Paul Oekten
* “How can I keep other people from stealing my idea?” If you’re hoping to do so through copyright law, good luck. [Law of Fashion]
* Howrey CEO Robert Ruyak blamed alternative fee arrangements for contributing to Howrey’s downfall, but Jay Shepherd isn’t buying it. [The Client Revolution]
* Speaking of Howrey, former partners have been picked up in recent days by Venable, Covington, and Arnold & Porter. [Am Law Daily]
* Paul Oetken, the openly gay New York lawyer nominated to the S.D.N.Y. bench, has received a “unanimously qualified” rating from the ABA. [Poliglot / Metro Weekly]
* For-profit colleges are under legal attack; could law schools be next? [STLtoday.com]
* What do great jazz musicians and successful trial lawyers share in common? [Underdog]
* What are some strategies for playing hooky from your Biglaw job? [Corporate Monkey Lawyer]
* It’s Pi Day. Or is it Pie Day? How about everybody eats 3.14 slices of pie so they’re covered both ways. [Pls Clarify via Blawg Review]
* It’s NCAA tournament time. Join our group “Above the Law Blog” with the password “abovethelaw” and fill out a bracket. The top three finishers will get ATL t-shirts (and mad respect from lawyers who like to procrastinate everywhere). [ESPN]
Last week we reported on global megafirm Latham & Watkins heading into the Boston legal market. The firm will officially announce the opening of its Beantown outpost later this month.
We mentioned that Latham snagged Alex Temel, a prominent partner from Proskauer, to help start up LW’s Boston office. Now we’re hearing additional reports about attorneys who will be joining Latham in Boston, as well as the location of the office….
Continue reading “More About Latham’s Boston Office”
You can’t charge exorbitant hourly rates to wealthy clients for routine legal work and still call yourself a “profession” instead of “just another business.” You can’t raise the price of legal eduction to the point where young lawyers have to mortgage their financial futures before they even sit for the bar and still attract cautious and temperate professionals. You can’t advertise on television and twitter, turn courtrooms into a reality shows, Latham careers before they even start, have partners auction themselves to the highest bidder, and outsource legal work product to India because it’s cheaper — and yet still expect to there to be some “professional dignity” involved when somebody dangles the opportunity to make a buck in front of some lean and hungry legal service provider.
In short, you can’t do all of the things the legal profession has done over the past 20 or 30 years and expect to get anything other than a big pile of Shpoonkle.
Shpoonkle is the name of a new website set to launch Monday. The site will allow clients to post their legal problems and receive “bids” from lawyers willing to represent them. The site was dreamed up by a New York Law School grad (one day, we’ll have a story about an NYLS grad who is actually a practicing attorney instead of a cupcake salesman or legal services entrepreneur). And there are already a bunch lawyers who can’t wait to join this race to the bottom…
Continue reading “‘The eBay of Lawyering’ Is The Natural Devolution of The Profession”
Last week we told you about our spring event for law students who want to learn about how to make the most of their summer experience. Like many of the things we do around here, it should be a lot of fun. But it should also be extremely useful — to law students who need to turn their internships into full-time offers, law students who don’t have jobs yet and are exploring all their options, and law students who just want general career advice from a panel of experts.
The panel discussion, entitled We Know What You Should Do This Summer, is taking place on Wednesday, April 6, at 6:30 p.m. It’s being co-sponsored by the Practical Law Company and the ABA Law Student Division, Second Circuit.
Steven Molo
Over the course of this week, we’ll be revealing the other panelists (in addition to David Lat and Elie Mystal). First up is our small-firm partner: Steven Molo, founding partner of the litigation boutique MoloLamken (whose launch we covered here). Before starting MoloLamken, Steve was a prosecutor in Chicago; a partner at Winston & Strawn, where he served on the firm’s Executive Committee; and a partner at Shearman & Sterling. Given the breadth of his career experiences, Steve has a tremendous amount of wisdom to impart.
There’s a small admission fee (to help us cover the cost of the venue), but we’re extending the $5 DISCOUNT until Friday, March 18, at 11:59 PM, because some people were away on vacation last week and didn’t get a chance to take advantage of the offer. We’ll also be giving away free ATL t-shirts to the next 25 people to sign up (as well as everybody who signed up last week). Just enter the following discount code when registering: Y084BG.
But don’t delay, since seating is limited, and the discount code expires on Friday night. You can get details and register by clicking here (or on the button above). See you on the 6th!
On Friday we posted a photo of a law-related license plate that struck some of you as rather obnoxious. We asked you to send in pictures of additional legally-themed vanity plates, by email (subject line: “Vanity License Plate”).
We received a number of interesting submissions. Check out the first one….
Continue reading “Law License Plates: School Spirit?”
Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.
Bruce MacEwen has been blogging long and well over at Adam Smith, Esq. He typically writes about law firm management, and his target audience is senior lawyers at large firms. Recently, however, MacEwen published a post about an award that Kraft Foods gave to Clifford Chance for innovation in delivering legal services.
