Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.
Law firms, and in-house law departments, should be outer-directed.
I realize that I just invented the word “outer-directed,” and sensible people might choose to call this concept being “client-focused.” But “outer-directedness” is broader than mere client focus — and I invented the word, so it’ll mean what I want it to mean.
At a firm, lawyers should naturally be client-focused, in the sense that client work comes first and most internal matters come second. “Outer-directedness” implies not just client focus, but a more general external focus — devoting efforts to impressing the world, rather than to impressing others within the firm.
We should naturally spend our professional time serving our clients. And, in a law firm setting, we should spend our semi-professional time gazing out through our office windows, not peering inwardly down our own corridors. If a case just settled and you have some free time, spend that time impressing the world, not your colleagues. Join a non-profit board, work for a bar or trade association, write an article, give a talk. Raise both your personal and your firm’s profile. That benefits the world and serves institutional purposes. Don’t spend your spare time impressing your colleagues.
We should of course be nice to each other, but that’s civility, not having an undue inner focus. I’m opposed only to the stuff that goes beyond civility, which I’ll delicately call “office politics”….
Continue reading “Inside Straight: On Outer-Directedness”
The law firm of Cromwell & Goodwin might be fake, but the law firm of Goodwin Procter is very real. As is the news of spring bonuses at the firm.
Whoops, sorry — make that “special bonuses.” That’s the terminology used by Goodwin Procter to refer to the supplemental payments.
Let’s look at the memo to see why….
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Goodwin Procter’s ‘Special’ Bonuses”
Ed. note: This post is by Will Meyerhofer, a former Sullivan & Cromwell attorney turned psychotherapist. He holds degrees from Harvard, NYU Law, and The Hunter College School of Social Work, and he blogs at The People’s Therapist. His new book, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy, is available on Amazon (affiliate link).
I was kidding around with some of the guys at my gym, tossing around the question – would you fight Mike Tyson for $3 million?
One of them joked – I think he heard this on Howard Stern – that he’d fellate Mike Tyson for $3 million. He could spend the first $1 million on mouthwash and retire on the rest.
Then another guy spoke up, a sometime professional heavyweight boxer. (I’m not making this up, he really has boxed, for big money, not too long ago – and has plans to do so again.)
“It’s not worth it. Mike would destroy you. There would be no retirement.”
He went on to explain what he meant. He knew from experience – this guy had been in the ring. You’d have more than bruises – you’d have concussions, brain injuries, damaged bones and joints. You’d never be the same – and it wouldn’t be worth it. You’re better off not having $3 million but appreciating the finer things, like being able to walk and talk and think.
I saw his point.
Biglaw is also not worth it, even for big money. That’s because it, too, destroys you – just like Iron Mike…
Continue reading “Not Worth It”
Raj Rajaratnam
* Raj Rajaratnam’s got a cute insider trading friend named Octopussy. Maybe he’s been doing some other insider trading, if you know what I mean. [Bloomberg]
* Florida redefines “beating it.” It may be time to reconsider things if you’re paying $2.99 to watch a hate crime with your pants off. Come on, at least look into some free porn. [Washington Post]
* Speaking of beating it, here’s a memo to file for John Branca from Katherine Jackson: she doesn’t wanna see your face, you better disappear. [Newark Star-Ledger]
* Listen, Frank, Bingham might be trying to “defend conduct that is indefensible,” but you were thinking about trading Chad Billingsley. Give me a break. [NBC Sports]
* Google v. Government. The DOJ isn’t buying what Google’s selling because Microsoft is a little bit less evil, and a little bit more FISMA compliant. [Los Angeles Times]
* Nothing says corporate equality for women lawyers like a picture of a woman in a fugly suit trapped inside of a dog cage. [The Careerist]
So this month, we went out of our way to nominate potential Lawyers of the Month who were still breathing. The desire of our readers to bestow this honor posthumously is laudable, but we don’t want to this feature to end up like the “dead people” reel at the Oscars, where folks bet on which deceased celebrity will get the most applause.
