Washingtonian magazine has a fun little piece on lawyers profiting from congressmen going after one another.

If you're interested in the intersection of law and politics, and we know many of you are, you'll enjoy this story. Here's how it starts:

Of all the angles played by Washington law firms, few can bring as much joy as having clients who aren’t playing with their own money.

Take the battle between two congressmen, John Boehner of Ohio and Jim McDermott of Washington: In a near-decadelong fight over McDermott’s leak of the contents of privileged and illegally taped conversations involving Boehner, the two ran up legal bills of about $1.6 million.

So who ended up covering that seven-figure legal bill? Find out, after the jump.

We have confirmed, with a reliable source at the firm, the rumor that Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher now pays a $50,000 clerkship bonus, as of January 1 of this year. We don't know the firm's policy for multiple clerkships of years of clerking; if you happen to know, email us, and we'll update this post with the information once it's confirmed.

Over the weekend, there was some discussion about a possible slowdown in terms of law firms hiring law clerks. Could sizable clerkship bonuses be contributing to this, by making law clerks more expensive for firms to hire?

Update: Two pieces of additional information. First, the $50,000 bonus is "flat"; it does not increase for multiple clerkships or years of clerking. Second:

I love Gibson Dunn, but don't be fooled. They just eliminated the bar stipend amount ($15,000), and then tell you that you are getting a $50,000 bonus for clerking. You can get $15,000 in the summer before you start your clerkship (like all of the other new associates) to help pay for the bar, but then your bonus really is only $35,000. So, they didn't really up their bonus, they just called your bar stipend something different.

We've received a number of inquiries about bonuses at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (especially in their New York office). This reminded us that we never did a full-blown bonus post about GDC. We merely noted, back in this post, that in the firm's Los Angeles office, they appeared to be paying the standard year-end bonuses (but no special bonuses).

We're not even 100 percent sure of that. And we also don't know what they did in New York. We hear -- through the grapevine, and not confirmed -- that first-years in New York got the standard $35K year-end bonus, and that the class of 2007 associates received a prorated year-end bonus.

So please help us get to the bottom of things. Consider this an open thread for discussion of Gibson Dunn bonuses (similar to yesterday's thread on Jones Day, which generated -- and continues to generate -- vigorous commentary). If you have info on GDC bonuses, please share what you know in the comments.

Update: One source reports:

Gibson's New York office received both the regular and special bonuses. They were paid in one shot on December 20th. The L.A. office did not receive the special bonus.

Also, speaking of Gibson Dunn, we have bonus (non-bonus) content for you: a cute departure email, sent out late last month. Check it out, after the jump.

Not a heck of a lot going on today, a Friday in the holiday season. So let's fall back on a staple of these pages: New York real estate.

If you're an associate at Cleary Gottlieb who's a fan of the current offices at One Liberty Plaza, congratulations. You're not going anywhere anytime soon. From today's New York Post:

[P]owerhouse law firm Cleary Gottlieb inked a deal to expand by 100,000 square feet at One Liberty Plaza. The law firm just signed a 20-year lease for 550,000 square-feet with landlord Brookfield Properties after more than a year of what Newmark Knight Frank broker Mark Weiss called "very competitive" and "very intricate" negotiations.

Cleary Gottlieb previously had 450,000 square feet under a lease due to expire in 2010. The "competitive" aspect was an attempt by Larry Silverstein to lure the firm to his new 7 World Trade Center.

Seven World Trade is a beautiful new building. But it's expensive; we're guessing Cleary got a very good deal to stay in its current spot. (The terms of the renewal were not disclosed.)

Meanwhile, a few miles uptown, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher is making a move. Details after the jump.

Here are some of the comments appended to our recent post about Gibson Dunn's snazzy new website:

"I like the pictures on the main directory. Those are the best part. Except that they don't have too many women, and one of the women is in a very high school girl peek-a-boo around the brick wall pose. They'd never put up a picture of a man doing that."

"I agree... Shame on you, peek-a-boo posing Asian woman!"

"Uh, that 'peek-a-boo posing Asian woman' is Debra Yang, the former U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, whom GDC allegedly paid a $1 mil signing bonus. She can peek-a-boo around whatever the hell she wants to peek-a-boo around."

"Debra Yang's picture's been taken down."

