Big news out of Washington today: Bob Bauer is stepping down as White House counsel. He’s returning to his former firm, Perkins Coie, where he will represent Barack Obama as his personal lawyer and serve as general counsel to President Obama’s re-election campaign. Bauer is being replaced by his top deputy, leading litigatrix Kathryn Ruemmler.
Kathy Ruemmler is no stranger to these pages. She’s famous for her role as a lead prosecutrix in the Enron fraud case — and for her fabulous footwear.
Let’s learn more about Ruemmler’s shoes — are they peep-toes? — and review her impressive résumé….
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: Bob Bauer Out and Kathy Ruemmler In as White House Counsel”
Chelsy Davy and Prince Harry
In a few months, Chelsy Davy, the on-again-off-again girlfriend of Prince Harry, will be starting as a trainee solicitor in the London office of Allen & Overy. The blonde beauty’s arrival at A&O will set tongues wagging, no doubt.
Meanwhile, here in the States, summer associates are arriving at their law firms — and surely some of them, like Chelsy Davy, are boldface names. We’d like to know about them, of course.
To get the ball rolling, let’s take a look back at some of the more famous summer associates of recent years….
Continue reading “Who Are This Year’s Celebrity Summer Associates?”
People who park like this should be forced to walk.
Remember the judge who was indicted for keying his neighbor’s car? Well, we’ve got another alleged incident of vehicular vandalism in the legal community, and this one is just dripping with spite.
According to published reports, a lawyer in Seattle has been accused of keying cars and leaving threatening notes on improperly parked vehicles.
I hate bad parking as much as the next guy, unless the next guy is this guy….
Continue reading “Lawyer of the Day: What Kind Of Man Allegedly Messes With Another Man’s Vehicle?”
Egad! The General Counsel just announced that your target for next year will be to handle 20 percent of all outside legal spend on an alternative fee basis! What do you do?
You can’t just do flat fee agreements! What happens if you agree to pay too much, and you’ve given away your client’s money? And success-based fees are a great idea, but they’re impossible to calculate! How does anyone know at the start of a piece of (non-routine) litigation what the case is worth? Since you don’t know the value of the matter, you can’t set the target from which you’ll judge success.
What’s an in-house lawyer to do?
Calm down. Here’s a way to ease into alternative fee agreements that will put neither you nor your outside firms at risk, will educate you slowly over time, and will meet your internal objectives….
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Alternative Fee Agreements For Beginners”
* Former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is joining Katten Muchin Rosenman as “of counsel.” Which promises to be a boon to their snow-clearing, graft, and patronage practices. [Chicago Tribune]
* South Carolina may be jumping on the E-verify train. Whatever, the sopapilla scene in Charleston was lame to begin with. [The State]
* This article details new regulations of for-profit colleges and characterizes these schools as ones that “get billions of dollars in federal aid but leave many students with crushing debt and credentials worth little on the job market.” As opposed to… [New York Times]
* A young autistic man (who, by the way, can’t paint for s**t) was sentenced to two years in jail for assaulting a policeman. [Washington Post]
* Foley & Lardner is starting its own venture capital fund. In related news, this monkey is totally carrying a puppy dog. [Am Law Daily]
* The Seventh Circuit benchslapped Hogan Lovells over a misleading brief. Judge Posner claimed it hurt him more than it hurt them but you know that’s a lie and why did he have to wear his rings, you know? [Thomson Reuters via ABA Journal]
* Manny Pacquiao settled his defamation lawsuit against Oscar de La Hoya and promoter Richard Schaefer. Buboy couldn’t be happier. [Sacramento Bee]
* A pit bull in Seattle bit off a man’s lip and was sent to a dog sanctuary outside city limits. The owner of the dog has now lawyered up in an attempt to get his dog back. To be fair, “Two Lip Charlie” should have been happy about losing his dumb nickname. [Seattle Post Intelligencer]
Atticus Finch was a heroic (albeit fictional) lawyer.
Unlike some of my fellow writers here at Above the Law, I don’t have anything against the legal profession or law school. I don’t have regrets about going to law school myself, and I believe it can be the correct decision for some (even many) people. See my prior post, In Defense of Going to Law School.
