If you are going to run a scam involving fraudulent checks, is it wise to use an account that belongs to a law firm? Texas Lawyer reports that check scammers have been telling people to cash fraudulent checks drawn against a Fish & Richardson account at Bank of America. Apparently the scam is not working:

As soon as people started contacting the firm last December with questions about Fish & Richardson checks they had received in the mail, the Boston-based firm notified its bank that someone was trying to pass counterfeit checks written on a firm account. Most recently, on Oct. 5, the firm learned from its bank that someone tried unsuccessfully to cash one of the checks, suggesting the scammers may have mailed a new round of letters, says Kelly Largey, chief marketing officer for the 418-lawyer firm.

The checks were sent to people around the country — including at least five in Texas — with cover letters telling recipients to cash the checks, and to send some of the money to the sender for “processing fees” or to a “mystery shopper, and keep the rest of the money.”

If you were going to try this, wouldn’t you run this scheme against a bicycle shop, or a cosmetics company, or some institution that isn’t as meticulous as a freaking law firm?

And it’s not like Fish & Richardson is being loose with its money these days. The firm is closing offices and cutting departments.

In any event, consider this a Public Service Announcement: if you receive a check from Fish & Richardson, don’t cash it.

Fish & Richardson Battles Scammers Writing Fake Checks on Firm’s Bank Account [Texas Lawyer]
Another Law Firm—Fish & Richardson— Says Scammers Hijacked Its Accounts [ABA Journal]

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.

As a New Yorker, people often tell me that Austin is “the oasis of Texas.” I think they mean that Austin is a culturally progressive blue city in middle of a red state.

I hope they don’t mean that Austin is a great place to practice law.

On Friday, Fish & Richardson announced plans to close its Austin office. This marks the second major law firm to get out of Austin this summer. Weil Gotshal has already announced plans to close its Austin office.

The Austin Business Journal described the importance of Fish & Richardson to the local legal market:

Fish, which opened its Austin office in 2005, currently has 28 attorneys and a total staff of approximately 68 locally. A spokeswoman in the firm’s Boston headquarters confirmed the firm will close the office on Dec. 31.

According to Austin Business Journal research, Fish & Richardson is the 16th largest law firm operating in the city, ranked by number of attorneys. Fish reported firmwide revenue of $420 million in 2008. Some of the firm’s clients include Microsoft Corp., Google and Freescale Semiconductor Inc.

Are Austinites ready to make the move to “regular Texas”?

Sources report that Fish & Richardson will cut its entire corporate department as of January 1, 2010.

To be fair, Fish & Richardson is more known for its IP work. Its corporate department is relatively small. But cutting an entire practice group seems like an extreme cost cutting measure. The firm has already cut associate salaries and laid off associates.

There are a few things we don’t know. Although our sources tell us the corporate department will be cut firm-wide, our sources are clustered in only one Fish office. We don’t know if corporate associates will be offered other jobs in the firm as of 1/1/10, and we don’t know if the move is being precipitated by a large group of Fish corporate partners leaving.

That’s because the Fish associates we spoke with were informed of the news in a curious way. Details after the jump.

The Dallas office of Fish & Richardson has won the contest for best summer associate event of 2009, capturing almost two-thirds of the 1757 votes in the runoff with the Carlton Fields fishing trip.

Fish & Richardson’s winning event was called “Harpdygal IV.” It is part of a series of “Biglaw counter-culture” events started four summers ago by associate Kip Mendrygal and partner Geoff Harper.

Back when summer associates were indulged, pampered, and treated to incredibly lavish lunches, dinners, and golf outings, Harper and Mendrygal wanted to offer something offbeat. So they took summers to WWE Friday Night SmackDown, a Professional Bull Riders event, and a demolition derby. This year, Harpdrygal was an outing to an all-female roller derby.

We congratulate Fish & Richardson for being crowned winner of the Best Summer Associate Event of 2009 (and for the firm’s recent legal victory, alongside Dewey & LeBoeuf, in Mark Cuban’s insider trading case).

Harper and Mendrygal sent us their acceptance speech via email. Here’s an excerpt:

[A]s for winning the ATL vote, Kip and I can truly say that this is the single greatest honor we have ever received for anything we’ve ever done. Ever. And, not to brag, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to get another $50 added to our budget, which will allow us to invite another 8 people to Harpdrygal V next year. It’s funny (actually sad) to us that, when we started Harpdrygal four years ago, our shtick was to be a low-brow gag event buried in the middle of fancy dinners, wine tastings, and sports suites. Now, with financial Armageddon approaching (here?), our events are substantially less shocking.

Read the message in its entirety, after the jump.

