There’s good news at Cooley Godward Kronish. The firm was among the many that froze salaries last year. This month, Cooley announced it’s more of a hottie.
The good news is that the firm is taking salaries out of the freezer. The bad news is that the salaries have suffered some freezer burn.
The firm’s new base salary scale reflects some chipping away.
Continue reading “Cooley Godward Unfreezes
(But New Salaries Are Still Chilly)”
Once again, Fortune magazine is out with its annual list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. And once again, a number of law firms have made the cut. (We’ve covered which law firms made the Fortune list in prior years: 2009, 2008, and 2007.)
This year the list has six big law firms, up from five in 2009. All of the 2009 firms remained on the list, although some went up and some went down in the rankings. They were joined by one newcomer, Baker Donelson (#77).
So which firms made the cut, and how high did they rank?
Continue reading “Fortune Recognizes Six Firms as Least Worst Best Companies to Work For”
What do you say to a recent law-school graduate? “A skinny double-shot latte to go, please.”
Last year, government lawyers were crucified for their prosecution of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. The DOJ prosecutors’ questionable handling of the case led to its dismissal and some problems for the DOJ’s public integrity unit.
This week marks another big f***-up by government lawyers. But in a different building. The Washington Post reports that the F.B.I. has been busted for breaking the law for years in its collection of Americans’ phone records from Verizon and AT&T:
The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.
Among those whose records were searched were reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post. The searches became public when FBI director Mueller called the journalists to apologize. Whoops?
If you attend or graduated from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, you most likely knew this post was coming. For the rest of you, let me bring you up to speed.
Cardozo Law is trying to connect students who want extra tutoring with students who are willing to help. Cardozo’s office of student services asked willing tutors to submit the following information.
1) Your name and class year
2) What course(s) you are interested in tutoring
3) What semester you took the course(s) in
4) What professor you had for the course(s)
5) What grade you received for the course(s)
6) How you wish to be contacted by other students
Hey, from the administration’s perspective, they’re all in the “employed upon graduation” hunt together. If some of the high-achieving students are willing to help some of the stragglers avoid a life of poverty and sadness, why not?
The information requested is appropriate for the position sought. You can’t offer yourself up as a tutor with crappy grades. In fact, the only way there would really be a “story” here is if some amazingly careless gunner submitted his qualifications and accidentally hit “reply all” to the school-wide email.
And really, who’d be stupid enough to do that?
Continue reading “Dodo ‘Dozo Student Makes Some Laugh, Others Cry”
On Tuesday, we tuned in to the late night show debacle unfolding at NBC. On his show that night, Conan O’Brien shared insights about the lawyerly wranglings. From US Magazine:
“Hi, I’m Conan O’Brien, and I’m just three days away from the biggest drinking binge in history,” he said during Tuesday’s monologue. “I spent the afternoon at Universal Studios’ amusement park, enjoying their brand-new ride, the ‘Tunnel of Litigation.’”
Noting reports that he is legally prohibited from bad-mouthing the network behind the mess (Jay Leno is taking over O’Brien’s time slot after his prime time show was axed), O’Brien joked in his monologue Tuesday “Nobody said anything about speaking in Spanish.”
He then rails off an insult in Spanish which translates to: “NBC is run by brainless sons of goats who eat money and crap trouble.”
The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that the Litigation Rollercoaster Ride rolled to a stop at 1 a.m. PST, thanks to operators at Gibson Dunn and Glaser Weil.
The final deal includes a payout of approximately $32.5 million for Mr. O’Brien and roughly $12 million for his staff, according a person familiar with the matter. The agreement will allow Mr. O’Brien to appear on another network beginning Sept. 1, the person said….
NBC, which is controlled by General Electric Co., will retain the rights to at least some of the comedic material from the show, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal also includes a non-disparagement clause, both for the 46-year-old comedian and NBC, and a provision that was said to bar or limit Mr. O’Brien from appearing on others’ shows for a period of time, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
Jay Leno gets to reclaim his 11:35 p.m. show starting March 1. Meanwhile, David Letterman is probably just happy that Leno and Conan are monopolizing the late night news cycle instead of his own legal troubles.