Apparently, Clifford Chance helped Kraft’s legal department with its knowledge management issues. Clifford Chance had experience in knowledge management; Kraft did not; Clifford Chance helped Kraft to create a series of blogs and discussion boards in which Kraft’s in-house legal department will share information. MacEwen provides this example:
“Kraft, as you know, is a global consumer food services company . . . which means they generate their own specific variety of legal questions, such as ‘what food-like items are subject to VAT in various countries around the world?’ Food is largely exempt from VAT, non-food subject to it. Kraft sells some products, such as chewing gum, which are on the border.
“If you post that question on a discussion board, and get responses from around the world, you have the beginning of a knowledge base on VAT incidence on quasi-food items. And of course it’s also recorded for posterity, at least in theory never needing to be answered again.”
This type of knowledge management is surely a good idea. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that only one of the two tools that Clifford Chance helped Kraft to create is ultimately going to prove effective. Which one, you ask?
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Corporate Discussion Boards And Blogs”
* Quentin Tarantino is suing his neighbor, Alan Ball, over the “pterodactyl-like screams” of his macaws. How high do you have to be to know what a pterodactyl sounds like? My guess: very. [The Telegraph]
* Connecticut, please don’t let Komirsarjevsky dictate the terms of his guilty plea. Many would sentence this guy to the death penalty quicker than they could pronounce his name. [CNN Justice]
* Textual harassment isn’t as sexy as it sounds, but is definitely applicable to our commentariat. Don’t let nasty comments come back to bite you in your anonymous e-butts. [Naples Daily News]
* A creative argument for wrongful death, but really, the only criminal behavior that’s invited by having a tip jar at Starbucks is the insinuation that the barista actually deserves a tip. [Huffington Post]
* ICE’s Operation Predator helped to nab GW Law professor Richard Lieberman on child sexual exploitation charges. Google’s cached pages > GW Law’s IT department. [Washington Post]
* Football’s greatest might be making bigger plays in the courtroom this year than on the field, but with David Boies on the NFL’s defensive line, it might be a complete shutout. [New York Times]
* A thief made off with a wallet from a “fancy law firm” in Florida. What kind of a “fancy law firm” lets randoms roam its halls? There’s a $1,000 reward if you can identify her, so get to work! [WTSP 10 News]
Devastation from the Japan earthquake.
* How lawyers in Tokyo were affected by the 8.9 magnitude earthquake that hit Japan. [Am Law Daily]
* Former Judge Jack Camp gets 30 days in prison — even less time than Paris Hilton. That’s some weak sauce. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
* An interesting account, by former Dealbreaker editor (and Skadden lawyer) John Carney, of behind-the-scenes arguments between the SEC and the U.S. Attorney’s Office over Rajat Gupta, pal of Raj Rajaratnam. [NetNet / CNBC]
* A legal loss for the Naked Cowboy — guess his briefs weren’t good enough. [Huffington Post]
Judge Jack Camp
* What should you do if you’re an associate who thinks your firm is going down, a la Howrey? Here are some practical tips. [Vault]
* By the time ex-Sidley associate Tyler Coulson completes his hike across America, “food will cost twice as much! Gasoline will be $5! Charlie Sheen will be running for office in California (and be elected)!” [Funny Business / CNBC]
* Ms. JD’s fourth annual conference on women in law is coming up next month. [Ms. JD]
* As is ATL’s special event for law students, We Know What You Should Do This Summer. [Above the Law]
[I]t is not in anyone’s interest — especially that of prospective students — to have less than accurate data being put out by law schools. It’s creating a crisis of confidence in the law school sector that is unnecessary and we think could be easily fixed.
Specifically, employment after graduation is relevant data that prospective students and other consumers should be entitled to. Many graduate business schools are meticulous about collecting such data, even having it audited. The entire law school sector is perceived to be less than candid because it does not pursue a similar, disciplined approach to data collection and reporting.
– U.S. News editor Brian Kelly, in a letter recently sent to law school deans. As explained by U.S. News rankings czar Bob Morse in a post at Morse Code, U.S. News “agrees with the efforts of Law School Transparency to improve employment information from law schools and make the data more widely available.” (Read more at the WSJ Law Blog and ABA Journal.)
Check out the amusing license plate below, sent to us by a reader in Los Angeles (of course)….
UPDATE (5:45 PM): Our original tipster adds, “Not sure if you can see the ‘Harvard Law Graduate’ brackets….”
Continue reading “A Funny Friday License Plate”
Numerous applicants to law school claim that they want to become lawyers in order to serve the public interest — and some of them are telling the truth. Alas, after burdening themselves with six figures of law school debt, they find it difficult to follow through on their public-interest dreams. The path of least resistance, or at least the path to the fastest repayment of loans, is working for a large law firm.
