You know what would be awesome, if the legal system got its claws out of my online poker “supplementary income” program.

Perhaps the first steps towards the decriminalization of poker have already started. While many states outlaw “games of chance,” the ABA Journal is reporting that some poker players are arguing that anti-gaming laws should not apply to them because poker is a game of “skill.”

A Pennsylvania judge ruled Texas Hold ‘em is a game of skill and acquitted a man who held poker games in his garage, according to CardPlayer.com. And a Colorado jury acquitted the organizer of a poker league after a University of Denver statistics professor testified poker is a game of skill, according to a press release by the Poker Players Alliance.

How is this not a slam dunk argument? Only people who don’t know how to play poker think that it is a game of chance. Luck plays a role, sure, just like in everything else in life.

“Why do you think the same five guys make it to the final table of the World Series of Poker every year? What, are they the luckiest guys in Las Vegas? “

Is Poker a Game of Skill that is Legal? S.C. Judge Will Decide [ABA Journal]

Californians, as we understand it, really care about their cars — and their parking spots. So White & Case’s latest maneuver out in Palo Alto could mean war:

White & Case’s Silicon Valley office is in a Palo Alto office complex shared with several other firms. Historically, all the parking, including a large parking garage, has been shared among all firms.

Apparently, White & Case used the downturn in the commercial lease market to renegotiate its terms with the management company. Just after the new year, around a dozen primo parking spots in parking garage were rebranded to indicate that they were for “White & Case guests.” This did not sit well with the locals.

But if you think that White & Case backed down, you’ve got another thing coming. Details after the jump.

* Breaking Media — ATL’s parent company, which Lat now runs — is hiring new writers (about finance and accounting). [DealBreaker]

* Who is going to win the SuperBowl. I already know. See, I have a system. [Sports Judge Blog]

* Military service as a punishment? Yes. Yes. We are “de-volving.” Soon we shall once again open up the great arena deathly gladiatorial combat. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Scalia’s got nothing but funny money. [What About Clients?]

* More reactions to Evan Chesler’s billable hour howling. [Ideoblog]

* Oooh, does Mahatma Blagojevich now get to be disbarred? [Cuban Revolution]

* Whatever has to happen to make the Broadway Thriller not happen needs to happen. [Popsquire]

Yesterday ATL reported that in addition to the 30 staff cuts, Fish & Richardson was in the process of conducting stealth layoffs of lawyers as well.

Today, Fish took those layoffs out of the closet and announced the full scope of its attorney reductions:

Since November of last year, 49 members of our legal staff have left or are in the process of leaving the firm, including four dismissals that were made today, January 30, 2009. Many of these departures occurred as the result of year-end performance evaluations, but others were based on purely economic decisions.

At least the information is now out in the open. Most of the associates we talk to prefer open communication about the state of their firms, so it’s nice to see Fish & Richardson clearly state its reasons for the attorney departures we reported.

We’re happy to bring you the news first; we just wish it wasn’t so sad. Good luck to all the displaced Fish & Richardson associates and staff.

You can read the full firm statement after the jump.

[Ed. note: This is a cross-post from one of our sister sites, Dealbreaker, which we thought you might appreciate because of its focus on an ATL celebrity: the recently indicted, high-profile litigator, Marc Dreier.]

Muffie Benson-Perella (muffie AT muffmarkets.com) was an Associate in the Investment Banking Division of a “Bulge Bracket” bank. She holds a B.A. in French and Art from Vassar College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. She concentrated in Contemporary French Poetry at prep school where she was awarded the exclusive premiership of the school’s “French Club.” Today, Ms. Benson-Perella is the Founder and Managing Director of “Muffie on Markets” (http://www.muffmarkets.com), a deep dive into capital markets, finance and investment strategy. She is also the Founder and Managing Director of Muff Cap, LLC., an invitation only, private investment vehicle for non-existent, prestigious and accredited investors only, employing an actively managed, long-short strategy.

There are few things as shameful as the deteriorating state of art and culture in this country. It will come as no surprise to my loyal readers, then, that the subtle, magnificent craft of portraiture appears utterly lost in a thick fog of mediocrity and a pretentious depthlessness. Of course, I can only refer to the latest visual representation of Marc S. Drier (for I cannot bring myself to call it a “picture” or “drawing” much less “art.”)

It is the essence of such representations that their creation at least attempt to rise to the level of their subject. In this case, admittedly, that is a tall order. The almost uniformly elegantly dressed senior partner of Park Avenue law firm Dreier LLP, Dreier presents a rich, complex texture, shot through with conflicts, dark veins of opposing forces, their churning opposition pressing the envelopes of the psyche, yearning for nothing but escape, escape, escape. Contrast the subtle signs of whirlwinds below the impeccable exterior with the rarely seen, but palpable, open, unshorn rouge and we can forgive him his undergraduate transgressions at Yale, for he certainly redeemed himself at Harvard Law thereafter, and this institutional combination, fatal in any weaker, less featured personality, permits Dreier to wear scruff like a bright ascot, an opportunity he occasionally indulges to juxtapose polished Fifth Avenue class with the suggestion that “That whole Yale thing” might not be that far from the surface, even after all these years.

There is a brazen yet subtle boldness in Dreier, the kind of audacity that mounts his brilliant deceptions in full view of the world, in the fishbowl of a glass-walled conference room, taunting the prospect of discovery as office staff who might at any time recognize him, call him the wrong name, plunge him into drowning, downward spiraling agony, walk by and casually glance through ethereal walls of glass that offer scant protection. The pulsing rhythm of office traversal, and throbbing mechanics of discovery. And who can deny the social genius of targeting Canadian Teachers and U. S. Real Estate firms as the foils of a fraud designed to sap the savviest of hedge funds? The very fabric of his machinations: wry social commentary.

Read the rest of the post, and comment, over at DealBreaker.

Some of our friendly commenters frequently gripe about the high number of Rabbi-officiated weddings featured in this space. They’ll be delighted to know that only one of our three weddings this week is a straight-up Rabbi wedding. The others were jointly officiated by a Rabbi and a Mennonite minister and a Rabbi and a bankruptcy judge. Yay for diversity!

Here are this week’s lucky finalists:

1. Harper Fertig and James Robinson

2. Marion Ringel and Joshua Panas

3. Julie Hootkin and Benjamin Schneider

Read all about these couples, after the jump.

Last summer, we started an official Nationwide Start Date Watch as a few firms decided to trim costs by delaying the start dates for incoming associates. Why bring in new kids at $160,000 a pop when there’s no work to give them?

In 2008, Powell Goldstein, Thelen, Thacher, and Heller pushed their start dates back to January ‘09 (though it was not enough to save the latter three firms); Seyfarth Shaw, K&L Gates, Shearman, and DLA Piper pushed their start dates back from September to October; Pillsbury pushed back to October, with bonus incentives offered to those who were willing to start even later; and Sonnenschein and WolfBlock asked associates to start in November.

This summer, firms may not have to “delay” start dates. Based on reports from a few 3Ls, it looks like late fall may be the new norm for start dates.

Start dates are in late October for new associates at Clifford Chance and Milbank Tweed, and November for new associates at Morrison & Foerster. (Though with Wednesday’s layoff news, MoFo-bound law grads are just happy to have start dates.)

Later start dates are good news for those who want to take nice, long bar trips, and bad news for those who want to start building their bank accounts as soon as possible. We’re wondering how widespread this trend is. If you’re a 3L with an offer letter in hand, please take this poll about when you’ll be officially entering Biglawdom.

Earlier: Previous ATL coverage of Start Dates

In early December, we reported that K&L Gates was engaged in merger talks with Bell Boyd. Today, the firms made it official. An email just went out to K&L Gates associates from Peter Kalis:

Colleagues: We wrote you in December to announce that our firm and the Chicago-based law firm Bell, Boyd & Lloyd LLP were in discussions with a view to combining the two firms. We are now pleased to report that the two firms’ partnerships have voted overwhelmingly in favor of the combination. I have appended below the news release that is being distributed to media outlets throughout the world. Please feel free to forward the release outside the firm to clients and other friends of the firm with your own message instead of mine. Thanks. Pete

You can read the official press release after the jump.

Good news on a Friday? Yay!

How hard up is the Blackstone Group? According to Cityfile, they have been reduced to stealing news:

[The Financial Times] filed a lawsuit against Steve Schwarzman’s Blackstone Group on Wednesday for sharing an FT username and password instead of setting up separate accounts for its employees.

Look, I know that the financial industry is kind of tanking right now, but dear God it’s not like publishers are rolling in it.

I’m also pretty sure that the Financial Times would have given Blackstone a good group rate if they had just asked.

Apparently, this problem with Blackstone has been going on since long before the financial crisis:

Officials at the FT became a bit suspicious when they realized a very industrious Blackstone employee was accessing thousands of articles a day; a subsequent investigation turned up evidence Blackstone had been engaged in the fraud since as far back as 2002.

Have you ever stolen a newspaper that is sitting outside a neighbor’s apartment door? Every time you do that an angel kills a child in an orgy of blood. Don’t do that anymore.

Schwarzman: Too Cheap to Pay for a FT Subscription! [Cityfile]
Crab-Hands Going Down [Dealbreaker]

Nobody needs to worry about Quinn Emanuel dissolving. Check out Quinn’s profit numbers as reported by AmLaw and The Lawyer:

In tough times, it’s good to specialize in bet-the-company litigation. Revenue at 400-lawyer Quinn Emanuel Urquardt Oliver & Hedges was $441.9 million in 2008, up 15 percent from 2007’s $384.5 million.

Profits jumped 10 percent, from $237.5 million in 2007 to $260 million last year. Profits per partner—already near the top of the Am Law 100 in 2007—rose 11 percent to $3.3 million. Quinn Emanuel has 78 equity partners.

In December, we reported that Quinn Emanuel’s bonus structure was very good for high billers but not so good for people low on hours.

After the jump, tipsters weigh in about Quinn’s 11% PPP increase.

Jonathan Glater’s article in the New York Times this morning is just further evidence that the pyramid scheme of major law firms is starting to show its age. Yesterday, the New York Lawyer (subscription) took more direct aim at the weak foundation of the Biglaw business model:

Over the last couple decades, high leverage—the practice of having each equity partner supported by three or more associates or income partners—was accepted as a basic tenet of profitability. A firm billed out these junior lawyers at significantly more than it paid them, often getting billings that were triple the lawyer’s salary. It seemed like a sure-fire way to make money. But high turnover and rocketing salaries ate into profit margins. Now, the whole pyramid model is looking fragile.

And it shouldn’t come as a shock that the pressure weighing down on the business model is coming from partners desperate to hang on to every penny of profit. It is clients that ultimately control the purse strings.

More detail after the jump.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going in a counter-cyclical direction. Is your firm freezing salaries? If you make a move through Lateral Link you can make that up by earning a $10,000 guaranteed signing bonus. These positions are just two of the hundreds of job openings that Lateral Link has throughout the country. Current members can also contact their personal search consultant directly to discuss these positions. Membership in Lateral Link is free and you can apply at www.laterallink.com.

Position: Bankruptcy Associate

Location: New York

Description: The New York office of a top international firm is seeking a junior bankruptcy attorney with 1-3 years of bankruptcy experience. For more information about this position or to apply, please see Position 9651 on Lateral Link.

Position: Antitrust Associate

Location: Washington, D.C.

Description: This mid-sized international law firm is seeking an antitrust associate with 2-3 years of experience in antitrust, litigation, securities enforcement and white collar work to join the firm’s 10 person Washington DC office. Strong academics and law firm and/or government experience is required. For more information about this position or to apply, please see Position 10151 on Lateral Link.

I have a radical idea. Let’s move the start date of the 2009 on-campus interview programs from the middle of August 2009 all the way up to the end of August 2006. That way there will be jobs for everybody! Somebody get Daniel Faraday and “magic” Desmond on the phone.

Michigan Law School is the latest school to try to give their students a competitive edge along the fourth dimension:

The 2009 Early Interview Week will be from Tuesday, August 18 through Friday, August 21. We will have orientation for it and a program on callbacks on Monday, August 17. We regret that this early schedule may be an inconvenience for some students, but we believe the early start date may help maximize students’ success in this difficult economy. We will have numerous programs and communications in the next few months to prepare you for Early Interview Week.

Students seem to feel good about this decision. One tipster reports:

At least they were up-front about the reason.

With all these schools interviewing in the middle of August (prime vacation time for partners and senior associates), you have to wonder if firms will have enough interviewers to go around.

Earlier: University of Chicago Law School The Latest to Change Fall OCI
Fall Recruiting Fallout: Harvard/Yale Make Concessions to ‘Reality’

Back in July, when we covered the nuptials of celebrity professors / Obama advisers Cass Sunstein and Samantha Power, we wrote: “We look forward to seeing the heights to which they will ascend, together, in the administration of President Obama.”

Well, now we know. Both have snagged important positions in the White House. As previously reported, Sunstein, a former colleague of Obama’s from the University of Chicago Law School faculty, was tapped to serve as “regulatory czar” — a big deal in an administration that will be cranking out lots of regulations.

And last night we learned that Samantha Power will be joining hubby Cass at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. From the Associated Press:

Samantha Power, the Harvard University professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who earned notoriety for calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a ”monster” while working to elect Barack Obama president, will take a senior foreign policy job at the White House….

Officials familiar with the decision say Obama has tapped Power to be senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, a job that will require close contact and potential travel with Clinton, who is now secretary of state. NSC staffers often accompany the secretary of state on foreign trips.

See, Obama does have a sense of humor! Or, more likely, Obama always planned to give Power a plum position, despite “Monstergate.” Sure, it wasn’t her finest hour; but as a Harvard Law School grad, Power is entitled to a few undiplomatic moments. Speculates Gawker: “If someone really wants to hire you, he’ll make your future boss promise to be nice to you, in exchange for her job.”

