This week’s headlines from AsiaLegalBlog.com

1) Weekly Asia Legal Job Openings
Since 2001, Cypress has offered the most extensive and up-to-date job bank focused exclusively on associate and partner opportunities in Hong Kong (42), Tokyo (24), Beijing (38), Shanghai (33) and the Middle East (15)….

2) Obama Tours Asia with Focus on Opening Foreign—Markets
As part of President Barack Obama¹s current tour of Asia, he is sending the message that the US wants more open trade with countries like China. That message resonates strongly with US law firms and lawyers who are interested in pursuing business opportunities in China….

3) Asia-Related CLE Opportunites
Cypress has found the following courses for lawyers looking to increase their knowledge on the Asian legal market while also taking care of their CLE requirements….

4) Asia Deal Watch
Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP has represented a Goldman Sachs International, The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, JP Morgan Securities Ltd and The Royal Bank of Scotland plc as initial purchasers…

5) Partner Moves & Promotions
Allen & Overy has hired Mallesons Stephen Jaques¹s litigation partner Simon Clarke to its Hong Kong office. Clarke has 15 years of extensive experience in complex litigation andcontentious regulatory work in Asia which the firm is eager to use….

6) Trailing Spouses and Other Dependants
If you want to know how the international assignment is really going, ask the spouse. It is well known that the success or failure of a stint abroad can depend almost entirely on the level of contentedness of the trailing family members. We offer some personal insights…

This information is supplied by cypressrecruiting.com, the first and only US-based legal recruiting firm to specialize exclusively on law firm and in-house placements in the China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Middle East, and Russia legal markets. Click here to see our available opportunities.

That’s the most shocking revelation in an interesting New York Times profile of H. Rodgin Cohen, the nation’s top banking M&A lawyer and chairman of the venerable Sullivan & Cromwell. From the NYT:

After [Cohen and his wife Barbara] had paid their [restaurant] check, they went to fetch the car, and Mr. Cohen, a Boston fan since his days at Harvard Law, glanced down at his BlackBerry to check on the Red Sox. He drives a Subaru, a humble ride for a man who earned millions last year arranging shotgun weddings for the busted firms of Wall Street, and standing next to Barbara in the darkness, Rodge Cohen, a titan of the banking bar, struggled with his automated key, initially unable to — woop woop woop — release the lock.

Unlocking car doors by remote control — where’s a good associate when you need one?

Now, in re Subarus, we have nothing against them; they are fine cars. Some of our best friends drive Subarus. One of our co-clerks — a member of the Elect, no less — drives a Subaru Forester. The judge for whom we clerked — Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain (9th Cir.), a top feeder judge — used to drive a purple Subaru (affectionately nicknamed “Grimace” by his clerks).

But as we know from the judicial pay controversy, federal judges don’t get compensated like partners at Sullivan & Cromwell. And Cohen is no ordinary S&C partner — he’s the chairman of the firm and its top rainmaker, generating tens of millions in business every year. A Subaru is shockingly downmarket for him. We realize that true wealth doesn’t have to advertise itself, and six-figure cars are for the nouveau riche, but this still seems a tad extreme.

More to the point, why is Rodge Cohen even driving himself? Wouldn’t it be more efficient for him to have a chauffeur-driven Maybach — john quinn, holla — so he can spend every waking minute on the phone, negotiating billion-dollar bank mergers? Isn’t it a waste of the brilliant Cohen’s brain cells to have him paying attention to yield signs when he could instead be thinking about yield curves?

More tidbits from the Rodge Cohen profile, along with commentary, after the jump.

The American Bar Association has a plan to help out unemployed lawyers with their student loans. Seriously. An actual plan. The National Law Journal reports:

The ABA wants the government to let unemployed graduates convert private loans into federal ones. The change could allow them to defer repaying those loans for as long as three years.

The plan is so simple and helpful that I’m almost positive Congress will find a way to horribly mess it up. The ABA wants to let people borrow money from the government to pay off their private loans. Then unemployed lawyers can put their new federal loans into deferment for up to three years if they need to.

The effort is in its early stages — executives of the largest provider of private law school loans, Access Group Inc., weren’t even aware of it, according to spokeswoman Linda Smith.

“This is really intended to give them some breathing room,” said ABA President Carolyn Lamm.

The plan was proposed by the ABA’s recently formed Commission on the Impact of the Economic Crisis on the Profession and Legal Needs, which is examining how lawyers can confront the recession.

