* Okay, I’ve accepted the fact that state officials in Alabama don’t have ready access to the Constitution. But thanks to advancements in technology, surely we can now print the thing on the back of a beer can so it magically appears when their beer achieves maximum freshness. Maybe we can print the Bill of Rights on a series of bumper stickers? We have to stop leaving Alabama behind. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Has the headline “The End of Biglaw” jumped the shark? [Adam Smith, Esq.]
* The search warrant for the house owned by Michael Jackson’s Doctor. [Popsquire]
* Here’s a personal injury law roundup. It’s better than the lottery. [TortsProf Blog]
“Big 4 firms dodge a bullet in the UK as the highest court dismissed a negligence lawsuit against an accounting firm that failed to detect a fraud that brought down a trading company.”
“[Former partners of accounting firm BDO Seidman] that were involved with the firm’s tax shelters are continuing to drop like flies. This time, Mark Bloom, a hedge fund manager and former BDO partner that worked in Tax Solutions group, pleaded guilty to several charges.”
Ah, California lawyers…. If only you were accountants, you might be entitled to some back pay for overtime. The issue will be decided by the worker-friendly Ninth Circuit at some point in the future.
Earlier this week, a Michigan Law alumnus complained to the ABA about the school’s Wolverine Scholars Program. Well, last night the Michigan Dean of Admissions emailed the students about the complaint and a popular legal blog that she “doesn’t read.” Here’s the email from Sarah Zearfoss, Director of Admissions at Michigan Law:
Hello all!
Hope your summer is going well—we miss you here in Ann Arbor, and are confused by the number of empty parking spaces. My own summer has been quite lovely, and my vacation hiking in various western desert national parks made me profoundly, profoundly grateful for that Michigan weather about which so many have Issues. “Dry heat,” my fanny. 120 degrees is brutal.
So, I don’t actually read the Above the Law website, but I can’t seem to stop people from forwarding links to me from time to time. Yesterday featured a blurb that has prompted me to write to all of you because of a fundamental misconception it contained.
Oh come on Dean Zearfoss, you want us on that wall, you need us on that wall. Besides, we know your boss, Michigan Law School Dean Evan Caminker, loves to read us. Don’t you want to do what all the hot kids are doing?
More from the Michigan Director of Admissions, after the jump.
Now that Gatesgate is behind us, capped off by a beer summit at the White House yesterday, what can we get riled up about now?
Well, there’s always something going on with the police. From Arthur Delaney of the Huffington Post:
A lawyer who moments earlier had been complaining to friends about police overreaction in the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., got a taste of the Gates treatment himself after loudly chanting “I hate the police” near a traffic stop in Northwest Washington, D.C.
Pepin Tuma, 33, was walking with two friends along Washington’s hip U Street corridor around midnight Saturday, complaining about how Gates had been rousted from his home for not showing a proper amount of deference to a cop….
Then the group noticed five or six police cruisers surrounding two cars in an apparent traffic stop on the other side of the street. It seemed to Tuma that was more cops than necessary.
“That’s why I hate the police,” Tuma said. He told the Huffington Post that in a loud sing-song voice, he then chanted, “I hate the police, I hate the police.”
Uh-oh. Find out what happened next to Tuma — a former associate at Milbank Tweed and Gibson Dunn, by the way — after the jump.
This couple definitely merits an honorable mention this week. They met a year ago in Vegas and turned a 24-hour hookup into a NYT wedding announcement featuring seersucker, a 6-year age difference, and a JD from Widener. It’s certainly one of the more colorful lawyer wedding announcements we’ve seen in a while (although we concede the bar is fairly low).
We even managed to find a picture for you, seersucker and all. They look like they know how to party, don’t they?
On to our finalists, who are more prestigious — but admittedly a bit less colorful:
Proskauer Rose has joined the growing list of firms to defer current summer associates to 2011. But unlike other firms on that list, the Proskauer deferral pushes the 2010 class to “fall” 2011. Other firms have at least told their summer associates that they could start in January 2011.
Proskauer has already deferred its incoming class of new associates to March 2010, and the firm only gave those new hires a $20,000 stipend for their trouble. And the firm has asked incoming associates to voluntarily defer until January 2011 with a $60,000 stipend. Maybe participation in the voluntary deferral program by the class of 2009 has been so great that the firm felt it had to involuntarily defer its current summers to the fall of 2011?
But at this point, it doesn’t appear that Proskauer is offering any kind of deferral stipend to the class of 2010, and that has some summers grumbling.
See, there are tons of things you can do with a soft liberal arts degree, including being an IP lawyer in Biglaw. Today’s job of the week, brought to you by Lateral Link, is one of several new openings at big firms around the country. If you are an associate considering a lateral move, you should contact your Lateral Link search consultant to discuss the options.
Position: IP Transactional Associate
Location: New York, NY
Description: A top international law firm is seeking a mid-level IP transactional associate to work on a variety of corporate intellectual property matters including technology transactions, licensing arrangements, IP components of M&A and corporate finance deals, and handling dealings with the USPTO.
For more information on this position or to apply, please see position #5156 on Lateral Link, or you can contact T.J. Duane at tjduane@laterallink.com. Membership in Lateral Link is free and you can apply at www.laterallink.com.
Edgartown Police are searching for a man who smashed the back door of the Dairy Queen ice cream shop on Upper Main Street early Saturday and tried to help himself to a pre-dawn snack….
A security camera captured the young man busting into the store at 4:45 am. Edgartown police provided the following description based on the video.
At 4:47 am “a white male forced the door open and entered the store,” according to the police report. “He proceeded to the front area behind the service counter and attempted to use the ice cream machines. One of the machines sprayed out a mess of liquid ice cream that got all over the suspect’s pants and feet. He gave up on the ice cream and then stuck his hands in some candy condiment bins. After a few moments he then exited the store.”
The man has been identified has Zachary L. Gould. He appears to be the same Zachary L. Gould that attends Moritz.
And yes, there is video. Hilarious drunken video. Check after the jump for more details.
Here’s a quick afterword on the story of Elizabeth Wurtzel, the critically acclaimed, bestselling author who — for rather mysterious reasons (9/11 was somehow involved) — traded in a life of six-figure book advances, glamorous parties, and relationships with other celebrity writers… for a law degree.
In a prior post, we wondered whether Wurtzel, who has not yet passed the bar, can refer to herself as a “lawyer” (as she has done publicly on various occasions, most recently in an interview with Bitter Lawyer). In a comment to Gawker, Wurtzel advanced the theory that she can refer to herself as a “lawyer,” even if not an “attorney,” because “if you graduate from law school/receive a JD, you are a lawyer; if you are licensed, you are an attorney.”
For those of you who just took the bar, and who will receive your law licenses in a few months, this is a pertinent inquiry. Does the lawyer vs. attorney distinction hold water?
Many regular Above the Law readers will remember that Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft laid off nearly 100 attorneys, back before laying off attorneys became cool. More recently, the firm put 34 associates on an involuntary sabbatical.
Cadwalader is still willing to give jobs to the 34 people let go earlier this month. Contract jobs. Multiple sources inform us that CWT is trying to bring on a gang of contract attorneys. But instead of just picking up any old person with a spare J.D. lying around, the firm is giving the right of first refusal to its former associates.
Here’s how a Cadwalader spokesperson described the initiative:
As part of our sabbatical program, Cadwalader is committed to helping affected attorneys in every way possible, from helping them to identify new job opportunities to providing them with resume writing and interview tips. We have alerted them to more than 60 job opportunities, helped to arrange more than 20 interviews, and are aware of three job offers. As part of our efforts to engage them at the firm when possible, we recently received a client request for assistance on an expanded document review project with tight deadlines. Rather than consider other staffing solutions as we might have in the past, we first offered these lawyers the opportunity to work on the matter. We will continue to help these talented individuals in whatever ways we can.
Would you go back to work for your old firm as a contract attorney? Before you answer, you have to take a look at the pay CWT is offering.
Remember James Ferraro, aka the Runaway Groom? He’s the multimillionaire trial lawyer who, back in January 2008, left his wife — Patricia Delinois, a well-known real estate broker — standing at the altar.
Their story ended happily: Ferraro and Delinois reconciled and eventually did get married, a few weeks later. And Mrs. Ferraro is probably very glad they did.
James L. Ferraro, the prominent Miami trial lawyer who owns the Cleveland Gladiators arena football team, is finally buying a nice Manhattan apartment. This week he’s spending $8,175,000 on a penthouse at the glassy Park Imperial on West 56th Street.
Even though Mr. Ferraro owns places in Miami and a 14-bedroom Martha’s Vineyard mansion, it had been years since he felt he could get a good bargain in New York. “I thought about it after 9/11, but I didn’t want to buy on a calamity—be a vulture on someone’s property; not that it’s bad karma, it is what it is. But this now is the best buying opportunity you’re going to have in the next 25 years.”
Yesterday, American Lawyer released the results of its annual survey of midlevel associates. Morale is about what you would expect from postal workers applying for a gun permit, not upwardly mobile white collar workers. But the results should surprise no one:
Associate morale plummeted to the lowest level in five years (since we started asking about it). It fell from a rating of 3.1 last year, on a scale of 1 to 5, to 2.7. The drop is clearly related to job insecurity. Eighty-three percent of our respondents reported medium or high anxiety about losing their jobs. The midlevels had good reason to be concerned. Sixty-one percent said that their firms had layoffs. And, for those who kept their jobs, there wasn’t enough to do. As early as last year, one-third of associates saw a drop-off in their workload, and this year 46 percent said it had decreased.
But it’s not just job security that is making Biglaw associates blue. The pay cuts don’t just hurt associates’ bottom line, they make associates feel less valuable:
Many survey respondents were also disappointed with their firms’ pay cuts, reduced or nonexistent bonuses, and decreased benefits. They were also troubled by what they saw as a lack of transparency on financial issues and layoffs.
After the jump, let’s look at the firms where midlevels are least miserable, and the firms that should consider adding Lexapro to the vending machines.
* Arturo Gatti’s death has been ruled a suicide, and Brazilian authorities have freed his widow. [BBC]
* David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez tested positive for steroids in 2003. D’uh. But the media learned about the positive results from blabber mouth lawyers. Do court orders mean nothing these days? [New York Times]
* Investigators are looking for evidence of whether Michael Jackson was a drug addict. [CNN]
* People are still trying to figure out what to do about the University of Illinois. The ABA is having a panel on public corruption, and one UofI trustee has resigned. [Chicago Tribune]
* Forced California court closings are going forward. [Law.com]
* I believe it was Chris Rock who once asked: “What do you got to do to be a racist anymore? Assassinate Medgar Evers?” [Boston Globe]
If you just finished your state bar exam today, Above the Law is here for you. If you finished the bar yesterday, immediately went to a purveyor of alcohol, and are just waking up now with a midget stripper in your bed, welcome back.
No matter how badly you think you did on your bar exam, trust me, you did better than Carlos Enrique Gomez-Alvarez. The Salt Lake Tribune reports:
A Utah immigration attorney and four of his employees accused in a visa fraud scheme on Wednesday entered not guilty pleas to the crimes. …
Carlos Enrique Gomez-Alvarez, arrested in New York while taking the bar exam in Buffalo, also entered a not guilty plea in New York on Wednesday and is expected to be transported to Utah this week.
Arrested while taking the bar exam? That’s got to add up to a galactic fail.
After the jump, check out some tips on what to do next.
* The Ticketmaster / Live Nation merger reminds me that Robin Williams is a poor replacement for Teddy Roosevelt. [Miss Trials]
* Who voluntarily dismisses a complaint against Pfizer for $50,000? It’s a plaintiff’s goldmine if you can force a settlement. Silly non-lawyers. [Drug and Device Law]
* European clients don’t like American civil litigation. Well, I think Europeans are wussies that we had to bail out of world warfare twice. Ooohhh. Burn. Take that, “Old World.” (Psst … can you send me some prescription medication? I won’t tell anybody.) [What About Clients?]
