Happy Valentine’s Day to you if you have a date lined up tonight! For the rest of you, Happy Staying-In-To-Watch-A-Movie-And-Drink-With-Your-Single-Friends Day. Last year, two Washington lawyers actually let me set them up on a V-Day date. This year, with my pool of Chicago candidates, I didn’t bother. I wouldn’t wish the boring Chicago dating scene on my worst enemy. Playing matchmaker and condemning more lonely souls to a yawn-inducing evening is as cruel as running a dog-fighting ring. At least the latter leads to a little biting and scratched backs for the participants.
So Courtship Connection is moving on and heading West. Hey San Francisco, do you have any single types willing to put their love lives into ATL’s not-so-capable hands? Fill out our survey! I will try to send you out on a blind date with a seemingly-compatible fellow legal type. You will dish the dirt afterwards. I will write about it, keeping you anonymous. And ATL commenters will provide their sincere, caring, and helpful commentary.
While waiting for the California girls and boys to jump into our dating pool, I will share with you the final Chicago date. Like the others, it did not go well. Why? Someone’s inferiority complex killed the mood….
Continue reading “Courtship Connection: Moving West”
The mega-firm of Baker & McKenzie has a global footprint, with 70 offices in 42 countries. It’s one of the world’s largest law firms, in terms of both headcount and revenue.
But are Baker’s 70 offices about to become… 69? For weeks, reports have been circulating about the possible demise of the firm’s outpost in San Diego. As you may recall, this little office is home to big drama.
Let’s look at the latest news about Baker in San Diego….
Continue reading “Is Baker & McKenzie Closing in San Diego?”
The recruiters at Lateral Link are working hard to fill positions with Am Law 200 firms and Fortune 500 companies throughout the nation. Today’s Job of the Week, provided by Lateral Link, presents a great opportunity for an Executive Compensation Associate at a top firm in the Silicon Valley. If you’re looking to live and work in a region buzzing with news in the high-tech world, this might be a great opportunity to consider.
Position: Executive Compensation Associate
Description: A top firm in Mountain View, CA is seeking an executive compensation associate to join its practice. Candidates should have at least one year of experience and be admitted to the CA bar.
Location: Silicon Valley
This opportunity is brought to you by Lateral Link Director Lexy Tretter, a recruiter covering Northern California. To apply for this opportunity or other opportunities, please register at www.laterallink.com. You can also reach out to Lexy directly via email at ltretter@laterallink.com. If you are a Lateral Link member already, see position #10784, or contact your recruiter for more details.
Tom Wallerstein
This post is dedicated to William A. Rutter, who passed away last week. If you’re not a lawyer in California, you might not recognize the name. But at least in my world, Rutter is the guy who produced the invaluable and ubiquitous Rutter practice guides, covering a wide range of practice areas and procedures.
If you’re not from California, you might be more familiar with other Rutter creations, like the BAR/BRI prep course he founded, or his Gilbert Law Summaries for law students.
My firm, like most firms in California, has a series of Rutter guides on our shelves. And even though we run a virtually paperless office with Lexis, Westlaw, and other electronic research options, I still love my printed Rutter guides. We even have a joke about Rutter. Whenever a colleague questions their ability to handle a particular matter or solve a particular issue, we joke, “I’m sure there’s a Rutter Guide for that.”
The joke has a serious point, namely, that the basics of most practice areas can always be learned. And if it’s easy enough to learn a practice area, why shouldn’t a lawyer forming a solo practice or small firm become a true generalist; handling everything from family law, wills and trusts, civil, criminal, and essentially whatever walks in the door?
Continue reading “From Biglaw to Boutique: ‘There’s a Practice Guide for That’”
Or, if you prefer, a ruling on marriage equality. We knew this ruling was coming because the Ninth Circuit kindly informed us in advance that its opinion would be issued today: “The Court anticipates filing an opinion tomorrow (Tuesday, February 7) by 10:00 a.m. in Perry v. Brown, case numbers 10-16696 and 11-16577, regarding the constitutionality of Proposition 8 and the denial of a motion to vacate the lower court judgement in the case.”
The Ninth Circuit’s practice of providing advance notice of certain opinion filings is very helpful to those who cover the court. It would be nice if other circuit courts followed the Ninth Circuit’s lead. (Yes, I just typed that sentence.)
Now, let’s find out how the three-judge panel ruled in Perry v. Brown (formerly known as Perry v. Schwarzenegger)….
Continue reading “Breaking: Ninth Circuit Issues Landmark Ruling on Gay Marriage”
The return of summer associate days of yore?
