This week has been fairly quiet in terms of news about the troubled Howrey law firm. A post over at the Howrey Doody Time blog — with a brilliant punny title (wish I had thought of it myself) — describes the current state of affairs as “a painful holding pattern.”
Well, this morning we do have some Howrey news to report. Above the Law has learned that IP partner Mark Whitaker is leaving the D.C. office of Howrey, his professional home for the past decade or so, to join Baker Botts.
“He’s going to Baker Botts to be the 337 guy,” said a source, referring to Section 337 (19 U.S.C. § 1337), which governs fast-track intellectual property litigation before the International Trade Commission (ITC). “He has a very nice stable of clients he has developed independent of Howrey.”
Mark Whitaker
The hiring of Mark Whitaker — described to us as a “great, great guy,” as well as a former Navy officer (like fellow Howrey partner Richard Beckler) — is a nice coup for Baker Botts, since § 337 expertise is an in-demand area. And luckily for Whitaker, the move won’t mess with his commute: both Howrey and Baker are in the Warner Building, at 1299 Pennsylvania Avenue.
We understand that Whitaker was part of the group of Howrey partners invited to join Winston & Strawn, but he had other plans underway when the Winston talks were announced. His departure from Howrey comes just a few days after WilmerHale’s announcement that it was picking up another noted Howrey IP litigator, Robert Galvin (in Palo Alto).
So that’s the latest Howrey partner news. What’s going on with associates and staff?
Continue reading “This Is Howrey Do It: Partner Departures and Other Updates”
The venerable and aesthetically pleasing law firm of Davis Polk has decided to join in the springtime bonus party. They’ve just announced their spring bonuses — and they’re matching the generous Cravath scale, not the Sullivan & Cromwell scale (which is slightly lower for more-senior associates).
Congratulations, DPW associates. It may have taken a while — perhaps the firm’s management reshuffle news delayed the announcement? — but good things come to those who wait.
Memo after jump.
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Davis Polk Matches the Cravath Spring Bonuses!”
* If the Muslim Brotherhood gains power in Egypt, they will impose sharia law. Just like Oklahoma! [ABC Online]
* Lindsay Lohan took to Twitter to announce that she “was not raised to lie, cheat, or steal.” Well, nature it is. [msnbc.com]
* Arizona is suing the federal government over the porous border. Mr. Obama, build us a wall! [Reuters]
* Barry Bonds, he of the enormous dome piece, had the number of felony charges against him dropped to five. Hauling that gargantuan cranium about. I’m not kidding, that boy’s head is like Sputnik. [ESPN]
* Mario will mediate the Madoff / Mets mess. [New York Post]
* How to fix the criminal justice system? I say gulags. Mostly because I like the word gulags. [The BLT via WSJ Law Blog]
* Hospitals have begun turning away job applicants who smoke. This guy thinks hospitals are acting like a bunch of weiners. [New York Times]
Good Samaritans are supposed to help strangers, not beat them up.
Joke about Good Samaritan liability all you want, but we’re about to talk about an interesting case that is right on point.
The Philadelphia Daily News reports on a lawsuit that has been filed in New Jersey. Keith Briscoe was killed during a scuffle with Winslow Township police officer Sean Richards and other men who came to the officer’s aid. Some of the men were cops, while others were random citizens — so-called “good Samaritans” — who had no idea what was going on but tried to help out the cop anyway. All of them are being sued in a civil action brought by Briscoe’s family members.
I hope Briscoe’s family wins.
I don’t know about you, but when I see a cop and a citizen having an argument or even getting into a fistfight, I don’t assume that the cop is in the right. I don’t assume the cop is addressing the situation with the best intentions or proper motives.
But I don’t assume that the cop is doing anything wrong either. I simply don’t assume and go about my business.
I don’t think I’m alone in this, but I do think I’m in the minority. And I think it’s about time that some in the majority feel some heat for making, and then acting upon, faulty assumptions that reflexively favor the police…
Continue reading “Good Samaritan Liability? Reflexive Trust of Police Costs a Man His Life”
Gilbert Arenas
* Remember the law firm screw-up that revealed juicy dish about NBA star Gilbert Arenas and his ex-fiancee, Laura Govan? Here’s an update. [Reliable Source / Washington Post]
* Musical chairs: King & Spalding picks up 14 litigators from Filice Brown. [The Recorder via ABA Journal]
* Be careful when buying up Google search terms — or you might end up owing $300K to the hat-sporting advocates at Binder & Binder. [Legal Skills Prof Blog]
* It seems that Redskins owner Dan Snyder, the plaintiff in a dubious defamation action, has his hand in a second suit — this time against Cadwalader. [Am Law Daily]
* In the wake of the tragic killing of Chief Judge John Roll, it’s probably unwise for a politician to call for putting federal judges “on the Endangered Species list.” [TPMDC]
* A tipster has the credited blurb for this article on judges in France: “Insert French surrender joke here.” [USA Today]
Santa convention? No, just French judges.
