You see what I did here?
* Finally, an answer to why in the hell “white shoe” law firms are called that. Not surprisingly, this is another case of Yuck Fail. [Overlawyered]
* I knew there was this ridiculous report from Cooley Law School floating around where the school claims that employment is great for lawyers. I wasn’t going to insult you by linking to another intellectually dishonest report from an institution that seems to thrive on such “evidence.” But somebody else has written about it now so I’ll link there and you can click over to the report if you don’t mind being toyed with. [Legal Skills Prof Blog]
* I’m not totally sure that having client sanitized blog postings is really all that helpful to the cause of journalism. But few over the age of 50 are convinced that “blogging” is helpful to the cause of journalism so I really don’t want to judge this new idea from BC Law. [LawSites]
* Instead of blaming the mother for faking her address to get her kids into a better public school, why not blame the school her kids were supposed to go to for sucking so hard that a parent felt compelled to lie to save her kids? [WSJ Law Blog]
* Shutting down pot dispensaries is bad for the environment. [LA Weekly]
* Do you work for a firm that counts Bank of America as a client? Hope you have a top notch collections department. [Dealbreaker]
* This expresses the big accounting firms as college football teams. Do you think we could do this with the AmLaw 100? Off the top of my head: Debevoise would be Virginia Tech (they seem nice and grounded in the fundamentals). Wachtell would be Ohio State (sure they pay players, but they win). Kirkland would be Florida (internal Kool-Aid drinking is mandatory). Yeah, I could do this 97 more times. [Going Concern]
While at the Legal Technology Leadership Summit, I attended the panel entitled “Legal Process Outsourcing and Insourcing.” As I mentioned on Twitter, when I go to conferences I enjoy attending the panels that are most likely to cause pain and suffering among junior attorneys. It’s kind of my thing.
Usually, anything involving outsourcing is a good bet to make junior attorneys scream expletives at God before drinking themselves into a stupor. But this panel was surprisingly positive about the future of Biglaw attorneys in a outsourced world — and not just the career associate types. The panelists saw a future for regular partner-track associates with dreams of a better tomorrow.
Of course, even under the rosiest of scenarios, Biglaw firms will lose money as more companies outsource, but corporate GCs don’t so much care about that….
Continue reading “Legal Technology Leadership Summit: Outsourcing And How It Maybe Won’t Totally Ruin Your Life”
In our most recent Grammer Pole of the Weak, over two-thirds of you voted against the use of gender-neutral language, opting instead for the historic use of “he,” “him,” and “his” to cover both sexes. In the poll before that one, over 80 percent of you voted in favor of the serial comma. These results suggest that Above the Law readers are traditionalists in matters of grammar, usage, and writing style.
But back in August, 60 percent of you said that you are all right with “alright.” So perhaps ATL readers are open to the evolution of the English language and the creation of new words.
How do y’all feel about neologisms? Let’s look at two new words, coined by none other than the newly svelte Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit….
Continue reading “Grammer Pole of the Weak: ‘I Respectfully Dissental’”
and get access to white papers, reports, and analysis from leading companies such as Autonomy, FTI Consulting, and Dell: http://abovethelaw.com/research/
Week in, and week out, without fail, we write about the state of the legal economy. Sometimes we have good news about employment prospects for law school graduates, but the reality of the situation is that things are probably going to get worse before they get better.
And these days, apparently you can run into career trouble even if you go to a top-tier law school in a major city.
Here’s the photo for out latest caption contest….
Continue reading “Caption Contest: What Can You Do With a Fordham Law Degree?”
Sadly, the percentage of Courtship Connection blind dates that lead to second dates is far lower than the percentage of ladies at One First Street, though it’s higher than the ratio of Supreme females to Supreme males dating back to the Court’s beginnings. Barely.
One of the couplings that did beat the odds included two New York lawyers paired because of their shared love of My Cousin Vinny. Seeing that two Chicago early-twenty-somethings had named Vincent Gambini as their fave legal fictional character, I sent these two yutes out on a date, hoping to replicate that success.
She self-described as a “cute fun firecracker” looking for a “hilarious (like really ridiculously funny), goal-oriented, and tall” legal dude. He said he was a “gunner w/sense of humor” whose type is “good-looking, smart, intense but funny.”
Firecrackers + gunners should make for a fiery night, right?
Continue reading “Courtship Connection Chitown: Hush, Puppies”
Adam Bier (sans beard)
At the Legal Technology Leadership Summit opening reception on Tuesday, I struck up a conversation with a friendly young lawyer. He won immediate social coolness points for several reasons: He has a beard. He’s from the East Bay, like me. He runs a solo practice, and he had some good stories about lawyers following unique, non-lawyerly paths (which we might mention in future posts).