Last week, we brought you our five finalists in the ATL Summer Associate Event Contest of 2009. The top two vote-getters are too close to declare one a winner, so we’re having a run-off.

Southeast firm Carlton Fields garnered almost 32% of the over 2,500 votes for taking its Tampa summer associates on a daylong fishing trip, with multiple swimming, beach, and bar stops along the way. IP firm Fish & Richardson captured 34% of the vote for “Harpdrygal IV,” an event shrouded in mystery revealed on the day of to be an all-female roller derby.

We checked back in with the firms and have some additional information about the events to inform your voting. We also have photos, but from the roller derby only. No Carlton Fields associates in bathing suits, though we can direct you to the summer associates’ photos and you can use your imaginations. After the jump.

This year’s batch of summer associates are roughing it at Biglaw summer camp, with fewer meals out on the firm and less lavish events. To make matters worse, some summers are being told now that their future job will be deferred. Summer associates at Skadden and Ropes & Gray have been informed that they can’t come back to the camping ground until 2011. Tents can’t be repitched at Orrick until 2012.

This seems like a good time to focus on the light side of the summer associate experience. For the past month, we’ve been soliciting entries for our Summer Associate Event Contest of 2009. They came trickling in slowly, whether because there aren’t many events to brag about or because summer associates are too busy (or too scared) to email us. One SA was so fearful of “tipping” us that the announcement about the firm’s event was sent anonymously via snail mail. [FN1]

One ATL reader from a small firm had this to say about the environment at firms this summer:

Our firm does a lot of corporate bankruptcy work, so we’re faring better in this economic storm than most, but we had to scale back our summer associate program a bit. We do not have as many summer associates as we used to, and we are not having as many major, expensive events. No more big-ticket concerts; no more dinner theater on a river boat; no more renting out an entire movie theater for a pre-release movie showing….

Certainly, the difficulties of this economy are showing in the makeup of our summer class: because we have a summer program at all (unlike many law firms), we’re getting students from higher ranked schools. Most of them are from Top 20 law schools, all of them from Top 75 law schools, none of them from the fourth-tier local law school that usually supplies some of our summer class. And our summer associates are noticeably more stressed about the experience and their prospects than I’ve seen in the past 10 summers.

Despite the foregoing, we have a nice selection of events for the contest. We ask you to vote on the best one, plus offer a few honorable mentions (for events involving public urination and broken bones), after the jump.

Is it nationwide salary cut day and nobody told me? Earlier today, Bryan Cave cut associate salaries. Now, Fish & Richardson will be doing the same thing. We just don’t know when.

At a firm wide video conference today, Fish & Richardson president Peter Devlin said that the firm would be cutting salaries in the near future. As we understand it, the chairman didn’t give a specific date. But he did say that Fish & Richardson would be moving towards a “meritocracy” with regards to its salary structure.

Update (3:47): We’re still waiting for Fish & Richardson to get back to us directly, but firm president Peter Devlin now says that he did not suggest that Fish would be cutting salaries in the near future. Here is a statement he sent out to the firm:

Shortly after my address at today’s forum, a story appeared on the Above the Law website erroneously stating that I had announced that F&R would be “cutting salaries in the near future.” In fact, I said the opposite - that the Management Committee is not considering cutting our associate salary scale this year, despite the fact that several other firms have done so. I went on to say that we are reviewing our associate compensation system in view of the changing market, and that in my personal view any new system should link compensation with meritorious performance, put less emphasis on hours, and move away from lockstep advancement. You’ll be hearing more about this as our work progresses.

Did our tipsters misinterpret Devlin’s statement of moving towards a merit based system as a salary cut? Only time will tell. We’ll update you again if Fish & Richardson chooses to respond.

Boy, if lockstep was such a horrible system that didn’t reward merit, you have to wonder why nearly every firm used that system for so long. I bet there are a lot of people who wish they had been rewarded on merit during the boom times, instead of being punished for “performance” during the bad times.

The news should hardly come as a surprise to (remaining) Fish & Richardson associates. In January, the firm announced that it had laid off 49 lawyers. In May, the firm laid off 120 people. The salary cuts are just the latest cost cutting measure from the firm.

More details from the video conference, after the jump.

Last week, Fish & Richardson laid off 120 people. It was the second round of layoffs from the firm this year.

