Over the weekend, the New York Times had an interesting article about compensation for Wall Street bankers. The article explained how, due to criticism from the public and from Congress, banks shifted employee comp away from cash and towards stocks and options. This shift was supposed to align pay with performance, averting an AIG situation of rewarding failure.

Now, thanks to the recovery in bank shares — fueled in part by generous government bailouts, and not necessarily the brilliant performance of bank employees — these stock and option grants are turning out to be super-lucrative. Here’s an interesting excerpt:

Goldman Sachs, for instance, sharply cut nearly all bonuses it paid last year but gave some executives more options than usual.

The company gave its general counsel, for example, 104,868 stock options and 14,117 shares in December, when the bank’s stock was around $78.

Now the bank’s shares have more than doubled in value, making that stock and option award worth nearly $12 million, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm in Redwood Shores, Calif.

Sullivan & Cromwell partners, eat your hearts out. Not only does Goldman GC Gregory Palm get to boss you around, he also makes more money than you do.

Way more. Get a hint of how much, after the jump.

Tipsters report that Goldman Sachs — they of the magnanimous bonuses — has sent the word out that holiday parties will be canceled this year. Even “personally funded” parties are being discouraged.

If that is what is happening at mighty Goldman, what paltry party offerings can Biglaw associates expect?

Last year’s season can best be summed up by Cravath. Usually the firm shindig is at the Rainbow Room. Last year, the party was at the firm cafeteria.

Cravath also canceled its biennial “Cravath Prom” last year. Is there any indication that the good times are coming back to Cravath?

What are the party prospects elsewhere? I would think “surviving 2009” would be a great theme for this year’s extravaganzas, if anybody has any money lying around to be extravagant with.

Perhaps I’m expecting too much? Will this holiday party season involve more coals than diamonds? Tell us what you think in the comments.

Earlier: Cravath Continues to Think Ahead

What is it about high-powered lawyers and underage girls? Remember James Colliton, the ex-Cravath tax lawyer who had his way with two teenage girls — after paying their mother for the privilege?

It seems Colliton may have company. Todd Genger — a (somewhat cute) 33-year-old lawyer at Goldman Sachs, and a father of three — appears to have been snared in a sting operation aimed at online perverts who solicit underage females for sex.

Read more at Going Concern and Dealbreaker.

Goldman Sachs Lawyer Likely to Appear on Dateline NBC [Going Concern]
Goldman Sachs Employee Takes One For The Team [Dealbreaker]

It’s NCAA Tournament time, which means that if you get married this weekend or the next two, your guests will be cursing you as they surreptitiously refresh their BlackBerries. We therefore applaud this week’s brides, who planned their weddings for this past weekend, before the madness struck. They are — if we may say so — our Cinderellas.

Here are this week’s finalists:

1. Sara Schacter and Aram Erenburg

2. Melissa Weiss and Kenneth Mazer

3. Rebecca Kirszner and James Katz

Read more about this week’s legal lovebirds, after the jump.

* Paris isn’t the only Hilton getting in trouble for sex. The former manager of a restaurant in the Hilton Minneapolis is suing the Hilton for “undirected” sexual harrassment because he walked in on upper management having an orgy. [Courthouse News Service]

* GMAC LLC, the financing arm of General Motors, is not allowing holders of so-called SmartNotes to exchange thier notes for more secure bonds. The exchange, which the company is offering as a ploy to get some of the bail-out money, is “limited to institutional notes and does not include retail debt instruments.” This means that holders of SmartNotes may get nothing if the company goes bankrupt, which could lead to some serious law suits. [Bloomberg.com]

* Lawyers: 1, bankers: 0. Former bankruptcy lawyer James H.M. Sprayregen is returning to Kirkland & Ellis after a three-year stint in the restructuring group at Goldman Sachs. The decision represents a triumph for corporate lawyers in their long standing rivalry against financiers. [The New York Times]

* Protestors in Thailand have concentrated their efforts on the airports in anticipation of a court verdict Tuesday that will likely order the Somchai’s People Power Party to disband. [Reuters]

* A plea-deal has been offered to an 8-year-old boy in Arizona, who confessed to killing his father and another man. [ABC News]

* The Federal Trade Commission is stopping the merger of two software companies because of the potential loss of competition. Capitalism will prevail! [Courthouse News Service]

We’re back with our second installment of the Legal Eagle Wedding Watch in as many days. Enjoy, and have a happy, happy Friday.

