August 2009

Do you remember the class of 2009? You know, the kids who should be gearing up to start work in a couple of weeks but are instead sitting around, waiting to get out of purgatory? Don’t look now, but a couple of firms have decided to extend the deferral period for these people, and that […]

* A disappointing ruling from the 3rd Circuit for sports gamblers in Delaware. [USA Today] * L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich wants to make hanging out illegal. [Los Angeles Times] * Judge Jed Rakoff is becoming a media darling. Another article singing the BofA-bench-slapping judge’s praises. [New York Times] * Foley & Lardner sued for […]

Even though we are moving out of the Vault top ten, we are still firmly in the land of law firms that everybody recognizes. To refresh your memory, here is the next batch of firms on the Vault list: 11. Williams & Connolly 12. Debevoise & Plimpton 13. Paul Weiss 14. Gibson Dunn 15. Sidley […]

We’re pretty busy today, but here are two links that we think you’d want to see. Michael Jackson’s death has been officially ruled a homicide. ‘Lethal levels’ of anesthetic propofol killed Michael Jackson [L.A. Times] Holder appoints a prosecutor to deal with the CIA interrogations. Holder to Appoint Prosecutor to Investigate CIA Terror Interrogations [Washington […]

* Goldfellas: [Matt Rittberg] * Is Bernie Madoff about the try the Lockerbie terrorist defense? Does he have friends in oil rich countries that we don’t know about. [Dealbreaker] * You can’t get rid of the LSAT until you come up with something better to replace it. I nominate tying up prospective law students and […]

Are you a laid-off lawyer who has been spending way too much time on Facebook? Here’s a way to turn that “résumé gap” into job experience: Director of Social Media Medium-sized Atlanta law firm seeks candidates interested in a part-time or full-time social media position. The primary responsibility of the Social Media Director will be […]

Life happens fast. This morning we reported that Thomson Reuters had revoked free printer access to law schools in Puerto Rico. It seems that the policy has now been reversed. A message from University of Puerto Rico law professor José Julián Álvarez González, after the jump.

When Justice Sonia Sotomayor needs to stock up on her beloved rice, beans and pork, where does she go? One might peg the Supreme Court’s newest member — a liberal, a lawyer, a Greenwich Village resident — as a typical Whole Foods customer. But perhaps Justice Sotomayor, in a show of support to the president […]

Skadden has decided to significantly reduce the size of its summer class for 2010. In a charming move, the firm told the media before informing law schools and prospective summer associates. Am Law Daily reports: Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom is cutting the size of its 2010 summer associate class by half and adjusting […]

Update (4:15): After this post went was published, Thomson Reuters reversed course and reinstated the free printer access to Puerto Rican law schools. Click here for our coverage. Thomson Reuters owns Westlaw and is one of the two major gatekeepers to legal research in the modern world. Recently, the company made an economic decision that […]

Is there really blood in the water around the billable hour? Or are we simply hearing an updated version of a familiar refrain? This morning the Wall Street Journal took another look at killing the billable hour (subscription): People who follow the world of law firms know, among so much else, two things: 1) that […]

The Vault survey rankings may have created buzz last week, but we’re going to kick off the buzz this week by unveiling our first annual review of the summer associate experience at the major law firms. With information based on surveys conducted by Lateral Link and tips we’ve gathered at ATL, the summer program snapshots […]

Yolanda Young is back with a vengeance, and an amended complaint against Covington & Burling. The brief synopsis on Young is that she was a Covington & Burling staff attorney who sued the firm for racial discrimination. Covington has denied the charges at every point. The firm briefly got the suit tossed, but it was […]

[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.] It seems so good, doesn’t it? According to the lead of a recent AP story, "The unemployment rate fell in 17 states and the […]

* More on the skanks. ‘Skanks in NYC’ blogger plans to sue Google for $15 million for disclosing her identity. [New York Daily News via Gothamist] * A Michigan attorney has filed an age discrimination lawsuit against the University of Iowa College of Law, claiming that the school wouldn’t put him on faculty because he’s […]

Ed. note: As previously mentioned, LEWW is on vacation this week. Regular weekly posting will resume with a double issue on Friday, August 28. Today we ask readers to choose the most impressive lawyer newlyweds of the past two months. Early summer traditionally represents the height of the wedding season, and this year’s June and […]

Last week, Above the Law was dominated by the Vault rankings. But we still had time to expose scandal and poke a little fun. This week’s top three stories: Vault Rankings: The list which all prestige-based conversations will have to reckon with was released this week. Vault is so exciting that we even published an […]

Firms have been making offers this month. The good news came first, leading us to ask at the beginning of the month: Summer Offer Rate Open Thread: Are We Back to 100%? We’re such optimists here at ATL that we followed that thread with this one: Summer Offer Rate Open Thread: Happy Happy Joy Joy!. […]

We have an update on former Lawyer of the Day and Sonnenschein San Francisco partner Paul Glad. Glad was sued earlier this year by a Girl Scout and her mother after running into them with his Lexus. We wrote in June: According to the San Mateo County Times, [Glad] had stopped to pick up some […]

* Maybe this dude thought that displaying the mental aptitude of child would make it okay for him to look at pictures of naked children. He was wrong. [Roll On Friday] * Facebook — good for cheaters and divorce attorneys. [Long Island Press] * If you want to shoot at beautiful wild animals for “sport,” […]