[Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks. Law Shucks has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.]

Alright, this is getting ridiculous. Last week, no real layoffs until Ropes & Gray got busted doing stealth layoffs at 11:00 on Friday morning. This column closes Friday afternoon, usually. We actually submitted yet another version celebrating the first week of the year without layoffs. Then Weil Gotshal went and laid off 79 staff. We’ll have to save the celebration for next week (hopefully - although we’re planning to be on the golf course, not writing).

So back to the usual roundup.

As in the general US market, the rate of law-firm layoffs (or first-time benefit applications) continues to drop, even though unemployment numbers continue to rise. So most of the cutting may be behind us, even if the growth and hiring haven’t kicked in yet. Still, this recession is far and away the worst of the past 40 years, from a jobs perspective. Check out Clusterstock for interesting chart that shows employment levels are continuing to decline 15 months after the current recession began, a point by which the 1980 recession had completely reversed its losses, 1974-76 was almost back to pre-recession levels, and the others had at least flattened out if not started trending upwards. Elie will continue to monitor Latvian hookers for signs of life. In the economy.

After the jump, there were a few other near-layoffs this week and the usual non-layoff cost-cutting measures.

Last week, we brought you the story of an intrepid New York Law School graduate who started his own business. Think cupcakes on wheels.

Today, the proprietor of Cupcake Stop, Lev Ekster, stopped by our office with his delicious wares. Yumyumyumyumyum.

[Ed. note: For the record, I really hate donuts. I don’t even particularly like sweets. I owe my girlish figure to (1) things that can be wrapped in bacon and (2) a zero tolerance policy when it comes to exercise.]

The most important part of the visit was the excellent food. Lev brought over his three best-selling creations: cookie dough, Oreo cookies ‘n cream, and red velvet. I’d never had a cookie dough cupcake, but its gustatory greatness cannot be denied. Lat preferred the cookies and cream flavor, while Kash opted to continue looking beautiful.

After we finished stuffing our faces, we sat down to talk with Mr. Ekster. Our notes from the interview, plus pictures of the cupcake-y goodness, after the jump.

* I actually saw Tamron Hall interview the Men-in-Power guy, yesterday. She totally ripped him a new one on live television. [Jane Genova]

* On the other hand, Tom Goldstein went on MSNBC and dominated. [SCOTUSblog]

* A DNA database brings us one step closer to an Orwellian universe run by CSI. [True/Slant]

* Here’s a new website devoted to all the Indian legal practitioners who are willing to do Biglaw work without Biglaw perks. [Legally India]

* From the department of “I can’t believe this hasn’t happened already,” Geeklawyer has been sued. [Geeklawyer]

* Acela Bob has made the list of “must read” law blog posts for 2009, so far. [3 Geeks and a Law Blog]

* Suing God. [Legal Toast]

* Does being massively hungover count as a sick day? Or are you supposed to drag your ass in and yack in the executive bathroom? [Young Lawyers Blog]

* She’s getting laid off, She can’t pay her debts now
And all she wants to do is dance. [What About Clients?]

* Been working, so hard. Keep punching, my card. Eight hours, for what?
Oh, tell me what I got. [Popsquire]

Last month, we mentioned the plans of Chambers and Partners, the U.K.-based publisher of law firm guides, to launch an online guide to U.S. law firms called Chambers Associate. Already well-known for its rankings of top firms in different practice areas — which firms love to tout in their PR materials, since they’re always good news — Chambers now seeks to supplement its coverage with a resource for law students and laterals.

The Chambers Associate site is now live. Enter a firm’s name in the search box to find its profile, or use the advanced search feature to find firms by region, practice area, or some other criterion.

How does Chambers Associate compare to other resources in the market? The field is already crowded, with players such as Vault and the new ATL / Lateral Link Career Center. Editor Michael Lovatt, whom we met at the NALP conference, explained Chambers Associate:

The emphasis we have gone for is away from the Vault prestige ranking model, and toward the notion that there isn’t a ‘best’ firm, rather that an individual’s specific interests and ambitions make different firms — with their various cultures, policies, practice strengths and identities — the right fit.

Getting law students and lawyers to look beyond prestige, in a profession as status-obsessed as the law, may be a challenge. But at least Chambers has done its homework:

For each firm, we write an overview based on the detailed practice area rankings from Chambers USA, then write 10 sections of editorial based on anonymous telephone interviews with a random, representative sample of junior associates at that firm. It’s an in-depth, substantive approach that we think gets under the skin of law firms in more detail than any other publication.

Present company excluded, of course; here at ATL, we pride ourselves on the ability to “get[] under the skin of law firms.” We checked out a few of the Chambers Associate profiles, and they struck us as comprehensive, if a bit tilted towards the positive.

Press release, after the jump.

Working at a firm that gets high profile work doesn’t make you immune to the ravages of the tanking economy. Above the Law can now confirm that Weil Gotshal has laid off 79 staffers. We received the following statement from a Weil spokesperson:

Effective today, the Firm has eliminated 79 administrative positions across its US offices. The decision to undertake this action has been an extremely difficult one; the fact that many peer law firms were forced to make similar moves is of little consolation. In taking these steps, we have made every possible effort to be fair-minded and those who are affected have received severance packages that provide transitional income and benefits, with access to a range of services that include healthcare and career guidance. We believe the package we have designed to assist those whose positions have been eliminated more than meets industry norms.

For those keeping score at home, this means that Weil believes it is perfectly able to handle the mega-bankruptcy work it is involved in without the benefit of extra staffers — or a fresh class of incoming associates.

If staff isn’t safe at Weil, are they safe anywhere?

The Weil statement goes on to cite cost concerns from its clients as the reason for the layoffs:

The buyers of legal services - many of whom are experiencing declining markets or even financial distress - are demanding that their service providers produce the most cost-efficient product possible. We have to be cognizant of this industry-wide expectation and plan accordingly.

Have Weil staffers been crushed under the wheel of economic efficiency? Congratulations to the survivors. Good luck to those that have been let go. Luckily, tomorrow is Saturday. Nobody gets laid off on Saturday.

Read the full statement after the jump.

We’ve been following the lawsuit filed by former Covington & Burling staff attorney Yolanda Young against Covington. She alleged that various incidents of racial discrimination derailed her Covington career.

Covington denied those claims.

Today, we have a judgment. Attorneys from Akin Gump — which represents Covington in this matter — sent out the following press release, earlier today:

United States District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton today dismissed Yolanda Young’s lawsuit against Covington & Burling LLP after Ms. Young and her attorney failed to appear for a court hearing.

Young filed her complaint in February 2009 against Covington and five of its present or former lawyers. Covington answered, denying Ms. Young’s allegations. Separately, on March 11, Covington filed a motion to strike certain of plaintiffs’ allegations on the grounds that they were false and scandalous, a motion which plaintiff neither responded to nor disputed. In addition, two of the individual lawyer defendants moved for dismissal for failure to state a claim against them, which the Court granted on May 28.

The Court on May 14 issued an order warning plaintiff that her failure to abide by the Rules and participate in a meet and confer conference might be treated as grounds for dismissal. Today’s hearing was scheduled more than two months ago. When neither Ms. Young nor her attorney, Latif Doman, appeared for the hearing or contacted the Court, Judge Walton dismissed the case without prejudice for want of prosecution.

Talk about anticlimactic.

After the jump, more details from the order.

Before we discuss this week’s finalists, here’s a peek at some of the weddings we can’t feature due to space constraints: a former Kirkland & Ellis partner marrying the youngest-looking 62-year-old we’ve ever seen, the creator of the Anonymous Lawyer blog marrying an anonymous doctor, and a Rhodes Scholar marrying an ordinary person.

The fact these couples couldn’t make the cut should tell you a little something about the quality of the field as we near the summit of the wedding season. Here are the three lucky couples who’ve reached the finals this week:

1. Kate Adamick and Kay Diaz

2. Sabrina Charles and Jamie Dycus

3. Jessica Chilson and Franklin Reece

Read more about these newlyweds, after the jump.

Although not completely immune to the downturn, intellectual property has weathered the recession better than many other practice areas. Today’s Job of the Week, brought to you by Lateral Link, is for an IP position in California. Lateral Link recently placed an attorney at this company, and they are now looking to expand their legal department with another IP attorney.

Position: Senior Corporate Counsel / Director of IP

Location: San Jose, CA

Description: The attorney will be the third attorney in the legal department and will have significant and wide-ranging responsibilities and opportunities for career advancement. The individual will primarily be responsible for intellectual property litigation management, intellectual property portfolio management, complex technology licensing and related commercial contracts.

Primary responsibilities will include managing the company’s ongoing intellectual property litigation matters, aggressively pursuing indemnification claims against suppliers and effectively defending against such claims from vendors, advising the company on IP issues, cost-effectively supervising outside counsel, developing and coordinating IP portfolio strategy for the company, negotiating complex technology licensing agreements and consulting on open-source matters. Opportunity exists to gain experience in other functional areas as well, such as corporate governance, SEC reporting, mergers and acquisitions, etc. This is a fantastic opportunity to join a well-established company and be part of an exciting group.

For more information on this position or to apply, please see Position #10569 on Lateral Link. Current members can also contact their personal search consultant directly to discuss this position. Membership in Lateral Link is free and you can apply at www.laterallink.com.

P.S. A reminder: if your firm is offering a paid deferral, please contact your Lateral Link search consultant, since Lateral Link has dozens of in-house positions for deferred attorneys.

You wouldn’t think it would be hard to find a group of unemployed Chicago lawyers these days. There are a lot of them lying around. But can they overcome the collective action problem to join together for an epic bender? Let’s turn to Craigslist to find out.

Here’s the text from an ad that went up earlier this week:

Looking for Desperate Lawyer! (Chicago Metro)

Seeking desperate lawyers to form drinking club. Job duties include drinking with the thousands of other out of work/can’t get a job/fresh from passing the bar grads like self who lack the connections/money necessary to find even minimal legal employment. Must be fluent in Scotch-Whiskey, Irish-Whiskey, Smithwicks, Bass, Harp, and any other sophisticated blue-collar drink. Occassional duties of blacking out from excess alcohol will be called upon as needed.

People who dig criminal defense and wasted hundreds on Lexis/Westlaw for their overpriced Illinois books will be given extra consideration.

Interested applicants may respond to the email listed above for further consideration.

Matt/David
www.myspace.com/mattdavidfilms

Oooh, they have a website. Let’s check out the virtual backstory after the jump.

McDermott Will & Emery is still on the $160K scale for first year associates. Summer associates arriving at MWE might have expected to be paid on the same scale throughout the summer.

But they would have been wrong.

Above the Law has been able to confirm that McDermott summers are being paid on a $135K scale, instead of $160K. A McDermott spokesperson had this to say about the cuts:

McDermott’s Summer Associates will be paid at the rate of $135,000 this year. We advised this year’s class of incoming Summer Associates that their compensation would be determined in the spring of 2009. The information regarding compensation for the summer was shared with all of the Summer Associates at the Firm upon arrival, as we have done in years past.

Sources that we spoke with didn’t feel that the salary cut was properly communicated. One tipster reports:

I’m subletting an apartment based on a $160,000 salary. The salary cut isn’t going to break me, but it would have been nice to know before I signed the papers.

Another tipster had a response that makes those of us at ATL happier:

I am now 15% more likely to tip ATL about any crap I see [at MWE] this summer.

After the jump, the McDermott spokespeople explain the reason for the cuts.

* The “Naked Cowboy,” who went after M&Ms for using his likeness, is now being sued by Gameloft. The video game maker wants a declaration that a character in its game is only “reminiscent” of the Cowboy. Perhaps Gameloft should spend its time improving its game, “New York Nights,” described as “simulat[ing] life in New York City, with tasks such moving into a Greenwich Village apartment, getting a job and navigating the city’s neighborhoods.” That’s not a game; that’s the nightmare that many of us are living these days. [Courthouse News Service]

* Personal-injury attorney Bill Marler is an Omnivore’s Delight for Washington State University. [New York Times]

* The White House scrambles to address the abortion issue and where SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor will stand on Roe v. Wade. [Washington Post]

* “Sotomayor’s sharp tongue will make her a match for Scalia.” [ABA Journal]

* Rihanna may make a court appearance in the Chris Brown assault trial. [Associated Press]

* Man charged for pissing off the IRS. [Smoking Gun]

Last night, Magic Circle firm Clifford Chance announced that Mark Kirsch, the firm’s U.S. litigation leader, is leaving the firm’s New York office. It’s unclear where he will be going next or if this is part of the trimming of the partnership ranks that Clifford Chance warned about back in February.

Given his departure, a source within the firm tells us that Clifford Chance is looking hard at the 29 associate positions in New York’s litigation group. There will be layoffs, though the total number is not yet clear. The firm plans to move quickly so those associates being let go will know who they are soon.

This is the second round of bad news for associates in the New York office within a matter of months. In March, the firm laid off 24 of its New York associates.

The firm made the announcement of impending layoffs and sent around a memo last night. The memo emphasizes that litigation in D.C. is still very strong. The new U.S. litigation practice leader has already been chosen: Juan Morillo, who is based in the nation’s capital. Read the full memo, after the jump.

Your ATL editors kicked off the Memorial Day weekend with a trip to the East 13th Street Theater in Manhattan, where we saw A More Perfect Union, presented by the Epic Theater Ensemble. The play, by Canadian playwright Vern Thiessen, is about two members of The Elect — i.e., two Supreme Court clerks, who fall in love while clerking at the U.S. Supreme Court. Maddie, a white Jewish woman from Ohio, clerks for a fictional conservative justice called “The Wise One”; James, an African-American man from Georgia, clerks for a fictional liberal justice called “The Enlightened One.”

Like the night we spent reviewing Law Revue videos, there were highlights and low points. A big highlight was a post-play discussion featuring former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse. As you know, we are what some might call Greenhouse groupies, though she was not as excited to talk to us as we were to talk to her. We just got a little handshake, a “nice to see you,” and an introduction to her daughter.

The post-show discussion also included professors Elizabeth Emens and Susan Sturm, both of Columbia Law School. Professor Sturm mentioned being a law school classmate of SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor, whom she described as “a straightforward person, who doesn’t hide from her background or make decisions based on it.” She also defended Judge Sotomayor’s Berkeley remarks about personal experience informing a judge’s jurisprudence, noting that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg basically said as much in discussing the recent strip search case before the Court (noting that her colleagues, who seemed less sensitive to the plaintiff’s plight, “have never been a 13-year-old girl”).

Obviously, we think the legal world is an exciting place, and we are always thrilled to see the courts get dramatic treatments. But our standards for fictional treatment of the courts, and especially the Court, are high.

Check out our reviews, after the jump.