* Obama has officially nominated William Baer, an Arnold & Porter partner, to run the DOJ’s antitrust division. Get ready for an election year confirmation showdown between the parties. [New York Times]
* Newt Gingrich has dropped out of the Virginia ballot lawsuit that was originally filed by Rick Perry. What does this mean for his campaign? Is he giving up his plans for the presidency, too? [Washington Post]
* Here’s a great refresher on all things Prop 8 in anticipation of today’s ruling from the Ninth Circuit. This is happening on West Coast time, so check back for our coverage this afternoon. [Poliglot / Metro Weekly]
* Summer associate hiring might be back in business thanks to pickups in litigation and transactional work, but don’t go out and start licking those Biglaw popsicles just yet. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* Sorry, bridge and tunnel people, but it looks like you’re going to have to keep paying increased prices at the tolls. AAA of New York and North Jersey lost a bid to block collection of the fee hikes. [Bloomberg]
* Anna Nicole Smith is no longer with us, but her memory will forever live on in ABA Resolution 10B. Gold diggers across the nation can now rely on the power of federal magistrate judges. [ABA Journal]
Above the Law may need to hire a full-time legal bathroom beat reporter.
A few days ago, we learned that Harvard Law School named a bathroom after an alumnus with an, umm, unusual last name.
Last night, we received a tip about the San Francisco branch of a national law firm that delivered an office-wide email concerning “restroom etiquette.” The email is hilarious, and if nothing else, impressively thorough. They thought of everything. The missive covered tips for masking awkward bathroom noises, suggestions for choosing a urinal, and an emphasis on the ways bathroom behavior can affect your professional reputation.
Let’s see which firm has (toilet) water on the brain, and take a look at the memo….
Continue reading “San Francisco Firm Sends Awesome Officewide ‘Restroom Etiquette’ Email”
Hey, little boy, do you want to go to law school?
I got home from New York last night, exhausted and ready to sleep in my own bed instead of a different couch every night. I noticed a couple things as soon as I set foot into the San Francisco airport. Everyone here wears jeans. Us Californians love our casual clothes. Also, fried food and all meat products and candy are outlawed here, so we are all in excellent shape. We have and enjoy trees, and we live in apartments large enough to have closets.
For better or worse, there are a lot of things about California that make us different and drive Newt Gingrich to say he wants to shut down our region’s federal appeals court.
One of our specialties is our penchant for unaccredited law schools. Say what you will about them — there are advantages and disadvantages — but what about an online only, unaccredited law school that spams law school students who have already enrolled at other, more prestigious institutions?
Shady? Or brilliant marketing strategy? Decide for yourself, courtesy of a generous tipster….
Continue reading “What’s the Difference Between Law School Admission and Spam? Good Question”
* How many friend requests did these firms just get? Fenwick & West and Simpson Thacher are the Biglaw stars of Facebook’s S-1 filing for its $5B initial public offering. Like. [Am Law Daily]
* The prosecution is expected to make its arguments today in Julian Assange’s appeal of his extradition from the U.K. to Sweden. Hope it won’t affect his role on The Simpsons. [CNN]
* Adventures in fourth-tier second-tier law school marketing: go to the University of Dayton School of Law, take a tour, and get your first-year textbooks for free. Mmm, the sweet smell of bribery. [National Law Journal]
* The little hybrid that could: Heather Peters, the former lawyer who decided to sue Honda in small claims court, has won her case. Maybe she should reconsider her career options? [Los Angeles Times]
* Looking for a way to shield your assets during a wrongful death suit? Just adopt your adult girlfriend. It has “nothing to do with the lawsuit” — dude just wants to bang his daughter. No big deal. [Palm Beach Post]
* Unpaid internships are so last season. A former intern for fashion mag Harper’s Bazaar wants class action certification for a lawsuit claiming that her free labor violated wage and hour laws. [New York Times]
Legal services are expensive. Duh. And sometimes clients do not want to pay their bills. Maybe the case outcome wasn’t what the client hoped for. Maybe the bill was significantly higher than expected. There are all sorts of reasons that attorneys just have to say, “Eff you, pay me.”
The thing is, you normally associate breach of contract disputes with litigation or other standard lawyering. Not Biglaw attorneys brokering movie finance deals, and suing when the client doesn’t pay his finders fee.
But Akin Gump filed suit last week against a Hollywood movie producer, for breach of contract and promissory fraud, alleging that he did not fork over the finders fee he owed a firm partner for helping secure loans and finding a distributor for one of his projects.
The firm says Mark Manuel owes a lot of money. So how much does he owe, and which movie is at the center of the controversy?
Continue reading “Akin Gump to Movie Producer Client: Where’s Our Money, Man?”
Tom Wallerstein
For some, the phrase “small law firm” implies certain stereotyped practice areas, clients, and attorneys. At its worst, the stereotype invokes unsophisticated clients and matters that are routine and uninteresting. I doubt the stereotype is wholly true anywhere. I know for sure it isn’t true in San Francisco or Silicon Valley.
I know many attorneys in small firms who have specialized, high-end practices. These specialized practices are often called boutiques, and they are perfectly suited to serve the entrepreneurial, high-tech client base that abounds in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Even in the down economy, a number of new ventures were launched in Silicon Valley. Geographically, the high-tech corridor also seems to be expanding, thanks to Twitter, Zynga, SalesForce.com, and the like setting up shop in San Francisco. You don’t even need a Visa or traditional office space to launch a startup anymore; now you can enjoy Peter Thiel’s “Visa-free entrepreneurship and technology incubator on an ocean vessel in international waters.”
