When I wrote the open thread on the Vault top ten, I wanted to say that none of the top firms froze salaries during the recession. But I couldn’t, because back in November Covington & Burling surprised many people by freezing associate salaries outside of New York.
But as we mentioned at the beginning of this month, salary shenanigans are so 2009. 2010 is the year of salary normalcy.
* A team of federal investigators called the “BP Squad” is starting up a criminal investigation into BP and its pals, Transocean and Halliburton. [Washington Post]
* The four justices of the Utah Supreme Court have reversed the rape convictions of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs. No word yet on their response to his marriage proposal. [How Appealing]
* The Sacramento firm of McDonough Holland & Allen is closing up shop by Labor Day, and its 80 or so attorneys are looking for new homes. [Am Law Daily]
* We can now return to not knowing or caring about Levinson Axelrod. [ABA Journal]
Hello, West Coast readers! How’s it hangin’ out there past the Rockies? Here at Above the Law, we try to overcome any suggestion of East Coast bias by consistently publishing a post later in the day for our readers in the Pacific time zone. And we try to be generally aware of West Coast firms and schools.
We’ve even heard of Stanford Law School. It’s like the Harvard of the West, right? We hear it’s wonderful. It’s not Yale, but hey, neither is the Harvard of the East (a.k.a. Harvard).
Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer wants that to change. He’s already pushed through grade reform, so now Stanford copies Yale’s grading methods. (Berkeley kids, just be quiet. Nobody wants to hear about how everybody copied it from you.)
But apparently grade reform was just step one of Kramer’s grand plan to oust Yale from its position as the nation’s best law school…
* Lawyer of the Day: Chicago attorney Matthew Campobasso (pictured) catches a foul ball in one hand — while holding his seven-month-old son in the other. [Hammervision]
* Speaking of foul things in Chicago, guess how much Rod Blagojevich spent on clothes over a six-year period. [Chicago News Cooperative]
* A Colorado woman by the name of Jan Schill has set up a website to oppose the bid of her father, John Mantooth, for an Oklahoma judgeship. The website’s catchy title: Do Not Vote for My Dad. [KOCO.com]
* Are CEOs obligated to maximize shareholder value? Professor Todd Henderson explains why this is a myth. [Truth on the Market]
Court clerks in Virginia may be shaking their fists at the Fourth Circuit today. In an interesting ruling on free speech, privacy, and public records, the court ruled that an angry blogger has the right to publish public officials’ and court clerks’ Social Security numbers in order to protest the fact that Virginia puts records online that publish citizens’ social security numbers. We skimmed the opinion, but didn’t see a citation to Hammurabi.
B.J. Ostergren has been writing TheVirginiaWatchdog.com since 2003 to bring attention to the fact that state governments play fast and loose with people’s Social Security numbers when putting land records online. Her advocacy got many of them to actually start attempting to redact SSNs from the documents before putting them online, but the system was still imperfect.
She started posting land records containing unredacted SSNs, which led the state to pass a law in 2008 to make what she was doing illegal. She sued and the courts supports her, though the Fourth Circuit eliminated some conditions imposed by the district court…
When you apply for a job, your potential employer gets to check you out — running background checks and credit checks, calling up past employers, asking for your measurements and a demonstration of your sexual prowess… What? Is that not normal?
But what do you find out about your potential boss? You get a sense of their style and their curiosity during the interview. (Do they talk about themselves? Or ask you questions? Or just kind of stare at you malevolently?) You can tentatively reach out to your future co-workers and delicately ask whether said boss has any psychoses. You can Google them, of course, and try to stalk their Facebook pages (though most people are savvy enough these days to turn up those privacy settings). Or you can check them out on eBossWatch, a site that’s been around since 2007 that allows employees to anonymously review their bosses.
We’re not sure how useful it is for lawyers, though. We searched for some Biglaw firms in there, but struck gold for onlyafew.