* I hate hate-crime laws. But I also hate homophobia. I didn’t hate the state of Pennsylvania Board of Accountancy, but now I do. [The Volokh Conspiracy]
* Congratulations to our friends at Practical Law Company (PLC), which just won a 2009 InnovAction Award from the College of Law Practice Management. [Marketwire]
You’ve heard horror stories about messy divorces where people litigate over the family pet. Traditionally, pets are regarded as just another piece of property to be divided up among the former spouses. But that could be about to change. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
[A] second trial on the custody of the nearly six-year-old brown pooch is set to begin. [Doreen Houseman] plans to testify again that her ex-fiancé broke an oral agreement to let her have the dog after she moved out of their house.
In March, a three-judge appeals panel ordered a new trial, saying Superior Court Judge John Tomasello should not have treated Dexter as just another piece of furniture during the first trial, in Gloucester County, in 2007
Houseman argued against the speciesist system where pets are considered mere property by family courts. Houseman and various animal defense lawyers tried to use the Michael Vick case as precedent:
They suggested the judge should also weigh what was best for the dog. That had been done, they said, with the dogs that belonged to former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, after he was involved in a dog-fighting ring.
The appellate panel declined to go so far as to apply the best interests test to a dog. Apparently, tail wags per minute is not a reliable indicator.
But the panel didn’t have to apply a best interests test. The trial court judge seemed to be just enough of a jerk to give the appellate court grounds to give Houseman a new trial.
Earlier this week, we reported that the Troutman Sanders pay cut applied to associates’ entire 2009 salary. We were wrong about that. A Troutman Sanders spokesperson explained to us that the pay cut will only apply to associate compensation from August 1, 2009 through the end of the year.
Why the confusion? Let’s go back to the original Troutman Sanders announcement of its pay cut:
Responding to changing market conditions for associate compensation, Troutman Sanders today announced a 10-percent reduction in the total amount of associate pay that was budgeted for Aug. 1-Dec. 31, 2009.
These reductions will not be made across the board but will be based on each associate’s individual performance evaluation.
Don’t get blinded — as we and some of our tipsters did — by the 10% figure. That’s just the target amount that Troutman wants to save off of all associate compensation between August and the end of the year.
After the jump, the firm explains that individual pay cuts will vary greatly.
With more summer programs getting the axe (including even non-firm summer programs), we want to remember what the summer of 2009 was like, so we can pass on the advice to the summer associate class of 2012 (or whenever they decide to have summer programs again). So please take a minute and tell us what you think about your summer associate experience. Click here to take our short survey.
For those of you who were summer associates years ago, perhaps you’re more focused on making partner. Check out this week’s review of survey data from the Career Center, brought to you by Above the Law and Lateral Link, in which we tell you which firms were most queried regarding the prospect of partnership. Remember that, in addition to the information here, you can see how associates at over 100 top firms feel about the chances of making partner at their firm by visiting the Firm Comparison section on the Career Center.
What is current law firm protocol with respect to affairs between partners and associates? The head of one the practice groups at my firm is having an affair with an associate in another group. It has been going on for awhile and is embarrassing for some of us who are aware (funny how people think they are being discreet, isn’t it?!). Am I obligated to tell someone? Will anything happen to them or is it generally acceptable (or not a concern) for this to go on? I’d like to send a note to the managing partner or head of HR — thoughts?
Rats of Nimh
Dear Rats of Nimh,
My first reaction to this question is, seriously, who cares? My second reaction is, calm down and get a life. Unless you think the associate has avoided layoffs (if any) because of protectia, what’s it to you if a partner you may or may not work with is having an affair with an associate whom he or she does not review?
I fail to see how this affair is embarrassing to you and others, unless you’re jealous that you were not selected as the object of desire. This happened to me once, where a partner I had a rabid crush on passed me over for another associate and I became enraged and threatened to three friends that I would lateral out because distance makes the heart grow fonder, at which point one of them reminded me that I had never actually spoken to said partner in real life, per se. The point is, “reverse Schadenfreude,” as my friend Megan likes to call it (i.e., fury at other peoples’ happiness), is a powerful emotion. It’s tough to think that others are experiencing carefree sexual liaisons and personal fulfillment while you code documents by the glow of your Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves computer wallpaper. However, polite society dictates that you grin and bear it. In these sort of situations, I find that gossiping viciously helps.
Emailing the managing partner or head of HR is patently ridiculous. They may be hosting the liaisons for all you know, like Jerry Seinfeld did for Madonna and A-Rod when he invited them to his Hamptons house to conduct their adultery in some peace and quiet.
Sorry to say, but you’ll just have to live with this one.
What is it about high-powered lawyers and underage girls? Remember James Colliton, the ex-Cravath tax lawyer who had his way with two teenage girls — after paying their mother for the privilege?
It seems Colliton may have company. Todd Genger — a (somewhat cute) 33-year-old lawyer at Goldman Sachs, and a father of three — appears to have been snared in a sting operation aimed at online perverts who solicit underage females for sex.
Earlier this week, we wrote about a serious drafting mistake by Stroock & Stroock & Lavan — maybe a typo, maybe not — that could cost Stroock’s client millions.
Could Stroock look to its malpractice insurer for help? Maybe not, according to the New York Post:
The gaffe exposes Stroock to the real possibility of having to pay back Extell and Carlyle out of its own pocket because sources said that if the developers sue Stroock, it’s unlikely its insurer will pick up the tab.
The basis for this prediction is not included in the Post article. If you have thoughts on the insurance issue, please do share.
Stroock didn’t comment to the New York Times, which first wrote about the error, but they did offer brief comment to the Post.
Thursday, July 30, 2009 11:43 AM - By Kashmir Hill
So it appears that Detroit’s ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was carrying on other text-based affairs. His exchange of over 14,000 steamy, adulterous texts with his chief of staff made headlines last year. Now, it’s been revealed that he exchanged some inappropriate SMSes with another woman: Sheryl Robinson Wood
At the time, Wood was at Kroll, a New York-based risk assessment firm, and had been appointed to monitor Detroit’s Police Department reforms. Now, she’s a partner at Venable in the firm’s Baltimore office.
Saul Green, Detroit’s group executive of public safety, briefed the media after a closed meeting with Detroit City Council after shocking revelations that Sheryl Robinson Wood, who resigned as monitor last week, had a relationship with Kilpatrick.
Green said the Justice Department turned over text messages from fall of 2003 through January 2005 that show Kilpatrick and Wood met in Detroit, Washington and other cities.
“They showed contacts between the monitor and the former mayor that were inappropriate and also an exchange of information related to the litigation,” Green said. “It was a personal relationship in which they met, in which they went to dinner… not in an official time or context.”
There’s nothing better than a little litigation information exchange over drinks.
Wood resigned from the monitor position, but trouble looms for her. One tipster points out that a judge recently slammed the police department reforms as “grossly inadequate.” The monitoring of those grossly inadequate reforms cost Detroit over $13 million. Now the Justice Department is considering a criminal investigation of Sheryl Robinson Wood.
Jeez. Even we are sick of this story — and that’s saying a lot.
But apparently some folks think, despite the endless navel-gazing and handwringing over the (canceled) visit of Dr. Li-ann Thio to NYU Law School, that there is more to be said here.
The principle of Truth, and the accompanying practice of Challenge Limiting Beliefs, is foundational to finding and following a calling. At The New World Institute, we define limiting beliefs as those ideas that hold you back from work that is work fueled by passions and purpose.
So, the first step in this process is discovering your own limiting ideas. Some ideas are individually based, and some ideas may be societal. For example, if your history includes making a lot of money from something you despise, you may have created an internal idea that you will never make money from something you love to do. You may believe this so strongly that it has prevented you from taking the time to explore your options for what you may enjoy that can also bring you a great income. Limiting ideas can be very powerful and often are based in fears more than facts.
Right now, many people believe that because of the current economy, they are lucky to have work and that right now is not the time to explore other options for jobs or careers. In fact, the timing may never be better for exploring your options for new work. Our rapidly changing world economy is morphing all existing industries and opening new possibilities every day. Job security is no longer in the hands of organizations; you have to be in charge of your own career, and the more prepared you are for change, the happier you will be in the long run.
Once you excavate your limiting beliefs, the next step is to re-script them in a way that is authentic for you and empowering. For example:
“I can’t make money from something I love” may become “I am willing to research potential careers that I can do in the future that are enjoyable and profitable.”
“I am lucky to have a job and this is not the right time to look for new work” may become “In order to be better prepared for change, I will explore new options for my next career chapter.”
If you are interested to find out how The New World Institute can help you transform your career, then call (347) 445-5763 for more information.
The rumor mill is churning over at Kirkland & Ellis this week. While we’re unable to confirm that the firm is poised to grind down associates, we are hearing from sources worried that layoffs are coming.
The first warning sign came last week, when we learned that Kirkland had decided to move up annual performance reviews. A tipster reported the news this way:
Kirkland and Ellis has moved up its annual review process by 2-3 months. Look for layoffs (stealth or otherwise), likely starting sometime in August.
In this market, changing the timing of performance reviews is often interpreted as a move by the firm to set up for layoffs. But associates are so generally terrified these days that just having a partner look at an associate the wrong way can make a person freak out.
Other evidence suggesting that Kirkland is gearing up for a round of layoffs, after the jump.
* Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, the No. 3 official in the Obama Justice Department, signed off on a decision to drop a voter intimidation complaint against members of the New Black Panther Party. [Washington Times]
* Can’t we all just get along — with the help of beer? Today at a White House picnic, President Obama will drink a Bud Light, Professor Gates will drink a Red Stripe, and Sergeant Crowley will drink a Blue Moon. We told you Cambridge police officers were yuppies. [Washington Post]
* A San Francisco lawyer who interviewed Bernie Madoff may use the information obtained to pursue feeder fund managers. [Reuters]
* Advisers on the Microsoft-Yahoo ad partnership: Sheppard Mullin, Skadden, and Perkins Coie. [Am Law Daily]
Today’s big bar exam news is that the ancient and decrepit Jacob Javits Convention Center sprung a leak. A tipster reports the news from Manhattan:
In the middle of the afternoon session, the ceiling started to leak and it appeared that it required a few students to relocate. It was somewhat noisy and created a bit of a scene for a while.
How did the bar finish up in other parts of the country? How was the first day of the bar for those of you in states that run the exam on Wednesday and Thursday?
For those of you lucky enough to be done with the exam, you’ve earned yourself a well deserved drink (or twelve).
Celebrate tonight. Tomorrow, you’ll have to get back to preparing to be a practicing attorney. That has very little to do with the exam you just finished.
Congratulations to all the test takers.
WARNING: Please do NOT discuss actual questions or topics from today’s bar exam in this thread. We will delete your comment and ban you from commenting if we see it, and we will NOT FIGHT anybody who subpoenas us to obtain your IP address.
You can talk about whether you found the exam easy or hard or somewhere in between. But please, nothing about the substance of the exams today. Thank you.
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.
Ah, the library. When was the last time you thought about it? When I started law school, I had a somewhat mystical notion of what the library would be like. Rays of afternoon sunlight would filter through tall windows, illuminating dust motes and spilling onto the pages of my neatly IRAC-ed briefs. I would sit at a long table, chewing thoughtfully on my pen before delving into an incisive analysis of Carolene Products, fn 4. A delicate lamp with a green glass shade would cast warm light on the law review article I was writing in longhand, with a fountain pen. I would meet a handsome stranger in the stacks and we would fall in love, like the Clintons.
In reality, the law library was devoid of such scholarly romanticism. It was either oppressively hot, resulting in all-girl study groups whose attire was more suggestive of a “Law Students Gone Wild” video than a chat session about conveyances, or cold enough to require indoor scarf-wearing. I spent more time asleep, with my face planted awkwardly on an open book, than I did actually reading. One of the bitchier members of our section patrolled the library with fierce determination, shushing us when we giggled about bizarre tort cases and classroom gunners. When it came time to study for the bar exam, I spent so much time in the library that, toward the end, I would wake up — in my own bed — feeling disoriented by the unfamiliar surroundings, groping anxiously for my highlighters. For years, I couldn’t pass by the building without experiencing the panicky sense that I had forgotten something important about commercial paper.