Update: More good news for Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein. A tipster tells us: “They’re creating a super-child of the 21st century. She’s pregnant!”

A little more about the Power couple, after the jump.

* The New York Times is on to the “kill the billable hour” story. Cravath says it is increasingly charging clients flat fees rather than by the hour. Scott Turow manages to get quoted even though he only responded to the reporter by e-mail. [New York Times]

* Political veterans “marvel at the sheer number of lawyers Obama has appointed or nominated so far,” and warn him not to let the White House counsel’s office grow more influential than the Justice Department. [The Washington Post]

* The Southern District of New York is the Ivy League of U.S. Attorneys’ offices, sending its alumni on to prominent positions in politics, academia, and law. [New York Times]

* Like so many Americans, Ron Rod Blagojevich has lost his job. Northwestern Law grad, Lieutenant Gov. Patrick Quinn, steps in to take his place. [Chicago Tribune]

* Marc Dreier was indicted yesterday. In the words of his attorney, “the indictment is not a surprise.” [Bloomberg]

* At least the era of partisanship — that is nowhere near over— can still be kind of funny. [TaxProf Blog]

* Extra, extra, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has been ousted by the Illinois State Senate. In other breaking news, Aristotle now believes man to be a “political” animal. More news at 11. [MSNBC]

* I’ve still yet to receive a satisfactory answer as to why gambling is illegal in the first place. [Underdog]

* Williams & Connolly and the White House need to get a room. [Washingtonian]

* In all seriousness though, shouldn’t this year’s Vault rankings look substantially different than last year’s results? [Litination]

* Young fool. Your feeble tort-reform skills are no match for the power of plaintiff’s bar. [Law and More]

It’s a little bit late in the bonus season, but there are still firms trickling in with bonus news.

It’s not terribly surprising bonus news. Winston & Strawn has matched the Cravath scale:

I am pleased to announce on behalf of the Firm the amounts of year-end bonuses for eligible New York associates for fiscal 2009, as follows:

Class of 2008 (1st Year) $17,500 (pro-rated)
Class of 2007 (2nd Year) $17,500
Class of 2006 (3rd Year) $20,000
Class of 2005 (4th Year) $22,500
Class of 2004 (5th Year) $25,000
Class of 2003 (6th Year) $27,500
Class of 2002 (7th Year) $30,000
Class of 2001 (8th Year)
$32,500

There’s a 1900 hour billiable requirement.

Wonder if Obama will get pissed about that? Congratulations to Winston associates on your belated windfall.

Read the full Winston memo after the jump.

Rumors were swirling around Ropes & Gray all day today. Now, Ropes chairman Brad Malt is letting everybody in on the bad news:

[W]e have reluctantly decided to eliminate 106 staff positions across all departments in the firm, or 10% of non-lawyer staff. While I know this is painful news, I felt it was important to share with all personnel as soon as appropriate.

No associates were part of the layoffs.

Just two weeks ago, we noted that Ropes was looking pretty healthy as it expanded its New York presence. But Malt acknowledged the reality of the current market crisis:

In October I wrote to you about the strength of our firm in the face of changing economic circumstances. I also said that our strength does not render us immune to what is happening in the broader economy. Our clients and marketplace have been seriously affected by the continuing global economic downturn, and the recession is now widely seen as the most serious since the 1930s.

Good luck to former Ropes employees. Read Malt’s full message after the jump.

Greenberg Traurig is trying to tighten up their administrative ship. The kind of normal, everyday instances of over clocking that many administrative assistants engage in are being directly addressed by management. Secretaries and administrative assistants received the following memo earlier this week.

The per attorney cost for overtime in the Chicago office is higher than the firm average and significantly higher than some offices. You may think that working an extra 15 -30 minutes per week is not significant. It is. We have to reduce our number and we are instituting the following guidelines. The guidelines are simply stated and easy to achieve. If you have questions, we are happy to discuss them with you.

In normal times, the guidelines (printed in full after the jump) would seem a bit petty. Here’s one example:

Take your full lunch hour and clock out BEFORE you go to pick up or purchase your lunch.

Yes, everybody knows that people should do that, but normally it wouldn’t be such a huge deal that you have to issue an entire memo about it. At least you shouldn’t have to use the excessively formal “All-Caps” method of communication.

But in these times of significant economic stress, 15-30 minutes of pay a day could literally save jobs. Everybody really should be looking for ways they can become more cost efficient.

Read the full firm memo after the jump.

The legal community is still digesting the news Morrison & Foerster’s layoffs. While a lot of people are asking what the news means for the financial health of the firm, MoFo has taken the laudable step of reaching out to their incoming summer associates.

The firm sent their summers the statement about the layoffs that we posted on ATL last night. But then the firm tried to reassure summers about their job security:

I write to confirm that this reduction in attorney staffing will not affect your joining us as a summer associate this summer. We are a financially sound firm with a strong and diverse practice, having weathered the challenges of 2008 better than a number of our competitors. You can expect excellent work and mentorship opportunities during the summer.

This is a nice note given the fear that gripped incoming MoFo summers last night.

But you have to wonder if that it was a necessary or even truthful swipe to say that the firm had “weathered the challenges of 2008 better than a number of our competitors.”

Let’s check the video tape (and take a poll) after the jump.

We’ve done a few stories on how the financial crisis is hurting public and private law schools. Over the past couple of weeks, administration officials at Columbia have shared some candid thoughts with the student body.

Law School Dean David Schizer let students know how he personally dealt with the last economic recession:

In conversations with many of you, I’ve heard that the economy is very much on your mind, so I wanted to share some thoughts with you based on my own experience. I was in law school during an economic downturn. I remember that some employers cut back on their hiring, and it turned out to be a serious mistake because, when the economy later rebounded — as it always does — they didn’t have the staffing in place.

According to Dean Schizer, this “mistake” will not be repeated:

In conversations with graduates who are involved in hiring decisions, in both the public interest area and in private practice, I’ve learned that memories are clear on this point, and that many employers who are of particular interest to you are eager to avoid this mistake. This is all the more true for Columbia graduates, who are always in great demand at the top of the legal profession. We know that our country will be going through some difficult times and know that you, as Columbia-educated lawyers, will have much to contribute to shaping our future.

Nothing is f***** here dude, nothing is f*****.

After the jump, Lee Bollinger weighs in on the general university finances.

Last week, Fortune released its annual list of the 100 best places to work. Shockingly, a number of law firms made the list.

Now Fortune wants to tell us about the 25 Best Paying Companies (from among the top 100 companies to work for), and once again I have no earthly clue what they are talking about.

Let’s start right at the top. The number one, best paying company that is also nice to work for, in the entire United States of America is … Bingham McCutchen. According to Fortune:

For the second year in a row, this law firm is the top-paying Best Company to Work For. Lawyers fresh out of school get starting salaries of $160,000 a year, topped off with fat bonuses.

Umm … okay. I mean, I think Skadden’s definition of “fat” is a little different than Fortune’s, but whatever.

More from Fortune after the jump.

[Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting—sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. 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.]

Evan here, writing from Miami, packing up for another Asia trip this weekend.

Kung Hei Fat Choi! Happy Chinese New Year!! Most firms in HK / China close their doors completely all this week for the holidays.

Here are a few pressing needs that we are working on in Asia and Middle East (there are more, but don’t want to make this a job board):

Tokyo - major US firm needs Korean speaking associates in project finance / leveraged finance practice

Dubai - major US firm needs UK qualified PE / M&A senior associate

HK / China - major US firm looking for IP senior associates / counsel / partner level (from US also considered) and would consider entire groups.

—

Despite an over one year long recession in US and Europe there are still a lot of new major firm offices opening up in Asia and Middle East. Although times are tough now, the long-term strategy by firms continue on in what will continue to be very important major legal markets in the future. At some firms, there is a need to build up a certain critical mass in new offices and that cannot always be accomplished by internal transfers within the firm. Here are some new offices in the past approximately 6 months (there are more opening in the next few months) :

Baker & McKenzie - Abu Dhabi
Ropes & Gray - Hong Kong
Akin Gump - Abu Dhabi
Weil Gotshal - Beijing
Weil Gotshal - Dubai
Curtis Mallet - Dubai
Proskauer Rose - Hong Kong
Salans - Beijing
Winston & Strawn - Hong Kong
Dechert - Beijing
Covington & Burling - Beijing
Walkers - Singapore
Goodwin Procter - Hong Kong

More after the jump.

Usually, resisting arrest in Boston involves a wicked scrap with staties.

I guess higher education is supposed to teach you how to use your words instead of your fists. But at Harvard Law, I guess they skip the “oral argument” phase altogether, and go straight to vague prestige threats.

Let’s see how that is working out for one of the brightest Harvard Law stars:

A promising Harvard Law School standout told cops during a bizarre drunken tirade that he would “lie and cheat” to ruin them if — as a future attorney — he ever calls them to a witness stand, police said.

My pres-tige brings all the boys to the yard, and they’re like: it’s better than yours. Damn right: it’s better than yours:

A police report states that Simpkins, 24, made the threat early Saturday morning, just four months from graduation, as he spilled out of a Theater District bar and into the back of a Boston police cruiser, barking to officers, “Give me a (expletive) ride, I work for the district attorney’s office.”

More fun details after the jump.

Last week, we mentioned that Linklaters was gearing up to conduct massive layoffs.

Today, The Lawyer is reporting that 270 Linklaters employees are out of a job:

Magic circle firm Linklaters has confirmed that between 100 and 120 of its City lawyers will lose their jobs as part of its so-called New World strategy, while 130 to 150 members of business services staff will also be affected.

“New World Strategy” indeed.

Linklaters is a large firm, but 270 people represent deep cuts:

The London cuts will translate to 4.8 per cent of the firm’s total workforce while 4.2 per cent of its lawyer headcount will be slashed.

Is there a country where the legal industry is thriving? Have Rosetta Stone, will travel.

Linklaters: 270 London jobs to go [The Lawyer]

Earlier: Magic Circle Meltdown: Layoffs at Allen & Overy, Linklaters, and Clifford Chance

[This article was written by Miguel Escobar. Miguel is a Director in Lateral Link’s New York office.]

This is the second half of our piece on avoiding common pitfalls during the interview process - Click Here for Part 1

You’ve done it! You’ve landed that coveted interview you first envisioned when entering the lateral market. Now some additional tips for navigating the potentially career-making interview.

(6). Having a cocky or arrogant attitude. For better or worse, working as an Associate at a prestigious corporate law firm is a team sport. While superb credentials can get you in the door, an arrogant or cocky personality can doom an interview. Don’t leave the interviewer with the impression that you will be a prima donna if hired. Exude confidence but refrain from adopting an unpleasant, needlessly stubborn or uncooperative attitude during an interview which you have worked so hard to obtain.

(7). Failing to Ask Questions. Do not wait for your interviewer to invite you to ask questions. An interview should be conversational and fluid, not a one-way monologue. Any questions you direct to the interviewer should allow you to demonstrate your deep knowledge of and genuine interest in the firm. In other words, craft interesting and on-point questions during your interview preparation and have them ready on hand for use throughout the interview.

More after the jump.

Fish & Richardson is conducting layoffs, another indication that IP work is not a safe haven during the economic storm.

The firm would not respond to our requests for comment, but a firm wide email sent to Fish associates confirmed that 30 support staffers were let go this week:

Today, Fish & Richardson is reducing the size of our staff by notifying 30 support staff that they will no longer be employed by the firm. Affected employees are in eight of our U.S. offices and in several administrative departments.

We thank all of these employees for their service to the firm. We know that this will be a difficult time for them, and we will assist them through this transition with a severance program. Our people are our greatest asset, and so we take these steps only after thoughtful consideration.

The firm wide memo did not mention anything about associate layoffs. That may be because the firm is also conducting stealth layoffs of associates.

More details from tipsters after the jump.

* Cha-ching. Harvard Law gets an anonymous $10 million gift to endow a Laurence Tribe chair. [Associated Press]

* Gov. Rod Blagojevich has decided to swing by his impeachment trial in time to deliver the closing argument. [Chicago Tribune]

* Martin T. Manton would have been a Judge of the Day back in 1939, had ATL existed then. The Second Circuit judge, who was nearly appointed to the Supreme Court, was found guilty of taking bribes, resigned, and spent 19 months in prison. Now, what to do with his portrait? [New York Times]

* This story is going to hurt the lawyerly reputation. Not only did this attorney steal from his clients, he stole from physically and mentally impaired clients. New York lawyer Steven Rondos stole $4 million from his clients’ medical malpractice settlements to pay his mortgage and buy a home theater system. [New York Daily News]

* President Obama brings Biglaw hours and a less formal dress code to the White House. [New York Times]

* Restless rainmakers. [Legal Times]

*Wow. Layoffs have come to the ACLU. Reagan: 1 - Obama: 0.[Huffington Post]

* How many people are taking the Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl? Would your answer change if I told you the Obama’s were backing them? [Sports Judge Blog]

* Bart Simpson is a Scientologist? [Popsquire]

* They raped Indy. And we just stood there and let them do it. [Ridiculum]

* Lat will be speaking at the Mid-Atlantic APALSA conference, at U. Penn. this Saturday. [Penn Law]

Earlier today, we learned that a number of associates have been let go from Morrison & Foerster. According to a firm-wide memo that was just released, 53 associates have been laid off across all MoFo offices. We also understand that 148 staff members were let go.

The firm just confirmed the reports to ATL:

Morrison & Foerster has reduced its legal and non-legal staffing in its U.S. offices to align our firm with client needs in this extraordinary economic downturn. We notified 53 attorneys and 148 staff of the termination of their employment. These decisions are exceedingly painful, but necessary to assure that we address the current economic challenge from a position of financial conservatism and strength.

Tipsters in L.A. report that 13 associates were let go from that office. Our New York sources say that 12 associates were let go in New York City. We understand that all class years were affected, including first years.

“I will be fine,” said one affected associate. “But it’s a sad day for people here.”