But that wasn’t the end of Fish’s cost cutting measures. Yesterday, the firm effectively “cold offered” one-third of its incoming first year associate class. Another third of the class will start on time, and the rest have been deferred until October 2010. Above the Law has obtained this statement from the firm:

While approximately one-third of our 2009 associate class will start on time, we are deferring the majority of the class to October 2010. About half of those deferred will receive a stipend of $5,000 per month for twelve months, along with reimbursement for health insurance. We have informed the other half of those deferred that, given current economic conditions, it is unlikely that we will have a position for them next fall, and we have advised them to seek other opportunities. That group will receive a stipend of $5,000 per month for six months, along with reimbursement for health insurance, and we will revisit their situations in mid-2010.

Isn’t it a bit late for firms to cold offer incoming associates? It’s almost June, yet a third of the first year class just found out that there were essentially out of a job.

Tipsters weigh in, and an update on how the decision was made, after the jump.

Fish & Richardson conducted attorney and staff layoffs at the end of January. But it looks like it is already time for round two.

The internal announcement just went out, Fish is laying off 120 people:

The global recession has profoundly impacted many businesses. Continuing to face unprecedented levels of economic uncertainty in the marketplace, the firm has decided to make workforce adjustments that will ensure our continued strength during these turbulent times. Specifically, we have reduced our legal staff by 35 and our support staff by 85 across our U.S. offices.

Fish & Richardson spokespeople did not respond to our requests for comment. But it appears that cuts are happening across all of Fish’s offices.

This round of layoffs is being cast differently than last time. Details after the jump.

Yesterday ATL reported that in addition to the 30 staff cuts, Fish & Richardson was in the process of conducting stealth layoffs of lawyers as well.

Today, Fish took those layoffs out of the closet and announced the full scope of its attorney reductions:

Since November of last year, 49 members of our legal staff have left or are in the process of leaving the firm, including four dismissals that were made today, January 30, 2009. Many of these departures occurred as the result of year-end performance evaluations, but others were based on purely economic decisions.

At least the information is now out in the open. Most of the associates we talk to prefer open communication about the state of their firms, so it’s nice to see Fish & Richardson clearly state its reasons for the attorney departures we reported.

We’re happy to bring you the news first; we just wish it wasn’t so sad. Good luck to all the displaced Fish & Richardson associates and staff.

You can read the full firm statement after the jump.

Fish & Richardson is conducting layoffs, another indication that IP work is not a safe haven during the economic storm.

The firm would not respond to our requests for comment, but a firm wide email sent to Fish associates confirmed that 30 support staffers were let go this week:

Today, Fish & Richardson is reducing the size of our staff by notifying 30 support staff that they will no longer be employed by the firm. Affected employees are in eight of our U.S. offices and in several administrative departments.

We thank all of these employees for their service to the firm. We know that this will be a difficult time for them, and we will assist them through this transition with a severance program. Our people are our greatest asset, and so we take these steps only after thoughtful consideration.

The firm wide memo did not mention anything about associate layoffs. That may be because the firm is also conducting stealth layoffs of associates.

More details from tipsters after the jump.

As we noted in yesterday’s Morning Docket, even the New York Times has taken note of the salary freeze trend at law firms. The Times reached out to Above The Law’s own David Lat for the story:

Although many associates are angry about the freezes, others are relieved, said David Lat, founding editor of AboveTheLaw.com, a blog about law firms and the profession.

“There is this sense that firms didn’t act prudently during the boom and now they are getting religion, and that it’s better late than never,” Mr. Lat said. “Many associates we have spoken to think the freeze probably saved jobs.”

At the beginning of the month, we did a round-up of firms that have frozen 2009 salary rates at 2008 levels. That list was 16 firms long. Since then, quite a few other firms have announced freezes. Due to frequent requests, we’re updating the round-up list since the number of firms with freezes (that we know of) has more than doubled, to 33 32. Check out the as-comprehensive-as-we-can-make-it list, after the jump.

Recently announced salary freezes include “solid ice freezes” at Blank Rome and Townsend and Townsend and Crew; and “Slurpee freezes” at Bingham McCutchen, Fish & Richardson, and Texan firm Andrews Kurth.

Memorandums, as well as a new list of all firms with “solid ice” and “Slurpee” freezes, after the jump.

Which firms are on the cutting edge of the digital age? Law and Technology News has an opinion. The publication just released their sixth annual law technology awards:

The awards recognize outstanding innovation by law firms and law departments in their use of technology.

The big winner is Fish & Richardson for most innovative use of technology.

And Joy Heath Rush of Sidley Austin won the award for “Champion” of Technology. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds pretty cool.

Read about all of the award winners here.

2008 LAW TECHNOLOGY NEWS AWARDS [Law Technology News]

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.

Here’s an update to last week’s post about how various law firms fared in recruiting summer associates for this year. That post, including the comments, featured oodles of info about the expected summer class sizes at different Biglaw shops.