"Wait, the peek-a-boo is still there. Now spotted in the mix over at Practices. Please, GDC, put up a different picture of Ms. Yang."

Curious to see what all the fuss is about? Check out the controversial photo of Gibson Dunn partner (and former U.S. attorney) Debra Wong Yang, after the jump.

It appears that Quinn Emanuel isn't the only law firm with a snazzy new website. The WSJ Law Blog reports:

Okay, we’re not necessarily proud of our law-firm Web site fetish, so forgive us for spilling a few pixels over the spanking-new page the folks at Gibson Dunn put up.

[Ed. note: Racy stuff, esp. for the Wall Street Journal! That sentence -- with its references to a "fetish," "spilling a few pixels" (hehe), and "spanking" -- is chock full of double entendres.]

We’re not sure it offers more or better content than the average firm site... but check out that design! We’re big fans, from the newspapery layout to the McSweeney’s-esque literary feel to the overall minimialist aesthetic....

Take, for instance, the six videos on firm diversity. There’s one entitled Out, with gay partners talking about their sexual orientation. And then there’s one called Red & Blue, about the firm’s political diversity, including an interview with former Congressman Mel Levine (Blue) and former Solictor General Ted Olson (Red)...

Unlike those rascals over at Quinn Emanuel, the GDC folks haven't pulled their videos. And hopefully they will leave them up, even after we poke (gentle) fun of them.

Which we proceed to do, after the jump.

Although the pace seems to be slowing, our open threads on Vault 100 firms continue to generate a decent quantity (and quality) of comments. So we'll press on, for the benefit of those of you who are now in the throes of the law firm application process.

Please pose questions about and share insights into these five law firms (in Vault 100 order, with prestige scores in parentheses):

16. Williams & Connolly LLP (7.234)
17. Sidley Austin LLP (7.232)
18. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP (7.158)
19. O'Melveny & Myers LLP (7.105)
20. White & Case LLP (7.092)

You can discuss them in the comments. Thanks.

The Vault Top 100 Law Firms [Vault]

Earlier: Vault 1-5; Vault 6-10; Vault 11-15

Late last month, we wrote about how Jack Weiss, a media and entertainment lawyer in Gibson Dunn's New York office, was under consideration to head LSU Law School. Despite his dazzling resume, Weiss lacked faculty support -- which Laurie Lin found surprising.

Now, a brief update. From the New Orleans Baton Rouge Advocate:

New Orleans native Jack Weiss will become chancellor of LSU’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center this summer after his unanimous selection Friday by the LSU Board of Supervisors.

Weiss, a New York partner for the Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher firm, which has about 800 lawyers, will take over for retiring Chancellor John Costonis as early as July 1, but at least before fall classes resume, Weiss said by phone from New York.

P.S. Weiss, who clerked for Chief Justice Warren Burger and John Minor Wisdom, joins a sizable club of former Supreme Court clerks who now occupy leadership positions in academia. For other examples, see here.

Weiss to head law school [The Advocate]
From the High Court to the Ivory Tower [Empire Zone/New York Times]

Earlier: LSU: Practitioner Versus Professoriate

Yes, we have seen the comments stating that Gibson Dunn & Crutcher has raised associate base salaries for its non-New York offices. We have no reason to doubt this tip, or to question the authenticity of this memo.

But we still want to dot our i's and cross our t's. We're in the process of getting confirmation from sources at the firm. If you're willing to help us out, please email us.

Once it's verified, we'll post the GDC memo after the jump. Thanks.

Update: The memo, confirmed for us by multiple sources at the firm, appears after the jump.

Will Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher be the next West Coast law firm to announce a pay raise for its non-New York offices?

Perhaps. Yesterday we received this message from a tipster:

Word on the street is that GDC is having an office-wide meeting tomorrow at 4. No word either way as to what they're going to do, though last time around it was merely to announce they were reviewing it and expected to stay in line with the market.

If you have any more information about what Gibson is planning, please email us. Of course, we'd also love to hear about this afternoon's meeting once it's done. Thanks.

A partner at Gibson Dunn is in the running to be the head of the LSU Law School. But shockingly, Jack Weiss, a media and entertainment lawyer in Gibson Dunn's New York office, does not have the support of the faculty.

The LSU search committee met in closed session for an hour Thursday before publicly approving Eric Chiappinelli, associate dean at Seattle University School of Law, and Michael Krauss, law professor at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Va.