MoFo had remained relatively quiet during these times of legal industry upheaval. But the firm did suffer partner defections from their D.C. office earlier this week.

No firm is immune to the 2009 market crisis. And it’s still only January.

News of the layoffs was first published by Legal Pad (while we held our post to give the firm a chance to issue a full statement). Read the firm’s full statement, after the jump.

Yes We Can…. Hire lots and lots of Supreme Court clerks?

In prior posts (here and here), we reported on the impressive legal team that President Barack Obama has assembled to staff key positions in his administration. Like many of the Bush Administration lawyers they’re replacing, the Obama lawyers have impressive pedigrees: degrees from top law schools, often with honors and/or law review experience; impressive clerkships, including many SCOTUS clerkships; and stints at leading law firms (but with WilmerHale and Williams & Connolly replacing Gibson Dunn and Kirkland & Ellis as the feeder firms).

Several legal superstars are making big financial sacrifices to go into government service. They can expect low six-figure salaries as government lawyers, a far cry from the seven figures that some of them — not the law professors, but the Biglaw partners — earned in the private sector. As reported by Ken Vogel over at Politico:

Eric Holder, President Obama’s nominee for attorney general, will get a separation payment from his firm, Covington & Burling, of between $1 million and $5 million, plus a share of the firm’s profits from this year “based on work performed through date of separation,” and a repayment of between $500,000 and $1 million from the firm’s capital account…. [Holder] earned $3.3 million last year as partner.

Jeh Johnson, Obama’s nominee to be the Pentagon’s top lawyer, would get a severance of between $1 million and $5 million from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison, an international law firm. He’ll also get his $200,000 capital investment back from the firm, which paid him $2.6 million last year as a partner.

For more details — e.g., how much Eric Holder and Jeh Johnson’s retirement plans and pensions might be worth — see Politico.

In our earlier hiring round-ups, we missed a few names. Many tipsters came forward to fill in the blanks.

Learn about the latest legal eagles to land in the Obama nest, after the jump.

We still don’t think Biglaw firms giving out normal raises is news. But judging from the number of e-mails and comments we’ve received begging for this list, many ATL readers judge this post-worthy.

In case you’re somehow unfamiliar with the practice, Biglaw firms tend to have a tiered salary system keyed to associates’ class years. In the new year, when an associate moves up a class, they move to the next level on the pay scale. An example of such a scale, from Cleary Gottlieb’s 2009 salary memo (posted in full after the jump):

Class Salary
2008 and participants in the International Lawyer Program - $160,000
2007 - $170,000
2006 - $185,000
2005 - $210,000
2004 - $230,000
2003 - $250,000
2002 - $265,000
2001 - $280,000

Some 32 firms (that we know of) are responding to economic pressures by freezing salaries: capping pay scales at last year’s rates.

But a number of firms are giving their associates the usual $10,000 - $25,000 raise. This is an open thread for those getting the pay bump to brag about it. A list of nearly 50 firms conducting business as usual with raises, after the jump.

AmLaw Daily continues to provide firm by firm profit numbers, and attorneys continue to be annoyed with firm rhetoric against the backdrop of actual layoffs.

The latest issue comes from associates formerly with Foley Hoag. Two weeks ago, we reported that Foley Hoag laid off 32 people, 17 associates and 15 staff. Yesterday, AmLaw reported that Foley’s profits per equity partner rose by 5%.

We’ve mentioned before that rising PPP in the face of layoffs and salary freezes is not necessarily a bad thing. If partners aren’t making money, partners will leave. If partners leave, banks start asking questions. If banks don’t receive satisfactory answers, everybody gets fired.

But just because people are capable of understanding the economics of the situation, it doesn’t mean that this is a time for partners to be patting themselves on the back.

The statements that annoyed some Foley people after the jump.

Starting February 15th, you’ll be able to spend your Sunday nights watching hottie Biglaw siblings Victor and Tammy Jih go global as they compete for $1 million in the Amazing Race.

As noted yesterday, Victor Jih, 35, is a partner at O’Melveny and Myers, while Tammy Jih, 26, is an associate at Quinn Emanuel. We had a three-way with them yesterday, and asked about trading Biglaw for reality TV, how they got on the show, spending 4 weeks Blackberry-less, and whether Victor really thinks Africa is a country.

Victor may be the senior Biglaw member of the family, but Tammy always jumps in first to answer questions. Check out the interview, after the jump.

We are now receiving reports that Morgan, Lewis & Bockius fired a large number of associates. A firm spokesperson tells us:

Attorneys depart law firms for any number of reasons. The number leaving this year is consistent with prior year departures. It is inappropriate for us to comment on individual personnel decisions. However, reports of a firm wide layoff are incorrect.

But tipsters at the firm have gotten a different impression about what is happening at Morgan Lewis:

I believe the total number will be around 50 attorneys. I do not know the number of staff members but I did see at least two secretaries crying on the way out.

Other tipsters also say that 50 or so associates and an undetermined number of staffers will be let go. Then again, our sources also suggest that the 50 have been concentrated in the corporate department, so maybe the layoffs aren’t “firm wide.”

Severance information and other Morgan Lewis notes after the jump.

[Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting—sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. 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.]

Evan here. I am writing from Miami, where I am recovering from another Gators BCS title. It has been a few weeks since we have posted here, due to the holidays and then being slammed upon return to work. There has also been a tremendous amount of partner level recruiting that we have been pre-occupied with in Asia. We will be pumping out two posts per week from here on out.

Notwithstanding the poor lateral hiring market at present, we do have some pressing client needs in Asia and the Middle East. Here is just a sampling:

Dubai - 4+ year PE / M&A associate for major US firm

Dubai - 2+ year strong projects / construction associates needed at major US firm

Dubai - 2+ year Islamic Finance associate with regional experience needed at major US firm

Abu Dhabi - 2 - 4 years US transactional associates needed at major US firm

Hong Kong - 3+ year PE / M&A associate needed at major US firm

Hong Kong - 2+ year PE / M&A associate needed at major US firm, Mandarin preferred

Hong Kong - 2+ year finance associate needed at major British firm

Hong Kong - 5+ year Korean fluent corporate associate needed at major US firm

Beijing - 2+ year PE / M&A associate needed at major US firm, Mandarin fluency required

Shanghai - 3+ year energy associate needed at major US firm, Mandarin preferred

Tokyo - 4 - 8 years M&A / cap markets associate for major US firm, Japanese required

We are receiving inquiries from solid US associate candidates about Asia and the Middle East at present at a much higher volume than ever before. We appreciate all the calls and emails and will respond to all of them, as soon as possible.

Please note that a job search in Asia or Middle East at present requires, above all else, patience. I don’t see a tremendous amount of lateral associate hiring in either market until summer and firms can afford to be picky and deliberate when making new hires in ‘09.

More after the jump.

Last January, we did an ATL / Lateral Link survey on how often you cancelled your social plans because of work.

Notably, we found that “[a]round forty percent of associates missed dates,” usually because a partner asked them to finish something at the last minute.

But now that the economy has collapsed slowed down, some employees are beginning to get their lives back. Yesterday, even as Kash was updating us on an avalanche of salary freezes in Big Law, Gizmodo was praising at least one company that’s trying to heat things up overseas:

This just in: Canon is the world’s greatest camera manufacturer. And it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with their actual cameras.

In response to Japan’s aging population and Japanese couples’ propensity to have too few children to maintain the country’s population, Canon called off the traditional 12-hour workday twice a week, encouraging their employees to go home early and make mini Canon employees of their own.

CNN chimed in that, even though this (pro)creative office perk meant missing out on overtime twice a week, employees were psyched:

“It’s great that we can go home early and not feel ashamed,” said employee Miwa Iwasaki.

To my knowledge, Big Law has not yet adopted a go-home-and-make-babies policy (although parental leave policies have certainly improved). But Lateral Link CEO Michael Allen tells me that “several firms encourage interoffice dating, and wrt marriage actually give a bonus, i.e., like $10,000 if you marry within the firm.”

If that’s true, then it definitely adds a different flavor to some of the questions Marin’s been taking lately on inter-office romance, like this one last fall:

I’ve just been staffed on a relatively long term project with another associate. She and I went on one date a few months ago and hooked up, but that was it because she is batsh*t crazy. Since then she’s sent me a bunch of “let’s get lunch” emails and has “coincidentally” appeared at happy hour drinks when I’m out with people from the firm. I think this person is unstable and I don’t want to put myself in a position to be sabotaged by her. But I don’t want to appear like I’m rejecting work or that I’m not a “team player.” I also don’t want to make it known that I dated a co-worker. Any advice?

So, today let’s update last January’s survey to ask not only whether you were able to be social and be a lawyer at the same time, but also find out whether your firms (or you) support inter-office productivity, as it were.

Take the survey after the jump.

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

ATL -

I’m a corporate attorney, dealing with an unhappy circumstance. I’ve worked in corporate law for ~2 yrs. Due to the slowdown in corporate, I was shifted to do banking litigation. It keeps me busy, a little more job security, etc., billing 200 hrs/mo, but I want to do corporate. Should I accept another position with another firm doing banking/bankruptcy because it’s a job - even though I hate it? Try to hope that corporate picks up? How easy would it be to switch back from banking/bankruptcy law to corporate when the economy recovers again?

Switcheroo

Dear Switcheroo,

Sometimes in life we have do things we hate because it’s good for us. You’ve got a job - a JOB - in bankruptcy, but you’d prefer to do corporate. Great, well I’d rather work on my tan than work at all but I have to suck it up until I marry rich the economy picks up. And you need to suck it up too and do the work you’re given without a peep. Also, I have no idea why you’d consider switching firms to do the same bankruptcy work you’re doing now. That’s redundant.

Trying to go from bankruptcy back to corporate is called a “re-tool” in recruiter parlance, because you’d be going from being a Bankruptcy Tool to a Corporate Tool. And if Tool Academy has taught us anything, it’s that there are specific breeds of Tools with very little crossover (See supra, “Cold-Hearted Tool,” “Party Tool,” and “Greek Tool”). My lawyer dad (and probably your lawyer dad) said that a law degree would “opens doors “and would qualify me (or you) to do “anything.” While that may have been true during the glorious reign of the Medici, these days the terrifying truth is that a law degree qualifies you to work in law exclusively, and then only in the area of your primary practice: i.e., bankruptcy litigation.

When I’ve mentioned to recruiters that I would be open to “re-tooling” myself from ERISA Tool to Party Tool Bankruptcy Tool, they hung up on me quicker than I’d hang up on a telemarketer calling during The Bachelor. So yes - switching back to corporate may prove difficult. But lack of complete control over your career and elimination ceremonies are par for the course at a law firm.

Your friend,

Marin

Elie accepts his Tool Badge after the jump.

Mayer Brown already announced that New York bonuses would match the New York market. Last night, the firm announced its bonus structure for offices in Chicago, Palo Alto and Washington, D.C.

We are pleased to announce that the Firm’s bonus structure for work done in 2008 will be the same as it was for work done in 2007.

Yay?

We couldn’t find last year’s Mayer Brown bonus memos for offices outside of New York. But based on what peer firms paid out last year, it certainly doesn’t look like associates will be getting more than their counterparts in New York.

Still, given that we are living in a time of salary freezes and layoffs, anything that resembles 2007 is probably a good thing.

Read the full Mayer Brown memo after the jump.

* Cheerleaders get respect, but lose the ability to sue. The Wisconsin Supreme Court rules that cheerleading is a contact sport, and so its participants can’t be sued for accidentally causing injuries. [CNN]

* Rod Blagojevich is participating in his impeachment trial by audio tape only. While the Illinois Senate listened to the recordings of the governor’s crass conversations, Blago continues to make the interview rounds in the hopes of winning the trial of public opinion. [New York Times]

* Last October, Connecticut Judge E. Curtissa Cofield got hauled in by the coppers for drunken driving and side-swiping a police car. She displays her displeasure with being arrested in the recently released police video. The state’s first black female judge hurled racial epithets at the troopers and blamed her ill mood on “Negro-itis.” [Hartford Courant]

* President Obama is getting his revenge on SCOTUS Chief John Roberts for that oath flub with his first White House legislation. On Thursday, Obama will reverse a recent Supreme Court ruling that had restricted the ability of women and other workers to sue for pay discrimination. [San Francisco Chronicle]

* A review of the latest Blackberry model. Gizmodo gives the Blackberry Curve 8900 a thumbs up. [Gizmodo]

* New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has subpoenaed former Merrill Lynch honcho John Thain. Cuomo wants to ask the question that is on all of our minds. What’s with those billions in bonuses you gave out before Merrill merged with Bank of America? [New York Daily News]

Readers, commenters, and tipsters have all demanded that we run a post addressing the “stealth layoffs” that might be taking place at Latham & Watkins.

The firm has remained steadfast in its contention that no layoffs have happened at Latham & Watkins. They claim no dismissals for economic reasons, or anything out of the ordinary course of business. A firm spokesperson told ATL:

Consistent with our standard practice at the end of each year, we have completed our associate review process. We counsel our associates at the completion of our review process each year, and in those conferences discuss topics such as job performance, compensation and career tracks. Our decisions relating to associate departures were performance related and part of our usual year-end process, not part of an economic layoff.

But how many associate departures have there been? Based on information from our sources, the number of cuts is all over the map. ATL has received reports from tipsters in New York, Chicago, Silicon Valley, and L.A. that Latham has been conducting stealth layoffs. But because of the way they are being carried out, nobody knows just how many associates have been let go over the past few weeks.

Tipsters report that the process has every artifice of “performance review” cuts, but those same tipsters claim the cuts are economic based. Against the backdrop of the firm statement, after the jump we post some of the tipsters’ reports.

* Creative destruction? If I was half the man I used to be, I’d take a flamethrower to this place. [Law and More]

* On Being a Black Lawyer’s Yolanda Yong tells us if we should expect anything “different” from the nation’s first African-American Attorney General. [Huffington Post]

* If you are desperate to hang onto your job, better client services can’t hurt. [What About Clients?]

