If you ask a small-firm attorney what is the advantage of a small firm over Biglaw, most will tell you that smaller size makes firms more nimble and better able to adapt to client needs and market changes. It stands to reason, then, that small firms could revolutionize the law firm model. But what changes should small firms make? And how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
To answer these questions, I spoke to Mae O’Malley, founder of Paragon Legal, and a visionary when it comes to offering legal services. Paragon Legal is one of the fastest growing alternative legal models. Their model is to offer highly-qualified attorneys (with a minimum of 8 years of experience) to Fortune 500 companies, akin to a contract-attorney arrangement.
This model allows the client to obtain top-notch legal help for a fraction of the cost of Biglaw. The arrangement is also appealing to high-caliber lawyers, particularly women, who look to balance their professional growth with their family obligations. In light of the model’s success, it’s not surprising that Fortune recently featured O’Malley as an individual “fixing a broken legal industry.”
What advice does Mae O’Malley have for reforming legal workplaces?
Continue reading “Size Matters: A Conversation with Mae O’Malley”
Robert Bork
Some lawyers can be so circumspect in speech and so careful in action that they’re just plain boring. Such caution might help you make it to the Supreme Court someday, but it’s not a recipe for a very fun life.
Thankfully, not all brilliant lawyers are afraid of speaking their minds. Take Robert Bork, the former U.S. Solicitor General and D.C. Circuit judge whose Supreme Court nomination famously went down in flames in 1987 — due in part to his loquaciousness during his confirmation hearings.
Judge Bork, now 84, is currently a fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank. He’s not as involved in public life as he once was, but he’s not completely out of the picture. For example, he’s serving as a legal adviser to Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney (a development that some on the left have criticized).
And Judge Bork continues to make controversial pronouncements, most recently in an interview with Newsweek….
Continue reading “Borking Up a Storm: Romney’s High-Profile Legal Adviser Speaks His Mind”
Here at Above the Law, we know that thanks to the powers of the internet, you can buy and sell just about anything on eBay, including stuff that may be relevant to your life in the law. We’re talking about things like:
And these days, you can even buy a lawyer’s time on eBay. More importantly, this lawyer is a hottie….
Continue reading “Lawyers: Now for Sale by the Hour on eBay”
I told you so.
Longtime Above the Law readers will remember the Southern New England School of Law. We extensively covered the purchase of that unaccredited private law school by the University of Massachusetts, which turned it into the state’s first public law school, renamed the UMass School of Law. I opposed the transition.
But nobody listened to me and the plans went forward, with UMass Law supporters talking about what a great thing the school would be for the people of Massachusetts. Just over a year ago, UMass Law Dean Robert Ward was crowing about the school’s re-opening and the record number of applications it received.
Today, Dean Ward is resigning, under a cloud of scandal….
Continue reading “Dean of the New UMass Law School Resigns”
Earlier this week, we introduced the first group of top New York partners whom our readers nominated as being great to work for. Today we present you with another eight partners from the Big Apple.
They hail from some of the heaviest hitters among Biglaw firms: Paul Weiss; Simpson Thacher; Kasowitz Benson; Cleary Gottlieb; Debevoise & Plimpton; Cravath; and Akin Gump.
Let’s learn who they are….
Continue reading “Career Center Survey Results: Top Partners to Work For – New York (Part 2)”
Many people have a cartoonish understanding of Brazil.
At Northwestern Law, the PC Police have a long and storied history. You are, of course, free to say what you want to say, but if you offend other people’s cultural sensibilities, you had best expect a reaction from other Northwestern students — whether the cultural slight was real or just perceived.
This week, a group of Northwestern Law students planning a study abroad trip in Brazil got smacked down by the PC police for being insensitive toward Brazil’s culture.
Now, in fairness, everything I know about Brazil comes from cultural stereotypes. If I went, I’d expect to be hanging out with amazingly attractive women who get horny for Jesus, while the men play soccer by day and capoeira dance-fight at night. It would all be a wonderful time, unless I went into the rainforest, where I’d die in short order from either a new species of venomous mammal or at the hands of illegal loggers who are selfishly destroying the world’s best carbon scrubber.
Is that wrong? According to some Northwestern kids, I am way off base….
Continue reading “Northwestern PC Police Trying to Change the Image Of Brazil, One Email at a Time”
Today, via Craigslist, we have a guy who maybe needs to give up the ghost on going to law school. He’s probably a very nice person who is a credit to his family, but the experience might not be for him. Hopefully he figures that out before somebody takes him up on his $10,000 tutoring offer.
Yeah, there’s a guy on Craigslist who is willing to pay a private tutor $10,000 if he or she can help him get a 160 or better on the LSAT. To this point, he’s taken two test prep courses and studied using various books, but hasn’t broken 155.