Of course, nobody knows precisely how the plan is going to work.

With most associates just trying to avoid joining the growing ranks of unemployed attorneys, partnership prospects might seem like part of a distant and unfathomable future.  But in what might be a surprise to associates who have been laid off or suffered salary cuts, many law firms are making a healthy number of new partners. The National Law Journal reports that the overall number of partners nationwide in 2009 is actually higher than in 2008. 

Visit the Career Center, powered by Lateral Link, for more on which firm has a five-year non-equity partner track, which firm does not require capital contributions from new partners, and which firm went from promoting 34 attorneys to partner in 2008 to promoting 0 in 2009. 

If you are a mid-level associate in Los Angeles and you really want the inside scoop on how to grab that brass ring, come to the Career Center Professional Development panel on November 17, hosted by Lateral Link and Proskauer Rose, for a discussion on long-term career planning, partnership prospects and in-house careers. Panelists include Morgan Chu of Irell & Manella, Mike Woronoff of Proskauer, and Vivian Yang, GC at Citysearch. Attendees will receive 1.25 CLE credit hours.  Click here to learn more or to register.

Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks, which has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.

It was pretty hard to miss this week’s big news: unemployment crashed through the 10% barrier, hitting 10.2% in October - the highest level since 1983 (and, of course, worse than predicted). Underemployment also hit record levels, with the number of self-reported disenfranchised and under-utilized people reaching 17.5%.

Republicans jumped on the numbers as a sign that Obama’s package has failed, and the White House countered that it has saved almost 700,000 jobs. But that claim doesn’t even come close to addressing the original estimates and is completely unmeasurable. Still, the administration is reconsidering ideas it had previously rejected, like a highway bill and a business tax credit for new hires, even as they ask for two versions of a budget: one with flat spending and another with a 5% cut.

Law firms got their place in the MSM sun this week, as Bloomberg used a former law-firm employee as an example of increased migration to areas perceived as having jobs:

Some people are pulling up stakes and moving to where they think the job prospects may be brighter. Beth Rubin, 41, lost her position as a receptionist at the law firm Goldstein Bershad & Fried, PC in Southfield, Michigan, in October. The resident of Ferndale, a Detroit suburb, is now selling her furniture and moving to Georgia. “I’m looking to get a job in Georgia, and I don’t know about the job market there, but I can tell you Michigan is horrible,” Rubin said in a telephone interview.

Of course, anything has to be better than Detroit.

More on the highs and lows in the legal sector, after the jump.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if some of our Above the Law commenters had one of their classic diatribes in open court? I do.

I don’t know if Raphael Scotto posts anonymous comments on ATL. But it wouldn’t shock me if he does. The New York Post reports:

A defense lawyer was fined $2,500 and barred from city administrative court after throwing tantrums and cracking fat jokes about an overweight prosecutor during a sexual-harassment hearing. …

He even made wisecracks about portly prosecutor Victor Muallem.

When Muallem squeezed between two desks, Scotto joked, “Tough fit, there, huh?”

Actually, I’m not being fair. ATL commenters are much more funny:

Elie - When you first read the phrase “friable issue of fact” did you get hungry?

But maybe Scotto doesn’t have a lot of experience making fat jokes. Apparently that is not his go-to move.

In July, Morgan Lewis & Bockius announced that it would be ending lockstep compensation for its associates in 2010. At the time, the firm furnished this statement to Above the Law:

“We’re running our own business and focusing relentlessly on client relationships,” said Francis M. Milone, Chair of the Firm. “Doing so responsibly means continuing to reduce expenses, committing to the people in whom we are already invested, and looking at compensation across the board to ensure our structure matches the reality the entire legal industry must face.”

The July announcement was the culmination of the effort made by MLB and its chairman, Francis Malone, to reform the Biglaw business model. Back in April, Milone gave an interesting interview to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Question: Law firms are still very profitable. Why do they need to downsize?

Answer: You have to make a judgment about whether you can keep people busy going forward. It is not healthy for a lawyer to not be busy, to have free time on his or her hands. You don’t grow, you don’t develop, you’re not happy.

And from a cultural perspective, you don’t want to build a firm that culturally is populated by a lot of people, or too many people, who don’t have enough to do.

Q: Is that the only reason?

A: The other piece of it is the feedback we got from clients. Because they’re looking at the way they want law firms to act. They’re not going to be as willing to pay, frankly, to train new lawyers. So it’s going to be harder to find things for new lawyers to do. And when we’re paying new lawyers $160,000 and clients don’t want to pay for them, you’re putting them in a position where there may not be a lot of things for them to do.