But perhaps there will be more soon. The site recently instituted a “National Sexual Harassment Registry” (kind of like the Sex Offender Registry, but with more executives and less violence). But the Connecticut Employment Law Blog calls foul…
If you’re a new grad or a laid-off attorney, you have my prayers and condolences.
– Joe Ankus, a legal recruiter quoted in the Miami Herald. (Ankus helpfully adds that “if you’ve got a book of business of over $1 million, there is a fever pitch to hire you.”)
It’s an approach that’s favored by groups such as Chambers and Partners. Instead of focusing on overall firm prestige, these rankings focus on which firms are great at their chosen specialties.
Of course, there’s a limitation to ranking firms this way. It’s more helpful for lateral hires and clients than to law students or young lawyers choosing between firms (who are often the consumers of Vault guides). Sure, young 2L, you might want to go to the top capital markets law firm in all the land — if you knew what capital markets practice entailed. Which you don’t. Specialization usually comes after you’ve been working for a couple of years, not before you even graduate from law school.
With that disclaimer, it’s still pretty interesting to see which well-known firms rose to the top in some interesting practice groups…
In May 2006, then-Judge J. Michael Luttig made major news in the legal world by resigning from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to become senior vice president and general counsel of aerospace giant Boeing. Luttig served as a Fourth Circuit judge for almost 15 years, during which time he reigned as the #1 feeder judge, sending almost all of his clerks into Supreme Court clerkships, and came extremely close to becoming a justice himself.
Luttig’s resignation from his life-tenured Fourth Circuit judgeship came as a shock to many (and was viewed by some as “taking his toys and going home,” after he got passed over for the SCOTUS seats that ultimately went to John Roberts and Samuel Alito). But Luttig, who’s only 56 — he was appointed to the Fourth Circuit at the tender age of 37 — seems to be enjoying the new challenges of serving as GC of a large public company.
During his four years at Boeing, Luttig has given its in-house ranks a major makeover. He has brought in some top talent, including at least four Supreme Court clerks: John Demers (OT 2005/Scalia), Grant Dixton (OT 2000/Kennedy), Brett Gerry (OT 2000/Kennedy), and Jake Phillips (OT 2004/Scalia). Is there any in-house legal department with more former Supreme Court clerks than Boeing? Don’t forget to count Luttig himself, who clerked for Chief Justice Burger (OT 1983), after clerking for then-Judge Scalia on the D.C. Circuit.
UPDATE: Boeing boasts at least eight (8) SCOTUS clerks. Here are three who were inadvertently omitted from the original version of this post: Bertrand-Marc Allen (OT 2003/Kennedy), Lynda Guild Simpson (OT 1984/Powell), and Eric Wolff (OT 2000/Scalia).
And Luttig has given his net worth a makeover, too. At the time of his May 2006 resignation, federal circuit judges earned $175,100 a year. As executive vice president and general counsel of Boeing — the country’s largest aerospace and defense company, #28 on the Fortune 500 — he makes millions.
Luttig no longer has to worry about covering college expenses for his two kids (which he cited in his resignation letter as a reason for leaving the bench). And this past May, he and his wife, Elizabeth Luttig, bought a fabulous second home in beautiful Kiawah Island, South Carolina.
How much did Mike Luttig pay for his new place? And how does the price tag compare to his in-house compensation at Boeing?
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
LexisNexis and OverDrive®, the digital library solutions provider chosen by 22,000+ libraries, schools and colleges worldwide, have joined forces to provide a library management solution that suits evolving legal research requirements mobility, simplified library management, and space and budget reductions.
Reduce your library costs and extend the budget.
With LexisNexis® Digital Library, overhead and administrative costs for maintaining a print library are reduced dramatically. Adopt an easy-to-use platform that requires minimal staff resources so your organization can make the most out of your library budget. Plus, multi-year purchase options let your library lock in savings.
Empower your librarians.
Your firm’s librarians will have more time to conduct value-added research. They’ll have greater insight into what resources the staff actually uses so they can make adjustments to the collection quickly using a single website. Librarians can gain greater control, which can lead to better library utilization and increased strategic value to the firm.
Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
