Ed. note: Welcome to ATL’s first foray into serial fiction. “My Job Is Murder,” a mystery set in a D.C. appellate boutique, will appear one chapter at a time, M-W-F, over the next few weeks. Prior installments appear here; please read them first.

Susanna Dokupil can be reached by email at sdokupil@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook.

Katarina grabbed her oversized purse and tossed a long red scarf around her neck. Tyler noticed a copy of Atlas Shrugged peeking out of it. Alignment: Libertarian. And geeky. Only true bookworms manage to slog through all 1000+-pages of Ayn Rand’s magnum opus.

“So what kind of law do you want to practice?” Tyler asked as they walked. He groaned inwardly for asking such a stock question.

“Litigation, probably appellate,” she replied. “I’m especially interested in constitutional questions.”

Tyler sensed a liberal arts background and good grades in law school. “And what was your college major?”

“Archaeology. I have my master’s degree in Near Eastern Art and Archaeology from the University of Chicago.”

Precisely, thought Tyler.

The Above the Law inbox has been on fire all morning as disgruntled (former) Schulte Roth & Zabel associates share some bad news:

Yet more lay-offs: Two groups — 13 associates so far — real estate and business transactions.

Other tipsters have used the same ominous language: “13 associates, so far.” Are there more people that are going to get the bad news from Schulte today? The firm did not respond to our request for comment, so we suppose other Schulte associates will just have to wait and see.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before we worry about how many more pink slips might be handed out today, let’s take a moment to look at the 13 we know of that have already been let go.

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.

As we mentioned earlier this week, Steve Sanders — a fourth-year associate at Mayer Brown, no relation to the 90210 character — argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday.

When we emailed him on Wednesday to set up an interview, we received this rather straightforward Out of Office message:

I’ll be traveling on client and professional business Monday, 11/2 through Saturday, 11/7. I will have access to email, but my response may be delayed. Thanks.

How modest! If we had been in Sanders’s shoes, we would have used this Out of Office auto-reply:

Oyez, bitchez!!! Today I’m arguing before the freakin’ Supreme Court of the United States.
Later, haters!!!

But that’s not Steve Sanders’s style. He is dignified and professional, as we discovered when we caught up with him by phone after his argument.

Today the winners of Lawyer of the Day honors are obvious. Congratulations to Arthur Cutillo, Michael Kimelman, and Jason Goldbfarb, three attorneys who stand accused of involvement in the infamous Galleon Group insider trading scheme.

Both Cutillo and Kimelman have distinguished pedigrees, with ties to two top firms. Cutillo (left), a holder of an M.S. in chemical engineering as well as a J.D. (both from Villanova), was an associate at the white-shoe firm of Ropes & Gray. Kimelman (right), a partner at Incremental Capital LLC, once worked as an associate at super-prestigious Sullivan & Cromwell. Check out Cutillo’s firm bio and Kimelman’s LinkedIn profile over here.

The third charged lawyer, Jason Goldfarb, apparently worked as a personal injury lawyer in Brooklyn. He allegedly served as a conduit of information between Cutillo and Zvi Goffer — the former Galleon employee apparently referred to as “Octopussy” at the SEC, because “he had his arms in so many insider” trading schemes.

More on our three honorees, after the jump.

We’ve talked a lot about law schools that are raising tuition. It borders on unconscionable for schools to pump up tuition at a time of deflationary legal salaries and a difficult job market.

So I was a little surprised when I received this email from a University of Miami School of Law student:

The Dean of UM just sent out an email announcing policy changes that are going to save students’ tuition money (up to a couple thousand $$$ per semester). This while other law school in America is trying to milk every last cent out of students.

A law school that costs less? To the bat mobile!

At first blush, the judgment awarded to the parents of a fallen baseball player is enough to make a tort reformer vomit. The Helena Independent Record reports (gavel bang: Overlawyered):

After 12 hours of deliberation, a jury sided with the parents of former Miles City American Legion baseball pitcher Brandon Patch in a civil suit over the player’s death during a 2003 game in Helena.