Well, 2010 is almost upon us. But MLB is suddenly not so excited about ending lockstep compensation. Milone conducted a firm-wide video conference yesterday, and tipsters report his enthusiasm for ending lockstep compensation was noticeably lacking.

Details and a statement from the firm, after the jump.

* Thelen refugees claim that the firms that hired the firm’s ex-partners — Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; DLA Piper; Nixon Peabody; Howrey; and Morgan Lewis & Bockius — owe them $18 million under the WARN Act. [Recorder]

* Galleon Group rascal Raj Rajaratnam dumps Gibson Dunn’s James Walden for Akin Gump’s John Dowd. [Bloomberg]

* … Dowd won’t have long to prepare. Judge Jed Rakoff wants to see Rajaratnam go to trial in 5 months. [Wall Street Journal]

* Estate lawyers, a lesson for you. [New York Times]

* Nationwide child prostitution crackdown results in the arrest of 690 people including 60 pimps, and the recovery of 52 children. [CNN]

The big decisional news out of New York today is the guilty verdict in the Brooke Astor trial. Anthony Marshall, the son of the late socialite and philanthropist, was convicted in a scheme to defraud Mrs. Astor.

But we also have news of another notable ruling. Longtime readers of Above the Law will recall the case of Jeremy Pitcock, the successful intellectual-property litigator who was fired from Kasowitz Benson in December 2007. The firm issued an unusual statement saying that Pitcock had engaged in “extremely inappropriate personal conduct.”

Pitcock sued Kasowitz for defamation. Kasowitz turned around and sued Pitcock, alleging in its complaint that he “subject[e]d at least twelve of the firm’s female employees…. to a pattern of unwelcome sexual advances.”

Now a judge has ruled in both of the cases. From Nate Raymond of the New York Law Journal:

A nearly two year-long public brawl between Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman and a former partner it fired for sexual harassment could be quieting down now that a Manhattan Supreme Court judge has dismissed both parties’ lawsuits.

Justice Martin Shulman (See Profile) last week found “unavailing” and “unpersuasive” the arguments made against the firm by intellectual property lawyer Jeremy Pitcock, who sued for defamation, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty.

The judge also found Kasowitz Benson failed to show how Mr. Pitcock had damaged the firm.

Executive summary (or West headnote): “A pox on both your houses.”

Here’s an interesting question. How do we know that animals involved in bestiality don’t actually like it?

This question was recently on the mind of one New Jersey jurist. From the Philadelphia Daily News:

During a bizarre hearing [in Burlington County, NJ], a Superior Court judge dismissed animal-cruelty charges against a Moorestown police officer accused of sticking his penis into the mouths of five calves in rural Southampton in 2006, claiming a grand jury couldn’t infer whether the cows had been “tormented” or “puzzled” by the situation or even irritated that they’d been duped out of a meal.

“If the cow had the cognitive ability to form thought and speak, would it say, ‘Where’s the milk? I’m not getting any milk,’ ” Judge James J. Morley asked.

Got milk? Or milky discharge?

Children, Morley said, seemed “comforted” when given pacifiers, but there’s no way to know what bovine minds thought of Robert Melia Jr. substituting his member for a cow’s teat.

“They [children] enjoy the act of suckling,” the judge said. “Cows may be of a different disposition.”

In its weirdness, this is all very Ally McBeal-ish (although too explicit for that show).

So, how did the prosecutor feel about all of this?

On Friday, we mentioned that Harvard Law School took on Sullivan & Cromwell over how long to firm would hold open offers for summer associates. It was a good show by HLS.

But the question of what 2Ls should do if they get multiple summer associate offers remains open. Earlier, we suggested that instead of just holding open an offer while they mull it over, we suggested that 2Ls affirmatively accept all of the offers they receive. Later — once the 2Ls have had time to make a considered and wise decision based on relevant financial information about the law firms — 2Ls can call up their firms and revoke the agreement to summer with a particular firm. Hey what is good for the goose is good for the gander, right?

Apparently, bloggers out at U.C. Berkeley disagree. From the Nuts & Boalts blog:

Harvard’s Dean impressed me, and ATL’s advice disgusts me. Boalties: don’t hoard offers. If you have more than one opportunity at your door, it’s time to start making decisions, because the earlier you decline an offer the more likely it will redound to one of your peers.

