operation. Students and others should contact the appropriate person as listed in the
following directory, http://www.law.columbia.edu/careers/career_services/staff, who will
continue to provide services and programming for our students.

— Ed

Edward Moroni

Associate Dean for Administration and Finance

Columbia Law School

So, we still don’t officially know whether Dean Wayne left voluntarily or was asked to leave, or any of the reasons for her departure.

A tipster puts an interesting spin on the situation after the jump.

In case you haven’t been following along, it appears that the NY Board of Law Examiners website is unavailable or unstable. It’s preventing exam takers from accessing their scores.

But how many? Please answer the poll below so we can see how many people are waiting for an oxygen mask to drop down from the ceiling.

Try to remain patient people, I’m sure that NY BOLE had no idea so many people would be visiting their website today.

Have you served your country with honor and dignity as a government lawyer? Maybe it is time to partake in the joys that only cash money can provide? This week’s Job of the Week is perfect for someone looking to make a move out of government before the administration change. As always, the Job of the Week is brought to you by Lateral Link and this position qualifies for Lateral Link’s $10,000 guaranteed signing bonus. Although the market is slow, Lateral Link continues to get its members offers, including Biglaw positions in New York, Austin, and San Francisco, all in the past week.

Position: White Collar Litigation Associate

Location: Washington, DC

Description: The Washington, D.C. office of an international law firm is seeking a white collar litigation associate. The ideal candidate will have at least 2-3 years of white collar litigation experience and excellent academic credentials. Previous employment at the DOJ is a plus. Some criminal investigations experience is a must. Candidate must be self-motivated, highly qualified and possess the ability to work well in groups.

For more information about this position or to apply, please see Position 10097 on Lateral Link. Current members can also contact their personal search consultant directly to discuss this position. Membership in Lateral Link is free and you can apply at www.laterallink.com.

The legal community is still buzzing with reaction to the news of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe’s layoffs of 40 attorneys — while White & Case sacrifices blood and treasure to the altar of “good timing.”

We don’t want to pile onto Orrick, we know a lot of good people that work there. But Ralph Baxter’s interview with the AmLaw Daily today is … a little weird.

Yesterday, we noted that Orrick’s layoffs come a month after they acquired a bunch of Heller Ehrman partners. Baxter addressed that issue specifically with AmLaw … depending on your definition of “addressed”:

What do you say to people who will look at your decision to hire 27 former Heller attorneys in early October, a month before this decision?

You take these two facts together (the Heller hirings and the layoffs), and you get a focused picture of Orrick. We’re bullish about the future, bullish about the role of lawyers in global finance, and we are boldly taking action to diversify Orrick’s practice. All of the Heller lawyers who joined us were in practice areas that are litigation-oriented. Compared with the layoffs, it’s apples and oranges. They are mostly partners, and they bring business with them.

Allow me to translate:

You see, there are these things called Apples. And man, let me tell you, Apples are the future. But unfortunately, there are these other things called Oranges, and Oranges are so obsolete, so yesterday. Really, IN THE FUTURE, the only thing Oranges will be good for is Juice. So we said, screw it man, let’s make some Juice. Let’s make some now! Because the future is now. Apples and Pulp bro’. Don’t sleep.

Other highlights from Baxter’s interview after the jump.

Last month, Moore Van Allen laid off 20 staffers. This month, the bell tolls for attorneys.

Associates and partners have confirmed that 20 attorneys we laid off from MvA on Wednesday.

Is there going to be a Charlotte “legal market” still standing in 2009?

We reported last month that Dewey LeBoeuf closed their entire Charlotte office, displacing 11 attorneys.

All of these hits to the Charlotte market make sense, since we no longer have a banking industry or, you know, money. But still, right now Charlotte looks like Sherman just came into town.

… Maybe there will be some Reconstruction work that Charlotte based attorneys can pick up?

Update (12:00): This should probably go without saying, but we now also have reports that MvA has canceled its 2009 summer program.

