Archive for July 2010

Photo of the Day: This law office needs an Urban Dictionary.

By Above the Law

The founders of this Oman-based law firm obviously haven’t seen American Pie:

Law Firm Fail [Fail Blog]

UVA Law Stakes Claim to Become the Douchiest Law School of All Time

By Elie Mystal

Last year, in our douchiest law school competition, Duke Law was crowned as the douchiest law school in the land. But we might have to run the contest again based on the new information we have about UVA Law.

On the law school’s website, the school is posting summer associate stories from UVA students who were able to secure SA positions. The one posted yesterday is so full of sweetness I developed adult-onset diabetes before I finished the post. It’s 565 words from a rising 2L at UVA about the (apparently glorious) opportunities available at Arent Fox. Yes, that’s the same Arent Fox that revoked offers to several members of its incoming associate class this past September. I think we can safely say that the idyllic summer experience at the firm isn’t at all like the nightmarish reality of getting your career aborted before it starts.

But such weighty issues are of no concern to this UVA student. You’ve got to check out her report.

Warning: you are about to enter a trippy world of lollipops and rainbows, so proceed with caution….

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Summer Associates: Let Your Voices Be Heard

By Above the Law

We are updating the Career Center and want to know what you think of your summer program.  Are the attorneys at your firm screamers or camp counselors? Are you eating at 5-star restaurants, or splitting meals from the Dollar Menu at McDonalds? Are you working on the next mega-merger, or picking up a partner’s dry cleaning?

Let us know about your firm and its summer associate program by taking the short but substantive Lateral Link Summer Associate Survey. The survey should only take you five minutes and is completely anonymous. Gloat about your experiences or warn law students about the real summer associate life. Your responses will give future summer associates the "I-wish-I-knew-those-answers-before-I-joined" information about the firm that isn’t on the recruiting brochures.

Click here to start the survey.

After you complete the survey, feel free to visit the Career Center and review what the current associates at the nation’s top firms think about their experience.

Wage Gap Persists Among Female Partners: Where’s the Outrage?

By Elie Mystal

A couple of days ago, a survey came out showing that the wage gap between male and female partners is still very large. The National Law Journal put it this way:

It’s no secret that women earn less than their male colleagues at law firms. The National Association of Women Lawyers concluded last year that female equity partners make an average $66,000 less a year than male equivalents.

This news was met with a tremendous yawn.

Amazing. We’re living in a world where women who rise to the top of their profession still suffer a ridiculous income gap, and nobody seems to care very much. Even my ATL co-editor Kashmir Hill said: “Women get paid less than men. D’uh.” So much for righteous indignation. The suffragettes must be thrilled…

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Lawyer of the Day, or Judge of the Day? We Report, You Decide.

By David Lat

Hippocrate “Cheecho” Mertsaris: Does he have a weakness for judicial buttocks?

In a few weeks, an interesting trial will be getting underway in Queens Criminal Court here in New York. The underlying incident should provide fodder for either a Lawyer of the Day or a Judge of the Day — but it’s not clear which.

The episode giving rise to the criminal charges was reported back in May by the New York Daily News:

A disabled lawyer accused of touching the rear end of a Taxi and Limousine Commission judge is blaming it on his cerebral palsy. Queens prosecutors have charged Hippocrate Mertsaris, 35, with sexual abuse and sexual harassment for allegedly grabbing the woman’s inner thigh and buttocks during a meeting in her Kew Gardens offices.

Mertsaris’ lawyer, Wyatt Gibbons, admits his client touched the woman but denies it was sexual. “He whacked her in the butt but it wasn’t sexual abuse,” Gibbons said. “He has spastic movements.”

Let’s dig a little deeper….

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Skadden Associate Graces The Cover of In Touch Magazine Thanks to Rumored Relationship with The Bachelorette

By Kashmir Hill

It’s not every day that we see a Biglaw associate on the cover of a celebrity gossip magazine. So we were a bit shocked when a tipster sent along the scanned image (right) of last week’s In Touch magazine, with this message:

The guy identified as “Ali’s new guy” in this week’s Intouch weekly (and pictured on the cover) is a Skadden associate — and I think a fairly well-regarded one at that.

Ali, of course, is the current star of The Bachelorette. Background from our resident celeb gossip expert Marin:

This season stars Bachelorette Ali Fedotowsky, an unemployed 25-year-old who quit her job at Facebook and moved back in with her parents to be on the show. Fans of the series will recall that Ali was a castoff from last season’s Bachelor, where she endeared herself to fans by wearing low-cut dresses, crying frequently, and vaguely resembling a poor man’s Reese Witherspoon as seen in dim light through cataracts. Anyhow, she’s back this season and more determined than ever to find love with one of 25 white bachelors, not including the one Hispanic dude, Roberto.