Aluminum bat maker Hillerich & Bradsby Co. failed to provide adequate warning as to the dangers of the bat used by a Helena Senators player during the game, at least eight of the 12 Lewis and Clark County jurors agreed Wednesday.

Hillerich & Bradsby Co. was ordered to pay $792,000 to Patch’s estate, which is represented by his mother, Debbie Patch, who filed the suit.

The jury felt the bat makers should have had some kind of warning about the dangers of batted balls at high speeds.

Seriously? On first blush, this verdict makes me want to hunt down jury members, scream “warning, terrible judgments could result in you getting hit with a bat,” and play pepper using their eyeballs.

But in my homicidal fantasy, I’m hitting eyeball grounders with a wooden bat, not an aluminum one. Are aluminum bats different, in a way that might partially explain the verdict?

More details after the jump.

Congratulations to Caroline Nyenke and LaRue Robinson, selected by ATL readers as our August Couple of the Month in a close race. Things were a bit more lopsided in our September Couple of the Month poll, as SCOTUS clerks and lovebirds Karen Dunn and Brian Netter took the crown with 40 percent of the vote. Both couples will compete for Couple of the Year honors in a few months.

Now, this week’s contestants:

1. Molly Rusten and Peter Rosen

2. Xixi Yin and Edward Amley Jr.

3. Simrin Parmar and John Bennett

Check out these newlyweds’ pictures and bios, after the jump.

As tends to be the case every year, August and September were fabulously prestigious months here on the Legal Eagle Wedding Watch. Three SCOTUS clerks were featured in this space during that period (two in the same announcement!), as well as a minor AutoAdmit celebrity, an astrophysicist, and Biglaw names like Cravath, Mayer, Jenner, and Covington.

Today, we’re asking readers to sort through all this excellence and choose the two most impressive couples of the bunch to advance to the Couple of the Year round.

After the jump, you’ll find recaps of our write-ups on each set of newlyweds, as well as two reader polls, one for each month. Voting ends on Thursday at midnight; we’ll announce the winners on Friday.

Keith Bardwell — justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana — is receiving a lot of criticism today. I don’t know why. All he did was deny marriage license to people he didn’t think should be married. Sure, he has a traditional view of marriage that is not shared by everybody, but what is the problem with that? Bardwell explains his case to the Associated Press:

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

“There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage,” Bardwell said. “I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it.”

See, Bardwell isn’t a bigot. Oh no, he’s got “piles and piles” of friends! He’s just defending a traditional view of marriage that most people believed in centuries ago. I’m sure other defenders of outmoded conceptions of marriage will rush to Mr. Bardwell’s defense.

Let’s check out the reaction after the jump.

Last week we wrote about the move of prominent D.C. lawyers Lanny Davis and Eileen O’Connor from Orrick to McDermott Will & Emery. Am Law Daily described the jump as follows: “Lanny Davis, a longtime Washington, D.C., lawyer who supported Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and was a fraternity brother of George W. Bush, is taking his unique practice from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe to McDermott, Will & Emery.”

It’s not the case, however, that the entire practice moved. As noted by one commenter, the rest of the legal strategic and crisis management practice remained with Orrick. Consistent with this, an Orrick spokesperson issued the following statement to ATL:

We wish Lanny and Eileen well, but Orrick’s law, policy, media, and crisis management practice remains vibrant and strong with continuing plans for expansion and will keep delivering its unique blend of legal, public relations and government affairs counsel to our clients around the world.

Remaining at Orrick are partners Adam Goldberg, who was co-chair of the practice with Davis, and Joshua Galper. Goldberg and Galper will head the practice going forward. In addition, the associates who work in and with the law, policy and media group are staying at Orrick.

As for clients, it’s not yet clear which ones will stay with Orrick and which will move to McDermott. “Thankfully, this is a practice where we’ve always had plenty of work, so that’s not an issue,” Galper said. (We’d guess, however, that certain clients closely tied to Davis — like CEAL, the Honduras business group supporting the coup in that country — will travel with him.)