Whoa. Above the Law-2008 just called, and they want their open thread back.

We have reported extensively on the difficult offer situation for people who summered at Philadelphia area firms in 2009. Morgan Lewis & Bockius had an offer rate below 28%. Pepper Hamilton offered about 63% of its summers. Dechert told half of its summers that the firm would wait until January to make a decision offers, yet continues to interview 3Ls this recruiting season.

Let’s close the loop on the Philadelphia market with two other well known firms: Drinker Biddle and Cozen O’Connor. The Legal Intelligencer reports that Drinker Biddle did slightly better than its area competition:

The firm gave offers to about 68 percent, or 25, of the 37 2L summer associates it had firmwide in 2009. The offer rate was about the same in Philadelphia, where 13 of the 19 2Ls received offers, the firm confirmed.

After the jump, Drinker Biddle chairman, Alfy Putnam, explains the firm’s decision.

Don’t forget that this coming Tuesday is primary day in New York City. In New York county (“Manhattan” for the uninitiated) the race is to replace Robert M. Morgenthau, the venerable Manhattan district attorney. There are three people running to be the new district attorney for the borough.

But just because Morgenthau is on his way out, it doesn’t mean that he has stopped doing his job. He is still busy, keeping us safe from lawyers that aren’t really lawyers but like to say they are lawyers.

Elizabeth Wurtzel is still safe. But that’s because she’s not been defrauding immigrants. The New York Times reports Robert P. Mangieri cannot say the same:

It turns out that Mr. Mangieri is not a lawyer and, according to Manhattan prosecutors, any fee he received was more than his services were worth.

Mr. Mangieri, 68, has been indicted on charges that he pretended to be an immigration lawyer and bilked more than $1,000 from at least one immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, announced on Wednesday.

Mangieri is not a Mangenius.

Tough news cycle for Trinidad and Toboggans. First their football team loses a game to the U.S. that they could have won, and now this.

That Lawyer Who Was Hurting? It Gets Worse… [City Room]

Today is the start of performance review season for associates at Fulbright & Jaworski. As you well know, performance reviews are now very important. We’ve noticed that firms which are miraculously unaffected by the economic recession coincidentally have the toughest performance reviews.

We don’t know if this round of performance reviews will lead to another round of layoffs at Fulbright. But according to an internal Fulbright email obtained by Above the Law, there is a lot on the line even for associates that will keep their jobs at Fulbright. This year’s reviews come with a cash prize — or penalty.

Read the email after the jump.

We’re now into the back half of the brand new Vault law firm rankings. Just like last year, we worry about a proliferation of “TTT” accusations in the comment threads. But such terms of art can miss the positives of many of the firms in this section of the Vault rankings. Here’s the list:

51. Fulbright & Jaworski
52. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
53. Morgan Lewis & Bockius
54. McDermott Will & Emery
55. Alston & Bird
56. Bingham McCutchen
57. Fish & Richardson
58. Dechert
59. Greenberg Traurig
60. Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft

We have already extensively talked about the Morgan Lewis situation. Let’s move on to other firms after the jump.

It has not been a great offer season for firms in Philadelphia. Yesterday, we learned that Morgan Lewis & Bockius offered only 27.5% of its summer class.

The news coming out of Pepper Hamilton isn’t quite as bad. But it is not great. Multiple tipsters report that Pepper Hamilton made offers to seven summers, out of 13 people its summer program.

Last year, the firm brought on 38 summers and made offers to 30. Some of our tipsters expressed concern that Pepper significantly reduced the size of its summer program, but still couldn’t find offers for everybody:

There were only a dozen of us. If they didn’t need all of us, why bring us on for the summer? You’d think a major law firm would have better counting skills.

It’s a cautionary tale for 2Ls interviewing with law firms now. Just because firms are reducing the size of their summer programs, it doesn’t mean that the firms are planning on giving offers to all of their 2010 summer associates.

Earlier: Nationwide No Offer Watch: Rocky Balboa Division Blank Rome and Pepper Hamilton
Morgan Lewis No Offer Follow Up

Morgan Lewis & Bockius has finally come clean about its offer rates to its 2009 summer class. The numbers are not pretty. The Legal Intelligencer reports:

Now that the firm has finished informing summer associates of their status and has made a firmwide announcement Tuesday morning regarding the decisions, Morgan Lewis has provided more concrete numbers when it comes to offer rates.