* Right now, I’m Terrence Howard in Crash. Roland Burris is Ludacris. It’s too bad because I hate Terrence Howard in that movie. [FOX News]

* Who the hell is Charles Whittaker? [CQ Politics]

* Some help for Mayer Brown summer associates. [Copyranter]

* Wait, am I the only dude that actually kidnaps white women and takes them to Disney World? Damn man, I can’t catch a break. [Bossip]

* Take a good look at this picture, partners. Remember, you can’t do this if you fire all of your associates. [Legally Drawn]

Not all firms are cutting back on the perks. The Memphis Commercial Appeal has an enthused article today about the perks to be had at the small Tennessee firm of Burch, Porter & Johnson.

The article, “Legal firm helps its employees find essential balance,” talks about the firm’s AMAZING perks:

Something refreshing for body and soul is happening within the 119-year-old walls that house a venerable Memphis law firm.

Refreshing as a good yoga session. Strengthening as a brisk core-body workout. And uplifting as guest speakers whose work has made Memphis a better place.

Sweet. You can work out at work! And they friggin’ bring in guest speakers at lunch. Wow! Do they have as much free coffee as you can drink too?

If you thought firm life in Memphis couldn’t compare to Biglaw in the big city, think again:

That quest for balance explains why Leah Hillis strolled down the hallways on a recent lunch hour wearing workout clothes for a yoga session.

The associate attorney headed for the firm’s large, third-story storeroom overlooking Court Square… Other exercise classes to strengthen the core-body are Mondays and Fridays in the same unfinished space, which holds files of old cases, surplus furniture and cleaning supplies.

The classes are inexpensive: $4 for yoga and $3 for the core-body sessions.

Only $4 to work out in the storage closet!

If that’s not your cup of tea, you can spend lunch with a guest speaker during one of the firm’s “fireside chats” in the Crump Room. A recent speaker mentioned in the article is a Holocaust survivor. Fun times.

Law and life: Legal firm helps its employees find essential balance [Memphis Commercial Appeal]

If you are of a certain age, your first experience with Delaware was probably this:

But then you went to law school. And at some point, you learned this:

But now we are in the 21st century. And it’s not your father’s Delaware, not anymore.

After the jump, Delaware gets ready for football season.

In March, we reported that Skadden was essentially canceling its staff attorney program. We reported:

Only staff attorneys that were “integral” to ongoing matters have been kept on. And there is no word on whether those people will have any job security after their matters wrap up.

It appears that Covington & Burling is also undergoing a major reduction of its staff attorney program.

Tipsters (including some recently laid off staff attorneys) report that firm management has decided to effectively discontinue its staff attorney program. The firm has been letting go of staff attorneys at the rate of a couple per week over the last few weeks. As we understand it, as staff attorneys finish up their active matters, they are being let go.

Our sources tell us that the decision was made by firm management some weeks back. At the time the decision was made, the staff attorney manager was out of the office on vacation. When she came back, she allegedly told Covington’s staff attorneys that they should start circulating their resumes.

In some cases, laid off staff attorneys are being given a one week severance option. One week, if they sign a form promising not to sue the firm over the circumstances of their termination. Some Covington personnel that spoke to Above the Law believed that clause is proof that Covington decided to move out staff attorneys as a response to the lawsuit filed by former-Covington Staff Attorney Yolanda Young.

After the jump, we have statements from Covington & Burling, and Yolanda Young.

The new ATLCareer Center, powered by Lateral Link, is a useful resource for learning about law firms. Last week, we brought you information about partnership prospects at different firms.

This week, let’s talk about working on the weekend. Working on the occasional weekend is part of the experience at every big firm, but at some firms that experience is more frequent than occasional. (Of course, in this economy, some lawyers may welcome weekend work — staying busy is the best way to avoid being laid off.)

Quinn Emanuel takes the top prize for weekend workers, with 100% of associates surveyed saying that they regularly do some work over the weekends, and a full 14% saying that “weekends are just another workday.”

Also near the top are Sullivan & Cromwell, Simpson Thacher, Milbank, Kirkland, and Cleary — all firms where more than 80% of the surveyed associates said that it is common for them to work at least some portion of the weekends.

At Skadden and Gibson Dunn, the large majority of associates surveyed said that it is common for them to work on the weekends, but most associates reported that they do that work from home.

And what firms are more likely to leave associates free on the weekends?

Read about them, after the jump.

Congratulations Am Law 200 firms. You have weathered all the disparaging comments about your cities, your practice, the quality of lawyers that work at your firms. And now, as we stare into the sewage drain of the American legal economy, the Am Law 200 firms are coming out smelling like roses:

Reports of their demise, it turns out, were premature. For years, the regional firms that constitute much of the Second Hundred were told that they were exactly the wrong size: too big to compete with the narrow focus of boutiques and too small to match The Am Law 100’s national footprints and marquee names. But last year, as the financial sector began its meltdown, the Second Hundred’s slow-growth strategies were vindicated.

While average revenue per lawyer at The Am Law 100 decreased by 1.2 percent in 2008 (the first decline since 1991), Second Hundred firms were essentially flat. And when the Second Hundred’s national firms, as well as those in the nation’s biggest money centers—Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.—are left out of the calculations, average RPL growth was 1 percent. In all, 49 Second Hundred firms posted increases in RPL, compared to 42 Am Law 100 firms.

As Bob Sugar might say: “This is a nice moment for you, I’m going to let you have it.”

After the jump, more ego-shattering news for coastal, prestige conscious associates and partners.

Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

Dear ATL —

I’ve been unemployed for almost a year. I have good academic credentials, but lost my job as a junior-associate in Biglaw before I could develop a highly valuable set of skills. At first, finding interviews for available positions was easy; I just wasn’t able to close. But about five months ago, interviews stopped altogether. I haven’t even been able to find contract work.

The economic recession is obviously a big part of my problem. But I also feel that part of the problem now is my extended term of unemployment. So my question is: How long is too long? When do I have to accept that I simply will not be a lawyer?

He Who Longs to Measure Time in 6 Minute Increments

Dear He Who Longs to Measure Time in 6 Minute Increments,

The fairy tale that you’ve concocted for yourself — that you will never again be a lawyer after T-minus one year of unemployment — is an homage to the Beast, who despairs of turning back into a prince. From the Beauty and the Beast prologue:

Ashamed of his monstrous form, the Beast concealed himself inside his castle, with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world. The rose she had offered was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his 21st year. If he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return, by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a Beast for all time.

As the years passed, he fell into despair, and lost all hope. For who could ever learn to love a Beast?

You have one year to receive True Love’s Kiss and clinch that “awesome” associate job before the enchanted rose’s last petal fell and seals your fate. After one year, you are to remain a Beast forever, hideous to law firms and vile to any employers other than traveling circuses and minstrel side shows. The End.

If really believe that you’ve been out of the law firm game for “too long,” what are your other options? Living as a hermit by the sea? If you have another dream career, by all means pursue it, but if you really want to be a lawyer, you can be one again, even if you’ve been out for a year. This economy is like the Mayer Brown swine flu outbreak — if you make it out alive, you’re expected back at the office. Law firms will have a hard time rejecting applicants based on gaps in their resume alone, when talented and bright laid-off attorneys will comprise a huge chunk of the applicant pool. Patience, Iago. The last petal has not fallen and Elizabeth Halverson has not sung.

Your friend,

Marin

Some advice from Le Fou, after the jump.

Maybe work is booming at Schulte Roth & Zabel? The firm is changing its vacation policy to make it more stringent. Could it be that the firm wants all hands on deck? A tipster reports the major changes:

* Personal days are now limited to 5 per year (there was previously no limit). Any days in excess of 5 count as vacation.

* SRZ previously reimbursed attorneys for nonrefundable costs associated with vacations that the firm cancelled due to work obligations. The new policy states that reimbursement will now be considered on a case-by-case basis.

* Weekend trips will only be reimbursed when the firm requires them to be cancelled if the trip has been previously approved by the partner appointed to approve vacations. The firm previously did not require attorneys to request approval for weekend trips.

Another tipster quips:

Schulte Tries Increasing Egg Production by Choking the Chicken

But it could also be that Schulte’s new vacation policy has an eye towards layoffs.

Read more, after the jump.

* Musical Chairs: Kirkland & Ellis loses the majority of its West Coast bankruptcy and restructuring team to Jones Day. Six L.A. lawyers and one N.Y. associate are making the Jones Day jump. [American Lawyer]

* A personal injury firm in Connecticut has sued Google for selling its name to a competing firm. Stratton Faxon is also trying to get an injunction to prevent Google from selling law firm names as adwords at all. Note that this firm specializes in personal injuries and not IP law. [Connecticut Law Tribune]

* SCOTUS lifts restrictions on questioning suspects without their lawyers present. [Seattle Times]

* A transcript of a conversation between Roland Burris and the brother of Rod Blagojevich proves that Burris likes Titanic quotes. The Senate Ethics Committee and a state attorney get to decide if it also proves Burris made improper offers in exchange for Obama’s vacated seat in the Senate. [Courthouse News Service]

* A 53-year-old martial arts instructor in Texas is quite the middle-aged ladies’ man. He has his hair, a flat stomach, a Corvette, and a French accent. Unfortunately, he also has AIDS and has been convicted of six counts of sexual assault for knowingly infecting his partners. [Dallas Morning News via ABA Journal]

* Back in her Yale days, SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor had a nasty OCI with the firm formerly known as Shaw Pittman, now Pillsbury. [Los Angeles Times]

At least one summer associate in the Chicago office of Mayer Brown appears to have contracted swine flu (aka the H1N1 virus), according to a firm memo that was circulated within the past hour. In addition, a second associate has been showing symptoms.

Quipped one of the many tipsters who sent this our way: “As though summer associates didn’t have it bad enough already this year:” Said a second source: “Rumor is that a lot of people are not feeling well.”

The Windy City has been hard hit by swine flu. As Tim Hadac, a spokesman for the Department of Public Health, told the Chicago Tribune, “This virus is spreading everywhere in the city right now.” On Sunday, a 22-year-old man — roughly the age of an average summer associate, maybe a bit younger — died of swine flu.

A spokesperson for Mayer Brown confirmed the news but did not offer much in the way of additional detail. One of the summer associates had a nasal swab test come back positive for swine flu, but this test is not definitive. According to the spokesperson, doctors have not performed a blood test — which would be definitive — because such tests are being reserved for the elderly and the young.

The affected summers and their officemates, who started at the firm just last week, won’t be coming into work for the rest of this week. From the memo:

Mayer Brown has been notified that a summer associate in the Chicago Office may have contracted the H1N1 virus. Another summer associate is also showing symptoms of this virus These summer associates are under medical care and will be staying at home. As a precaution, we have instructed the summer associates who share an office with the affected summer associates to remain at home for the balance of the week.

Read the full memo, after the jump.

“Not wanting to push her too fast, he rode her easy…. She got hot and wet, but too wet.”

That sounds like something you’d find in the pages of a soft-core porn novel. But no, instead you’ll find it in the non-sexily titled “MarineMax’s Motion To Dismiss Count X of Plaintiffs Second Amended Complaint,” filed in the Southern District of Florida last week.

Michael Krieger of Clear Marine Ventures has filed a breach of contract suit against boatmaker Brunswick Corporation and a host of other characters — including MarineMax — involved in the maintenance of his boat. MarineMax’s defense attorney, Jack Kallen, decided to have some fun in describing the nature of Krieger’s relationship with his sea vessel.

A footnote claims that the motion “is not intended or meant to titillate, but illuminate the unique relationship that an individual has with a vessel and the special, discriminating and demanding wants and needs of a wealthy individual, who was disappointed and dismayed with his purchase.” But titillate it does. Here’s an excerpt, via the Southern District of Florida Blog:

He first saw the model on line and in a promotional brochure (para. 13-15)…. Her glossy exterior, sculpted body, sophistication, bloodlines, not to mention the accolades of how she could perform, intrigued him, piqued his curiosity (para. 13-15; Exs A. and B. to second amended complaint). Needless to say, he needed to know more, meet her, ride her. He was excited (para. 22).

Suitable arrangements were made. Not wanting to push her too fast, he rode her easy (para. 36, 37). With her prominent front pushed up, her rear somewhat down, her performance was somewhat hesitant and resistant. But he was told she was a maiden, that he’d be her first owner (para. 40, 47).

We called the motion’s author, Jack Kallen, to find out why he decided to pen such a smutty motion. We told him we thought it was funny. “I hope the judge does too,” he replied. Read on, after the jump.

* Latvian hookers are the “canary in the coal mine” of economic recovery. Hey, I’m ready to do my part to help end the recession. [Dealbreaker]

* Chris Brown hates haters, blames them for roughing up Rihanna. Chris Brown definitely loves fishsticks. [Popsquire]

* Every year someone tries to come up with an argument in favor of taxing emails. It’s actually funny to see how desperate the government is to get into your pocket, without starting an open revolt. [TaxProf Blog]

* Keeping up with the Jones(es) (to)Day is important business. [Law and More]

* It’s one thing to be an aspiring actor in L.A. or New York. But in D.C.? You’re going to need some good representation to swing that. [Entertainment Agent Blog]

* It won’t be an easy confirmation process for Sotomayor. [Litination]

The recently released Michael Vick can expect no quarter from most animal lovers. I forget how long he was in jail, but if his sentence didn’t involve a dog biting him in the ass every day, then it wasn’t long enough.

But Vick is (or was) merely a retailer in the world of inhumane treatment of animals. The real outrage should be directed at the wholesalers. And that is just what Weil Gotshal appears to be doing. The firm won a major victory against the alleged puppy mill Wizard of Claws, in Broward County Circuit Court:

The Broward County Circuit Court has issued a ruling refusing to dismiss several defendants from a major class action lawsuit against a south Florida puppy dealer known as “Wizard of Claws.” The suit, filed in 2007, accuses Wizard of Claws, its owners, and its affiliates of defrauding customers by misrepresenting the origin of puppies, and by selling puppy mill dogs who suffer from severe health problems and genetic defects.

The court’s order allows plaintiffs to proceed with their claims against three entities sharing common ownership with Wizard of Claws — Celebrity Kennels, Inc., Dog Breeder Kennel, Inc. and Puppies for Sale, Inc. — and also directs the defendants to turn over records regarding the puppies they have sold to the public. The court also ordered the owners of Wizard of Claws to sit for depositions concerning their business practices.

This victory has been a long time coming for lawyers at Weil Gotshal. More details after the jump.

Yesterday, the Exquisite Rap Duo dropped a new album. What’s especially exquisite about the album is that it’s the work of Anthony McNamer, an IP attorney in Portland, Oregon.

McNamer is a ‘95 Stanford Law grad who has worked for Bingham McCutchen and for Davis Wright Tremaine, clerked in American Samoa, and founded his own small three-person firm, McNamer and Company, five years ago. The firm does IP work and media, entertainment, and sports law.

“I’m probably the biggest music lawyer in Portland… but that’s not saying much,” McNamer told us. He is also on the short list for most extreme athletes looking for a lawyer, he said, representing them when sponsorship deals go awry or in “right of publicity” cases.