Behold, the most outstanding legal lovebirds from the past three weeks:

1. Brenda Zelin and Kyle Williams

2. Alyssa Greenwald and Edward Wittenstein

3. Erik Hyman and Max Mutchnick

4. Jamie Bartholomew and Steven Aller

Evaluate the worthiness of these couples, after the jump.

We’re not the only ones obsessed with layoffs these days. So is the New York Times, which has published two meaty articles on layoffs in the past few days — one in the Business section, and one in Sunday Styles.

The upshot of the business piece: Wall Street firms are increasingly relying upon “stealth layoffs” (like their brethren in the law, as we’ve discussed). Louise Story and Eric Dash report:

[E]xactly how many jobs have been or will be eliminated [on Wall Street] is unclear. In the past, banks typically made sharp reductions all at once. After the 1987 stock market crash, for example, employees were herded into conference rooms and dismissed en masse.

This time, companies are making many small cuts over the course of weeks or even months. Some people who have lost jobs, and many more struggling to hold them, say banks are keeping employees in the dark about the size and timing of layoffs.

Sound familiar, law firm associates?

Read the rest, below the fold.

Law-related stories are proliferating over at our big sibling site, DealBreaker. Here are three from yesterday afternoon alone:

1. Goldman Sachs Acquitted of All Charges. It’s good to be Goldman:

“In an effort to uphold the rule that the Masters of the Universe can pretty much get away with anything simply because they’re the Masters of the Universe (see, also: Jobs, backdating), a federal judge has ruled that Goldman cannot be included in a lawsuit by Fannie Mae shareholders.”

2. Dow Jones Insider Trading Watch: Two Charges, Dow Jones Director Scutinized. Hmm, this sounds a wee bit fishy to us:

“[T]he SEC filed a lawsuit against a Hong Kong couple, Kan King Wong and Charlotte Ka On Wong Leung, accusing them of insider trading. The couple had purchased $15 million of Dow Jones shares prior to the May 1st announcement.”

They liquidated the position after News Corp.’s unsolicited offer to boy Dow Jones, for a tidy profit of $8.2 million. More details here.

3. In the Future of a Defamation Lawsuit, Dimon Is the Law. Here’s a teaser, concerning the lawsuits that are flying between Dow Chemical and a former executive and board member: “It’s the legal equivalent of a John Woo action scene.”

You can check out the full post here.

Please read this. Here are your study questions:

1. “How did a Goldman Sachs banker earn only $115,000?” (This one was from Professor Caron.)

2. “How can she afford to give away this much to charity — does she have a sugar daddy wealthy spouse?”

3. “So what exactly does $55,000 in secondhand clothing look like?”

(On that last item, maybe we should ask our little sibling, Fashionista.)

P.S. With respect to the title of this post: Yes, we realize that the charity in question, Housing Works, funds its programs by running a high-end thrift store — it’s not giving designer duds directly to homeless people. We’re just taking a little poetic or blogospheric license; please cut us some slack.

Tax Court: Goldman Sachs Investment Banker With $115k Salary Can’t Take $55k Deduction for Charitable Donation of Used Clothing [TaxProf Blog]

Move over, Fire Island. See ya later, Provincetown. Rehoboth Beach, you’re all washed up.

The gay destination of choice for summer 2007? This may come as a surprise to you, but it’s 125 Broad Street, New York, New York — home of the estimable law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell (plus the ACLU’s LGBT Rights Project).

From Aaron Charney, the plaintiff in Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell:

I am informed by numerous sources that David Braff (at right), on behalf of certain gay S&C partners, circulated a memorandum stating that such partners are pleased with the work environment at S&C.

What exactly makes Sullivan such a fabulous workplace for gays? Is it the subsidized gym? The proximity to S&C client Goldman Sachs, home to countless cute banker boys with seven-figure incomes? The complimentary cosmos served in the firm cafeteria?

If you have a copy of this memo, please send it our way, by email.

