A year ago, Howrey announced that it was slashing first-year starting salaries and radically changing its first-year program. Drinker Biddle had adopted a similar “apprenticeship” approach a few weeks before Howrey. Aside from Howrey, Drinker Biddle, and some firm in Kentucky, no other law firm has tried to sell below market salaries and intensive “training” to new recruits.
Despite the paucity of firms attempting to remake the first year experience, the press remains fascinated by the experiment. In April, the Washington Post did a feature on Howrey’s first year experiment. Today, the National Law Journal has a full breakdown of the year-old program:
Proponents hail the programs as a positive step away from the sink-or-swim environment many young attorneys encounter when they show up at large firms, and as a practical response to the growing cost-consciousness of clients. The firms bill at much lower rates or not at all for work performed by the apprentices, who earn lower salaries than the industry standard.
The three firms that have gone in this direction claim that the apprenticeships are working. But since nobody is following their lead, it’s evident that the rest of Biglaw is not at all convinced…
Continue reading “Legal Press More Fascinated By Apprenticeship Programs than Law Firms”
* Laurence Fishburne was honored by the D.C. Bar. In unrelated news, a D.C. associate was arrested today after trying to escape from a hi-rise by scaling down the scaffolding on the side of a building. [BLT: Blog of the Legal Times]
* Being stalked by Kashmir isn’t nearly as sexy as it sounds. [Assembly Journal]
* It’s hard to believe that an M.B.A. could be even more worthless than a J.D., but it could be. Hey, at least it only takes two years. [Law and More]
* Is everybody excited to see the President spank BP tonight? My pitchfork is sharpened, just tell me where the mob is forming. [WSJ Law Blog]
* If you’re looking to buy your first home in Austin, Boston, San Francisco or St. Louis, this announcement may be of interest to you. [High Noon Entertainment]
* Sacha Baron Cohen is not a sorcerer. [BL1Y]
Back in February, we reported that Marc Zwillinger and Christian Genetski, who previously headed up the internet practice group at Sonnenschein, were leaving to start their own firm, Zwillinger Genetski LLP. The firm is only a few months old, but it’s already at seven lawyers — and growing.
The Blog of Legal Times reports:
New Internet law boutique Zwillinger Genetski is bulking up with the addition of three attorneys, including Yahoo! Inc. associate general counsel Elizabeth Banker. The new hires nearly double the size of the three-month old Washington-based firm, bringing its headcount to seven.
The usual migration is from a law firm to an in-house job (often for lifestyle reasons). But sometimes we see moves in the reverse direction. E.g., Daniel Cooperman, who went from Apple back to Bingham McCutchen; Bear Stearns refugees, who wound up at various firms.
Elizabeth Banker is just one of the three new hires at Zwillinger Genetski….
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: Internet Boutique Spun Off from Sonnenschein Goes on Hiring Spree”
A number of attorneys at the SEC were not getting enough stimulation from their securities work, so they turned to porn. Lots and lots of porn — one attorney ran out of room on his computer and had to start storing his porn on CDs and DVDs in boxes in his office, according to the Inspector General’s report earlier this year.
Who were these attorneys who, for so many years, were more focused on wanking it than spanking the Madoffs? We don’t know. The 33 XXX-site-surfing SEC employees — mostly accountants and attorneys — were identified only by their work titles in the Inspector General report and not by name.
According to the Denver Post, the SEC turned down FOIA requests from both the Washington Times and Colorado attorney Kevin Evans, seeking the names of employees involved in the scandal. From the Denver Post:
[T]he SEC maintains in court records that the request for employee names and discipline is an invasion of privacy.
“Public identification of the Commission staff could conceivably subject them to harassment and annoyance of the conduct of their official duties and in their private lives,” a government legal adviser wrote in a denial of Evans’ FOIA request.
Evans is a former partner at Hogan & Hartson and Schiff Hardin, and is now a name partner at his own firm. And he was not content to have his FOIA turned down. He sued the SEC last month, and will let the courts decide if this is a true invasion of privacy.
His justification: how would your clients feel if you were billing them for “rubbing the redweld” while looking at www.ladyboyjuice.com?
Continue reading “Colorado Partner Wants To Expose Porn Lovers at the SEC”
Moving in-house really is the golden ticket. Better hours, great pay, and you get to bitch around law firm partners and their associate underlings whenever you want. The only thing separating in-house counsel from the good life seems to be that they have to regularly slough into a stuffy corporate office everyday.