What impact will this $45-million ruffling of the Peacock Network’s feathers have on entertainment law practices?
Two experts opine on what this means for the entertainment law industry, and the major takeaway lesson for talent lawyers, after the jump.
Continue reading “What Does the Conan-Leno-NBC Debacle Mean for Entertainment Law?”
If you’re like most Biglaw attorneys, your days as a first-year associate were some of the best days of your life. The rush of arguing in court with no supervision. The tawdry office romances with beautiful, lonely seventh-years. The 6 p.m. happy hours where you and five of your hard-bodied colleagues sat around O’Neil’s sipping brewskis and bitching about how the firm was taking over your lives. Good times, man. Good friggin’ times.
Luckily, ABC is giving us another chance to relive these glory days with the premiere of The Deep End, a dramedy about a bunch of first-years at an L.A. firm called “Sterling.” The previews show two female associates changing shirts in the middle of the office, a dude waking up after sex, and people throwing paper at each other. That the show promises a laser-accurate, real-life portrayal is beyond question.
I hope you’ll join me as I liveblog the show tonight, starting at 8 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. CT. We’ll put up a post here at around 7:30 that will contain a dialog box. To access the liveblog, click the box. You can comment on the side of the box in real time and if I publish your comment, it will appear in the feed. So join me tonight, won’t you, as we crack open an ice cold beverage and tear this show a new one.
Earlier: New ABC Show About Biglaw
This morning the Supreme Court handed down its eagerly awaited decision in Citizens United v. FEC (PDF). The ruling will allow both corporations and labor unions to participate more fully in the political process. The opinion was written, not surprisingly, by Justice Kennedy.
More after the jump.
This past Tuesday, January 19, was the first day of work for many class of 2009 associates. They’ve been deferred, they’ve been scraping by on stipends, but yesterday many of them finally got to start work.
Right?
On our most recent start date round-up, we noted a number of firms that pinned their class of 2009 start date to January 19th, 2010.
Were those people actually able to start on time? How did it go? Let’s discuss after the jump.
Continue reading “Open Thread: How Was Your First Day of Work?”
* Duane Morris partner Daniel Winslow, chief legal counsel to Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown, discusses Brown’s path to victory. [National Law Journal]
* Meanwhile, a former U.S. senator — the famous trial lawyer and one-time VP candidate, John Edwards — has admitted he’s the father of his ex-mistress’s 2-year-old daughter. [The Lede / New York Times]
* NBC and Conan O’Brien (finally) make a deal. [Associated Press]
* Does the SEC need a more effective system for handling whistleblower complaints? [Washington Post]
* The Supreme Court is not so great at predicting the future…. [New York TImes]
* …. but it was able to trigger a mistrial in Dallas. [Politico]
Dorsey & Whitney is not planning on more layoffs. Not in California. Anything you may have heard to the contrary is false.
If you happen to work for Dorsey & Whitney in California, you may have noticed a recent report in the San Jose Mercury News. Tons of readers sent the story to Above the Law. The news organization reprinted a list of companies that had filed layoff notices in compliance with California’s WARN regulations. Companies with more than 75 employees must provide 60 days’ notice in advance of laying off 50 or more employees.
Here’s the list. You’ll note that Dorsey & Whitney is prominently listed on the top of the page. In three separate entries, the paper makes it look like Dorsey & Whitney is planning on laying off 72 people sometime in 2010.
That’s not correct. First of all, the entries list Dorsey & Whitney as laying off people in Valencia, when in fact Dorsey’s Southern California’s office is in Irvine. Also, there aren’t even 72 people working in Dorsey’s Irvine office. It would be mathematically impossible for the firm to lay off that many people in Southern California.
The WARN filing is just a big clerical error. How did this mistake happen? The firm explains after the jump.
