Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire leader of the Galleon Group, has been found guilty.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty on all 14 counts Rajaratnam was facing — nine counts of insider trading and five of conspiracy. Rajaratnam could get a sentence of up to 19 and a half years under the federal sentencing guidelines, according to prosecutors.
Rajaratnam’s defense lawyer, John Dowd of Akin Gump, is a renowned advocate — but he’s not a miracle worker. Raj was just too big a target.
Check out our sister site Dealbreaker for continuing coverage.
– John Dowd, leading criminal defense attorney and Akin Gump partner, responding (or not responding) to reporters’ inquiries about the whereabouts of his client, Raj Rajaratnam. The jury in Rajaratnam’s insider trading trial is still deliberating.
It’s definitely a good Friday over at Akin Gump. The firm just announced spring bonuses.
Better late than never. We’ve been receiving complaints from financially achin’ Akin associates for weeks. Earlier this month, for example, one Akin Gump lawyer complained about the firm not paying spring bonuses despite robust profits in 2010 (profit per partner of $1.6 million, compared to 2009′s $1.5 million).
So Akin Gump partners had a good year in 2010, and now they’re spreading the wealth. Let’s take a look at what they’re doing with spring bonuses….
Although I now live in New York, I lived in D.C. for several years before moving back to NYC. And while I was in Washington, few trial lawyers were more renowned around town than Michele Roberts. A legendary litigatrix celebrated for her skill in the courtroom, Roberts was at Akin Gump — home to other top talent, such as John Dowd, now defending Raj Rajaratnam — from 2004 until recently.
Very recently. Yesterday the news broke that Roberts was leaving Akin Gump and joining global mega-firm Skadden. Skadden trumpeted the news in a press release, noting that Roberts “is widely recognized as one of the nation’s premier trial lawyers,” with over 100 jury trials under her belt.
Roberts has a somewhat unusual background for a Biglaw litigation partner. Let’s learn more about her….
* What’s the secret to lawyer happiness? And no, it doesn’t involve illegal drugs or porn stars (Charlie Sheen isn’t a lawyer). [Slaw via Legal Blog Watch]
* Want to start your own law blog? Read this interesting interview with BL1Y (a regular in the ATL comments section). [Lawyerist]
* Superstar criminal defense lawyer John Dowd, the Akin Gump partner who successfully got Monica Goodling (among many other clients) out of legal trouble, offered a rousing defense of Raj Rajaratnam today. [Dealbreaker]
* Elsewhere in Ken Starr news, it seems that some celebs are getting hit with IRS tax liens as a result of their ties to him. [TaxProf Blog]
* Congratulations to a 3L at Harvard Law School, Nneka Ukpai, who trounced the prosecution at trial and won an acquittal for her client. [Yolanda Young / On Being a Black Lawyer]
* Congratulations to a 3L at NYU Law and future S.D.N.Y. law clerk, Eli Northrup, who belongs to a hip-hop band called Pants Velour — which has, in the words of our tipster, “captured the magic of Charlie Sheen as only music can.” [YouTube]
* One of my favorite parts of the judicial nomination process is the financial voyeurism it makes possible. Check out the income and net worth numbers for two S.D.N.Y. nominees named Paul: Paul Engelmayer, recognized by ATL as a top partner to work for, and Paul Oetken, who would become the first openly gay man to serve on the S.D.N.Y. if confirmed. [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]
* Now that the DOJ will no longer defend DOMA, married gay couples, represented by prominent immigration lawyer Lavi Soloway, plan to challenge the law in immigration court. [Stop the Deportations]
* Lawyerly Lairs: Retired Law Professor Edition. Amidst all the bellyaching by state workers demanding rich, defined-benefit pensions (which are basically extinct in the private sector), isn’t it nice to read about two old people who can pay for their own retirements — and a $3.3 million condo? [New York Times]
* Wondering why Rep. Christopher Lee stepped down so quickly? Here’s a possible answer. [Gawker]
* Musical chairs: Indianapolis-based Barnes & Thornburg takes six lawyers from Akin Gump and opens a new Los Angeles office. [Indiana Lawyer]
* If you’re done with the February bar exam, congratulations! Here are some ways to celebrate (besides going to Disney World). [Lawyerist]
Superstar Supreme Court litigator Thomas Goldstein — who has argued 22 cases before the high court, racked up numerous honors from legal and general-interest publications, and, most importantly, served as a judge of ATL Idol — is leaving Akin Gump. Goldstein has led the powerhouse firm’s Supreme Court and appellate practice and serves as presiding co-leader of the firm’s litigation management committee. He arrived at Akin four and a half years ago, back in May 2006, to much fanfare.
Why is Tom Goldstein leaving Akin Gump? And where is he headed?
Pennsylvania legal circles are buzzing over a discriminationlawsuit filed yesterday in federal district court by a partner in the Pittsburgh office of Reed Smith. One source who informed us of the suit referred to “some really interesting allegations” against the firm.
A corporate and energy law partner at Reed Smith, JoEllen Lyons Dillon, alleges that her firm pays and promotes women less than men. Yawn; that’s definitely not “really interesting.” While unfortunate — or even outrage-inducing — if true, one could say the same thing about dozens, if not hundreds, of large law firms.
Far more interesting is Dillon’s claim that “work was diverted … to female attorneys who were willing to engage in sexual relations with members of [Reed Smith] management or with whom members of [Reed Smith] management had sought to engage in such relations.” Dillon alleges that because she “did not engage in such relations,” she was professionally penalized.
David DeNinno
Dillon decided instead to have “relations” with her husband, resulting in the birth of twins. After she took time off to take care of the two tots, “her total compensation decreased, by almost half,” according to the complaint. Dillon claims that when she objected to this pay cut, partner David DeNinno, former chair of the Business & Finance Department at RS, asked if she was “done having babies yet.”
That’s just for starters. Dillon claims to have more dirt on her firm….
Then, as we mentioned in Morning Docket, the firm got hit with a racial discrimination lawsuit on Friday. Evidently, racial harmony at Akin “is not so good right now in case you did not know.”
Given all that bad news, let’s focus on something positive (it is the holiday season, after all). Akin Gump has announced associate bonuses, and the firm is matching the Cravath structure, at least in New York. That makes sense: Akin Gump partners are meeting the minimum standard of bonus payout, while Akin Gump associates are putting forth minimal effort towards updating their time entries. What’s fair is fair.
What’s potentially not fair is the timing of the bonus payments. Akin Gump associates will have to wait until 2011 to actually collect their 2010 bonuses….
Nothing says “Biglaw” quite like an old-fashioned partner threat. Biglaw partners, a self-important bunch if there ever was one, generally do little to mask their huge egos. But when those egos express themselves in the form of threats against underlings, well, that’s when you learn why people get paid $160,000 right out of school.
You see, in most situations you just can’t treat highly educated people like naughty schoolchildren and expect them to take it. Not if you are paying them $50,000 a year for some average, middle-class lifestyle. They’ll quit. They’ll tell you to take your BS job and shove it down your condescending throat. But when you pay people $160,000 (or more), then you can talk to them however you please. They’ll take it (and apparently thank you for it). Biglaw partners know that their associates are being paid more money than they can make nearly anywhere else, and so they have little incentive to consider how they speak to their associate colleagues.
Now most partners threaten or belittle people on an individual, face-to-face basis. But sometimes these communications are disseminated to a broader group, and on the rarest of occasions these partner meltdowns are captured over email and sent to Above the Law. And those are the best.
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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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