Archive for June 2010

Michigan Lawyer Ryan Hill Has a Funny Way of Showing ‘Marriage Matters’

By Kashmir Hill

Ryan Hill and his wife

Michigan law firm partner Ryan Hill has a very candid biography on his non-firm website:

I am a self-proclaimed family man. My wife and I have open communication about everything, whether it is small things such as who is going to take out the trash, to bigger things such as communicating our sexual desires.

We’re all in favor of open communication about sexual desires, but why does this Thomas Cooley law grad want to share it with those reading his bio?

It’s because he’s the face of his own non-profit, My Marriage Matters:

My Marriage Matters is a non-profit organization that strongly believes in the union of marriage. We acknowledge there are infinite obstacles that stand in the way to a happy, long-term marriage but we encourage couples to work through those obstacles together. Divorce should not be considered an option when you decide to say “I do”.

So what kind of attorney is Ryan Hill? A divorce attorney.

When one starts digging, this all gets stranger and stranger…

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Update: Rotunda v. Zengerle Has Settled

By David Lat

Last month we covered the somewhat salacious suit that law professor Kyndra Rotunda filed against her former employer, George Mason University School of Law; a GMU law professor, Joseph Zengerle; and the law school’s dean, Daniel Polsby. As we reported, most of the counts, including the juiciest sexual harassment claims, were dismissed.

Some state-law claims for assault and battery were still kicking around. Now those claims have also been settled, according to the ABA Journal.

So what are the terms of the settlement?

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Quote of the Day: CHECK YOU CAREER CHOICES

By Elie Mystal

sometimes it seems i just go from protecting one billionaires’ billions to protecting another billionaires’ billions.

– John Quinn, managing partner of Quinn Emanuel, describing his job to his followers on Twitter.

Kagan and the Cert Pool: Should She Jump In?

By David Lat

The confirmation hearings for Solicitor General Elena Kagan, nominated to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, are currently scheduled to start on Monday, June 28. We will, of course, offer extensive coverage, including some liveblogging.

But most observers expect little confirmation drama — which makes sense. Elena Kagan is an eminently qualified nominee who has over the years kept herself out of trouble, personal or political. She enjoys support from a number of notable conservatives, such as Miguel Estrada and former judge Michael McConnell (both of them possible SCOTUS nominees in a Republican administration).

Just today, Vanderbilt law professor Brian Fitzpatrick — a former law clerk to Justice Scalia and a former counsel to Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) — issued an enthusiastic endorsement (PDF) of Kagan, praising her as “a person of utmost integrity, extraordinary legal talent, and relentless generosity.” Such sentiments have been heard from many conservative corners.

So, with Lady Kaga’s confirmation more or less assured, let’s start thinking about what we can expect from a Justice Elena Kagan. Specifically, how will she handle petitions for certiorari, the requests filed by litigants who want the Court to hear their cases?

In other words: Will Justice Kagan plunge into the cert pool? And should she?

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Blame Canada — For Its Crappy Law Schools

By Elie Mystal

The Canadian legal blogosphere has been buzzing this week over an article penned by last year by a retired Canadian law professor. In it, University of Western Ontario emeritus professor Robert Martin likens Canadian law faculties to “psychotic kindergartens” and offers other hilarious taunts about the quality of Canadian legal education.

The Guardian highlights this quote by Professor Martin: “Each fall, a horde of illiterate, ignorant cretins enters Canada’s universities. A few years later, they all move on, just as illiterate, just as ignorant and rather more cretinous, but now armed with bits of paper, which most of them are probably not able to read, called degrees.”

Some might say: this sounds just like the United States. Does Professor Martin have a newsletter or perhaps a blog of his own so that we may continue to hear his thoughts on the state of legal education?

While Martin has a number of excellent quips about Canadian education, he reserves his biggest guns for the value proposition of going to law school. His thoughts should resonate with many American law students….

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K&L Gates: Closed to Associate Mothers?

By Elie Mystal

From time to time, we’ve tried to track whether or not the Biglaw layoffs have had a disparate impact on women or minorities. There hasn’t been a lot of hard evidence. We did a story last year on layoffs at Squire Sanders that seemed to disproportionately affect women. And this year we ran a report that contained statistics showing that minorities have been disproportionately hosed by the layoffs as well.

Of course, there are some good arguments that the difficulties experienced by women in larger law firms are gender-neutral. This article on TechnoLawyer explores some of those concerns.

But there is one Biglaw issue that is undeniably gender-based. Only women can give birth.

Lately we’ve been getting information suggesting we should add another group to the Biglaw endangered species watch list: mothers. Specifically, we’re hearing that the New York office of K&L Gates apparently sports zero associate mothers. There are some female partners at K&L Gates with children, but no female associate in the New York office has figured out how to breed and hang on to her job at the same time.