The Skadden Arps associate is not one of the two lawyers who was competing for her hand on the show. So this story would ruin the season, if true. Who is this associate?

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WilmerHale Brings Clarity to Its Merit-Based Compensation Program

By Kashmir Hill & Elie Mystal

The heady days of the “mutual assured destruction” approach to associate compensation by Biglaw firms are behind us. But some associates would still like to see how they are doing in comparison to their colleagues at other firms. A tipster recently wrote us:

Can you do a post requesting commenters to post grade schedules a la greedyassociates back in the day showing salary per year. This would make comparisons easier. I’ll start:

Sheppard Mullin
1st year 145K
2nd 160
3rd 170
4th 185
5th 210
6th 225
then it gets vague with a range from 240-265K.

Some of this information is available in the firm profiles on the Above the Law Career Center. But as good greedy Sheppard-ite must know, comparing salaries is much more complicated these days due to some firms instituting merit-based compensation models.

WilmerHale is one of those firms. Yesterday, Wilmer released its projected salary structure for 2011. We’ll see if it’s a merit-based market leader…

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Morning Docket: 07.13.10

By Kashmir Hill

* Debt collection is big business for law firms, and a big annoyance for court systems. [New York Times]

* Former Florida Senator Mel Martinez’s tenure at DLA Piper was fairly brief. [Dealbook/New York Times]

* More law lessons for Lindsay Lohan, from the professor whose law review article she twee-quoted. [ABA Journal]

* John Stamos will now forever be “creepy Uncle” Jesse. [NBC News]

* Blago lawyers want a trial delay. [ABC 7]

* The attorney thorn in the DOJ’s side. [Post and Courier]

Mel Gibson Can Keep His Life but His Freedom is Probably Going to be Taken Away

By Kashmir Hill

Mel Gibson. (In background is his career going up in flames.)

Sorry, Braveheart fans. You can no longer name this movie as your favorite of all time without making women around you shudder in disgust — thanks to the off-screen actions of the film’s barbaric leading man.

Mel Gibson used to be a perfect man crush: squeaky clean Hollywood blockbusting-star, with a big family and serious passion. But now his major hits tend to be for gossip websites reporting on his misdeeds, first with his anti-Semitic rant while being arrested for drunken driving in 2006 (later expunged from his record), then with the end of his 28-year marriage amid accusations of adultery, and now with the alleged battery of and abusive phone calls to his current Russian-musician girlfriend/baby mama.

Gibson usually plays an affable and inspiring good guy in films. But in real-life phone calls to his girlfriend — check out recordings #1 and #2 (with added death threats and heavy panting!) — it sounds like he’s auditioning for a horror movie, using his mouth as a lethal weapon. Here’s a censored version of one of the calls (so you can listen with your kids), from the AP:

Gibson’s girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, taped the calls after Gibson allegedly punched her in the face and broke a few teeth — all while she was holding their love child. California is a two-party consent state when it comes to taping conversations, with $2,500 fines and jail time for those that break the wiretapping law.

Could Grigorieva get in trouble for recording Mad Mel?

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Non-Sequiturs: 07.12.10

By Elie Mystal

* Now that Sonia from the Block is on the Court, she should be able to make a little bit of scratch with her memoirs. [New York Times]

* Is your Biglaw job ruining your Sunday even on Sundays you don’t have to go into the office? If so, it might be time to find yourself a new job. [TechnoLawyer]

* David Boies explains how to intimidate homophobes. [The Atlantic]

* Great, the last thing we need is a bunch of CPA’s — people who already have perfectly fine careers — going to law school and contributing to the massive oversupply of lawyers. [Going Concern]

* Just how much talent do you need in order to be able to get away with rape? [Jane Genova]

* A Blawg Review devoted to the Id. [Lawyerist via Blawg Review]

* In other legal wrap-up news, who knew the blawgosphere was so very much like a carnival? [Compliance Building]

Elizabeth Wurtzel: Not A Fan of the Bar Exam

By David Lat

The fabulous Elizabeth Wurtzel — the bestselling and critically acclaimed writer, who graduated from Yale Law School and is now a litigatrix at the powerhouse known as Boies Schiller — has a bone to pick with the bar exam. In a recent post on the blog of the Brennan Center — an organization that we won’t try to describe, since some of you objected vigorously to our last attempt — Wurtzel questions the value of the bar exam as a gatekeeping mechanism for lawyers. (Those of you frantically cramming for the test right now might agree with her.)

Wurtzel begins by noting how Kathleen Sullivan — the noted constitutional law scholar, former dean of Stanford Law School, and current name partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan — didn’t pass the California bar.