Get to know Messrs. Galper and Goldberg, and read more about Orrick’s very interesting and unusual practice area, after the jump.

In an environment where hours are scarce, a new report shows that white attorneys are coming out on top. A new survey suggests that African-American attorneys — and minority attorneys in general — are experiencing a greater pinch for hours than their white counterparts. The Minority Law Journal reports:

[M]inority lawyers surveyed said they posted fewer billable hours on average last year than their white counterparts. The average hours billed figure in 2008 was 1,862 for black midlevels, 1,925 for Asian Americans, 1,965 for Hispanics, and 1,976 for whites. And minority lawyers are unlikely to boost their relative output much in 2009. Projected billables for this year were just under 1,825 hours for Asian Americans and African Americans, about 1,840 for Hispanics, and roughly 1,890 for whites.

Hours are low all over, but these numbers indicate the pain is not being shared equally.

Are minority attorneys being “out-hustled” for work, or are these numbers just another manifestation of the old boys’ network?

More numbers from the report after the jump.

The stalk-and-eventually-marry-your-doorman phenomenon continues to enthrall the NYT weddings editors. This week they shine the spotlight on yet another bride — this time a producer at CNN — who found love in the lobby. LEWW encourages female Biglaw associates to embrace this trend. You’re in and out of office buildings all day, ladies — open your eyes to the lusciousness perched behind those security desks!

And now, this week’s finalist couples:

1. Monique Mendez and Graham O’Donoghue

2. Ashlee Conley and Andrew Veit

3. Anne Claiborne and Andrew Grotto

Read all about these newlyweds, after the jump.

Thomas O’Brien is the former U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. He recently joined Paul Hastings, which trumpeted his arrival in a press release. Tom O’Brien is a public figure — he used to be the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate — so he’s used to a little public scrutiny.

But O’Brien couldn’t have been prepared for what happened when his girlfriend’s estranged husband took an unauthorized stroll through her email inbox. The husband found emails between O’Brien and his wife, and they didn’t make him happy.

Instead of handling the situation like a rational adult, the husband — we’ll call him “Ken” — decided to bombard the professional networks of both O’Brien and his wife (also an attorney) with the “pillow talk” emails he discovered. Ken attempted to cast the relationship between O’Brien and his (Ken’s) wife as an affair.

This is not the first time such a thing has happened. Back in 2008, the New York Times reported on a husband’s similar vendetta against a successful Wall Street banker, carried out online. Earlier this year, as Above the Law readers may recall, a cuckolded husband emailed sexting messages between his wife and a White & Case attorney to all of the lawyers at White & Case in Miami.

Ken took this aggressive strategy one insane step further, apparently emailing every lawyer he could think of. You may have already received Ken’s emails, especially if you’re in California, from Ken himself or via email forward.

Is spamming an entire professional network the new revenge of the spurned lover? Are lawyers, as members of a profession that is surprisingly small and highly reputation-conscious, especially vulnerable to this tactic? Does this approach actually work?

After the jump, let’s look at the offense and the (over)reaction.

Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Notes from the Breadline,” a column by a laid-off lawyer in New York. Prior columns are collected here. You can reach Roxana St. Thomas by email (at roxanastthomas@gmail.com), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.

As many of you know, waiting is an integral part of life in the breadline. You send out résumés, and you wait. You make follow-up calls to prospective employers — and wait. You hear that the nation’s economic climate is improving, so (although you see no factual indicia that this is actually the case) you dust off your interview suits, submit applications … and wait. You vaguely remember what momentum feels like, and what it feels like to have a life that moves forward. You think about getting up and walking away, about leaving frustration and disappointment behind you. But instead, because you have no choice, you wait.

This interminable waiting, of anticipating an event that never materializes, can become so familiar that, after a while, it barely registers. It also becomes progressively harder to identify what, precisely, you are waiting for. Movement is suspended; growth is deferred. The only way to stave off inertia is by clinging to hope, no matter how vague or ephemeral it seems.