Needless to say, I was surprised to walk into Thursday’s keynote discussion, “Qualcomm Revisited: When Lawyers Face Discovery Sanctions,” and discover that this attorney was actually the youngest member of the Qualcomm Six.
Adam Bier was still a self-described “baby lawyer” when he was wrongfully sanctioned in the landmark 2008 Qualcomm e-discovery case. Kashmir Hill interviewed him early last year, when the appealed sanctions were finally vacated, more than two years after they were first imposed. Bier shared his story with conference attendees, joined onstage by U.S. Magistrate Judge David Waxse and Frank Cialone of Shartsis Friese, who defended several of the outside counsel in Qualcomm.
After the jump, learn the details of Bier’s nightmare experience. Can you imagine yourself in his shoes?
Continue reading “Dispatch from Amelia Island: When Clients Attack”
My objections to the TSA and the invasive search techniques they employ have been well documented in these pages. I believe their tactics are violative of our rights and would be deemed unconstitutional in any America where courts placed justice ahead of fear. I believe a government that authorizes these searches has lost its legitimacy to rule. I believe citizens who support these procedures do not deserve the liberty they so eagerly toss aside.
And I believed all of that before I was actually molested by the TSA just yesterday.
Having now been through that awful experience, and so close to the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, I can only conclude that not only did the terrorists win, but they keep winning. Right now, the terrorists are winning so hard that they’ve gotten us to do their work for them. In my opinion, the TSA is nothing more than a domestic terror organization that operates above the law.
Just two minutes alone with these people has made me realize that their power now far exceeds the normal constraints of law and order. It might well take active civil disobedience to stop them.
Of course, this is all just my opinion. That’s a disclaimer I feel I need to make very clearly, since the TSA apparently believes that I should be wary of even criticizing it, for fear of being slapped with a lawsuit….
Continue reading “Two Minutes of Terrorist Triumph: Alone With the TSA”
The information age we live in can be a blessing and a curse. Few fields demonstrate this truth more persuasively than the realm of electronic discovery.
During a panel here at the Legal Technology Leadership Summit on the theft and exfiltration of intellectual property, the panelists discussed the exponential growth in information densities, the increasing importance of IP, and the challenge that evolving technology presents to the governing legal frameworks. As one panelist noted: “Technology leaps, the law creeps.”
What does rapidly changing technology mean for the e-discovery world? And what are some considerations that in-house lawyers should keep in mind when responding to e-discovery requests?
Continue reading “Dispatch from Amelia Island: In-House Strategies for Litigation Response”
* Looks like you really screwed the Cooch. Virginia and its Obamacare challenge got slapped around today by the Fourth Circuit. [Blog of Legal Times]
* Just how rich are the members of SCOTUS? When you’re worth $45M, like RBG, you can afford to fall asleep during the State of the Union address. But you can’t afford such luxuries when you’re still Sonia from the block. [Forbes]
* An interesting read on the Kenneth Moreno case from the perspective of a juror. Buy it on your Kindle and check it on the way home today. [Gothamist]
* What is law school’s dirty little secret? If you have social skills, you don’t need to be in the top ten percent to get a job. Fair warning, because your mileage may vary with this bit of advice. [Law Riot]
* If Texas A&M is actually allowed to join the SEC, fans are going to have to learn how to start talking smack about the Big 12 and buy a pair of jorts stat. [ESPN]
* What a Masshole: sorry, lady, but if seeing your criminal history in print is too upsetting, maybe a career change is in order? No judge is just going to stop the presses for you. [Salem News]
* “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here! Thou art cash cows being led to the $laughter!” Well, if you’re going to riff on my school, at least get your facts straight. We cry in our cars. [LOLawyer]
* No, you cannot change your name to NJWeedman.com. We get it, you smoke two joints before you smoke two joints. But if you lose the domain, your stoner friends would be confused. [Gawker]
Almost half (48%) of Career Center survey respondents said they were too busy billing on the Labor Day holiday to fire up the barbie. That’s more than the 35% of survey respondents who reported working on the Fourth of July, but less than the 73% of respondents who worked on Presidents’ Day, and the 66% of respondents who worked on MLK Day.
The most popular reasons given for skipping out on the Labor Day celebrations were:
56% said that nobody specifically asked them to do work, but they had work they needed to get done. 29% said a partner or associate asked them to do work. 14% said a client asked them to do work. 10% said they needed the hours. 7% said everyone else in their office was working. 3% said that Labor Day is not recognized as an official firm holiday.
Now let’s find out in which practice areas and at which Biglaw firms associates were most and least likely to work on Labor Day….