Firmwide hiring partner Eric Kraeutler said there were 102 eligible 2Ls across the country in this year’s summer program. Of that group, 28, or 27.5 percent, were given offers to start as first-year associates in the fall of 2011 — a year later than would normally be the case given the deferrals of the 2009 first-year class until the fall of 2010.

Last week we reported that MLB would be “extend[ing] only a limited number of offers.” The Morgan Lewis offer rate is certainly limited, but the numbers are much lower than what we’ve seen so far from peer firms.

And remember that Morgan Lewis has already canceled its 2010 summer program. So if the firm needs any more fresh talent over the next couple of years, it will have to be successful in the lateral market. That might be hard to do if the firm slashes base pay as it moves to a “performance based” compensation model.

After the jump, let’s take a look at offer rates in specific offices.

Ed. note: This post has been updated. Please read below (updates in bold).

Not all Biglaw types are luxuriating in 1600 hours for the year. Some are still working long hours and spending late nights at the office. There can be hazards to late night assignments: canceled dinner plans, sleep deprivation, and running across an armed robbery in the car garage.

Such was the case last night, in a garage shared by many firms, including Paul Hastings. A Los Angeles attorney sent us this e-mail last night at midnight EDT/ 9 p.m. PDT:

This evening, some attys in the office received the following email:

“In case you guys were planning on leaving the office, there’s an armed car jacking going on in j2, its barricaded and cops aren’t letting anyone in. Some sort of stand-off with the cops now.”

Our correspondent has since retired. We have inquiries in to Paul Hastings but have not gotten an official statement yet. Are there any early risers on the West Coast who know more about this? Send us tips at tips@abovethelaw.com.

UPDATE: The Los Angeles garage in question is shared by Paul Hastings and other noteworthy Biglaw firms, such as Morgan Lewis, Winston & Strawn, and Jones Day.

The full story from a building manager is that a woman — we don’t know her Biglaw affiliation, if any — was approached by a man in the parking lot who demanded that she surrender her car keys. She did and called the police. That precipitated the closing of the garage. The police investigated the crime scene for a couple of hours, which is why nobody was allowed to leave the building during that time. No “stand-off,” just a crime scene investigation.

The criminal was not apprehended, but police reports indicate that the criminal left behind some physical evidence. As we understand it, the car jacker was not armed.

We’ll keep updating this post as we have more details to report.

Late last week, offer calls went out to those who summered at Cadwalader. We now have the firm wide offer rates. Compared to some other firms, it’s really not so bad.

Here is the information from a firm spokesperson:

Cadwalader made offers to approximately two thirds of our 2009 Summer Associate Class.

Cadwalader went through its layoffs early and often. People who summered at CWT had to know that the firm isn’t one to defer associates. Instead, Cadwalader recently asked some of its laid off associates to comeback … as contract attorneys.

Given all of that history, a 66% offer rate seems pretty good. In fact, even some of the CWT summers that were no offered didn’t sound too angry about the situation. One no offered summer described it this way:

The hiring partner was very nice about it, and offered to serve as a reference when I pursue other jobs, and I was repeatedly told that it was for purely economic reasons … I was upset, but I understand what the economy’s like right now, and I’ll be ok, may just take a while.

Things could be worse. Good luck with 3L recruiting, CWT friends.

Earlier: Cadwalader Is Hiring — Kind Of

Prior ATL coverage of no offers

Yesterday, we learned that Morgan, Lewis & Bockius came up with only one offer for the 17 second-year law students who summered in the firm’s D.C. office.

At Sidley Austin’s D.C. office, the news is very different. Above the Law has learned that Sidley D.C. is calling some of its incoming associates and asking them to start early. A Sidley-bound tipster reports:

Everybody in the D.C. office who expressed an interest has received a call from the D.C. office to start early — right after the Labor Day. Yay! Yay! Yay!

Sidley offered a voluntary deferral option to its incoming associates. The firm reports that about a third of their incoming class voluntarily decided to start in November 2010. The rest of the class is slated to begin work in November 2009. But a few people in D.C. will have the opportunity to start earning money even earlier. A Sidley spokesperson released this statement to Above the Law:

[A]bout 100 associates will start with the firm on November 16, 2009. Due to the needs of certain practice groups, a handful of fall associates will join the firm before November 16, 2009.

This is good news. Cherish it, my friends.

Earlier: News For Incoming Associates at Kirkland and Sidley Austin
Nationwide No Offer Watch: Zero Offer Extended At Morgan Lewis D.C.