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.
Continue reading “Quinn Emanuel Associate Has Reservations About ‘Redskin’ Victory”
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.
Continue reading “Open Thread: How to Handle An ‘Ornery’ Partner?”
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.
Continue reading “Skadden Summers: Welcome to the New Market
Class of 2010 start dates pushed to 2011.“
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.
Continue reading “Chief Justice John Roberts: The Elephant in the SCOTUS Courtroom?”
* 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.
Continue reading “Welcome to Linklaters!”
* 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.
Continue reading “Massachusetts Superior Court Rescinds Clerkship Offers”
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?
If you do have an iPhone, we imagine you spend some time at the iPhone app store tricking it out. We decided to check in with Jeff Richardson, a partner at Adams & Reese in New Orleans, for some application recommendations. Richardson is such a big fan of the iPhone that he started a blog devoted to it six months ago: iPhone J.D.
Richardson’s top 10 iPhone app picks, and a couple more polls, after the jump.
Continue reading “Top Ten iPhone Apps for Biglawyers”
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.
Continue reading “DLA Piper Salary Cut Follow Up”
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.
Continue reading “Pillsbury: Let’s Try This Whole ‘Voluntary Departure’ Thing One More Time”
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]
* 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.
Continue reading “This Week in Layoffs: 05.15.09″
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]
