* Hey baby, your placenta or mine? Four nursing students may have aborted their careers due to oversharing on Facebook — and now one of them is suing. [Wall Street Journal]
* Like sh*t through a goose: a woman claims she now has digestive problems because she got to second base with Donald Duck. [Washington Post]
* Can a school keep your kid from looking like a lesbian? These parents are fighting for their son’s right to look like Justin Bieber. [Indianapolis Star]
* No happy ending for Brett Favre. The QB tried to throw a pass to his masseuses’ tight ends, but he’s now getting sacked with a lawsuit. [New York Post]
* U.S. News wants you to know that if you go to Cooley, the only place your application will be transferred to is the paper shredder. [Get In: Law School / U.S. News]
* Rahm sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so stop writing parody songs about him, motherf**ker. [Change of Subject / Chicago Tribune]
Over the holiday break, Irell & Manella announced its associate bonuses. Multiple sources are telling us that the Irell bonuses doubled the bonuses offered by Cravath, Sullivan & Cromwell, or their followers.
That’s great news, but Irell associates are not particularly impressed. Irell doubled the small bonuses of Cravath and S&C last year, too. And since Cravath et al. paid essentially the same bonus as last year, Irell associates ended up with the same bonus as last year, notwithstanding any increase in profit the firm may have achieved in 2010 over 2009.
Still, Irell is following a proven strategy to get noticed. Remember, it wasn’t all that long ago that Cravath was the most prestigious firm (according to the Vault rankings). But then Wachtell started consistently blowing Cravath away in terms of compensation, and now the Cravath’s and S&C’s of the world seem to be just playing for second place. The same thing could be happening to Irell: the firm shot up from #50 to #37 in the most recent Vault rankings, and I’d imagine that another year of paying double the market will help Irell continue its rise.
Actually, does Cravath really even constitute the “market” for top-end Biglaw associate compensation anymore? In 2008, Skadden doubled Cravath’s bonuses. In 2009, Cravath took advantage of a cratering economy to push bonuses to new lows, but there were still firms like Irell that found a way to beat the Cravath bonuses. And during the 2010 bonus season, it feels like the only firms even pretending that Cravath pays top associate compensation are the huge ones that really want to keep the associate compensation market as depressed as possible.
Let’s make a list of the firms that can see the Cravath bonuses in their rearview mirrors. We’ll get you started, and hopefully you can fill us in on anybody we’ve missed….
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Let’s Make a List of Firms Like Irell & Manella That Are Killing Cravath Bonuses”
James Sandman, the LSC's new president.
* Aviation lawyer Arthur Wolk, who’s suing Overlawyered and blogger Ted Frank for libel, opposes the filing of an amicus brief signed by star legal bloggers Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), Marc Randazza (Legal Satyricon), Ed Whelan (National Review Online), and Eugene Volokh (Volokh Conspiracy). His opposition is… kinda crazy. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* If our two recent posts on whether you should drop out of law school weren’t enough for you, here’s more. This part-time law student wants to quit, but her husband is counting on her to “make us rich.” [Reddit]
* Former D.C. bar president and Arnold & Porter partner James Sandman is taking over as president of the Legal Services Corporation. He’s a great choice, given his sympathy for poor people. [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]
* If you’re a pot dealer with an iPhone, this app’s for you. [Gawker]
* John Wheeler, adviser to Republican presidents and Yale Law grad, R.I.P. [ABA Journal]
* Charon QC starts off the new year with an epic Blawg Review #292 — on Cicero’s birthday. [Charon QC via Blawg Review]
* Congratulations to… us! We were the top vote-getter in the News category for the ABA Journal’s fourth annual Blawg 100. Thanks to everyone who took the time to register and vote for ATL. [ABA Journal]
Sometimes lawyers are rude — really, really rude. And when they get extremely rude in emails with one another, sometimes the result is discipline from the bar. So, counselors, please be polite; treat each other with courtesy and respect.
(And treat bartenders with respect too. You never know when one of them might bring your rudeness to the attention of Above the Law.)
The importance of common courtesy is a lesson that Florida lawyers Nicholas Mooney and Kurt Mitchell learned the hard way. After they called each other some nasty names over email, charming monikers like “scum sucking loser” and “retard,” they both wound up getting disciplined by the Florida Supreme Court.
Let’s take a closer look at their crazy correspondence, shall we?
Continue reading “Lawyers of the Day: ‘Scum Sucking Loser’ and ‘Retard’
Email insults lead to sanctions for two Florida attorneys.“
It’s hard to understand why some firms choose secrecy over transparency when it comes to associate bonuses. I understand not wanting to tell Above the Law about them. We often find out eventually, but if you want to make us jump through a couple of extra hoops, that’s fine. (To help us jump through the hoops, please email us about your firm’s news.)
But even if you don’t want ATL to know about your firm’s bonuses, I don’t see how fear of a blog is justification for keeping information from your own people about how they are compensated. If you are transparent about how bonuses are calculated and awarded, most of the people will accept that they knew what was expected of them and either met those expectations or fell short. Sure, there will be some disgruntled people, but at least everybody gets to know why they are being paid what they are being paid.