These memories, which conjure a queasy blend of academic stress, physical discomfort, and the feeling of being incarcerated in a cell made of CFR parts, resulted in a certain degree of library amnesia. Indeed, it hadn’t occurred to me to set foot in a law library for … well, years. Then, a few weeks ago, I received an email that read….
Since it has been so long since Heller Ehrman collapsed, it’s easy to forget that the firm’s dissolution continues to affect so many. Today, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the owners of the building that housed Heller will now have to forfeit that property:
The owners of a premier San Francisco office tower plan to forfeit the property to their lenders, the city’s second distressed transaction involving a major commercial building in recent weeks and another sign of the growing pressures in the sector.
Hines and Sterling American Property decided to transfer their interest in 333 Bush St. to the original financers, following the surprise dissolution of law firm Heller Ehrman in September, according to a letter Hines sent to local real estate brokers and obtained by The Chronicle. The 118-year-old law firm defaulted on its 250,000-square-foot lease, leaving the nearly 550,000-square-foot property 65 percent vacant.
How are former Heller associates and partners doing these days? Have people put the Heller experience behind them? Or is the pain still too near to talk about it?
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 2:29 PM - By Kashmir Hill
Many a law student has forwarded along an e-mail from his or her law school career services office announcing that this or that law firm has dropped out of on campus interviewing schedules (a.k.a. OCI). Here’s a recent sample from Columbia announcing that Sullivan & Cromwell will not be interviewing 3Ls:
From: COLUMBIA CAREER SERVICES OFFICE
Date: Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 7:09 AM
Subject: EIP 2009 UPDATE: Sullivan & Cromwell 3L Schedules
Dear Students,
Unfortunately, Sullivan & Cromwell will no longer be interviewing 3L students on their EIP schedules. We will be happy to accept one additional bid - to be entered in either the same slot as you had placed the firm in your bid list, or in the last slot on your list. Please email me your selection by 12 pm tomorrow, July 29. If you will not be able to do so, please let me know as soon as possible. If you do not select an additional firm to add to your bid list, all of your bids will simply move up one place in your list.
Again, we apologize for the inconvenience, and please let me know if you have any questions.
We are happy to get these e-mails but we’re not likely to do an “X-firm-has-dropped-from-X-law school schedule” play by play on fall recruiting. So here is an open thread for law school students from across the country to discuss which firms have dropped out of recruiting at which law schools. Also, feel free to make use of the ATL Community Section.
It’s a pretty sad time at Southwestern School of Law. The National Law Journal reports:
The recent murder of a 17-year-old girl who was abducted near the Los Angeles campus of Southwestern University School of Law has sent shockwaves through the law school.
The victim’s mother, Deborah Drooz, a partner at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, had just finished a summer course as an adjunct professor at the school.
The victim, Lily Burk, was leaving Southwestern’s campus when she was abducted. A suspect has been arrested for her murder:
Burk had just picked up some paperwork at the Southwestern Law School’s building for her mother when she was abducted on Friday afternoon, according to recent press reports. During the next hour, Burk called her parents, asking how to withdraw cash from an ATM using her credit card. Her beaten body was discovered in her car Saturday morning at a downtown parking lot. A 50-year-old transient, Charles Samuel, who had entered a drug treatment program near the law school’s campus, has been arrested for her murder.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to Ms. Drooz and her family.
Last September, the University of Michigan Law School announced its Wolverine Scholars Program. The program allows the law school to admit University of Michigan college students who have a 3.8 GPA — so long as those students don’t take the LSAT.
Look Michigan, if you are going to try to rig something, at least have the decency to do it under the cover of darkness.
To a UM college student with a 3.8, the Wolverine Scholars Program looks like an interesting example of game theory. But to the rest of us, it looks a straight bribe. It’s like Michigan Law School is saying: “Please, please, please don’t take the LSAT. Because if you get a 167 we probably have to accept you anyway. And if you get a 175 you will better deal us for a lobster dinner.”
We weren’t alone in our criticism. Indiana University professor Bill Henderson also panned the program:
The lofty rhetoric of the Wolverine Scholar program cannot be squared with the unnecessarily rigid admissions criteria. In my opinion, the only rational explanation is that Michigan seeks a rankings payoff. Here, an elite law school sets a new low in our obsession of form over substances — once again, we legal educators are setting a poor example for our students….
Above the Law’s critiques of the Wolverine Scholar Program are now a matter of record with the American Bar Association thanks to one Michigan Law graduate. Details of his complaint to the ABA after the jump.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 12:25 PM - By Elie Mystal
At a press conference today, Lucia Whalen spoke out about her 9-1-1 call and her role in the Gatesgate fiasco.
She said that she supports the Cambridge police and respects Professor Gates. She’s happy that the police released the actual tapes of her call to the police.
She also clarified that she only spoke to Sergeant Crowley briefly at the scene. While she wouldn’t speak about the police report specifically, she indicated that she did not say the “black males … with backpacks” line that was in Crowley’s police report.
As I said Monday, I feel bad for this woman. Her voice was shaking and she’s clearly been traumatized by the scrutiny of her actions. I totally apologize for jumping to conclusions about this woman based on the police report.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 11:36 AM - By Elie Mystal
Boston Magazine has a great article about alimony in Massachusetts. By the time you’re done reading it, you’ll be willing to stay in a dead-end marriage rather than getting divorced in Massachusetts:
When an alimony case comes up before a judge, the focus is almost exclusively on the wealthier ex-spouse’s ability to shell out, and hardly ever on the recipient’s ability to fund his or her own needs. … But unlike in most states—and every other state in New England—here judges historically do not assume any income for the recipient, even if he or she is able to work but chooses not to. (In fact, Massachusetts’ alimony system doesn’t even conform with state rules for other areas of family law. In child support cases, recent reforms explicitly encourage the judge to impute potential income to a recipient if the judge believes the recipient is shirking higher-paying work.)
For all this, what really sticks in the craw of would-be reformers is that alimony in Massachusetts is so often a burden without end…. [I]n Massachusetts: The only way judges here will set a cutoff for alimony is if it is tied to a specific event, like the recipient’s remarriage, death, or new inheritance. And since judges cannot predict what a recipient’s financial circumstances will be at a point in the future, most simply award indefinite alimony and leave it to the payor to seek modification. The vast majority of judges who do want to set a duration get overturned on appeal, so few ever try.
Ouch. Do gays and lesbians in Massachusetts really want to sign up for this? On its face, this alimony scheme seems to make divorce a one way ticket to financial ruin for the spouse with higher earnings. What God has joined together let no man put asunder — unless that man is willing to pay through the nose for the rest of his natural life.
After the jump, why hasn’t this medieval law been changed already?
This is really of interest only to hard-core ATL groupies. But if you’d like to know our policy on preserving the anonymity of law students who do embarrassing things — and why we identified the alleged Law Student Spitter by name yesterday, even though we generally keep names out of summer associate stories — then check out the statement we issued to the UVA Law Blog.
One caveat: this is our policy with respect to law students. We deal with lawyers — or “attorneys,” if you think the words have different meanings — on more of a case-by-case basis.
Last week, we brought you some salary cut news from the Sunshine State. Today we bring you more such news.
Holland & Knight, a large national law firm with a significant presence in Florida (the state it started in), announced pay cuts yesterday for associates, senior counsel, and senior professionals. The salary cut will be effective with the next paycheck (i.e., this Friday). The information was disseminated by voicemail — or, to be technical, a secure link to a Flash audio message — at approximately 7 p.m. Eastern time yesterday.
Our sources reported pay cuts averaging around 10 percent. But according to managing partner Steven Sonberg, the overall cuts are closer to 7 percent.
The explanation, including the firm’s full statement on the cuts, after the jump.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 9:00 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* Goldman Sachs has been taking a beating in the press recently thanks in large part to Matt Taibbi calling it “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” in Rolling Stone. And now, one of its lawyers has been charged with trying to get a 15-year-old to beat it. [New York Daily News]
* Obama could face the “ultimate confrontation” in the courts over Guantanamo. [New York Times]
* Nationwide Layoff Watch: Hawaii firm fires nine administrative staff. But holla’! They’re looking to hire new IP attorneys. [Pacific Business News]
* Lawyer Jules Cattie is playing New York subway watchdog. He says he recently spotted a child operating his train. [New York Daily News]
* New Jersey Internet radio host Hal Turner pleads not guilty to death threats against federal judges Easterbrook, Bauer, and Posner. [Chicago Tribune]
Tomorrow we’ll discover what our God in heaven has in store, One more dawn, One more day, One day more! [FN1]
All day, I’ve been asking my hippocampus to produce one clear memory about what I did between day one and day two of the bar exam. All I came up with was the momentary feeling of depression that overtook me when I found out I passed that November. I remember that passing meant that I had to go back to whatever donkey, doc review work I was doing.
In any event, I have nothing helpful to say about what you should do between the day one and day two of the bar exam. Maybe a glass of wine and a musical about a failed French revolution? Maybe some commenters can share some helpful hints?
The most positive thing is that this entire bar experience is almost done. For most of you, tomorrow will be the last time you have to worry about this stuff. And maybe one day you too will have no earthly idea about what you did in between the days of the bar exam.
WARNING: Please do NOT discuss actual questions or topics from today’s bar exam in this thread. We will delete your comment and ban you from commenting if we see it, and we will NOT FIGHT anybody who subpoenas us to obtain your IP address.
You can talk about whether you found the exam easy or hard or somewhere in between. But please, nothing about the substance of the exams today. Thank you.
[FN1] Unless, say, you’re taking the bar in a state with a three-day exam, or in two different states. In which case, enjoy the ordeal.
* I’m not one to talk about typos, the passive voice, and other mistakes. But Vanity Fair is. [Vanity Fair]
* Defamation over a tweet? This can’t be what the world is coming to. [True/Slant]
* Best. Health care revenue enhancement. Ever. [TaxProf Blog]
* Long Island Law is booming! They should make a t.v. show about it called Sound Law with: Paul Giamatti [kindly managing partner], Jeff Goldblum [hot shot partner who wants to take over], Alyssa Milano [she’s a dragon in the courtroom, and in the bedroom], and Idris Elba [token black guy with token chip on dark, handsome shoulders]. [Long Island Business News]
* Allen Stanford doesn’t like jail. Hang on, let me get out my violin … please continue, Mr. Stanford. [WSJ Law Blog]
* A good defense lawyer will defend all kinds of clients, even police officers. [Underdog]
Last month, Kevin Heinz and Jill Peterson got married in Minnesota. They posted their wedding march video to YouTube earlier this month and it’s gone viral. We’ve been looking for an excuse to post the hip hop wedding sensation, and a kind tipster furnished us with the excuse, telling us the somersaulting groom is heading to law school next month.
The couple swapped “Canon in D major” for Chris Brown’s “Forever:”
Their only misstep: Choosing a song by someone convicted of domestic abuse. Find out to which law school Heinz is heading this fall, after the jump.
Yesterday we heard from legal ethics experts about whether Elizabeth Wurtzel’s referring to herself as a “lawyer,” despite not having passed the bar yet, could get her in trouble. The two we consulted, Professors Steven Lubet and Stephen Gillers, did not see it as a big deal.
There’s an interesting follow-up over at Gawker, which obtained the following comment from La Wurtzel herself:
This is my understanding: if you graduate from law school/receive a JD, you are a lawyer; if you are licensed, you are an attorney. That’s what I’ve always been told.
Not too many nice things to say about the Bar Exam. Every year, some very gifted people fail it (Hillary Clinton, Kathleen Sullivan of Stanford Law School)—and every year, a lot of real idiots pass it. Hard to know what to make of that ;-)
Regarding Wurtzel’s understanding of the difference between the terms “lawyer” and “attorney,” other folks have been told that too. See the comments to this post from last year on the subject.
But there is disagreement. Read more, and take a READER POLL, after the jump.