McNamer sent us an e-mail last week to let us know about his “rap group” and debut album:

You don’t hear about many big firm lawyer to rap group transitions. Word.

Apparently, McNamer is unaware of his East Coast rival, Mekka Don, who went from being a Weil first year to being a self-proclaimed savior of hip hop. Word.

We surfed over to his website and listened to some of the songs. As for our favorite, we’re torn between the one about not being able to look tough on a BMX bike and “Best Friends with a Gay Dude” about his college best friend coming out after graduation, which McNamer informed us is 100% autobiographical. The latter includes samples from Cher’s “Believe.” If you haven’t guessed yet, McNamer’s rap has a funny side. But he doesn’t consider his work to be pure novelty. “I don’t want to be Weird Al,” said McNamer.

We also watched the music video for Calculator Watch; the humorous approach reminded us strongly of Law Revue videos. We followed that hunch and discovered during our interview that McNamer was once a lead writer for Stanford’s version of Law Revue. None of the songs on Nine Mile (We Go The Extra Mile) employ legal humor, though. “I know from doing [Stanford’s Law School Musical] that law stuff isn’t very funny,” said McNamer.

We spoke to McNamer yesterday about his music, founding his own law firm, and how his legal career will help boost his musical stylings. Check out his video and the beauty of having your own firm in Portland — HINT: his target for weekly billables is 15 hours — after the jump.

Right now the news cycle is dominated by the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor (2d Cir.) to the U.S. Supreme Court. We’ve been following the story closely, of course, and we’ll have more later.

In the meantime, check out Underneath Their Robes, where Clerquette has been blogging up a storm. Her latest posts appear here and here (don’t miss the photo montage at the end).

We’ve expressed our views on the Sotomayor nomination. What do you think?

We’ve heard some opinions expressed in the comments, but the commenters are not always representative of the ATL readership as a whole. So please take our reader poll:

The Sotomayor Nomination: The Morning After [UTR]
SCOTUS Leaderboard: Sonia Hits an Ace! [UTR]

The California Supreme Court might have upheld Proposition 8, but those who are trying to use the courts to promulgate a notion of fundamental fairness for gays and lesbians are not done. In fact, the battle has just begun:

In a bold move that takes a new approach to achieving marriage equality, two attorneys who argued opposing sides of the 2000 Bush v. Gore lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court have filed a challenge to Proposition 8 in federal court, …

Theodore B. Olson, the U.S. solicitor general from 2001 to 2004 under President George W. Bush, and David Boies, a high-profile trial lawyer who argued on behalf of former vice president Al Gore, filed the suit May 22 in U.S. district court on behalf of two California gay couples

This is like Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto joining forces to stop the federal government, only if the movie was any good.

But will it work? ABC News has this quote from Mr. Olson:

Olson said that recent US Supreme Court rulings “make it clear that individuals are entitled to be treated equally under the Constitution. I’m reasonably confident that this is the right time for these [injustices] to be vindicated.”

Paging President Obama after the jump.

Performance reviews have never been fun exactly. But these days, when firms are periodically going on “cleanses,” the review process is more nerve-wracking then ever.

We are receiving anecdotal reports of associates who have always received good reviews suddenly being criticized for ridiculously trivial infractions — perhaps to lay the groundwork for a future performance-based dismissal. We are also hearing about reviews being moved up in time at some firms, presumably to accelerate the process of stealth layoffs.

In the worst-case scenario, you may learn that your performance is not up to par and you’re being let go (as happened to approximately 40 Ropes & Gray attorneys during spring performance reviews last week). One of the victims of Ropes’s performance-based firings wrote to us:

First, the idea that this is “performance based” is ridiculous. I received a good December review, got a bonus, and all of the partners I work with have been uniformly shocked that I was on this list (the partners were not informed in advance which associates were being let go, and the onus has been on the associates to inform them — awesome).

The only comment in my review this time around was a vague reference that I was unlikely to make partner….

Indeed, that does seem unlikely now.

An attorney at another firm writes:

During this review period, at least four female associates (including myself) were told that we are not “assertive” or “confident” enough. All four of us are strong, hardworking women, whose only bad comment on the reviews was that we are not aggressive enough.

Well, at least she was proactive enough to write ATL about her firm’s dubious review process.

Have your performance reviews changed from perfunctory to terrifying? Do you fear that seeds of criticism are being planted now in order to justify a performance-based firing later? Are you getting new kinds of criticisms?

We invite paranoid speculation in the comments. We especially welcome the leavening of humor — so if some of the review criticisms you’ve received are so silly or stupid as to be laughable, please do share them. Thanks.

As many of you know, Jones Day guards its salary information as if the firm is protecting the Holy Grail. Compensation is kept confidential and talking about what you make, even to colleagues, is generally discouraged.

But no firm is immune from the global economic crisis. Today, a piece of information leaked out of Jones Day regarding a freeze on staff salaries:

In responding to these kind of challenges, the Firm has always been concerned about the long-term and about what is in the best interests of our clients, our lawyers, our employees, and the Firm as a whole. Thus, we consistently try to make decisions that are aimed at protecting those long-term interests. That process requires that we adjust to meet new challenges, and it means that we must be prudent in managing our costs and expenses to ensure that we maintain our solid financial foundation.

Consequently, as the year has unfolded, we have examined all of our spending and are making adjustments in a number of areas. As a part of that examination, and after careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision that salaries for all legal support personnel and staff in all Offices and Departments of the Firm will remain at their current levels through June 30, 2010, and that no Year End Payments or discretionary bonuses will be paid in 2009. We know that these decisions may be disappointing for you and your families. We also are confident that you share our commitment to the long-term success of the Firm and understand that these decisions are one part of ensuring that success.

As we’ve seen around the legal industry, employees — be they staff or associates — are generally willing to suffer a pay freeze if it means they can hang onto their jobs.

But will the pay freeze help Jones Day staff keep their jobs? Notes about the Jones Day performance review after the jump.

Last month, we brought you a summer lunch memo featuring the comedic stylings of lawyers from Cleary Gottlieb.

This week, a lunch memo is going around the offices of WilmerHale:

Year in and year out, our Summer Associates tell us that what they remember most is the time they spent with the lawyers of WilmerHale. And there is no better way for each of you to get to know these 38 lawyers-to-be than to take them to lunch and chat them up a little bit.

Look around your floors today and take notice of the new Summer Associates. And yes, those of you on floors 21 and 31 may have to put in a little more effort and look around other floors on your way to meetings. Keep in mind, Summers tend to (a) have full heads of hair, (b) be a touch overdressed on their first day, and (c) have nice WilmerHale paraphernalia that even those of us who have labored here 5, 10, 15 years don’t get. Make a point to invite those folks to lunch a few times over the next 10 weeks.

The memo goes on to parody the Boston-area furniture store that famously gave away a lot of merchandise for free when the Boston Red Sox won the world series.

While we at Above the Law appreciate any attempt at levity during these difficult times, some WIlmerHale tipsters are less than impressed:

[O]bviously written by someone who is on the cusp of having a sense of humor not quite there. [It] lacks the risqué-ness of the Cleary memo (e.g. class distinction - “you can go to McDonalds,” etc) but is what you get from the most rigid firm in Boston.

Everybody’s a critic. And while we admit that the memo is a little bit inside (Boston) baseball, at least WilmerHale is joking. That has got to be better than the lunch memos that came out of Simpson Thacher.

Read the full memo after the jump and see for yourself.

* GM drove its Chevy to the bondholder levy but the levy was dry. Bankruptcy imminent. [Wall Street Journal]

* Is your support for same-sex marriage and opposition to Prop 8 strong enough to risk a citation for jaywalking? [CNN]

* … For more on yesterday’s California Supreme Court ruling letting Prop 8 and existing marriages stand, see our post on the topic. [Above The Law]

* Do people outside of New York care about the Brooke Astor trial? The New York media are going crazy over it, but we checked Twitter — our new gauge for public interest — and there’s not much #Astor trial tweeting there. Things did get more interesting for Biglaw ilk yesterday though, when McDermott, Will & Emery partner Henry “Terry” Christensen III took the stand. [AmLaw Daily]

* Almost everything you could want to know about the history and personal life of SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor. For example, during her time at boutique firm Pavia & Harcourt defending Fendi, she tracked down a suspicious merchandise shipment in Chinatown and hopped on a motorcycle to chase down suspected counterfeiters. There are also some things you might rather not know. For example, she likes to lunch on tuna fish and cottage cheese. [New York Times]

* Adam Liptak sticks to analysis of Sotomayor’s legal opinions in this piece. [New York Times]

This morning we covered the announcement by President Barack Obama of his intention to nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor, of the New York-based Second Circuit, to serve as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. This afternoon, we participated in a conference call between a senior Administration official and several reporters, to discuss the Sotomayor nomination. Here’s a quick write-up of the call.

“Obviously it’s an historic day here at the White House,” the official noted, referencing the fact that Judge Sotomayor, if confirmed, will be the first Hispanic (and only the third woman) to serve on the SCOTUS. He stressed that the president took the choice “very seriously,” and read “literally thousands of pages” of judicial opinions and academic writings by the potential nominees. (Of course, as a former law professor, Obama is used to such intellectual heavy lifting.)

Obama interviewed four candidates personally (and Vice President Joe Biden also talked to the final four): Judge Sotomayor; Judge Diane Wood, of the Seventh Circuit; Solicitor General Elena Kagan; and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. He picked Judge Sotomayor based on three factors: (1) her overall level of intellectual capacity and legal acumen, reflected in her academic record, her work as a lawyer, and her judicial service; (2) her approach to judging, including her legal craftsmanship and her ability to win over colleagues on the Second Circuit; and (3) her compelling personal story, which was placed front and center at this morning’s press conference.

Then the floor was opened up to questions. Read more, after the jump.

If you like the fast life, look out for opportunities in your firm’s offices abroad. Judging from the Russian tales of Deidre Dare and the new memoir, China High, by the pseudonymous “ZZ,” life in Biglaw’s foreign offices is full of drugs, sex, and nonstop clubbing.

Of course, these two are no longer with their firms, Dare fired from Allen & Overy and ZZ no longer on the payroll at Sidley Austin. Which leads us to suggest that you not serialize your wild adventures — Dare’s downfall — or get caught running food delivery business or smoking opium-laced hashish in public — ZZ’s sins.

Now ZZ is pursuing a new career: writing. He has spun his adventures and misadventures into a memoir, called China High. From Bloomberg:

The seat of China’s age-old civilization is as seamy on the inside as it looks imposing from the outside, judging from “China High,” a memoir scribbled under the nom de plume ZZ by a Shanghai-born, U.S.-trained lawyer in his 20s.

Written before the global credit meltdown, “China High” lifts a curtain on a side of Beijing seldom seen by tourists. ZZ captures the nocturnal buzz of a city where rave parties in derelict factories are a staple and orgies have become a rite of passage. Then there’s the pot, which locals call the Big Numb….

A Chinese national, ZZ graduated from Brandeis University and Boston College Law School, says his publisher, St. Martin’s Press. Then he went to Hong Kong in late 2000 to work for Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP (now Sidley Austin LLP) and transferred to its Beijing office in late 2001.

That bio is detailed enough that we don’t imagine ZZ is going to stay anonymous for long.

Those who have been to Beijing know that it is super cheap. Anyone living there with a $250,000 salary gets to live like a king. A sex-having, drug-doing, dumpling-eating king. More on ZZ’s indulgences and “flings with models, Mrs. Robinsons, kept women and what he delicately terms ‘local girls with jungle fever’,” after the jump.

* Save the date. David Lat will be trying to help people restart their careers in a couple of weeks. [New York City Bar]

* Many of you know that our own Kashmir Hill has been exploring privacy law over at True/Slant the past couple of months. I’m getting into the mix over there too, as I continue my Quixotic quest to really annoy white people. [True/Slant]

* Really, Alfred P. Doolittle had it right all along when he said: “I’m ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving, and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like, and that’s the truth.” [What About Clients?]

* We close the book on Prop 8, for now … [Law Dork 2.0]

* Okay, domestic violence is bad. So, if you are going to make an ad discouraging domestic violence, is there really a need to be confusing about your point? [Copyranter]

* Important safety tips for creating a practitioner’s website and want to generate business. [New York Personal Injury Law Blog]

* When teenage girls attack. [Popsquire]

* Towel Day is finally here. I’d have sent in a pic but, I air dry. [Cyberlaw Central via Blawg Review]

Back in March, we reported on salary cuts for associates at Allen Matkins. At the time, we reported:

First year salary has been reduced from $160K to $145K. A number of other associates (excluding first years) were informed that their salary would be reduced by 15% or 30%. Those associates were told that they were selected to receive “adjusted” compensation based on their hours, although the actual method for determining which associate would be subject to this salary adjustment was not disclosed and remains unclear.

We now understand that many mid-level and senior associates took a 20% salary hit.

But we also understand that a 20% salary cut has also been executed on the firm’s paralegal contingent. A tipster reports:

You did not mention that paralegals were grouped with associates and also had their salaries cut by 20%.

Associates and paralegals all met individually with two partners who notified us of the pay cut and told us that if we could manage to get our billable hours up to goal before the end of the year we would get the full 20% back. And if we could get to a slightly smaller goal, they would return 10%. There were no explanations about how they arrived at these various figures and at that time we didn’t know that first years’ salaries were only being cut 10%. We were told this measure was needed to avoid further layoffs although there were also a number of people let go that day.

We haven’t really heard about firms cutting salaries on paralegals. Paralegals have been fired for sure. But there just hasn’t seemed to be a lot of economic upside to shaving a few dollars on salaries of people who already don’t make very much money.

More news from Allen Matkins after the jump.

We’ve been trying to stay on top of all the things law schools can do to help their students who have been crushed by the current economic environment. Although it’s a little bit late, it looks like Columbia Law School will be offering a helping hand for some of its recent graduates that haven’t been able to find a job.

On Friday, Dean David Schizer offered five fellowships to the Columbia class of 2009:

I am delighted to announce the creation of five new fellowship opportunities for graduates pursuing careers in public interest law and government service: the Social Justice Pathways Fellowships. Each of the fellowships will carry a $25,000 stipend to fund up to eight months of work. The members of the J.D. Class of 2009 are the first class eligible to become Social Justice Pathways Fellows.

These fellowships serve two important purposes. First, they allow qualified graduates committed to a career in public interest law to gain the experience, skills and networks that will assist them to get full-time jobs in their fields. Second, they provide talented young lawyers to organizations that are confronting great demand and diminished resources.

Cue the “they’re only doing this to massage their U.S. News ‘employed upon graduation’ statistic” in 3 … 2 … 1 …

More details after the jump.

