Paul Clement and John Boehner: now out of King & Spalding's hair.
Some people, including crisis communications experts, think that King & Spalding should just shut up already about the DOMA debacle. The firm agreed to represent the House of Representatives in defending the controversial Defense of Marriage Act, and then almost immediately turned around and withdrew from the representation. This prompted the departure from the firm of star appellate litigator Paul Clement, former Solicitor General of the United States, who took the DOMA matter over to his new firm, Bancroft PLLC.
The decision to drop DOMA defense also led to the defections of King & Spalding clients, like the NRA and the state of Virginia. It generated criticism of the firm from diverse quarters — everyone from Ken Cuccinelli to the New York Times editorial board. [FN1]
Despite the advice of the communications experts (with which I personally agree), King & Spalding continues to discuss the DOMA debacle. The firm is starting to sound like a therapy patient that won’t relinquish the couch, and just wants to yap and yap and yap. Are you listening?
Let’s look at the latest revelations — and also some compensation news out of K&S….
Continue reading “King & Spalding: More DOMA Drama, Plus Salary and Bonus News”
Do you know why people go to law school? For most people, it’s not because they “love the law” or because they want to be part of the system of justice. It’s because they want to make money. Lots and lots of dirty, sexy money.
Granted, there are easier ways to make money in this world. You could work on your jumpshot. You could do… whatever it is they do in business school, between pub crawls masquerading as “networking events.” You could choose your parents wisely.
But still, if everything works out — and I mean everything — you might make an obscene amount of money in Biglaw. So much money that you can send around messages like this to your fellow attorneys….
Continue reading “Biglaw Blind Item: In Biglaw You Deal With Big Money”
* With a stroke of his pen, Delaware’s governor quickly pleased the state’s gays. You won’t hear them complaining about this one minute man any time soon. [USA Today]
* On Friday the Thirteenth, it’s fitting to tell you about this herpes-laden, lawsuit horror story. What happens in Vegas never stays in Vegas, especially when you tape it in the nude. [Daily Mail]
* You know those witty little sayings about how people in different professions do it? Well, here’s a new one. Psychologists do it on a couch. With your wife. [New York Times]
* Illinois expects you to change your innie to an outie, and vice versa, if you want your gender to be changed on your birth certificate. [Chicago Tribune]
* This lady wins the prize for most embarrassing mother ever. Can you imagine growing up and being known as the kid whose mom sued Chuck E. Cheese? [San Diego Union-Tribune]
* $10M in debt, tax lady Roni Deutch is closing her firm, leaving 200 people without jobs. I think it’s fair to say that we can now go with the phonetic spelling of her name: douche. [Sacto 9-1-1 / Sacramento Bee]
This was a good chick flick.
* I remember after my 2L summer telling my mother how I didn’t think I’d like being a Biglaw litigator. And I remember my mother telling me that I only had to do it for a little while and then I could do something cool — like be a sports agent, “like Jerry Maguire.” I remember wanted to punch my mother in that moment. Wanting to punch her and any other regular lawyer turned sports agent I’d ever meet. [Vault Law Blog]
* A lesson for law students: unless you control the butter, you’re not as important as you think you are. [Young Lawyers Blog]
* Bottom line: Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz is awesome. [Main Justice]
* Foreign dollars, fear the foreign dollars in your campaign coffers. [Politico]
* If Harvard doesn’t buy the Unabomber’s typewriter, something is wrong with the world. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Lawyer funny papers. [Cowbirds in Love]
* The longer the NFL lockout goes on, the more I try to learn about Barclay’s Premier League fantasy football. [Blackbook Legal]
* BarMax recently offered every student in the Harvard Law class of 2011 a free copy of its bar review app — and announced a slew of new instructors who are HLS alums. (Disclosure: BarMax is an ATL advertiser.) [Bloomberg]
Not all of the players in the Biglaw scene are based in New York City. Check out the firms below that established their roots outside the Big Apple. True, total compensation at these firms is sometimes lower, and you may not earn the respect of Partner Emeritus — but the majority of associates surveyed who work at these firms seem to enjoy the lifestyle and opportunities their respective firms offer. You can view the profiles of other firms at the Career Center to see how associates rated their experiences in the past year at each firm.