On that bright note, we bring you Notes from the Breadline Community Theater. Because adult professional life probably doesn’t leave you nearly enough time to reflect on life’s baffling futility through absurdist theater, our feature presentation is — you guessed it! — an adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” Since you all did so well on your Homework Assignments from the Breadline, you can go ahead and cheat on this one. The SparkNotes summary is here, and you can refresh your recollection of the text, in all its glory, here and here.

Now, dear readers, without further delay (hush! The house lights are going down!), we bring you “Waiting for Bono.”

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

We draft this column by starting with the relevant articles from the past week in the legal sector, then tying in the broader economic data. We were quite happy to see that the law-firm layoff numbers this week were good - perfect, in fact - a week without layoffs for just the second time this year (the other was the week ending August 14).

And we weren’t the only ones pleasantly surprised. For the third straight week, initial jobless claims declined, down to 530,000 against an anticipated 550,000. Continuing claims also declined, but as we’ve said repeatedly, that seems to be more the result of benefits running out and people giving up (which means they no longer count as unemployed, in a bizarre example of government logic), than actual job creation.

After the jump, we turn to the legal sector.

When we run caption contests here at ATL, we prefer to withhold the back story on the photo. However, this photo, and the story behind it, has gone viral. We’ve gotten it many times in tips — Thanks, tipsters! — and even our non-lawyer friends have been sending it to us.

We’re running a contest anyway, but we’ll give you the back story now… or after the jump rather. Same rules apply as always: Submit possible captions in the comments. We’ll choose our favorites — with preference given to those with a legal bent — and let you vote for the best one.

Here’s the photo of a bunch of legal types:

Think of a great caption. Write it down. Then check out the real and incredibly bizarre caption for this photo after the jump.

Oh happy day! It brings us news of a beloved figure who has been long absent from these pages: Monica Goodling, our favorite DOJ diva. And the news for Goodling, a high-ranking and influential official in the Bush Administration’s Justice Department, is good.

Remember the case of Gerlich v. U.S. Department of Justice, the putative class action brought by Honors Program rejects who claimed they weren’t hired for political reasons? Many of the claims, as brought by individual plaintiffs — a somewhat dodgy motion for class certification remains pending — have been resoundingly dismissed.

From the Washington Post:

A federal judge this week dismissed civil claims against former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, rejecting a lawsuit by job applicants who argue that they were blacklisted from the Justice Department during the Bush era because of their ideology.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates concluded that the unsuccessful job candidates had not followed the appropriate steps in the civil service system before filing their lawsuit in the District last year….

More discussion and links, after the jump.

We’re having a pretty gay Monday here at Above the Law. Earlier today, we discussed which top law firms won recognition from the Human Rights Campaign for being LGBT-friendly.

Perhaps we’ll still recovering from the weekend. As we mentioned before, we spent part of it attending the excellent Lavender Law conference, over in Brooklyn (just a short subway ride away from the ATL offices in Soho). In case you’re not familiar with the conference, here’s some background:

Every year, the sharpest legal minds in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community gather at the National LGBT Bar Association’s annual conference and career fair.

Hundreds of practicing attorneys, dozens of scholars, over 500 students and many leading members of the judiciary are expected to attend over the course of this year’s events.

We moderated a panel on Saturday, focused on federal courts and LGBT equality, and we attended several other panels and workshops. We’ll be writing a bit about the conference proceedings.

Our first conference write-up — discussing the workshop Coming Out in the Profession: “But What Will the Clients Think?”, which may interest young LGBT attorneys — appears after the jump.

LEWW’s memory isn’t what it once was, but we can’t recall a stronger week in legal nuptials than this one. All six of our featured newlyweds are truly impressive, and a few are even interesting! And not to give anything away, but if you love SCOTUS clerks (and oh, we do!) prepare to curl your toes in ecstasy.

Here are our finalists:

1. Lee Bickley and Martin Carr

2. Betsy Anderson and David Gottlieb

3. Karen Dunn and Brian Netter

Join us in evaluating these couples, after the jump.