Just to be clear, the first quarter of 2009 was not the beginning of the great recovery everybody is hoping for. AmLaw Daily reports that Q1 revenue fell on average at 175 law firms:

They were right to be concerned. Citi’s first-quarter 2009 Flash Report indicates that revenues at the 175 firms that provided data were down 3.7 percent from first-quarter 2008, a period that was not particularly robust. Demand at those firms declined 6 percent from year-previous levels. The first-quarter 2009 Flash Report includes results from 71 Am Law 100 firms, 50 Second Hundred firms, and 54 smaller firms.

Citi Private Bank provides financial services to more than 600 law firms in the United States and the United Kingdom. Each quarter, the Law Firm Group confidentially surveys firms in The Am Law 100 and the Second Hundred, along with smaller firms. In addition, we conduct a more detailed financial survey. These reports, together with extensive discussions with law firm management conducted on an ongoing basis, provide a comprehensive overview of financial trends in the industry and insight into where it is headed.

Even more disturbingly, the revenue drop was more pronounced at top firms than the rest of the sample:

On a more granular level, our most recent data shows that Am Law 100 firms were hit harder than the broader sample: For them, revenues and demand fell 5.0 percent and 7.0 percent, respectively (versus 3.7 percent and 6.0 percent for the full sample). In fact, Second Hundred firms actually saw a modest increase of 1.1 percent in revenues and a smaller drop of 1.8 percent in demand. Clearly, those firms with heavy reliance on transactional work and clients who are more heavily weighted in financial services are feeling the pain more deeply.

This seems like a good time to mention that, over the same period, tuition costs at top law schools dropped dramatically stayed exactly the same. As Kanye West might say: “law schools don’t care about broke ass graduates suffering through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”

You’re going to love the proposed remedies to the decline in revenue at law firms. Details after the jump.

In about 15 minutes or so, the California Supreme Court will issue its decision in three cases challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in that state. The decision will be posted on the court’s website at 10 a.m. Pacific time (or 1 p.m. Eastern time). We’re putting up this post now, to get the discussion going, and then we’ll update once the decision comes in.

Update (1:10 PM): The court’s website is still down, but there’s this from the San Francisco Chronicle: “The California Supreme Court upheld Prop. 8 by a 6-1 vote but ruled that the same sex marriages performed last year can stand.”

Update (1:15 PM): The Los Angeles Times has this write-up, which notes:

The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8’s ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will continue to be married under state law.

The decision virtually ensures another fight at the ballot box over marriage rights for gays. Gay rights activists say they may ask voters to repeal the marriage ban as early as next year, and opponents have pledged to fight any such effort. Proposition 8 passed with 52% of the vote.

Although the court split 6-1 on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the justices were unanimous in deciding to keep intact the marriages of as many as 18,000 gay couples who exchanged vows before the election. The marriages began last June, after a 4-3 state high court ruling striking down the marriage ban last May….

Only Justice Carlos R. Moreno, the court’s sole Democrat, wanted Proposition 8 struck down as an illegal constitutional revision.

So much for Justice Moreno as a possible U.S. Supreme Court justice (although, having missed out on the Souter seat, he’ll probably be too old anyway when the next vacancy comes up).

Update (1:20 PM): Here is a link to the court’s opinion (PDF).

Background and links about the case, after the jump.

Two weeks ago, we reported on Syracuse College of Law changing its exam guidelines in an attempt to thwart cheaters. Fordham Law School also had some academic dishonesty issues. Fortunately, this new cheating phenomenon is not limited to New York State. The National Law Journal reports:

When a Florida Coastal School of Law student last year spotted notecards poking out of a fellow test-taker’s pocket during finals, she kept her head down and focused on the exam in front of her. “I’ve never been one to rat people out,” said the student, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

Her classmate was returning from a bathroom break during a final exam, and it was pretty clear to her that cheating was afoot. Like thousands of law students each year, the Florida Coastal student and her classmates had signed an honor code on their first day of school. Law schools rely on honor codes to keep students from cheating. The codes reflect the self-policing nature of law school academic integrity regimes, and they appeal to students’ sense of fair play to keep them in line.

Cheating at Florida Coastal? Noooooooo!

What is your friendly, neighborhood American Bar Association doing about the scourge of cheating at accredited law schools? We explore after the jump.

Last week, we told you that Sonnenschein would be cutting its associate’s salaries. At the time, Sonnenschein pointed out the hit to first year salaries:

Our first year Associate base salary under the new approach will be set at $145,000 in most of the cities in which we operate, and the salary levels for the balance of our Associate classes vary by year and geography consistent with our standard practice.

What does “consistent with our standard practice” mean? Above the Law has received word on what the salary cuts will look like for the rest of Sonnenschein’s associates. Tipsters report:

* 2002 and above = 15%
* 2004 = 15%
* 2005 = 14%
* 2006 = 14%
* 2008 = 10%

Did anybody expect Sonnenschein to ask its more senior associates to take a larger pay cut than its junior associates?

More news from the firm after the jump.

Yours truly is covering the White House press conference, over on Twitter.

For more detailed discussion of the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, see our prior post.

Earlier: Breaking: Obama To Nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor (2d Cir.) to Supreme Court

* Silence from the SCOTUS justices is a good sign for your case. [New York Times]

* A South Carolina judge has issued a TRO protecting Craigslist from criminal prosecution by the state’s Attorney General. Let the whorish ads continue. [ZDNet]

* Ready your rainbow posters. The California’s Supreme Court will rule on Prop 8 today. [Wall Street Journal]

* More experts weigh in on the future of Biglaw. [Philadelphia Business Journal]

* GM’s bankruptcy is bankrupting the ranks of bankruptcy attorneys. [New York Times]

* We’ve heard of parents forcing kids to make inventive use of empty bottles during road trips, but this is the first time we’ve heard of a teacher forcing a student to juice up a lunchbox. [Courthouse News Service]

* The biggest news of the morning is Sonia Sotomayor’s proposed move to One First Street. See our early morning post for more on this. [Above The Law]

[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. Apologies for the delay in getting another post up. We have been extremely busy the past couple of weeks with extensive travel and also a great run of new placements in Hong Kong / China. Yes, after going from February through April having just one placement in Asia (after 3 in January), we had a nice run last week, with four US associate, one US counsel and one US partner placement, all in Hong Kong. Further, Robert made a partner placement in Texas and I made one in Florida in the past week. We expect 4 to 5 new Asia placements (all in Hong Kong), including one partner and counsel, in the next few weeks. The practice areas involved with the current recent and expected Asia placements are M&A, cap markets and fund formation.

Next week, Robert, Daniel and I will be again in Hong Kong and Yuliya will be traveling back to Russia. Yuliya will be in Russia for three months. Of course, Alexis is in Hong Kong, per usual, as that is her home base.

The slow down in placements in Asia the past few months (up until this past busy week) has of course been market related and although we are seeing a lot of positive signs for a rebound, especially in China, we expect a still very slow (relative to ‘06 to mid ‘08) lateral associate hiring market in Asia for the foreseeable future and well into ‘10. February and March were the first months in over two years that I had no Asia placements, so things were really dead there for a while and there has been steady improvement since then.

Keep in mind though that our increased placement numbers recently are in large part due to our adapting to the current tough climate, rather than the market heating up significantly. Further, numerous US firms have hiring freezes globally, including Asia markets, and many US firms in Asia are quite overstaffed, due to focus on the busy and lucrative IPO market the past several years (hard for some US partners in Asia to get clearance for needed hire, when plenty of cap markets associates are available on site for re-tooling). Thus, while M&A and other practice areas in Asia, especially in China, look to be on the rebound, it will take a) IPO work in Asia to rebound, as wells as b) US markets to rebound, before the Asia lateral markets can return to the previous sizzling levels. The former is important in order to get entire offices busy, not just a certain practice group, and the latter is important to slow down the flow of US candidates from US markets.

***More after the jump.

As we once wrote about Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Second Circuit, paraphrasing the lyrics of another high-powered Latina who made it from the South Bronx to the pinnacle of fabulosity and fame, “Don’t be fooled by the robes that she’s got; she’s still Sonia from the block.” Despite her high station as a federal appeals court judge, the down-to-earth Sotomayor has her clerks over to her apartment, for card games and drinks.

It now looks like “Sonia from the Block” might be taking up residence on a new block — One First Street, in Washington. From The Caucus:

President Obama has chosen Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Federal Appeals Court as his nominee for the Supreme Court, officials said on Tuesday, and has scheduled an announcement for 10:15 a.m. at the White House.

Ms. Sotomayor, 54, will be the first Hispanic to serve on the Supreme Court if her nomination is approved by the Senate.

The president reached his decision over the long Memorial Day weekend, aides said, but it was not disclosed until Tuesday morning when he informed his advisers of his choice less than three hours before the announcement was scheduled to take place.

The president narrowed his list to four, according to people close to the selection process, including Federal Appeals Judge Diane P. Wood of Chicago, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

Congratulations to Judge Sotomayor. She will be a tough nominee for Republicans to defeat, due to her compelling personal story. To read about that story — which took her from the housing projects of the South Bronx to Princeton, Yale Law School, the legendary New York D.A.’s office, private practice, the S.D.N.Y. trial bench, and the Second Circuit — see the New York Times profile or her Wikipedia entry. It also won’t hurt her confirmation prospects that she (1) would be the first Hispanic justice and (2) was appointed to the district court by the first President Bush (even though she was really the pick of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, not the Bush White House).

Will SS thank Jeffrey Rosen in her nomination acceptance speech? Professor Rosen, with his attack piece on her, sparked a backlash — in the blogosphere, from Latinos, and in liberal circles more generally — that may have helped her nomination in the end.

There’s extensive discussion of the Sotomayor nomination over at SCOTUSblog, where Tom Goldstein was analyzing the nomination dynamics as early as 7:30 this morning. Goldstein is of the view that her confirmation is almost certain, absent any major surprises, and we tend to agree. The potential roadblocks — her involvement in the controversial Ricci v. DeStefano affirmative action case, her unfortunate quip about courts making policy — just aren’t big enough to stop her (and her history-making nomination).

(According to SCOTUSblog, the AP publicly reported the news of her nomination first. But in this day and age, in which news spreads almost instantaneously, scoops tend not to last for longer than a few minutes.)

This should be an interesting confirmation. Stay tuned.

Obama Chooses Sotomayor for Supreme Court Nominee [The Caucus / New York Times]
The Dynamic of the Nomination of Sonia Sotomayor [SCOTUSblog]
Sonia Sotomayor [Wikipedia]
On a Supreme Court Prospect’s Résumé: ‘Baseball Savior’ [New York Times]

[Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks. Law Shucks has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.]

No! So close! We had this whole piece written on the optimistic assumption that this would be the first full week without a layoff since the end of 2008.

Then Ropes & Gray went and ruined it for everyone.

The slowdown of law firm layoffs reflects the trend in the broader economy. Initial jobless claims were down 12,000 for the week ending May 16, to 631,000. Continuing claims increased by 75,000, the net of the 637,000 claims from last week. That was the 16th straight week of a net increase in unemployment, bringing the rate to 8.9%, a 25-year high. The level is expected to peak over 10% in the next year, and take five more years to drop down to 5%.

So even though the grand total for calendar 2008 broke the 10,000 layoff mark last week, the rate has dropped off dramatically. It was only on April 13, 2009 that the total from the current wave (counting from Cadwalader in January, 2008) broke 10,000. Despite the recent slowdown, it took just over a month to have as many people laid off from law firms as were laid off in all of 2008.

Even if Ropes hadn’t rained on all the barbecues, there were still going to be a number of caveats and clarifications to the "no layoffs" analysis. We address those, and other cost-cutting measures, after the jump.

Today is Memorial Day. Please take some time to reflect upon the sacrifices of the brave men and women who gave their lives in service to our country.

We hope that you’re not in front of your computer and/or in the office on this holiday. But for those of you who are, here’s your Morning Docket.

* If you are stuck at work today, maybe you’re at Weil or Dewey or Jenner or Honigman, working on the GM bankruptcy. [Am Law Daily]

* With an announcement expected any day now, President Obama drops some hints about what he’s looking for in a Supreme Court justice. [Washington Post]

* One area where a new justice might make a difference: executive power. [New York Times]

* The Times has been profiling possible SCOTUS nominees [FN1], and ATL gets a veiled shout-out (“a legal blog”) in the profile of Justice Leah Ward Sears. [New York Times]

* A downside to judicial service: threats to judges and prosecutors are on the rise. [Washington Post]

* More legal trouble for ex-NBA star Jayson Williams. [AP]

* Alaska prosecutors to retired teacher: Please don’t feed the bears. [USA Today]

* Over on the other side of the pond, Kilpatrick killed its London office — back in March. [Am Law Daily]

* Elsewhere in the EU, Scientologists go on trial in France. [The Independent via Drudge]

[FN1] Here are the other SCOTUS profiles: Jennifer Granholm; Elena Kagan; Carlos Moreno; Janet Napolitano; Sonia Sotomayor; and Diane Wood.

Fashion is always a hot topic here at Above The Law. Last year, a partner at Winston & Strawn got females’ panties in a bunch by questioning the length of their skirts. In the fall, our post on suitable interview suits generated quite the long thread.

We seldom tire of talking about short shorts and see-through blouses, and we’re not the only ones. The judges and lawyers of the Seventh Circuit weighed in on fashion faux pas at a conference in Indianapolis this past week, reports the New York Times:

The topic was first raised by a United States district court judge, Joan H. Lefkow, of the Northern District of Illinois as the panel discussed good and bad trends in courtroom practice. Judge Lefkow said some women should dress more appropriately in court. According to an article in the National Law Journal and from the accounts of others in the room, she said one lawyer had shown up for a jury trial in a velour outfit that looked for all the world as if she was “on her way home from the gym.”

While the lawyer won her case, Judge Lefkow suggested to the judges and lawyers in the room that unseemly clothing in court was the kind of issue that should be the subject of quiet conversation in law firms.

What? Winning isn’t all that matters?

Judge Lefkow’s remarks led to some not-so quiet conversation during the rest of the panel. The judges voiced their disdain for loud ties, short skirts, and other titillating attire.

Read about their opinions, and share your own, after the jump.

* This is the best argument in favor of Roe v. Wade. [True/Slant]

* And here is an argument against extending copyright protection to architecture and fashion design. [Concurring Opinions]

* Is stare decisis fo’ suckas? [Southern Appeal]

* Is Elena Kagan “a great friend of conservatives”? Maybe not, according to Wendy Long. [National Review Online]

* “The Millennials: Generation Enlightened or Generation Lazy?” [WSJ Law Blog]

* Talk about a “sin tax”: teen who auctioned off her virginity may owe thousands in unpaid taxes. [The Sun via TaxProf Blog]

Last week, the “normal-seeming” couple won our reader poll in a romp over the buttoned-up, hyper-achieving competition. No danger of that this week! All three of these contestant couples give off major type-A vibes and are firmly locked in prestigious-degree-accumulation mode. And oh, how we love them.