At least the kid has the good sense to not go to a law school that would be thrilled to have him at 155. But I think he should continue acting with self-restraint and find something better to do with his ten grand….
Continue reading “Sometimes All the Money in the World Won’t Help You on the LSAT”
We recently had to hire a new lawyer to help with our litigation in the United States. Not surprisingly, that got me to thinking: What are we actually looking for in lawyers that we hire?
Some companies litigate their own cases in-house, writing their own briefs, taking depositions, and trying cases. If that’s your company’s model, then you’ll need to hire lawyers with a certain skill set.
My joint operated that way at times in the past, but now uses in-house lawyers to manage litigation. We hire outside counsel to represent us, and the in-house lawyers typically supervise the work being done by outside lawyers. In that environment, who’s the right person to hire?
Even in that more restricted world, the answer isn’t immediately clear….
Continue reading “Inside Straight: The Land Of The Bobbleheads”
Better as a redhead.
* You know you’re screwed when law school folks are coming after you. A University of Hawaii Law dean has jumped aboard the “sue Facebook for wiretapping” bandwagon. [The Republic]
* Walk like an Egyptian? Emory Law student, Ilan Grapel — who was detained by Egypt on espionage charges — may soon be released in an exchange with Israel. [NBC New York]
* Lindsay Lohan’s probation was revoked, and she’s facing up to a year in jail. Judge Sautner doesn’t like her, so here’s hoping that LiLo’s single and ready to mingle. [New York Daily News]
* Heather Mills is being sued by her hairdresser over $80K in unpaid bills. After getting $50M in her divorce, she can’t cry poverty — she wouldn’t have a leg left to stand on. [Daily Mail]
* Being sexy and using kinky props for a song entitled “S&M” aren’t options anymore, because David LaChapelle has settled his copyright suit against Rihanna. [Rolling Stone]
* Peter Mullen, executive partner during the M&A boom at Skadden Arps, RIP. [New York Times]
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: we really do not like to write about murders, suicides, or murder-suicides here on Above the Law. The loss of human life is tragic, and it is even more so when there are children involved.
But that being said, we have news today that Sam Friedlander, an alumnus of my alma mater, was involved in a dispute with his estranged wife late Monday night — one that led to her bludgeoning and the shooting of his two young children — before he decided to turn the gun on himself.
If you think the story can’t get any sadder, wait till you see how the law school handled it….
Continue reading “Western New England Law Alum in Tragic Family Murder-Suicide”
* The American Bar Association is hiring Carol Stevens, former managing editor of USA Today, as its new director of media relations. Yeah, ’cause it’s the media that makes the ABA look bad, not the ABA’s refusal to regulate law schools during a time of dishonesty and profiteering by member institutions. [Poynter]
* Let’s play “count the stupid lawyer stereotypes” in this paragraph, many of which could lead a person into making a grave financial mistake. [Boise Weekly]
* Look, if an animal escapes from a zoo, it wins. It shouldn’t be hunted down and taken back to captivity. That’s just natural law. [Legal Blog Watch]
* Breaking news: if you sign your name on a petition, people might find out you signed your name to a freaking petition. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Pretty awesome collection of t-shirts people are wearing in their mugshots. [New York Daily News]
* Viacom cancels Ted Olson, taps Paul Smith as his mid-season replacement. [Hollywood, Esq. / Hollywood Reporter]
* I’m trying to figure out what this report on parenting styles can tell us about Bonobo_Bro’s upbringing. [Dealbreaker]
* If you’ll be in New York on October 26 and would like to attend a free screening of the new, buzz-generating HBO documentary, Hot Coffee, followed by a conversation between Lat and director Susan Saladoff, click here to RSVP. [New America NYC]
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It’s said that it’s rude to ask a woman her age. In fact, it’s only rude to ask women 30 and over about their digits. It’s far worse, however, to ask a woman with decades under her belt for her age and then to publish it for the world to see. An actress in Texas says it wasn’t just rude but financially costly for her when the movie database IMDB publicized her nearly over-the-hill age in 2008. Cue, Robert Murtaugh.
The Hollywood Reporter has a copy of the actress’s complaint against Amazon.com, which owns the Internet Movie Database, in which she alleges that everyone’s favorite website for figuring out who-that-guy-in-that-one-movie-was-and-what-was-that-other-movie-he-was-in-with-that-girl screwed her over after she signed up for a Pro IMDb account. After entering credit card information and personal details, including her birthdate, to start the account, her age all of a sudden appeared on her public profile page, “revealing to the public that Plaintiff is many years older than she looks,” according to her humble complaint.