K&L Gates did not respond to our multiple requests for comment, but the statistics are quite shocking…

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Welcome, Summer Associates! We’re Glad You’re Here, But Clients Aren’t.

By Kashmir Hill

It’s summer time! A lucky few are being paid to warm seats in law firms across the land. (Very few — thanks to the minimal numbers of offers extended to law students in Recession Land.)

Some firms are very excited about their summer associates, to the point of issuing press releases about them. Firms are planning fun events. Hopefully, Williams & Connolly offers cooking classes at a culinary institute again this summer (for those who don’t get offers and may not be able to afford to eat out one day). We’ve got a round-up of our favorite summer “happenings,” after the jump.

But one thing firms may not plan to do this year is bill for summer associates’ time. Nate Raymond reports in the New York Law Journal that Citigroup Inc. has told its outside counsel that it will not pay for law students’ time. Citi does not stand alone:

J. William Dantzler Jr., a tax partner at White & Case who oversees hiring in New York, said with regard to billing clients for summer associates, it has been “a slide for 10 years.”

“More and more clients don’t want summer associates to bill to them,” he said. “When I started almost all clients would accept it. And it’s evolved to where a lot of clients don’t.”

Ironically, because of the huge decline in the number of summers brought in, they’re more likely to actually do substantive work this year. One Biglaw firm, for example, instituted a requirement last year that every summer associate produce at least one piece of seriously impressive legal writing. Which firm is it?

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Pro Se Litigants Also Want Cheap Legal Advice

By Elie Mystal

We’ve done a number of posts on terrible job offers. You can pretty much go onto Craigslist once a week and find some firm trying to get legal services on the cheap. Usually, it’s a firm or a solo practitioner that’s trying to take advantage of the legal recession by lowballing prospective associates.

Yesterday, an ad went up from a Pro Se litigant looking for legal help. This guy isn’t willing to hire a lawyer to represent him, but he’s got no problem finding one to do all the work:

Recent law school grad needed for research by Pro Se Litigant in areas of civil law including contracts and due process. Please include resume with your response. PayPay will be method of payment. Please indicate which legal search engine you will be using.

Wonderful, so not only does this guy want you to do all the work, but he also expects you to pay for your own Westlaw or Lexis access.

What’s this guy going to pay you for this opportunity?

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Winston & Strawn Tries To Rewrite History By Editing Out a Problematic Partner

By David Lat

It’s clear that Winston & Strawn isn’t happy about all the publicity it’s getting over Jonathan Bristol, the Winston partner — or former partner? — who has gotten entangled with Kenneth Starr

In case you haven’t been following the case of Kenneth Starr — not the one who brought us the delectable Starr Report, but the one who managed money for celebrity clients and now stands accused of a $30 million investment fraud — Jonathan Bristol did legal work for Starr. Bristol is referred to in the criminal complaint as “Associate-4″ — not as catchy as “Client No. 9,” but it’ll do.

Since the Starr story broke, Winston has refused to comment on the case or to clarify Bristol’s current status at the firm. On the latter subject, there are conflicting reports:

Bristol is a Winston & Strawn partner who arrived at the firm from the now-defunct Thelen. Bristol is not charged with any crime and faces no civil charges. But he appears to be gone from Winston, though firm higher-ups and a spokesman will not comment publicly on Bristol’s status. Two sources familiar with the matter say Bristol is indeed gone from Winston, though one source close to the case insists that Winston did not terminate Bristol.

Regardless of whether he’s still connected to the firm, Jonathan Bristol is definitely gone from the Winston website. As in really, truly gone.

Last week, Winston removed Bristol’s bio from the firm website. But that’s not all. Winston went to the trouble of taking the November 2008 press release touting Jonathan Bristol’s arrival at the firm (along with several other Thelen lawyers), revising it to omit any mention of Bristol, and then putting it back on the firm website….

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Morning Docket: 06.08.10

By Kashmir Hill

If Elie, Kash, and Lat were smurfs...

* The lawyer who helped bring us Smurfs is broke and charged with a Gargamel-ish blackmail plot. [New York Daily News]

* This may make it harder to challenge your next speeding ticket. [Columbus Dispatch via Yale Law Tech]

* It may be time to revise Google’s motto: Do no evil… and if you do, say it was a “mistake.” Attorneys general urge Google to come clean about its WiFi snooping. [Boston Globe]

* Joran van der Sloot may be claiming ‘reputation self-defense’ in his alleged murder of a Peruvian woman. If she was Googling him, the Natalee Holloway results were probably popping up high. [ABC News]

* Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II really wants to take health care reform to court. [Washington Post]

* The Rod Blagojevich trial gets it on today. The former Illinois governor has at least one fervent supporter. [Chicago News Scoop]

* Prosecutors want to deprive Ponzi lawyer Scott Rothstein of the Florida sun for 40 years. [Associated Press]

One Way to Pad Your Hours: Picking Up Dry Cleaning

By Elie Mystal

I take the 4/5/6 to work every morning. Usually the trip is uneventful by New York City standards  — just a collection of mariachi bands and homeless people who loudly state their intention not to bother me. Occasionally, people break the cardinal rule of subway etiquette and make direct eye contact: but I can’t tell if that’s because people recognize me from Above the Law or if they’re hoping to get to know me, in the biblical sense.

