Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Size Matters, one of Above the Law’s new columns for small-firm lawyers.
Last month I received an email from Cameron McCord. McCord is a fifth-year associate at a boutique bankruptcy firm in Atlanta, where she’s been having “a great experience.”
“I am in court all the time and have started handling my own trials,” McCord wrote. “I have worked here since my second summer and am able to have a good work/life balance. I have an 11-month-old and a four-year-old, and my husband is a full-time student. I think it is important for people to realize that you can be successful without working at [Biglaw].”
Upon reading her email, I knew I had to feature her and her firm. I mean, she reads my column! And, I suppose, a firm that affords its attorneys the opportunity to maintain a life outside of work is, well, awesome.
Here is what goes down at Jones & Walden LLP….
Continue reading “Size Matters: A Bankruptcy Associate Finds Small-Firm Nirvana”
There’s lots of good news these days over at Dechert. For example, as we mentioned last week, the firm is launching a new Los Angeles office, built around a group of lateral partners lured over from Orrick.
This morning brings good news for Dechert associates and counsel as well. The firm just announced Cravath-level spring bonuses, to be paid to qualifying associates. We discuss the qualifications and reprint the full memo below.
Although Dechert is now a major international firm, it’s still associated in many people’s minds with Philadelphia, where it got its start. Does Dechert’s spring bonus announcement place pressure on firms that are headquarted in Philly or have significant presences in the City of Brotherly Love?
By the way, it appears that we never reported on Dechert’s 2010 year-end bonuses, which were announced in early February 2011. We discuss them as well, after the jump.
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Dechert Announces Spring Bonuses”
A couple of weeks ago, we asked for information about start dates at large law firms. The class of 2011 keeps peppering us with emails about when they can show up for work.
Happily, we’ve been hearing that most Biglaw firms will have their incoming classes start on time, in September or October. Most of the information in the comments to our open thread reflects that news as well. The most prestigious firms seem to be starting on time. Cravath, Sullivan & Cromwell, Davis Polk, Kirkland & Ellis, and firms of that ilk will be welcoming the class of 2011 in the fall of 2011.
But our tipsters do report some notable exceptions….
Continue reading “Start Date Open Thread: Return To Normalcy At Many Firms”
Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.
The Harvard Law School career services office recently asked me to record a podcast on the subject of “managing up.” This got me to thinking: What the heck is “managing up”?
Fortunately, the woman from career services explained. She was interested in discussing how, as a junior lawyer, you manage the senior lawyer who’s supervising your work.
That’s not anything I’d thought about before, but (as readers of this column well know) that hasn’t stopped me yet, so I said I’d be happy to help with the podcast. Now I’m thinking about what I might actually say.
I’ve tentatively decided that the key to managing up is exactly the same as the key to managing down. In fact, it’s the key to basically every interpersonal relationship you’ll ever have: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Think about it: How should you manage down? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Do not have me, the father of two young kids at the time, fly to Cincinnati for what should be a five-minute meeting set for 11 a.m. on October 31, and then postpone the meeting for an hour, and then postpone it for another couple of hours, and then postpone it again, and then, after everyone else has headed home or to the airport to take their kids trick-or-treating that night, finally tell me at 6:30 that we’ll have to reschedule our meeting. If that ever happened, I might still remember the incident, with lingering resentment, eighteen years later….
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Managing Up”
* Remember how in Boumediene we said Guantanamo terror detainees could challenge their confinement? Yeah, about that. [Washington Post]
* “Do you know who I am?” No, sorry, Allen Iverson, but no one really follows Turkish basketball. The Atlanta police called a technical foul on the ex-NBA star for unsportsmanlike conduct. [CNN Justice]
* You can run, you can hide, but you can’t escape his love – especially if it isn’t violent, harassing, or abusive. FYI for all tall, young, hot nymphs: Kenneth Kratz is still the prize. [Appleton Post Crescent]
* Yet another adventure in IP law. Christian Louboutin is seeing red over Yves Saint Laurent’s spring 2011 shoe collection. [ABC News]
* Ladies at Allen & Overy have been asked to lower their hem lines, because let’s face it, not everyone is law firm hot. No one wants to see your thunder thighs. [Daily Mail]
* Prozac is giving this woman anxiety after using her picture for marketing ads without permission. This probably would be funnier if Xanax had yoinked the model’s picture instead. [New York Post]
* The Bratz/Barbie case has been sent to a jury for deliberation. Soon, we will know who owns the rights to America’s skankiest doll line for kids. [Los Angeles Times]
Although this could change, right now it looks like the federal government is about to shut down (for the first time in 15 years). Here’s an open thread for discussion.
Speaking of shutting down, we’re done for the day. To learn about how the courts and the Department of Justice will (or won’t) be affected by the shutdown, check out the excellent links collected below.
UPDATE: A compromise deal has been reached, averting a shutdown. Yay!
Continue reading “Federal Government Shutdown: Open Thread”
Here ended the lesson.