But if you roll out there with secret formulas and unspecified hours requirements, nearly everybody feels disgruntled because they have no idea why they received (or didn’t receive) whatever they got. It’s like, if a girl tells you she won’t put out until after at least four dates, you know what you’re up against. But if she says nothing and you find yourself standing outside her apartment after a successful third date and she’s not inviting you up for “coffee,” you’re super-pissed (and hoping that the slutty chick who was checking you out earlier is still at the bar and relatively disease-free).
And that’s where Arnold & Porter associates find themselves when it comes to their bonuses. Standing outside of some chick’s apartment, wondering what the hell just happened.
Oh A&P announced its bonuses. But the eligibility for these bonuses is really anyone’s guess…
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Arnold & Porter Will Try Transparency Next Year, This Year Sticks With Cloak and Dagger Routine”
(Admittedly, that advice would have been more helpful on Friday than it is now, but then I wouldn’t have had anything to write up today.)
Every year there are people who use New Year’s as an excuse to go out and act like fools. I know, the bubbles in the bubbly are hard to handle. But usually people get their act together by New Year’s Day. Maybe not Big Ten football people, but regular people usually manage to avoid embarrassment at the start of a new year.
But there are exceptions to every rule, and this year’s lawyerly exception comes from Charlotte, North Carolina. An associate at Alston & Bird went out for New Year’s Day dinner, and hilarity ensued.
Happily for the rest of us, an Above the Law reader was there to bear witness — and the associate left behind a little bit of evidence…
Continue reading “Associates: Try Not to Leave Behind Evidence of New Year’s Debauchery”
Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s new column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.
Also, in case you missed them because of the holiday break, be sure to check out his recent posts on in-house compensation and bonuses.
First, a story. Then, my point.
(If I promise a point at the end, maybe you’ll persevere through the story.)
When I was a partner at a large law firm, sending out bills, I took the job seriously. I sat in a coffee shop one Sunday afternoon each month and went through every !*@!! time entry in every bill to be sure that (1) I could understand what task the lawyer had performed and (2) the time spent was not disproportionate to the work performed. Only then would I approve the bill.
Editing bills is like torture. In fact, strike the “like.” This is torture. At the end of three or four hours of editing bills, you’re ready to jam toothpicks into your eyes. So I took a lesson from Tom Sawyer and whitewashing fences: I conned my teenage son into thinking that editing bills was a very important job. He bit! (Other than falling for this, the kid is actually pretty smart.) During Jeremy’s sophomore through senior years of high school, he and I did some father-son bonding on the third Sunday of every month at the local coffee shop. I bought the kid a caramel frappuccino (“venti” if we were doing north of 500 grand in bills; otherwise, grande; always with whipped cream). He took half the stack of bills; I took the other half; we edited. (Stay calm. I didn’t charge clients even for my own time spent doing this, let alone the kid’s. This was on the up and up.)
What did we do?
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Entering Time”
Over many years, however, a persistent problem has developed in the process of filling judicial vacancies. Each political party has found it easy to turn on a dime from decrying to defending the blocking of judicial nominations, depending on their changing political fortunes. This has created acute difficulties for some judicial districts.
— Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in his annual report on the state of the federal judiciary (gavel bang: Tony Mauro / The BLT).
We were somewhat surprised to learn that this actually isn’t the most depressing day of the year. That honor goes to the third Monday in January, not the first. There’s a whole mathematical formula about it. Anyway, here’s some LEWW cheer to brighten your gray Monday.
Administrative note: Signs are indicating that LEWW will soon be presenting Mr. LEWW with another heir. Wedding coverage will be scaled back somewhat while we recover from the blessed event, but you won’t care because it’s January, and nobody gets married in January.
But some got married in December — like these three couples:
1. Ellen Tobin and Todd Kaminsky
2. Rachel Laitala and Colin Greenspon
3. Mabel Hwang and Jonathan Weiss
Check out their bios and photos, after the jump.
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Jews Versus Episcopalians”
Joe Miller finally learned what everybody else knew in November.
* For just pennies a day, you can outsource your legal work to a lawyer who doesn’t even know what a penny is. [Los Angeles Times]
* They might have terk your jerbs, but the Republicans are going take their schooling and birthright citizenship. [New York Times]
* Oh no, Joe, say it ain’t so! Joe Miller finally waives the white flag: after three strikes in court, he’s out. [CNN]
* Elie can haz victory! The ABA finally pulled its head out of its ass the sand and issued a warning to prospective law students. [NetNet / CNBC]
* Lots of law firms defied logic and offered “safe ride” programs for New Year’s Eve. You too fancy for DUI defense, huh? [ABA Journal]
* No job? No problem! Just have the local paper run a sob story about you, and see what happens. These kids are geniuses! [Chicago Sun-Times; Bergen Record]
* Robo-signing from beyond the grave — sounds like an episode of Tales from the Crypt made for lawyers. [Wall Street Journal]