* Should we withhold judgment on John Thain until all the facts come out? Where’s the fun in that? [PrawfsBlawg]

* I’m not even going to attempt to remember to pay my taxes this year, and dare Geithner to say anything about it. I’ve always wanted to see the inside of a real jail anyway. [TaxProf Blog]

Really, it was only a matter of time before it came to this:

A mistrial was declared Monday when a home-invasion robbery suspect smeared human feces on his attorney’s face then threw more at the jury.

What are the chances that this is an Ed Norton in Primal Fear moment?

The prosecutor said the defendant was compliant after the outburst and was taken into custody without further incident.

Sounds promising.

But sadly, it was his own lawyer, not the prosecutor, that the defendant was going after.

More on that after the jump.

Everybody has been asking about which law firms are hiring. This week Lateral Link’s Job of the Week answers some of those questions. Is your firm freezing salaries? If you make a move through Lateral Link you can make that up by earning a $10,000 guaranteed signing bonus. These positions are just two of the hundreds of job openings that Lateral Link has throughout the country. Current members can also contact their personal search consultant directly to discuss these positions. Membership in Lateral Link is free and you can apply at www.laterallink.com.

Positions: Corporate Associate and Litigation Associate

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Corporate Associate: The LA office of a top national law firm is seeking a corporate associate with 3-5 years experience in M&A, capital markets and/or finance. California bar required. For more information about this position or to apply, please see Position 10233 on Lateral Link.

Litigation Associate: One of the most selective litigation boutiques in California is seeking a junior litigation associate. Candidate should have stellar credentials and 1-4 years of litigation experience at another top firm. For more information about this position or to apply, please see Position 10268 on Lateral Link.

John Grisham sat down with us this morning for an exclusive blog interview to discuss his new book, The Associate. The book’s main character, Kyle McAvoy, is a Biglaw associate with a mysterious past and intriguing future.

In his previous books, Grisham has explored emotional and ethical costs of practicing the law in various forms. But his latest book takes dead aim at the life, and lifestyle, of junior associates at top Manhattan law firms.

A lot of Kyle McAvoy’s Biglaw experience will ring true to most readers of Above the Law. We found out that Grisham’s depictions of Biglaw life are so accurate because typical associates told him the truth:

I found some wonderful blogs where associates post anonymously their stories. Beautiful stories….

But my best research was done by a research assistant that spent one year in the law…. He knew a ton of lawyers in the big law firms in New York. He told them up front what he was doing [researching for Grisham’s new book] and that their stories would be kept anonymous, and they just unloaded on him…. Most of it went into the book.

The book contains scenes that are easily recognizable to most Biglaw associates, from the mind-numbing experience of document review, to the attorney who literally passes out due to exhaustion.

But we wanted to know if Grisham modeled the book’s central firm, Scully & Pershing, on any individual real-life firm. Grisham said that he unequivocally did not:

I was prepared to go to a big law firm and get inside and walk around and kick the tires. But I didn’t want to do that because I knew the portrayal would be unflattering and I didn’t want to embarrass any particular firm.

In fact, Grisham thought about changing the name of the fictional Scully to avoid any possibility of confusion with Skadden.

Why is the take on life in Biglaw so “unflattering”? Grisham explains that the wasted potential he explores in The Associate mirrors what he sees in the corridors of the nation’s top law firms.

More details, after the jump.

Okay, so Chief Justice John Roberts can’t administer an oath of office to save his life. But he can hire brilliant and fabulous law clerks:

1. James McDonald (UVA 2007 / Sutton)

2. Stephen Sachs (Yale 2007 / S. Williams)

2. Erik Zimmerman (Stanford 2007/Wilkinson)

They join the previously hired Roman Martinez (Yale 2008 / Kavanaugh), filling up JGR’s chambers for October Term 2009.

We also hear that Justice Samuel A. Alito is done hiring for OT 2009. In addition to Jaynie Randall’s previously reported hiring, we can now add:

1. Amit Agarwal (Georgetown / Kavanaugh)

2. K. Winn Allen (UVA / Sutton)

If you know the identity of the fourth Alito clerk, please drop us a line. We hear that SAA is a bit secretive about his clerk hiring, which strikes us as a bit silly. As a former prosecutor, Justice Alito should be familiar with the inevitable discovery doctrine. Why guard the identities of Supreme Court clerks so jealously, when they’re all going to be made public eventually by the Court’s Public Information Office?

Updated lists of Supreme Court clerks, for OT 2009 and OT 2010, after the jump.

As we noted in yesterday’s Morning Docket, even the New York Times has taken note of the salary freeze trend at law firms. The Times reached out to Above The Law’s own David Lat for the story:

Although many associates are angry about the freezes, others are relieved, said David Lat, founding editor of AboveTheLaw.com, a blog about law firms and the profession.

“There is this sense that firms didn’t act prudently during the boom and now they are getting religion, and that it’s better late than never,” Mr. Lat said. “Many associates we have spoken to think the freeze probably saved jobs.”

At the beginning of the month, we did a round-up of firms that have frozen 2009 salary rates at 2008 levels. That list was 16 firms long. Since then, quite a few other firms have announced freezes. Due to frequent requests, we’re updating the round-up list since the number of firms with freezes (that we know of) has more than doubled, to 33 32. Check out the as-comprehensive-as-we-can-make-it list, after the jump.

Recently announced salary freezes include “solid ice freezes” at Blank Rome and Townsend and Townsend and Crew; and “Slurpee freezes” at Bingham McCutchen, Fish & Richardson, and Texan firm Andrews Kurth.

Memorandums, as well as a new list of all firms with “solid ice” and “Slurpee” freezes, after the jump.

As if things weren’t difficult enough for job seekers, news leaked out on Monday that the federal government’s job website was hacked.

Since the government is one of the only institutions that is hiring, we hope our readers avoided this scam:

USAJOBS is the official one-stop-shop for Federal Government jobs and employment information in the United States. It has also been officially breached.

In a statement released over the weekend, Mary Volz-Peacock, Program Director at USAJOBS admits that it had been the subject of a security breach. Or rather the company providing the job seeker technology, Monster, had been.

Obama can get a BlackBerry that turns into a lightsaber, but if you’re looking for a job in this economy, you’re screwed.

After the jump, what information was hacked?

The Amazing Race is a reality TV show where teams of two race around the world in the hopes of winning $1 million. The 14th season of the show debuts on February 15th, and will star hot legal siblings, Victor and Tammy Jih.

Victor Jih, 35, is a partner at O’Melveny and Myers, while Tammy Jih, 26, is an associate at Quinn Emanuel. In this CBS video clip, Tammy says she hasn’t “had exactly the same life experience that Victor has had.” We think she just means in terms of length of time spent in Biglaw. Both Jihs went to Stanford undergrad and Harvard Law School, and now work as attorneys in California.

According to their bios on the CBS site:

Tammy is a litigator who believes that her ability to keep a cool head under pressure, especially with little or no sleep, will lead to success on the Race. Her biggest pet peeve with her brother is that he’s a bit of a control freak…

Victor is a partner at his law firm and works as a corporate litigator. He is running the Race to see if he and his sister can co-exist in a hyper-competitive situation without driving each other crazy.

We’re going to be catching up with the Jihs in an interview later today. If you have questions you’d like us to ask the hottie reality TV stars, beyond their practice groups and relationship statuses, send us an e-mail with the subject “Amazing Race.”

Check out a video clip of the two, as well as a little info on who they’re up against, after the jump.

* Cristina Warthen née Schultz, aka the Stanford Law Escort, is the 2001 Stanford law grad turned call girl turned filthy rich wife of Ask Jeeves founder David Warthen. Yesterday, she pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges stemming from her prostitution earnings and will be paying the government back to the tune of $313,000. [San Jose Mercury News]

* Dana Milbank dubs Gov. Rod Blagojevich the “unofficial poet laureate of the criminal justice system” after yesterday’s media tour. [Washington Post]

* This article by Debra Weiss at the ABA Journal is titled “How Two Lawyers Managed To Look Busy,” but it would be more accurately titled, “How One Lawyer Tried to Look Busy, but Got Fired Anyway.” [ABA Journal]

* Pennsylvania Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan are stepping down and heading to prison after pleading guilty to fraud charges for accepting kickbacks. Apparently, the judges were making millions by locking kids up over minor offenses and making sure they wound up in certain detention facilities. [Associated Press]

* Nationwide Pay Freeze Watch: Missouri judges. [Associated Press]

* Cadwalader may sue the London partners who left the firm for Paul Hastings. [Legal Week]

As the Above the Law community continues to grow, more people are posting absurd, inane, and arguably offensive comments. And more people are complaining about those comments — in the comments, as well by email and other means.

Here at ATL, we reserve the right to moderate comments as we see fit. We delete comments for reasons including (but not limited to) offensiveness, abusiveness, excessive profanity, irrelevance, or rank stupidity. Above the Law is a privately owned website, and we have no obligation to provide our bandwidth to any particular user.

But we also offer this recommendation to people who are offended by the comments: don’t read them. Toward that end, we want to make it easier for you to avoid the comments if you want to. Over the next 24 hours, we’ll be changing our site design so that comments will default to “hidden.” If you want to see the comments, you must affirmatively opt-in, by clicking a button to reveal them (either the “show them anyway” button within the post, or the “comments” button / counter on the front page).

Read more — and see for yourself how this policy will work — after the jump.

* Can law firms evolve? Because right now they look a lot like a T-Rex right after the Chicxulub blast. [Ideoblog]

* Here’s a chart showing how California law schools stacked up against each other in terms of bar passage rates. Berkeley < USC & UCLA. This would never have happened at “Boalt.” [TaxProf Blog]

* Having nailed Bush, I think there’s a new job for Josh Brolin. [Popsquire]

* Here’s one way to handle criminals. Or suspected criminals. Or suspected unarmed criminals. Hey, better that 10 innocent people are boiled in oil rather than one axe murderer getting away with a fair trial. [Nix-on-Crime]

Major news coming out of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. The firm just announced that 45 attorneys and 68 staff were laid off:

[I]t is with regret that we announce that the firm will be downsizing our associate, legal support, and administrative ranks, with 45 attorneys and 68 staff directly affected. Members and staff managers will meet with their teams today and tomorrow to inform them of the details of this decision. Please know that the firm is extremely grateful to all of the affected employees for their contributions, and we will work with them and provide resources to ease their transitions.

In light of that news, the salary freeze and bonus news for those who are left doesn’t really sting that much:

[W]e will not be making associate step salary increases this year, but we will be paying out bonuses based on the criteria and structure developed by the Associate Bonus Program Steering Committee and announced last fall (additional details to follow shortly). Legal support and administrative staff will not receive merit bonuses in January, but the firm will be making profit-sharing contributions in the spring to all eligible plan participants equal to 9.5 percent of their eligible compensation, as we have in previous years.

Best of luck to the 113 people suddenly out of work. Keep your heads up.

Check out the full firm statement, after the jump.

Everybody has to sacrifice to survive in the new “economy” (if that’s what we’re still calling it). Today, we’ve received word that Buchanan Ingersoll could be asking partners to shoulder part of the burden. A tipster explains:

Buchanan Ingersoll was not able to pay nonequity partners any of their holdback at year end and equity partners only received a very small portion of their money. Partners forced to borrow to pay in capital by Jan 30.

But according to the firm, this is the normal timing for Buchanan’s decision making process. A firm spokesperson told us:

In terms of payouts to non-equity and equity partners — We are on a January 31 year-end for partner compensation so it’s only after that date that we determine the payout to equity and non-equity partners. There will certainly be a payout to non-equity partners and a substantial equity payout as well.

If there is any level of payout uncertainty in the partnership ranks, you can imagine how associates are doing. We explore after the jump.

One thing that has become clear to me since I started at ATL is that people in prison have a lot of time on their hands. A lot of time. We regularly receive handwritten letters from pro se litigants complaining that the judge who sent them to prison is “above the law.”

Michael Lambrix has been held on death row for over 25 years. Now, he wants to serve on the Florida Supreme Court. “Mike” describes himself on his website (doinglifeondeathrow.com) like this:

Born and raised in Marin County, CA I have now been held hostage on Florida’s death row over 25 years….

My spiritual faith and a healthy (if not a bit twisted) sense of humor have been my strength while the hope of spending time with my 3 children and grandson is my goal….

By nature I am easy going, hard to anger, and quick to forgive - even to a fault. Although spiritual by nature, I’ve grown disgusted by organized religion. For the same reasons I’m disgusted by organized politics — both have become institutions corrupted by man’s arrogance and greed.

Who better to deal with man’s arrogance and greed than a humble convicted felon? It makes sense to Mike. In his application to fill a vacancy on Florida’s highest court, Mike makes his best (handwritten) case:

I would now request that I be considered for nomination and in all fairness I would ask that you do not so quickly discount my genuine desire to become a Justice on the Florida Supreme Court. As a longtime (albeit involuntary!) citizen of the state of Florida I believe I am entitled to due consideration, and the following facts show that I am uniquely qualified to be a Justice on the court.

As for that pesky capital offense?

Of course, I do understand… there would be a predictable measure of reservation to my appointment, but to hell with the public. It’s the governor’s providence to appoint anyone he so chooses, and if the narrow minded public doesn’t like it, they can always vote me off the court in 6 years when I come up for a “retention vote.”

Before you “quickly discount” Mike’s appointment, give due consideration to the fact that we are talking about the state of Florida.

Read Mike’s full application, after the jump.

Two big name rainmakers are leaving Morrison & Foerster for Goodwin Procter. According to a Goodwin Procter email:

Goodwin Procter announced today a major expansion of its Financial Services Group with the addition of two nationally-recognized attorneys, Robert M. Kurucza and Marco E. Adelfio. Kurucza joins as co-chair of the firm’s Financial Services Group. Both are resident in Washington, D.C. The addition of Kurucza and Adelfio will enable Goodwin Procter to provide a more fully integrated suite of services to prominent common clients, and to offer even greater cross-disciplinary expertise to a broad range of financial institutions.