* Kash “monitors” herself. She identifies privacy concerns, but resistance is futile. [Forbes]
* The MTA has a point here, and they are free to litigate that point if they don’t mind every person in New York City kind of hating them. [Village Voice]
* If the character and fitness committee had checked David J. Stern’s soccer coach credentials, he might have never been admitted to the bar. [New Times]
* Bob Morse and I agree that adding “diversity” to the U.S. News rankings is more complicated than it might appear. [U.S. News via ABA Journal]
* I’ve been so focused on these Tea Party people trying to shut down the government that I’d forgotten the Birthers existed. [WSJ Law Blog]
* I wonder if the guy who lied about having a BU Tax LL.M thought it would play out like Sean Connery believing Kevin Costner in The Untouchables: “Who would claim to be that who was not? Hmm?” [Tax Prof Blog]
* Via Eugene Volokh, here’s word of an interesting new project called the Journal of Law (announced by Ross Davies, of Green Bag fame). [Volokh Conspiracy]
Remember Lawrence Connell, the professor at Widener Law School who got in trouble for coming up with teaching hypotheticals in which he killed Dean Linda Ammons? Well, perhaps Professor Connell wishes the dean’s death was more than hypothetical.
Apparently Professor Connell wants to slay Dean Ammons — in a court of law. He has sued the dean for defamation.
Suing your current boss or employer — as opposed to suing after you’re gone, a la Matthew Kluger v. Fried Frank — can be awkward. Just ask JoEllen Lyons Dillon of Reed Smith or Raymond Carey of Foley & Lardner, two partners who have sued the law firms where they still work.
But they don’t have tenure, unlike Larry Connell. Let’s see what the good professor is suing over….
Continue reading “Lawsuit of the Day: Widener Law Professor Sues Dean for Defamation”
Over the past few weeks, as springtime bonus news trickled in, we heard from a few associates at Bingham McCutchen. The exact wording varied, but their messages all sounded the same theme: Shouldn’t one of the best places to work offer one of the best pay packages? Or at least a pay package consistent with Biglaw market rates?
One reader had this suggestion: “Can you guys keep a running list of firms that paid spring bonuses and firms that haven’t? Preferably alphabetical, so Bingham is near the top of the no-pay list.”
Well, happily, no such shame sanctions will be necessary. Bingham has jumped into the spring bonus pool. Let’s see what they’re offering….
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Bingham Brings Bonus Bounty”
Incoming summer associates, would you donate one day of your summer salary to help other students at your school who did not get summer jobs? Would you donate that money for a pro bono or public interest cause? Would you donate that money so your law school could fund the pro bono interests of other students?
Or am I giving you a false choice? Is it offensive to suggest that your law school needs one cent of your hard-won salary to fund public interest programs that should be covered by your tuition?
These are the questions facing students at one law school, thanks to an interesting donation request from the school’s administration. This isn’t a public interest auction like you’ll see at many law schools, where students with extra cash can bid on items, and auction proceeds are used to fund public interest fellowships. Rather, this is a direct request for a redistribution of income.
And I’m not sure if this is laudable or monstrous…
Continue reading “Should Working Students Pay for Their Pro Bono Classmates?”
Raise your hand if you are a JPMorgan Chase customer. Now raise your hand if you’ve shopped at Best Buy. How about Citibank, Target or Walgreens?
Has everybody in the world raised their hands yet? Congratulations — your email address may have been stolen.
There was a data breach at Epsilon, a Texas-based marketing firm, last weekend, exposing the names and email addresses of potentially millions of their clients’ customers. I first found out about it when Chase emailed me. You might have gotten a similar alert from one of the affected companies.
Read part of the bank’s announcement and more about the breach, after the jump.
Continue reading “Hackers Probably Stole Your Email Address Last Weekend”
I’ve only been on one blind date in my life. Arranged by a journo friend, it was actually more like a sneak-peek date, since the suitor and I Facebook-friended and g-chatted prior to getting drinks for the first time.
My Courtship Connection participants are not so lucky. Their dates are completely blind — they don’t even know one another’s names prior to meeting. All they know is that they’re going to be meeting up with a lawyer or law student. I’m still in mild disbelief that risk-averse legal types are willing to participate, but I suppose the risk of being partner-less in perpetuity is greater than that of a single, potentially-horrific date.
So, how do you best set the tone for such a night? I always ask participants to wear or bring something distinctive so they can find one another. I recently paired a do-gooder attorney with a legal academic; the two seemed like hipster types to me, but I was hesitant about sending them all the way to H St. NE, so instead I chose The Passenger for their rendezvous. Our self-described “cheery, active, irreverent” lady lawyer said she’d be “wearing high heels and carrying a cantaloupe.”
So guess what our “hippie economist” brought? Hint: it’s phallic….
Continue reading “Courtship Connection: If Your Date’s Bringing a Cantaloupe…”
[M]asturbation is a form of “sexual activity” in the ordinary-language sense of the term, which judges use on occasion just as laypersons do. Masturbation is also a “sexual act” in that sense, but not in the statutory sense.
– Judge Richard Posner, doing his best to take all the fun out of jerking off (via Josh Blackman).