The third finalist named, who does not have approval from a majority of the faculty, is Jack Weiss, a New York partner for Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, a law firm with more than 800 lawyers.

It's not immediately obvious to us why someone with Weiss's credentials should be unacceptable to the LSU faculty. He clerked for Warren Burger and John Minor Wisdom, and he has ties to the area, having previously been a partner at a firm in New Orleans. He certainly looks like a law school dean!

More important, isn't practice at a large firm decent preparation for running a law school, perhaps more so than churning out seldom-read articles in solitude? We suspect that this has something to do with the hostility some law professors harbor toward people who actually practice what they teach (particularly the ones who make good money doing it).

Former Solicitor General Ted Olson, now back at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, is one of the nation's top appellate advocates. He's an amazing lawyer and a distinguished public servant. And he -- together with his wife, the beautiful and brilliant Lady Booth -- knows how to throw a killer wedding.

But Olson does seem to have an unorthodox sense of client conflict rules. From Howard Kurtz's media column in today's Washington Post:

Now it can be told: Matt Cooper thought that Time magazine's strategy in the Valerie Plame leak investigation was "insane." He was unhappy when his lawyer wanted to simultaneously represent I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the man whose identity Cooper was risking jail to protect. And Judith Miller got on his nerves.

Cooper, who has left Time, is now Washington bureau chief for Portfolio, the glossy business magazine from Conde Nast that makes its debut today. The launch is cloaked in secrecy....

Cooper says he realized early on that he would probably lose the subpoena battle over his refusal to testify about his 2003 discussions regarding Plame with White House aides Libby and Karl Rove. But Time rejected Cooper's plea to compromise by seeking waivers of confidentiality from the officials. "Behind the scenes I desperately wanted to make a deal that could get us out of this mess," he writes.

Norman Pearlstine, then Time Inc.'s editor in chief, decided to hire conservative lawyer Ted Olson. But Cooper's opinion of the former solicitor general declined when Olson asked if he could also represent Libby, which Cooper saw as a conflict since "Libby's defense ultimately involved my word against his." Olson quickly backed off.

Our tipster notes: "I worked as an attorney at a federal agency in Washington for several years right after law school, and was frequently astonished by the casual approach to conflicts issues many private sector attorneys had there. Olson's is the worst proposal I have seen in many years."

But perhaps we're missing something. We're sure that some of you can come up with a defense of Olson's ability to represent both Cooper and Libby. We welcome your thoughts in the comments.

A Sorry Story, With Apology Yet to Come [Washington Post]

Earlier: Lady and Ted's Excellent Adventure: Wedding Photos That Rock

Here's some (belated) news about notable moves at the Department of Justice and the White House:

New Arrivals at the DOJ:

We enjoy breathlessly reporting on the meteoric career trajectories of attractive women. And attractive men, too.

Over at Main Justice, two handsome gents have come onboard:

* The fresh-faced Thomas Dupree, Jr., formerly a partner in the Washington office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, has joined the Justice Department as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division.

For those of you outside the Beltway, being a DAAG is a big deal. Dupree, who is one of Washingtonian magazine's 40 top lawyers under 40, will oversee a staff of over 200.

* William Burck (above right, accepting bedsheets from anti-Cindy Sheehan protesters in Crawford, TX) -- a former Kozinski clerk and member of the Elect (OT 1999 / Kennedy), who should have been nominated as a White House hottie -- is leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Burck, who served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Staff Secretary, is heading over to the DOJ's Criminal Division. We don't know the title of his new post; if you do, please drop us a line.

This marks a return for Burck to the DOJ, since he previously served as an assistant United States attorney in the magical Southern District of New York. Being at the Criminal Division means that he'll get to work with the fantabulous Alice Fisher -- one of the few DOJ divas who could hold her own against Shanetta Cutlar.

* Elizabeth Petrela Papez (at right), a blonde beauty and Kirkland & Ellis partner, is heading over to the Office of Legal Counsel (aka the Finishing School for the Elect). She will be serving as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General.

DOJ Internal Promotion:

* Papez is filling a spot that was vacated due to a promotion. DOJ wunderkind Steven Engel -- like Bill Burck, a Yale Law School grad / Kozinski clerk / Kennedy clerk (OT 2001) -- has been promoted to Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the OLC. Steve Engel is married to another member of the Elect: Susan Engel (OT 2001/Scalia), yet another partner at K&E.

