Cleary Gottlieb

Which Law Firms Are Most Diverse? Let’s Look at the Rankings

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An old white male and his younger diverse peeps.

Law firm diversity matters. It matters to corporate clients, many of them public companies that want to demonstrate their commitment to diversity through their selection of vendors and service providers — which is what law firms are, at the end of the day. It matters to the law students and lawyers that firms are trying to recruit — which is the premise behind the data collection conducted by Building A Better Legal Profession.

So there should be keen interest in the latest edition of the American Lawyer’s Diversity Scorecard 2011, which the magazine just released. As Am Law explains, the Scorecard constitutes its annual ranking of large law firms by their percentage of minority attorneys and minority partners.

Let’s take a look at the top firms for diversity. Did your firm make the list?

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Associate Bonus Watch: Cleary Raises to Cravath Spring Bonus Scale

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This news shouldn’t come as a shock, since all the cool kids are doing it. But for the record, Cleary Gottlieb will be paying spring bonuses, following the top-of-the-market Cravath scale.

Cleary had previously announced spring bonuses on the Sullivan & Cromwell scale. In fact, CGSH was one of the first firms to follow S&C’s lead. But now that S&C’s spring bonus scale has been eclipsed, Cleary is stepping up to the plate and matching Cravath.

The news was announced today at an associate lunch, where Above the Law got a little shout-out….

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Associate Bonus Watch: Cravath Enters the Bonus Wars — and Beats S&C!

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The venerable firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore — still widely regarded as setting the market for associate compensation at large law firms, even if other places pay more — has announced springtime bonuses. These bonuses are on top of the recent year-end bonuses that Cravath paid in December 2010.

And get this: the CSM bonuses are higher than the spring bonuses previously announced by Sullivan & Cromwell. Wow!!!

For the classes of 2010 though 2008, the bonuses are on the S&C scale. But for the class of 2007 on up (more senior), the Cravath bonuses are more generous than SullCrom’s.

It seems that Cravath has gotten the memo: Cachet is nice, but cash is nicer.

So how generous are the Cravath bonuses for the more senior classes?

UPDATE (8:45 PM): After the jump, we have added a table comparing the Cravath total bonus to the Sullivan & Cromwell / Simpson Thacher / Cleary Gottlieb total bonus.

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Associate Bonus Watch: Cleary Gottlieb Matches S&C Spring Bonuses!

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Springtime for Hitler? No, silly — Springtime for Associate Bonuses! And just like the (in)famous “show within a show” from The Producers, this production is a huge hit.

This afternoon, Cleary Gottlieb announced spring bonuses on the Sullivan & Cromwell scale. They’re payable on April 29, just like those of Simpson Thacher.

What else is there to say?

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Yale Law Prof Amy Chua Backs Away from Controversial Claims About Superiority of Chinese Mothers

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Amy Chua

If you’re going to be a diva, then own it. Was this lesson lost on Yale law professor Amy Chua, the author of an incendiary essay in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, and a new book about Eastern versus Western parenting styles, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother?

Professor Chua seems to have it all: brains and beauty; an incredible academic career, with an endowed chair at Yale Law School; a hunky husband, fellow YLS prof Jed Rubenfeld; and two lovely and accomplished daughters. (Speaking of Chua’s kids, does anyone know where her oldest girl, Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, is attending, or applying to attend, college? To Asian parents, sending a child to a top college is the ultimate vindication.)

Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld

But Amy Chua may need to work on her bitch-goddess qualities. After her controversial essay about the superiority of Chinese mothers and hard-ass Asian parenting set the blogosphere on fire — and sent her book rocketing to #5 on the Amazon bestseller list — Chua backtracked a bit, instead of defiantly standing her ground.

In interviews with the San Francisco Chronicle, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, among other outlets, the self-proclaimed “Tiger Mom” seemed to turn into a pussycat….