The current online front page of the NYT weddings section is worth a click. The head blurb leads with “Despite their differences in age … ” underneath a picture of a 20-something bride embracing a “groom” who appears to be about nine years old. “Differences in age,” indeed. Somebody alert Morality in Media! (Of course, when you click on the link, you learn that the real groom is 40-something. Still yucky, but not illegal.)
Our spotlighted weddings this week feature couples who are well-matched not only in age, but in accomplishments. Here they are:
It is not unusual for some top firms to decline to interview at Yale Law School. The school is so small, and quite frankly some firms know that they are not going to attract Yale talent.
That said, in this market some firms are unsure about what to do with fall recruiting. Is pulling out of Yale this year an indication of a firm’s larger decision to scale back its 2010 summer program? A tipster has done some legwork for Above the Law readers:
Yalies got a fall interview program pep-talk/preparation video yesterday. According to the CDO, the firms participating plan to have “robust summer programs” but “smaller” than in the past. Nothing too surprising….
Interesting to you guys will be the top firms who are NOT participating in the fall interview program at Yale. I went through Vault up to 50. If firms with New York offices won’t send people on an hour-and-a-half train ride to New Haven, even just for show, they must really be hurting.
Check after the jump for the list of Vault 50 law firms that won’t be doing OCI at Yale.
All the attention recently showered upon Harvard celebrity professor Henry Louis Gates since his arrest earlier this month has resulted in the discovery of tax problems at a foundation he created and oversees.
It seems like the summer associates just arrived, yet many are already packing up their Biglaw bags to head back to school. This may be due in part to shorter summer associate programs this year, but that’s besides the point.
Summer associates departing the offices of Ropes & Gray have big smiles plastered on their faces. The firm has delivered good news, say tipsters:
During the week or two leading up to the end of the summer program, the Partner in charge of the summers met with all the SAs for reviews. In these reviews, ALL SAs got offers. There is not even a buzz about anyone getting no-offered or cold offered!
We checked in with the firm. A spokesperson put a very slight damper on the excitement, but also delivered some good deferral stipend news for 2010 law grads, after the jump.
I hope you all enjoyed your bar exam day one morning session. For your lunch break, I have a real-life legal question I just picked up off of the street, standing in front of the Breaking Media offices in Nolita:
You are standing outside your office on a crowded street. Construction workers, residents, and even some clergymen regularly pass by. While smoking a cigarette and minding your own business, a local walks by and asks you for a light. You are about to comply with the request, but the object the local presses to his lips does not appear to be a store-bought cigarette; rather, it appears to be a joint.
You sheepishly ask, “Is that a hand-rolled cigarette?” The local replies “Naw man, it’s the good s***. You wanna hit?”
You shake your head “no,” then scan the street for police officers, but all you see are six-foot blonds entering the casting agency next to your building. Eventually, the local asks again for your lighter.
Should you give it to him? Why or why not? Could you be subject to criminal liability for doing so?
I’m interested to hear what you think. Check back here later — this post will be updated — for my solution.
We’ve covered the legislative twists and turns of same-sex marriage fairly closely here at ATL. But there was one notable court case we missed back in March.
We thought Dr. Li-Ann Thio’s description of anal sex as “shoving a straw up your nose to drink” was graphic, but this article by the Register on attempted same-sex female marital rape is even more explicit:
A Massachusetts woman has appeared in court on a domestic assault and battery rap after allegedly attempting to impregnate her wife with a plastic syringe containing her brother’s sperm.
Stephanie K Lighten, 26, of Pittsfield, was reportedly “all liquored up” when she made unwelcome advances towards her other half, 33-year-old Jennifer Lighten. Jennifer explained to officers that Stephanie “had been talking about trying to impregnate her for some time”, and that she’d accordingly armed herself with a “turkey baster and her brother’s semen in a sealed container”.
According to Lez Get Real, there were no rape charges per Jennifer’s request, just a domestic assault and battery charge.
Apparently these lovebirds were able to put the turkey baster incident behind them. We checked in with the Central Berkshire District Court and found out the case was dismissed in April.
We all know gunners who spit hot fire at professors. But we rarely see gunners who spit at the police. According to the Charlottesville police, one UVA law student can roll both ways.
A Charlottesville woman is facing felony assault charges after an altercation with a police officer on Thursday.
Elisabeth Epps, 29, is accused of spitting on a police officer early Thursday morning in the Market Street parking garage.
It appears that initially she was trying to keep her saliva safe within the confines of her car, but the police were having none of it:
Charlottesville Police say friends of Epps were trying to get her out of a locked, parked car after a night of drinking. When Epps would not respond to continued police instructions, officers broke the back window to get her.
After police removed Epps from the car, she continued kicking and screaming and then spit in an officer’s face.
Epps is actually a little bit famous in UVA circles. More details after the jump.
* Thanks to the Governator’s intervention, the California Supreme Court decided yesterday that paralyzed UC Davis Law grad, Sara Granda, will be able to take the bar exam today. We hope she studied. [Sacramento Bee]
* Massachusetts college students being tried for illegal music downloading got bad news about “fair use” yesterday. [National Law Journal]
* Guys in my high school used to bribe, intimidate and silence witnesses in order to defend their drug kingpin clients all the time. It was kind of a big deal. [New York Daily News]
* The Michael Jackson death investigation is shaping up into a murder case, and his doctor is at its center. [Wall Street Journal]
Here are some last-minute tips for those of you taking the bar exam this week:
1. Get a good night’s sleep.
2. Set out your clothes for tomorrow, and everything else you’ll need for the exam, before you go to bed.
3. Relax; don’t dwell on the bar exam horror stories. They’ll just freak you out. So many things lie beyond your control — e.g., earthquakes — so there’s no sense in worrying about them.
* Just for Captain Canuck, we acknowledge that the differences between Canadian law and American law are about more than what you can legally do with a moose. [Legal Lad]
* The movement to ban anonymous commenters failed to gain another follower, but anonymous insults are still pretty wussy. [Simple Justice]
* Some dude hung out a shingle — on Craigslist — and now he’s making all the unemployed attorneys who are sitting around drinking until the economy turns around look bad. In middle school, this kid would have a hard time finding someone to sit with at lunchtime. [ABA Journal]
* Harry Markopolos — the Madoff Ponzi scheme investigator — fulfilled a mother’s worst nightmare about clean underwear. [Going Concern]
DLA Piper, one of the biggest law firms in the country (and the world), has added its voice to the changing nature of Biglaw summer programs.
In a letter sent to law school deans and career service officers (and obtained by Above the Law), DLA Piper announced it was deferring its current summers and delaying recruiting for new summers.
For current summers, the program is similar to the one Weil Gotshal announced earlier this month. The earliest 2009 summer associates will be able to start is January 2011, and they will be encouraged to take a deferral and not start until January 2012. Here’s how the DLA memo puts it:
One result of these deferrals is that our current summer associates would start at the firm at approximately the same time as the Fellowship participants from our class of 2009, creating another potential class that may exceed demand. While we proactively reduced the size of our summer class for 2009 to half the size of the Summer 2008 class, the start date changes require that we adjust the start dates for this class as well. We have therefore made the decision to make offers to this Summer’s class in generally the same manner as the last class. We will make offers to our summer associates of 2009 soon after the program ends, and the offers will be for a January 2011 start date. We expect that some portion of the class will be encouraged to participate in a Fellowship program during 2011, further deferring the expected start date to January 2012 for some. We plan to keep these offers open until the NALP deadline of November 15.
That is bad news for summers that are currently at DLA, but it also means that summers who want to go to DLA will have to wait their turn.
Here’s a story that might interest the “legalize cannabis” crowd. From our friends at Fashionista:
This is turning into the summer of the fashion crowd running into trouble with the law.
Last week, a major drug bust went down in Ralph Lauren’s tony New Canaan, CT store. The stock manager, 34-year-old Ricky Sullins, was arrested for accepting a FedEx package loaded with 14 pounds of marijuana. FedEx contacted the police before delivering the package since they could smell the drugs through the box and an undercover cop posed as the delivery man.
Fourteen pounds is enough to get an entire polo team high — including the horses. Since it involved a large quantity of pot moving through the state of Connecticut, we wonder if U. Conn. law student John Belanger was involved.
If Sullins is looking for representation, might we suggest Allison Margolin, aka L.A.’s Dopest Attorney? She’s a California attorney, but perhaps she can get admitted pro hac.
To read more and comment, click on the link below.
To those of you getting ready to take the bar exam this week, here’s some reassurance for you: even if you fail, life goes on. Consider this list of famous failures, people who didn’t pass the bar exam but went on to tremendous success anyway.
And here’s another boldface name who failed the bar: Elizabeth Wurtzel, the bestselling and critically acclaimed author, who graduated from Yale Law School last year and sat for the New York bar in July 2008 (and maybe in February 2009 too). In an interview with the New York Observer, Wurtzel shrugged off her bar failure.
In a more recent interview with Bitter Lawyer, Wurtzel once again breezed past that fact. From Gawker:
Wurtzel granted an interview recently to Bitter Lawyer, talking about how much she loves the law and how awesome it is being a lawyer and working at David Boies’s law firm. Except she’s not a lawyer! At least not in New York, where it seems to be unlawful to claim to be a lawyer if you haven’t passed the bar exam. Which she hasn’t.
In the Gawker post, John Cook parses Wurtzel’s Bitter Lawyer interview against the backdrop of New York rules and statutes regulating the legal profession. Cook suggests that Wurtzel describing herself as a lawyer violates New York Judiciary Law § 478, “Practicing or appearing as attorney-at-law without being admitted and registered.”
We forwarded the Gawker link to a pair of legal ethics experts, Professor Steven Lubet of Northwestern and Professor Stephen Gillers of NYU, and asked them to assess the situation.
The Cabbed Caller, who reported Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to the police, now disputes the police report about what she told them in her 9-1-1 call. Instead, the caller — who has now been repeatedly identified as Lucia Whalen — contends that she did not know the race of the two people attempting to enter the house. According to the Boston Globe:
Lucia Whalen, saw the backs of both men and did not know their race when she called 911, said Wendy J. Murphy, a Boston lawyer from New England School of Law. Whalen phoned police, Murphy said, because she was aware of recent break-ins in the area.
Well, I guess I was wrong. On Friday, I questioned whether or not the woman acted appropriately in sicking the Cambridge police on Professor Gates while he was attempting to enter his house. Previously, I questioned whether Gates’s blackness prevented this woman from assessing the situation rationally.
Assuming the woman is telling the truth, then you can’t really fault her. You can fault the Cambridge police, for injecting race into a call where race wasn’t even mentioned.
More from Whalen’s side of the story, plus the 9-1-1 tape, after the jump.
If some law firms are not willing to invite members of the class of 2010 to work for them over the summer, why should banks?
We just received word that Citigroup has decided to cancel its 2010 Summer Program for 2L summer associates. A tipster sent us this email that students at Penn Law School received this morning:
Dear Students,
I regret to inform you that Citigroup is not having a summer class for the Summer of 2010 and has cancelled all of it on campus interviews. Your bid will not be lost as we will consolidate it before we process the interview schedules. I apologize for any inconvenience this cancellation may cause you. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you need further assistance.
All the best,
Did you know that Citigroup got legal talent fresh off of the law school tree? Well, they don’t anymore.
Let’s look at what the program used to be after the jump.
As you may have noticed, we generally moderate comments relating to a certain rather vulgar meme (and sometimes we ban IP addresses too).
If you don't know what we're talking about, then skip this post -- and consider yourself lucky. But if you miss being able to invoke the ass lobster meme, then you're in luck.
We are offering "ass lobster amnesty" in the comments to this post. Get it all out of your system now, since we will continue to zap "ass lobster" comments on other posts.
To inspire you, we took some photos this weekend of associate editor Kashmir Hill, posing with a big-ass lobster (five pounds).
Morris Manning has decided to cut salaries. Given the decisions of other prominent firms with large offices in Atlanta, this news alone is not that surprising. Morris Manning had been paying $145,000 in Atlanta.