- This Boston-based firm has been around for more than 150 years and continues to grow. While the firm is typically a follower and matches market in terms of associate compensation, Lateral Link Members lament that the firm operates within a “black box,” and management is not very transparent with decisions. Still, associates appreciate the “wonderful formal training” offered, as well as the responsibility they receive.
- Making partner at this firm, based in Seattle, is an achievable goal, according to most of the associates we surveyed. Even if you do not make partner your first go-around, there is no up-or-out policy, and the firm has a very flexible partnership policy. While associate compensation is lower relative to other Biglaw firms, the firm is one of the few law firms consistently recognized on Fortune Magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For”.
More profiles, after the jump.
Continue reading “Career Center: Law Firm Life Outside of the City That Never Sleeps”
Before this column launched, I spent several moments stewing over possible pseudonyms. After all, branding is everything. So, I wanted to come up with a name that said to my audience that I was a small-firm expert and a super-cool chick. Naturally, I picked the name that is synonymous with post-menopausal Jewish bubbies. Perhaps I still have a thing or two to learn about branding.
I am not the only small-firm lawyer with a problem selecting the right name. Indeed, after Jay Shepherd opened my eyes to the hyphen-crisis, I began noticing a comma-crisis. Specifically, I noticed that there are a lot of small firms with way too many last names strung together with commas.
Why is it that many small firms have such problems coming up with the perfect firm name? Let’s explore this age-old question….
Continue reading “Size Matters: What’s In A Name?”
'Once upon a time there lived a woman named Mrs. Palsgraf....'
We reacted with horror when a law firm offered University of Texas law students the opportunity to be a “Legal Assistant/Nanny.” That one was crazy. So was the UCLA Law job posting seeking a chauffeur (to drive in Los Angeles traffic, no less).
But these jobs were proffered during tougher times for the economy. Now things are better. Now, students who go to the best law schools — law schools ranked even higher than UT — don’t have to work on their wet-nursing skills in order to secure gainful employment.
Of course, if they want to take care of somebody else’s kids…
Continue reading “Going To A Top-Flight Law School Can Land You A Sweet Babysitting Gig”
If you read a lot of e-discovery articles — and I know y’all do — you know that judges are quickly losing any patience for attorneys who don’t have their act together during e-discovery (or even regular old discovery).
I know that nothing about the process is simple or easy. I know e-discovery is expensive and time-consuming and involves complex computer programs that most people don’t understand. But seriously, everyone needs to hurry up and figure this stuff out.
Otherwise you might end up like the attorneys for the city of Washington, D.C., who got benchslapped so hard on Monday that they won’t be able to see straight for a week.
Read on to learn about what Chief Judge Royce Lamberth (D.D.C.) described as a discovery abuse “so extreme as to be literally unheard of”….
Continue reading “D.C. Lawyers Screw Up E-discovery So Badly, It’s ‘Literally Unheard Of’”
Does this sign also mean no blacks or women allowed?
It’s the ruling that is splitting the Sixth Circuit apart. A federal bankruptcy judge, George Paine II, belongs to an all-white country club in Nashville. But there is a pesky judicial code of conduct that says that judges “should not hold membership in any organization that practices invidious discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin,” according to the New York Times (gavel bang: ABA Journal).
That seems cut and dry to me. An all-white, all-male country club sounds a hell of a lot like an organization practicing “invidious discrimination.” But I’m not on the Sixth Circuit.
And the Sixth Circuit essentially told Judge Paine: guys in my high school used to belong to discriminatory clubs all the time, it was no big deal.
In a 10-8 decision, the circuit decided to allow Paine to continue his membership in the club and on the bankruptcy court.