Here are the contestants:

1. Alyssa Worsham and Bretton Dimick

2. Sada Jacobson and Brendan Bâby

3. Julie Ehrlich and Noam Elcott

Check out these couples’ credentials and photos, after the jump.

Law firms are dealing with the Great Recession in many different ways. As we’ve chronicled in these pages, layoffs and salary cuts are commonplace, practically clichéd.

Some firms are cutting costs more creatively. From a source at Kirkland & Ellis:

We just got a memo from K&E about a massive increase in our health care premiums. I’m not happy at all…. By my rough math, my deductible tripled, but the cost increased $100/month. So they’re screwing us two ways. Again, if my math is right.

From a second tipster:

This change effectively reduces associate salaries by approximately $1,000-$2,000 per year, although made under the guise of a change in the health care plan (perhaps in attempt to avoid blog coverage of salary cuts?).

K&E’s health care coverage was already pretty poor compared to other biglaw firms. This change makes their health care for associates (and other employees earning more than $90K) even worse. Also disturbing is that part of the justification for the change is to “bring the amount paid for health care coverage for associates closer to the amount paid by partners of the Firm…..”

My (albeit limited) understanding of health care coverage for partners in partnerships is that by its nature it is always different from the partnerships’ actual employees (i.e., associates)…. Additionally, we all know K&E partners make a ton of money (as evidenced by their high ppp, which have not been reduced). While associates at Kirkland are definitely well compensated, they work brutal hours for that money, and enacting a salary cut in the guise of bringing partners health care cost “in line” with associates seems greedy and ill-advised.

Full memo, in all of its hyper-technical glory, after the jump.

The “spring review process” at Ropes & Gray got underway this week, and early reports indicate the Boston-based firm is doing some heavy spring cleaning.

Sources tell us the firm has spoiled the Memorial Day weekends of 30 to 40 of its associates. Upon information and belief, approximately eight first-years [Ed. note: see update below] two first-years are among those whose three-day weekends will be spent firing up laser printers instead of barbecue grills.

The departed are being told it’s for “performance reasons.” An attorney in the Boston office indicates that the firings could continue into next week:

Stealth layoffs are going on at Ropes & Gray right now. Performance reviews started this past Monday and will be continuing through next Friday. So far, more than 10 associates, almost entirely first and second years, have been fired. Word on the street is that the layoffs are widespread, but the firm hasn’t acknowledged anything. The firing takes place at the review itself. When associates who are getting laid-off show up for their reviews, there are two people there — the partner and HR. People who have been laid off have 1 month to leave. No word on what kind of severance they’re getting.

The firm’s spokesman would not confirm the number let go, but says the firings are part of the “normal review process.” Ropes “understand[s] that associates who have received disappointing messages in this environment can readily interpret the reviews as layoffs,” said the spokesman, but the firm says that’s not the case, in its statement released to Above The Law this morning. Here’s an excerpt:

Ropes & Gray is completing its normal associate performance review process, just as we do twice each year in the spring and fall. Like our peers, we have an “up or out” system, so this process, as in the past, will result in the departure of some associates across all departments, primarily from the mid-level associate ranks.

The spokesman declined to confirm total number of associates fired or that first years were let go. He said that “very, very few, if any” first years were among those fired. But tipsters say otherwise.

UPDATE (1:30 P.M.): After the post went up, Ropes decided to release more information. Here’s the firm’s additional statement:

First, a total of two first-year associates received reviews resulting in the end of their employment, and the total number of first- and second-years receiving negative reviews is considerably less than 10. Second, there is no HR person in the room. These are reviews, not terminations. Third, it is not correct that “people who have been laid off have one month to leave.” The departure time is considerably more generous than that.

Full statement from the firm, and more from sources, after the jump.

Before you head off for the Memorial Day weekend, check out the latest Job of the Week, coming out of Texas. As always, the Job of the Week is brought to you by Lateral Link. Lateral Link has successfully placed dozens of attorneys at regional law firms. If you are a regional firm looking to hire a top attorney, please email Michael Allen at mallen@laterallink.com.

Position: Litigation Associate

Location: Dallas, TX

Description: Local boutique firm seeks an ‘05 or ‘06 associate for its litigation practice. Excellent academic credentials required. Candidates should be licensed in Texas or be willing to take the first available bar exam. This well-respected law firm is comprised of approximately 40 attorneys, many of whom are refugees from larger firms who tired of the big firm lifestyle.

For more information about this position or to apply, please see Position #10559 on Lateral Link. Current members can also contact their personal search consultant directly to discuss this position. Membership in Lateral Link is free and you can apply at www.laterallink.com.

P.S. The Harvard Law School Alumni Association is looking for at least four graduating students who are deferred by law firms and seeking interim positions in the non-profit field as part of their deferral. For more information, check out the Resources section of the Career Center.

Earlier: Prior Job of the Week listings

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, the guy who replaced Rod Blagojevich, wants to institute public financing for judicial elections. He’s set up a commission and everything!

The latest proposal floating around the Illinois statehouse would require lawyers to foot the bill on behalf of campaigning judges. A tipster reports:

[Pat Quinn] has proposed public financing of judicial elections beginning in 2010. Of course, Illinois, like many big states, is deeply in dept, so the governor plans to pay for this “reform” by taxing each lawyer $50, as an extra charge on his or her annual bar registration fee. Needless to say, many lawyers see this as bad policy and a terrible precedent. Why should a government, which has no money, pay for the cost of judicial campaigns, or transfer the cost to lawyers?

I’m surprised the government hasn’t put more “sin taxes” on the legal profession already. Should lawyers have to pay for a judge’s campaign? Probably not. Are you going to get the general public to rally to the defense of lawyers? Certainly not.

But it’s not too late to act. More details about the plan after the jump.

* Republicans slam Obama for his “empathy” standard for his SCOTUS nominee, citing an earlier speech on the Senate floor emphasizing a different standard. [The Washington Post]

* Speaking of Obama, is he “the best lawyer to occupy the U.S. presidency since William Howard Taft”? [Foreign Policy]

* The Yankees held a moot court in a room off the clubhouse. Would you want to face a jury of Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon? [The New York Times]

* The Justice Department has arranged for the first Guantanamo inmate to be tried in a New York court. [The Washington Post]

* Shuttered Chrysler dealers may have a tough time fighting their closures in court, due to the freedom that bankruptcy laws give courts to tear up contracts. [The Wall Street Journal]

* Immigrants are being deported in the middle of their court cases. [The Los Angeles Times]

When you’re hanging out at Chic-A-Boom Room in Dunedin, Florida, late on a Monday night, you need to be prepared for trouble. So discovered Florida patent attorney Louis Brunoforte this week. But only after taking a punch to the face from a feisty 45-year-old woman from Indiana.

From the St. Petersburg Times:

As he headed to the restroom early Tuesday at the Chic-A-Boom Room, Louis Brunoforte left behind a Budweiser to mark his spot at the bar.

He returned to find someone sitting in his seat. A verbal dispute ensued and quickly escalated.

Words were exchanged, expletives were hurled and, finally, a punch was thrown, hitting the 6-foot, 240-pound Brunoforte right in the kisser.

Getting punched in the face, however, is not enough to warrant the honor of Lawyer of the Day. No, Brunoforte earned that honor by announcing to the Times that he plans to sue:

Brunoforte, 46, of Dunedin, is a lawyer and may proceed with a civil suit against Adams. He said he had back surgery in March and walks with the help of a cane and back brace. He wasn’t injured by the shot from the 5-foot-8, 180-pound Adams, but said that fact isn’t relevant.

“I was a boxer in high school so I guess I know how to take a punch,” Brunoforte said. “But I could have fallen down, and with the serious back surgery I had that could have been problematic.”

Oh, Bruno, for the sake of your self-respect, you should have stopped talking after “take a punch.”

Brunoforte claims the Hoosier woman “threw a punch like a man would throw a punch.” But rather than hit her back, his cool head prevailed. He started planning his civil suit against her and asked the bartender to call authorities.

Dunedin lawyer says Indiana woman punched him after bar dispute [St. Petersburg Times]

* Pringles are potato chips. I never knew this was in doubt. [TaxProf Blog]

* Somebody really needs to do something to make law school useful. [Courtoons]

* I don’t think school bus drivers get a whole lot of respect on a day-to-day basis. [Underdog]

* The recession is hurting fake lawyers too. [Law and More]

* Do you have a picture of a towel that you’d like to share with a legal blogger? I’m just trying to get my Okama Gamesphere back. [CyberLaw]

Just a few months ago, Sonnenschein was doling out seven-figure paydays to partners from the dissolving Thacher Proffitt & Wood. Today, the firm is cutting associate salaries.

But the firm has decided to take a major swing at lockstep compensation in the process. The official statement from managing partner Elliott Portnoy starts out with the highest ambitions:

Long before the current economic upheaval that has gripped our clients and profession, survey after survey consistently confirmed a common theme: law firm associates have become increasingly unhappy in their work. Indeed, an entire industry has arisen in the blogosphere, where websites detail — often hour by hour — concerns from associate lawyers around the country and in firms of all sizes and stripes.

And yet, despite these warnings, the fundamentals of how most law firms recruit, develop, and compensate their associate lawyers have remained largely unchanged for too long — to the detriment of the current structure’s sustainability and, more importantly, to the professional reward and promise of our Associates.

As I discussed with you during today’s monthly Firmwide Associate Meeting, Sonnenschein is committed to meaningfully redesigning our relationship with our Associates. I am writing to outline the specific steps we will take together over the next eighteen months to translate our vision, and the key role Associates at Sonnenschein will continue to play in our shared future, into reality.

Hey, don’t blame it on the “blogosphere.” The industry was built this way when we found it.

More visions from Portnoy, after the jump.

Our new Career Center, brought to you by ATL and Lateral Link, continues to gain momentum. Traffic to the center has been growing steadily since its launch last month.

Recently we shared with you the top ten most-viewed profiles. We update that list after the jump. As you’ll see, there hasn’t been much movement in the top 10 since last week. Quinn Emanuel retains the top spot — perhaps not surprisingly, in light of recent events. Check out how Google searches for “Quinn Emanuel” have spiked in the past week.

Today we’d like to highlight a different feature of the Career Center: Firm Comparisons. Accessing it requires registration, but registering is free and easy. You can then compare law firms on various metrics, including compensation, the associate experience, billable hours, vacation policy, and partnership prospects.

Let’s use partnership prospects as an example. Here is how the top nine firms, ranked by how often their profiles are viewed, stack up:

Quinn:
# 57% It is an achievable goal if you work for it
# 42% It is a longshot no matter how hard you work

Skadden:
# 64% It is a longshot no matter how hard you work
# 21% It is an achievable goal if you work for it
# 14% There is virtually no chance, don’t even try

O’Melveny:
# 50% It is an achievable goal if you work for it
# 50% It is a longshot no matter how hard you work

Cravath:
# 66% There is virtually no chance, don’t even try
# 33% It is an achievable goal if you work for it

Kirkland & Ellis
# 40% It is a longshot no matter how hard you work
# 40% It is an achievable goal if you work for it
# 18% There is virtually no chance, don’t even try

Jones Day
# 66% It is an achievable goal if you work for it
# 33% It is a longshot no matter how hard you work

Sullivan & Cromwell:
# 88% It is a longshot no matter how hard you work
# 11% There is virtually no chance, don’t even try

Cleary Gottlieb:
# 50% It is an achievable goal if you work for it
# 33% There is virtually no chance, don’t even try
# 16% It is a longshot no matter how hard you work

Akin Gump:
# 45% It is a longshot no matter how hard you work
# 45% It is an achievable goal if you work for it
# 09% There is virtually no chance, don’t even try

There wasn’t enough data for the missing member of the top ten — our former firm, Wachtell Lipton. But with a one-to-one partner to associate ratio, WLRK partnership prospects are pretty decent (by Biglaw standards).

An updated list of the most popular firm profiles, after the jump.

Remember Kiwi Camara? He’s the legal Doogie Howser who graduated from Harvard Law School at the tender age of 19, reportedly making him the youngest graduate in the school’s history. But K.A.D. Camara, as he’s also known, may be best known for a youthful indiscretion: referring to African Americans as “nigs,” in a class outline that was posted to an HLS website. (For more background on the controversy, see here.)

Well, everyone’s favorite Flip — present company excluded — is back in the news. From p2pnet news (via Slashdot):

I’ve just spoken with a jubilant Jammie Thomas, the woman Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA tried to nail to the wall with a bill of almost a quarter of a million dollars.

She’s over the moon because only days after learning Brian Toder, her previous legal representative, had decided discretion was the better part of valour, leaving her fend for herself against the Big 4 music labels, another lawyer has come forward with an offer of pro bono help.

He’s K.A.D. Camara from Camara & Sibley in Houston, Texas, says Jammie. And, “He’s the youngest person in history to graduate from Harvard Law school with honors,” she points out.

Nor will her trial — or, rather, her retrial — be delayed, as was expected. It’ll now go forward on June 15, as slated. “I’m so happy!” Jammie said.

And so is Kiwi. We chatted over the phone with our fellow Filipino-American lawyer — about the Thomas case, how he plans to prepare for a trial less than a month away, and his new law firm, Camara & Sibley (which is hiring, by the way).

Read about our conversation, after the jump.

Last week, Fish & Richardson laid off 120 people. It was the second round of layoffs from the firm this year.

But that wasn’t the end of Fish’s cost cutting measures. Yesterday, the firm effectively “cold offered” one-third of its incoming first year associate class. Another third of the class will start on time, and the rest have been deferred until October 2010. Above the Law has obtained this statement from the firm:

While approximately one-third of our 2009 associate class will start on time, we are deferring the majority of the class to October 2010. About half of those deferred will receive a stipend of $5,000 per month for twelve months, along with reimbursement for health insurance. We have informed the other half of those deferred that, given current economic conditions, it is unlikely that we will have a position for them next fall, and we have advised them to seek other opportunities. That group will receive a stipend of $5,000 per month for six months, along with reimbursement for health insurance, and we will revisit their situations in mid-2010.

Isn’t it a bit late for firms to cold offer incoming associates? It’s almost June, yet a third of the first year class just found out that there were essentially out of a job.

Tipsters weigh in, and an update on how the decision was made, after the jump.

People are already calling the class of 2009 the “lost generation.” We’ve detailed the difficult market facing the class of 2010. But yesterday we received some news out of Morris Manning, an Atlanta-based firm with approximately 175 lawyers, that suggests tough times are ahead for the classes of 2011 and beyond.