But the pay cuts at Morris Manning are not based on hours or “performance.” Instead, the firm is cutting salaries based on practice groups. As we understand it, Morris Manning is giving a 15% salary cut to associates in the real estate, commercial lending, and general corporate practice groups. Everybody else will receive a 10% pay cut.
Tipsters report that initially, associates in real estate, lending, and corporate were looking at a 20% pay cut. But it looks like the firm reversed course on Friday after they decided to spread the pain around by taking the 10% bite out of the rest of the associates.
Update (6:50): Morris Manning spokespeople got back to us and clarified the situation. Apparently, associates in the the slowest practices already received a 20% pay cut earlier this year. When the firm decided to make a 10% across the board pay up, the firm changed the pay cut on the slow practice groups to 10% (making for the average of 15% percent that many of our sources reported). So now, all the associates in every group are looking at a 10% cut in base pay going forward.
Behind the veil of ignorance, this plan is probably more fair than making a deeper cut in practice groups that have been hardest hit by the recession. But — assuming that the three practice groups taking the larger pay cut are indeed slower than the rest — is it fair for busy associates in other practice areas to shoulder part of the burden?
The firm did not respond to our request for comment. But you can weigh in with your thoughts in our reader poll, after the jump.
Over the weekend, the California state bar website was down. It’s a pretty big system glitch to have on the weekend before the bar exam, as this tipster explains:
Considering past exams and answers, as well as testing center information is on there, I’m sure lots of people are freaking out. Clear sign of incompetence on the Bar’s part here in not addressing the problem at all.
The site was still inactive when we woke up this morning on the east coast. But now, as most of California is getting into gear, the site is back up.
Cram away, left coasters. The bar will be over soon, and you’ll be able to go back to surfing and eating seaweed or whatever.
If you’re a minority female, you’ll likely say ba-bye to your firm within five years, says a study from Catalyst, a non-profit focused on women and business issues.
The organization recently released a report titled, “Women of Color in U.S. Law Firms:”
According to Catalyst’s Women of Color in U.S. Law Firms, women of color face complex barriers compared to other groups that may significantly decrease job satisfaction and increase the intent to leave their current firm—factors that affect a firm’s bottom line. The study is the fourth and final in Catalyst’s Women of Color in Professional Services Series examining how the “intersectionality,” or combined identities of gender and race/ethnicity, puts women of color at a unique disadvantage in the workplace. Despite widespread existence of systems created to develop and advance women of color, research has shown that more than 75 percent of these women will leave their employer within five years, costing an amount potentially greater than each person’s total salary and benefits.
The organization surveyed 1,242 lawyers and conducted focus groups with women of color—including Asian women, black women, and Latinas— and then produced a 72-page report [pdf]. Here’s the short version from the Chicago Sun-Times:
75% bail within 5 years due to barriers.
Female lawyers of color being flaky is maybe not exactly the message that Catalyst wanted to send.
We skimmed the report, and must say it’s a bit dry. We’ve extracted the juicier bits — mainly the individual stories — after the jump.
Last week, we reported that Troutman Sanders instituted a 10% associate pay cut based on performance. Those salary cuts were supposed to be temporary. The pay cuts apply from August through December — though we don’t know if that pay will automatically bumped up on January 1, 2010.
Notwithstanding the definition of “temporary,” it now appears that the Troutman cuts are retroactive. A tipster explains it this way:
What they’ve neglected to say is that the cuts are retroactive to January 1, 2009. They will be taking the entire ten percent (or in some cases higher percentages) out of the remaining paychecks for the rest of the year. So if Troutman Sanders cuts a first year associate’s salary by 10%, they will not be taking 10% off of each individual pay check, but rather taking out the entire $14,500 in just the last ten pay periods. This is the first firm I’ve heard of to do retroactive cuts like this, and it just seems very disingenuous to present these cuts as only 10%.
We can’t know for sure if Troutman is the first firm that has done its salary cuts this way. But we are sure that this is the first time that associates have squealed about this kind of retroactive pay cut.
Which is not to say that other firms haven’t been trying to creatively get at the same problem. More details after the jump.
This information has been updated and corrected. Please click here for continuing coverage.
* Crocs have no teeth when it comes to fighting legal battles. The footwear company has settled five design defect lawsuits filed by parents whose children suffered escalator injuries. [On Point News]
* Yolanda Young’s suit against Covington & Burling is back on. [BLT]
* The ATL editors are not the only legal groupies in New York. [New York Times via Gothamist]
* Blago’s judge is prepared for theatrics in the court. [Associated Press]
We realize that Elie makes we make our fair share of typographical errors here at ATL. But this is just a blog, not a document being sent to a client or filed with a court, and we’re more focused on substance than style, due to the speed of the news cycle and our desire to be… FIRST! So please cut us some slack.
(But do continue to point out typos to us, either in the comments or by email. Readers are our unofficial copy editors, and we frequently fix typos after they’ve been brought to our attention.)
In any event, at least our typos don’t cost anyone millions. From the New York Times:
The Rushmore, a new 41-story glass and stone condominium tower on Riverside Boulevard at the Hudson River, seemed serene on a recent visit. The flowers in the interior courtyard were in full bloom; the ground-level pool had been filled. Sixteen buyers had already moved in.
And yet an error of a single digit in an arcane document — the densely worded 732-page offering plan — could upset that happy picture, and cost the sponsors, the Extell Development Company and the Carlyle Group, tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue, lawyers say.
Of course, this isn’t the first example of an expensive typo (assuming it’s a typo; this is open to debate). Remember the $900,000 comma, or the $40,000 missing “L”?
But, if given effect, the glitch in the Rushmore offering plan will certainly be one of the more expensive ones. Find out the nature of the mistake — and the law firm responsible — after the jump.
Here’s a final collection of links from the recent Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, an event we were privileged to attend and to speak at last week. We thank the Ninth Circuit for the generous hospitality and warm welcome.
* We shared the stage with Nina Totenberg, Linda Greenhouse, and an esteemed federal judge (Judge Robert Lasnik (W.D. Wash.)). Somebody pinch us; was that a dream? [Legal Pad]
* What to expect from Solicitor General Elena Kagan. Also: she supports cameras in the courtroom at One First Street. [San Francisco Chronicle]
* If you’re planning a trip to Monterey or Santa Cruz, here are some good travel tips. [dagblog]
Mega-fraudster Marc Dreier, who recently traded a magnificent penthouse for a cell at the MCC (look him up in the handy Inmate Locator), isn’t the only New York lawyer with new digs.
The iconic CBS Building (aka “Black Rock”), longtime home of Wachtell Lipton, has another prestigious legal tenant. From the New York Observer:
Law firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe was expected Thursday to sign a lease for approximately 220,000 square feet at CBS’ 38-story granite slab known as Black Rock, at 51 West 52nd Street, according to industry sources.
As part of the deal, Orrick is taking the space being vacated by UBS and Cushman & Wakefield, which will consolidate its midtown offices at 1290 Avenue of the Americas. Sources say that UBS paid more than $32 million to terminate its lease early, money which CBS applied to the Orrick deal to absorb the costs of Orrick’s build-out of the noncontiguous space to the tune of $150 a square foot, and which will reduce the firm’s rent in the building.
It’s a great building, with handsome, elegant architecture (courtesy of Eero Saarinen). Because the footprint is relatively small, it doesn’t have the impersonal, warehouse-like feel of many other New York office buildings. The midtown location is super-convenient, and the higher floors offer amazing views. (We know Black Rock well, having spent several thousand hours in it while working at Wachtell.)
An Orrick spokesperson confirmed to ATL that the deal, described by the Observer as “expected,” has closed. Congratulations to Orrick on the fabulous new digs!
[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.]
We may not have seen the worst yet, the last few weeks’ progress in the American economy has turned slightly for the worse this week.
Applications rose by 30,000 to 554,000 in the week ended July 18, in line with forecasts, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington. Claims had fallen by 93,000 over the previous two weeks. The number of people collecting unemployment insurance decreased to the lowest level in three months, also reflecting seasonal issues surrounding closures at carmakers.
The constant layoffs without any expectation of hiring have had a continuing negative effect on consumer confidence. If we’re getting out of this recession, it won’t be consumer-spending driven. And it looks like there’s still some pain to come.
The economy has lost 6.5 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007 [the Law Shucks Law Firm Layoff Tracker counts lawyer layoffs from January 2008]. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict the unemployment rate may reach 10 percent by year-end from 9.5 percent in June, the highest level since 1983.
Slower layoff rate, more yet to come? Sounds just like the law-firm industry.
So. There’s this thing called the bar exam taking place next week. (Exact dates vary by jurisdiction.)
As bar exam candidates enter the home stretch, they exhibit a wide range of emotions. Some are cool as cucumbers, so confident of passage that they spend bar review classes making origami creatures. Others are panicky, hot messes (literally — like the folks who had to sprint down smoke-filled stairwells during the NYU library fire earlier this week).
Does anyone sitting for the bar have last-minute requests for advice? Do any veterans have wisdom to impart? What’s the most effective way to study — or relax — over the next 72 hours or so?
* Isn’t lugging around casebooks one of the only ways for law students to get any exercise? If you digitize them and put them on the Kindle, law students will lose bone density like astronauts do when they are in space. [Ideoblog]
* Harvard Law School is threatening a student over her role on a legal defense team for Joel Tenenbaum. Not surprisingly, Charlie Nesson is right in the middle of this. [Copyrights & Campaigns]
* Unleash your demons! It might help you get a job. [Law and More]
* If I tried to steal something from you, failed, got away, and later came back to apologize, would you have me arrested? [Quiz Law]
* Dr. Phil intentionally inflicts emotional distress every time he opens his mouth. [Lawtini]
* Professor Brad DeLong on the “huh?” moments from Lat’s panel at the Ninth Circuit conference. [Brad DeLong]
* A Harry Potter star used the “escapium from incarcerationus” spell. [Popsquire]
Kirk Herbstreit, ESPN commentator and former quarterback of The Ohio State University football team, let the fire department burn down his house. As fans from Michigan know, this is classic Buckeye behavior.
Above the Law’s commitment to bring you all of the latest details about the crazy saga of Dr. Li-ann Thio is unmatched. On Wednesday night, we broke the news that Dr. Thio decided against teaching at NYU Law School this fall.
Now we have Dr. Thio’s official statement explaining her decision to withdraw as a visiting professor. According to the resignation letter she sent to NYU Law Dean Richard Revesz, a lack of tolerance changed Dr. Thio’s mind about NYU Law:
As an Asian woman whose legal training has spanned the finest institutions in both East and West, I believe I would have something of value to offer your students. However, the conditions no longer exist to proceed with the visit, given the animus fuelled by irresponsible misrepresentation/distortions and/or concerted invective from certain parties. Friends and colleagues have also expressed serious concerns about my safety and well-being.
I am convinced that a primary condition for learning and teaching, especially in my chosen fields (which are rife with contested concepts) - human rights and constitutional law - is a tolerant, serene environment where different viewpoints emanating from a variety of worldviews are heard with mutual respect and carefully evaluated, in a civilised fashion. I have always striven to ensure my classroom would exemplify such conditions and had planned to bring this practice to my NYU classroom.
Dr. Thio Li-ann appears to be arguing that NYU Law students should respect her beliefs. But some of her beliefs sound pretty disrespectful to gays and lesbians in the NYU Law community. Unless “shoving a straw up your nose to drink” counts as a respectful way of discussing sexual practices.
Of course, since we are dealing with Dr. Thio, the letter goes on. Brevity is not her strong suit. Read more after the jump.
What should a female Solicitor General wear to the U.S. Supreme Court? It’s a hot-button issue. For some excellent analysis, see Dahlia Lithwick.
The topic of SCOTUS-appropriate attire for a Solicitrix General keeps coming up. It popped up yesterday in Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s interview with Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, at the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference in Monterey.
From an attendee (who stayed at the conference longer than we did; we left the day after our panel):
In case you are not here, David: the solicitor general was just asked what she will wear at the Court, and she declined to say. But Judge Kozinski followed up to ask — expressly on your behalf [David Lat fka Article III Groupie] — whether she would be wearing Jimmy Choos. She said “no,” because the heels are too high to stand in while she argues.
