David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Observer, Washingtonian magazine, and New York magazine. Prior to ATL, David worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, in New York; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. David graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School, where he served as book reviews editor of the Yale Law Journal. David has received several awards for his work on ATL, including recognition as an ABA Journal Legal Rebel, a group of innovators within the legal profession, and inclusion as a member of the Fastcase 50, "the fifty most interesting, provocative, and courageous leaders in the world of law, scholarship, and legal technology." You can connect with him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter.
Position Description: A privately-held holding company, whose businesses collectively generate approximately $1.5 billion in annual revenues, is seeking a Senior Counsel to join the nine-lawyer (seventeen-person) legal department. Position reports to Vice President/Deputy General Counsel.
As Clarence Darrow once said, “Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.” Indeed, many lawyers harbor frustrated creative ambitions. Sure, they went to law school, and now they’re out practicing. But they could have been novelists, or painters, or pastry chefs.
Or successful jazz musicians. From NJ.com:
Joshua Redman is quite the brainy guy, who very easily could have been some hot-shot attorney — or judge, perhaps?– living lavishly in New York City.
But the music bug took a big bite out of the summa cum laude Harvard grad, who scored a perfect 180 on his Law School Admissions Test to earn entrance into Yale Law School.
“I had moved to New York City and was on my way to law school,” Redman says. “But during that year I had this incredible opportunity to play with some great musicians. The encouragement and support I got from them motivated me to continue. So, I decided not to go to law school.”
And he’s never looked back:
Almost 16 years later, it isn’t a decision the acclaimed saxophonist has regretted.
“I probably wouldn’t have been such a good lawyer,” he jokes. “At the time, I essentially went to law school because, like others, I kind of didn’t know what I wanted to do.”
We can relate — and we’re guessing that many of you can, too. Law school was once described to us by Tony Kronman, then the Dean of Yale Law School, as “the great American default option.” He added that law school is a popular path for smart and motivated young people “who can’t stand the sight of blood.”
So why did you go to law school? Are the reasons that you articulated for going — in, say, your law school application essays — ones that continue to motivate you today? Are you happy with your decision? He’s smart enough to skip law, and choose music [Hudson County Now via NJ.com] Do You Believe in Life After Law? [New York Observer]
Another day, another controversy involving New Yorker scribe Jeffrey Toobin and his eagerly anticipated book, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (to be published on September 18).
Yesterday we wrote about Toobin weighing in on who deserved the blame for Harriet Miers. Today we bring you a new drama (first noted earlier this week by Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin, over at Yeas & Nays).
We begin with a juicy excerpt from Toobin’s book, concerning Justice Souter’s reaction to Bush v. Gore:
David Souter alone was shattered. He was, fundamentally, a very different person from his colleagues. It wasn’t just that they had immediate families; their lives off the bench were entirely unlike his. They went to parties and conferences; they gave speeches; they mingled in Washington, where cynicism about everything, including the work of the Supreme Court, was universal.
More discussion, including JT’s juicy revelation about Justice Souter, after the jump.
Here’s an amusing anecdote from a West Coast reader:
Went to visit a dentist in Palo Alto for a routine cleaning the other day. When I told him I was an attorney, he quipped: “So, do you grind your teeth? Lawyers are notorious for grinding teeth.”
And then, unprompted and somewhat gratuitously, he added, “Especially those guys at Wilson Sonsini — they’re the worst.”
Granted, my dentist’s views could be somewhat skewed given WSGR’s major presence in Palo Alto. Nevertheless, I hope WSGR has a good dental plan.
And that recruiting has figured out how to use the bcc field.
* News you can use: “Latin phrases law students should know, but likely don’t.” [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Two angry pharmacists walk into a bar. [Concurring Opinions; NY Personal Injury Law Blog]
* Methinks Senator Craig doth protest too much. [Blogonaut]
* And what about his daughter? She may have been a bad girl too. [Washington Wire and The Smoking Gun (both via Blogonaut)]
* A consumer law firm resorts to product placement. Is this better or worse than having a theme song? [National Law Journal (now registration free, thanks to yours truly)]
* Miranda Priestly at the MoMA? That’s all. [Althouse (last photo)]
* And did she mention that it’s NOT a beauty pageant? [WSJ Law Blog]
This email exchange, between two law students at Washington University Law, took place late last month. It’s reminiscent of that Greenberg Traurig email exchange from the other day — which, in our book, is high praise.
Some background, from our tipster:
I’m an avid reader of ATL. Although I don’t see much law school coverage on your site, I thought you might find this email string between a couple Washington University in St. Louis law students amusing.