Even though it’s no longer my full-time occupation, I also don’t have a problem with the practice of law. Practicing law can be a noble calling, and it can also be financially rewarding. The work of a lawyer is often intellectually challenging and personally fulfilling. In the words of Scott Greenfield, “There is enormous satisfaction, value, to serving our clients. There is great satisfaction in ending a day knowing that someone is better off for your having been there.”
So I’m not a “law hater.” To quote the winning entry from this year’s Law Revue contest, I Like the Law.
But even I, despite my favorable feelings towards lawyers and the legal profession, couldn’t help chuckling at what one four-year-old girl had to say about becoming a lawyer….
Continue reading “Should You Be A Lawyer? Ask A Four-Year-Old.”
* If you divorce a male banker, you’ll probably get to keep the kids — but be ready to fight over the dog. [Dealbreaker]
* Former escort now a lawyer in Canada. I can see the Lifetime movie now: Prosti-Suit. [Toronto Star]
* Speaking of prostitutes, if they were legal it’d be much harder for serial killers to hunt them. [Law and More]
* One could argue that putting teenagers to work is at least as useful as giving them any more education. [Huffington Post]
* Clothing advice for male attorneys. It seems that you need $250 outfits to get in the ballpark. [Tips for Young Lawyers]
* Just to be clear, I’m sure there are all kinds of racist things happening in the fashion industry. It’s just that none of it is being done to Naomi Campbell by Cadbury. [Fashionista]
* Seeing the Westboro Baptist Church versus the Klu Klux Klan is like getting a special sneak peek of what’s playing on ESPN Hell. [Washington Post]
* I’m going to be honest. I don’t have any “Congressman Weiner’s wiener” jokes, mainly because I think wiener is a stupid word and will use the word penis or dick instead. But, come to think of it, I don’t have any jokes about Congressman Penis’s dick either. [MSNBC]
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Justice Stephen G. Breyer
Are justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gods, or men? There’s evidence on both sides. Their brilliant legal minds and dazzling résumés weigh in favor of deity designation. Their ability to make mistakes suggests that they’re mere mortals.
Supreme Court justices: they’re just like us! They get into accidents — as Justice Stephen Breyer did over Memorial Day weekend, while riding his bicycle near his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Justice Breyer broke his right collarbone in the incident — ouch (and more evidence to support my dislike of cycling).
This isn’t even the first vehicular mishap for one of the nine in 2011. As you may recall, Justice Antonin Scalia got in a car accident, back in March — and received a ticket for it.
Physical accidents involving federal judges might not be shocking; brainiacs aren’t known for their grace and agility. But ethical oversights might be more surprising.
Let’s look at the latest controversy involving Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. — and whether the hubbub is justified….
Continue reading “Supreme Court Justices: Accidents Happen”
Cellphone beat-downs are back in the news. Last week, New York Times tech writer David Pogue allegedly attacked his wife with an iPhone (if it wasn’t an iPhone 4, his career is over). And now the Grande Dame of Smartphone Assaults, supermodel Naomi Campbell, is threatening to throw her bloodthirsty Blackberry at Cadbury, the chocolate manufacturer, over using her name without permission in an ad she finds racist.
The docile model, who has lived peaceably since beating police officers in 2008, has a big problem with this:
Naomi contends that ad offensively likens her to chocolate: “It’s upsetting to be described as chocolate, not just for me, but for all black women and black people. I do not find any humour in this. It is insulting and hurtful.” Cadbury maintains that the ad was meant to be “a light-hearted take on the social pretensions of Cadbury Dairy Milk Bliss,” but has since pulled it.
Meanwhile, Campbell continues to pursue “every option available” to her, including a possible lawsuit — and maybe a fist fight…
Continue reading “Fame Brief: Naomi Campbell May Sue Cadbury’s Over ‘Racist’ Ad”
Sometimes LEWW scans a wedding announcement with bated breath, praying that we’ll find a law degree so we can write about a couple. We were crushing on Peanut Wong and David Hattaway before we even clicked on their link. But alas, she’s a dental student (of course she is), and he’s an electrical engineer. So we’ll just say this: If you eat the Wong Peanut, you could die.