Upon receiving an email entitled “Breakfast battles at Cardozo,” I naturally assumed there was some kind of kosher issue between the administration and secular students at the school. I was hoping for something outrageous. Perhaps a kid was ready to bite into a ham and cheese croissant when he was tackled by a gang of lunch ladies who then tried to circumcise him with a bagel cutter? But sadly it turns out that I had a prejudiced outlook towards my gmail account. Cardozo students are perfectly able to skirmish with the cafeteria staff over non-religious issues. My bad, guys.
Instead of having religious overtones, this story is an old-fashioned one about a law school trying to nickle and dime its own students during a time of recession. Cardozo isn’t being quite as cheap as Columbia (which started charging students for plastic forks during the recession), but if you were spending tens of thousands of dollars to go to law school, you’d be pissed at your school over this.
Apparently, milk has become far too expensive for Cardozo to just give away anymore….
Continue reading “Got Milk? Not At Cardozo.”
* This is from last weekend, but it’s still worth reading. How Wachovia helped launder billions for Mexican yayo dealers. And how the bank largely got away with it. [The Guardian]
* A piece from the current New Yorker on the Supreme Court’s approach to campaign finance laws. Apparently they’re agin ‘em? [New Yorker]
* Time Warner and Viacom are in court, quarreling over who gets to deliver content for those giant Iphone things. [Bloomberg]
* A juror was caught falling asleep at a trial for three construction workers accused of manslaughter in the death of two firefighters. [New York Post]
* About that too-close-to-call Wisconsin Supreme Court election? Nevermind. [New York Times]
* A man who pretended to be a lawyer in Wisconsin was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison yesterday. His real crime was making money as an attorney before he accrued crippling student loan debt. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
Matthew Kluger aka Big Gay Matt
“Aww, Matt, why do you have to go around giving us a bad name?”
Ever since Matthew Kluger was charged in a massive insider trading case, involving an alleged conspiracy that spanned 17 years and generated more than $32 million in profit, the foregoing question could be asked by many groups: Cornell grads, NYU law grads, Cravath lawyers, Skadden lawyers, and Wilson Sonsini lawyers.
Tonight we can add more groups to the list: Fried Frank lawyers, and gays — specifically, gay dads.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier tonight, Matt Kluger worked at yet another major law firm: Fried Frank. After he was fired by the firm in 2002, he sued, claiming that partners there discriminated against him because he’s gay — and a father of three, with parenting responsibilities.
Just when you thought this case couldn’t get any weirder, it just did. Matthew Kluger is gay. And a dad. With three kids. Thanks for sending America such a positive image of LGBT parents, Matt!
Let’s take a closer look at Kluger’s suit against Fried Frank — and additional details about Matt Kluger’s complicated personal life, gleaned from ATL tipsters….
Continue reading “Matt Kluger, Ex-Biglaw Associate Charged With Insider Trading, Is A Gay Dad — and Once Sued Fried Frank Over It”
You know, given the fact that most law school professors act like they are doing you a favor by grading your exams, it’s a wonder this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often. Of course, since it doesn’t happen more often, this is a noteworthy occurrence.
A criminal law professor out in California figured out there were grading errors from her fall semester course. She figured this out last week. But the errors were so significant that it changed the class rank of some students.
Yeah, so if you got dinged from a summer associate position because your first semester grades were too low, or if perhaps you didn’t even apply for some positions because you didn’t meet a percentile cut-off, whoops, your professor might have screwed up.
Which law school needs to examine its motives?
Continue reading “Professor Discovers 2010 Grading Errors; Mistake Is Fixed in April 2011″
Judge Linda Van De Water
* Musical chairs: Orrick partners to Dechert and Gibson Dunn; Weil Gotshal partners to McDermott. [Am Law Daily; McDermott Will & Emery]
* Some of the questions in this survey, designed to assess how law students use online media when evaluating law firms, are amusing. If you’re a law student, please take the survey — you can win a gift card — and talk about how important Above the Law is to your assessment of firms. [Survey Gizmo]
* Judge of the Day candidate #1: Linda Van De Water, for allegedly “kicking and jumping on her ex-boyfriend’s car after confronting him outside the home of another woman.” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
David Zornow
* Judge of the Day candidate #2: Tom Carney, for allegedly wielding a gun like a gavel, in an incident with another motorist. And don’t forget that snazzy pink necktie. [Erie Times-News]
* Peter Lattman looks at David Zornow, the global head of litigation at Skadden, and Zornow’s obsession with Bob Dylan — reflected in a mock indictment of “The Judges,” drawn up by “special assistant U.S. attorney Bob Dylan.” [DealBook / New York Times]
* There’s a new post up on the blog of Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, daughter of Yale law professors Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld. Critics of Amy Chua have speculated about whether her “Tiger Mother” ways have damaged her daughters psychologically. But based on her blogging, young Sophia seems grounded, charming, and funny. [new tiger in town]
In the first part 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 to remind yourself of the reasons why you began your job search in the first place. Today we’ll discuss how to assess what the new firm is offering you, and how to determine whether it addresses the issues with or shortcomings of your current firm.
More on tip #2….
Continue reading “Career Center Tip of the Day: Evaluating the Counteroffer — Should You Stay or Should You Go? (Part 2)”