Being forced to choose only among living candidates, Above the Law readers perhaps started another trend we’re sure to see in future Lawyer of the Month contests: they voted for a guy who is no longer a practicing attorney…
Continue reading “Lawyer of the Month: We Like It When People Just Walk Away”
* The oldest continually operating law firm in Austin, Clark Thomas & Winters, has gone the way of Howrey. [Austin American Statesman]
* If you want to teach high schoolers about privacy, speak to them in a language they understand: embarrassment. [Kashmir Hill / Forbes]
* Can a U.S. state prohibit pre-viability abortions based on concerns about fetal pain? Professors Glenn Cohen and Sadath Sayeed, of Harvard Law and Harvard Medical Schools, respectively, tackle this question. [SSRN]
* Will Maryland be getting medical marijuana? [Underdog]
* Here’s an interesting essay by a former supporter of traditional marriage who now supports marriage equality. [Two Cents and a Couple of Copecks]
* Is Douglas Kmiec, the former Catholic University law school dean now serving as U.S. ambassador to Malta, spending too much time writing about religion and not enough time “ambassading”? [CNN]
* Speaking of religion, Professor Ann Althouse analyzes the new French law targeting the wearing of veils in public. [Althouse]
* If you’re interested in the legal academic job market, check out this table of entry-level faculty hiring for 2011. [Prawfsblawg via Faculty Lounge]
I was explaining to new Above the Law helper Natasha Lydon how things work in the ATL, and I said: “Basically, from now until finals, we’ll be able to run a ‘stupid law student story’ every day. The kids are stressed, and it’s starting to show.” On cue, I received an email from a law student tipster, with the following subject heading: “Bozo the Clown.” Hilarity ensued.
Above the Law has a long and proud history of documenting the thievery of law students. Who can forget the Tulane Law student who stole a piece of Americana, a shoe worn by Mr. Rogers, from the Louisiana Children’s Museum? Going even further back, there was the Michigan Law student who liked to go around stealing other people’s sandwiches.
Today we’re going to add to that tradition by telling you about the apparent theft — or liberation, depending on how you look at it — of Bozo the Law Library Clown…
UPDATE: Bozo has been found! Read more below…
Continue reading “Law Library Misplaces Tortured Clown”
The high priestess of liberal blogging: Arianna Huffington.
The gorgeous and glamorous Arianna Huffington, reigning empress of the liberal blogosphere, has been sued by some of her not-so-loyal subjects.
This morning, a group of unpaid bloggers for the Huffington Post, led by union organizer and journalist Jonathan Tasini, filed a class-action lawsuit against the HuffPo; its foundress, La Arianna; and media giant AOL, which bought HuffPo back in February. The gist of the lawsuit, as Tasini told Jeff Bercovici of Forbes, is that the site’s unpaid writers “must share in the value they create” — $315 million worth of value, based on what AOL paid for the Huffington Post.
As a writer myself, I’m all in favor of writers being paid for what they do. But the lawsuit against HuffPo strikes me as a bit dubious….
Continue reading “Lawsuit of the Day: Liberal Bloggers v. Arianna Huffington”
I don’t know, just kind of laying on top of him. Not laying on top of him but straddling him. It was like a lap dance, you could say.
– a sophomore describing the “ethics symposium” hosted by Jack Rappaport, a business professor at Lasalle University. You can read more about Rappaport’s alleged activities over at Dealbreaker.
In the first and second parts of our Career Center “Tip of the Day” series, focused on how to evaluate a counteroffer, we covered the importance of re-evaluating your current employment situation and assessing what the new firm is offering you, to determine whether it addresses the issues/shortfalls of your current firm. Today we’ll discuss how to carefully analyze your firm’s counteroffer to see if it is really better than the new offer.
More on tip #3…
Continue reading “Career Center Tip of the Day: Evaluating the Counteroffer — Should You Stay or Should You Go? (Part 3)”
Thanks to Ben Mezrich, David Fincher, and Aaron Sorkin, we all feel like we know the backstory of the creation of Facebook (shameless plug: please like the ATL Facebook page). It goes something like this: Mark Zuckerberg was a shady little brat, who screwed over his one friend while he was building what would become a multi-billion-dollar company. Roll credits.
Legally, just yesterday it seemed that Zuckerberg and Facebook were finally in the clear. The Ninth Circuit told the amazingly privileged Winkelvoss twins to go away, and it appeared that everybody could go back to masturbating to Facebook friends without worrying about who really owned the thing.
But not so fast. There is another outstanding Facebook lawsuit that has recently been amended and refiled in federal court. We’ve reported before on the claims of fraudster Paul Ceglia. Now he’s back, and he’s got some explosive new evidence to support his claims to 50% ownership in Facebook — as well as new counsel.
Is the evidence credible? It depends: do you trust DLA Piper?
Continue reading “The Facebook Lawsuit That Wasn’t In The Movie”
Remember that ironic message about the versatility of a law degree?
Now we bring you an ironic message about the value of a law degree….