Well, one general counsel isn’t going to let the great indoors ruin his awesome job. The ABA Journal reports:
[Richard Russeth], an avid collector of books about tree house architecture, is taking on his own endeavor: building a sophisticated tree-office nestled 20-feet high in a grove of 50 to 90-feet tall pine trees near his home in Evergreen, Colo.
Did James Cameron put him up to this? Is this guy going to start communicating in Na’vi?
Continue reading “Lawyerly Lairs: My Lawyer Got Stuck in a Tree”
CHECK YOU EMPLOYEE BACKGROUND. That appears to be the lesson learned by the New York office of litigation powerhouse Quinn Emanuel.
A source at QE recently sent us an email with this dramatic subject heading: “A rapist among us.. Quinn Emanuel.” Here’s the allegation:
[Earlier this month] our Records Manager, [name redacted - hereinafter "Got-a-Record Manager"], was fired. He’s been employed at Quinn for over 2 years. Termination Reason: He was a convicted rapist. He’s been convicted since 1987. He was charged with sodomy and first degree rape. I shudder to think that we had a rapist among us and the firm who claims to do background check on employees did not even catch this. An employee did a simple Google search on him and came up with it…. How did the firm miss this?
The tipster provided links to Got-a-Record Manager’s (1) LinkedIn profile, showing his employment at Quinn Emanuel as a “Records Manager,” and (2) a sex offender profile on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement website, containing Got-a-Record Manager’s name and photo. If you enter Got-a-Record Manager’s (uncommon) name into Google, the first result in his sex offender registration and the third result is his LinkedIn profile.
How did this come up? According to our source, “People just like to Google others for fun, and this time someone got a surprise.” Indeed.
Was Got-a-Record’s criminal record “a surprise” to the powers-that-be at QE? We reached out to the firm for comment….
Continue reading “Did Quinn Emanuel Hire, Then Fire, a Convicted Sex Offender?”
If Boston College Law Dean John Garvey was a J.R.R. Tolkien character, he’d be about to shadow fax in his letter of resignation to the BC administration. Eagleionline reports:
John H. Garvey, Dean of Boston College Law School, will be named the new President of Catholic University of America tomorrow…
The Catholic University of America (CUA), is the national university of the Catholic Church in the United States. Founded and sponsored by the bishops of the country with the approval of the Holy See, CUA states that it “is committed to being a comprehensive Catholic and American institution of higher learning, faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ as handed on by the Church.”
Regular ATL readers know that Dean Garvey has defended the Catholic interpretation of Jesus Christ before…
Continue reading “Boston College Law Dean Seeks to Humble Us With His Newfound Piety — Becomes New President of Catholic University”
Stripping might not be the oldest profession, but it is certainly a lucrative one. It’s a low impact way for some women to make a little extra money — and it’s legal. But how many women have availed themselves of this sensual revenue enhancement? If the New York Post is to be believed, strippers are all around us! And they’d like to keep their secret identities, well, secret:
Nearly two dozen current and former dancers for Rick’s Cabaret — including moms of school-age children — filed court papers yesterday seeking to block lawyers from contacting them about a pending class-action employment suit against the Midtown jiggle joint.
No word on whether the strippers are also seeking an injunction to place a gag order on Texas alum Vince Young…
Continue reading “Motion Practice of the Day: Strippers Wish to Remain Anonymous”
Rob Skinner, partner at Ropes & Gray
Ropes & Gray partner Rob Skinner was named a “Future Star” by Benchmark Litigation in 2009. They were surely impressed by his securities work on behalf of financial services clients. But Skinner may be a future star in musical theater, too.
That’s our prediction after watching a YouTube video from “Rob Skinner’s Midlife Crisis Cabaret,” a one-man show Skinner put on last month in honor of his 40th birthday. An attendee tells us:
Rob is a well-loved, youngish partner at Ropes, known for his being a bit over the top. After he turned 40, he wrote and arranged a one-man show, then rented out his local theater in Winchester, MA and performed it last month for friends, family, and a fair number of co-workers (plying us with drinks for a good while before hand). Not in any way a firm-sponsored event, although a fair number of partners were in attendance.
We discovered that partners are just as capable as associates of making fun of law firm life. Skinner did a Kermit-inspired number about lawyer TV shows. “The partners on TV shows are like Machiavelli. They own everything but their souls,” he sings. “They win their cases and have lunch with Satan, who joins them for 18 holes.”
We caught up with Skinner by email. Check out his hilarious video and an interview with this non-Satanic partner, after the jump.