Thought you’d want to know this breaking fashion news!
So it’s not surprising that people are becoming concerned about another titan of the Philadelphia market, Blank Rome. The firm has cut associate salaries, and it did lay off 79 people back in March.
On Wednesday, multiple rising 2Ls at Penn Law received information that led them to believe that Blank Rome was pulling out of on-campus interviewing at Penn. That made others speculate that Blank Rome’s entire 2010 summer program was in jeopardy.
But sources at the firm — including some partners — contend that the firm is going full steam ahead with its 2010 Summer Program, which will include recruiting at Penn. A firm spokesperson furnished Above the Law with this response:
I can confirm that we are currently scheduled to recruit at Penn and that we will be continuing our summer program.
How did so many Penn students get spooked about the Blank Rome recruiting situation? We investigate after the jump.
A partner at a top New York law firm — we have more partner readers (and tipsters) than you might think — sent us an email with this subject line: “Stimulus Money for Law Firms?” The email directed us to two links on Recovery.gov, the disturbingly expensive website devoted to tracking where the federal economic stimulus money is going.
Almost $900,000 in stimulus money — i.e., your taxpayer dollars hard at work — is going to two top law firms: Debevoise & Plimpton and Paul Weiss. Debevoise is getting $432,680 and Paul Weiss is getting $462,528, both from the U.S. Department of Energy. Links are here and here.
Needless to say, this got us hugely excited. Have things gotten so bad that law firms — even firms as prestigious and profitable as Debevoise & Paul Weiss — need government funds?
Economists sometimes talk about the hypothetical stimulus of the government paying people to dig ditches and then refill them. Is the federal government now trying to jump start the legal economy, by paying law firms to draft merger agreements or summary judgment motions, then send them through the shredder? Has the phenomenon of fake work spread beyond the summer associate class, into the ranks of associates and partners, to be paid for by U.S. taxpayer dollars?
Not quite (although that would have been a juicier story). Find out the somewhat boring reality, after the jump.
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Elie here. On Wednesday, I took a closer look at the woman who called the Cambridge police on Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. I wondered if she could be held liable under a good Samaritan statute, and asked if we should hold good Samaritans to a higher standard.
Most readers felt that the woman was beyond reproach. She saw “two black males with backpacks” attempting to enter a house, and most people — including Professor Gates and President Obama — felt she acted appropriately when she called the police.
Legal Blog Watch has published a great analysis suggesting that Gates’s arrest was unwarranted. Even if you take the police officer’s word about what happened inside the house, it was unlikely that a prosecution against Gates for disorderly conduct could have survived (at least based on the evidence we have now; there are rumors of tapes).
I understand that I am hanging far out on a thin limb, but I remain far from convinced that the woman acted appropriately. I do think, hypothetically, that there is a cognizable legal claim Professor Gates could have against the woman who turned him in. Here is the applicable Massachusetts “good Samaritan” statute:
Section 13. No person who, in good faith, provides or obtains, or attempts to provide or obtain, assistance for a victim of a crime as defined in section one, shall be liable in a civil suit for damages as a result of any acts or omissions in providing or obtaining, or attempting to provide or obtain, such assistance unless such acts or omissions constitute willful, wanton or reckless conduct.
On Wednesday, I suggested that the standard for liability was reasonableness, as opposed to “willful, wanton or reckless conduct.” Obviously, a recklessness standard is much more difficult to prove.
But after the jump, I make my case. And then Mr. David Lat slaps me upside the head makes his case … that I need to be Rule 11-ed right back to Tolerance 101.
It looks like our little legal meltdown is spreading fear and decreased job prospects to our neighbors up north. A tipster reports that rising 2Ls at McGill Law School are having the same problems as schools in the states:
[A]t McGill this year, only 4 firms are participating in OCIs (Paul Weiss; Ropes; MoFo; Chadbourne Parke) … 2 years ago, there were 24 or 25 (and last year had about 19). I guess the firms don’t want to be paying the extra money for visas, etc. for Canadian students.
I know things have been tough for lots of top American law schools, but imagine only have four firms to interview with. That’s not competition, its a deathmatch between you and every other student.
Good luck, Canucks. You might not get legal jobs in America, but apparently you’ll always have a health care system that works better than ours.
We are living in a bizzaro world. Check out this fact pattern:
There’s a partner at Morgan Lewis with 18 years of experience. Morgan Lewis cancels its entire 2010 Summer Program. Partner leaves Morgan Lewis. For a more lucrative gig? No. He leaves to be the new head of career services at UVA Law School.
UVA Law has just hired Kevin Donovan, a former litigation partner at Morgan Lewis.
First of all, who leaves a partnership for a career services gig?
Secondly, the irony of a partner at a firm that just refused to hire rising 2Ls being in charge of finding jobs for rising 2Ls is rich. Is this some kind of twisted Marshal Plan? First you bomb it, then you build it?
After the jump, let’s take a look at Mr. Donovan’s qualifications and vision for UVA law students.
* Making law is hard to do: health care reform probably won’t pass before the August recess. [Washington Post]
* Why is New Jersey so ethically challenged? [WSJ Law Blog]
* The investigation into Michael Jackson’s death may be evolving into a manslaughter probe. [AP]
* Gatesgate update: The Cambridge police chief comes to the defense of the arresting sergeant (but Commissioner Haas also promises a review of the Gates case). Some officers want an apology from President Obama for his remarks. [Boston Globe]
* Justice Souter isn’t heading off into Salinger-esque New Hampshire seclusion just yet. First he will address the ABA at its annual meeting in Chicago next month. [The BLT]
* Speaking of Salinger, an appeal is being taken by Fredrik Colting, the Swedish author whose book based on “The Catcher in the Rye” has been blocked from publication here in the U.S. (Colting is represented by Edward Rosenthal and Frankfurt Kurnit — who also, by the way, sometimes represent your friends here at Breaking Media). [Am Law Daily]
* Bad news for laid-off lawyers (current and future): the recession is placing the unemployment benefits system under great strain, and some states are in violation of standards set by federal law for timely processing of claims. [New York Times]
A certain big-time lawyer turned big-time fraudster -- Marc Dreier, aka "Mini-Madoff" -- will probably spend the rest of his life behind bars. He must miss his days of house arrest, when he got to hole up in 34C -- not just a great bra size, but also a great apartment -- at One Beacon Court.
That apartment is no longer his. The New York Law Journal reports:
The luxury midtown Manhattan apartment of disgraced attorney Marc S. Dreier was sold at auction for $8.2 million, about $2 million less than the $10.43 million he paid in 2007.
The sale of the condominium at 151 E. 58th St. came just one week after Southern District Judge Jed S. Rakoff sentenced Mr. Dreier to 20 years in prison for orchestrating a multi-year Ponzi scheme that fleeced more than $400 million from clients of Dreier LLP and investors to whom he sold bogus promissory notes.
Forty-six bidders registered for the auction held at Southern District Bankruptcy Court. In just five minutes, the price of Mr. Dreier's 3,000-square-foot apartment in the Bloomberg Building at One Beacon Court rocketed to $8.15 million from an initial bid of $3 million.
Eight million isn't chump change. But look at everything the buyer is getting!
A reader sent this Craigslist ad along, noting the “uninhibited freedom of expression afforded to smaller firms” in their advertising as opposed to “uber-processed biglaw ads.” Yes, MidLaw and SmallLaw, thank you for providing the fuel for our Adventures in Lawyer Advertising series.
The advertising California-based firm, Le Pelletier, has one of the strangest websites we’ve ever seen. There is only one attorney listed: the firm’s managing partner, Erin Carlstrom Pelletier. Her LinkedIn profile says she is a Yale undergrad, Pepperdine Law ‘08 grad, who apparently started her own firm.
In case you can’t read it, here’s an excerpt from the ad:
Do you need a stealthy warrior specially trained in the unorthodox arts of law? How about a team that can sneak under the cover of darkness to silently assassinate your debt? Le and Pelletier, LLP can be your ninja! We will stalk your enemies like a shadow and strike before they ever knew what hit them.
The rest of the text and some gems from the firm’s site, after the jump.
* Note to men in Miami: Please stop falling in love with porn stars, it always ends badly. [MSNBC]
* Oakland imposes a tax on marijuana. All that has to happen is for Oakland to become more prosperous than San Francisco thanks to this tax, and pot will be legalized everywhere. [The Stimulist]
* Statistics back up the anecdotal evidence that lawyers like social networking. [Young Lawyers Blog]
* It’s always sad when Stockholm Syndrome really takes hold and the captors force people to explain why they are in law school. [Jeremy Schacter’s in Law School]
* Instead of trying to look busy, I think associates should go the other way. I think people should just sit in lawn chairs drinking cheap domestic beer right outside the assigning partner’s office until somebody gives you some freaking work, just to go away. [Litination]
According to a well placed source, Milbank has decided to cancel its 2010 summer program for its Los Angeles office.
We understand that the firm will still be inviting summer associates to join them in New York and Washington, D.C. The firm did not respond to our immediate request for comment.
According to NALP, there are 83 lawyers at Milbank, L.A. We don’t know if that number has been updated since the firm laid of 49 attorneys (and 40 staff) back in May. In the past, the L.A. office has employed around 10 summers per year.
From a certain point of view, canceling at least a portion of the summer program could be the honorable thing for Milbank to do. A number of first years were let go in Milbank’s latest round of layoffs. At least the firm isn’t throwing away perfectly good fruit and then heading right back out to the grove.
Of course, the class of 2011 isn’t really concerned with how laid-off attorneys feel right now. The Milbank news is just another indication that things are going to be very difficult for 2Ls this fall.
Is my associate experience better than your associate experience?
One of the cooler features on the Above The Law Career Center, powered by Lateral Link, is the ability to compare firms based on associate experience in a number of areas including firm management, partnership prospects, parental leave policies, vacation policies, billable hours expectations, etc. You can see how your experience stacks up against the experience of associates at other firms by running your own side-by-side comparisons in the firm comparison section.
Thousands of readers have used this feature, and today we wanted to highlight which firms you have most often pitted against one another. We also want to remind all of you summer associates out there to take our short summer associate survey - Click Here for that (of course the survey is completely confidential).
So which firms do our readers compare most frequently?
I am a first year associate in a small/mid-sized firm. I graduated during during the height of the recession, so it took me many months to find this job. I have been working there for about three months (and I hate it).
Recently, I have noticed oppressive and harassing behavior in the workplace by the senior/managing partners. In addition, I have a strong suspicion of unethical practices occurring in the firm, but I do have not have clear evidence to confirm my suspicions. I have a strong inclination to leave the firm for these reasons.
However, if I leave, I am stuck as to how I will answer if asked why I left after just three months. Moreover, trying to find another job in the current economy in California is difficult. I’m afraid if I disclose the real reason I left, I may be saying untrue things about the firm, and/or be viewed as a whistleblower or someone who cannot be trusted. Any other answers will surely raise eyebrows as to my commitment considering the short time period spent at the current firm.
Advice?
Give a Little Whistle
Give a Little Whistle,
I was sitting at home watching Cake Boss when my phone rang. It was Lat. He asked me what I was doing and I said, “Watching Cake Boss, this show is actually not that bad.” He then reminded me that I had a Pls Hndle Thx due the next day and when I said that I didn’t have any witty responses to the question posed above, he ordered me to - you guessed it - write a poem.
“It doesn’t have to rhyme,” he said, to which I responded, “Actually, last time I checked, ALL poems had to rhyme,” and he immediately conceded this point. So without further ado, I present to you, “Ratting on Your Firm on a Snowy Evening.”
Marin’s Poem and Elie’s Susan Boyle impersonation after the jump.
Dechert’s stealthiness when it comes to layoffs have been well documented in these pages. But it has been an open secret around the firm that another round of layoffs were coming. Above the Law has spoken to sources that have been talking about Dechert’s impending layoffs for nearly a month.