Conservative legal circles are so incestuous, aren't they?

White House Internal Promotion:

Actually, make that REALLY incestuous:

* Bill Burck's shoes in the White House are being filled by Brent McIntosh (previously described in these pages as "strappingly handsome"). McIntosh is, like Burck, another Yale Law grad and former Sullivan & Cromwell associate.

McIntosh is being promoted from within. He previously served in the White House Counsel's office. He is a former law clerk to two conservative legal heavyweights: Judges Dennis Jacobs (2d Cir.) and Laurence Silberman (D.C. Cir.).

White House Departure:

* Dabney Friedrich, who served as associate counsel to the President, will be nominated to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, according to the Legal Times.

(Dabney Friedrich was previously featured in a photo caption contest at Underneath Their Robes. Alas, due to her lack of familiarity with the movie American Pie, the "band camp" reference had to be explained to her by others.)

Bush to Nominate Former White House Associate Counsel to D.C. Court [Legal Times]

As we predicted, this Friday afternoon is turning out to be eventful in terms of associate salary news. Our last open comment thread is a beehive of activity. We're in the process of following up and confirming various items.

Verified pay raise announcements from Latham & Watkins and Paul Hastings, after the jump.

If you can vouch for the Gibson Dunn memo posted in the comments to this thread, please send us an email. A blank email from a GDC address will suffice.

Update: Thanks everyone. The GDC memo, now confirmed, also appears after the jump.

A few weeks ago, we reported that Kirkland & Ellis's Los Angeles office has raised the starting salary for its new associates to $145,000.

For those of you who don't believe anything until it appears in the MSM, you can now rest easy. From today's Recorder:

Chicago-based Kirkland & Ellis confirmed to The Recorder last week that it has upped its California offices to start at $145,000.

The article also reports that Irell & Manella has joined the $145,000 club, paying its first-year associates in Los Angeles the standard going rate for New York.

The question now becomes whether (and when) the so-called "Big Three" of L.A. law firms -- Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Latham & Watkins, and O'Melveny & Myers -- will match. Rumor has it that Latham is "reconsidering" whether to raise to $145K (a movie it had previously ruled out doing in 2007).

If you hear anything on that front, please share what you know. Thanks.

Irell and Kirkland Hit $145K Mark [The Recorder via Law.com]
Re: Kirkland goes to $145k in LA/SF [Infirmation / Greedy LA]

Earlier: Skaddenfreude: Kirkland LA Ups the Ante

We love lists: the Forbes 400, the U.S. News college and law school rankings, or Washingtonian magazine's list of 40 top lawyers under 40. We love lawyers -- which is good, since we spend all day writing about them. And we love fabulous things.

So you can imagine our delight upon seeing this feature from The American Lawyer: The Young Litigators Fab Fifty. It's a list of 50 top litigators from around the country, all under the age of 45, whom the magazine "expect[s] to see leading the field for years to come."

You can check out the list here. Regular readers of ATL will recognize many of these youthful luminaries. Here are some highlights:

-- Latham & Watkins partner Sean Berkowitz,* the former prosecutor who rose to fame durring the Enron case;

-- Paul Clement, the U.S. Solicitor General (who was very nice to us);

-- Weil Gotshal partner Gregory Coleman and Texas Solicitor General R. Ted Cruz, two top Texas lawyers (and possible Fifth Circuit nominees);

-- Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher, the delectable DOJ diva;

-- Jeffrey Fisher, of Davis Wright & Tremaine, SCOTUS lefty litigator extraordinaire (he's a Bleeding Reinhardt and former JPS clerk);

-- Deputy Solicitor General Gregory Garre, Chief Justice Roberts's former l'il buddy (from his Hogan & Hartson days);

-- Professor Neal Katyal of Georgetown Law, the "Paris Hilton of the Legal Elite";

-- Alabama's Solicitor General, Kevin Newsom (amusing story about him here); and

-- Eugene Scalia, the Gibson Dunn partner and fabled ERISA hottie (and son of Nino).

On the whole, it's an excellent list. We can think of a few questionable omissions (and a few dubious selections). But with something this subjective, reasonable minds will differ.

Congrats again to the Fab Fifty!

* Does anyone know if Sean Berkowitz and Bethany McLean, the Fortune reporter who covered Enron, are still an item?

