Floyd Abrams

Career Center Survey Results: Top Partners to Work For – New York (Part 1)

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Floyd Abrams of Cahill and Evan Chesler of Cravath: two great lawyers who are also great to work for.

With all the negative press surrounding partners lately — see, e.g., here and here — it’s about time for some good news, about good partners.

Last month we asked you to nominate the best partners you work for, tell us why they are the best, and rate them in six categories: expertise within the practice area, quality of work given to associates, hands-on training given to associates, provision of feedback on associate work, respect for associates’ schedules, and professionalism with associates. And we didn’t even have to pay these associates to say nice things about the partners they nominated.

Over the next few weeks, the ATL Career Center, hosted by Lateral Link, will bring you the list of the best partners to work for, divided up by geographic region. This week we will focus on New York, Above the Law’s home base, and give you the top 24 partners to work for in the Big Apple as nominated by you, our readers.

Let’s look at the first eight, shall we?

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Do Lawyers Actually Read Boilerplate Contracts?
Richard Posner and Evan Chesler don’t; do you?

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Judge Richard Posner made one remark that stole the show at a panel about regulation at the recent American Constitution Society conference. We summarized his quip on Twitter:

Judge Posner at ACS panel: For my home equity loan, I got 100s of pages of documentation; I didn’t read, I just signed. #ACS10 #Posner #LOL

This generated laughter from the crowd, due to Judge Posner’s status as one of the greatest legal minds of his (or any other) generation. It was amusing to imagine the brilliant Posner flipping page after page of paperwork and mechanically scribbling next to every “Sign Here” flag, without even bothering to read what he was signing. It’s the kind of behavior one would expect from a person earning $35,000 and a buying a $600,000 home two hours outside of Phoenix, circa 2006 — but not from one of America’s leading jurists.

As it turns out, Judge Posner isn’t the only boldface name of the legal profession who skips over the fine print in form contracts….

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Richard Posner and Evan Chesler don’t; do you?“

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Quote of the Day: You Can’t Handle the Truth

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I’d rather not get into it. You’d fall off your chair.

– Leading First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, declining to discuss with the New York Times what he and Cahill Gordon are charging the ratings agency S.& P.

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Why Citizens United Is Not the End of the World

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This morning I attended a very interesting panel discussion sponsored by the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law, Citizens United: Mountain or Mole Hill? Because the talk was sponsored by my rather left-leaning alma mater, I expected the answer to the question presented to be “Mountain” — and not just any mountain, but Mount Doom.

I was pleasantly surprised. The deeply thoughtful discussion pointed more in the direction of “Mole Hill.” This was especially surprising given the liberal bona fides of the three star panelists:

  • Floyd Abrams, the longtime Cahill Gordon partner and celebrated First Amendment lawyer, who argued in the case for Senator Mitch McConnell (as amicus curiae, in support of Citizens United);
  • Heather Gerken, the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and a leading scholar of election law and voting rights; and
  • Samuel Issacharoff, the Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law, and an expert in voting rights and civil procedure.

Both Professors Gerken and Issacharoff worked on the Obama campaign. And we all know what President Obama thinks of Citizens United.

But what did this eminent trio of panelists have to say about the case?

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Floyd Abrams, Standard & Poor’s, and the First Amendment Defense of Rating Agencies

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Floyd Abrams Cahill Gordon Reindel.jpgCould the credit rating agencies who are now being sued for their alleged role in the financial meltdown have a valid First Amendment defense? Floyd Abrams, god of First Amendment law and longtime partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, thinks so.
Abrams is the subject of a lengthy, interesting article in Sunday’s New York Times, focused on his representation of Standard & Poor’s, the biggest of the rating agencies. From the NYT:

Dozens of investors have filed lawsuits seeking redress from the rating agencies, contending that the companies bear responsibility for investors’ losses, under a Whitman’s sampler of theories. The recession, in other words, is about to begin its litigation phase, and Mr. Abrams and a handful of partners at the law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel are readying defenses for more than 30 suits filed against S.& P. Up first, an oral argument on a motion to dismiss one case is set for July 31….

Mr. Abrams will contend that S.& P.’s ratings deserve exactly the sort of free-speech protections afforded to journalists, on the theory that a bond rating is like an editorial — an opinion based on an educated guess about the future. And for the same reason you can’t sue editorial writers, Mr. Abrams will argue that you can’t sue a bond rater because the economy went into a free fall that few saw coming.

Is this a valid comparison? Is trying to sue a ratings agency like trying to sue a newspaper editorial board? Or the weatherman?
Read more, and debate the issue, after the jump.

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