Today, the ax is finally falling. We don’t have official numbers (Dechert has ignored our numerous requests for comment), but we have information suggesting that around 25 associates are being let go today. In addition to the associates, other tipsters report that “a bunch” of paralegals have been laid off, as well as some staff attorneys and legal secretaries.
Sources report that the pain is being spread between Dechert’s Mass Torts and Product Liability group (about a dozen attorneys) and its general litigation practice (another dozen or so attorneys).
We also understand that the vast majority of cuts affected 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year lawyers.
Today’s moves are the culmination of weeks of planning at Dechert.
You know, call me naive but I really thought we’d make it through the whole week without anybody getting laid off in Biglaw. After the government bloodletting earlier this week, I just had a good feeling about private practices retaining all their people for a week.
If I were in a Star Wars movie, I’d probably be dead now. Multiple independent sources report that Fulbright & Jaworski laid off ten people: six associates and four staff.
The numbers aren’t huge, but our sources tell us that this was not a “performance review” cut:
All but one of the associates were first years who started in September. [Fulbright] hasn’t claimed there was gross incompetence on the part of [the laid off first years].
Twitter is a twitter with news about the corruption scandal in New Jersey. To this point, 30 people have been taken into custody. The Newark-Star Ledger reports:
The arrests are the result of a two-year FBI and IRS probe that began with an investigation of money transfers by members of the Syrian enclaves in Deal and Brooklyn. Those arrested this morning include key religious leaders in the tight-knit, wealthy communities.
Political corruption is always exciting. Unless it happens in New Jersey, New York, or Illinois. Then, it’s somewhat expected.
Two New Jersey mayors have been caught up in this investigation. Not Newark mayor, the first next black president Cory Booker. But Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, and Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell.
A tipster reports that Mayor Cammarano has brought shame to our Seton Hall readers:
He and his wife are 2002 Seton Hall Law grads and he won in an election closer than the MN Senatorial election.
On the bright side, if you are a rising 3L at Seton Hall Law, it looks like some more jobs will be opening up in your community.
Thursday, July 23, 2009 11:06 AM - By Kashmir Hill
Last night, NYU had two “firestorms”: the announcement that Dr. Thio would not be coming to campus, and a more literal fire at NYU’s Bobst library.
From a tipster around 5 p.m. yesterday:
Just got out of NYU’s Bobst library. There was a small fire and they evacuated everybody inside. I had to run down 6 flights of smoke filled stairs. Great way to prep for the bar exam…
Our correspondent from Greenwich had particularly bad luck:
I actually think if I went down the main stairs I would be fine. They herded us towards two separate fire exits (on the washington park side), and the one I went down was the one filled with smoke. It cleared up around the first floor, so maybe the fire was on the second floor? … The ironic thing is, the other set of stairs seemed fine, and I’m not even a student at NYU. I just came here for one day to see a friend and for the change of atmosphere.
We’d advise heading to the NYU Law Library to study instead, but we have heard that mysterious smells lurk there.
Soooooo, the bar exam is next week. How’s that studying going? Feel free to kvetch in the comments.
When I work with clients on this principle, we not only explore their career history but we also analyze the work histories of their family. My experience is that parents are often the most influential on someone’s career choices in one of four ways:
The parents put pressure on a child to fulfill a certain career direction that does not suit the child, and the child conforms anyway which leads to dissatisfaction.
The parents encourage the child to follow their most authentic path and provide support and guidance, and the child finds their calling.
The parents do not help a child choose a career, which leads to confusion.
The parents do not help a child choose a career, which leads to the child finding their calling anyway.
Part of the process is to help each person separate the wishes of their parents from their own. I have had many clients of all ages still trying to please parents with their career choices and making themselves miserable in the process. So here are a few questions to ask yourself so you can begin to understand your own history:
If you had to rate your parents’ job satisfaction from 1-10, how would they rate?
What are your parents’ attitudes about work?
What attitudes do you have about work that you learned from your parents?
What attitudes did you learn from your parents that will not serve you in your next career chapter?
If you are interested to find out how The New World Institute can help you transform your career, then call (347) 445-5763 for more information.
[Ed. note: The following piece was authored by The Legal Tease, of Sweet Hot Justice fame. Check out her other musings from Sweet Hot Justice here.]
There are a few moments in any young lawyer’s life guaranteed to perk up the day. Closing a deal after a marathon of strained, sleepless nights. Winning a case after three years of document review and trial prep. Finding out you haven’t been included in the firm’s latest slaughter. But none comes close to the thrill of witnessing your opposing counsel have a public, full-out mental breakdown. Call me a sucker for schadenfreude, but there’s just a greasy comfort that sets in when you realize that there’s someone—anyone—outside of your own tortured corner of Big Law who’s closer to losing his mind than you are. Only thing is, that comfort comes with strings—and if you’re not careful, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll double back and take a nice, firm chokehold right around your own neck.
Don’t believe me? Imagine, if you will, the scene that played out in my office a few weeks back: I’d been working on a nightmare bond deal with the most repulsive type of cretin partner imaginable, a deal made all the more ridiculous by the incessant, obnoxious demands from the monumentally horrid senior associate first-chairing for the other side, a 6th-year I’ll call Mitch Haklafti. After a couple of weeks of his tirades, all it took was seeing “Haklafti, Mitch” in my Outlook inbox to set off a fresh round of stomach cramps.
So, around 2 a.m. the night before the deal was set to sign, after a string of all-nighters and increasingly hostile emails from all sides, when I saw a new message arrive from Haklafti, I took another swig of Diet Dr. Pepper and braced myself for what I assumed would be another dose of pain. What I wasn’t prepared for, though, was this—including the 16-point, lavender script font:
“Assorted buddies, daddies and babies: please review and let me know if you have any nits by 4.45 a.m. e.s.t., at which time I will send to the totality of working group. Client hasn’t seen. Usual caveats.
-M.H., The WalruS. goo goo gjoob “
Break out your straitjacket and keep on reading, after the jump.
Details are still sketchy, but word on the street is that Dr. Li-ann Thio will not be coming to NYU Law School this fall. It appears that Dr. Thio has voluntarily decided not to serve as a visiting professor.
As many of you know, Dr. Thio has been heavily criticized by some in the NYU community (and beyond) for the allegedly anti-gay views she professed as a member of Singapore’s Parliament. But up to this point, Dr. Thio has enjoyed the support of Dean Richard Revesz and the NYU administration.
We previously reported that early returns showed low student registration for Dr. Thio’s classes this fall. A petition protesting her appointment garnered over 800 signatures. It’s too early to tell if any of this affected her decision to withdraw.
We will let you know when we receive official word from the law school or Dr. Thio.
UPDATE: The official announcement is now available. Check it out after the jump.
If you are an incoming first year at Quinn Emanuel’s San Francisco or Silicon Valley office, you are probably on the final stretch of your CA bar exam preparations. If so, please stop reading this post right now. We don’t want to put any extra pressure on you guys.
For everybody else, you might be interested to know that Quinn Emanuel has deferred half of its incoming first year class in those two offices until January 2010.
As we understand it, the firm is not offering any kind of deferral stipend for the affected incoming associates.
Tipsters have been critical of the firm’s decision:
This is a double whammy. First, they hadn’t been deferred at all, were planning on starting in two months, so this is late notice. And second, telling people one week before the bar?!?!? that’s cold.
Well, it’s better than being told between the first and second day of the bar exam.
After the jump, Quinn Emanuel’s managing partner, John Quinn, explains the reason for this decision.
The Above the Law tips line achieved a critical mass of Schulte Roth chatter after a summer associate meeting at the firm yesterday. We’ve contacted various parties who were at the meeting and the firm itself. Here is what went down.
Over the course of the meeting Jeffrey A. Lenobel, a member of the firm’s executive committee, told summer associates that offers would not be extended at the end of the summer program. Schulte traditionally makes offers to people on their last day at the firm — and this year the firm’s summer program ends this Friday. Lenobel told associates that Schulte would be making a decision on how many offers to extend at a later date, but some summers took that as an indication that Schulte would not be extending any offers.
When we spoke to Mr. Lenobel, he assured us that some summers got the wrong idea:
Of course we’ll be making offers. We just don’t know when we will and how many we’ll be making.
But will those offers be for 2010, or will Schulte join the ranks of firms that are deferring associates to 2011? More details from Lenobel after the jump.
This morning, we mentioned that Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. talked to the Washington Post about his arrest (the charges have already been dropped). But there is a lot of chatter around the web about this instance of racial profiling — or honest mistake, depending on your point of view.
Writing for the Daily Beast, Professor Gates’s daughter, Elizabeth Gates, conducted an interview with her father.
Meanwhile, Touré — who you might recognize from the wall-to-wall Michael Jackson coverage — channels Malcolm X when he asks, “What do you call a black man with a Ph.D.?”
Of course, I have my own take. But instead of focusing on the arresting police officers, I’m interested in the white lady who called the cops in the first place, and whether she’d be found liable under various theories of good Samaritan laws. I don’t think she met the “reasonable person” standard, but I’m also the guy who thought the person who took Madlyn Primoff’s children to an ice cream shop in the Kaye Scholer Mommy of the Day case was an idiot. At least I’m consistent.
Should we hold so-called “good Samaritans” to a higher standard?
Yesterday, we told you that there would be a big meeting at Troutman Sanders today. The meeting has concluded and we can now report on the news from the firm. Here is the statement a Troutman spokesperson provided to Above the Law:
Responding to changing market conditions for associate compensation, Troutman Sanders today announced a 10-percent reduction in the total amount of associate pay that was budgeted for Aug. 1-Dec. 31, 2009.
These reductions will not be made across the board but will be based on each associate’s individual performance evaluation.
Troutman Sanders couldn’t give us any additional detail about whether the performance evaluations will account for factors other than associate hours.
The salary cuts keep on coming. We will of course keep you posted.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 12:47 PM - By Elie Mystal
This seems like a stressful time to be enrolled at Duke Law School. The news of firms pulling out of on-campus interviewing at the school continues to grow. The latest big name firms to partially pull out of Duke recruiting are DLA Piper and Kirkland & Ellis. Here’s the email Duke students received late last week about DLA:
We received notification from the employer, DLA Piper (Austin, Dallas, CA offices), that they will be canceling interviews. You will not need to contact them as we have forwarded your resume on file to them (unless you wish to send an updated resume). In addition, they have posted a resume collections via Symplicity for your convenience. They will review your resume and contact you if they are interested in speaking with you further.
There is nothing else that you have to do at this point. I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused and wish you well in your other interviews. You will be removed from this interview and your interview schedule will reflect this change.
At least they can still interview for DLA New York.
But today, Duke students found out that K&E was also dropping them. K&E Chicago never signed up to recruit on-campus. K&E D.C. dropped out today:
Unfortunately, Kirkland & Ellis’ Washington, DC, office just contacted us to say they will be canceling their on campus interview schedule. We know this news is frustrating for you. They have posted a position and are soliciting resumes on Symplicity, and we strongly encourage you to apply.
To reflect the change, you will soon see the firm removed from your interview schedule. As you plan and conduct both your on-campus interviews and outreach to employers, please stay in close touch with the Career Counselors so we can help you maximize your success.
But as summer opportunities continue to dry up, Duke Law students are still trying to figure out whether they’ve made it onto law review. And once again, what should be a simple notification process seems totally screwed up.
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.The beauty of being unemployed in the summer is that, well, it’s summer. Rather than sitting in an office that is refrigerated to temperatures at which your summer crop of green beans could be flash frozen, you are free to roam about in flip-flops and attire that would make the most casual Friday blush modestly. But when it rains (as it has done consistently for approximately two months, here in New York), you have time to reflect on the fact that the seasons have changed, and you remain jobless.
During one recent rainy stretch, I was scowling at a half-written cover letter on my computer when the phone rang. It was Lat, who was off on an editorial boondoggle. He was someplace that sounded lovely; unlike home, he told me, the weather there was beautiful. I waited for him to tell me that people in this mythical place also had jobs, and that scones grew on trees.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Eating Mentos,” I told him, cramming candy into my mouth, “wondering whether today is the day I’ll finally shower. You know; the usual.” As an afterthought, I added, “and I’m applying for jobs. As always.”