Now we bring you a few more data points. First, just a few short hours after our post went up, this email went around the New York office of Latham & Watkins:

As we move forward into 2008, the Recruiting Committee and the Recruiting Department would like to thank each of you for your support and participation in last year’s recruiting efforts. Your involvement in the summer program and our fall recruiting efforts was “priceless”. Thanks to your efforts, our summer program and fall hiring results were incredibly successful. The recruiting efforts resulted in 61 first years (not including judicial clerks, which we are currently in the midst of recruiting) starting next fall and a summer class of 80 summer associates (our largest to date!). Thank you all again and a very happy and healthy 2008 to each of you.

It’s nice when firms are so responsive to our inquiries.

In addition, a few tipsters emailed us unofficial information about how their firms did in the recruiting process. Check it out, after the jump.

The holiday season is pretty much over, and bonus season kinda is, too. But it’s not completely over, so we’ll still bring you occasional updates on news that comes across our desk. If you have information to share, please email us (subject line: “Associate Bonus Watch”).

While placing info in the comments is helpful, comments aren’t subject to verification and follow-up in the same way as emails. Also, due to sheer volume, we can’t (and don’t) read every last comment. So email is still the best way to send us bonus info (or request that we cover a given topic).

Here are some associate bonus odds and ends:

1. Quinn Emanuel: Lots of unhappy campers. The upshot is that they employed a very bright-line 2100 hours cutoff to get the full bonus. More details, after the jump.

2. Fish & Richardson: They announced a new compensation plan back in November. It didn’t go over so well. To their credit, they seem to be reversing themselves (for the most part; look out for a higher hours requirement). More details, after the jump.

3. Covington & Burling (New York): We previously reported on their special bonuses, which matched market. In case you were wondering, they’re also paying the standard year-end bonuses (in New York).

4. Bracewell & Giuliani (New York): We haven’t written much about them before. But since name partner Rudy Giuliani is in the news a lot lately, thanks to his presidential bid, and some folks were kind enough to send their memo our way, we provide their bonus announcement after the jump.

5. Kasowitz Benson: We also haven’t written much about Kasowitz Benson before. It’s a very profitable shop, and a bit on the secretive side. Since several people passed along their bonus memo, though, we’re happy to post it after the jump.

People who practice intellectual property law tend to be really, really smart. This is a good thing, since you’d have to be a genius to understand the new associate pay plan just announced by Fish & Richardson.

Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But we just couldn’t bother reading a document as long and complex as the Fish & Richardson memo, at least this early in the day; the caffeine from our morning coffee is still working its way through our system.

Fortunately, our sources offered some explanation:

“Attached is the new Fish & Richardson compensation plan. The basically cut salraries by taking around 20k of salary away from each year and then giving it back when you make 2000 hours. Pretty sh**ty for patent prosecutors. Everyone is pretty pissed off about this.”

“I am pissed. Not only are they effectively taking 10k from my pocket because I always bill over 2000 hours, but we don’t get the target bonus or the special bonus. In short, someone from my year will make at least $80,000 more at another firm for hitting 2000 hours.”

To see what’s causing such bitterness, check out the memo, after the jump.

We’re rather late on this, but better late than never. Some time ago, one of you sent us this tip:

Fish & Richardson has asserted ownership over patents secured by a former principal who, in addition to being an attorney, also is a prolific inventor (and alleged “patent troll”).

Interestingly enough, Fish appears to have made its claims only after Google, one of its clients, was sued under a patent claiming a technology that Harris invented while at Fish. See Patently O, which has a copy of the Complaint.

What a mess. Anyway, we were reminded of the case yesterday, when it was picked up by Overlawyered:

Annals of creative patent lawyering: Highly placed attorney with intellectual-property specialists Fish & Richardson accumulates his own portfolio of patents, quits the firm, begins suing Fish & Richardson clients, things get messy fast (Patent Troll Tracker, Oct. 21).

We expect to be following this case for a while. If you have some inside info to share, please email us. Thanks.

Annals of creative patent lawyering [Overlawyered]
A Tangled Web of Patent Rights [Patently O: Patent Law Blog]
Fish & Richardson Strikes Back at Scott Harris [Patent Troll Tracker]
Patent Troll Sues Fish & Richardson [Patent Troll Tracker]

Andrew Bruck takes a question at Wednesday’s press conference.

Every now and then, we leave our apartment. We did so on Wednesday, to attend the press conference of Law Students Building a Better Legal Profession, where the organization unveiled its law firm diversity rankings (accessible here; Los Angles Times article here).

It was quite informative. For those of you who might be interested — and we’re guessing there are a number of you, judging from the robust commentary on our earlier post — read more, after the jump.