Wurtzel then argues….

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The Best Midsized Lifeboats Law Firms

By Elie Mystal

Have you fallen off the Biglaw bandwagon and can’t get up? Were you lucky enough to hang onto your Biglaw job and are just now realizing that the blessing was actually a horrible curse on your lifestyle? Well, then maybe you’re in the mood to downsize to a midsized law firm, but you just don’t know where to look.

If so, the National Law Journal has you covered. It’s hard to distinguish one midsized law firm from another, but the NLJ has compiled a list of the twenty “hottest” midsized law firms.

Don’t everybody send your résumés all at once…

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Quote of the Day: Better Help Wanted.

By Kashmir Hill

Recent graduates do not apply. I know the job market for lawyers is not good, but the sad sorry truth is that law schools do not teach you how to be a lawyer. This job is for someone with experience.

– Koncilja & Associates, P.C. in a Craigslist legal job ad for a “Denver attorney.”

ATL Summer Associate Event Contest: The Winner!!!

By Kashmir Hill

Times are tough, but firms are still treating their summer associates to some fun, even if it’s cheaper fun than in years past. Last week, we brought you the finalists in our 2010 Summer Associates Event Contest. Some of them are not scrimping:

  • Quinn Emanuel: Firm-sponsored hiking trip up Mount St. Helens. (Bonus: If you make it back down the mountain, you get an offer.)
  • Paul Hastings: Dinner at a partner’s house in a posh neighborhood, with different street food trucks parked in the driveway, dispensing delicacies and blasting music. (Negative: Summer associates aren’t deemed respectable enough to be served dinner inside the house.)
  • Schulte Roth & Zabel: DJ School, where they teach you to mix and be a DJ. (Bonus: If you don’t get an offer, you can work house parties.)
  • Irell & Manella: Firm-sponsored weekend trip to Catalina Island off the southern California coast, including hotel rooms, food, drink, kayaking, biking, glass-bottom boat tours, zip-lining, mini golf, arcade tokens. (Bonus: Some summers scored an invite to a partner’s yacht that he keeps docked near Catalina. Potential Negative: Seeing colleagues in bathing suits.)
  • Davis Polk & Wardwell: Trapeze School and rock climbing. (Hidden agenda: The firm can make sure their prospective associates’ bodies are well-toned and live up to DPW’s hottie standards.)

One commenter suggested that SRZ had another musical event: a luxury suite at a Lady Gaga concert. But even if someone had submitted that event to the contest, it would have been hard to beat our winner.

Which firm had the best summer associate event of 2010?

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UT’s KKK Dorm Name Change Is up to the Board of Regents

By Elie Mystal

A couple of months ago, we brought you the story of Simkins Residence Hall at the University of Texas. The dorm is named in honor of a former UT law professor — a professor who was a Ku Klux Klan leader and organizer. University officials claim they only became aware of Simkins’s KKK past when former UT law professor Tom Russell did some research.

After months of debate, a 21-member advisory group has recommended that UT change the name of the dorm. The proposal will now go up to UT’s Board of Regents. CNN reports:

Gregory Vincent, the university’s vice president of diversity and community engagement, told CNN affiliate KXAN that naming a public building after a self-proclaimed racist compromised the university’s image.

“We’re certainly not erasing Professor Simkins from the annals of UT history,” said Vincent. “All we are saying is that honorific is a very special designation and it should not harm the university’s reputation.”

Sorry Klansmen and Klan sympathizers, Texas needs y’all to be a little less prominent…

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Biglaw Perk Watch: A Follow-Up on Google’s Gay Gross-Up

By David Lat

If you’re a gay employee and have a domestic partner who receives health benefits through your employer, you have to pay more in federal income tax — about $1,000 a year, on average. This is because federal law, thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages. As a result, the feds treat employer-provided health benefits for domestic partners as a form of taxable income (if the partner is not considered a dependent).

(Note, however, that this could change. A federal judge in Boston recently struck down part of DOMA. Stay tuned to find out what happens on appeal.)

Earlier this month, we wrote about a perk that Google extends to its gay employees who find themselves in this situation. As reported by the New York Times, Google “essentially [covers] those costs, putting same-sex couples on an even footing with heterosexual employees whose spouses and families receive health benefits.” Google makes an extra payment to gay employees to make up for the increased tax burden — a perk that we dubbed “Google’s gay gross-up.”

We asked you, our readers, if any legal employers also offer this benefit. As it turns out, several do.

Find out which employers provide this perk — and vote in a poll on its fairness, which was hotly debated in the comments to our prior post — after the jump.