* A (rather cute) male associate named William stands accused of sending around pictures of his Greg. [The Dirty]
* If you’ll be in NYC on February 23, come to the annual dinner of the Asian American Bar Association of New York, which I’ll be emceeing once again. [AABANY]
* Looking for a job — or for a new employee? Don’t forget the ATL job board. [Above the Law Jobs Board]
'Judge Tacha, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.'
Here’s a new mini-trend: federal judges leaving the bench to lead law schools.
In 2007, David F. Levi stepped down as chief judge of the Eastern District of California, to assume the deanship of Duke Law School.
Today, Pepperdine University School of Law announced that Judge Deanell Reece Tacha — who has served on the Tenth Circuit for over 25 years, including a term as chief judge (2001-2007) — will be the school’s new dean, effective June 1.
Judge Tacha follows in the footsteps of another federal judge: former D.C. Circuit Judge Ken Starr, of Whitewater / Monica Lewinsky fame. Judge Starr served as Pepperdine Law’s dean until he left last year for the presidency of Baylor University.
How are students reacting to news of Judge Tacha’s appointment?
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: Judge Tacha To Take Over as Dean of Pepperdine Law”
Only one person had a good time on this date. (Stock photo.)
With Valentine’s Day swiftly approaching, now seems like a great to time to relaunch ATL’s Courtship Connection — our well-intentioned but only sporadically successful program for hooking up our single legal-eagle readers.
Like the Real World, the series is back and in a new city. Judging from the date we’ll now recount, our matchmaking adventures in D.C may be as disappointing as the eight strangers MTV picked to live in a Dupont Circle house last year. (But hey, dating through Above The Law has got to turn out better than dating through Craigslist in D.C.)
This was an East Coast (him) meets West Coast (her) match. Both were of the politically-liberal persuasion. I matched these two top law grads in the 25-35 age range in part because I thought they would look good together. Both are hotties. When asked to describe themselves in three words, neither could stick to the word limit. He said he was a “brainy, preppy reformed frat-guy” and she said she was “disarmingly feisty and unabashedly vivacious.”
I should not have been so superficial. While he enjoyed her vivacity, she enjoyed… writing up a feisty recap of the date….
Continue reading “Courtship Connection: A Rocky Start in Washington, D.C.”
I don’t know how long they’ve been doing this, but I’ve just learned that Cornell offers a “Pre-Law Summer” program aimed at undergraduates who want to know more about becoming a lawyer. Cornell is charging almost $5,000 ($4,970 to be exact) for an “intensive, six-week program taught in New York City.” The program promises to give students an “unparalleled chance to develop an accurate picture of the realities, rewards, and challenges of being a lawyer today.”
(Oh, did I mention that the price tag doesn’t include housing or food in New York City for six weeks? I should have mentioned that.)
You know, I’m not even going to blame Cornell. If you have college students (or parents of college students) who are desperate to give you $5,000, you take it. In related news, if anybody wants to pay me $5,000 to watch me eat a sandwich, you know where to reach me.
But here at Above the Law, we believe in equal access. For all of the people who don’t have $5,000 for the “Pre-Law Summer,” we’re going to give you all the information you could have gotten from the program in one post, in the middle of February, for free!
Don’t say we never did anything for ya….
Continue reading “Just Read ATL for Six Weeks Instead of Doing Cornell’s ‘Pre-Law Summer’; We Won’t Charge You Five Large”
Ed. note: This is the first installment of Size Matters, one of Above the Law’s new columns for small-firm lawyers.
Who am I? I graduated from a top law school in Chicago. (Okay, there’s only two.) From there, I went to work for Biglaw for several years. Or, maybe it was only a year and a half. I am pretty sure that time passes more slowly in Biglaw than in the rest of the world.
Then, I took the path well traveled and went to a small law firm to “get hands on experience,” “more client contact,” and “mentoring.” After almost three years — in real time — at my small firm, I have come to appreciate the unique aspects of practicing law at a small firm and these insights I hope to share with you.
While I do not want to give away the milk for free, I will give you a snapshot of what is to come. Small law firms have actual holiday parties. The holiday parties at my Biglaw firm took place in the lobby which was shared with other tenants when the other employees in the 40+ floor office building were attempting to exit. They served cheap wine and had a cheese tray and hired a high school band called “The Cats” to jam out for the partygoers.
At my current firm, where all employees could fit comfortably in a single floor of the 15-floor office of my former firm, they really throw a party….
Continue reading “Size Matters: From Big to Small to the Paralegal Who Made It Clap”
Not too long ago – you know, when Biglaw firms were begging law students to work for them, no one cared about law school transparency, and having a J.D. guaranteed you a long and prosperous career – signing yourself up for six figures of crushing law school debt didn’t seem like such a big deal. Nor was it unheard of back then for first-year associates to buy nice big houses. But in the aftermath of the recession, many attorneys have to face the now onerous consequences of decisions they made in better economic times.