Note that the email string starts as a solicitation sent to the entire school, marketing a washer/dryer for sale. The proceeding communications are also copied to the ENTIRE school of law (including professors, deans, etc.).
Maybe we should feature stories about the full-time associates who mistreat summer associates. For one such story, involving a senior associate in New York who’s an a**hole of Ari Gold proportions, see here.
Or maybe we should feature stories about partners who, despite being partners, comport themselves in a manner that would make Aquagirl blush. For one such story — from a few years ago, and from the other side of the pond, but trust us, it’s good — see here.
We’ll tell you that the two naughty female partners were from Shearman & Sterling. But please respect the house rules and don’t identify them further. Considering the great nicknames developed for partner #2, including “The Human Stain” and “The Sprinker,” it’s just not necessary. Thanks. Stories from the Belly of Biglaw: Curious George [Urbanagora] Yank skanks [TheLawyer.com]
Up until this point, we had perhaps shaky evidence that Nina Totenberg, legal affairs correspondent for NPR, is a diva.
There was the (now closed) ATL reader poll, in which 30 percent of you declared La Totenberg to be a true diva. There were variousstories of diva-like behavior. There was her recent, diva-licious appearance on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, in which she gave Scooter Libby prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald a piece of her mind. (Click here, select “Not My Job: Patrick Fitzgerald,” and skip ahead to the 7:30 mark.)
But now it’s official: Nina Totenberg really IS a diva, narrowly defined as “[a] female opera star of great rank or pretension.” Click here, and listen to her operatically trill the four finalists for a new “All Things Considered” jingle.
Although some of the notes in Nina’s upper register sound a little thin, on the whole she’s in fine voice. We’re very impressed!
From one tipster: “Can I suggest a barbershop quartet, consisting of Nina Totenberg, Joan Biskupic, Jan Crawford Greenburg, and Linda Greenhouse?” Or maybe a sing-off between Nina Totenberg and Judge Marjorie Rendell (3d Cir.), another diva in the figurative and literal senses of the word?
We’re not being sarcastic. This course, to be offered at Georgetown Law in spring 2008, sounds awesome. To the average law student, it’s probably way more interesting than securities regulation (or even ERISA — one of our favorite law school classes). [FN1]
From the GULC course catalog:
The Law of “24″ Professor W. Sharp LL.M Course 853 (cross-listed) | 2 credit hours
The award winning Fox Television drama series 24 explores America’s fictional response to international terrorism through the eyes of Jack Bauer, a U.S. counter-terrorism agent. Oftentimes without remorse or regard for the law, Agent Bauer is willing to do what has to be done when faced with the threat of kidnappings, assassinations, nuclear detonations, and bioterrorism on U.S. soil – despite traitors in his family, his unit, and the White House; partisan politics; sleeper cells; and hidden agendas.
This course provides a detailed understanding of a very wide-range of U.S. domestic and international legal issues concerning counterterrorism in the context of the utilitarian and sometimes desperate responses to terrorism raised by the plot of 24. Course requirements include active classroom discussion and a paper of approximately 25 pages.
If Jack Goldsmith’s new book is correct, it seems some members of the Bush Administration legal team might benefit from this class.
The instructor, adjunct professor Walter Sharp, sounds pretty badass. He’s a Naval Academy grad who currently serves as Associate Deputy General Counsel for International Affairs at the Defense Department. He previously served as Deputy Legal Counsel to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pretty cool!
[FN1] We followed, with interest and amusement, this recent spirited commenters’ debate over whether you can get a “real” legal education at Yale. For those of you who care, we offer some thoughts on that subject after the jump. The Law of “24″ [Georgetown University Law Center] Faculty bio: Walter Gary Sharp [Georgetown University Law Center]
The devoted readership of ATL down in ATL will appreciate this update. From an article by Meredith Hobbs in yesterday’s Fulton County Daily Report:
More law firms have capitulated in Atlanta’s second round of pay raises this year.
Jones Day will raise starting pay to $150,000, and Sutherland Asbill & Brennan and Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker will go to $145,000 — an increase of $15,000 at each firm.
The raises are effective Jan. 1, 2008, when pay raises go into effect at several other Atlanta firms, including Alston & Bird, King & Spalding and Troutman Sanders.
The rest of the article, which contains discussion of salaries for more senior associates (compression!!! aargh!!!), is available here. Three Law Firms Pump Up Pay for First-Years [Fulton County Daily Report]
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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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