Morris Manning managing partner Bob Saudek sent around this firm-wide email:

FYI, the firm has decided not to interview on law school campuses this fall, which of course means that we do not plan to have a formal summer program next summer. This decision was made because we don’t know when the economy will pick up, we feel that our first obligation should be to making sure that our existing lawyers are productive rather than committing to bring in a whole class of additional associates, and we believe that when and as we need to hire additional lawyers there are very likely to be a lot of well-qualified experienced lawyers available as well as well-qualified third year law students, since so many firms have contracted significantly and reduced or eliminated their summer programs.

Is this a wise strategy? In a post late last year over at Adam Smith Esq., Bruce McEwen expressed doubts:

[Y]ou cannot introduce a gap into that supply chain. You need to be in the business of continually recruiting new talent, in order to feed the continually moving production line of senior to mid-level to junior staff needed to manage cases and transactions. You cannot, in other words, inflict on your own firm the equivalent of a “lost generation.”

So counter-intuitive as it may seem, I recommend continuing to feed the associate pipeline from the start, summer associates and first-year hires, even at the cost of some mid-year enforced “attrition.” Aside from what I believe to be sound long-term reasons to continue investing in the firm’s future in this way, there are as well both an abstract and a prudential argument for same.

Of course, there is always a counterargument. Let’s get into it, plus take a reader poll, after the jump.

Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Notes from the Breadline,” a column by a laid-off lawyer in New York. Prior columns are collected here. You can reach Roxana St. Thomas by email (at roxanastthomas@gmail.com), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.

This column is a continuation of last week’s column, which you can read here.

After the departure of Elisa — who, I now have it on information and belief, is a bitch — I have the distinct sense that I have been sent to my room. “Go to your room!” I imagine her screaming at a petulant child, “and don’t come out until you’ve reviewed 68,000 documents!”

I want to ask one of my new colleagues for some guidance — an insider’s view of what to expect, and how things work in this strange ecosystem — but I am reasonably certain that my inquiry will be futile, since none of them can hear me: they are all wearing headphones. Even the carpal tunnel guy has retreated to the auditory solace of his own world, and is bobbing his head gently while he applies something pungent to his visibly swollen joints. I watch him pull a tattered plastic shopping bag out from under his desk and rifle through a collection of tubes, bottles, and jars, one of which he finally selects and opens, filling the room with the smell of menthol. I wonder if he is going to apply it directly to his forehead.

I start to flip through the review protocol, which seems inordinately complicated. The document tags appear to have been created by several different people who were not in the same room at the same time. Like anything produced by multiple lawyers (with multiple egos), it looks like the product of a stubborn refusal to compromise. Perhaps it will make more sense once I start reviewing actual documents, I think, opening the database. I am hoping that the fine points of the “review tool” will come back to me quickly.

Instead, looking at the screen in front of me, I am flooded with the memory of a case I worked on a few months before I was laid off. For a moment I am back at my desk in my old office, talking to the client on the phone about what we need to identify in the documents. I want to laugh at the absurdity of revisiting the nuances of Kroll Ontrack the way some people remember the details of an old relationship. In this scenario, Kroll would be the ex-boyfriend, which, I suppose, is not so far-fetched given how much time I spent with it.

Kroll would be a bad ex, I muse. Remember that restaurant we didn’t go to? The time we didn’t go for a walk together? Remember when I marked that document “privileged,” and then someone else marked it “non-responsive”? Remember how hard we didn’t laugh? I’m sorry we had to break up, Kroll, but you never wanted to do anything but talk shop and stay in on weekends. Yes, I remember when you said I’d be back, and I guess you were right. But I want you to know that I saw other documents — lots of other documents — while we were apart.

More after the jump.

May 2009 must be a month of mixed emotions for Andrew Giuliani, son of former New York mayor (and unsuccessful presidential candidate) Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani the younger sued Duke University for kicking him off the golf team.

On the positive side, he graduated from Duke this month (even if he did miss the graduation ceremony). On the negative side, he lost his breach of contract case against Duke — and now, thanks to the humorous opinion by a little-known North Carolina judge, he’s being subjected to a quadruple bogey of humiliation.

Magistrate Judge Wallace Dixon dismissed Giuliani’s suit with golf references playing through the whole 12-page opinion. Here’s a sampling of leads from various news sources:

ESPN: Suffice it to say that in U.S. Magistrate Judge Wallace Dixon’s opinion, ousted Duke University golfer Andrew Giuliani’s lawsuit against the school did not make par.

New York Daily News: Andrew Giuliani’s bid to sue Duke University for kicking him off its golf team ended in the rough this week.

New York Times: A federal magistrate judge with a taste for sports metaphors has found that Andrew Giuliani’s lawsuit against Duke University for letting a coach push him off the university’s golf team is “a swing and a miss.”

San Jose Mercury News: A judge treated Andrew Giuliani’s lawsuit with all the gravitas it deserved — which is to say, there’s a legal document in North Carolina that was inspired by “Caddyshack.”

The News and Observer: The son of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to make a federal case against Duke University for kicking him off the golf team. But a federal magistrate says Andrew Giuliani’s case belongs in the drink.

The News & Observer wins the contest for wonkiest golf metaphor. Excerpts from the opinion, after the jump.

* President Obama will talk about his plans to close Guantanamo in a national address in order to rally support from the public after getting shut down by members of Congress. [CNN]

* After quietly accepting charges from several states, Craiglist is fighting back. The company sued South Carolina’s attorney general for violating free speech and the Commerce Clause with his prosecution threats. [San Francisco Chronicle]

* A “flamboyant” high profile defense attorney in New Jersey who was famous for saying “no witness, no case” has been charged with having key witnesses murdered. [New York Times]

* “Manhattan prosecutors have charged a New York personal injury lawyer with stealing $650,000 in client settlement money. [ABA Journal]

* Despite his liberal tendencies, David Souter treated the business community well. Will Obama’s successor do the same? [Wall Street Journal]

* The pitfalls and benefits of power of attorney. [New York Times]

Yesterday, we reported on an associate at Quinn Emanuel who had strong views about the firm’s recent victory in the Pro Football v. Harjo case, in which the D.C. Circuit upheld the Washington Redskins trademark in the moniker “Redskins.” We, along with many readers, speculated about whether the first-year associate would be able to hold onto his job after yesterday’s publicity.

We are now able to report that the Quinn associate was let go from the firm yesterday — but not because of the various “reply-all” emails.

Instead, the associate was let go because he failed the California bar exam. For a second time.

(Thus, as noted in the comments, any email indiscretions by him essentially amounted to harmless error.)

The firm declined to comment about individual personnel matters, but multiple sources report that it is the standing policy of Quinn Emanuel to part ways with associates who fail the bar multiple times.

But we shouldn’t necessarily look at the emails as an attempt to go out in a “blaze of glory.” As we understand it, the associate sent the first reply-all email — the one that was not meant to “rouse some rabble or down some debbies or outcrunch some crunchies” — before he found out that he failed the bar for a second time.

As for the rest of the emails, that might be a different story. More details, and a colorful “no comment” from the associate himself, after the jump.

* Lost in yesterday’s Quinn controversy is the fact that the name “Washington Redskins” still pisses a lot of people off. But really, “Redskins” was never the best example of this issue. Not when Chief Wahoo is sitting right there. [Washington Post]

* The CEO of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, John Roos, is set to be named the next ambassador to Japan. That’s what I call a positive performance review. [Bloomberg]

* Ponytails are one of the most boring things to ever happen. Not as boring as the pant suit, but pretty damn boring. [Corporette]

* Now more than ever, being a law clerk seems like the only reasonable choice for intelligent people. [Law Clerk Addict]

* Because really, even if you have a law firm job, the people you work for are desperate for you to get a clerkship and spend some time on the government’s dime. [Faculty Lounge]

* The last time somebody mentioned Martindale-Hubbell to me, I thought they were talking about a new mission for the space telescope. [What About Clients?]

* You know what, I don’t want a jury of my peers. I want a jury of my betters. [Obscure Store]

* Why delay the results of the bar exam when you can just make it much, much harder to turn off the spigot of new lawyers? Oh wait, that would require lawyers to have a professional organization of some kind that looked out for the selfish interests of its current members. [Litination]

When students at New York Law School can’t find work, sometimes they resort to tearing the clothes off of 1Ls. So we applaud Lev Ekster, an NYLS alumnus, for his non-violent approach to the economic crisis:

Recent law school grad Lev Ekster is going from court to cupcakes. When the New York Law School student realized he wouldn’t land a law firm job this year, he turned to entrepreneurship. Inspiration struck after a disappointing trip to Magnolia Bakery, where he waited in an excruciatingly long line for what he deemed a “dry and tasteless” cupcake. “The experience reminded me of my parents’ stories of waiting in line for bread,” says the native Ukrainian.

Yes, this story reminded us of breadlines too.

The mobile cupcake service is called Cupcake Stop, and it should be rumbling by a street corner near you. If you’re interested — not just in cupcakes, but possible employment — take note:

[A]ccording to their recent Twitter post, they’re hiring:

Now hiring, part-time and full-time employees in NYC. Food prep license is preferred, not required. Fun job! email jobs@cupcakestop.com

Why shouldn’t every NYLS student get in on the entrepreneurial act? We have additional details, after the jump.

Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

Dear ATL -

I enjoyed last week’s column! Here’s another question for you. Bar class starts next week (I am in NY). Do I really have to study every day until the bar exam or is that just an urban legend?

School’s Out For Summer

Dear School’s Out For Summer,

Law students who believed that you have to study every day until the bar exam are the same people who spent their entire first semester of law school holed up in the library, clutching oily copies of One L and fearing failure: Nerds. They’re a delicious candy, but they’re completely ridiculous. Why study a little bit every day of law school and thereby ruin every day when you can save the studying and only ruin the last two weeks before exams? Similarly, why ruin May, June and July studying for the bar when you can just ruin July?

So no, you don’t have to start studying on the first day of bar class, but there will be nerds who do. The classic nerd strategy is studying + intimidation, seen in its purest form at SAT testing sites, where students roll up to the testing center carrying Princeton Review pencils and wearing Harvard sweatpants. At bar review class, this translates to students loudly complaining about carrying around 13 pounds of homemade index cards and taking every practice exam released since the blessed Council of Nicaea. You’ll have to ignore their transparent bragging as the panic rises within you and have faith in the procrastination process.

I didn’t start studying till after July 4th weekend and I passed the bar by four points a comfortable margin. It did involve me making a sizable donation to Temple Beth El in South Orange, NJ for prayers to be said in perpetuity for no commercial credit essays, but it was a small price to pay for what might have been a lifetime of “retaker” ignominy. But then again maybe you should start studying early; with Prof. Charles Whitbread sadly no longer with us, the people in Tapeland will have to pick up the slack.

Your friend,

Marin

Elie makes a wager about his bar score, after the jump.

Some law students might be considering suing their schools now that a bright future in Biglaw seems like such a dim possibility. We can imagine lawsuits alleging false promises of golden handcuffs sweeping the land.

But the only suit against a school we’ve seen recently is reported by the National Law Journal (via the Minn Lawyer Blog). And the cause for the ADA suit against the New England School of Law is flunking the student without regard for his brain damage:

According to court papers, the plaintiff, Seva Brodsky, was expelled after failing two courses in the spring of 2005, and later learned from medical testing that his “memory and organizational deficits” likely stemmed from an accident in the early 1980s.

The plaintiff claimed he presented medical evidence to the school at a readmission hearing in November 2005 and was told that academic success in a relevant program would boost his chances for readmission.

Despite lots of chatter around the Web, there are some things that are unclear to us:

Since December, Reed Smith has fired 215 people. So the latest news from the firm won’t be all that surprising. This morning, Reed Smith managing partner Greg Jordan sent the following message to the firm’s associates:

Over the past several months, Reed Smith has adopted many changes to our business in response to global economic conditions, changing client demands, and the competitive landscape in the legal industry. Among other things, this has meant lower compensation levels for partners. Today, we are announcing another change which we believe is appropriate to further sound business operations. Effective July 1, 2009, we will reduce associate salaries in the U.S. by 10% across the board.

What is marginally more surprising is the news about Reed Smith’s incoming first-year associates:

We will set the salaries for our incoming class of U.S. associates at a later date, but the new salaries will be at least 10% lower than current first year levels.

As The Dude might say, “That’s a real bummer, man.”

Our informal numbers tell us that fewer than twenty AmLaw 200 firms have cut associate salaries outright (this does not include the numerous firms that have frozen associate salaries). That’s not the best news, but we haven’t reached epidemic levels. Not yet.

Read the full Reed Smith memo after the jump.

Conservatives won’t be happy with President Obama’s pick to succeed Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. But some nominees are more noxious than others. Of the names surfacing on SCOTUS short-lists, who can conservatives live with — and who would drive them up the wall?

We reached out to Curt Levey, Executive Director of the Committee for Justice, and solicited his thoughts on the Obama shortlisters. More specifically, we asked him to rank the possible nominees from most problematic to least.

Levey kindly obliged. Assuming the nominee will be a woman, an assumption that is almost universally shared, he grouped the most commonly mentioned names into three groups.

In the first tier — consisting of the most problematic nominees, with “judicial activism guaranteed” — Levey listed three: Judge Sonia Sotomayor, of the Second Circuit; Judge Diane Wood, of the Seventh Circuit; and Kathleen Sullivan, former dean of Stanford Law School (and one of the most famous failers of the California bar exam, along with this guy).

For the second tier — containing nominees who are still “very liberal,” but might have some respect for the rule of law, “if only because they haven’t proved otherwise yet” — Levey mentioned three: Solicitor General Elena Kagan; Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm; and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.

Finally, in the third tier, Levey mentioned two names: Justice Leah Ward Sears, of the Georgia Supreme Court, and Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, of the Ninth Circuit. He described Justice Sears and Judge Wardlaw as jurists who have at least “shown some respect for the rule of law.”

The bad news for conservatives: the nominee will probably come from Levey’s top two tiers.

Read more, after the jump.

Lost in yesterday’s Quinn kerfuffle was the fact that Skadden has officially deferred its class of 2010 associates to 2011. That move will help stem the influx of fresh talent into Skadden,

But what about the all of the talent leaving Skadden? Friday, we learned that David Fox and Daniel Wolf were leaving Skadden for Kirkland & Ellis. Today, the word is that restructuring partner D.J. (Jan) Baker is leaving Skadden for Latham & Watkins. AmLaw reports:

The lateral move comes on the heels of two lateral departures from Skadden’s M&A practice reported on Friday — partners David Fox and Daniel Wolf have joined Kirkland & Ellis.

But Skadden executive partner Eric Friedman sees no connection between Baker’s lateral move and that of Fox and Wolf. When asked whether the three departures allude to any larger issues at Skadden, Friedman simply responds, “none whatsoever.”

Anybody in the mood for some positive spin? Let’s take a look at some after the jump.

Last week, we reported that DLA Piper cut associate salaries. But on Monday, we followed up that report with news that DLA had made salary cuts of up to 20% for associates who were not on pace to make their hours. Tipsters reported serious frustration with a 20% salary cut based on only a few months of accrued hours.

