In the interest of completeness, here are a few quick postscripts to stories that we previously covered in these pages, but didn't get around to mentioning during the craziness of last week. They come from the National Law Journal and/or the WSJ Law Blog.

1. Judge Robert Somma: The cross-dressing former bankruptcy judge (at right), who resigned from the bench after a drunk driving arrest, has joined the bankruptcy practice of Posternak Blankstein & Lund, a midsize firm based in Boston, as senior counsel. [National Law Journal; WSJ Law Blog]

2. American Justice School of Law: This defunct Kentucky law school, which in 2007 was hit with a class action filed by some of its students, has filed for bankruptcy. [National Law Journal; WSJ Law Blog]

3. L'Affaire Kozinski: The panel of federal judges from the Third Circuit investigating Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski (at right) has retained Robert Heim, head of litigation at Dechert, to oversee the probe (which will be staffed by lawyers from Dechert and Morgan Lewis & Bockius). [National Law Journal; WSJ Law Blog]

4. University of Michigan's Wolverine Scholars Program: Sarah Zearfoss, dean of admissions at UM Law, has defended the program against allegations that it's an attempt to game the U.S. News rankings. She pointed out that the program is small, likely to result in the admission of just five to ten students (out of a class of 360), and that very few UM undergrads (about 200) would even be eligible for it. [WSJ Law Blog]

We're entering the second half of the Vault 100. This is part of a series of open threads to discuss the firms considered to be the profession's most prestigious. Because we know you love prestige. And the opportunity for "TTT" accusations. [FN1]

Here's the next bunch of firms, with prestige scores in parentheses:

51. Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP (5.851)
52. Dechert LLP (5.838)
53. Vinson & Elkins LLP (5.822)
54. Goodwin Procter LLP (5.815)
55. Jenner & Block LLP (5.778)
56. Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP (5.728)
57. Alston & Bird LLP (5.715)
58. Fish & Richardson P.C. (5.706)
59. Cooley Godward LLP (5.692)
60. Irell & Manella LLP (5.635)

Vault notes that attorneys at Pillsbury are treated to "freshly baked cookies." But they also have to put up with being referred to as "Pillsburians" by Vault.

Compare, contrast, discuss... and if you're at Pillsbury, have a chocolate chip cookie for us.

Earlier: Vault 100 Open Threads - 2009

[FN1] We periodically get e-mails asking for the definition of "TTT," which appears so often in comment threads. As the uninitiated have surely gathered, it's a derogatory term. Likely originating on AutoAdmit, it stands for "third tier toilet." For more, see Urban Dictionary.

We're eagerly awaiting the end of the Supreme Court's 2007-2008 Term -- not because of all the sexy end-of-Term opinions, but because we're hoping the SCOTUS clerk nuptial action will pick up! It's been far too long since one of the Elect has graced this space. We haven't even seen a truly top-grade circuit clerkship in a while.

So finish up those sexy opinions, SCOTUS clerks, and then get to work penning your bragadocious NYT wedding announcements! Until then, here are this week's outstanding finalists:

1. Kimberly Wilson and Michael Portnoy

2. Noraan Sadik and Stephen Haskins

3. Maya Stowe and Daniel Silver

4. Alyssa Saunders and Eric Trager

5. Kristin Silverberg and Paul Lettow

Read all about these newlyweds, after the jump.

With apologies for the delay, here's our promised update on the situation over at Dechert LLP.

As we mentioned last Friday, back in this post (and its multiple updates), it looked like Dechert laid off 13 lawyers in its Finance and Real Estate practice ("FRE"). Then firm chairman Barton Winokur sent out this message, late on Friday afternoon:

Due to the major shift in market conditions affecting client demands in our Finance and Real Estate practice area, we currently do not have sufficient work for all the associates in FRE. As a consequence, we have told 13 associates in the U.S. FRE group that we see no demand for them in that group in the foreseeable future. However, due to increased and substantial demand in other practice areas, we will be offering those lawyers the opportunity to work in those other groups.

We think we've gotten to the bottom of what happened to the Dechert 13. And we've picked up a few other tidbits about the situation over there.

Read more, after the jump.

Don't believe everything you read in these pages. If a gossip site isn't flat-out wrong a sizable percentage of the time, it's not sufficiently gossipy.

But we were right about something being afoot at Dechert LLP. This morning we wrote:

We've been hearing vague rumblings of something about to go down over at Dechert LLP. Said rumblings are reminiscent of what we heard in the days and hours leading up to Cadwalader's Thursday Morning Massacre....