Continue reading “Dorsey & Whitney: Clerical Error Fans Layoff Fears”
* 20 legal movies every law student should see. [Legal Writing Prof Blog]
* Jeff Toobin would like Obama to be more active when it comes to judges. [The New Yorker]
* Incoming ABA president talks, lawyers desperate for protectionist policies should listen. [Legal Blog Watch]
* Obama’s Office of Personnel Management needs to get out of the stone age. [Law Dork]
* Maybe we should nominate Steven Seagal for head of TSA? [The Volokh Conspiracy]
* Litigators you don’t want to mess with in court, but you might be able to take them in a bar fight. [Business Insider]
* If you’re in D.C. tomorrow, January 21, come hear me (and others) discuss the legal job market — such that there is. [D.C. Bar]
We’re taking some trips down memory lane this week at Above the Law. Yesterday we wrote about Peter John, a Lawyer of the Day from 2007.
Today we bring you news about Herman Thomas, a Judge of the Day from 2007. He was accused of improperly paddling prisoners, but was acquitted at trial.
Now he’s exploring new opportunities in the political realm. From WKRG:
Three months after he was found not guilty of paddling and sexually abusing inmates, former Mobile County Circuit Judge Herman Thomas is running for State Senate.
“I wish to continue my commitment to serve my community that has done so much for me and my family,” Thomas said.
Like acquitting you on charges of spanking male prisoners and trading favorable treatment for sexual favors?
Herman Thomas isn’t the first former judge to go into politics. Over the years, there has been significant movement between the judicial and the legislative branches. (Linda Greenhouse has this nice write-up of the phenomenon.)
But ex-Judge Thomas’s move still seems a bit… random. Could there be another reason he’s running for elected office?
Continue reading “Herman Thomas: Could the ‘Spanking Judge’ Become the ‘Spanking Senator’?”
Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.
ATL Editors,
I just got my grades, and needless to say they were less than stellar, approximately a 2.0 GPA. I got my Biochemistry PhD prior to attending a 2nd tier law school on a great scholarship, but now I stand to lose my scholarship lest I get a 4.0 (obviously unlikely due to my struggle this past semester).
What do I do? Obviously I need to buck up, work on my writing skills, and work harder at learning how to take law tests. However, I will now be forced to pay full price for two years of law school.
Assuming my grades will be mostly A’s and B’s going forward, do I still have a chance at a decent firm paying a decent enough wage to fend off the potential debt? Or should I pack it in and say it was a nice try?
– C Change
Dear C Change,
Can someone please explain to me what the hell people with advanced degrees are doing in law school? Law school is for generically smart people who lack other marketable money-earning skills. It is your duty as someone with a biochemistry Ph.D. to do important things like develop AIDS vaccines or effective cellulite treatments. Or just go to Pfizer and make a bagillion dollars ASAP. God did not intend for you to squander your math and science skills in a monkey hole somewhere attaching schedules to Chipotle securities offerings. That’s why He invented outsourcing.
The downfall of many smart people — such as yourself — is that they think they’re great at everything. If you’re getting multiple C’s your first semester at a T2 school,um, outlook NOT GOOD. Use that big brain of yours to cut your losses and quit, rather than rack up $100,000 just to slog through a degree because of pride. One advanced degree is enough! Mother always said you were greedy.
Listen, law isn’t your strong suit. It wasn’t mine, either. And that’s ok. You clearly excel in the sciences; I’m gifted at insulting people in fresh and exciting ways. We must each capitalize on these divine talents to forge our careers.
I hope this helps.
Your friend,
Marin
Last week, Seyfarth Shaw kicked off a round of 2010 layoffs. Today, Wilson Sonsini followed suit.
The firm just announced that it is laying off staff. Here’s an excerpt from the firm-wide memo:
[A]fter a long and thorough analysis, we have concluded that these changes have made it necessary to downsize the ranks of our staff by approximately 20 employees nationwide, primarily in the secretarial area. We emphasize that the downsizing is a regretful but prudent business decision and no reflection on the skills and performance of the employees involved, who already have been informed of the specifics of this decision. The firm will provide separation pay and support services to help them transition.