In today’s Career Center survey, brought to you by Lateral Link, we want to know how your debt currently affects your decision on where you work or want to work. Is it Biglaw or bust? Or are you able to turn a blind eye to your debt and find more compelling reasons to work where you want to?
Please take our short survey and then check in next week for the results.
Wouldn't it be awesome if every person in this picture received education from the same place?
As we’ve previously reported, Thomson Reuters is contemplating the sale of Bar/Bri. Instead of preparing the lawyers of the future, Thomson Reuters has acquired Pangea3, a legal outsourcing company. We’ve speculated on what Thomson Reuters’s shift says about the legal economy.
But who wants to get into the business of preparing recent graduates to pass the bar exam and become actual attorneys? There are so many kids in law school and law schools don’t even pretend to prepare people to pass the bar. Surely there’s a business opportunity there.
One company is being mentioned as possibly interested in acquiring Bar/Bri. And put it like this: it would kind of make sense if the company responsible for helping you pass the bar could also help you get a degree in refrigerator repair…
Continue reading “Becoming a Lawyer Is Getting To Be More Like Becoming a Plumber”
Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.
This column comes from a narrow perspective — that of a litigator and, in particular, an in-house head of litigation.
I suspect that in-house SEC lawyers, or M&A lawyers, may have entirely different perspectives on this topic. But as a litigator, I pay a lot of attention to briefs and other written work. Why is that?
Because I can.
When I was a partner at a firm, I’d let junior lawyers argue motions. For significant matters, I’d chat with the lawyers beforehand, to discuss how to approach an argument. But I almost never attended those arguments. Maybe I should have (for reasons of associate training and evaluation), but I generally viewed sending myself as an observer to be over-staffing an event. I thus rarely saw associates on their feet in court.
I also didn’t double-staff depositions. In mass torts (which was a lot of my practice, way back when), senior lawyers typically defended depositions, and more junior lawyers typically took them. This is partly driven by the nature of mass torts; in that environment, deposition defense is critical. If the senior VP of research and development gets her clock cleaned in deposition, that testimony will come back to haunt the client in hundreds of later cases. In mass torts, senior lawyers play deposition defense….
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Why The Focus On Written Work?”
* At an ABA public hearing yesterday, the panel heard from court officials all across the country who have struggled while dealing with budget cutbacks. Begging for pens, going without health insurance, and sucking various appendages for crack were all discussed. The crackhead was quickly ushered out of the hearing by security. [ABA Journal]
* Malcolm X’s estate is still tied up in something called Surrogate’s Court, where it has remained for over a decade due to family bickering. Get your hand outta my docket! Eh? No? Okay. [New York Times]
* Lindsay Lohan offered to take a polygraph test in order to prove her innocence. She also offered to suck various appendages for crack and was quickly ushered out of the DA’s office by deputies. [TMZ]
* The proposed merger of Deutsche Börse AG and NYSE Euronext carries with it many serious antitrust concerns and one serious umlaut. Motörhead approves. [Fox Business]
* A former SAC Capital portfolio manager who has already pleaded guilty to insider trading told the court how he came to acquire his information. Man looks in the abyss, there’s nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man turns state’s evidence. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss. [Bloomberg Businessweek]
* Alan Dershowitz “blasted” the judge who presided over the trial of his client, Mazultov. Congrats? [New York Post]
* Los Angeles is attempting to pass a law that would require condom usage in pornographic movies filmed there. AltTransport will be around shortly to explain how this new law might impact the Bang Bus. [New York Times]
If Kanye West were here, he’d say: “The Stanford Board of Trustees doesn’t care about law students.”
Tuition is going up across the Stanford University system. That’s not surprising. We’ve said many times that tuition is “recession proof”; it just keeps going up, regardless of the job market for degree holders.
But Stanford is almost going out of its way to hurt its law students. While the rest of the university will endure a 3.5% tuition hike for the 2011-2012 academic year, Stanford Law School will receive a special 5.75% tuition hike. The law school currently charges $44,880 in tuition alone. Once you include books and other living expenses, the suggested budget for a Stanford Law student is $71,535 per year.
According to the school, that’s a bargain. The school should be charging way more. Why? “Because they can,” said one Stanford Law student we heard from.
When considering how much a Stanford J.D. should cost, the school admits that it’s not looking at the market value of a law degree — it’s simply looking at how much other schools charge for their degree programs, and making tuition decisions accordingly.
Yes, this is more evidence that the price of a law degree has become completely disassociated from the value of a law degree. But it’s also evidence that when the chips are down, Maryland Law cares a lot more about the future success of its students than Stanford…
Continue reading “Tuition at Stanford Law Goes Up Dramatically Because….”