Good news for Goodwin, but the announcement is just more unsettling information coming out of MoFo. Rumors of all sorts have been popping up about how things are going at MoFo. What we do know for sure is that Mofo hasn’t made a decision about associate salaries:

MoFo, [hasn’t] announced their bonus/ pay freeze intentions yet (which is totally bogus because it leaves associates in the dark). What little guidance we received came in the form of a wait and see what the market is doing approach.

Latham and Orrick have frozen, O’Melveny and Gibson Dunn are paying market. What will MoFo do?

The summer of 2009 should be very different from past summers of fun and excess. Many are expecting this summer to be a twelve week (or ten week, or eight week) “job interview” that current Biglaw associates didn’t really have to go through.

This shouldn’t come as a galloping shock to A) regular ATL readers, B) casual ATL readers, C) people who can read, or D) anybody at all that has been paying the slightest bit of attention to the legal industry.

But it is time to ask “how bad is it going to be?” We started receiving reports this weekend on perhaps a new paradigm for summer associates. Here’s a rumor that has been swirling around Nixon Peabody:

Nixon Peabody [has] informed their summer class they will only be hiring 50% of the summer associates?? Basically they said…only HALF of you are going to make it and we are going to give you real work to see who is worthy.

After the jump, Nixon Peabody unequivocally shoots down this rumor.

We always appreciate mentions of Above the Law in other publications (and we get annoyed when ATL isn’t given proper credit for breaking stories.). Here are a few recent shout-outs:

1. Chill of Salary Freezes Reaches Top Law Firms [New York Times]

We previously linked to Eilene Zimmerman’s article in Morning Docket, but in case you missed it, check it out here. An excerpt:

Although many associates are angry about the freezes, others are relieved, said David Lat, founding editor of AboveTheLaw.com, a blog about law firms and the profession.

“There is this sense that firms didn’t act prudently during the boom and now they are getting religion, and that it’s better late than never,” Mr. Lat said. “Many associates we have spoken to think the freeze probably saved jobs.”

2. Gauging the net worth [Legal Week]

This article, by Alex Aldridge, focuses primarily on the social networking and blogging scene over in the U.K., but there is some discussion of what’s going on here in the States:

[T]he US legal blogging community is a fascinating case study in itself, having grown up in the wake of the controversial lawyer message boards Greedy Associates. So influential did the irreverent site come as a means for junior lawyers to pass around information that they were regarded as playing a key role in the pay wars of 1999 and 2000, as news of tit-for-tat pay rises among US law firms raced around the web.

3. Obama re-takes oath of office at the White House [CNN]

The always-playful legal Web site Above the Law asked readers to answer an online poll. About 48 percent blamed Roberts, just 17 percent blame Obama, and 35 percent said yes to the statement, “They both sucked.”

4. Back to School with Professor (and Federal Appeals Judge) Alex Kozinski [American Lawyer]

A short write-up, by Ben Hallman, of our recent event at Columbia Law School, an interview with Chief Judge Alex Kozinski (9th Cir.).

Chill of Salary Freezes Reaches Top Law Firms [New York Times]
Gauging the net worth [Legal Week]
Obama re-takes oath of office at the White House [CNN]
Back to School with Professor (and Federal Appeals Judge) Alex Kozinski [American Lawyer]

Maybe Stephen McPherson, former Assistant Dean for student affairs at Regent University School of Law, just likes working with young people. Really young people. The former Regent administrator pleaded guilty to sexually abusing children:

McPherson, 39, of Chesapeake entered guilty pleas to two counts of forcible sodomy and two counts of object sexual penetration. He is set to be sentenced May 22.

Regent University is the alma mater of such esteemed lawyers as Monica Goodling.

Back in June, McPherson was indicted on charges stemming from his work with distressed girls:

McPherson and his wife worked from August 1996 to August 2000 as house parents supervising a cottage of as many as eight girls at Hope Haven Children’s Home on North Landing Road in Virginia Beach, said Linda Jones, a spokeswoman for Union Mission Ministries, which operates the home. Hope Haven, founded in 1965, provides Christian-based care for children from “distressed family situations,” according to its Web site. …

After they left Hope Haven, the McPhersons adopted three girls over the objections of Hope Haven, Jones said.

According to the report:

McPherson must wear an electronic monitoring device while free on bond pending sentencing.

I hope that thing is not just strapped to his ankle.

Ex-Regent University official pleads guilty to sexual abuse [The Virginian-Pilot]
Former Regent assistant dean faces sexual assault charges [Ex-Christian]

* The country’s top newspapers are full of law firm recession news. The New York Times looks at the salary freeze phenomenon at top firms, with some help from David Lat. [New York Times]

* And the Wall Street Journal reflects on the recession’s effect on law firms, focusing in on the demise of Heller Ehrman. The same thing that ruined baseball is putting the squeeze on mid-size firms: senior players shopping themselves to other teams. [Wall Street Journal (subscription)]

* The Patriot Act has led to legal trouble for many a non-terrorist airplane traveler. The law has been used to prosecute plane passengers who spilled bloody Marys, used profanity, and engaged in “overt sexual behavior.” [Chicago Tribune]

* Public Service Announcement: Get free make-up at Dillard’s, Macy’s, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s thanks to a class action settlement over price fixing. [Virginian-Pilot]

* Contempt of court, moral turpitude charges, and a suspended law license won’t stop Andrew Fine. [Los Angeles Times]

* Edward Genson, Rod Blagojevich’s chief defense attorney, said good night and good luck to the governor on Friday, hinting that Blago refuses to listen to his advice. [Associated Press via Wonkette]

* Congratulations to the new batch of Skadden fellows. Harvard, NYU, and Michigan students make a strong showing among this year’s recruits to the “legal Peace Corps.” [Skadden Arps via PRNewswire]

The law firm of Morgan & Finnegan, a leading intellectual property boutique, will be dissolving imminently, according to several sources at the firm. Some (but not all) of its lawyers, including prominent partners John Sweeney and James Gould, will join Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell.

Last month, we mentioned the possibility of a merger between the two firms. It now appears that it won’t be a complete merger, but a selective acquisition of certain lawyers (a la Sonnenschein’s absorption of Thacher Proffitt & Wood attorneys when TPW dissolved). As a result, Morgan & Finnegan lawyers who aren’t offered spots on the Locke Lord life raft will be out of jobs.

John Sweeney will become the deputy managing partner of Locke Lord’s New York office, while James Gould will assume the role of co-head of the intellectual property department. At least 11 other Morgan & Finnegan partners will also be making the move. Joining Locke Lord as equity partners are Matthew Blackburn, William Feiler, Peter Fill, Harry Marcus, and Steven Meyer. Coming aboard as income partners are Seth Atlas, Robert Goethals, James Hwa, John Osborne, Richard Straussman, and Andrea Wayda.

Rumors of dissolution have been swirling around Morgan & Finnegan for quite some time. Back in August, the firm engaged in staff and attorney layoffs.

As for how the word got out, something rather strange happened on Friday. An email from an anonymous address was sent to a large number of M&F associates, attaching the Locke Lord offer letters to Sweeney and Gould (posted below — but you may have seen them already, since they were in wide circulation over the weekend, sent to us by multiple correspondents). From one source:

Morgan & Finnegan is dissolving on Monday. They are sending termination letters to everyone. Then, a number of those people will receive offer letters from Locke Lord (so it is not really an acquisition).

Not everyone will get offers. A large number of staff and attorneys will be laid off on Monday. Rumor has it around 70 people. Most first years, and some other associates. Pretty much all staff. LLBL just wants the lease and some of the partners….

Interesting that [Sweeney and Gould] are making off with $1+ million apiece at the cost of most of the jobs of their employees. Needless to say, most people are disgusted. John Sweeney is the person who has kept saying that people should not worry and the firm is fine. Now he is cutting his losses and running.

More discussion — plus links to the James Gould and John Sweeney offer letters, which are an interesting read, especially if you don’t know what a lateral-partner offer letter looks like — after the jump.

Deidre Dare is a senior lawyer in Allen & Overy’s Russia office. Like many an expat, she’s been maintaining a website, presumably to keep folks back home up to date on her life and to share the splendor of living abroad with random strangers on the Internet.

On the website, Philosophy Can Be Sexy, she posts poetry, photos of herself in lingerie, “philosophy” (if a quote from the “Marriage Delusion” counts), and a serialized novel about the expat life in Moscow.

Allen & Overy was not too pleased to discover the novel. Per the Daily Mail:

Miss Dare, who is thought to earn £150,000 a year at the firm’s Russian office, is calling her steamy online novel, Expat: A Weekly Serialized Novel About Living in Moscow.

It describes the sordid lifestyle pursued by staff at a British-led professional firm in the capital.

Miss Dare’s promiscuous heroine describes herself as a ‘part drug addict, part alcoholic’ who regularly turns up for work hours late and hungover.

She and her colleagues are constantly seeking new sexual conquests, attend obscene sex shows involving donkeys and dwarves, blow fortunes at expensive restaurants and gossip about where they are planning to get drunk next.

Sounds like working abroad is like being a summer associate all year long. An erotic excerpt for the grammarians among you, after the jump.

We haven’t yet gotten our hands on the Chadbourne & Parke bonus memo, but a firm spokesperson confirmed what the general numbers look like. According to the spokesperson:

“Our bonuses are on Cravath, Half-Skadden, scale. Individual bonus determinations are based upon individual performance and pro rated for part time attorneys and attorneys who have been with the firm for less than the full year.”

I wonder if somewhere, Cravath’s Evan Chesler is thinking about ways to kill me?

Meanwhile, Chadbourne also announced a salary freeze:

As you know, the world economic outlook for 2009 is uncertain. Accordingly, as a matter of prudence, the Firm is reserving decision on associate salary levels for 2009. We will make a decision on this matter within the next several months as the global economic picture becomes clearer.

Half-Skadden bonus, Latham salary — but no layoffs, so there’s that to be happy about.

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of associate bonuses
Prior ATL coverage of associate salary freezes

* Today, there were layoffs at Choate. No, not that Choate (well maybe that Choate, it’s not like that Choate is Andover or Exeter) but the other Choate. [Boston Common Law]

* Traffic stats of law blogs. Yay readers! [Avvo]

* I wonder if I would understand this better if I had ever seen the inside of a courtroom? [Courtoons]

* They’ve revoked Wesley Snipes’s passport. Could someone please take away his SAG card as well? [TaxProf Blog]

* This would never happen at GULC. [Litination]

* I can’t promo this link any better than this: “LaBeouf needs La Chauffeur!” [Popsquire]

Lindsay Harrison at One First Street. Photo by Patrice Gilbert.

To paraphrase the controversial Campari ads at issue in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell (aka The People vs. Larry Flynt), everyone remembers “their first time” — arguing in open court, that is. It’s a rite of passage that all young litigators must go through. At large law firms, associates (or even junior partners) typically tackle something minor for their first oral argument — e.g., a non-critical discovery motion — and then work their way up the ladder.

But that’s not the case for everyone; some people start at the top. Meet Lindsay C. Harrison. She’s a fifth-year associate in the D.C. office of Jenner & Block, who just had her very first oral argument — which happened to be in the U.S. Supreme Court. On Wednesday, she appeared before the nine justices to argue the case of Nken v. Mukasey (or, technically, Nken v. Filip; more on the name changes later).

Read our interview with Lindsay Harrison, after the jump.

Free food. Free drink. Ample networking opportunities. What’s not to like?

Practical Law Company (PLC) — a U.K.-based company that just started offering its services here in the U.S., which we’ll be writing more about later — is holding a launch party next week here in New York. The festivities will be attended law firm folks (partners and associates), in-house lawyers, legal journalists, and others connected to the profession. The party will be held on Wednesday, January 28, from 6:30 to 10 p.m.

If you’d like to attend, please RSVP. The first 25 ATL readers to respond will be placed on the guest list. If you’re in the first 25, you’ll receive a confirmation email. (We will also append an update to this post after all the spots are filled.)

If your firm canceled its holiday party last year, here’s your chance to chuckle at inebriated law firm partners. Several members of the ATL crew will be in attendance. We hope to see you there!

P.S. Disclosure: PLC is an ATL advertiser.

Update: The 25 spots have been filled. Thanks for your interest!

The Innovation Agenda: Practical Law Company Sets Up Shop in NYC [Am Law Daily]

Last weekend, while most of you were lining up for the Inauguration, a few oddballs were elsewhere, engaging in nuptial activities. Obviously, pretty much every superstar lawyer in the country was preparing to report for duty in the incoming administration, so we must warn you that this week’s wedding announcements are a little short on prestige. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t lots of weirdness and dysfunction to mull over.

Here are this week’s finalists:

1. Rachel Natelson and Seth Fogelman

2. Courtney Shea and Stephen Ball Jr.

3. Elyssa Sims and Vincent Dunleavy

More about these newlyweds, after the jump.

Latham & Watkins might be leading the charge for salary freezes, but that’s not going to stop the firm from paying out associate bonuses. Right?

Latham is not a lockstep bonus firm. As a tipster explains it:

Our bonuses are not lock-step- so those people working their tails off usually do end up doing better than market … It’s usually those who are at the threshold (1900 hours) who do worse than market or get no bonus at all.

Well bonus information just went out and it looks like those hours thresholds have shifted. Latham goes through great (and ultimately futile) lengths to make sure that the firm’s bonus information doesn’t appear in the press. A tipster explains:

The way they announced them was via an email with a link in it that took you to a page that listed both your specific bonus, as well as an “un-cut-and-pasteable” bonus memo.

After the jump, we post the first screenshot of the Latham bonus structure.

