Boring Stuff

Should lawyers be held to a standard of technological competence?

Okay, this is not the most exciting layoff news ever. It pales in comparison to the massive bloodshed over at Cadwalader this morning, which forced us to break out the Drudge siren. It reminds us of those Kaye Scholer secretarial layoffs from May, just not as big. But when it comes to law-firm layoff coverage, […]

We resume our occasional series on the perks or fringe benefits of Biglaw life. Today’s thrilling subject: bar dues. From a reader: Would you mind including paying for bar dues/section memberships and ABA memberships/section dues in your series on fringe benefits at law firms? Okay, sure. We don’t know if this will be terribly exciting, […]

We continue our series examining perks or fringe benefits provided by legal employers. We’ve already covered technology allowances, gym memberships, marriage bonuses, and help with housing. Today we tackle a subject that’s kinda boring, but very important: retirement benefits and financial planning. If you don’t think about this stuff now, you’ll be chewing ramen with […]

Zzzzzzzzz… Guess this is the calm before the storm. The Supreme Court cranks out lots of important-but-boring opinions in May, so it can clear the decks and focus on the 5-4, “It’s All About AMK” barnburners that it dumps on the nation in June. Nino starts saving up his energy for penning those trademark zingers […]

Announcements just in from Kaye Scholer and Covington & Burling (NY). Guess what? They’ll be paying associate bonuses consistent with the New York market rates. We realize this is thrilling news. But please, control your excitement. We don’t have a copy of the Covington memo, but we understand that (1) the bonuses will be paid […]

Biglaw bonus season is lurching towards its inevitable, anticlimactic close. Yesterday there were a few more announcements of market matching, from White & Case and Fried Frank. Pretty standard-issue. The only noteworthy difference: the math-challenged folks at Fried Frank, instead of paying the class of 2006 the usual bonus of $30,000 prorated, announced a flat […]

This morning’s news is that Shearman & Sterling announced bonuses that match Milbank. We haven’t confirmed this yet, but we have no reason to doubt it, since it’s what everyone else is doing. If you have a memo, please send it our way. While we were over at Greedy NY, our eye was caught by […]

The latest news is that Morrison & Foerster’s New York office has matched the market bonuses. We’ve checked with our MoFo sources, and this is accurate. So consider it CONFIRMED. Specific numbers, after the jump. Earlier today, a reader made this comment: “Why don’t you just call up all the firms now, instead of waiting […]

This post has nothing to do with the gastrointestinal tract of a certain Supreme Court reporter. Rather, it’s about Massachusetts v. EPA, the greenhouse gases/global warming case, argued before the Supreme Court yesterday. We’re relatively late in covering this — you’ve probably read about it already elsewhere — so we’ll be brief. Questions Presented: (1) […]

Not sure how we feel about this development: For years, outsourcing has been a dirty word inside the world of white-shoe law firms…. A number of large law firms, though, are starting to tiptoe onto far-flung shores. The latest is Clifford Chance, one of the largest law firms in the world with 29 offices in […]

Here’s a brief update to our post from yesterday, concerning the divergence among Supreme Court justices over whether to include a second “s” at the end of the possessive form of a proper noun already ending in “s.” E.g., Kansas’ or Kansas’s. Justice Thomas says no (“Kansas'”), while Justice Souter says yes (“Kansas’s”). We’re with […]

Okay, we’re nerds. We love this kind of stuff — even if some of you might find it soporific. From a delightful piece by Jonathan Starble in the Legal Times: As one of its final acts last term, the U.S. Supreme Court issued Kansas v. Marsh, a case involving the constitutionality of a state death-penalty […]

* Senate approves broad new rules to try detainees. [New York Times; Bashman linkwrap] * Senate House grandstands over Hewlett-Packard as most witnesses take Fifth; libertarians celebrate that time wasted is time not spent passing new appropriations. [New York Times; WaPo] * Verizon Wireless piles on against H-P. [WSJ Law Blog] * Observers suggest Supreme […]

Good morning. David Lat is in Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand for the weekend for what has been euphemistically called “elective surgery.” Rest assured, D-Lat will return Monday, safe, sound, and happy to blog, if having to sit on a comfy pillow to do so, and we should all be supportive of the very […]

Technical difficulties persist. Yes, we have heard about Anna Nicole Smith, triumphant Supreme Court litigant, and her lawyer-cum-lover, Howard K. Stern. We will be chiming in on that shortly. In the meantime, here are links to recent posts that seem to have “disappeared”: — The Paris Hilton of the Federal Judiciary: Judge Alex Kozinski! — […]

A new website, like Above the Law, can take some getting used to. And we’re still working out various glitches and kinks. Please bear with us, and please give us your feedback about any problems you encounter; it’s very helpful. (And yes, we are considering a font overhaul. If you have views on that subject, […]

And no, it’s not instant messenger. It’s this thing called blogging… Sun Microsystems General Counsel Mike Dillon has started a blog (the blandly named “Legal Thing”). According to the WSJ Law Blog, it’s the first blog launched by a Fortune 500 GC. Dillon explains why he’s blogging in these terms: My primary motivation is a […]

The latest crop of entries in the Wall Street Journal’s ongoing Summer Associate Diary (subscription) are pretty boring. If you don’t have a subscription, don’t worry; you’re not missing much. Here’s our executive summary: Marc Allon (Jenner & Block/University of Michigan): “Mr. Allon has mixed feelings about heading back to school. At Jenner & Block, […]