One of the nice things about being a Biglaw lawyer is that you’ve got some autonomy over your schedule. You know how much work you have to do, and you know when it’s due, and within those borders you can manage your own time. If you want to come in a little bit later and stay a little it later, so be it. If you want to come in super early… well, you’re probably still going to end up staying late because of some BS that happens at 4:30 p.m., but after you bill 100 hours in a week, you can probably take it really easy once your matter closes.
The point is, Biglaw lawyers have the expectation of being treated like adults when it comes to their own time management.
So it’s a little bit surprising that a Biglaw firm is treating associates in one office like little children who need to be present when attendance is taken….
* “This is a total victory not just for the C.F.T.C., but also for financial reform.” Regulators, mount up, because you basically just got a free pass to do your jobs and keep a more watchful and vigilant eye on Wall Street. [DealBook / New York Times]
* Last year, China officially surpassed the United States in terms of the number of patent applications filed. China’s probably surpassed the United States in terms of patents infringed, but that’s neither here nor there. [National Law Journal]
* And now we see why St. Louis University School of Law’s interim dean said he’d be donating his salary to the school. He’s no “butt boy” — he’s settled $25M worth of cases since the fall. [Madison-St. Clair Record]
* “Help me, I’m poor”: the Huffington Post’s army of unpaid bloggers will continue to be unpaid, because the Second Circuit recently affirmed the S.D.N.Y.’s decision to toss out their case. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]
* Diane von Furstenberg, the fashion designer behind luxury brand DVF, is suing an ex-distributor for selling her wares on the cheap to the likes of TJ Maxx and Marshalls. Ugh, cringe… that’s très déclassé. [Bloomberg]
* Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which is the fairest firm of them all? According to the 2012 Acritas Brand Index survey, the current leader of the Global 100 is the most powerful Biglaw brand for the fifth year in a row. [American Lawyer]
* But that might not last for long, considering the dilemma Baker & McKenzie is facing when it comes to joining the Shanghai Bar Association in China. The firm is one of the first to indicate that it’ll take the plunge. [Wall Street Journal]
* Thanks to the Second Circuit, Rajat Gupta will be a free man on bail pending the appeal of his insider trading conviction. We wonder what Benula Bensam would have to say about this new twist. [DealBook / New York Times]
* Jason Smiekel, the lawyer who pleaded guilty in a murder-for-hire plot involving a former client, was sentenced to eight and a half years in federal prison. The things men will do for HHHBs. [Chicago Tribune]
* Student loan payments: coming to a paycheck deduction near you! Congress is considering an overhaul of the country’s student debt collection practices, and Rep. Tom Petri has some interesting ideas. [Bloomberg]
* The Cleveland-Marshall College of Law is the latest school to hop aboard the solo practice incubator train, but graduates will have to rent their office space from the school. Nice. /sarcasm [National Law Journal]
* “We didn’t file this complaint lightly.” Sorry, Judge Norman, but as it turns out, you can’t just sentence a teenager to attend church for 10 years as a condition of parole without pissing off the ACLU. [Tulsa World]
* When your alterations cost more than your wedding gown, it’s pretty much a given that you’ll have some problems — ones worth suing over, if you’re a true bridezilla (like moi). [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
If you’re not familiar with Wendy Williams, we’ll tell you a thing or two about her: this “shock jockette” claims to be the “Queen of All Media,” she has her own syndicated talk show, she’s been known to pull her insider information about the stars she interviews out of her own rear end, and she’s even got a few rappers dropping beats in an attempt to shut her up. And because nothing says classy like purchasing fashion goods hawked at 3 a.m. on TV, we’d be remiss if we forgot to mention Williams’s line of shoes and other accessories, sold exclusively by QVC.
As it turns out, Williams is having a bit of legal trouble with the Chinese manufacturing firm that’s likely gluing her new shoe line together with the tears of underpaid children. It seems that Williams’s Chinese cobblers would like to get paid, so much so that they’re fiercely protesting and even taking hostages, all over some peep-toe shoes with heels dangerously high enough to qualify for instant stripper status in most polite social circles.
Staci Riordan, a partner at Fox Rothschild who runs the firm’s Fashion Law Blog (and who also spells her name in the most fabulous of ways, might we add), is representing manufacturer Max Harvest, in their shoe problems against the media queen, while Ken Schulman of Pryor Cashman is representing Williams. And unfortunately for Williams, “things don’t work in China the way they work in the United States….”
