We have been following the sad tale of a University of Michigan 2L and a U-M professor who got caught up in a prostitution scandal. Yesterday, the Michigan 2L responded to some of the comments that have been made about her.
Today, the professor involved asked ATL for equal time and an opportunity to tell his side of the story. In a letter entitled: “Have you considered whether she may be simply lying?” and sent to the entire law school, the professor says:
I wish to raise with you the claim that, for whatever reasons, your student is simply lying. Allegations must be substantiated with facts; here are the facts as they emerge from the police report (which, as I am sure many of you know, anyone is entitled to get from the police).
We reprint the letter in full after the jump.
And just to be clear, this will conclude our coverage of these events. Both parties have had an opportunity to say their piece, and we’d like to leave it at that.
We’ve previously reported on law firms having difficulty getting clients to pay their bills. It’s not just happening to firms working on deals that go bust; it has also happened to a firm representing a celeb after his marriage went bust. From Am Law Daily:
Blank Rome is suing rapper/actor/activist Mos Def for over $60,000 in unpaid legal bills stemming from his 2006 divorce from Maria Yepes.
The couple ended their 10-year marriage that year in a Brooklyn court, with Judge Sarah Krauss pleading with them to settle their differences outside her courtroom.
Reports say that the Brooklyn-born Mos Def (real name: Dante Smith) owes the money to Blank Rome in the form of unpaid fees and retainers. The Emmy, Golden Globe, and Grammy award-nominated entertainer retained lawyers from the firm’s well-regarded matrimonial practice, which advises high-end clients on divorce, mediation, property distribution, paternity, visitation rights, and trusts and estates.
This is Mos Def’s second month in a row of legal troubles. In November, Las Vegas police issued an arrest warrant after Mos got in a scuffle with a photographer. In more bad news, his portrayal of Chuck Berry in the recently released music biopic extravaganza Cadillac Records was panned by the Los Angeles Times.
We wonder if this will make him rethink the title of his upcoming album, rumored to be titled Ecstatic.
Let’s say you meet a woman. You like her, she likes you, and eventually you move in together. She helps around the house and, you know, “helps” with other things too. Let’s say that over the course of a year, you “spend” $10,500 on that woman.
How would you explain where that money went, to say an account or on your tax forms?
Well, if you are Mr. Howard Shih of California, you call the $10,500 “wages” and try to get a tax deduction.
That is the situation that the U.S. Tax Court recently wrestled with. Except the proceeding was not directed at Mr. Shih for claiming a deduction, instead the case was about whether the woman (Ms. Jue-Ya Yang) should have reported the $10,500 as “income.”
(Dear God: That whole “The Law” idea you had is brilliant. What a great premise for your “Earth” sitcom. Don’t change a thing! It’s comedy gold.)
After the jump, TaxProf Blog walks us through the difference between wages, gifts, and illicit prostitution.
Following up on its inspirational holiday card, yesterday Cadwalader announced the NYC-standard crappyCravathy bonuses. The transmittal memo, which included the familiar numerical table, was short and sweet:
We are pleased to announce that the Firm will award year-end bonuses to associates and counsel as follows. Bonuses will be based on previously communicated criteria and are expected to be paid in January 2009. Associates who joined the Firm subsequent to January 1, 2008 and prior to October 1, 2008 will receive a pro-rated portion of the bonus.
The reference to “previously communicated criteria,” we’re told, is a reference to CWT’s hours requirement.
* A couple is suing United Airlines for “overserving” the husband by serving him red wine every 20 minutes on the flight. They say this is what caused him to beat his wife on the way to customs. [Chicago Tribune]
* “Federal judges in some parts of the United States are delaying the swearing-in of new citizens, apparently so that courts can keep millions of dollars in naturalization fees paid by immigrants, according to a new government report.” [The Washington Post]
* A Rhode Island family sued their cable provider for hooking up the Playboy channel, which plays hardcore porn. [Courthouse News Service]
* Investors in Madoff’s ponzi scheme might be able to get back some of their money by filing for a U.S. tax refund. As if the U.S. government isn’t paying out enough money these days…[Bloomberg.com]
* The high court in Europe says a UK couple should be bound by the ruling of judge in southern Cyprus that they demolish their vacation home. The house is built on land that belongs to a Greek Cypriot who claims it was taken from him during the Turkish invasion in 1974. [BBC News]
To balance out word of the robust O’Melveny bonuses, here’s some bad news out of California. Earlier this week, Gunderson Dettmer (boy I miss “ad”venture capital) laid off a number of junior associates. As veterans of the heady dot-com days may recall, Gunderson put itself on the map back in 1999 by leading the charge to $125,000 starting salaries.