Rarely do people actually talk to me. The other day a man came up to me just after I boarded the 6 train:

RANDOM DUDE: Aren’t you the Above the Law guy?
ELIE: Yes, one of them.
RANDOM DUDE: I’m a paralegal and you’re going to love this story.
ELIE [the only thing I want to love right now is a cup of coffee]: Do you want to email me?
RANDOM DUDE: Nah. But you see that right there? [Points to clothes hanging up on one of the bars.] That is my boss’s dry cleaning.
ELIE: SHUT UP!
RANDOM DUDE: He sent me uptown to deliver some documents, and he asked me to pick up his dry cleaning on the way back.

It sounds like an urban Biglaw legend, but I snapped a quick picture to capture the moment…

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Non-Sequiturs: 06.07.10

By David Lat

Eve Tushnet

* Elie previously declared that Debrahlee Lorenzana, the too hot for Citigroup plaintiff, was “pretty,” but not “‘blood has stopped flowing to my brain’ pretty.” This video is proof that Elie underestimated her. [Dealbreaker]

* Ugly people get fired on Wall Street too. How many of these 1,200 Morgan Stanley layoffs are in the legal department? [Gothamist]

* Are large-firm gender issues actually gender issues, or just law-firm issues? [Technolawyer]

* Meet Eve Tushnet — daughter of Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet, sister of Georgetown law professor Rebecca Tushnet — the prominent lesbian writer who’s opposed to same-sex marriage. [New York Times]

* An update on that amusing oral argument in the Supreme Court: the government prevailed, with SCOTUS upholding the Bureau of Prisons method for calculating prisoner good-time credits. [Sentencing Law and Policy]

* Blawg Review #267: Venkat Balasubramani is blogging about… blogging! And social media, too. [Spam Notes via Blawg Review]

An Interview With Northwestern’s Resident Pop Star

By Kashmir Hill

Would you trade in being a pop star to be a legal rockstar? Last week, we wrote about So-eun Lee, a South Korean pop star who left behind her music career to attend Northwestern Law.

We emailed with the now-2L to find out how she achieved pop stardom back in Seoul and whether it seems easier to break into the music industry than the legal industry these days. We also found out she goes by Nikki Lee here in the States.

ATL: How did you break into the music industry in South Korea?

I participated in a national song writing contest when I was thirteen, and it was broadcast on television. I got calls from various recording companies after that went on air, and that was the beginning.

ATL: Why did you decide to leave your music career for the law? Are you glad you decided to go to law school?

I am glad, although I have to admit that sometimes during the last year I wondered why I ever decided to come. I did music for a long time, for eleven years, and I felt and knew that I wanted a change in direction. I was a spokesperson for a couple of organizations as an artist, and I wanted to be able to know and participate in the substantive issues instead of just being the “face” of something, and a legal education seemed like the right path.

So what substantive issues is she diving into this summer?

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Quote of the Day: Latham Layoffs in a Movie Review?

By David Lat

I wasn’t the only viewer taken aback by Miranda’s impulsive decision to quit her law firm in a climate in which a powerhouse like Latham & Watkins lays off hundreds.

– New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis, writing about reviewers’ reactions to Sex and the City 2.

Law Professor Peter Erlinder Is Denied Bail in Rwanda

By Kashmir Hill

Law professor Peter Erlinder’s summer break continues to suck.

Last week, we told you about the William Mitchell College of Law professor, who traveled to Rwanda to help with the defense of a political leader running against the incumbent president. He was arrested soon after his arrival because of his “genocidal ideology.” He allegedly violated Rwanda’s laws against minimizing the 1994 genocide in which more than 500,000 Rwandans, mainly ethnic Tutsis, were killed.

Erlinder, who previously defended a Hutu during the International Criminal Tribunals in 2003, contends that it’s inaccurate to blame just one side for what happened. That got him locked in the Rwandan slammer, along with the opposition leader he went to Kigali to defend. During interrogations last week, he fell ill, leading to his hospitalization. Erlinder’s wife says he needs his blood pressure medicine. His daughter told us she’s hoping the State Department will intervene.

He pleaded not guilty to the genocide-denial charges during a hearing on Friday, but the Rwandan judge decided today to turn down Erlinder’s bail application.

What are the charges based on? It appears obscure publications don’t just come back to haunt lawyers during Senate confirmation hearings….