Age isn’t just a number, says her counsel, “Internet lawyer” John Dozier, but a $1,075,000 number…
Continue reading “Actress To IMDb: ‘I’m Too Old For This Sh*%’”
My court has, by my lights, made many mistakes of law during its distinguished two centuries of existence. But it has made very few mistakes of political judgment, of estimating how far … it could stretch beyond the text of the constitution without provoking overwhelming public criticism and resistance.
Dred Scott was one mistake of that sort. Roe v. Wade was another … And Kelo, I think, was a third.
– Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court, commenting on several cases in which he believed SCOTUS had made mistakes of political judgment. His speech was given at the Chicago-Kent College of Law (which, as you may recall, is facing a potential class action suit over its post-graduate employment data).
Judge Maryesther Merlo. Who will play her in the movie? Suggestions welcome.
Earlier this year, we brought you the story of Judge Rae Lee Chabot, a state court judge in Michigan. Judge Chabot was accused of taking three-hour lunch breaks and long shopping trips to the Gap, in the middle of the workday.
I wrote in defense of Judge Chabot, whose judicial work was well-regarded despite her, ummm, flexible work schedule. I opined that “[a]s long as a judge is reasonably current with his docket, he should be left alone. There is no face-time requirement for judges.”
But even I would have a hard time defending the latest judicial diva under fire, Judge Maryesther Merlo of Allentown District Court in Pennsylvania. Judge Merlo — or make that ex-judge Merlo, since she just got removed from the bench — allegedly missed 116 days of work, from September 2007 to December 2009. That amounts to over 23 weeks, in a period of about two years.
And that’s not all Maryesther Merlo stands accused of. Her treatment of defendants appearing before her may have strayed beyond the merely tough into the downright rude….
Continue reading “Judge of the Day: Banned from the Bench
(Not that she spent much time on it anyway.)“
When last we talked about the Occupy Wall Street protests, I was busy ripping them a new one. My friends on the left were outraged, while my friends on the right said “I’m not your friend, guy.”
When producers for the Mike Huckabee show on Fox called, I thought they were interested in my thoughts about what the OWS crowd was doing wrong.
But no, they had a real live Tea Party organizer to handle that side of the argument. Instead, the producers wanted me to defend the Occupy Wall Street protesters.
So, like Lat, I had to go down there and check them out. Then, after a delousing, I had to go on television and defend their cause.
Tell me how I did….
Continue reading “Then, I Had To Defend Occupy Wall Street”
I told you last week that today’s column would focus on “how to get my attention.” And I’ll let you know in a bit.
But first, let’s play “Which Biglaw Anecdote is True?” Here are the options:
(1) A partner at Law Firm A regularly has his briefcase sent to his home in a limo;
(2) Law Firm B is chock full of lawyers of all faiths and backgrounds, but holds its summer outing at a country club known for being “restricted”; or
(3) Attorneys at Law Firm C take a helicopter from the 34th Street heliport in Manhattan to a hearing in Connecticut — and then bill the client for it.
Which story is true?
Continue reading “House Rules: How To Get an In-House Lawyer’s Attention”
NYU Law School seems to have a problem with graffiti. Hate graffiti. Last year, NYU had to bring in the NYPD hate crimes task force to deal with somebody who scrawled “damn orthodox jews” in the main NYU Law building.
This year, there’s been another incident of hateful graffiti at the law school. Honestly, I don’t know why the kids can’t keep this stuff on the 6 train where it belongs. Or maybe they should be tagging up some phat outlines instead of defacing their school.
Apparently this graffiti was anti-gay and directed at one specific student….
Continue reading “NYU Students Should ‘Tag’ Their Resumes, Not Their Hallways”
We’re doing this a little bit late this year. We’re into the fourth quarter and we haven’t yet asked you guys: how many hours are you on track to bill this year?
It’s an important question.
Remember firm leadership has already started trying to manage expectations about 2011 bonuses.
And between the natural inclination to keep as much money as possible and prudent concerns over a double-dip recession, many firms will want to hold the line on associate bonuses.
But that’s going to be harder to do if people have been busting their tails…
Continue reading “The Hours Open Thread: How Are Your 2011 Billables?”
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, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist, is available on Amazon, as is his previous book, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy (affiliate links).
As The People’s Therapist, my door is always open. I don’t turn away poor clients.
“Pay whatever you can afford,” I tell them.
Naturally, they get what they pay for. If I’m a little sleepy, or staring at the clock – who are they to complain? Come to think of it, why do we have to talk about them all the time anyway….
Just kidding.
But let’s be real — are things any different with the the high-fidelity first-class traveling set than they are with folks flying “comfort class”? I ask myself that question a lot. I do it to stay honest….
Continue reading “The Other Half”