Earlier: Nationwide Layoff Watch: Is Katten Cutting Fat?
Dewey & LeBoeuf Closes Charlotte Office

One of these days, I’m going to be able to lead off with some good news for attorneys or support staff. But it is not this day.

Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge has confirmed layoffs of a number of support staffers:

We have been engaged in a long-term review of our cost structure and due to improvements and efficiencies with our technology and processes, we determined that lower staffing levels are appropriate.

Meeting and exceeding our clients’ needs remains our top priority. We, like other law firms and businesses, continually strive to best position the firm. We felt it necessary to take proactive measures to align our talent with our client needs

We understand that 50 staffers were laid off: 25 from the Boston office, and 25 across all other EAPD offices. The firm said that no associates were laid off as part of this long-term review.

The firm could not provide us with information about the severance package offered to staff.

Some EAPD back story after the jump.

* Felons can join the Army but not the New York police force. But New York State Supreme Court Judge Henry Kron wants to change that rule for Afghanistan war veteran, Osvaldo Hernandez, who served a year on Rikers Island for gun possession before joining the Army. [New York Times]

* Former O’Melveny & Myers partner Ron Klain (a.k.a. Kevin Spacey in Recount) is Joe Biden’s pick for chief of staff. [Politico]

* Woman suing Kansas City Chief running back Larry Johnson (not Grandmama). After she rejected his advances, he allegedly spit his drink in her face, threatened her life, and ordered his bodyguards to administer a beatdown. [Courthouse News Service]

* Mormons, Prop 8, and an unidentified white, powdery substance. [Los Angeles Times]

* New North Carolina senator is not a sore winner. Senator-elect Kay Hagan drops her suit against Senator-not-for-long Elizabeth Dole. Hagan had sued for defamation after Dole ran a TV ad accusing her of being “godless.” [CNN]

* Skadden sues Thelen. [American Lawyer]

New York first-year associates have been driving us insane with their anticipation of bar exam results being posted this week.

The moment has finally come. Results are up as of 9 a.m. today. Unfortunately, the overeager result seekers seem to have overwhelmed the page. It is down as of 9:14 a.m.

We hope all the gunners who have been clogging our inbox achieve the ultimate bliss of passage today.

Voyeurs have to wait until Monday for the results to go public.

Earlier: Prior ATL Coverage of Bar Exams

The Recorder is reporting that Howrey will take on 40 lawyers from Thelen’s prestigious San Francisco construction practice:

The group — which Howrey characterized as “most of the construction practice” from Thelen — includes Thelen Chairman Stephen O’Neal, construction practice head John Heisse II, D.C. office managing partner Andrew Ness, San Francisco partner David Buoncristiani (who handles matters for client Bechtel), Los Angeles partner Robert Thum and D.C. partner David Dekker. Most of the 18 partners and about 25 associates and of counsel are in San Francisco and D.C., and the rest are in New York and Los Angeles.

Hmm… Thelen attorneys, Chairman Stephen O’Neal, Howrey — where have I heard that before?

Oh yeah! You’ll remember that the Recorder initially broke the story on O’Neal’s flirtations with Howrey.

Immediately after Thelen dissolved, we mentioned possible options for the firm:

Option 1 is the plan they have arguably been pursuing: breaking up the firm practice group by practice group to interested parties. As we reported yesterday, this is the best option to save associate jobs. However, that plan is dependent on Thelen’s banks signing-off on the plan and maintaining their line of credit. Did Stephen O’Neal’s aggressive and ultimately public pursuit of his own lifeboat at Howrey scuttle that option? Once everybody is told that the managing partner could be leaving in ten days, why would other potential suitors compete for full Thelen practice groups? Instead, it’s easier to wait for an official dissolution and cherry-pick the rainmakers. This is what happened to Heller.

I’ll pause until the Thelen people stop screaming and hitting things.

Read about other Thelen landing places, after the jump.