It looks like another law firm just got a look at its 2009 profit numbers and found them unappealing. But at Wilson, this is the second year in a row that the new year has brought about new layoffs. In January 2009, Wilson Sonsini laid off 113 people (68 staff) because of the economy. At least this round of New Year’s layoffs isn’t as deep.
In September, Wilson froze the salaries of its secretaries, evidently the firm decided it needed to make a stronger move.
Good luck, Wilson Sonsini friends.
Read the full firm memo after the jump.
Continue reading “Nationwide Staff Layoff Watch: Wilson Sonsini Makes Cuts”
Perhaps Herb Wachtell and Marty Lipton wanted some company as Legendary Old Dudes at 51 West 52nd Street. From the Associated Press:
Former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau has joined the New York-based law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Morgenthau retired at age 90 as district attorney, after 35 years in the job.
In a release Wednesday, Morgenthau said he’s long admired Wachtell Lipton. He said it has helped to advance the law and the legal profession.
As well as the residential real estate markets in Manhattan and Westchester County. Wachtell Lipton routinely tops the American Lawyer’s list of the nation’s most profitable large law firms. The firm had profits per partner of just over $4 million in 2008, according to the 2009 Am Law 100 survey.
The firm represents many financial institutions.
That’s an understatement. The firm’s financial institutions group, led by the unstoppable Ed Herlihy, is second to none in the field of banking M&A (with the possible exception of Sullivan & Cromwell’s FIG group, headed by Rodge Cohen).
So what can Bob Morgenthau expect while working at the CBS Building?
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: Former New York D.A. Bob Morgenthau to Wachtell Lipton”
There’s a lot of news coming out of Goodwin Procter today. Some of it is even pretty good. In a wide-ranging, firm-wide memo, Goodwin announced bonuses (basically), thawed out salaries (kind of), and indicated an intention to adopt a merit-based compensation structure (sort of).
Let’s start with the bonus news:
Maybe you got a little bit more, maybe you got a little bit less. But if you hit 1,850 hours at Goodwin Procter in 2009, you were in the general vicinity of a Cravath-level bonus.
For salaries it’s a little more complicated.
At right, you will find the old logo for the American University – Washington College of Law (WCL). It’s a typical law school logo. There’s little particularly objectionable about it. We’re not graphic design experts here at ATL, but we would only criticize it for being a little too busy and incorporating too many fonts.
The WCL administration recently decided to revisit its logo, perhaps in hopes of convincing prospectives that it’s still worth going to law school if they don’t get into Georgetown. (Over at Concurring Opinions, law professor Sarah Waldeck would say no, unless they’ve scored a free ride.)
The WCL students are not too happy about the new logo, so they’re getting their protest movement on. They’ve started a Facebook group! They’re soliciting angry comments at the SBA Student Thought Spot! And they’re sending the media long, impassioned letters about the wrongs being perpetuated against them by the Man!
One revolutionary writes:
The students have dubbed [the logo] “progressive preschool,” with its mismatched typeface and colors. This is one sad day for AU Law students.
See the revolution-inciting abomination, after the jump.
Back in July, Morgan Lewis & Bockius became one of the first firms to announce that it was doing away with lockstep associate compensation. Sadly, MLB is still lagging behind other firms in explaining precisely what that change means for its associates.
Morgan Lewis’s chairman, Francis M. Milone, sent out a firm-wide email to MLB associates today. In the words of one tipster: “It’s elusive and vague as expected.”
Regarding the death of lockstep, here is the key paragraph from the memo:
[W]ith respect to compensation, as I previously described, we have moved away from lockstep in favor of a compensation model that places more emphasis on individual performance and contributions. While an attorney’s relative performance has served as the driving factor in awarding bonuses in recent years, it has played less of a role in setting base salaries. This year, in establishing base salaries and bonuses, we gave increased weight to a wide variety of factors such as the quality of an attorney’s work, the value provided to clients, industry level, including pro bono commitments, nonbillable contributions such as Firm citizenship and business development efforts, client service, and experience level. After considering all of these factors, we awarded base salary increases of up to $25,000 and incentive bonuses of up to $35,000 to our highest performing associates. As I advised in my November video presentation, we did not reduce associate base salaries.