We hear that certain groups at Dechert are super-slow, and morale in some quarters is super-low. These are, of course, often harbingers of lawyer layoffs.

Now we learn this, from Gina Passarella in the Legal Intelligencer:

The slowing economy has hit home at Dechert which has just let go 13 associates strictly in its finance and real estate practice, according to a source inside the firm....

Dechert has given the 13 associates, who have worked in Dechert offices throughout the United States, until the close of business Tuesday to leave. No one was asked to leave Friday, the source said....

There were no additional layoffs prior to today, but some attorneys were shifted into other practice areas, the firm source said. The layoffs comprise less than 10 percent of the 167 attorneys listed in Dechert's finance and real estate practice, which includes mortgage finance, structured finance and securitization, investment, and mergers and acquisitions.

The attorneys who are leaving were offered three months severance, six months of paid medical benefits and transition placement support, the source said.

Three months seems to be "market" in terms of severance. There was some fear that laid-off Dechert associates were going to get less.

ATL gets a shout-out in the piece:

Legal blog Above The Law has reported extensively on associate and staff layoffs across the country. The reports included associate layoffs at Thacher Proffitt, Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft and Clifford Chance, mainly in the structured finance, real estate and capital markets practices of those firms.

Today, Above The Law posted a blog on rumors of low morale at Dechert, questioning whether layoffs were imminent.

The article closes with a helpful overview of the layoff landscape:

Dechert's news puts the U.S. legal scene over the 100-attorney mark in terms of attorney layoffs and offered buyouts this economic cycle. According to data collected by The American Lawyer, 35 attorneys were laid off at Cadwalader Wickersham; 24 Thacher Proffitt mid-levels were offered buyouts plus an additional five first-years took optional buyouts; six Clifford Chance associates were laid off and 23 associates at McKee Nelson took buyouts.

Check out the full article, which also discusses Dechert's record-setting year in 2007 -- $836 million in gross revenue, and more than $2.3 million in profits per equity partner -- by clicking here.

Update (5:15 PM): Okay, we're confused. We just received this email, sent out by firm chairman Barton Winokur, and forwarded to us by a Dechert source. Our source had heard that the 13 were being laid off. But this email implies otherwise:

From: Winokur, Barton
Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 4:37 PM
To: ALL Dechert Users
Subject:

Due to the major shift in market conditions affecting client demands in our Finance and Real Estate practice area, we currently do not have sufficient work for all the associates in FRE. As a consequence, we have told 13 associates in the U.S. FRE group that we see no demand for them in that group in the foreseeable future. However, due to increased and substantial demand in other practice areas, we will be offering those lawyers the opportunity to work in those other groups.

Barton J. Winokur
Dechert LLP

Update (5:40 PM): We have reached out to Barton Winokur for clarification. We will let you know if and when he gets back to us.

Update (6:20 PM): The Legal Intelligencer has revised its piece somewhat, in light of the Winokur email:

The slowing economy has hit home at Dechert which just issued layoff notices to 13 associates strictly in its finance and real estate practice, according to a source inside the firm.

Shortly after the firm confirmed the planned layoffs, the source said Chairman Barton J. Winokur issued a statement that the firm would then offer the 13 associates positions in other practice groups. [Reprints the email.]

There was no word as to whether those associates, who had been given severance packages, accepted the revised offer to switch practices.

Update (6:35 PM): We're hearing conflicting things about whether these 13 lawyers really are being given the opportunity to switch practice groups, or whether they're being laid off outright, with additional lawyers getting moved internally.

We will continue to monitor and report about what's going down at Dechert. If you can clarify this somewhat murky situation for us, please email us. Thanks.

Layoffs Hit Dechert Following Record Financial Year [Legal Intelligencer]

We've been hearing vague rumblings of something about to go down over at Dechert LLP. Said rumblings are reminiscent of what we heard in the days and hours leading up to Cadwalader's Thursday Morning Massacre. Also note this comment on today's Morning Docket:

Not all Dechert associates have three days to enter their time. Some will need to enter it before they leave the building today.

We hear that certain groups at Dechert are super-slow, and morale in some quarters is super-low. These are, of course, often harbingers of lawyer layoffs.

We've put in an inquiry to the firm, but they haven't gotten back to us yet. We'll let you know if and when they do. In the meantime, feel free to dish in the comments, or email us. Thanks.