On to this week’s featured couples:
Elena Saxonhouse and Tulley Rafferty
Kathleen McArthur and Matthew Gross
Alice Brown and Michael Leiter
Get the scoop on these couples — including their registries, résumés, and cheesy wedding websites — after the jump.
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Leiter Than Air”
As we’ve previously mentioned, we are hosting the Legal Technology Leadership Summit, in partnership with the Electronic Discovery Institute (EDI) and the American Society of Digital Forensics and eDiscovery (ASDFED). Today we are able to let you know about some new sponsors for the event, as well as new speakers who will be joining us at the Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island, Florida, on September 6 through 8.
First, a big thank you to our new sponsors:
1. Nextpoint
2. Pangea3, a Thomson Reuters Company
3. Datacert
And now our new guest speakers:
1. Mark E. Lowes, Vice President Litigation, KBR
2. Robert Miller, Discovery Counsel, BP
3. Douglas I. D. McLean, Litigation, Arbitration & ADR, TransCanada PipeLines Limited
Wouldn’t you want to hear what these panelists have to say?
You can attend this event by registering here. CLE will be offered (details to follow), and there will be a special rate for groups.
Above the Law, cutting-edge tech, and sunny Florida. What’s not to like?
Legal Technology Leadership Summit
Earlier: For Legal Technology, Above the Law Needs An Entire Summit
I hope you had a good Memorial Day weekend. I hope you were able to leave work behind for the long weekend and spend time with your friends and family. I hope you enjoyed good weather, maybe threw a ball around, grilled some steaks, and so forth. It was, after all, the Unofficial Beginning of Summer.
My long weekend was nothing like that. I spent it entirely inside, packing up the offices of Shepherd Law Group, preparing files for a storage facility, and boxing up the rest of the equipment and random stuff for my basement. For me it was, after all, the Unofficial Beginning of the Rest of My Life.
Let me explain: As you may have heard, I started a consulting firm called Prefix, LLC, to teach lawyers and other professionals how to price their knowledge. As a result, I made the decision to close my Boston employment-law firm after 13 years in business.
As I tape up my last box and peel away the sign from the office entrance, I thought I’d share with you some of the things I’ve learned running a small law firm. These are 13 things I wish I had known when I started.…
Continue reading “Small Firms, Big Lawyers: Reflections on Thirteen Years”
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).
There’s slow at the office. Then there’s moribund. Like, stick a fork in it, parrot in the Monty Python skit, no longer viable, kaput, over and out, flatlining… dead dead dead.
Like you haven’t recorded a billable hour in weeks. Like you show up at 10:30 a.m., slide your Kindle under your computer monitor, and try to look busy while you read John LeCarre novels. Then leave at 6 p.m. – or whenever the coast is clear and you think you can get away with it.
We all know having nothing to do at a big law firm is better than being busy. Being busy is really, really bad…
Continue reading “Brain Dead”
“[T]he new NALP numbers confirm that the job market is terrible for young lawyers (aka the “lost generation”).” I wrote that last year about the class of 2009.
And last year things were way better than this year. This year’s NALP employment numbers are out, and they show that the class of 2010 had some of the worst employment outcomes of the last 20 years.
No wonder people are suing their law schools. Going to law school turned out to be a terrible decision for many of them….
Continue reading “Latest Job Data From NALP Confirm That Class of 2010 Is Lost”
* J’Accuse…! The S.E.C. has, so far, been operating on a Lone Frenchman theory in regard to mortgage securities fraud at Goldman Sachs. [New York Times]
* This article suggests that the dumb question of the 21st century is “Is it legal?” I suggest the honor go to “F**king magnets, how do they work?” [CBS News]
* Arizona is suing the Justice Department over the Notorious P.O.T. [WSJ Law Blog]
* DLA Piper and Skadden were instrumental in bringing a hockey team back to Winnipeg. Winnipeg! Hockey! Here’s a baby panda! [Am Law Daily]
* The woman who accused two New York cops of raping her released a statement yesterday. [New York Post]
* Joran van der Sloot’s attorney has van der quit. The case. It’s a play on his name. Van der quit. [CNN]