Gunderson did not respond to multiple requests for comment, made yesterday and today, so we don’t have an official number of new people looking for work. But two sources claim that the firm laid off half of its first-year class (five out of ten associates) on Monday, plus an additional but unknown number of more senior attorneys. These layoffs are, according to a tipster, “on top of performance-related attrition / dismissals throughout the fall.”
Some of those laid off this week were stub first-years, i.e., class of 2008 from law school. As Chris Rock might say, “here today, gone today.”
This should not come as a great surprise, but let’s go ahead and close the loop. From the WSJ Law Blog:
Nearly two weeks ago, mere hours after Marc Dreier was arrested up in Canada for allegedly impersonating an in-house lawyer at a pension fund, lawyers at the eponymous law firm were heralding its doom. “It’s over,” said one litigation partner at the time.
On Tuesday, the predictions came true; Dreier LLP filed for Chapter 11 protection in bankruptcy court in Manhattan. In its petition, filed by Stephen Shimshak and Brian Hermann at Paul Weiss — where the receiver in the case, Mark Pomerantz, also hangs his hat — Dreier claims to have liabilities tallying between $10 million and $50 million.
The best reading in the petition is the list of creditors. Seems Mr. Dreier hadn’t been keeping up with the firm’s bills. Among those allegedly owed: the landlord of 499 Park Ave. ($908k); West Publishing ($441k); American Express ($323k); PR firm Van Prooyen Greenfield ($274k); ABM Janitorial Services ($89k); and AT&T ($81k).
* What’s the reason for U.S. AG Michael Mukasey recusing himself from the Bernard Madoff investigation? It may be his synagogue. [Cityfile]
* K&L Gates grand poobah Peter Kalis gripes about U.S. News & World Reports, gets all mushy about Pitt Law, and praises affirmative action. For minorities and kids from West Virginia. [TaxProf Blog]
* Ohio lawyer David Mills has started a daily legal cartoon blog. We ATL folk are painfully aware of how hard it can be to make the law funny. [Courtoons]
* ATL’s own Elie Mystal in a free-ranging interview on race, the law, blogging, and comments. [On Being a Black Lawyer]
* Two-thirds of law firms expect lower 2009 revenues. Sigh. But 8.2% expect higher revenues. Those must be the boutique bankruptcy firms. [National Law Journal]
Seriously, though, it’s a good sign for the firm, even if it may not be a lucrative engagement — the Treasury press release reports that “total cost for the firm’s services is not expected to exceed approximately $500,000.” It raises the possibility that rumors of the firm’s demise are greatly — well, maybe not greatly, but somewhat — exaggerated.
It’s getting ugly out there. For the first time since 2005, associate bonuses at Wachtell Lipton have dipped below 100 percent of base salary.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the subject, here’s how bonuses at WLRK work. First, they’re lockstep, not tied to any billable-hours requirement or performance review. Everyone in the same class receives the same bonus.
Second, Wachtell bonuses are calculated as a percentage of base salary. Sometimes the percentage is the same from class to class; sometimes it’s not. In 2006, for example, there were divergences from year to year. When there are divergences, they generally favor seniority, with more-senior associates receiving bonus percentages that are higher than those given to juniors.
In 2006 and 2007, total bonus compensation at Wachtell (including midyear bonuses in 2006) clocked in at or above 100 percent of base salaries . This year, however, the bonus percentage sank below that threshold. We don’t have the exact number, but we’re hearing around 70 percent of base salary — “good” and “better than expected,” say two sources, but not as good as recent years.
(If this figure isn’t consistent with what you know, please email us. Please mention the class year that is the basis for your information, since sometimes the bonus percentage varies from class to class. Due to that variability, plus the lack of a firm-wide bonus memo, bonuses at Wachtell are less transparent than at other firms.)
Recall also that Wachtell base salaries are on a scale that is slightly above market. First-year associates at WLRK earn a base of $165,000 rather than the usual $160,000 (no Latham shenanigans here). A base salary of $165,000 and a 70 percent bonus would bring total compensation for a (non-stub-year) first-year to just over $280,000.
A Wachtell associate earning under $300,000 is a sad thing. But these are sad times.
Even the Wachtell holiday party was scaled back. More details, plus predictions about the firm’s future, after the jump.
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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We have been following the sad tale of a University of Michigan 2L and a U-M professor who got caught up in a prostitution scandal. Yesterday, the Michigan 2L responded to some of the comments that have been made about her.