It remains to be seen whether we’re experiencing a boom or just another bubble, but I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not an economist and I’m not making predictions. I am only remarking on some great practice opportunities for smaller law firms which exist here, maybe because we are fortunate to have so many imaginative, passionate, and savvy entrepreneurs working on exciting projects in so many different industries….
Continue reading “From Biglaw to Boutique: Beyond the ‘Small Law Firm’ Stereotype”
With some of the truly horrible stuff going on in law these days — law students allegedly trying to kill each other, managing partners having affairs with their subordinates’ wives — it’s almost reassuring to know that people can still afford to get crazily worked up about good old-fashioned nothing.
Some behaviors are the equivalent of anger comfort food. Crappy parking jobs, really annoying commercials, and school lunch theft.
One of the top law schools in California is embroiled in a lunch thievery epidemic. The situation has gotten so out of hand that the Student Bar Association has sent an email to the entire school about the problem.
Any guesses as to which university needs to bump up its cafeteria security?
Continue reading “There Is a Law School Lunch Thief Running Wild in Our Midst”
Sorry folks, no relation.
Hi everybody! I’m Chris Danzig. You might have seen me around Above The Law over the past year, covering technology and West Coast legal news. As of today, I’m excited to be the site’s newest full-time editor, joining David Lat, Elie Mystal, and Staci Zaretsky.
I’m a journalist by trade, not a lawyer. I’ve spent too much time writing about the law — and the stressful situations that can arise within the legal profession, which sometimes drive lawyers to drink — to ever want to practice.
I went to journalism school at Northwestern University. I helped investigate a wrongful conviction case with the Medill Innocence Project while I was in school. After graduation, I was the assistant editor at InsideCounsel magazine in Chicago, where I covered legal technology.
I left that job about two years ago, and have worked as a full-time freelance reporter since then. I’ve written for a variety of publications, covering health care, music, social justice, and a bunch of other stuff. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I was born and raised.
Keep reading for more personal trivia about yours truly (and to see the photo of myself that Lat asked me to provide)….
Continue reading “Mother, Tell Your Children Not To Read My Stories: Meet Team ATL’s Newest Member”
The picturesque Richard H. Chambers Courthouse in Pasadena, home of the Ninth Circuit.
California has released some macro-level results from the July 2011 administration of the bar exam. The California bar is notoriously difficult, and every year we like to take a look at which schools prepared their students well for the exam, and which schools did not.
Last year, the overall pass rates were 68.3% for all takers and 75.2% for graduates of the twenty ABA-approved law schools in California. This year, overall pass rates clocked in at 67.7%, while students who went to ABA-accredited law schools passed at a 76.2% clip.
But you might be surprised at which California law school had the best passage rate on the California bar. Hint: it’s not Stanford, or Boalt Hall, or UCLA….
Continue reading “California Bar Passage Rate Holds Steady; Shame For Underperforming Schools Deepens”
Here in California, we’re pretty much legally obligated to love our hybrid cars, our medical marijuana, and our activist judges. But what happens when treasured liberal clichés don’t live up to the hype?
A former attorney in Los Angeles is unsatisfied with her Honda Civic hybrid’s gas mileage. It seems her supposedly high-efficiency car was emitting more smog than smug. A class action lawsuit against the auto manufacturer probably won’t give her the relief she wants. So she is taking on Honda in an unusual judicial venue and hoping to remove lawyers from the equation….
Continue reading “Former Attorney Sues Honda… in Small Claims Court”
* Rick Perry’s motion for a temporary restraining order over the printing of Virginia’s primary ballots without his name on them has been denied. Damn all of those unelected, activist judges! [Bloomberg]
* Jed Rakoff isn’t the only one with cojones big enough to challenge the SEC. Wisconsin Judge Rudolph Randa fell right in line, and cited the controversial Citigroup case as precedent. [New York Times]
* Looking for ways to lower your law firm’s operating expenses in 2012? Here are some suggestions for Biglaw firms. At least they deal with technology, not layoffs. [Law.com]
* Long, hard litigation: a Los Angeles city attorney would like to pull out of a ballot measure that requires porn stars to wear condoms while filming before people start suing. [Los Angeles Times]
* Do you want to think about babies when you’re being served at a strip club? Didn’t think so. This pregnant waitress is suing over being demoted, and then fired by the Hustler Club. [Gothamist]
* Grumpiest old man: at almost 100, an Italian man is set to become the world’s oldest divorcé. Hope he had a prenup (even though they probably didn’t exist back then). [Herald Sun]
* Pizza, beer, and hot chicks: what’s the problem? A lawsuit over the “hot chicks.” A former bartender says he was replaced in favor of hotties, and now he wants justice (and money). [11 Alive News]