Update (4:40 PM): As reported by the Legal Intelligencer, Dechert just laid off 13 associates. We have a new post up on the subject over here.

How can law firm administrators get associates to enter their time on time? Here's one idea: link time entry to those beloved bonuses.

From a source at Dechert:

Attached is an email that all the attorneys at Dechert LLP received today regarding associate bonuses and potential penalties. According to the policy outlined below, an associate's bonus may be reduced by up to 10% due to the late submission of billable time over the past year. I thought this might be of some interest to your readers.

We agree. Might this become a Biglaw trend? Nagging emails about timely time entry are easily ignored. Slashing bonuses, on the other hand, tends to grab associates' attention.

In fairness to the firm, it's worth noting that the policy is not super-draconian. Most of the bonus reductions were under 5 percent, and delinquent associates have the opportunity to redeem themselves: "[E]very associate whose 2007 bonus is reduced will have the opportunity to earn the amount of bonus reduction back, if he or she remains in good standing and complies fully with our time-recording policy in 2008."

Check out the full memo, after the jump.

Here's an open thread request we've received from multiple sources. A representative message:

I'm trying to gather more info about firms / offices that pay NYC salary + NYC bonus in secondary markets. For example, I believe that Weil and Skadden both do in Dallas and Houston, but none of the other firms in Texas do. I don't know if you've done a post about this before, but I think it might be interesting, because $205K goes really far in TX.

Skadden Wilmington is another possible example.

That's correct about Skadden in Wilmington. Another well-paying secondary market: Charlotte. A CLT tipster tells us: "Mayer Brown, Dechert, Dewey, and Cadwalader have all increased salaries to $160K here in Charlotte."

Hold on a sec -- Cadwalader? Didn't they just lay off 35 lawyers, including some in Charlotte?

Yes, they did -- but they also raised salaries for the survivors. More after the jump.

In last month's ATL / Lateral Link survey we asked you which holidays you worked on, or expected to work on, during 2007. About half of you reported that you had worked on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Last week, we asked you how you fared this year. Did you take the day off to honor a champion of civil rights, or did you make it a "day on"?

We received just under 1,300 responses, and 44% of you reported that you took the day off. Associates in New York, Los Angeles and Boston were most likely to celebrate the holiday, while associates in Chicago, Atlanta, the Bay Area, and Texas were most likely to be working. (Respondents in the Bay Area were also most likely to work over Christmas and New Year's. Is it time for them to get New York bonuses?)

How did it break down on a firm by firm basis? DLA Piper, Milbank, Sidley & Austin, Dechert, Hunton & Williams, Jones Day, Latham, Mayer Brown, McDermott, Hughes Hubbard, McGuire Woods, Morgan Lewis, Nixon Peabody, Paul Hastings, and Sullivan & Cromwell each had multiple happy associates who reported that they had taken the day off. Kirkland & Ellis, Baker Botts, Dewey & LeBoeuf, O'Melveny & Myers, Weil, and Winston & Strawn each had mixed responses. Associates at Skadden, however, uniformly reported that they had worked the holiday, as Martin Luther King Jr. day is a "floating" holiday for the firm.

Of those who spent the day at the office, about 54% reported that they weren't actually asked to work the holiday, but had things they needed to get done. About a quarter reported that their offices were open. Another quarter said that partners told them to work on the holiday. About 8% were asked to work by clients. A surprising number of respondents wrote in that other associates had told them to work on the holiday.

A little over a third of respondents who worked on the holiday thought that the work did not justify the sacrifice.

Who says the associate bonus news has dried up? Check out the latest announcement to make its way to our inbox:

LAW OFFICES OF DAVID C. MCGRAIL
676A Ninth Avenue #211, New York, NY 10036
Ph: (646) 290-6496 Fax: (646) 224-8377

MEMORANDUM TO ALL U.S. ATTORNEYS

November 8, 2007

We are delighted to announce that the Firm will pay special bonuses to all U.S. attorneys, in the amounts set forth below.

Class of 2000: $60,003

The special bonuses will supplement the Firm’s normal year-end U.S. bonuses. In lieu of special and year-end bonuses, U.S. attorneys may opt for a 100% equity stake in the Firm.

It is our pleasure to work with such an extraordinarily talented, quick-witted, well-read, handsome, modest group of lawyers. Thanks to your hard work, 2007 has been the Firm’s best year ever. While our securitization, antitrust, environmental, mass tort, tax, trust and estates, and patent litigation practices remain nonexistent, our bankruptcy/restructuring and general corporate practices have flourished. Profits are up infinity percent from 2006. We look forward to seeing you all and celebrating this year’s successes at the holiday party at “Go Sushi” on 51st and 9th.