* Check out the absurd rules governing tonight’s presidential debate. Should make for some awesome boring-as-hell television. And yes, of course the rules document was signed by lawyers. [Gawker]
* Chinese politics is starting to adversely affect American law firms. Next thing you know, attorneys will be hiding out in the woods, drinking deer blood. Oh wait, that kind of already happened. [Asian Lawyer]
* This is a newly released video of NYPD kicking the ever-loving sh*t out of a homeless man, who was inexplicably charged with assaulting the officer who, again, beat him up on video. Inside a synagogue. Where the man was sleeping. With permission. Can’t wait to see the lawsuit that comes out of this. [Gothamist]
* SCOTUS has agreed to review the Arizona voter law. Oh goodie. [WSJ Law Blog]
* This San Francisco attorney had a nice visit to the up-and-coming superpower across the Pacific. And by “nice,” I mean the Chinese tried to kill him and the U.S. State Department made things worse. [San Francisco Chronicle]
* I’m sure there’s some sort of serious social commentary here about how gay marriage is good or bad, but I can’t figure out what it would be. Either way, this poor kid has had quite the rough go of it. [Althouse]
* Monster Energy Drinks are under investigation from an as-yet unnamed state attorney general. Because apparently some people were unaware that drinking something that looks like liquid uranium may be unhealthy. [About Lawsuits]
* The suspect in this multimillion-dollar scam graduated from Harvard Law in 1972. You stay classy, Cambridge. [ABC]
* Glenn Reynolds explains why everyone just needs to suck it up and pay income taxes. [Instapundit]
* Justice Scalia is interviewed again about his new book. Shockingly, no one took any shots at Judge Posner this time! [LA Review of Books]
Everyone knows lawyers make mad bank. That’s why you become a lawyer, right? Or, maybe they don’t always get super rich, but they usually do. Wait… lawyers used to always get super wealthy, but now not so much.
Dammit, now I’m all turned around. Point is, however much attorneys make in the U.S., how does it compare to lawyers across the rest of the world? Without further ado, check out our Infographic of the Day….
If I were sitting in a bar and a guy wearing overalls sat down next to me and said with a Southern accent, “You know, in China, rich people hire body doubles to stand in for them at criminal trials,” I’d say “shut up, you racist prick. They don’t all look alike.”
At that point the apocryphal redneck would whip out a copy of Slate (on his iPad, cause print is dead) and say “Git R done” and order a cold domestic beer while I read the Slate piece and tried to pick up pieces of my shattered mind out of my gin and tonic.
Because in China, powerful and wealthy people do in fact hire body doubles. It’s not an urban legend. It goes down often enough that the police were willing to talk about it, anonymously of course.
* A manager at a Long Island-based national women’s organization has been sued by her female coworkers for allegedly being too grabby and being “obsessed with butts.” Not sure what to think about the lawsuit, but you can’t really complain about the photo of the manager motorboating her (also female) friend included with the story. [New York Post]
* The organizers of the London Olympics are concerned about getting hacked. So like any smart business, they employed a legion of hackers (pardon me, “ethical hackers”) to protect their systems. [IT-Lex]
* In other Olympic news, Congress is PO’d that the American Olympic team uniforms were made in China. As Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit points out, though, the real problem is that they are ugly as hell. [Christian Science Monitor via Instapundit]
* George Zimmerman wants another new judge because he claims this one is “prejudiced against him.” Sorry, but judges aren’t like Magic cards, you can’t continue to trade up. [Big Story / Associated Press]
* You gotta fight / for your right / to flip the bird at the 5-0. (That said, assuming you have said right, it doesn’t make it a good idea.) [New York Magazine]
* Handbags at dawn: can’t get enough of the Gucci v. Guess case? Take a look at some comprehensive analysis on this fashion law showdown. [Law of Fashion]
* A state judge in Pennsylvania ruled that discovery of private content on Facebook is only “minimally intrusive.” In other words, if you still hadn’t heard, the “private” stuff you put on Facebook is really anything but. [CPR Law Blog]
It’s Friday, and I’m going camping for the weekend. After the jump, check out a video of where I’m going….
What is the deal with Biglaw partners and getting in trouble for drinking and driving? Just yesterday, we wrote about a Winston & Strawn partner and would-be ambassador to the Netherlands whose nomination was scuttled after getting charged with a DUI. And many of you are familiar with the unfortunate drinking-related courtroom escapades of Laura L. Flippin of DLA Piper.
The newest partner drinking story comes to us from the Far East. This Biglaw partner was not only allegedly driving under the influence, but he apparently crashed his fancy sports car in the process….
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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One of the nice things about being a Biglaw lawyer is that you’ve got some autonomy over your schedule. You know how much work you have to do, and you know when it’s due, and within those borders you can manage your own time. If you want to come in a little bit later and stay a little it later, so be it. If you want to come in super early… well, you’re probably still going to end up staying late because of some BS that happens at 4:30 p.m., but after you bill 100 hours in a week, you can probably take it really easy once your matter closes. 
