Billable Hours

How good were Goodwin's bonuses for 2013?

How generous are Dechert's 2013 associate bonuses?

Some partners are edging closer and closer to a $2,000 per hour rate. Which firms do they hail from?

* While we’re celebrating recently anointed Biglaw partner classes, let’s take a minute to call out the firms that haven’t bestowed the honor upon a single woman this year. Cheers, jerks. [Am Law Daily]

* The results of the NLJ’s Law Firm Billing Survey are out, and lo and behold, one of the top partners in the country is pushing $2,000 an hour for his services. Congrats, Ted! [National Law Journal (sub. req.)]

* Everyone’s buzzing about the federal law clerk who’s been accused of attempted aggravated rape and solicitation of a minor under 13. Don’t let that legendary 4.0 GPA go to waste. (More on this later.) [Times-Picayune]

* Congratulations to Gerchen Keller Capital, the litigation finance firm founded by former SCOTUS clerks and hedge-fund alumni, on raising $260 million for its new fund. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Iowa is thinking about allowing law school grads to practice immediately instead of having to take and pass a bar exam. Paired with its recent tuition cuts, the Hawkeye State is looking better and better. [Des Moines Register]

* If you’re in the unfortunate situation of still having to look for a law job once OCI has ended, then you might want to start considering applying for some of the other law jobs that don’t want you. [Mashable]

* The incarceration of a blogger known for making salacious allegations against federal judges raises First Amendment concerns. [New York Times]

* The Tenth Circuit will not be blocking same-sex marriages from occurring in Utah, so the next stop will be Supreme Court intervention. Sorry, but we have a feeling that Justice Sonia Sotomayor isn’t going to be too helpful with that. [MSNBC]

* Winston & Strawn, if you’re overbilling on pro bono motions and you want fees, you might want to be more descriptive. Please tell this judge what “preparation for filing” even means, and why you spent more than four hours doing it. [New York Law Journal]

* This judge felt she was “being played with,” so she took a man’s kid away from him during Christmas. Now a judicial ethics commission is showing her that it’s not one to be played with. [Texas Lawyer]

* Yay, happy news! Chapman Law’s associate dean for student affairs really takes her job responsibilities to heart. She’s performed several wedding ceremonies for both students and alumni. [National Law Journal]

* The Indian diplomat who got strip-searched was arrested over a silly mistake, says her lawyer. It’s too bad that a lack of reading comprehension can result in having to bend over and spread ‘em. [Bloomberg]

Another blow to the dignity of contract attorneys.

If padding hours is a problem in Biglaw, imagine what would happen if you paid lawyers by the hour.

Anonymous Partner wonders: Is the Biglaw problem of padding bills getting worse, not better?

According to the ATL Insider Survey, which practice areas and law firms offer the best (and the worst) hours?

Do clients really know what associates are doing during all those billable hours? Because a lot of the time it's not helping get the job done.

* The trial of a Utah doctor accused of murdering his wife-to-be with a mistress 20 years his junior has kicked off a battle of medical experts trying to guide the jury through the competing theories about the cause of death. See, this was all easier when you could just introduce a new sister wife into the equation. [The Expert Institute] * Is it acceptable to interrupt Justice Ginsburg’s dinner to show her something on your phone? [Slate (second item)] * Case against Iowa law school for barring a student training a service dog will go forward. They should have just been happy it wasn’t a llama. [Des Moines Register] * This week in clever footnoting: citing The Chairman of the Board in Footnote 2 (page 17). [U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit] * Professor Eric Posner reviews Professor Rahul Sagar’s new book, Secrets and Leaks (affiliate link), which posits that people may be overreacting when they call for tearing down the NSA. [The New Republic] * Jay Edelson and his associate Chandler Givens explain why the billable hour is the first thing that must go. Don’t they mean “Reason Number 1″ to reform the legal profession? [Reuters Legal Solutions] * Judge Scheindlin is lawyering up, and Bloomberg looks at the various legal experts — including our own David Lat — who have spoken out about the case. Video embedded after the jump… [Bloomberg Law via You Tube]

Seven more ways of staying (or at least looking) busy, while you put in your law-firm face time.