The Firm urges you not to circulate this memo to muckraking legal tabloids such as Above the Law. We recognize that our special bonuses exceed those offered by Cravath and others, and we don’t want to hurt their feelings.

Law Offices of David McGrail [official website]

From a little bird, er, law clerk:

A friend going to Dechert in Philly informed me that this year's incoming class is receiving a $50k clerkship bonus.

Hearsay? Sure. But we then checked the Dechert website, which provides official confirmation:

Judicial Clerkship Bonus

Effective September 2007, we will pay a $50,000 clerkship bonus to incoming associates who join the firm upon completion of a federal court clerkship.

Are you aware of clerkship bonus news that we haven't previously reported? If so, please email us (subject line: "Clerkship Bonus Watch"). Thanks.

Careers: U.S. Laterals: Benefits [Dechert LLP]

We're surprised that the firms in this latest group of Vault 100 law firms aren't ranked more highly. Some of them are quite profitable (Dechert),* prestigious (Munger), or high-profile (Boies Schiller, home of legendary litigator David Boies).

But who are we to argue? For communal discussion, here is this morning's batch of Biglaws:

46. Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP (6.026)
47. Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP (6.004)
48. Dechert LLP (5.973)
49. Irell & Manella LLP (5.952)
50. McDermott, Will & Emery (5.946)

Please trade thoughts on these firms in the comments. Thanks.

* Dechert's 2006 profits per partner clocked in at just under $2 million. But it should be noted that the firm has multiple partnership tiers and only 169 equity partners (out of 898 lawyers).

The Vault Top 100 Law Firms [Vault]

Earlier: Vault 1-5; Vault 6-10; Vault 11-15; Vault 16-20; Vault 21-25; Vault 26-30; Vault 31-35; Vault 36-40; Vault 41-45

We've previously covered Denver and Hartford. Today our series of posts profiling associate compensation in various smaller legal markets -- smaller than New York or Washington or Los Angeles, at least -- turns to Philadelphia.

What's going on in the City of Brotherly Love? Based on some recent articles we've read, it seems that the standard starting salary in Philly hovers between $135,000 and $145,000.

At $135K: Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis; Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll; Duane Morris; Blank Rome; Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen; and DLA Piper.

At $145K: Morgan, Lewis & Bockius; Dechert; Drinker Biddle & Reath; and Pepper Hamilton.

Will Philly move to the $160K scale anytime soon? If so, when? And who will lead the charge?

In the cheesesteak metropolis, starting salaries aren't the only issue. Per a commenter:

[W]hen you do [Philadelphia], please make sure to point out our mid-level comp which sucks. We get about a 5k raise per year (though [in] some years we do get 10k but not most). After 7 years we're just clearing 200k.

Interesting -- and depressing. Is so-called "compression" higher up the seniority ladder a more pressing salary issue in Philly right now than the state of starting salaries?

Please discuss, in the comments. Thanks.

Hangley Aronchick Raises Associate Salaries to $135,000 [Legal Intelligencer (subscription)]
Pepper Hamilton Raising First-Year Associates' Salaries by $20,000 [Legal Intelligencer (subscription)]

If you care only about associate compensation in major legal markets, stop reading now; do not sully your eyes with this post. But if you have an interest in what associates make outside the biggest cities, keep reading.

Yesterday we covered Denver, to kick off what one commenter described as "Mid-Market Salary Mania." Today we shine the spotlight on Hartford -- aka "New England's Rising Star" -- and Connecticut more generally.

From the Connecticut Law Tribune (subscription):

In the wake of a flurry of first-year salary hikes, two more national firms recently announced pay raises in their Hartford, Conn., branch offices. Their compensation philosophies are starkly different, however.

Dechert increased its Hartford starting salaries in mid-February to $145,000 to match those in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Newport Beach, Calif., and Washington, D.C....

Meanwhile, Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner bumped its entry-level salaries in late February to $105,000 in Hartford, up from $97,500 the year before. That followed an earlier announcement from the firm that it increased rookie compensation to $160,000 in New York and $145,000 in its California, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey offices -- decisions that closely mirror the maneuverings of other national firms.

But this was back in March. Has there been significant salary movement in Connecticut since then? If not, any thoughts on if and when CT associates will see their base salaries increase?