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ATL Summer Party: It’s Tonight

By Above the Law

Just a quick reminder that the Above the Law summer cocktail party, brought to you by ATL and the Practical Law Company, is taking place tonight. You’re cordially invited to enjoy drinks and hors d’oeuvres with the ATL editors and your fellow readers. The details:

Monday, July 12, 2010
6 PM – whenever
Amity Hall (80 West 3rd Street, New York, NY 10012)

The event is free, but space is limited, with priority given to summer associates and law students. Please RSVP by email, to rsvp@abovethelaw.com. (We’re almost at capacity, but we still have a few more spots.)

Thanks. We hope to see you tonight!

What One Mizzou Grad Learned in Law School

By Kashmir Hill

Bar takers, the big day approacheth. We hope you’ve given up alcohol, television, Facebook, and daily showers, and are making progress on packing as much law into your brains as the remaining time allows. We’ve offered you lots of advice here at ATL: how to go through BAR/BRI faster, how to fail the BAR/BRI midterm and still pass, and how 2 avoid language that will hurt your score.

Some bar takers have had their fill of studying, though, and are looking for distractions. A Mizzou Law grad is in this camp:

I’m studying for the bar right now, and to be honest, little of this sounds like what I learned in law school. So I said to myself, if I didn’t pick up these 20-odd topics, what did I learn?

He came up with a list of the 17 things he learned in law school. Some excerpts:

  • Walk, don’t run from the police. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000).
  • A good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the judge. See DeMentas v. Estate of Tallas, 764 P.2d 628, 632 n.6 (Utah App. 1988) (quoting the “colorful, if occasionally irreverent” trial judge: “It’s hearsay, I agree, but it’s damn good hearsay, and I want to hear it.”).
  • Criminal defendants tend to be idiots. See State v. Gaw, 285 S.W.3d 318, 320 (Mo. banc 2009) (After approaching Gaw’s vehicle, “Sgt. Frazier asked Gaw to give him his marijuana. Gaw reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a small baggie and handed it to the officer.” Gaw was then arrested.).
  • People litigate some really bizarre stuff. See Tulare Irrigation Dist. v. Lindsay-Strathmore Irrigation Dist., 45 P.2d 972, 1007 (Cal. 1935) (use of water by farmers to drown gophers not allowed in area with chronic water shortage).

The full list of lessons learned in law school, after the jump.

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Roman Polanski Gets His Freedom On

By Elie Mystal

The 76-year-old iconic director, Roman Polanski, is free to drug and sex 13-year-old girls across the European continent. As we mentioned in Morning Docket, the Swiss government rejected a U.S. extradition request. The Associated Press reports:

The Swiss mostly blamed U.S. authorities for failing to provide confidential testimony about Polanski’s sentencing procedure in 1977-1978.

The Justice Ministry also said that national interests were taken into consideration in the decision.

Funny, I didn’t know the Swiss had a national interest in protecting convicted rapists…

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The Asia Chronicles: CONSIDERING A PRC FIRM OR OTHER LOCAL FIRM IN ASIA?

By Kinney Recruiting


[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 two years. You can reach them by email: asia at kinneyrecruiting dot com.]

** Check out our new daily Asia biglaw blog at THEASIACHRONICLES.COM! **

Evan here. While PRC firms, Korean firms and Japanese firms have for years successfully recruited US biglaw associates, in ’09 such recruitment was more successful than usual. There are two reasons for this trend: i) most top US firms in Asia were on hiring freeze throughout ’09, making it extremely difficult for even the most impressive US associates to lateral to a US practice in Asia in ’09 (such lateral moves did happen, most with Kinney involved, but not in great number, relative to ’06, ’07, ’08 and ‘10); and ii) there has been a feeling in the market in the past couple of years that some local firms in Asia, especially PRC firms, are catching up to US practices there.

We know a number of US associates who made the move from top 10 US firms to PRC firms in ’09 (some with Kinney’s help). We also know a handful of US associates from top tier US firms that moved to Korean and Japanese local firms in ’09. This type of lateral move has been a good one for those looking for more of an entrepreneurial role early on in their career, especially if they have very strong personal connections at banks and other relevant entities in the target country. However, this type of move has been a bad one for those who are focused on keeping their technical skill set at a top US practice level of sharpness (in order to open up career doors now and in the future).

Unfortunately, most lawyers realize at some point that the skill set is paramount in importance in a legal career, typically coming ahead of even client control when working at top-tier firms. Having joined a local firm, it is very difficult to move from a local firm back to a top US firm, even within the same market where the associate has been getting unique major domestic firm experience. This is true, even if (in that market) US associate lateral hiring has picked up tremendously (which is the case in HK / China this year). double red triangle arrows Continue reading “The Asia Chronicles: CONSIDERING A PRC FIRM OR OTHER LOCAL FIRM IN ASIA?”