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Law Profs Want Schools to Stop Reporting LSAT Scores to U.S. News

By Elie Mystal

From the files of “things that will never freaking happen,” the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) is telling law schools to discontinue divulging LSAT scores to U.S. News for the publication’s annual rankings. SALT should duck before that flying pig smacks it upside its head. The National Law Journal reports:

[SALT] has urged law schools to stop providing U.S. News with their incoming students’ LSAT scores on the theory that the immense pressure to snag incoming students with high scores is making it harder to admit diverse classes. The median LSAT scores of the entering class accounts for 12.5% of each law school’s U.S. News score — a greater weight than the magazine gives to average grade point average or acceptance rate.

Not only is this something that will never happen, it’s also an idea that is beyond dumb. Quite an exacta there from the law teachers…

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In-House Counsel v. ‘Outhouse’ Attorneys

By Kashmir Hill

If the professional world were a zoo, Biglaw attorneys and in-house counsel would be kept in separate cages. They live in distinct environments and, according to a group of general counsel at the InsideCounsel SuperConference, have very different characteristics.

GCs from Kaplan Higher Education, Navistar, and Johnson Controls got together for a panel about building great in-house teams. It started with some general advice: Ask for writing samples from applicants, don’t hire applicants who use “I” during their interviews, and help to develop your workforce.

“Attorneys don’t tend to be precise and concise when they talk,” said Janice Block of Kaplan Higher Education. She has training sessions to help new hires improve their communication skills, so they can explain what they do for the company if they get stuck in the elevator with the CEO, for example.

Not surprisingly, companies are getting tons of applications for in-house positions these days. “In a market like now, we have lots and lots of people interested in joining the company,” said Jerry Okarma of Johnson Controls, a technology company based in Wisconsin. Attention, diverse candidates: “We have a hard time finding African–Americans in Milwaukee,” said Okarma.

People at the conference told me they’re seeing some amazing résumés cross their desks. People with 20 years of experience are applying for the lowest-level in-house jobs, said one in-houser.

But note well, law firm types: your experience might be a strike against you. The GCs in this session said they look at candidates with in-house experience first, and then to those with law-firm experience. One GC referred to law firms as the “outhouse.” The session included a fair amount of harping about how the animals are trained in the Biglaw outhouse…

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Could Law School Loans Become More Easily Dischargeable in Bankruptcy?

By David Lat

Last month, New York Times columnist Ron Lieber wrote an interesting piece analyzing whom to blame when students wind up in over their heads in educational debt. This past weekend, he wrote a somewhat more optimistic article, raising the possibility that student loans might become more easy to discharge in bankruptcy.

The status quo in terms of educational debt and bankruptcy is all too familiar to many law students and lawyers:

If you run up big credit card bills buying a new home theater system and can’t pay it off after a few years, bankruptcy judges can get rid of the debt. They may even erase loans from a casino. But if you borrow money to get an education and can’t afford the loan payments after a few years of underemployment, that’s another matter entirely. It’s nearly impossible to get rid of the debt in bankruptcy court, even if it’s a private loan from for-profit lenders like Citibank or the student loan specialist Sallie Mae.

Gambling debts can be discharged in bankruptcy like any other debts, but educational debts are subject to a test that requires the borrower to establish “undue hardship” (very tough to do under existing law). And losing money in a casino is a heck of a lot more fun than three years of law school.

But could changes to this legal regime be on the way?

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ATL Caption Contest: Legal Lexus-Nexus Winner

By Kashmir Hill

There are two occasions that inspire people to scrawl messages on their cars’ windows: sporting events and graduations. With either one, white paint on the back windshield lets the world know you’re a winner.

An ATL reader spotted a writing-festooned Lexus parked outside of the Boston Harbor Hotel and sent us the photo below, which we turned over to you for captioning. This Boston law student’s graduation was celebrated with both caps thrown in the air and errors thrown into capital letters:

Over 3,400 caption contest votes were cast. The runner-up, with 17% of the votes, is:

“My other ‘M’ got deferred.”

And the winner is…

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Legal Sector Adds Jobs: Let’s Not Lick Each Other’s Popsicles Just Yet

By Elie Mystal

This morning, you might have heard the great news that the legal sector added jobs in May. Jobs, yay, woohoo! It sounds like great news, until you look at how tepid the jobs bump was in May. Am Law Daily reports:

The legal sector gained 300 jobs in May after experiencing losses in the hundreds during the previous month, according to the latest employment report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the industry has still lost 400 jobs since March, and a total of 22,200 legal jobs have disappeared since May 2009.

It’s been a while since my mathlete heyday, but couldn’t you write this story as: “Legal sector loses 100 jobs since March.” Or you could say: “Legal sector loses 19,900 jobs over the past year.”

And we don’t even know if these 300 jobs are “good” jobs…

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