Please discuss in the comments. Thanks.

Conn. Big-Law Associates in Line for More Money [Connecticut Law Tribune (subscription)]

We're a little behind in our coverage of associate pay raises at large law firms. This post will attempt to bring everyone back up to speed.

Listed below are firms for which we have announcements that have been (1) confirmed and (2) not previously posted on ATL. We treat an announcement as confirmed only if we have received an email about it, from a source that we can verify as working at the firm in question. You don't have to email us from your work account (and probably shouldn't); but if you email us from a personal account, please tell us your real name, so we can look you up on the firm website. (We will keep you anonymous, unless you request attribution; but we do need to know who you are so we can verify your identity.)

If you have some pay raise news that you'd like to be reported in these pages, you need to email us. Rumors reported in the comments -- which we no longer read through completely, due to their sheer volume -- are not treated as confirmed. If we see an interesting rumor in the comments, sometimes we will nostra sponte reach out to our sources for confirmation; but we don't always have the time to do that.

New and Confirmed Pay Raise Announcements (in alphabetical order)

1. Dechert LLP (Palo Alto)

2. Katten Muchin Rosenman (Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC)

3. Morgan Lewis & Bockius (Chicago, Washington, DC, and San Francisco)

Update: Please note the addition of Morgan Lewis in Chicago to the list. It was not mentioned in the first version of this post, but we have now confirmed their move to $160K.

Surely this list is incomplete. But we're not adding to it until we get confirmations by email (preferably with memos, if available). We have been burned before by false information, and we would rather be slow and accurate than fast and wrong.

Memos for the Dechert and Katten announcements appear after the jump.

Yesterday we posted the female nominees for America's hottest law librarian. But we know it's the men you really want to see. From an email:

We're all waiting for the male nominees with bated breath. I'm sure there's a Daniel Craig hiding in a row of US Reports somewhere....

We'll let you be the judge. The hot male law librarians are a smaller group than the women. But there are still some impressive contenders in the bunch, despite its modest size.

You can check them out, in all of their masculine-yet-bookish glory, after the jump.

We have more associate base salary information, from different Dechert offices around the country, to share with you. Alas, these pay scales aren't as interesting as the Dechert DC memo, which announced what one commenter described as "a caste system" within that office.

But some of you did request compensation information for Dechert offices other than D.C. and Philadelphia. So here it is.

Check out the tables, if you're interested, after the jump.

Not all practice groups are created equal. Some law firm groups are flagships, oozing revenue and prestige. They're touted to law students in glossy recruiting brochures and bragged about in interviews with the media.

Other groups are basically just deadweight. The firm would shed them if it could -- if not for the need to please a major institutional client, or to show respect to an aging name partner.

If you're an associate in a favored group -- at our former home, Ed Herlihy's FIG guys were the "green berets" of M&A -- you're on a rocket ship to partnership. And if you're in a loss leader of a practice group, your days are numbered.

But Biglaw shops generally PRETEND that all practice groups are on the same footing. It's a genteel fiction. You may work in a sexy and lucrative practice area, and your fellow associate two doors down may work in a backwater. But you both get the same pay and benefits.

Not so in the Washington office of Dechert. The firm just announced a "differential pay scale" that they concede in their memo is "unusual." Under that scale, "FSG Associates" -- associates in Dechert's prestigious financial services practice group -- earn higher salaries than their non-FSG colleagues, starting in year three ($175K to $170K). By the time they reach their eighth year, FSG associates are earning $30,000 more than their non-FSG counterparts ($280K to $250K).

We reprint the Dechert memo after the jump.

Here's an open thread for discussion of associate pay raise developments in general. The last Skaddenfreude thread we created, which you can access by clicking here, can now be devoted entirely to clerkship bonuses.

We can verify the accuracy of the Dechert base salary news. A squished version of the Dechert memo appears after the jump.

At the White House:

* On the heels of Christopher Oprison and Cheryl Stanton, former Wilmer Hale partner Paul Eckert joins the White House Counsel's Office.

Lateral Moves:

* Nicholas H. Politan, to Gibson Dunn & Crutcher (NY), from Bingham McCutchen, where he served as co-head of the project and structured finance group.

(Wild guess: He's the son of former federal judge Nicholas H. Politan (D.N.J.).)

* IP litigator Duane David-Hough, to Fish & Richardson, from Ropes & Gray (NY).

A few more moves, plus links, after the jump.