Continue reading “Ropes & Gray Partner Rob Skinner Puts on a Midlife Crisis Cabaret”
* Plaintiffs law firms get Google search savvy in advertising their services. This is such an ad. [Wall Street Journal]
* More of Gloria Allred’s twisted feminism? She’s taking Debrahlee Lorenzana‘s case. [CBS News]
* John Yoo is urging the Ninth Circuit to dismiss the lawsuit against him. [Associated Press]
* Divorce attorney stabbed twelve times by her client’s angry husband. [ABA Journal]
* Is Congress getting serious about monitoring do-it-yourself genetic testing? [Genomics Law Report]
* UC Irvine law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky endorses one-year suspension for the university’s Muslim student group after it disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador. [Los Angeles Times]
Former Akin Gump partner Ken Mehlman — a 1991 graduate of Harvard Law School, just like Obama, but more known for his work in politics, also like Obama — has purchased a fabulous new Manhattan apartment. Mehlman, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, is settling in Chelsea, which has raised some eyebrows.
So how much did he pay for his place? And what does it look like?
Let’s take a peek….
Continue reading “Lawyerly Lairs: Ken Mehlman Moves to Chelsea”
So you’ve been laid off. What do you do? There are so many options: sulk; cry; send out résumés; try to sell your degree; spend time in the Above the Law comments section, complaining about your deadbeat firm…
Or you could take your 2009 Porsche Cayman S on a road trip across America. That’s what a laid-off sixth-year associate did when she got canned by her prestigious AmLaw 20 firm. The associate from an East Coast office is keeping her identity under wraps, so we’ll call her Porschia.
The “double ivy league educated corporate lawyer” started a blog about her adventures, called Driving with Gusto, which has beautiful photos of spacious skies, amber waves of grain, and purple mountain majesties.
While the Porsche is a manual, we wouldn’t say she drives stick. Porschia is a lesbian, and so there are many fun tales of hot girl-on-girl action from across the fruited plains…
Continue reading “Alternatives for Laid-Off Lawyers: Road Trip in a Porsche”
* Different ways your Biglaw colleagues will try to destroy you. [TechnoLawyer]
* Debrahlee Lorenzana gets another lawyer. Hey, we know she’ll do whatever she can to augment her case. [American Banking & Marketing News]
* UC Irvine bans Muslim student union. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* How do you humanize violent defendants? [Underdog]
* For those who have been following the World Cup, it looks like South African fans will not have western standards of noise pollution unfairly imposed on them and their wonderful vuvuzelas. [AP]
* The best thing I can say about Quincy, Massachusetts is that it’s not Worcester, Massachusetts. That, and Quincy used to have some badass cliff quarry diving — which is the jumping off point for this week’s Blawg Review. [HealthBlawg via Blawg Review]
Now that both partnerships have voted, the merger between Sonnenschein and Denton Wilde is a done deal. But the ride between now and the effective merger date of September 30th could still be bumpy.
The first bump is coming from Thacher Proffitt & Wood. As TPW was dissolving, Sonnenschein scooped up 100 lawyers from Thacher Proffitt. The partners involved received significant compensation packages.
According to The Lawyer, those well-compensated partners are now thinking of leaving Sonnenschein, before the merger…
Continue reading “Ghosts of Thacher Proffitt Get SNR Denton Off on a Sour Note”
A few weeks ago, we reported on how Dewey & LeBoeuf was being less than enthusiastic in welcoming back to the firm some participants in DL Pursuits, its year-long sabbatical program.
Dewey might not be alone in treating its returnees in this way. Simpson Thacher — widely regarded as having invented the public interest fellowship as an innovative way of dealing with the downturn, and praised for doing so — appears to be taking a similar approach. A source reports:
Simpson, creator of the public interest year, is reneging on its “guaranteed return” promise. Multiple corporate and satellite office associates who indicated interest in the return option were told either that there might not be capacity, or just outright that there isn’t a place for them. From the firm that “invented” and still spins this program as public service, that’s disappointing.
The number of public interest fellows who aren’t being invited back to the firm is not known. We don’t believe it’s a huge number — somewhere in the single digits. (If you have information, please email us.)
We reached out to Simpson for comment. The firm has a somewhat different characterization of what’s going on here….
Continue reading “Simpson Thacher Public Interest Fellows Not Welcomed Back?”
Back in February 2009, Latham & Watkins laid off 440 people. They weren’t the first firm to lay people off, they weren’t the last, and you can even argue that they didn’t even lay off the most associates in percentage terms.