Thus far, the University of Chicago Law School has been immune to the fever of grade reform. While other law schools bend over backwards to make the same level of education look better on a transcript, Chicago has held the line.

But it’s not like U of C Law is just ignoring the economic realities of the day. Another trend among top law schools it to make their on-campus interview process start earlier so firms don’t “fill up” on other candidates. Chicago is officially moving in that direction:

The fall 2009 on-campus interview program may seem very far away during the Chicago winter, but the Office of Career Services has begun planning in order to maximize your opportunities during this important phase of the job market for students exploring law firm careers. This planning has led to a notable calendar change: The University of Chicago Law School’s fall on-campus interviews will be held August 17-28, with an orientation to the program scheduled for August 15th.

After the jump, Chicago Law makes its intentions clear — but there are other problems with changing the timing of OCI.

Yesterday, I mentioned that Fortune released a list of the Top 100 places to work. In that post I failed to note that Perkins Coie was ranked 82nd on that list.

According to Fortune:

A support staffer gave this impressive list of her benefits: $2,000 in technology flex plan allowance, $80 for wellness program participation, $475 for 20th anniversary with firm, $1,500 performance bonus, $50 Nordstrom gift card, $3,500 year-end bonus.

Well, tipsters report that Perkins Coie management is pumped about the news. Check out the firm-wide email and fun tipster responses after the jump.

The London-based “Magic Circle” firms may have had a strong presence on the 2008 global law firm rankings, but a few of them are off to a rough start in 2009. Earlier this month, we reported, “having already laid off 20 New York litigators, Clifford Chance today let go of 70 - 80 London lawyers.”

The layoff disease has spread to two other Magic Circle firms. Layoffs were announced in the New York office of Allen & Overy yesterday. Our sources says:

Allen & Overy just fired two paralegals and three attorneys in the NY office. These firings are said to be “performance based.” Word on the street is that there will be more, but they will come in bits and pieces to avoid bad press. Rumors have already started about other attorneys being let go in offices abroad.

[UPDATE (Jan. 26, 10:34 a.m.]: In response to our inquiry about layoffs, A&O spokesperson Jaime Bruck says, “This is nothing more than the normal management of our business. We don’t comment on the reasons for individual departures. The total # of attorneys in NY is 171.”]

And Linklaters plans layoffs soon. The Old World firm is going “New World” by axing 70 partners and 10 percent of its associates, reports The Lawyer:

Linklaters’ top management is to drastically overhaul the firm’s structure, slashing up to 70 partners and 10 per cent of associates in a bid to become a smaller, more profitable operation.

The programme, understood to be called Linklaters New World, will also see redundancies among support staff. The firm’s offices in Western Europe are thought to be most vulnerable to cuts.

Those layoffs could start as soon as February.

With the Guardian reporting that “Britain has officially entered recession for the first time since 1991,” the layoff news from London seems inevitable. But some of the firms in the circle— Freshfields and Slaughter & May— are still feeling magical. Good news from those firms, after the jump.

* Governor Patterson has chosen Kirsten Gillibrand, a 42-year-old New York congresswoman to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate. [Reuters]

* On the 36th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade protestors gather for the annual March for Life on the National Mall. [The Los Angeles Times]

* The Senate has confirmed six members of Obama’s cabinet but Attorney General-designate Eric Holder is still waiting. [The Associated Press]

* Blagojevich may file a lawsuit challenging “unfair” Senate trial rules to the state Supreme Court. [The Washington Post]

* Obama ordered the Justice Department to review the case of an accused al-Qaida agent, the only enemy combatant held on US soil. [The Associated Press]

Quips a tipster: “Dreier gets $20 million bond — but he didn’t steal enough to pay. This guy is no Madoff.”

Dreier Gets $20 Million Bond [Bloomberg]
Dreier to Remain in Jail [Am Law Daily]
Judge Says No to Bail Request; Dreier to Stay Behind Bars [WSJ Law Blog]

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Marc Dreier

* Well, surely this will be the most disturbing image anyone sees today. [Quiz Law]

* Orin Kerr defends the third-party doctrine, which holds that “a person cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy in information disclosed to a third party.” We like the sound of that. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Traffic stats on popular professorial blogs! [TaxProf Blog]

* Fascinating interview with a Venable partner who was on the U.S. Air flight that landed in the Hudson. [AmLaw Daily]

* Will Obama be good for the cause of criminal justice? [Underdog]

* Illinois’ state legislature is going to consider abolishing the death penalty there. But probably not until after they get done with Blago right? You know, why take that club out of the bag? [My Law Life]

America, welcome to your new national nightmare: a country run on the thinking instilled by Harvard Law School.

Noam Scheiber’s brilliant article in the New Republic takes the first stab at capturing what this turn of events could mean for the direction of the country. After pointing out some obvious differences between the Bush 41-Clinton transition and the Bush 43-Obama transition, Scheiber explains:

But part of the explanation also lies in the elite institutions that socialized them—namely Harvard and Yale, their respective law schools. The two schools stand on opposite sides of a cultural chasm in the academic world. Even more than that, they stand for different theories of governing.

Obviously, Scheiber makes his argument by using broad generalizations about the two schools’ methods of education. Yale is portrayed as intellectually curious if a bit absent minded and unstructured. Harvard is austere and disciplined and a place where happiness goes to die.

Individual experiences will certainly vary. As John Matteson offered in the Sunday Times:

I can’t tell whether Barack Obama suffered into self-knowledge at Harvard Law the way I did. Whereas I never discovered an academic comfort zone in Roscoe Pound Hall, he became president of The Law Review — a feat of intelligence and dedication I can regard only with awe.

The generalizations about the two law schools have particular import though. Remember, Obama is seemingly bringing the entire HLS faculty with him to Washington.

Additional thoughts after the jump.

Tulane Law School finished third in our post about the Top Law Schools of the Year.

Apparently, they took that as a challenge. Some of the law students there decided to throw a little party. From Guanabee:

It’s racist party pics of a bunch of white law students at Tulane University dressing up like Mexican caricatures. It seems last weekend the President of the Tulane Student Bar Association…. attended (or threw?) a party whose theme was “The Border” according to a tipster who attends the same school. These pictures were posted on [her] Facebook profile under the title, “No we will not die like dogs! We will fight like lions!” Because Mexicans are a caricature from The Three Amigos.

Geez guys, if you want to make ATL that badly, you could always just steal another shoe.

I guess some people are not clear on the rules, so let me help those people out. If you are already clear on the rules, please skip right to the jump, to see the blatant rule violations that were posted on Facebook.

Anyway, if you absolutely must dress up as a racial stereotype, you first need to ask yourself:

A) Are you a mascot?
B) Is it Halloween?

If you answer “no” to both questions, then you generally cannot mock other ethnic groups via costume, unless:

1) You’re “one-eighth” of the ethnic group you are mocking and can provide sufficient documentation to that effect upon request.
2) You’re in a play or some other performance piece and can legitimately blame directorial choices for your dress.
3) You’re trying to make a crushingly ironic point about the currently state of world affairs (a/k/a The New Yorker Exception).
But note that if you are applying under the guidelines set forth in subsection three, you can still legitimately be called out by others who aren’t in on the joke.

That is all. Pictures after the jump.

K&L Gates associates have not heard about their 2008 bonus or their 2009 raises yet. Bonus news is historically late at the firm, and raise news should come in March.

In the meantime, associates got an unexpected bonus along with their second paycheck of the year. This is an excerpt from the e-mail associates received yesterday:

Please see the email below regarding an error with the direct deposit of the January 22nd payroll. In short the issue is that your payroll appears to have been deposited 3 times and the firm is in the process of request [sic] 2 of those be returned. So, please be careful not to spend more then your normal pay until you see that they [sic] corrections have been made to your account.

On the downside, K&L uses an inept payroll company. On the upside, the firm’s cash flow must be nice and healthy if it can afford to triple pay all of its associates. Indeed, as we reported yesterday, profits per partner at K&L are up.

The associate who sent the e-mail along to us is a brave one:

they said they’d take it out by early next week. i think i could head up to atlantic city. triple it. then put it back in my account by next monday.

Sounds like a plan to us. Not a good plan, but a plan. Full e-mail from the director of payroll after the jump.

Fortune has released its annual list of the top 100 companies to work for. Despite the general feeling of malaise in the legal industry, a few law firms made the cut.

The highest ranked law firm (number 21 overall) is Arnold & Porter. Fortune reports:

Law firm offers world-class benefits to staff and attorneys: 18 weeks’ paid leave for maternity and adoption, $5,000 for adoption fees, $30,000 for fertility services, free onsite fitness center, on- and off-site child care.

I guess a salary freeze that their peer Vault 20 firms are largely avoiding doesn’t trump a free gym.

Fortune also released a list of the top 20 companies that are great places to work and still hiring. … No law firms made that list.

So I guess we’ll focus on other law firms in the top 100 after the jump.

A couple of weeks ago we reported that Mayer Brown’s failure to reflect a salary increase in associates’ initial January paycheck could be an indication of a coming salary freeze. A tipster told us:

Today was the first pay day in 2009 for Mayer Brown NY. In the past, our first pay check of the year automatically reflected salary increases. No such increase today. Smells like a pay freeze?!?

In response, some commenters made it very clear that the failure to increase salaries in January had nothing at all to do with a salary freeze:

The fact that THIS year you don’t have an increase yet WITHOUT any firmwide announcement (which has NEVER happened, btw) doesn’t mean anything. It is what happens normally at every other MB office every year (and also has happened in NYC in the past). Sure, it is possible (maybe even probable) that MB will announce a freeze, but keep your panties on; the fact that a raise isn’t in your paycheck doesn’t mean anything other than that there hasn’t been an announcement yet (which we already knew). Hence, this is not newsworthy.

A firm spokesperson even jumped in on the general theme:

Mayer Brown spokesman Bob Harris says the firm “has not yet announced its plans for lawyer compensation in 2009” and that it usually makes the decision in February.

A funny thing happened on the way to the normal, put the panties on, non-announcement of a decision usually made in February that is not at all newsworthy: about an hour ago, Mayer Brown announced a salary freeze.

In this market, it might be time to rethink previous definitions of normalcy.

Read the full memo after the jump.

Honestly, we’re not trying to pile on Cadwalader, but they just keep making news.

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog is reporting today that the firm has fired nine associates: three in New York and six in Charlotte:

“Cadwalader confirms limited terminations of a few associates in the Charlotte and New York offices; and adjustments to our Charlotte-only compensation schedule,” wrote firm spokeswoman Nicky McHugh in an email.

There are still associates in Charlotte? Maybe they should have taken the pay cut.

Our tipsters report that most of the layoffs hit the real estate practice group.

How are Cadwalader associates dealing with all the bad news? We’ve heard rumors of everything from Career Builder to Duck Hunt. Let us know about your Cadwalader coping mechanisms.

Cadwalader to Cut Nine More Associates [WSJ Law Blog]

Earlier: More Pain Coming to Cadwalader?
Prior ATL coverage of law firm layoffs

[Ed. Note: The following piece was authored by “The Legal Tease” of Sweet Hot Justice fame. You can check out all of Legal Tease’s other musings from Sweet Hot Justice here.]

My first intervention went down pretty much exactly like the ones you see on TV. Well, except that there were no cameras. Or tears. Or therapists. And it took place in a shoebox office in a law firm instead of, say, in my living room, surrounded by friends and family. Still, the core elements were the same: I had a serious issue and it needed addressing. No, I wasn’t a junkie, or an alcoholic, or addicted to fetish porn. My issue was far more dangerous. More destructive. More worthy, apparently, of the powers that be at the firm stepping in to make sure the situation didn’t get further out of control.

The issue? My billable hours were too high.

It was a couple of years ago, when it was actually possible to have billable hours, no less ones that were too high. The day started like any other: sitting at my desk on three hours’ sleep, mourning my former life as a person who…had a life, and wading through diligence for a massive public company merger that had consumed every billable, no less waking, hour of my life since I’d started working at the firm a few months back. I heard a knock on my door and looked up to see Bess, a senior associate I’d never met, smiling at my door.

“Hey there!” she chirped. “How’s it going?”

I looked down at the heaps of SEC filings covering every inch of my desk. How does it look like it’s going?

She kept smiling. “Sooo, gotta sec?”

No. “Sure.”

“Great! I figured we could just go grab a coffee and talk for a bit.” Oh, Jesus Christ. What the hell is this about? I don’t have time for this.

Turns out, that was the whole point.

Having a life, after the jump.

[This article was written by Miguel Escobar. Miguel is a Director in Lateral Link’s New York office.]

You’ve done it! You’ve landed that coveted interview you first envisioned when entering the lateral market. Following up on previous “Ask the Experts” columns discussing the importance of thorough and meticulous interview preparation, let’s now address some common pitfalls to avoid during this potentially career-making interview. We’ll highlight 5 this week and 5 more next week.

(1). Dissing Your Current Firm. Do not focus on negative feelings you may have about your current firm, its Partners or your fellow Associates. Never make your desire to transition into a personal issue. Focus instead on your substantive reasons for wanting to make a lateral move. Some good reasons to move to another firm include: a desire for more hands-on responsibility and sense of ownership over your caseload, a desire for more growth opportunities and interaction with clients, a desire to focus or specialize in a particular field or even a desire to join the more tight-knit atmosphere of a smaller boutique. Be humble and stress that you have learned a great deal at your current firm but are now simply ready for the next step in your career.

(2). Mentioning billable hours. It’s entirely possible that your current job demands 2600 billable hours per year. It’s also entirely possible that this is your main (and rather understandable) reason for seeking a new position. Nonetheless, do not make the critical mistake of mentioning a desire for better hours as your motivation for choosing a new firm. While your desire for less demanding, “lifestyle” hours may be entirely reasonable, Hiring Partners aren’t eager to hire Associates who complain about their difficult hours.

More after the jump.