* Hey Elie, check this out: “Money Tips for Young Lawyers.” The top tip: “Get on top of student loans.” [Alpha Consumer / U.S. News & World Report]
* What matters more, experience or grades? [Lawyerist]
* Who should use a legal recruiter — and who shouldn’t? Recruiter Dan Binstock explains. [The Careerist]
* Sports law professor Gabriel Feldman considers some of the legal issues related to a possible NFL lockout. [Huffington Post]
Rep. Christopher Lee (R-NY)
* Ashby Jones asks: Is it time for stricter regulation of law schools and the information they disclose (or don’t disclose)? In other words, “Should Congress gin up the Law Student Truth in Education Act of 2011?” [WSJ Law Blog]
* If you’re interested in the intersection of law and neuroscience, here’s a new blog to check out (by the fabulous Professor Nita Farahany, of Vanderbilt Law). [Law and Biosciences Daily Digest]
* Professor Charles Ogletree is offering a cool new course at HLS: “Race and Justice — The Wire.” [WBUR]
* A married Republican congressman, Christopher Lee, has a new nickname: “The Craigslist Congressman.” His comment on the controversy: “I have to work this out with my wife.” [Gawker]
On Sunday, Morrison & Foerster sent around its associate bonus memo. For non-New York associates, the news is that the numbers are loosely based on the old Cravath scale, with some compression for mid-level associates. The actual bonus amount paid to any particular associate is determined based on performance factors. But in a nice show of transparency, MoFo also reported the bonus range and average bonus payment for each class year.
The numbers don’t look too bad, especially adjusting for the cost of living outside of New York City.
Inside New York City, MoFo is taking a wait-and-see approach. As we mentioned yesterday when talking about Weil, the stand-off between Cravath and Sullivan & Cromwell over spring bonuses has paralyzed the New York bonus market. For all we know, S&C is preparing to top Cravath in old-school “bonus wars” fashion.
Wisely, MoFo has decided not to get caught up in all of that drama; it’s just going to wait until New York sorts itself out. Let’s look at the memo…
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: MoFo Admits New York Is Still Too Early To Call”
Please tell me you're not using that thing to actually take notes.
Here at Above the Law we do market research, just like everybody else. Some numbers just came across my desk that I thought some of you might find interesting.
Who needs the Cooley law school rankings? I have a listing of America’s top law schools based on a metric far more important than the number of books in the library: the number of visits to Above the Law….
Continue reading “More Rankings: Top Law Schools Based On… Visits to Above the Law!”
Ed. note: This is the first installment of Small Firms, Big Lawyers, one of Above the Law’s new columns for small-firm lawyers.
I’ve been working in small law firms my whole career — nearly 17 years. I’d like to tell you that I chose this path for carefully considered and noble reasons, but I can’t. In truth, I ended up on the small-firm path for one simple reason:
A blonde.
Let me explain.
Now it’s not what you think. I didn’t turn my back on a BigLaw career to pursue a flaxen-haired beauty. That would almost be romantic, and this is a serious law blog. Ish. No, the story is a bit more prosaic.
I entered Boston College Law School in the fall of 1991. At the time, I had a serious girlfriend (the aforementioned blonde) who was not going to law school. And that became a problem. You see, like most 1Ls, I got caught up in everything that was new about law school: new friends, new challenges, new vocabulary (I mean really: how many jokes should there be with “res ipsa loquitur” in the punchline?). I didn’t realize it at the time, but I paid too much attention to my new law-school world, and not enough attention to my girlfriend.
So she left me….
Continue reading “Small Firms, Big Lawyers: How I Became a Small-Firm Lawyer”
We are well into February, and there are still law students who haven’t received all of their grades from first semester.
Why? I have no earthly idea. We’ve talked about this problem before: we get that professors really hate spending the time it takes to grade a bunch of exams. It’s boring. It’s arbitrary. It’s annoying to know that no matter how “fairly” you grade, you’ll have at least a few students who can’t handle the truth, waiting in your office to ambush you.
But it’s also your job. It’s your duty, owed to the students who are ruining themselves financially to help pay your salary, to provide them with grades in timely fashion. This is especially true in law school. And it’s especially true in a crappy economy. Law school grades matter, and it’s just cruel to keep students in the dark about them.
Now, if I show you a hundred professors who handed in grades late, you’ll hear a hundred different excuses about why grades were delayed: “I was preparing for a conference,” “My Commodore 64 broke down,” “I was having personal problems” — whatever. We get it; sometimes life intervenes and prevents professors from doing their jobs.
But at NYU Law School, some students are alleging that professorial favoritism is allowing some professors to turn in their grades much later than others…
Continue reading “Are Some NYU Law Professors Allowed to Submit Grades Later Than Others?”
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