Working for a prominent law firm is great — lucrative, prestigious, honorable work — provided that it’s actually what you want to be doing (as opposed to, say, public interest work in Nepal). Unfortunately, many who toil in Biglaw do so primarily for the debt-dispelling powers of the paycheck.
Well, if you go to the University of Chicago Law School, you might be able to have your cake and eat it too — i.e., obtain an amazing legal education, work in the public interest, and not find yourself trying to invoke the “undue hardship” exception in bankruptcy.
Let’s learn about some changes that Chicago Law just announced to its LRAP, or Loan Repayment Assistance Program (those wonky Chicago types love their acronyms)….
Continue reading “The University of Chicago Law School Unveils Its Enhanced Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP)”
A view of Kathmandu (via The Kathmanduo).
On Wednesday we wrote about the great departure email sent out by Brian Emeott, a former corporate associate at Skadden in Chicago. Emeott, a 2004 graduate of Harvard College and 2008 graduate of Harvard Law School, picked up and moved to Kathmandu, Nepal.
Brian’s wife, Claudine Emeott, resigned from her own job in December and moved to Kathmandu in January. She’s in Nepal to advance a worthy cause: as a Kiva Fellow, Claudine is working with a local microfinance institution for three months.
In our original post, we applauded the Emeotts for their sense of adventure. You can follow them at their (excellent) blog, The Kathmanduo, as they “work, write, and photograph [their] way through beloved Nepal.”
Some of our commenters, however, were more skeptical. They wondered (and so did we): How are the Emeotts making this work, in financial terms? Are they trust fund babies?
Continue reading “The Skadden Associate Who Picked Up and Moved to Nepal: An Update”
The following tale of legal technology took place in our nation’s capital, although it seemed to draw more attention overseas.
Last December, as winter’s grip began to take hold over Washington, D.C., Rodney Knight Jr. found himself in serious need of a heavy jacket. So he did what any of us would have done in these circumstances: he broke into someone’s house and took one. Knight kicked down the back door to the home of Marc Fisher, a metro columnist for the Washington Post, where he found his new winter jacket. In addition, being in a proactive mood, Knight decided to swipe two laptops and a bunch of cash.
Knight was so proud of his little heist that he felt the need to do a little bragging. Check out what one of the greatest criminal masterminds of the early 21st century did next….
Continue reading “World’s Dumbest Criminal Would Like to Add You As a ‘Friend’”
A couple of participants played Courtship Connection musical chairs
At the heart of our Courtship Connection series is the premise that lawyers play well together in romantic relationships. Hopefully the story earlier this week of an engagement between two lawyers going horribly wrong won’t discourage future participants from taking on a fellow lawyer as a playmate.
Previous Courtship participants aren’t discouraged, at least. Perhaps you remember the whiskey-swigging law student who was “prettier/kinder/smarter” than the Blue Moon-drinking fellow student I paired her with? In her write-up, she expressed an interest in the “nice, smart, and talkative” Big Gov lawyer who wasn’t swept off his feet by a fellow conservative attorney over dim sum on Valentine’s Day. She was up for “steamed buns” but, sadly, he wasn’t.
Our picky Elephant says that “a friend” alerted him to whiskey girl’s call to action. He emailed me to say he was up for it, so I sent them out to The Tabard Inn in Dupont Circle. He wound up getting that action. At least, I think he did…
Continue reading “Courtship Connection: Sloppy Seconds”
Earlier this week, associate bonuses were announced at McDermott Will & Emery. We’ve heard about the news from multiple McDermott sources — and, without exception, all expressed happiness with their bonuses.
“McDermott essentially matched market for average billers and beat market for above average billers,” said one source. “They also combined year-end and spring bonuses, and are paying out on March 16.”
Bonuses at McDermott are individualized, so there’s no bonus table to post. As you may recall, last year MWE announced its move to a non-lockstep compensation system with three levels, each with a different base salary: Level 1 at $145,000, Level 2 at $175,000, and Level 3 at $200,000.
At the time the new merit-based system was announced, some worried that it might just be a sneaky way for reducing overall compensation. But based on what we’ve been hearing, McDermott associates under this system are doing as well as or better than their counterparts on the Cravath compensation scale.
Let’s get into some specifics….
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: McDermott Will & Emery’s Good News”
Monty, the Yale Law library dog
In the past week, we’ve learned about the best law schools for getting rich and the best law schools according to law firm hiring partners. So let’s do one more ranking: the best law schools for dog lovers.
This ranking, as it turns out, looks a lot like the U.S. News law school rankings: there’s Yale Law School at #1, and then there’s everyone else.
How many law schools let you “check out” a certified therapy dog from the library, for thirty-minute periods of stress relief? As far as we know, YLS stands alone.
We kid you not. And this time around, YLS isn’t denying it….
Continue reading “The Best Law Schools — For Dog Lovers”