The Young Litigators Fab Fifty [American Lawyer]

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.

At the White House:

Positions in the White House Counsel's office are some of the most prestigious and interesting jobs in the entire legal profession. And now two new lawyers are coming on board as associate counsels to the president:

* Christopher Oprison, formerly of Skadden Arps (Washington, DC); and Cheryl Stanton, a former law clerk to then-Judge Alito, and most recently of Olgetree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart (Morristown, NJ).

The arrival of Oprison and Stanton will mean that the lawyers in the office will reshuffle their portfolios for judicial nominations. We hear that Stanton will be in charge of Fifth Circuit nominations -- a subject of great interest to us.

* Also, a third lawyer -- Alan Swendiman, previously general counsel of the GSA, everybody's favorite government agency -- is joining the White House staff. He'll serve as special assistant to the President and director, Office of Administration.

At Google (which is arguably more powerful than the White House these days):

* John Kent Walker Jr., formerly deputy GC of eBay, joins the search engine giant as general counsel.

Unusual structure: Walker will report to David Drummond, Google's senior vice president of corporate development, who will take on the title of "chief legal officer." But hey, Google is an unusual company.

Biglaw moves, after the jump.

"Okay, Judge Bork. Smile and say 'The Original Understanding'!!!"

(Also: Is that Harvard Law prof Laurence Tribe standing behind Robert Bork, or just someone who looks a lot like him?)

Earlier this week, we gave you a detailed report about the fabulous nuptials of Ted Olson -- the winning lawyer in Bush v. Gore, former Solicitor General, and current Gibson Dunn partner -- and his beautiful and brilliant bride, Lady Booth.* The Olson wedding was attended by the crème de la crème of D.C. and conservative legal circles.

Now we have an update to our prior coverage, an ATL exclusive: WEDDING PICTURES!!! And they're not boring, like the ones your college roommate makes you look at every time you visit her house. Did Justice Sandra Day O'Connor attend your college roommate's wedding?

Check out the pics -- there are just a few of them, it won't take you long -- after the jump.

* "Lady" is her given name, not a title. See here.

This past Saturday, October 21, Washington superlawyer Ted Olson and his fiancee, Lady Booth, were married. The wedding ceremony took place at the stunningly beautiful Meadowood resort, in Napa Valley, California.

Olson, a giant of the Supreme Court bar, served as Solicitor General -- the federal government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court -- from 2001 to 2004. He's currently a partner in the elite D.C. office of top-flight firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

Olson successfully litigated the landmark 2000 election case, Bush v. Gore, in the Supreme Court. On the losing side: renowned litigator David Boies. But presumably there were no hard feelings, since Boies showed up for the wedding festivities -- along with many other legal luminaries.

Some legal celebrity sightings, from the Washington Post's Reliable Source:

More than 300 guests attended the midafternoon ceremony on the golf course, including Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, former justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, legal commentators Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova, NPR's Nina Totenberg, legal names such as Robert Bork, Kenneth Starr, David Boise [sic], and Olson's law partner Bill Kilberg. U.S. Appeals Court Judge Laurence Silberman performed the ceremony, and Wall Street Journal Publisher Gordon Crovitz served as best man.

This is Booth's first marriage and Olson's fourth. The couple will honeymoon in Hawaii.

We hear through the grapevine that the wedding was, not surprisingly, "a great time. It seemed like half of Washington was there!"

Other notable guests: Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, of the Fourth Circuit; Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, of the Ninth Circuit, and his ever-stylish wife, Maura O'Scannlain; Frank Fahrenkopf, former RNC chairman and current gaming industry superlobbyist, with his wife, Mary; current Solicitor General Paul Clement; and conservative pundit Laura Ingraham.

Despite the tremendous collective brainpower of these august guests, we hear that several of them were left scratching their impressive craniums by one wedding detail: the request on the wedding invite for "Napa Casual" attire.

These leading minds of the bench and bar can slice, dice, define and parse the most complex legal terms known to man. But throw two innocent little words at them -- "Napa Casual" -- and watch them panic.

If only every day could be a court day. Who doesn't look good in black?

Update: You can check out photographs from the wedding by clicking here.

Napa Nuptials for Olson and His Lady [Washington Post]
Theodore B. Olson, Solicitor General bio [USDOJ.gov]
Theodore Olson [Wikipedia]