Last month, we reported that bankrupt law firm Heller Ehrman would be selling some of its art to raise money for its creditors. Heller hopes to raise $1 million (or more) through a series of sales, in New York and California.

The first of several Heller art auctions took place yesterday at Bonhams & Butterfields, at 580 Madison Avenue in New York. We attended, both to cover the proceedings and in the hope of making a purchase or two. (The most important works from the Heller collection will be sold next year, but those pieces -- by artists like Diebenkorn, Lichtenstein, and Serra -- are a bit beyond our price range.)

Upon arrival at Bonhams, we checked in with a receptionist. We were asked to provide our driver's license and credit card for photocopying, which we did. Buyers can pay for purchases with either a credit card or a check, but the auction house still copies your credit card for its records.

(There is a slight discount for using a check or cash over a credit card. The buyer's premium, a commission paid by the winning bidder to the auction house, is 22 percent of the purchase price for credit cards, but 20 percent for cash or check.)

After supplying the requested documentation and filling out a short form, we were given a paddle for bidding. We were hoping for something wooden; the word "paddle" conjures up images of spanking -- fun! Instead, we received a laminated card of gray and white plastic, printed with the number "238" (our bidder number).

Did we make any purchases? How well did the Heller Ehrman art sell? Find out, plus check out pictures of the art, after the jump.

Williams Mullen is a prominent Richmond-based law firm that is “100 years strong,” according to its website. For 18 of those years, Vietnam native Hanh Nguyen Allgood, 53, was a case manager for the firm. She left in March 2007.

Apparently, the departure was not “all good” with her. She has filed a $950,000 lawsuit against the firm, alleging discrimination and sexual harassment, according to Style Weekly.

Litigation partner Robert Eicher bears the brunt of Allgood’s sexual harassment allegations. According to her complaint [PDF], he asked when he first met her whether “her vagina was vertical or horizontal,” a reference to “a horrible racial slur bandied about by some American soldiers during the Viet Nam War contending that Vietnamese women had vertical vaginas.”

And then there was the cucumber incident….

UPDATE: A statement from the firm has been added after the jump.

* Happy Veteran’s Day. Thanks to all who serve. [Army JAG; Navy JAG]

* If you think law school looks like a terrible financial investment, you are correct. [Tax Prof Blog]

* Punching women isn’t the best way to make a point about racial injustice. [The Legal Satyricon]

* A pro-wrestler fell down, but not by design. Predictably, he decided to sue. [Chicago Now]

* What’s wrong with cutting off the hands of those who steal (online content) again? [Simple Justice]

* What’s the difference between journalism and blogging? Some thoughts from Lat. [Yale Daily News]

* Josh Blackman created a Supreme Court fantasy league. You get points for predicting the outcome of the case and which justices will be in the majority and minority. [FantasySCOTUS]

After Cleary announced its 2009 associate bonus, we asked you if the market had been set at the Cravath level. In response to the question “is it over,” 83% of you said “yes.”

Not so fast my friends. There was an all associates meeting at the D.C. office of Sidley Austin. Tipsters report that the Sidley bonus could be larger than it was last year.

Details from our tipsters after the jump.

Ed. note: Welcome to ATL’s first foray into serial fiction. “My Job Is Murder,” a mystery set in a D.C. appellate boutique firm, will appear one chapter at a time, M-W-F, over the next few weeks. The first chapter appears here; please read it first.

Susanna Dokupil can be reached by email at sdokupil@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook.

Tyler headed down to the firm lobby to meet Mark and the 2L summer associates: Katarina from Harvard and Alex from University of Chicago. He knew Mark would want to go to Solstice, the trendy new restaurant in the basement of their building. Mark was efficient like that. Experience Points: about 2700/yr, very respectable.

Tyler hated Solstice. Overpriced, overpresented, and underflavored. But the name, he thought, was fitting. Every day in this building was the longest day of the year.

The elevator reached its destination with a bit of a thud. Mark, Katarina, and Alex were already waiting for him. Mark waved him over. “We were just thinking of going to Solstice,” he said. “Sure,” said Tyler, suppressing an eye roll.

He had met Alex before. Class: Summer Associate. Level: 1. High Intelligence, moderate Charisma. Experience Points: perhaps 50? Alignment: Lawful good. He had quickly developed a reputation as an incredibly nice guy.

And then there was Katarina. Class: Sorceress! Level: 1. Clad in the standard 2L-clone-just-bought-lightweight-wool-dark-suit uniform. But summer associates were well advised to stand out for their work quality rather than their appearance, so her choice probably indicated decent judgment. Something about her, however, exuded a certain geekiness.

“This is Tyler. He also went to Harvard, and then he clerked for Judge Pyrrha on the Fifteenth Circuit.” Mark broke in helpfully.

“Oh, I heard her speak at Harvard last year on the original understanding of the Ninth Amendment. She was amazing,” Katarina replied.

Alignment: Libertarian.

The American Bar Association has a plan to help out unemployed lawyers with their student loans. Seriously. An actual plan. The National Law Journal reports:

The ABA wants the government to let unemployed graduates convert private loans into federal ones. The change could allow them to defer repaying those loans for as long as three years.

The plan is so simple and helpful that I’m almost positive Congress will find a way to horribly mess it up. The ABA wants to let people borrow money from the government to pay off their private loans. Then unemployed lawyers can put their new federal loans into deferment for up to three years if they need to.

The effort is in its early stages — executives of the largest provider of private law school loans, Access Group Inc., weren’t even aware of it, according to spokeswoman Linda Smith.

“This is really intended to give them some breathing room,” said ABA President Carolyn Lamm.

