Last week Britain was treated to the surreal sight of a junior lawyer collecting a lifetime achievement award for his services to pop music. Dave Rowntree, drummer in the band Blur — honoured with a lifetime achievement award at Wednesday’s BRIT awards — now spends his days working as a trainee lawyer at London corporate firm Kingsley Napley, and plays music part-time. Judging by his constant fiddling with his Blackberry during the awards ceremony, Rowntree seems to have got into the spirit of Biglaw.
The lure of the legal profession hangs heavily over celebrities in Britain….
* Speaking of presidents, the Arizona and Michigan primary elections are today. I know folks on the coast often don’t pay too much attention to those middle-of-the-country states, but it will be interesting to see what the Illegal Immigration State and Crippled American Auto State have to say about our ragtag bunch of Republican presidential candidates. [New York Times]
* Emails published yesterday by Wikileaks appear to show that certain Pakistani military intelligence knew where Osama bin Laden was hiding in the months before Seal Team Six raided his garrison and killed him. I hope Wikileaks has juicier material in the pipeline? [Telegraph (U.K.)]
* Congratulations to Tony West, who will become acting associate attorney general, the No. 3 post in the Justice Department. [Chicago Tribune]
* Interesting report on tensions between the White House and the NSA, which has tried to get permission to monitor private web activity, perhaps at the expense of privacy. But Google knows everything you do on your computer, so why shouldn’t the government? [Washington Post]
We admit it. We have a certain fondness for poking fun at organizations like the Law School Admission Council, the folks who help run the law school show. Because, as you all know, it has been getting harder and harder to make a successful living with a law degree. That’s why we are excited, courtesy of a Chicago tipster, to have visual evidence of a new and innovative money-making use for the Law School Admission Council, or at least some of the organization’s giveaway swag.
The subject of this photo is not necessarily a lawyer, but let’s just say he is music to our ears.
* Wow. David Brock, head of the liberal watchdog group Media Matters, “paid a former domestic partner $850,000 after being threatened with damaging information involving the organization’s donors and the IRS,” according to allegations in a lawsuit. [Instapundit]
* Are you a legal geek with a weakness for interesting historical tidbits about famous cases? Check out Professor Kyle Graham’s new blog. [NonCuratLex.com via Volokh Conspiracy (Orin Kerr)]
* If you’ll be in Los Angeles on March 8, consider attending this legal industry “battle of the bands” — with proceeds going to worthy charities. [Law Rocks]
* Could next year’s Oscar nominees include a Dreier documentary? The film does look pretty cool (movie trailer after the jump). [Am Law Daily]
Hemy Neuman is standing trial for murder. His defense is unusual.
Right now in Atlanta, a former operations manager at General Electric is standing trial for allegedly murdering the husband of his female coworker and alleged lover.
It’s a twisty tale of romance, deception, and violence, something you might find in an airport bookstore.
The strangest part of what has been dubbed the Dunwoody Day Care Killing, though, is the bizarre defense put forth by accused murderer Hemy Neuman. He says an angel and a demon, in the form of two celebrities, made him shoot his alleged lover’s husband.
Howrey dissolved almost an entire year ago, but its bones are still filling warehouses and servers across the world, and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in storage fees.
The firm’s estate is embroiled in the painstaking process of destroying old files or returning them to former clients. There is still a long, long way to go. In today’s Washington Post, we get to see a vivid illustration of the problems involved in putting to rest a massive law firm that bridged the paper and electronic eras.
It is also a good cautionary tale for other firms: these documents will not just go away, even if your firm bites the dust…
People going to bottom-tier law schools ought to know that they won’t go like hot cakes on the job market. But that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to exploit their vulnerability.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been receiving interesting reports about Dewey & LeBoeuf. They were nothing but vague rumblings for a while, but they’ve now reached the point where we have enough to write about.
So let’s check in and ask: How do things stand at this major, top-tier law firm? In other words, “Where’s LeBoeuf?”
This week’s column was initially going to be about setting fees, but then two lawyers pissed me off so I’m now writing about why technology sucks and needs to be controlled like a screaming 2-year-old on an airplane.
I took Friday off to chaperone a field trip with one of my kids to the Everglades. I promise if I ever get a Pinterest account I’ll post all the pictures of the alligators. On Thursday, I did everything but wear a shirt that said, “I WILL NOT BE IN THE OFFICE OR AVAILABLE FRIDAY.” I also emailed some annoying people that haven’t been out of their office, ever.
That day, one lawyer I emailed responded something to the effect of, “I know you’re going to be out tomorrow but,” and then asked me to do some work on our matter. The other lawyer called Friday morning, was told I was out and said, “Can you have him call me to discuss a case even though he’s out?”
Yeah, we all have smart phones, we’re all getting email in real time, and regardless of what we’re doing, the other side can’t comprehend that we are either really not available, or just don’t want to be available. Maybe we’re looking at alligators with our kids while our phone is back on the bus.
Being out of the office (and for those that don’t have an office, “being out of the office” is a concept, not a physical geographical location issue) is something lawyers need to do to avoid hating the practice of law, but it is becoming more and more looked down upon….
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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Last week Britain was treated to the surreal sight of a junior lawyer collecting a lifetime achievement award for his services to pop music. Dave Rowntree, drummer in the band Blur — honoured with a lifetime achievement award at Wednesday’s BRIT awards — now spends his days working as a trainee lawyer at London corporate firm Kingsley Napley, and plays music part-time. Judging by his constant fiddling with his Blackberry during the awards ceremony, Rowntree seems to have got into the spirit of Biglaw.
Continue reading “Letter from London: Celebs Flock to Biglaw”