“Your job search is like an epic poem!” he said, laughing. There was a pause, and I sensed his next words forming in the empty space. Wait for it, I thought. Wait for it. I waited. A moment later, I was vindicated. “Hey,” he said thoughtfully, “have you ever thought of writing poetry?”
“No,” I told him. “The only thing worse than being unemployed would be a poem about being unemployed.” In the silence that followed, I felt his rebuttal forming.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Maybe an epic poem would be too … collegiate. But why don’t you just try it?” No, I told him. It’s out of the question.
He persisted. We argued. He made concessions (“it doesn’t have to rhyme!”); I objected. Finally, with an exasperated sigh, he pulled rank. “Just try it, Roxana,” he pleaded. “Do this for me.” I groaned. “Fine,” I said. “Can I do something more like haiku, less like Ovid?”
“Great!” he answered triumphantly. And, with that caveat, I direct all complaints to David Lat.
Greetings from the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference. We’ve been having a great time schmoozing with federal judicial celebrities, here in lovely (but surprisingly chilly) Monterey.
Yesterday we participated in an excellent panel discussion about the future of journalism, together with some boldface names: Linda Greenhouse (moderator), former Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times; Nina Totenberg, of NPR; Judge Robert Lasnik, chief judge of the Western District of Washington; and Hal Fuson, Executive Vice President, Copley Press. We got to play the role of blogger-barbarian at the gate, which was fun.
We’ve also enjoyed attending the excellent educational programs and speeches. Two of the early highlights: a review of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recently completed Term, by the noted constitutional law scholar and former Stanford Law School dean, Kathleen Sullivan (top right); and a speech by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (center right). We got to meet both Dean Sullivan and Secretary Napolitano — both of them possible Supreme Court nominees, both of them fabulous — and it was thrilling.
(We even got Secretary Napolitano’s business card. Who knew that Cabinet members got business cards? Does President Obama have a business card?)
We were planning to write up both of these events, until we saw the excellent accounts of Articleman over at dagblog. We refer you to his delightful write-ups (links below).
P.S. If you’d like to see our rough notes on Dean Sullivan’s SCOTUS round-up, click here to download (Word document). But these notes are very rough, not converted to polished prose; you’re much better off with Articleman’s elegant summary.
We already mentioned the Erin Andrews situation this morning. The ESPN anchor was spied on through a peephole at a hotel. Andrews is considering her actions, and she has retained counsel. Bingham McCutchen will be taking on this high-profile case.
While alone in the privacy of her hotel room, Erin Andrews was surreptitiously videotaped without her knowledge or consent. She was the victim of a crime and is taking action to protect herself and help ensure that others are not similarly violated in the future. Although the perpetrator or perpetrators of this criminal act have not yet been identified, when they are identified she intends to bring both civil and criminal charges against them and against anyone who has published the material. We request respect of Erin’s privacy at this time, while she and her representatives are working with the authorities.
One of these days, the people who snap this kind of footage and the publishers who make it available are going to get smacked down, hard.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 8:43 AM - By Kashmir Hill
* ESPN reporter Erin Andrews was secretly taped by a peephole videographer. Now the naked tape has made the rounds on the Internet. (Before you search, beware of viruses.) Her lawyer says Andrews plans to pursue criminal and civil charges against the peeper. [Fox News]
* “Morgan Lewis signals Armageddon.” [AmLaw Daily]
* Deutsche Bank allegedly tried to plant one of its lawyers as an intern at another law firm in order to gather intelligence. [Bloomberg]
* The Washington Post gets the first post-Gatesgate interview with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The incident has made the race scholar want to study race. In criminal justice. [Washington Post]
* Oregon court rules that divorce when kids are involved can be just as messy for same-sex couples as it is for heterosexual couples. [Courthouse News Service]
* Dan Rather’s lawsuit against CBS is back on and e-mails between K&L Gates and CBS experts are discoverable. [Reuters and New York Times]
History repeats itself. Back in March, we wrote in advance about a mystery meeting at Troutman Sanders. At that meeting, the firm announced a voluntary departure program for staff, as well as looming layoffs for lawyers. The firm never provided numbers on those attorney layoffs, but it appears that approximately 28 lawyers were affected.
Troutman tipsters tell us that another mystery meeting / videoconference is scheduled for later this morning (around 11:30 - 11:45 a.m. Eastern time). What will be discussed is not known, but some suggest that additional layoffs and / or salary cuts will be announced. Troutman’s summer program ended last week, so if there is bad news to convey, now would be a logical time. (Expect more firms to roll out such announcements after their summer associates leave the building.)
We’ll keep you posted on the Troutman situation. Have a tip for us about a mystery meeting at your firm? Please email us. Thanks.
* Yet another sports figure is accused of sexual assault. This time it’s Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. [TMZ]
* How to get out of paying your ex-wife $2.5 million: go to jail for 14 years. [Lowering the Bar]
* A Pennsylvania prisoner, serving time as a sex offender, sued to get porn while in prison. Not surprisingly, he lost. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
* Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban may have prevailed against the SEC (for now), but not all of his legal woes are over. Now he’s being sued by a company controlled by former Mavericks owner Ross Perot Jr. [Young Texas Lawyer]
* Musical chairs: two partners leave Bromberg & Sunstein, including name partner Lee Bromberg, after failing to convince colleagues to merge with a bigger firm. [Boston Globe]
There’s a minor new development in the saga of Dr. Li-ann Thio, the NYU visiting law professor whose views on homosexuality have made her the legal academic everyone loves to hate. It’s an online petition, addressed to the NYU law school and university administration, expressing “deep dissatisfaction with New York University School of Law’s appointment of Dr. Thio Li-Ann as a Global Visiting Professor of Law.”
The petition concludes by articulating the belief “that the Administration’s decision to appoint Dr. Thio was a grave mistake and her designation to teach ‘Human Rights in Asia’ is inappropriate and offensive.” There’s an additional option, selected by many (but not all) of the signatories, calling upon the administration to rescind Dr. Thio’s appointment.
You can check out the position, and sign it if you like, by clicking here. Currently the petition has 564 signatures.
The use of tasers by police officers is occasionally controversial (See Man bursts into flames after Taser shock and Police Officer Tases Great Grandmother). When minors are involved, taser use becomes even more controversial. When the taser use on a minor is followed by sodomy threats… well, that warrants a lawsuit and an ATL post.
A shelter for adolescents in southern Illinois is suing the local sheriff’s office for what it describes as an unprovoked attack by two police officers on four children, three of whom were tasered, and one of whom was threatened with sodomy by a sheriff’s deputy.
The Illinois Office of State Guardian has sued the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. The agency says it called police officers last year to subdue some rowdy children. According to United Press International, the officers went on a “rampage” abusing three children aged 11 and 12, who were not even the ones who had been acting up. From the court filing:
“Without physical provocation and/or physical gestures from B.B., Deputy Bowers held B.B. down on his bed and shocked him repeatedly with a taser. While he was tasing B.B., Deputy David Bowers threatened to sodomize B.B. As a result of this repeated and excessive tasing, B.B. urinated and defecated himself. Deputy David Bowers was aware that B.B. urinated himself after the tasing.”
When a 17-year-old girl objected, the officers put her in handcuffs. According to the filing, one of the officers then choked her; asked her, “do you want to live or die bitch?”; and then shut her in a closet.
It kind of puts the abuse of power by the officers involved in Gatesgate in perspective.
The legal job market is a little dicey right now, leading some law grads to question the worth of their shiny new J.D. degree. Suffolk Law grads — and not just the ones who can’t get dates — are really questioning the value of their degrees, after an ill-timed job advertisement from Weil Gotshal & Manges went out on their career services list-serv:
Dear 2009 Graduates,
I wanted to make you aware of a great opportunity currently posted on Symplicity. Please find the job information below. Interested parties should apply through Symplicity with a resume and cover letter.
Employer: Weil Gotshal & Manges, LLP (Boston, MA)
Title: Paralegal Position for ‘09 Graduate
Description: This posting is for the class of 2009 grads who are not deferred for another position. Monday-Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm, flexibility with overtime required.
Yay, that Suffolk law degree can get you into Biglaw! But there’s a catch.
Johann Scott Scrimshire is a Minneapolis attorney who likes to let it all hang out. He specializes in criminal defense and business corporate law, but is apparently unfamiliar with laws dealing with public nudity. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Johann Scott Scrimshire, 42, was arrested about 6 a.m. near Calhoun Parkway after a 911 call about a man on a bicycle exposing himself to walkers and joggers.
The officers who responded said Scrimshire told them he was training for a bike race on the West Coast in which participants ride nude, said Sgt. William Palmer, a Minneapolis police spokesman.
The officers said Scrimshire was wearing a skirt-like garment or a pair of shorts with the crotch area removed. Palmer said. “It clearly looked intentional,” he said.
Clearly.
Apparently, Scrimshire is training for the World Naked Bike Ride (moderately NSFW), an organization that holds naked bike rides in cities around the globe. The photo on this post is from the organization’s D.C. event. From the website, it doesn’t appear to be a very serious event; we wonder if others have been moved to don special “skirt-like” training gear in order to prepare.
Other than naked riding, we’re not sure what Scrimshire is up to these days. He used to be the primary name partner at personal injury firm Martineau, Gonko, & Vavreck — its website address still bears his initial: SMGV — but the firm tells us he left in April. Beyond that, the firm had no comment, and was not especially happy about this “exposure.”
As for Scrimshire, he tells the Tribune: “The charges are ridiculous, and the facts will come out in court.” We hope the facts are all that Scrimshire decides to put on display in court.
Yesterday, we told you about the strange case of the UNLV Constitutional Law professor who went “missing,” causing all of her students to receive a grade of “pass” in her 1L course. Some students argued that the change in the grading system disadvantaged students that were hoping to make it onto the law review.
The Nevada Law blog, Wild Wild Law, identified the professor as Lynne Henderson. According to the blog, Professor Henderson was not completely incommunicado:
[T]he missing professor, who has been identified as Professor Henderson, has emailed to congratulate the students who made it onto law review.
Above the Law corresponded with Professor Henderson about her situation. Sadly, she said that health issues prevented her from completing all of the grading for her course. But she also said that she did not just go missing. She said she informed the appropriate people at UNLV Boyd School of Law about the issue.
Check out the full response from Professor Henderson, after the jump.
Last week, prominent African-American studies scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested for disorderly conduct after police confronted him for trying to break into his own home. There are accusations of racial profiling. Harvard Law School professor Charles Olgetree is representing Gates. The media are all over the story; even TMZ is covering it (and picking up on “yo’ mama” jokes from the police report). We’ve dubbed it Gatesgate,.and we gave you a full write-up of the incident this morning.
Charles Ogletree has prepared a statement about the incident and released it to The Root, a website co-founded by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Not surprisingly, his account sounds a bit different from the police report. Here’s an excerpt:
As Professor Gates followed the officer to his own front door, he was astonished to see several police officers gathered on his front porch. Professor Gates asked the officer’s colleagues for his name and badge number. As Professor Gates stepped onto his front porch, the officer who had been inside and who had examined his identification, said to him, “Thank you for accommodating my earlier request,” and then placed Professor Gates under arrest. He was handcuffed on his own front porch.
Professor Gates was taken to the Cambridge Police Station where he remained for approximately 4 hours before being released that evening.
No overt aggression, but apparently plenty of passive aggression from the officer.
UPDATE (12:30 p.m.): The AP reports that the disorderly conduct charge against Gates has been dropped:
The city of Cambridge issued a statement saying the arrest “was regrettable and unfortunate” and police and Gates agreed that dropping the charge was a just resolution.
“This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department,” the statement said.
* Okay, I’ve accepted the fact that state officials in Alabama don’t have ready access to the Constitution. But thanks to advancements in technology, surely we can now print the thing on the back of a beer can so it magically appears when their beer achieves maximum freshness. Maybe we can print the Bill of Rights on a series of bumper stickers? We have to stop leaving Alabama behind. [Volokh Conspiracy]
(37) Comments
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