Well, last night there was a change in policy from DLA Piper. The firm is going to make a 10% cut across the board to all associates, regardless of hours:

We have had many conversations with partners and associates since making the adjustment, and it is clear that there are numerous anomalies in individual associate situations such that people who were typically strong performers would receive the additional compensation reduction. That is not the result we want to achieve, and we are therefore removing the additional adjustment based on year-to-date performance and maintaining a straight adjustment of 10% for all associates. We will continue to reward associates for exceptional performance in 2009 through our bonus program, taking into consideration both the associate’s performance and that of the firm.

It is an objectively good thing when a law firm responds to associate concerns. It seems that in this case, a wrong has been righted.

But, of course, not everyone is happy.

Additional complaints, after the jump.

* Struggling to compete for business in a shrinking market, law firms are hiring image and marketing consultants to improve their chances—one Philadelphia-based image consultant even tells them how to dress for the courtroom. Lay-off problem solved—apparently all you need is a makeover. [The Wall Street Journal]

* Not only that, but in an effort to be more business savvy, more firms are investing in management courses for their top lawyers. [The Wall Street Journal]

* Tweets lawyers should follow. [Law.com]

* Jeffrey Toobin on John Roberts. [The New Yorker]

UPDATE: * Kash on Toobin on Roberts. [Above The Law]

* The District US Court of Appeals ruled that the White House can keep emails from the public because the White House Office of Administration is not subject to The Freedom of Information Act. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]

* Donald Trump argues that calling him anything less than a God is defamatory. Okay, that’s not true. But make sure you call him a billionaire. Or you’re fired. [Popsquire]

* The market will provide … incentives for Somali pirates to keep you alive. [The Volokh Conspiracy]

* Crispin is selling its intern on Ebay. Could this be a new model for first year associates? [AdAge]

* Professor Bainbridge on SOX. [ProfessorBainbridge]

* Red State v. Blue State on American Idol tonight. If only the contestants themselves would play along. [Althouse]

* Seriously, Beyond Thunderdome should be required viewing for this summer’s associates. [Legal Writing Prof Blog]

Lawyers tend to do well on reality TV shows. Siblings Victor and Tammy Jih, both California lawyers, just won a million dollars on The Amazing Race. Back in 2006, another Asian attorney, Yul Kwon, snagged a seven-figure prize on Survivor: Cook Islands.

(By the way, May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. Yay Asians! Two of your ATL editors, yours truly and Elie Ying Mystal, are Asian American.)

Not surprisingly, lawyers tend to excel on reality TV shows involving skill and strategy. Alas, fluency in legalese might not be helpful when you’re trying to speak the language of love. From a tipster:

No story on the lawyer on the season premiere of The Bachelorette? The guy was a total douche, but he redeemed himself with his closing line. As he had just failed to make the first cut of guys that the Bachelorette was interested in, he told the camera, “Maybe she’s just not into awesome guys.”

Another reader wrote, about eliminated contestant Stephen (above right; he looks a bit like Bob Saget):

This guy is 30, apparently just graduated law school, is a lawyer in NYC, and when he got kicked off the show said that the B’ette didn’t understand what happens in cities, prefers hicks, etc. He was utterly douchey…. If you were to do a post, I’m sure you’d find out more about this dude…

If you know more about New York lawyer Stephen, feel free to share in the comments. It looks like he won’t be threatening the record of Texas lawyer Jeremy Anderson, who currently holds the title of the longest-lasting attorney contestant on The Bachelorette.

Commentary on The Cougar, after the jump.

Have you ever been passed over for a promotion and decided: “screw you guys, I’m going home.” That may be what is happening at Mayer Brown. The National Law Journal reports:

Mayer Brown Vice Chairman Paul Maher, who had been on sabbatical at the law firm as of last month when he was passed over for one of the firm’s new management posts, has provided his official resignation from the firm.

Mayer Brown Chairman Jim Holzhauer told all of the firm’s lawyers in a May 15 memo that Maher would be leaving on “a date to be agreed upon.” Maher, a London partner who was slated to give up his post next month, didn’t respond to an e-mailed request for comment. The firm declined to comment beyond noting that Maher currently is still at the firm.

This is just the latest big management change from Mayer Brown. More details, after the jump.

Is it possible to be on the short list to fill Justice Souter’s place on the Supreme Court and not even know it? Newsday reports:

Much to her surprise, the dean of Hofstra University Law School woke Sunday morning to find she had just been thrust into the national political conversation as a possible contender for a seat on the United States Supreme Court.

National Public Radio speculated that Dean Nora V. Demleitner, 42, of Port Washington, was among those being considered by President Barack Obama for a job on the nation’s highest court.

“I was very surprised in that NPR mentioned me,” Demleitner said in an interview Monday. “It’s an incredible honor to be mentioned.”

Does anybody know how the rumor got started? Even Long Island court watchers seem surprised:

Brian Griffin, former president of the Criminal Courts Bar Association of Nassau County, said he read about Demleitner’s potential candidacy in the newspaper….

Demleitner said she was baffled about how her name got mentioned.

“Like everybody else, I know a lot of people who have connections, but I could not begin to imagine who would have done it,” Demleitner said of a possible nomination.

If the dean of Hofstra Law School was actually appointed to the Supreme Court, would she hire clerks from Hofstra? If so, would Justice Scalia’s head simply explode?

The possibilities are tantalizing.

Hofstra law dean honored to be mentioned for Supreme Court [Newsday]

Earlier: Supreme Speculation: And Then There Were Six

Here’s a post devoted to the perils of “Reply All” and idealism among first-year associates. Brought to you by the attorneys of Quinn Emanuel.

The firm just celebrated a victory in its Washington Redskins case, reports the Washington Post:

A federal appeals court yesterday handed the Washington Redskins another victory in their long-running legal dispute with Native American activists over the team’s name.

The appeals court did not address whether the name was offensive but upheld a federal judge’s ruling last year that a Native American man had waited too long to challenge six Redskins trademarks.

AmLaw Daily reports that Quinn attorney Robert Raskopf, who has been working on the case for as long it has been since the Redskins have seen a Superbowl stadium, was pretty psyched about the victory:

Raskopf was in a good mood when we spoke with him about the appellate win. He’s been on the case since it started 17 years ago. “It’s a great win for the team,” said Raskopf, who had help from Quinn partner Sanford Weisburst on the brief. “I’m so happy for the Redskins and their fans.”

Raskopf was so happy on Friday that he sent out a firm-wide victory e-mail. But not everybody was thrilled. After bouncing around the firm and racking up some responses, the victory chain made its way to our inbox via a tipster:

This is too good not to share. This was sent to all Quinn attorneys.
—-
The First Year Associate Who Shat All Over Raskopf’s Victory Email OR The First Year Associate Who Repurposed the Redskins

After the jump, see the chain that culminates in a (soon-to-be-fired?) first-year associate’s plea for idealistic litigation at Quinn.

The ABA Journal addressed a question that is near and dear to the hearts of many associates: How do you deal with a partner that is a big, bad meanie? The story comes from a weekend Wall Street Journal article on handling interoffice bullies. Apparently, a Jones Day associate had the perfect tonic for her blustery boss:

Chelsea Grayson, 37 years old, was an associate at the law firm Jones Day in Los Angeles when she was placed on a series of deals with an ornery senior partner. “He was very intimidating,” she says. “He’d give me these unrealistic deadlines, saying sarcastically that there were 24 hours in a day. He never smiled, and I just thought he didn’t like me.”

Ms. Grayson resolved the situation by making an effort to look at it from the senior partner’s perspective. Nearing retirement, he was under pressure to train the next generation of lawyers while making sure key clients were always happy. “Once I understood his motivation, I decided to take responsibility for changing the dynamic,” she says. “I demonstrated interest and enthusiasm whenever we’d interact, and eventually he became my mentor.”

Something tells me that Ms. Grayson managed this magic trick before the economy went into the tank. Are there strategies that are more relevant to the Great Recession for dealing with mean bosses?

Let’s explore, after the jump.

Summer associates started at Skadden yesterday, and it doesn’t look like the firm hid the ball when it came to talking about market realities. We have news about expected offers and start dates for the class of 2010 — and it’s not even Memorial Day.

At one of the summer associate welcome meetings, summers were told something like “the offers are there, but you have to earn it.” At that point, the collective sphincter-tightening among summers in the room made an audible noise. As one summer puts it:

They said the usual bs about how if they brought us in it’s cuz they wanna offer us, how we’re not competing against each other, there’s room for everyone, etc, But what wasn’t said is as remarkable as what was said. They didn’t point out the 98 percent offer rate the year before, they didn’t even ever explicitly say they expect to give most of us offers. They only said that we’re all eligible to earn an offer based on merit, as every year. The room got VERY quiet and awkward the whole time the guy was speaking, and other partners felt the need to interject with reassurances throughout.

But other sources have told Above the Law that Skadden does plan on making offers commensurate with previous years. The specific “you have to earn it language” was apparently on a PowerPoint slide — the same slide that is shown every year. We’ve heard rumblings that some firms will have summer offer rates of 50% or less, but none of that talk is coming from Skadden. Our understanding is that Skadden fully expects its offer rate to remain unchanged.

So, as long as you can breathe out of your nose instead of your mouth, things should be okay.

But after you get your offer, when can you start? After the jump, we have a clear indication from Skadden.

Everyone’s a-twitter about Jeffrey Toobin’s profile of Chief Justice John Roberts in this week’s New Yorker. And with good reason. We’re not sure whether the title of the profile, “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” is meant to describe Roberts or Toobin.

We’re sure you’re familiar with Toobin, the ubiquitous legal analyst whose resume includes gigs with CNN and ABC, as well a Harvard Law School degree, a stint as an assistant U.S. attorney, time on the Oliver North trial, a Second Circuit clerkship, and many books, including The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. And he’s not yet 50 years old (though he’ll be 49 on Thursday, according to Wikipedia).

But back to Roberts. He gets a fairly harsh appraisal in the profile, coming across as a political stooge:

After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

Toobin does not appear to be a fan of the Roberts Court. More on the elephant in the courtroom, after the jump.

* A word of advice to the new summer associates: Paralegals can’t be trusted. [Legal Intelligencer]

* SCOTUS dismissed the lawsuit that sought to punish top Bush officials, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft, for detaining Muslims that were not involved in 9-11. [Christian Science Monitor]

* Military commission trials for Guantanamo detainees present many of the same challenges that the Bush administration faced, in spite of Obama’s facelift. [New York Times]

* The White House passed on an opportunity to bring a case involving gays in the military to the Supreme Court. Are they stalling and playing politics or are they right to say that the law should be changed in the legislature and not the courts? [Wall Street Journal (subscription)]

* What do potential SCOTUS nominees and ambulance chasers have in common? Uh, hopefully nothing…[Esquire]

* The court will hear a case against Sarbanes-Oxley in the fall term—is this the time to question too much oversight? [Washington Post]

Earlier today, we welcomed summer associates to Above the Law. It looks like Linklaters had the same idea. Here is today’s welcome memo from the firm.

We offer some more “frequently asked questions” after the jump.

* Yeah, if I saw a bottle of vodka on the shelf, and it had a Russian looking name on it, I’d assume that I was purchasing Russian vodka. Or at least Soviet vodka. [What About Clients?]

* Are we really going to start suing strip joints for age discrimination? I mean really? [The Legal Satyricon]

* Let’s avoid this whole issue by not talking about murders you’ve witnessed, committed, or are otherwise peripherally involved in? [Stl. Today]

* Towel Day. This is a thing now? [Cyberlaw Central]

* I always suspected that the lyrics to most country music songs were nothing more than copyrightable mad-libs.
[Current Trends in Copyright, Trademark & Entertainment Law via Blawg Review]

* Many of you know you can follow Above the Law on Twitter here. But all of you favorite ATL editors are also on Twitter as well. You can follow Davidlat or Kashhill or ElieNyc, or all three of us. [Above the Law]

A Cleary Gottlieb partner thinks that an automated “out-of-office” reply send the wrong message to clients. AmLaw Daily reports:

Raj Panasar, a partner in Cleary’s London office, apparently sent an e-mail to London-based lawyers suggesting that they should always be available to answer e-mails or at least arrange for a colleague to answer messages when a lawyer is truly unreachable. The only time an “out of office” reply might be acceptable is when a lawyer is on a long flight, Panasar wrote.

Umm … wtf?

[T]he “out of office” reply should indicate which time zone the lawyer is traveling to and when he or she will be able to respond to the message. At The Am Law Daily, we find that such detailed “out of office” messages are already typical among oft-traveling partners, but we had never heard of a near-blanket prohibition on “out of office” replies.

On the one hand, Cleary hasn’t cut or frozen salaries or gone through a round of mass layoffs. We imagine Cleary attorneys are willing to go the extra mile to serve clients in this market.

On the other hand, what kind of crazy, self-important, gunner-emeritus do you have to be to think that a client cannot process the line: “if you have a pressing question, please contact [Name], [email], [phone number].” Maybe Mr. Panasar is only “truly” unavailable when he is fighting with the flight attendant about the relevant FAA regulations. But the vast majority of people — partners or associates — are not in the best frame of mind to answer pressing work questions when they are trolling for recent divorcees on Grand Cayman. Aren’t you serving your clients better by directing them to attorneys that are in the office and capable of responding in real time, instead of handling it yourself while you are distracted by other vacation activities?

Unless Panasar thinks lawyers shouldn’t ever take a vacation in the first place? But I don’t think Cleary is going to put that in its fall recruitment brochure.

Cleary Partner: “Out of Office” Replies Not Acceptable [AmLaw Daily]

Just at the moment, a NASCAR driver that has lost control of his car and is 0.3 seconds from colliding with the wall is in a slightly safer position than a third year law student. The latest terrible news (subscription) comes from the Massachusetts Superior Court:

With this year’s budget cutbacks at the Trial Court, 25 third-year law students are scrambling for jobs instead of preparing for fall clerkships at the Superior Court.

The would-be law clerks lost their promised jobs last fall when the Trial Court instituted a hiring freeze, according to Superior Court Chief Justice Barbara J. Rouse.

According to one prospective clerk, who asked not to be named for fear of hurting future job leads, the court’s decision to rescind the clerkships was extremely ill-timed.

According to the story, officials knew there would be a hiring freeze as early as last November or October. But they are just getting around to telling the would-be clerks:

According to a statement issued by Rouse in response to questions from Lawyers Weekly, the clerkship offers “always are contingent on funding.”

In light of the 2009 fiscal issues, “we made the conditional nature of the offers even more clear,” Rouse writes. “The absolute hiring freeze implemented by the Trial Court in mid-October and the deteriorating nature of the state’s fiscal condition has precluded the hiring of any new personnel. … I regret that we are unable to benefit from the assistance of these qualified, capable individuals, however, we are managing unprecedented cuts and difficult decisions across the judicial branch.”