They used an awful lot of words to explain that they were not going to let people know how much they are making relative to everyone else.
Did anybody from Morgan Lewis receive a $25K raise and a $30K bonus? Perhaps the more important question is: did more than one person at MLB receive a $25K raise and a $30K bonus?
More from the memo and our tipsters, after the jump.
Continue reading “Morgan Lewis: Details Still Sketchy on its Merit Based Compensation”
There are significant similarities between the legal profession and the gay porn industry (which are not mutually exclusive, of course). Here are some thoughts on the subject from Queerty:
We’re not sure which is harder: working in law or working in gay porn. They’re both very competitive, require working closely with pricks, and their rough, late night hours can really take it out of your ass.
University of Louisiana-Lafayette law student, Jeremy Williams, has worked in both fields. In law, he’s a paralegal and very close to graduating from UL with a “near-perfect” GPA. In the porn field, you may know him as Mustang power bottom Jay Armstrong — he’s starred on the site Bait Buddies and in such films as Alabama Takedown, Big Muscle, and Forced Entry, a film in which he famously took a double-penetration. Hard work, indeed.
Small correction: we don’t believe Williams is a law student, since UL doesn’t have a law school. It seems he’s a student in the university’s political science department (which includes law and international relations). Also, for the record, he appears to be a former porn star; according to Queerty, he hasn’t been in an adult film since March 2007.
But where you might find an ex-porn star-turned-lawyer kinda hot, not everyone feels that way, least of all one of Williams’ professors, who’s threatening the student with “consequences” for his “vulgar” career.
O RLY? More info, plus pics, after the jump.
Continue reading “Politics Professor Pesters Paralegal Cum Porn Star”
In 2009, a small group of Harvard Law School students noticed an absurd monopoly in the bar prep space, held by an unchallenged leader with a non-evolving product. In response, these students teamed up with Harvard Law alumni to launch BarMax on January 14, 2010.
The mission: democratize bar prep by embracing new technologies to provide the very best bar exam review courses at a fraction of the cost normally associated with these courses.
Since then, with the encouragement of thousands of students and an unwavering commitment to their success, BarMax has established itself as a comprehensive alternative to the stagnant, over-priced status quo.
As we continue to expand, we do not want to lose sight of the basic premises that led us to create BarMax in the first place. If you are a law student who believes that there is something fundamentally wrong with being forced to take out yet another loan to pay for a $4,000 bar exam prep course, you are not alone.
Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past five years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com
Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December.
As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / China), please note that thus far in January ’12, we have already made seven US associate and counsel placements in Asia. This is an especially impressive number, considering the biglaw lateral hiring market in Asia is down right now (see state of the market brief overview below). These new placements are of new hires in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, who were interviewing with their new firm for a month or more and they are spread out among different practice areas, including project finance, litigation, fund formation, M&A and cap markets. We are close on four additional new associate placements, in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, that we expect to close soon. We do not discuss partner placements in these articles, but the pace of partner recruitment in Asia (a large part of our business) has continued.
Hedge Fund In-House Openings in Hong Kong
We are seeing a small run of new in-house openings in Hong Kong at hedge funds. We are currently filling three different in-house positions at three different hedge funds in Hong Kong, two of these searches we are handling on an exclusive basis. All three will most likely be filled by a US associate, with about 4 to 6 years of experience. Mandarin not required. Candidates from NYC and London will be considered, but at one of these funds the new hire will likely come from Hong Kong / China or Singapore (with HK being the strong preference).
Please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com if you are interested in these hedge fund openings. As you probably would expect, the competition for these spots will be fierce and the funds will be very selective when choosing which candidates to interview.