Continue reading “Career Center Survey Results: Who Labored on Labor Day?”
Dennis Block
Big news out of New York today: Dennis Block, a leading mergers and acquisitions attorney, is on the move. Known for being extremely successful — but notoriously difficult to work with — Block is stepping away from Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and bringing his huge book of business to Greenberg Traurig.
This Brooklyn Law School graduate proves that you don’t need to go to a T-14 school to have a great career. Block has served as counsel on several big time affairs, including Pfizer’s $68 billion Wyeth takeover, and JPMorgan’s Bear Stearns buyout.
Let’s learn more about Block’s past, and see what Cadwalader has to say about this partner’s defection….
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: Greenberg Traurig Snags a Major Player from Cadwalader”
The month of August brought us a slew of disasters, both natural and otherwise. At the end of the month, we faced off against the Great D.C. Earthquake of 2011. Shortly thereafter, we got slammed by Hurricane Irene.
But August wasn’t just about natural disasters — there were plenty of man-made disasters to deal with in the legal world. From the egomaniacs to the technologically-impaired, August was full of candidates for our Lawyer of the Month competition….
Continue reading “Lawyer of the Month: August Reader Poll”
When is a litigator thinking most keenly about a specific witness’s testimony?
There are two days: The day you’re taking (or defending) the deposition of the witness, and the day — months or years later, if ever — when you’re examining the witness at trial. So when should you be making notes about the witness’s testimony and your reaction to it? That question answers itself: You should make quick notes of key points during the deposition, and you should write notes to yourself immediately after the deposition ends. “Immediately after”: Not later in the week; not the next morning. Now, when your brain is fully engaged.
Those notes don’t have to be comprehensive, but they have to memorialize the things that you noticed during the deposition that you’re likely to forget by either the next morning or the day, a month later, when you’re reviewing the transcript. The notes are quick and easy. Write an e-mail to yourself that says: “Today I took Smith’s deposition. These were the highlights: (1) He admitted A; (2) He denied B; remember to create some other admissible evidence on that point; (3) He evaded on C; there’s something fishy going on there; (4) Opposing counsel started interrupting when I got near D; we should press harder on that point; (5) His testimony opens up issue E; let’s do some legal research.” There might be a half dozen points; there might be a dozen. But the key is to record immediately the fleeting ideas that you had while your brain was most in gear.
During the deposition, you’re as attentive as you’ll ever be. Don’t lose the moment; capture it.
What do you use those notes for?
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Reporting On Depositions”
Stephen Venuto
People came in wanting to work, which is a shift. Students’ primary goal three or four years ago was to ensure they had a terrific social experience. They short-changed themselves a little.
– Stephen Venuto, head of on-campus recruiting for Biglaw firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, commenting on the new environment of summer associate programs during the legal recession.
This year, Orrick made offers of full-time employment to 47 of 52 summer associates. The firm’s 90 percent offer rate was at the lower end of the spectrum of the 17 national firms surveyed by Am Law.
Can't we all just get along?
As everyone knows, IT professionals and lawyers often want to stab each other’s faces with butter knives have a little trouble seeing eye-to-eye. Practitioners of both the law and computer sorcery tend to be headstrong and preternaturally assured that they are correct 100 percent of the time.
It only makes sense then, that several of Wednesday’s panels at the Legal Technology Leadership Summit dealt with the crucial and interdependent relationship between law dogs and mysterious IT folks. Throughout the day, discussion leaders from both sides of the aisle discussed ways to avoid (or at least mitigate) data breaches and to use technological tools to ease billing nightmares. One session was dedicated to lamenting the top ways IT staff and attorneys drive each other nuts.
For reasons why your boss isn’t thrilled about your sweet new 128 gigabyte flash drive and some classic ha-ha-lawyers-don’t-understand-technology anecdotes, keep on reading….
Continue reading “Dispatch from Amelia Island: IT and Law Are an Odd, Ornery Couple”
Attorney Misconduct, Quote of the Day, Rudeness
Quote of the Day: A Ballsy Prosecutor
By Staci ZaretskyObviously some people in my office … all of them … don’t like me.
– County Attorney Bill Sutter, of York, Nebraska, drawing a conclusion about his relationship with his co-workers. His co-workers have alleged that Sutter was disrespectful to women, made crude comments about his scrotum and about rape, and goofed around in the office. Sutter has refused to resign, and county officials are now attempting to initiate his recall.
Tags: Attorney Misconduct, Bill Sutter, District Attorneys, Inappropriate Comments, Nebraska, Prosecutors, Quote of the Day, Rudeness, William D. Sutter, York County