So that code of judicial conduct means what exactly?
Continue reading “Judge Allowed To Belong To All-White Club (Because He’s Trying Really Hard To Make It Better)”
I recently had lunch with a guy who had worked at a law firm, gone in-house, and later returned to a law firm. (It’s actually more than that. This guy’s bio is: assistant U.S. attorney; associate at K&E; partner at Bartlit Beck; deputy general counsel at Bank One; and now at his own small firm. That’s called either “done it all” or “can’t hold a job.” Because this post will share with the world an idea that he proposed, I’ll credit him publicly: He’s Lenny Gail of Massey & Gail, a small shop based in Chicago and D.C.)
Lenny asked at lunch, as folks frequently do, what I’d learned about business development by having gone in-house. I answered honestly, as I occasionally do: When I was outside counsel, I always thought that business development was a game of chance. You tried a hundred different things, with no clue what might pay off, and then random chance struck and business arrived inexplicably, out of the blue.
As in-house counsel, my view hasn’t really changed: If you’re on our list of preferred counsel and we use you regularly, we’re likely to hire you again. If you’re a newcomer, there’s not much you can do or say to draw that first retention. Everything you say at our introductory meeting simply repeats what some other guy told us about his firm last week, and virtually nothing you’ve done is so breathtaking as to make you irresistible.
Lenny nodded, and we drifted back into our iced teas.
The real problem with getting retained is the first nibble. As outside counsel, once someone retained us for one case, it was a lock that they’d retain us for another. The client would come to know our people, our firm, the quality of our work, and the results we obtained. Parlaying one opportunity into many was easy; the hard part is getting the first chance. As in-house counsel, that continues to strike me as true for many (but not all) firms.
How do you get the first nibble?
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Getting Business By Inventing Business”
* The Village People taught us that you can find pleasure, search for treasure, and join your fellow man in the navy. All things considered, same-sex marriages on naval bases shouldn’t be that big of a deal. [Reuters]
* If this lawsuit doesn’t work out, there are plenty of other career opportunities available that involve sliding down a pole. [Wall Street Journal]
* Britney Spears proves that capitalizing on the fact that people think she’s crazy in her songs may be a good way out of a deposition. [Hollywood Reporter]
* I know you guys want me to quit it with the prison rape stories, but this inmate is suing over his lack of teeth. You know what he must be good at? Whistling. [Chicago Tribune]
* It’s probably a bad sign for your city when it can’t even afford “free.” And apparently, “free” comes at a hefty price when dealing with Cravath. [WGAL Susquehanna Valley]
* Attorney Mark Zuckerberg can relate to Office Space’s Michael Bolton, but at least this guy doesn’t have to deal with a PC Load Letter. [Technology / Los Angeles Times]
There’s a very interesting debate coming out of Washington State: Should universities do more to provide child care for students with children? On Monday, parents across the University of Washington system brought their kids to class to protest the lack of child care options in the area.
It’s an important question. According to the Seattle Times, child care is the third-greatest barrier to completing a college degree.
It’s a problem for law students too. The University of Washington School of Law has been taking an aggressive approach to finding family-friendly options for its students.
But is this something that law schools should be concerning themselves with? It’s time to fire up the old ATL Debate Machine….
Continue reading “Should Law Schools Offer Child Care? An ATL Debate”
Self-driving Vegas Cash Cab would be the most awesome thing ever.