Is there some claim, perhaps based on a theory of reliance (i.e. promissory estoppel), that could be relevant here? More details after the jump.

How should the federal and state governments deal with their depleted coffers? Here’s one idea, from Nick Gillespie of Reason.com, in yesterday’s New York Times:

Legalize drugs and then tax sales of them. And while we’re at it, welcome all forms of gambling (rather than just the few currently and arbitrarily allowed) and let prostitution go legit too. All of these vices, involving billions of dollars and consenting adults, already take place. They just take place beyond the taxman’s reach.

Legalizing the world’s oldest profession probably wasn’t what Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, meant when he said that we should never allow a crisis to go to waste. But turning America into a Sin City on a Hill could help President Obama pay for his ambitious plans to overhaul health care and invest in green energy. More taxed vices would certainly lead to significant new revenue streams at every level. That’s one of the reasons 52 percent of voters in a recent Zogby poll said they support legalizing, taxing and regulating the growth and sale of marijuana.

Are ATL readers more or less libertarian than the general public? In a prior poll, almost 70 percent of you voted in favor of legalizing prostitution.

We know how L.A.’s dopest attorney feels — but what’s your opinion of pot? Vote in this poll, and debate in the comments.

Paying With Our Sins [New York Times]

Earlier: A Seminal Question: Should Prostitution Be Legalized?
Adventures in Lawyer Advertising: ‘The Dopest Attorney’

These days, it seems like the Blackberry stranglehold on Biglaw is loosening. Purely anecdotally, we’ve been seeing many office-pale fingers making use of iPhone touch screens to check for partner e-mails over the weekends.

Let’s move beyond the anecdotal though. Which do you prefer as your Biglaw ball and chain?

Richardson’s top 10 iPhone app picks, and a couple more polls, after the jump.

On Friday, we reported that DLA Piper cut associate salaries by ten percent across the board. But we now know that ten percent was just the starting line for associate salary cuts.

Friday, the firm memo included this language:

Adjustments to all associate salaries at other class levels will be determined and communicated on a case-by-case basis based on class year and performance levels.

It appears that the case-by-case consultation resulted in salary cuts of up to 20% for associates that were not on pace to make their hours. Many tipsters brought this to our attention, as well as some interesting commenters:

Elie/David - what I hope is not overlooked in DLA’s move is that they made a calculated move to mislead abovethelaw and its readers by saying that starting salaries were being lowered to 145. That’s not true. A number of first year attorneys salaries were lowered to 128k. There are 3rd years making 136k. Their efforts to cover for there salary reductions should be given more exposure.

Other commenters made the point that the decision was all about hours:

You could get great performance reviews/make in excess of your budget for years/ be well regarded/ do pro bono work etc, but still the ONLY thing that was taken into account when cutting salaries was whether you were on pace for the first 4 months of this year. The published memo does not disclose this. You could be a pretty average associate and happen to have been staffed on a doc review for the first 4 months or hoarded your work and hey suddenly you are getting paid more than other associates.

Tipsters emailed us, texted us, even called us on the phone to give us details about the 20% cut. We get into the extra news after the jump.

Back in February — after the Acela fiasco, before the layoffs — Pillsbury offered a voluntary departure program to its associates. The program didn’t really work, and the firm ended up laying off 55 associates (155 employees in all), in March.

Undaunted, Pillsbury is offering another “voluntary” program, this time directed at its incoming first year associates. The firm has already delayed start dates for all of its incoming first year associates to January 2010. But now the firm is offering a cash payment to associates to go away entirely. Multiple sources report that Pillsbury is offering $60,000 to incoming first years to voluntarily quit the firm.

At the beginning of May, Stroock offered $75,000 to encourage people to fall on their own sword. If my math is right, Pillsbury is offering significantly less money for the same option.

What happens to people if they don’t take Pillsbury up on its offer? We have additional details after the jump.

Summer associates have started trickling into Biglaw offices around the country, so we at ATL wanted to take a minute (or approximately an hour as that’s how long we usually let a post sit at the top of the page) to say, “Welcome!” We hope to see you around these parts often this summer. This is where Biglaw comes for its news, gossip, and water cooler talk.

While we do occasionally cover law school stories, most of our content is aimed at those with JD degrees in hand. So we expect you may not yet be familiar with Above The Law (a.k.a. “ATL”). We like to do what you might call “tabloid journalism.” (Please see our tagline at the top of the page.) We also do what you might call “public service journalism.” In that light, we encourage our readers to use this opportunity to offer advice to incoming summer associates. What can they do to secure an offer at the end of the summer?

Let’s be honest here. Your summers are not going to be as awesome as the summers of past SAs. You’ve had the bad luck to be diving into Biglaw in the middle of a recession. Expect events to be scaled back in comparison to past years. Expect lunches to be scarcer and cheaper. Expect first year associates to eye you warily.

To help relieve your misery, feel free to send us tips. We can be reached at tips@abovethelaw.com. We like stories that show the scandalous light side of the law. Our tipsters are always kept anonymous.

We love Summer Associate stories. We are the ones who brought the legal profession the tales of river-jumping Aquagirl, the lip-locking Sapphic Summers, and the Partner-headlocking “Randy Savage” SA. We expect that many of you will try to be on your best behavior this summer, knowing that offers will be hard to come by. Over at the WSJ Law Blog, they’ve got legal consultant Peter Zeughauser predicting doom and gloom for this year’s SAs:

And what about the end, Peter? Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

It’s not going to be over before the end of the year. I think you’re going to see dramatically reduced offers to summer associates at the end of this summer, and dramatically reduced offers for people to come in as summers in 2010. These cuts could be very dramatic, as much as slashed by 90 percent.

With that in mind, if things aren’t looking good halfway through the summer, start drinking heavily at firm events. Have fun and let loose. And then send us your stories.

Will BigLaw Slash Hiring by 90 Percent? [WSJ Law Blog]

[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. Things are getting busier for us in Asia, in particular in HK / China. Robert just returned from a trip to Hong Kong, where he typically met with numerous firms, as well as a number of impressive partner candidates that we are representing, including a few that we are in the process of placing. It was an extremely productive trip.

Robert and I plan to be in Beijing for the China Finance Summit, May 19-20 (http://www.chinasummit.org/) (Chinese version of website more up to date than English, or so I am told). Should be an interesting and informative conference and I am very fortunate that a friend is arranging a VIP pass, so another good networking opportunity. I will head back to HK and Tokyo in early June, followed by Dubai in late June. Alexis will be at home in HK throughout May and June. Robert will be back in HK at some point in June as well.

In today’s and next week’s posts, we will very briefly and in a basic manner go over the typical process of an associate placement in Asia in today’s market. In short, in many cases (not always of course) we work with associate candidates for months and even years before a job search begins. Further, in this tough market, job searches for even the most qualified and sought after associate candidates can take months. In this post we will focus on the process of working with the firm side of placements currently in the works, by giving two examples, whereas next week the focus will be on the candidate side.

But first, here is a sampling (not all of course) of 15 of our current US associate needs (please note that firms continue to be extremely selective, due to market conditions):

-proj. finance / energy - senior / counsel (Mandarin required) - Hong Kong
-finance - junior to mid-level (Korean required) - Hong Kong
-proj. finance / leveraged finance - junior to senior (Korean required) - Tokyo
-PE / M&A - mid-level (Mandarin required) - Hong Kong (several of these)
-PE / M&A - mid-level (English only ok) - Hong Kong
-M&A / cap markets - mid-level (Korean required) - Hong Kong
-IP Litigation - senior / counsel (Mandarin required) - Hong Kong and Shanghai
-IP Transactional - mid-level (Mandarin required) - Hong Kong
-M&A / cap markets mix - mid-level (Mandarin required) - Beijing
-cap markets - mid-level (Mandarin required) - Beijing
-PE / M&A - junior to mid-level (Mandarin required - Beijing
-cap markets - junior to mid-level (Mandarin required) - Hong Kong
-proj. finance / energy - junior to mid-level (Mandarin required) - Hong Kong
-M&A - senior / counsel (Mandarin required) - Beijing and Shanghai
-M&A / cap markets - mid-level to senior (Japanese required) - Tokyo
—

Firm A - M&A mid-level to senior spot in HK / China

***More after the jump.

* Conservatives are gearing up to attack Obama’s SCOTUS nominee. [The New York Times]

* The White House is preparing for the fight, and has hired Stephanie Cutter, who currently works for Timothy Geithner in the the Treasury Department, to help with the confirmation process. [CNN]

* But some Republican Senators say that Obama’s nominee will be confirmed no matter what they do (barring some major flaw). [The New York Times]

* The new Justice, whoever she, or he, but probably she may be, will have a busy docket this fall, including a case deciding whether juvenile offenders who commit crimes before they turn 18 can be sentenced to life in prison. [Reuters]

* The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan is investigating at least 8 of Madoff’s investors and associates, including one of his closest friends. [The Wall Street Journal]

* Two enforcement lawyers at the SEC are being investigated for insider trading. [The Financial Times]

* The New York Times couldn’t get a quote from Justice Scalia about the Fordham privacy invasion, but we did. It feels good to gloat. [New York Times]

[Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks. Law Shucks has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.]

As usual, we start with the big-picture number, and once again, it’s not good. Initial jobless claims were up to 637,000 last week, from an adjusted 605,000 the week prior. The streak of continuing-claim records continues, now in its 15th week, as net jobs continue to contract. Unemployment is at a 25-year high of 8.9%. There may be some room for optimism, as many pundits believe the surge is a result of the auto industry’s continuing woes. Other sectors may be seeing some of those green shoots.

At least we’re not BigPharma (although they do provide tons of work). According to IguanaBio,

[Pfizer]’s four-year “tour de layoffs” has cost the company $7B, according to an SEC filing. To date, PFE has spent $5.3B for employee-termination costs, including severance payments, pensions and post-retirement benefits, as well as costs associated with write-downs on properties, plants and equipment. PFE has axed 40,000 (yeah, 40,000) employees over the last five years, with 1,650 positions gone in Q1. The damage is not done either. PFE says that once the WYE merger is done, another 19,000 will get the axe with 8,000 coming from PFE and the rest from WYE. PFE expects the merger and restructuring will cost between $6-8B, but will reduce annual costs by $4B starting in 2012.

After the jump, back to updating BigLaw layoffs (despite some parties’ selfish objections) and other cost-cutting measures.

Find out over at our sister site, Dealbreaker, which has the latest news.

Dreier Sheets [Dealbreaker]

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Marc Dreier

We’ve been getting reports of disappointing results for February bar exam takers in states across the land. As we’ve said before, passage results are always lower in February. But this year has been particularly dismal in many states (e.g., see Florida).

Today, bar exam results were mailed out in California. Applicants can start checking their results online at 6 p.m. PST and bar exam voyeurs can check the pass list starting Sunday at 6 a.m. PST.

Congratulations to those who passed. And if you failed, take heart — you too could be a contender for a SCOTUS nomination one day.

February 2009 California Bar Examination Pass List [California State Bar]

Earlier: The Bar Exam: A List of Famous Failures

* I would have no problem at all if potential SCOTUS justices had to answer this questionnaire and those answers had to be published and discussed during the confirmation hearing. [Daily News]

* Married men looking for sex slaves might want to consider the words of the wise Falstaff. Discretion is the better part of valor. [True/Slant]

* New Hampshire Governor John Lynch has some ideas about reelection religion. [Law Dork 2.0]

* New U.S. Attorneys have been named for New York and New Jersey. I suggest laid off associates start networking with these guys now. Remember, today’s U.S. Attorneys are tomorrow’s rainmakers. [City Room]

* Isn’t being forced to watch Maury Povich a clear violation of the 8th Amendment? I don’t mean liberal “whaaa, when I go to prison, sometimes they give me bad touches” violation. I mean a straight up, dress you in a bonnet and make you watch surveillance DVDs of your mom having sex with your stepdad, violation of the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. [Popsquire]

We know many lawyers have “secret” other lives. Last night, we went to the surprisingly good debut performance of one of our legal friend’s rock bands. Some legal types dabble in the visual arts. Some attorneys have a little prostitution gig on the side…

It’s best if your extracurricular activities are not of the variety that push legal boundaries.

Hatim (Tim) Attalla, of counsel at Miller Canfield in Detroit, likes to spend his free time on a Harley with the Detroit Highwaymen Motorcycle Club. Nothing wrong with that. Lawyers and leather go together just fine.

But the love of the road, and his fellow bikers, allegedly led Attalla to stray from the straight path of the law. Now he’s part of a 35-count federal court RICO indictment. From the Detroit News:

Hatim “Tim” Attalla is charged in the indictment with conspiracy to possess and distribute illegal drugs. It’s alleged he advised arrested club members to keep quiet about former club vice-president Aref “Scarface” Nagi’s involvement in drug dealing, supplied Nagi with a variety of pills, and acted “as general counsel to the enterprise.”

Terrible timing. Attalla was named on Wednesday to the new Detroit mayor Dave Bing’s crisis turnaround team. Yes, the mayor who was elected to replace philandering mass-texter Kwame Kilpatrick. Does Detroit exist just to make New Orleans feel better about itself?

More on the Highwaymen’s general counsel of corruption, after the jump.

We’re pleased to announce that HLS grads Tracy Zuckerman and Ryan Van Grack triumphed in a high-turnout vote to win ATL Couple of the Month honors for April. Kudos!

On to this week’s contest. Once again, it’s too close for us to call, so get your voting fingers ready; there’s a poll after the jump. Here are the entrants:

1. Elizabeth Arens and Christopher Mathews

2. Jennifer Toll and Brett Schulman

3. JoAnn Kamuf and Rusty Ward

Check out these couples’ resumes and photos, after the jump.

As noted in yesterday’s Morning Docket, President Obama has reportedly narrowed his search for a Supreme Court justice to a shortlist of six. From CNN:

Among the finalists are federal appeals court judges Sonia Sotomayor and Diane Wood, and Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak by the White House.

Women make up all but one of the top candidates currently being given serious scrutiny, the sources said.

Also on the list, a source said, was California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno. The 60-year-old Los Angeles, California, native was not among the early favorites mentioned by legal analysts and the media. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs previously hinted some of the names under consideration were under the political radar.

Who will get the nod? To be totally honest, it’s pretty impossible to say at this point. Once you get down to a short list of a half-dozen, the choice belongs to the president (as the White House seems to be emphasizing to interest groups). Anything can happen.

President Obama will meet personally with some of the finalists, and his final choice will no doubt be influenced by those meetings. A leading contender can kill his or her chances by coming across poorly in the interview (as former Judge J. Michael Luttig did when he met with President Bush, according to Jan Crawford Greenburg in Supreme Conflict).

But none of this will stop us — or anyone else — from speculating. Speculation is fun! And since we probably won’t have a nominee until after Memorial Day, for the reasons identified by