But somehow Latham has taken a bigger public relations hit because of its layoffs than any other firm. The firm fell ten spots in last year’s Vault rankings. It’s been referenced in New York Times movie reviews in connection with lawyer layoffs. Hell, people turned Latham into a verb, and not a nice verb.
Now, the latest ignominy. The verb “Lathamed” isn’t just in Urban Dictionary; it’s in the Latham & Watkins firm description in the Chambers guide:
In 2008 gross revenue slipped to $2 billion and profits per equity partner were down by 21 percent, according to 2009 Am Law data. The initial response was a number of performance-related layoffs which was followed, in February 2009, by the laying off of another 190 associates and 250 support staff members. Such was the severity of the cuts that the expression “to be Lathamed” (which, by its most polite definition, means “to be laid off”) was coined.
How did it come to this for Latham?
Continue reading “How Did Latham Become the Poster Child for Layoffs?”
We are pleased to announce the launch of our newly re-developed Career Center, featuring an enhanced design and completely updated firm profiles based on the results of the 2010 ATL / Lateral Link Career Center Associate Satisfaction survey.
Are you curious which firms are getting the most buzz? Which firms do people most want to work for? Want to compare firms on compensation, billable hours, partnership prospects, summer programs, maternity leave, etc.? Check out the revamped Career Center, powered by Lateral Link, for user generated insider information, and see how your colleagues and peers rank your firm and others. It’s like Yelp! for law firms!
On the updated Career Center, you will find out that this firm’s compensation includes a unique bonus program for associates who attract new business to the firm, this firm considers associates for partnership after a “refreshingly brief” four to seven years at the firm, and this firm’s unlimited pro bono policy results in its lawyers averaging over 160 pro bono hours annually.
We are still working out a couple bugs here and there so if you see any errors (in the site or the data), please email us. As always, we encourage you to send information about your law firm experience by emailing us or by clicking the "Update Firm Data" button in each firm snapshot.
[Elena Kagan] would be considered very young and inexperienced for this highly prestigious judgeship.
– Former White House Counsel Charles Ruff, evaluating the qualifications of Elena Kagan, at the time just 38 years old, for a seat on the D.C. Circuit (for which she was nominated but not confirmed).
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.
Oh, friends, I know: Where have I been lo these past few months? I’d like to say that I’ve been off on a soul-searching journey, finding peace within Big Law. Or pursuing emotional self-improvement. Or romping around with an aspiring actor type with soccer legs and a limited vocabulary. But, sadly, I can’t say any of those things. Truth be told, I’ve been pursuing self-improvement of a different kind. There’s no way of admitting this without getting ambushed, so I’ll just lay it out there: I had a breast augmentation. A big, round, expensive one. And if you’ll forgive the hubris, the new additions are pretty incredible.
Now, before you start judging, hear me out. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the parade of psychopaths populating my romantic life knows that I’ve had no luck in finding The One. The whole law-degree thing just hasn’t reeled them in like I thought it would. At this point in my life, I just want to meet a professional, well-educated man and I realized a few months ago that I needed to take more drastic action to make it happen. And I figured that inflating my boobs to the point where I resemble a pair of engorged cantaloupes resting on a blanched pretzel rod seemed like a good— oh crap, wait, that’s not right. I was getting myself confused with our favorite litigious ex-Citi siren, Debrahlee Lorenzana, there for a minute. Sorry. I’ve just actually been at the office this whole time…
Continue reading “The Marrying Kind”
Would you shed your bra for a client? Earlier this month, Miami attorney Brittney Horstman did just that, while trying to pay a visit to a client at the Miami Federal Detention Center — but it did not help her case.
When Horstman visited the center on June 4, she set the metal detector off. The guards at the detention center barred her from entering while wearing a bra with underwire. The prison dress code doesn’t bar the bras, but it appears to be informal policy at the prison — presumably because an inmate might use the metal to make a Victoria’s Secret shiv and bust out.
So Horstman went to the bathroom and took her bra off. But the guards again declined to let her enter. From the Miami Herald:
In blouse and jacket, she returned, and cleared the walk-through detector.
Again, guards refused to let her pass — now, because she was braless, which is against prison dress code guidelines.
Apparently this has happened before, and there’s a special memo allowing defense attorneys to enter the center wearing a wire (bra). As women know, it’s hard to find a bra without underwire, after all…
Continue reading “Lawyer of the Day: Brittney B. Horstman Is Above the Bra”