* Self-driving cars in Vegas? Yes please, I want to play destination roulette. [ABA Journal]
* Wow, I guess law schools are still afraid of being exposed by the New York Times. Here’s some Case Western news, from Professor Jonathan Adler. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* A follow-up on Tim Wu’s recent Quote of the Day about Asians vs. whites, from a woman’s point of view. [The Ying-a-Ling (fka Exley of ATL Idol)]
* Tarting yourself up and pushing ice cream is one option for recent law school graduates. [DNAinfo]
* Our tax code is full of chicken s**t. [Going Concern]
* I used to get something called a “heart attack” at the old Tasty in Harvard Square. I never died from it, and I was pretty sure that scientists hadn’t yet perfected the way to distill a major coronary event into a sandwich. [WSJ Law Blog]
* I hope there are enough swords for King & Spalding managers to fall on. [The Careerist]
* I feel sorry for Osama bin Laden’s relatives. I mean, I don’t give a damn what they think they’re entitled to, but I still feel a little bit sorry for them. [CNN]
* Jay Shepherd puts his hyphen advice to practical rhetorical use. (Or: A chance to see and hear @JayShep, in the flesh.) [LexThink via YouTube]
* Not law-related, but this is the best thing that’s been written about Ben Kenobi since Return of the Jedi (and yes, I know what’s been released since Jedi). [Popurls]
In cooperation with our friends at the Practical Law Company, we produced a webcast, We Know What You Should Do This Summer. Career experts, including law firm partners, discussed subjects of interest to law students who want to excel as summer associates.
The recession might be officially over, but we’re not back to the glory days of 2006 and 2007. If you’ll be a summer associate this year — congratulations, by the way — you don’t want to run the risk of being no-offered.
Let’s take a look at the latest video segment, which looks at how economic times have affected what’s expected of summer associates, and offers practical advice on how to succeed as a summer….
Continue reading “ATL Webcast: Career Advice for This Summer (Part 4)
The post-recession summer associate experience.“
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You always hear this business axiom: “The customer is always right.” Whether true or not, you’re supposed to at least let the customer believe that he or she is correct. But in my experience, that doesn’t always work.
Before I went to law school, I was a banker. (That sentence makes me sound old, since I started law school 20 years ago this fall. Whatever.) Anywho, in my years as a banker, I frequently had to explain to customers the vagaries of the American banking system. “What do you mean my money’s not in my account? I just deposited the check. Of course it’s there!” No, sir, I’d have to say. Your money’s not there. Your check hasn’t cleared. The customer was very often just not right.
Turns out, practicing law isn’t much different. Your clients are often wrong. And your job as their lawyer is often to tell them that they’re wrong.
Even if it gets you fired.…
Continue reading “Small Firms, Big Lawyers: The Customer Is Always Right. Not.”
After the closest vote in (the three-year) history (of the Law Revue contest), we are finally able to crown the best law revue video in 2011.
May all of the pride and good feeling in all the land be sent henceforth to Boston University School of Law, for their winning video submission: I Like The Law.
Their video bested the submission from UC Davis Law, Davis State of Mind, by a mere 47 votes. That’s 47 votes out of nearly 11,000 cast. That’s ridiculous…
Continue reading “Congratulations To Our 2011 Law Revue Video Contest Winner!”
Proving your case requires more than a screenshot.
The practice of “oversharing” on social networks has been a boon for law enforcement. Investigations regularly involve checking out people’s Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn profiles. Thus, it’s probably unwise to post about your involvement in a crime. Or about threatening a witness set to testify against your boyfriend.
While investigating Antoine Griffin, a murder suspect in Maryland, police checked out his girlfriend’s MySpace wall, where she had unwisely written (note that “Boozy” is Griffin’s nickname): “FREE BOOZY!!!! JUST REMEMBER SNITCHES GET STITCHES!! U KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!”
The “veiled” message was a little too transparent. During the trial, prosecutors used this as evidence that Boozy’s girlfriend, Jessica Barber, had intimidated one of their key “snitches” witnesses, affecting his testimony. They introduced a print-out of Barber’s MySpace wall into evidence. Boozy was busted and found guilty of the 2005 shooting. Seems like an open and shut case, right?
But Griffin appealed, in part because the prosecution had not proven that it was really his girlfriend’s MySpace profile, or that it was really something she had written. The Maryland Court of Appeals was sympathetic….
Read on at Forbes.com….