* Stop bullying the judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. They don’t cave to just any government data request — they make changes to about 25 percent of them. But uh… they don’t like to talk about the other 75 percent. [Bloomberg] * Everything’s bigger in Texas, including the number of Biglaw firms with […]

Seven recommended ways of staying (or at least looking) busy, while you put in your law-firm face time.

* The Supreme Court’s Term opens today, and the conservative justices may have the opportunity to shift the law even further to the right when it comes to today’s social issues. [Los Angeles Times]

* In his Biglaw days, Chief Justice Roberts “gave his adversaries heartburn.” Now, his litigation skills serve the same purpose for those giving oral arguments before SCOTUS. [National Law Journal]

* It seems that in the end, Justice Ginsburg’s career choices have been whittled down to the lyrics found in one of The Clash’s catchiest songs: Should she stay or should she go now? [Washington Post]

* In other news, in case you were wondering, Justice Antonin Scalia, a firm believer in the Devil, is just as scary in real life as he is when he haunts your dreams (which is impressive!). [New York Magazine]

* “If this continues, it’s going to be very problematic.” Clients are very annoyed, and some Biglaw firms continue to worry about how the government shutdown will affect their bottom line. [New York Law Journal]

* The defections at night, are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas: Weil Gotshal’s Houston office is still leaking partners like a sieve. We’ll have more on these developments later today. [Law360 (sub. req.)]

* President Obama continues to comment on the important issues of the day. He’d “think about changing” the Redskins team name if he were its owner — just like this fired Quinn Emanuel associate. [CNN]

* Viva la raza! The federal government is too slow for California, so the governor signed a bill into law that will allow illegal immigrants to become licensed as lawyers. Congratulations to Sergio Garcia. [Reuters]

* No, we won’t remove that embarrassing story we wrote about you — but at least we’re not trying to charge you hundreds of dollars for their removal like those pesky mug shot websites. [New York Times]

* According to Altman Weil, law firm merger mania is on pace for record highs as firms desperately attempt to stave off financial problems by gobbling up smaller firms’ clients. [Am Law Daily]

* The NCAA better watch its back: Jeffrey Kessler, the Winston & Strawn partner who helped bring free agency to the NFL, wants in on the potential case for unpaid college athletes. [Bloomberg]

* Lawyers doing regulatory work are very afraid that the shutdown will decimate their fourth quarter billables because “[t]he longer it goes, the more problematic it will be.” Yay government. [Reuters]

* GrayRobinson partner Philippe Devé is in need of a bone marrow transplant, and his firm is using its social media presence to crowdsource a donor. Will you lend a helping hand? [Daily Business Review]

* UpCounsel has successfully raised $1.5 million in funding to beef up its international patent practice, proving the point that it costs a pretty penny to protect clients from the world’s patent trolls. [TechCrunch]

* Law schools in New York State are feeling the pain of the drop in applications, and some are now willing admit that their graduates had to start “cannibalizing each other” in the job market. [New York Law Journal]

* But really, so what if applications are down? Lots of law schools consider themselves lucky to be keeping the lights on with the assistance of generous alumni donations in the millions. [National Law Journal]

* Another day, another “diploma mill.” Sorry to disappoint you, law students and alumni, but Charleston School of Law is moving forward with its plans to sell out to the InfiLaw System. [Post and Courier]

* Who’s bad? Not AEG Live. A jury made up of people unable to answer yes or no questions during the reading of the verdict found that the concert promoter wasn’t liable in Michael Jackson’s death. [CNN]

Are happy days here again for in-house lawyers (and the law firm lawyers who work for them)?

A private lawyer working as a court-appointed attorney racked up massive fees by billing impossible hours.

Are you in law firm management? If so, you may need to rethink your conception of "wasted" time.

When billable work is scarce, who should get priority, partners or associates?