Continue reading “Ironic Message About the Value of a Law Degree”
The Winklevoss twins might be hot -- but their case is not, according to the Ninth Circuit.
If you enjoyed The Social Network, then perhaps you should be grateful to Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The lawsuit they filed against Facebook and Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, gave rise to excellent entertainment. The movie wouldn’t have been possible without it.
But now the litigation is getting… old. And some people just want the Winklevoss twins to go away. Like three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In a ruling handed down today, rejecting the Winklevosses’s effort to overturn an earlier settlement with Facebook and Zuckerberg, the Ninth Circuit dispensed some stinging benchslaps. The opinion contains detailed and erudite analysis of both California contract law and federal securities law, but it can be summarized in four words: “Winklevii, STFU and GTFO.” (Feel free to use that in your headnotes, Westlaw and Lexis.)
Who wrote the opinion? None other than the ever-colorful Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, of course!
Let’s see what His Honor had to say — plus learn about additional Kozinski-related and movie-related news….
Continue reading “Chief Judge Kozinski to the Winklevii: Please Go Away Now”
Judge A.P. 'Pete' Fuller
* New Egyptian democracy is already putting critics in jail. Dammit Middle East, this is why we can’t have nice things. [Gawker]
* We must make sure this technology never gets into the hands of clients. [LawyerClock]
* So it appears that South Dakota actually does have one badass living and working there — but now they want to kick him off the bench! [WSJ Law Blog]
* I tried so hard to come up with a meta-joke to go along with Ben Kerschberg’s story about metadata — and then I realized that I did and it’s just not that funny. [Forbes]
* You know what really makes Eliot Spitzer look bad? Andrew Cuomo. [Truth on the Market]
* Our very own Jay Shepherd doesn’t want to bill in six-minute increments, but he can present under such time pressure. [ABA Journal]
* Something tells me the fake law firm of Cromwell & Goodwin is about to get some very real resumes résumés. [Am Law Daily]
* When I was a kid, the only things you had to worry about finding on Long Island beaches were hypodermic syringes. Ah, the good old days. [Village Voice]
* Congratulations to Blawg Review. As Admiral Adama says, “Sometimes you have to roll the hard six.” [Blawg Review]
* Hey kids, don’t forget to send us your Law Revue clips. Share your funny — surely you can do better than this guy — with the rest of the world. [Above the Law]
The satirical Onion News Network recently reported on new government funding for that “massive online surveillance program run by the CIA,” known as Facebook — dreamed up by “secret C.I.A. agent Mark Zuckerberg.” The report made light of how much information we’re willing to make available to a third party — information that we would never consider freely handing over to the feds. While funny, the report speaks to serious concerns about privacy. Civil liberties advocates like Christopher Soghoian and Nicholas Merrill worry about the ease with which the government can get access to the digital information we store with third-parties like Facebook, Yahoo!, and Google, as well as to the rich databases that our mobile phone providers have.
Should we call it the Tech.B.I. or the Dot.Com.I.A.?
Continue reading “Are Tech Companies Becoming Unofficial Intelligence Agents?”
It’s actually worse than a bad mortgage…. You have to get rid of the future you wanted to pay off all the debt from the fancy school that was supposed to give you that future.
– Peter Thiel, the billionaire entrepreneur, encouraging kids to drop out of school rather than go deeper into debt for education.
Choosing the next editor of the law review.
It so happens that we are right in the middle of election season for law review boards. At top law schools around the country, 2Ls who want to be Supreme Court clerks — or Supreme Court justices, or even presidents — are finding out if they’ll be able to include “Editor in Chief: Law Review” on their résumés for the rest of their lives. At less prestigious schools, 2Ls are hoping that a place on the editorial board of their school’s law review will help them get a job upon graduation.
(And people who are not on law review have another week or two to get hammered and enjoy the fledgling spring before they need to hunker down and cram for finals.)
The people involved in law review elections take the popularity contest selection process very seriously. At many places, the debates over whom to pick last well into the night, and the election takes many ballots before a winner is declared. The process at many places is so ritualistic, it’s a wonder that newly minted editors-in-chief don’t adopt new names when they win, just like the Popes. Can’t you see it now: Homosextius I of the Harvard Law Review?
Of course, if there are winners, there have to be losers. And some losers don’t take their losing lying down. Thanks to the magic of forwarded emails, we are able to bring you one such story of law-review-losing bitterness…
Continue reading “2L Bitter Over Law Review Snub Illustrates Why He Wasn’t EIC Material”