The plan was proposed by the ABA’s recently formed Commission on the Impact of the Economic Crisis on the Profession and Legal Needs, which is examining how lawyers can confront the recession.

Of course, nobody knows precisely how the plan is going to work.

The Associated Press reports that John J. O’Connor III died today at 79 of complications arising from Alzheimer’s disease.

John and Sandra Day O’Connor met as law students at Stanford.

The O’Connors were married in 1952 and became a leading couple on Washington’s social scene when they moved from Arizona in 1981 following her confirmation as the first woman on the Supreme Court.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stepped down from the Supreme Court in 2005 in order to care for her husband as his Alzheimer’s disease worsened.

Husband of retired Justice O’Connor dies [Associated Press]
Justice O’Connor’s Husband Dead at 79 [BLT]
Sandra Day O’Connor’s Husband Dies [Washington Post]

We’ve mentioned Corri Fetman before, mainly because she’s a lawyer who has posed for Playboy. But today she’s making news that doesn’t have anything to do with her boobs. The Chicago Tribune reports:

The Chicago divorce lawyer who stirred up controversy with a racy billboard for her law firm and later bared it all for Playboy is now being sued by the magazine.

Playboy alleges in a suit filed Monday that Corri Fetman is trying to steal the phrase “Lawyer of Love” that it coined for an advice column Fetman briefly wrote for the magazine’s Web site.

Alright, today’s Corri Fetman’s news is tangentially related to her boobs.

Fetman isn’t one to receive service from Playboy lying down. In fact she fired the first shot at Playboy.

Details after the jump.

In today’s Morning Docket, we mentioned the recent benchslap administered to Sidley Austin by Judge Diane Cannon (pictured), an Illinois state court judge. Lynne Marek of the NLJ reports:

A court hearing on Tuesday in Chicago at which former Northwestern University journalism students planned to fight a subpoena for their records and grades turned into a judicial lambasting of their Sidley Austin lawyers.

It started when Judge Diane Gordon Cannon of the Cook County Circuit Court called the lawyers, partner Richard O’Brien and associate Linda Friedlieb, to the bench before prosecutors from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office had even arrived. She asked who had written the brief she was holding. O’Brien and Friedlieb responded that they had submitted the reply supporting the motion to quash the subpoena.

Judge Cannon was, suffice it to say, not happy about the Sidley Austin brief.

Her Honor’s complaints — plus discussion of whether they were justified, and a reader poll — after the jump.

Ed. note: Welcome to “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, follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook. You can also read more about her at www.notesfromthebreadline.net.

Dear Readers,

I hope this message finds you rested, relaxed, gainfully employed, or nursing your recession hangover with a fabulously expensive steak affixed to your forehead (or some combination thereof).

As you know, I have enjoyed your company here in the breadline for many (many) months. We have shared laughter, tears, the thrill of victory (assuming, arguendo, that ‘victory’ is defined as ‘avoiding non-flip-flop footwear’), and the agony of defeat, in its many and varied forms. Now, however, the time has come for an Interregnum from the Breadline. After today, Notes from the Breadline will be on hiatus, at least for a little while.

As a preliminary matter, I will address your (unposed) questions seriatim. No: I did not find a job. No: I did not get “laid off” from Above the Law. No: I am not taking a break so that “I can spend more time with my family” (or my cats), and no: there is no damning sex tape involving Partner Emeritus, Douche Patrol, Frat Stud, Fraternity Lothario, Glass Cock, Jack Bauer, Guest, or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sometimes, dear readers, a hiatus is just a hiatus.

A quick word of thanks to this week’s advertisers on Above the Law:

• Assara Laser

• The Atlantic

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• Kinney Recruiting

• Lateral Link

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• The Tikvah Center at NYU School of Law

• The Red Cross

• University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Isenberg School of Management

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You know how much we love rankings around these parts. But apparently there is a list of law firm rankings out there that actually matters. The National Law Journal reports:

An Association of Corporate Counsel law firm rating system unveiled last month has triggered a lot of interest from the association’s in-house lawyer members, who have submitted 1,500 firm reviews. Lawyers at firms are less enthused. …

Since the ACC initiated its “value index” last month, its members have shared their opinions about the performances of 500 law firms. The ACC has used the mainly anonymous input to rank firms on a five-point scale.

Unfortunately, there is one humongous catch:

The evaluations and ratings are viewable only by ACC members.

Why, Association of Corporate Counsel? Why? Why produce a juicy new list of clients actually rating the quality of legal services they receive, and then keep it private? We all want to know what you think.

Sorry. “All” is probably a little bit strong. Law firm managers don’t seem to like this list very much.

* Judge Diane Cannon — no relation to actress Dyan Cannon (who played a judge on Ally McBeal) — benchslaps Sidley Austin for its brief in the high-profile case involving Northwestern University journalism students fighting a subpoena for their records and grades. [National Law Journal]

* Speaking of journalistic freedom, was prior restraint applied to a high school newspaper — by Justice Kennedy? [New York Times]

* Meet John Galligan, the lawyer who will be representing the accused Fort Hood shooter. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Another prominent notorious gunman — John Allen Muhammad, aka the “DC sniper” — has been executed. [Washington Post]

* Professor John Yoo appeals a ruling allowing a suit against him to proceed to the Ninth Circuit (which might not be the friendliest court for Yoo, but we’ll see). [How Appealing]

* “L is for Lawyers… And That’s Good Enough for Them”: Zach Lowe interviews two of the lawyers behind the success of Sesame Street. [Am Law Daily]

* Judge Charles Sifton (E.D.N.Y.), RIP. [New York Times]