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Associate Bonus Watch: Cleary Matches Cravath

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Are we really going to live in a world where the firms that consistently rank highest on the Vault surveys are paying a smaller bonus than the firms just one tier down? Are we really going to live in a world where partnerships at Cravath, Skadden, and Davis Polk are paying smaller bonuses to many of their people than Kirkland, Sidley, and Cahill?

Perhaps so. Cleary Gottlieb just announced its bonus scale, and the firm is doing its part to keep the associate bonus market as low as possible. It’s a straight match of Cravath….

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A Look at New Partner Classes at Ten Top Firms (and an Open Thread)

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Partnership: the proverbial brass ring.

‘Tis the season — for new partner elections at large law firms. Although there are some exceptions, most firms pick and announce their new partner classes around November and December, with partnership effective on January 1 of the following year.

These partnership announcements sometimes contain interesting information, if you read between the lines. As we’ve previously observed, “Partnership decisions often shed light on the current state of a firm, its prospects for the future, and its priorities. How many new partners did a firm make? How does the number of new partners this year compare to past years? In which practice areas did it make new partners? How many of the new partners are women or minorities?”

After the jump, we look at new partner news from ten top firms — perhaps you know some of these law firm superstars (and soon-to-be millionaires)? — and we invite you to discuss the new partners at your firm….

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Who Represents Corporate America?

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Now this is a list that matters. Corporate Counsel (an American Lawyer publication) has complied its annual list of the firms that Fortune 100 companies use as outside counsel. This is a list of which firms are getting work from clients with deep pockets. If you care at all about the business end of the law, then you care about this list.

And while the firms that are tapped for this kind of work won’t surprise anybody, it’s always good to take a look at who clients want to be with.

For general corporate law, these are the firms that were mentioned most by clients reporting to the magazine:

Cleary: 12 mentions
Davis Polk: 11 mentions
Cravath: 10 mentions
Simpson Thacher: 10 mentions

Yep, no real surprises there.

But what about some other practice areas? Well, the names start to change…

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Welcome, Summer Associates! We’re Glad You’re Here, But Clients Aren’t.

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It’s summer time! A lucky few are being paid to warm seats in law firms across the land. (Very few — thanks to the minimal numbers of offers extended to law students in Recession Land.)

Some firms are very excited about their summer associates, to the point of issuing press releases about them. Firms are planning fun events. Hopefully, Williams & Connolly offers cooking classes at a culinary institute again this summer (for those who don’t get offers and may not be able to afford to eat out one day). We’ve got a round-up of our favorite summer “happenings,” after the jump.

But one thing firms may not plan to do this year is bill for summer associates’ time. Nate Raymond reports in the New York Law Journal that Citigroup Inc. has told its outside counsel that it will not pay for law students’ time. Citi does not stand alone:

J. William Dantzler Jr., a tax partner at White & Case who oversees hiring in New York, said with regard to billing clients for summer associates, it has been “a slide for 10 years.”

“More and more clients don’t want summer associates to bill to them,” he said. “When I started almost all clients would accept it. And it’s evolved to where a lot of clients don’t.”

Ironically, because of the huge decline in the number of summers brought in, they’re more likely to actually do substantive work this year. One Biglaw firm, for example, instituted a requirement last year that every summer associate produce at least one piece of seriously impressive legal writing. Which firm is it?

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Law Firm Facebook Pages Reveal How Associates Really Feel

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Earlier this year, in one of its many format changes, Facebook forced users to make their profile info more public via Community Pages. Facebook created pages based on users’ lists of interests, jobs, and favorite things to help people find others “who share similar interests and experiences.”

So if you, for example, listed “document review” as something you like, you’d be a member of this page. And maybe this page too.

One issue discussed in some circles was the potential trademark violation in Facebook’s automatically creating and populating Community pages for businesses and brands. Another issue picked up by the National Law Journal was that some of the Community Pages created aren’t very flattering to law firms.

If you listed your employment as “Slave” at Skadden Arps, for example, you’re responsible for this page:

What are some of the other interesting law firm-affiliated Community Pages on Facebook?

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