* Obama made the order to close Guantanamo within a year and former U.S. attorney David Iglesias has been hired to prosecute suspected terrorists held at the prison. [The Associated Press]

* Caroline Kennedy withdrew her Senate bid, so all that press was much ado about nothing. [The New York Times]

* The Chinese court sentenced two to death and one to a life prison sentence for their role in the tainted milk scandal. [The International Herald Tribune]

* SCOTUS refused to reconsider COPA Wednesday, and agreed that a Massachusetts family could sue the school district for sex discrimination.[The Associated Press]

* A Bank of America shareholder is accusing the bank of withholding information about Merrill Lynch’s $15.3 billion in losses before the shareholders voted on its acquisition. [Bloomberg]

The second time was a charm. Constitutional crisis averted.

Okay, it was hardly a “constitutional crisis.” But it was probably wise to take a mulligan on the oath, to avoid crackpot claims of illegitimacy. In the words of law professor Jonathan Turley, who recommended retaking the oath:

He should probably go ahead and take the oath again. If he doesn’t, there are going to be people who for the next four years are going to argue that he didn’t meet the constitutional standard. I don’t think it’s necessary, and it’s not a constitutional crisis. This is the chief justice’s version of a wardrobe malfunction.

Turley seems to place blame for the screw-up on Chief Justice Roberts, as does CNN (see their headline below). Based on the results of yesterday’s reader poll, ATL readers concur.

Obama retakes oath of office after Roberts’ mistake [CNN]
Experts say Obama should retake the oath [San Francisco Chronicle]
Reading of the Presidential Oath, Take Two? [WSJ Law Blog]

Earlier: Whoops. How does that Constitution go?

Are you familiar with Second Life? It’s a virtual world where real people can interact and do business with other real people, without the pesky interference of “the mortal coil.”

Santa Clara Law has decided to take this phenomenon to what I suppose is its logical conclusion. Competing to attract the best students, Santa Clara will host an application workshop in Second Life tomorrow. From the press release:

Posing as her own self-created avatar, “Penny Canucci,” SCU Law School Dean of Admissions Jeanette Leach will play host to prospective students who sign in for the event, taking place from 6 to 8 p.m. at “Santa Clara Island” on Second Life.

They’ll view a video welcome from Santa Clara Law Dean Donald Polden (appearing in real-life video footage, not as an avatar). After Leach’s workshop, participants will be able to ask questions of the admissions office staff and gather information about applying to Santa Clara Law.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. And when dealing with a digital generation that finds face-to-face interaction “a little weird,” I guess your only choice is to jack into the Matrix.

More on Santa Clara’s Second Life strategy after the jump.

If you missed our recent event with Chief Judge Alex Kozinski (9th Cir.) in Los Angeles, and if you’re here in New York, feel free to swing by Columbia Law School at around noon tomorrow:

A Judge in Full: Personality and Jurisprudence

When: Thursday, January 22, at 12:10 PM
Speakers: The Honorable Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, Ninth Circuit; David Lat, Founder, Above the Law
Where: JG 106, Columbia Law School, 435 West 116th St. (at Amsterdam Ave.)
Cost: Free and open to the public. Lunch will be served.

Thanks to the Columbia Law School Federalist Society for hosting the event. We hope to see you tomorrow.

Update: If you missed the talk, here’s a write-up, from Ben Hallman of the American Lawyer.

A Judge in Full: Personality and Jurisprudence [Columbia Law School Federalist Society]

Earlier: Kozinski & Lat: The Podcast

* Scientific research is now available about people who post “first” in the comments. [Graph Jam]

* Given my flare flair for misspellings and grammatical train wrecks, I’ve got a lot of sympathy for President Obama and Chief Justice Roberts. Don’t let the commenters get you down, guys! [Language Log]

* Litigation is up in response to the faltering economy. In other breaking news, I’m freaking freezing. [May it Please the Court]

* How many associates got a first draft of the MLK Day closing memo? [Courtoons]

* Maybe President Obama reads ATL? He just froze salaries too. [Law and More]

We reported earlier today that Cooley Godward laid off a number of attorneys and staff. The firm just sent out its official press release, and it turns out the cuts run even deeper than we previously reported.

According to the firm, 52 attorneys and 62 staff were let go today:

Given the continued slowdown we have experienced in pockets of the Firm over the last five months and the forecast for continuing global economic turmoil in 2009, the Executive and Management Committees concluded that a reduction is necessary at this time. At all levels throughout the Firm we strive to provide an opportunity for everyone to grow professionally and at an appropriate pace. It was the collective judgment of the Firm’s management that in the current environment we would compromise our ability to achieve that goal without reducing the Firm’s headcount across the board.

Our tipsters report that the San Diego office was particularly hard hit. In addition, a commenter said that New York took it on the chin as well.

Read the full Cooley release after the jump. Good luck to all those let go today.

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of law firm layoffs

Today there were white powder scares at some venerable institutions. The Wall Street Journal editors were targeted this morning, as were professors at Harvard Law School. Many tipsters believe that Professor Alan Dershowitz was targeted.

HLS just sent around this message reassuring students:

Dear members of the HLS Community,

Earlier today, a letter delivered to an office on the Fifth floor of Hauser Hall was opened by a faculty assistant and was found to contain some white powder. The university police and the Cambridge police department were notified and responded to the scene immediately, along with the Cambridge Fire Department and the university’s Environmental Health & Safety team.

There is no indication of adverse effects to any of the people who were in the vicinity of the letter when it was opened. Samples have been taken for laboratory testing by the investigating authorities.

While testing has yet to be completed, the authorities have concluded and informed the law school, based on the investigation thus far, that they do not believe that an evacuation of Hauser Hall is warranted. Nevertheless, because the investigation is ongoing, caution and prudence require that the fifth floor of the building remain off limits until the investigators have cleared the scene. Moreover, in order to minimize the possibility of interference with the investigators and responders, the law school administration is asking that anyone intending to study or conduct
business in Hauser not do so until further notice informing the community that the building can once again be accessed freely.

Any students and staff presently in Hauser should feel free to leave if they so choose. Classes scheduled in Hauser later today or this evening, are being rescheduled, and any affected individuals or groups should contact the office of the Registrar for further information regarding new locations for those activities.

We will continue to update the community as we learn more.

I know Professor Dershowitz a little. Intimidating this man is not an option. In fact, Dersh is more likely to defend these powder sending yahoos and use the case as an educational opportunity for his students than he is to lose sleep over this nonsense.

Next time, you best bring kryptonite.

We’re glad to hear everybody is safe.

Yesterday’s staff layoff post generated a lot of tips and rumors. Please keep them coming. It appears that staffs are taking it on the chin even worse than associates and partner profit margins.

While we are still playing “fact or fiction” with some of the rumors, we can now report these additional staff reductions around the world of Biglaw.

First off, Julie Kay at the National Law Journal reports that Squire Sanders laid off a number of staff from a variety of positions:

Alvin Davis, managing partner of Squire Sanders’ Miami office, said on Friday that Miami employees laid off at the firm on Thursday include “a couple runners, some staffers and a few people in accounting.”

Times are so bad firms can’t even afford the accountants who tell them how bad times are.

There were conflicting reports as to whether any attorneys got caught in the crossfire:

But while Davis said no lawyers were laid off, sources inside the firm said that lawyers indeed had been laid off, but were still working at the firm until they find jobs elsewhere.

After the jump, more staff layoff news.

No Gropius dorms for her, thank you very much. Harvard Law School student Cate Edwards, oldest daughter of prominent politician John Edwards, just purchased a million-dollar property in Washington’s tony Georgetown neighborhood.

From an item in Washingtonian:

Buyer: Harvard law student Cate Edwards.

Famous dad: Former presidential hopeful John Edwards.

Price: $1.3 million.

Amenities: Two bedrooms, five baths.

An NPR internship with Nina Totenberg doesn’t pay like a summer associate gig. Perhaps Cate was able to draw upon the fortune amassed by her father during his career as a top trial lawyer.

The property has two bedrooms and five bathrooms. A high bathroom-to-bedroom ratio is a token of a luxuriousness. But does Cate really need all those bathrooms? Does Papa Edwards — who might crash occasionally at Cate’s place, having sold his own mansion around the corner in 2006 (for $5.2 million) — really have that much ickiness to wash off?

The children of Senators Ted Kennedy and John Warner also snapped up some swank properties. Read about them over at Washingtonian.

Chips off the Old Blocks [Washingtonian]
No Conflict? NPR’s Nina Totenberg Takes on John Edwards Daughter As Summer Intern [NewsBusters.org]

When the ATL inbox is on fire, there is a lot of smoke somewhere out there in legal community.

Tipsters report that Cooley Godward has decided to make significant layoffs today. Tipsters that work at the firm place the numbers as high as 10 percent of associates and staff. That could put the overall number of layoffs into the fifties. The laid off employees will have to be out by the end of the week. They’re being given a 3 month severance package.

Cooley Godward spokespeople could not be reached for immediate comment.

But other tipsters report that attorneys were told that the layoffs were based on the economy, not anybody’s individual performance. The layoffs are also understood to affect all offices and some departments (like IP transactional) that one wouldn’t necessarily expect.

We will update you as more information comes to light.

The now confirms that there were layoffs today, more than we reported here. The firm says that 52 attorneys and 62 staff were let go. Check here for continuing coverage.

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of law firm layoffs

A couple of internal emails came across our desk today, heralding good news — at least for the partners.

Profits per Partner are up at WilmerHale:

PPP are $1,080,000, which is up from last year by a little bit. Also, 6.7% of total hours billed by the firm were to pro bono matters.

And the firm is passing some of those profits back down to associates. Individualized bonus memos are making the rounds at WilmerHale today, and at 2000 hours associates will be receiving a Cravath level bonus. Our Boston based sources are pretty happy with that.

Perhaps more importantly, WilmerHale announced that they will not be freezing salaries. So while associates at Goodwin Procter will be getting a better bonus, WilmerHale associates will be getting pay raises that are reflected in their February paychecks.

White & Case also shows a revenue increase after the jump.

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

Dear ATL, I have a soft addiction to Facebook, Gmail and online dating sites. My firm doesn’t block the sites and I can’t help spending hours a day procrastinating on them. I wanted to ask the IT department to block these sites, but I’m afraid of being the girl who blocked J-date. Do you think I should do it?

Unplugged

Dear Unplugged,

We all learned about the “tragedy of the commons” in property class: the phenomenon whereby people acting selfishly destroys a common resource, like a public park or the ATL comment threads.

In asking IT to block Facebook, Gmail and Jdate, you’re inherently being selfish. In doing so, you alert IT and ultimately the partnership to the notion that other associates may also be wasting time on the internet. The firm may then block these sites on a firm-wide basis, essentially punishing those associates who check their online dating profile no more than twice an hour and who dutifully set their Gchat status to “busy/you may be interrupting.” The catastrophe that would ensue from complete blockage would likely be on par with the cursed day that Friendster accidentally revealed whose profiles people had been checking. Not pretty.

Firms may not realize until it’s too late that they’re cutting too wide a swath by getting rid of social networking sites. Take away Facebook, and how will people know if someone from middle school is now In a Relationship or ate Thai food for lunch? We won’t. Without this critical information, lawyers simply cannot do their jobs effectively. Might as well cancel Lexis and look for the latest legal developments in the crusty Pacific Reporter 2d. In fact, while we’re at it, why not toss computers altogether and go back to drafting motions through cave paintings.

So before you run down to IT and tell them to shut off the internet, why don’t you stop thinking about yourself for once and consider your co-workers. They use the internet too.

Your friend,

Marin

We have detailed that spate of partner defections from Cadwalader in recent weeks. But how are things going for associates on the ground? In the Cadwalader litigation department, at least it’s not particularly busy. A tipster reports:

Learned at a CWT Litigation Department associates-only meeting held at 2:00 [last week]: Everyone was anxious about the lack of work in the Litigation Department. One of the reps took a poll and no one in the room was currently staffed on a securities fraud matter. This raised serious concerns about the department.

But as Lestat might say: Cadwalader is going to give associates the choice I never had:

Based on 2008 productivity, some associate salaries will be frozen. Others in slow departments will be asked to take a pay cut if they want to stay. So there will be some 8th, 7th and 6th years who were slow in 2008 who will be dropped two or three class years.

Pop quiz senior associates. What do you do?

Earlier: Musical Chairs: Bruce Zirinsky and John Bae from Cadwalader to Greenberg Traurig
Musical Chairs: Cadwalader Loses More Lawyers

President Obama made a pretty interesting statement in yesterday’s inaugural address:

Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished.

But based on last week’s ATL / Lateral Link survey, which asked you how many hours you billed last year, these words of inspiration might not quite fit the legal profession. As we noted last week, more than a quarter of respondents were unable to bill even 1800 hours last year.

And many commenters suggested that the situation will be more dire in 2009:

Hitting 2000 hours for 2008 was doable because the bulk of the slow-down didn’t occur until September/October. Only because I had very high hours before then was I able to just barely hit 2000 hours for the year. 2009 will be much worse. I’m worried.

what are these “billable hours” of which you speak? i keep hearing they’re good to have, but i can’t find them anywhere. i’ve looked under the rug and everything!

Other commenters pointed out that even 2008 was probably a worse year financially than last week’s survey suggests:

It is hard to tell how busy associates really were based on this data. One problem is that “billable hour” may mean different things at different firms. At some firms “billable hour” = client billable hours only. But many firms give billable hours credit for pro bono, recruitment and professional development work. I would be curious to see how much CLIENT BILLABLE hours associates had in 2008 and what they are expecting for 2009.

Also, pro bono hours are way up, which is great for our day-to-day feeling of some accomplishment, but not as great for our future viability.

In today’s survey, we’ll focus on both issues: how much of your “billable” work last year was really for “CLIENT BILLABLE” time, and what do you think 2009 will look like?

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

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

[Ed Note: Yesterday, Hope showed us what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting real. Today, she offers some solutions. Check out yesterday’s column here]

Here is what I am going to do to pass the time while we weather this storm:

1) Meditate - My anxiety-ridden friend Pablo is going to start going to meditation class with me on Thursday nights at the Unitarian church. Instead of pounding aloe martinis (love), we’re going to grab our mats and visualize good things and talk to people that we are told to imagine. We’re gonna get some spirituality! And meditation class is way cheaper than going out for cocktails; you just give a donation at the door. (I hope Pablo gives a donation. He was cheap even in the good times.) I’m so into the meditation thing that I’m Type A’ing it and going to a real ashram. Ashrams, my friends, are the new spas - sans the elegant soap, fluffy towels and private showers.

2) Giving What You Can - I’m going to donate some clothes to the church I never go to but belong to but it’s okay because I’m getting my spirituality now through the Unitarian Church lady who tells me to listen to the man whispering in my ear about compassion and acceptance. And I gave a full Metro card to the nonprofit I volunteer for. In the past I would help by holding fundraisers at posh boutiques where I used to shop … but that trite maneuver aint gonna fly during the world financial collapse, so I’m giving subway tokens instead. Give what you can. You may feel broke, but there are a lot more people who are more broke than you. And save your receipts. Charity a good tax deduction, and everyone is going to be audited this year. Treasury aint going to give us a bailout or even a return - that’s all went to AIG.

After the jump, more hope from Hope.

Last night we wrote about some of the top-notch talent that will be filling senior legal positions in the Obama Administration. These are big names, and you probably also read about them in big publications, like the Legal Times or the Wall Street Journal.

ATL is willing to drill down deeper. We now bring you personnel news at more junior levels. If you graduated law school in the past 15 or even 10 years, you might actually know some of these people.

Our prior post focused on two of the most prestigious parts of the Department of Justice: the Solicitor General’s office, and the Office of Legal Counsel. We now turn our attention to two other top offices: the White House Counsel’s office, and the office of the Deputy Attorney General.

Over 300,000 people applied for 3,300 positions in the Obama administration. After going through a ridiculous screening process, these fine folks landed 20 of the most coveted legal jobs in the country.

See if you know any of them, after the jump.

* Lawyers are winning in the long rivalry between lawyers and bankers. Endless financial fraud cases make lawyers look ethical. There is another fraud charge in Philadelphia against money manager Joseph Forte. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]

* The SEC is investigating Apple’s disclosures about CEO Steve Jobs’ health, to make sure the company did not mislead investors. [Bloomberg]

* The point man for Madoff’s investor Frank DiPascali will now be the go-to guy for prosecutors investigating the scheme. [The Wall Street Journal]

* Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Apeals to review his 19 convictions. [The Houston Chronicle]

* A Czech businessman settled a suit filed against him by hedge fund Omega advisors, after he alegedly bribed government officials in Azerbaijan, defrauding investors hundreds of millions. [The New York Times]

* In the aftermath of India’s Enron—the Satyam scandal, the Indian government will likely rescue Satyam’s workers from losing their jobs. [Time.com]

* SEC chairman Christopher Cox resigned in the wake of scrutiny of the SEC for failing to investigate allegations in the Madoff scandal. [The Associated Press]

President Barack Obama has hit the ground running. Even before President Obama was done flubbing taking the oath of office, the revamped White House website was launched. You can check the WH website, including the new “Briefing Room” blog, for news of notable nominations and appointments.

We’ll also follow personnel news here on Above the Law, at least with respect to leading lawyers (most of them bound for the Department of Justice and the White House Counsel’s office). We’ve covered some notable nominations already. E.g, Eric Holder for attorney general; Elena Kagan for solicitrix general; Cass Sunstein for regulatory czar; and Kathy Ruemmler for PADAG.

A few more names have surfaced since then. Some of them pertain to the Office of Legal Counsel, the most prestigious DOJ component to work for other than the Solicitor General’s office (and arguably more powerful). We once dubbed OLC the Finishing School for the Elect:

If you don’t land a Supreme Court clerkship that immediately follows your feeder judge clerkship, cool your heels at the OLC, then reapply to the Court. Success is practically guaranteed!

As previously reported, with the Senate’s consent, the headmistress of the Finishing School will be Dawn Johnsen (pictured). Professor Johnsen teaches law at Indiana University - Bloomington and served at OLC during the Clinton Administration, as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Deputy Assistant Attorney General, so she is well-prepared for the job. When we spoke at IU almost two years ago, students we met were already speculating that Professor Johnsen — described as a “brilliant” scholar, even if not the clearest or most effective classroom teacher — might someday return to government.

Professor Johnson will be joined by two more academics: Professor David Barron, of Harvard Law School, and Professor Marty Lederman, of Georgetown Law School. To learn more about their appointments, see Politico and Balkinization, respectively. Professor Lederman may be familiar to many of you as an active contributor in the legal blogosphere, having blogged for Balkinization and SCOTUSblog.

Since President Obama is a former legal academic, it should come as no surprise that he’s recruiting so many law profs to join the upper echelons of his administration. The marquee names of Kagan, Sunstein, Johnsen, Barron and Lederman will also be joined by one of the brightest young stars of the legal firmament: Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal (pictured), of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld fame. As reported by the Legal Times (via the WSJ Law Blog), wunderkind Katyal has been tapped to serve as Elena Kagan’s right-hand man, principal deputy solicitor general.

For a comprehensive listing of the top legal eagles in the Obama Administration, see this handy round-up over at the BLT. As you can see, these are big, boldface names — gods and goddesses of our profession. Congratulations and good luck to all of them (not that they’ll need it).

We’ll have more hiring news — including items about less celestial beings, more junior lawyers, people you might actually know — in subsequent posts. If you have info to share, please email us. Thanks.

Update: Add Harvard’s Einer Elhauge to the list of legal academics bound for the Obama Administration. Details via Brian Leiter.

Marty Lederman joins the Office of Legal Counsel [Balkinization]
Katyal Tapped as Principal Deputy in SG’s Office [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]
DOJ in Flux [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]
Georgetown to Lose Lederman and Katyal to OLC, SG’s Office [WSJ Law Blog]
Another Bush critic to OLC [Politico]
More Departures from Academia to the Obama Administration: Lederman from Georgetown, Barron from Harvard [Leiter’s Law School Reports]

* Good luck Senator Kennedy. [CNN]

* A unified theory of the universe might still be some way off. But a unified bar exam? It could happen. [TaxProf Blog]

* Could somebody please explain to me how Don King got a ticket to the inauguration? [Underdog]

* Now the people at Drug and Device law thinks blogging is helpful for generated business. “You alright, I learned it by watching you.” [Drug and Device Law]

* It should be MLK day everday. Blawg Review takes a look at the promised land.
[On Being a Black Lawyer via Blawg Review]

Having traveled down to D.C. to cover the Woodstock of Washington, we’ve fallen behind a bit in our Wall Street Journal reading. So a “Science Journal” article from Friday’s edition only just came to our attention: The Brain, Your Honor, Will Take the Witness Stand.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have identified the parts of the brain that become active when we render legal decisions. The study is part of a larger $10 million three-year project funded by the MacArthur Foundation to study how “experimental brain findings may alter traditional notions of guilt, responsibility and choice.”

Vanderbilt law professor Owen Jones collaborated with researchers for the experiment. We’re guessing he came up with the legal questions posed to 16 volunteers as their brain activity was monitored with an MRI machine.Two areas of the brain became active as the guinea pigs thought about “50 hypothetical scenarios ranging from theft of a music CD to rape and murder.” It seems like 12 volunteers would have been more appropriate, perhaps with two alternates.

Any hoo. Here’s what they found:

No one part of the brain stands in judgment of others, they found. Instead, at least two areas of the brain assess guilt and assign an appropriate penalty. An area associated with analytical reasoning, called the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, became very active, they reported. But the decision process also electrified emotional circuits.

[One of the researchers] Dr. Marois found so much emotional activity during an impartial legal decision surprising. “This reasoning may not be so detached. It shattered my preconceived ideas of the legal system,” says Dr. Marois. “But for a lawyer, maybe it doesn’t.”

Our ideas of the legal system aren’t shattered. Our ideas about the insight of researchers are a bit wobbly.

More about studies to come, including one on “a group of inmates diagnosed as psychopaths,” after the jump.

As we type this, our fingers are still thawing from standing in the cold on the National Mall during today’s inauguration. The number of people willing to brave the cold was impressive. Every time President Barack Obama appeared on a jumbotron screen, the crowd went crazy with shouts of “O-bam-a” and “Yes, we did.”

The crowd quieted down in order to hear Obama take the oath of office. But what followed was a bit confusing. SCOTUS Chief Justice and now-President Barack Obama appeared to be talking over one another. In the crowd, people started asking, “Who screwed it up?”

MSNBC.com reports that Roberts is to blame:

The Constitution prescribes the text: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

But Chief Justice John Roberts, using no notes, flubbed his lines, and Obama knew it.

First, Obama jumped in before the “do solemnly swear” phrase, which seemed to throw the chief justice off his stride. Roberts rendered the next phrase as “that I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully.”

“That I will execute,” Obama repeated, then paused like a school teacher prompting his student with a slight nod. Roberts took another shot at it: “The off … faithfully the pres … the office of President of the United States.”

Is there a little pro-Obama bias there? We’re not so sure Roberts is totally to blame. As one ATL commenter says:

First Flub: Obama. Roberts proceeds with the swearing in and Obama jumps the gun before Roberts gets done. Second Flub: Roberts.

Watch the video here. What do you think?

Read the transcript from MSNBC.com, and see our take, after the jump.

A lot of pain has been dealt out to support staff at various law firms recently.

On Friday, Akin Gump slashed their support staff, laying off 65 employees. The WSJ Law Blog reported:

“There are no planned attorney layoffs,” said [Sheila Turner, a firm spokeswoman]. “But in these difficult times we of course expect to monitor the economy and staff the firm accordingly.”

Is the promise that Akin Gump won’t fire attorneys something that people can rely on? Don’t forget that Akin Gump is one of the few firms that admitted to rescinding offers to summer associates.

Meanwhile, in Indianapolis, the firm Ice Miller is making a two percent reduction in their workforce. Indiana Lawyer Daily reports:

“Over the last few months, we have been engaged in a thorough review of all aspects of our business operations in an effort to increase efficiencies and productivity to better serve our clients,” [Chief managing partner Byron Myers] said in the statement. “As a result of that review, we determined that we could consolidate some of our internal processes which resulted in much more efficient staffing requirements.”

This is the third firm in the past two months to cut support and administrative positions. Bose McKinney & Evans cut 11 support positions Jan. 9, almost 8 percent of its operational staff. It was a move that didn’t involve any attorneys but was something that law firm leaders said was necessary because of the economy.

Skadden joins the party after the jump.

No country does the “peaceful transfer of power” quite like the U.S.A.

When Hughes Hubbard released bonus information last year, a lot of associates were angry. Last year, Hughes Hubbard tied the “special bonus” to billable hours.

At the time, the firm promised that 2008 bonuses would be better.

Of course, that was before the great 2008 whatever the hell we’re living through. Few expected HHR to keep their bonus promise. But the structure that HHR released Sunday seems very generous and fair in light of market conditions:

Class of 2001 and above: Tier 1: $32,500 Tier 2: $65,000 Tier 3: $85,000 Tier 4: $105,000

Class of 2002:
Tier 1: $30,000
Tier 2: $60,000
Tier 3: $80,000
Tier 4: $100,000

Class of 2003:
Tier 1: $27,500
Tier 2: $55,000
Tier 3: $75,000
Tier 4: $95,000

Class of 2004
Tier 1: $25,000
Tier 2: $50,000
Tier 3: $70,000
Tier 4: $90,000

Class of 2005:
Tier 1:$22,500
Tier 2: $45,000
Tier 3: $ $60,000
Tier 4: $75,000

Class of 2006:
Tier 1: $20,000
Tier 2: $40,000
Tier 3: $55,000
Tier 4: $ 70,000

Class of 2007:
Tier 1: $17,500
Tier 2: $35,000
Tier 3: $50,000
Tier 4: $65,000

Tipsters are happy:

That’s pretty sweet - everyone’s pretty happy for now (although 2009 bonuses and salaries are still “under consideration”). Tier 1 is 1950 hours, tier 2 is 2100, … tier 3 is 2300 and tier 4 is 2500. … Since HHR counts pro bono hours 1 for 1 as billable, and a number of associates have TONS of pro bono it’s not quite as hard to meet the “tiers” and rake in a pretty sweet bonus.

Good news for Hughes Hubbard people. Congratulations.

Read the full memo after the jump.

So…. Here’s The Thing….

It’s kind of like what Collective Soul said a decade ago, when things were just fantastic:

Are these times contagious?
I’m never been this bored before.
Is this the prize I’ve waited for?

These days, it seems like all my friends are depressed on account of the Depression. (Or the “recession,” for those ostriches who choose to bury their heads in the sand.) It certainly doesn’t help that CNN keeps slapping Obama into FDR’s car or that every reporter declares 600,000 jobs were lost today or the “Dow hasn’t dipped this low since 1929.” Good lord. No wonder no one is spending. I’ve stopped reading the papers. It’s all just widespread panic. Pretty soon they’ll be bringing polio back, too.

And the law firms. Wow. Who ever would have thought those blue-blooded Ivy Leaguers who were doing filings and writing law review articles about all those “complex financial instruments” would now be unemployed? And each day there are more and more layoffs. Where are the acquisitions? And where are freaking derivatives? I mean you always need lawyers, right? And what: associates doing paralegal work? They don’t know how to shepardize, much less tab and hole-punch briefing books. Geez.

The Depression takes its toll, after the jump.

* Enjoy the inauguration. Even if work sucks—America is awesome. There is a lot of news concerning the inauguration, but one interesting point is that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is the “designated successor” to run the federal government in case of emergency and will not attend the inauguration. [