We’re looking forward to seeing it. But Charney seems less than impressed:

Braff’s memo directly misses the point. My complaint concerns the discrimination and retaliation perpetrated by S&C against me. S&C clearly has no defense against the allegations enumerated in my Complaint and instead seeks to muddy the waters by trying to divert people’s attention away from the issue at hand. S&C’s campaign of diversion is the latest example of S&C’s unwilling[ness] to enforce the firm office manual’s anti-discrimination policy and confirms why I was left with no choice but to pursue this legal matter.

Charney’s willingness to speak freely about the case — or to try it in the court of public opinion, as his critics claim — may explain why he seems to be winning the PR war, at least at the current time. In our reader poll, which is still ongoing, about two-thirds of respondents support him over S&C.

(But that is down somewhat from the 75 percent support that Charney enjoyed earlier in the afternoon. Could an anti-Aaron backlash be developing?)

Update: One of you has posted what appears to be the gay partners’ memo in the comments. Thanks!

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell (scroll down)

Once again, no news. But something might happen today, if the first mover tries to lowball the market. Friday afternoons are the optimal time for breaking bad news.

We never tire of saying this: As soon as you learn of a bonus announcement, even if completely uncorroborated, please email us. We will then go investigate.

This is true even if the bonus announcement is just something you see on a message board. We check the message boards regularly; but when it comes to big bonus news, the faster word gets out, the better. Don’t worry about sending us a duplicative message. We’d rather receive lots of emails with the same tip than be even half an hour late in reporting a key announcement.

In the meantime, as everyone frets, it’s important to maintain a sense of perspective. Earlier this week, we reminded you Biglaw associates that things could be worse. An in-house lawyer in the Midwest is overjoyed just to get a second microwave in his break room. So be grateful for your bonus, even if it’s not as large as you expected.

But if you don’t find that persuasive, let’s approach the issue from the other side: Why are you getting so worked up over your bonuses? They’re piddling!

If you want to talk about serious cash, consider what Wall Street CEOs are expected to receive as bonuses this year. Or if that’s too grandiose a comparison — after all, they’re CEOs of huge multinational corporations — check out the reported bonuses going to some four dozen Goldman Sachs employees.

We feel your pain. We wish we found finance fascinating too.

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of bonuses (scroll down)

Our big sibling reports on the departure of high-finance hottie Suzanne Nora Johnson from Goldman Sachs, the obscenely profitable investment bank. Johnson, who served on the firm’s 23-member management committee, was the highest-ranking woman at Goldman Sachs.*

And as the WSJ Law Blog notes, in a post entitled Associates, You Too Can Become a Master of the Universe, Johnson is a former lawyer:

Before joining Goldman in 1985, Johnson (USC, Harvard Law) was an associate at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett and clerked on the Second Circuit.

Anyone know which judge Johnson clerked for? If that jurist is still living, Johnson — who earned a cool $17.2 million last year (eat your hearts out, Biglaw partners) — should foot the bill for the judge’s official portrait.

(While we’re correcting the titles of Law Blog posts, “spritely” should be replaced by “sprightly” back in this post. As far as we know, the elfin Erwin Chemerinsky did not participate in the KSR v. Teleflex argument.)

* Goldman Sachs has no relationship or connection whatsoever with Goldmansex.com — other than to golden shower rain on that poor website’s parade.

Top Goldman Gal Dumps Bank [DealBreaker]
Associates, You Too Can Become a Master of the Universe [WSJ Law Blog]

Earlier: Because $7 Million a Year Isn’t Enough for Them

Partners at top investment bank Goldman Sachs take home an average of $7 million a year. But not content with that, they’ve decided to chase after a small businessman, who’s just trying to make an honest living.

From the WSJ Law Blog:

[Goldman Sachs is involved in an] ongoing battle with Goldman Advertisement BV, a Netherlands-based adult-entertainment directory…. Goldman argued [in a National Arbitration Forum proceeding] that goldmansex.com would cause confusion and contained links to objectionable “adult” material. The NAF agreed with the investment bank, and goldmansex.com is no more.

Say it ain’t so! Who would confuse the world’s leading investment bank with a porn providers’ directory? (Our big brother blog, which covered this story back in July, agrees.)

“Goldman” is a last name that strikes us as pretty generic, and “sex” is, well, sex. GS’s position strikes us as weak, whether viewed from a cybersquatting or trademark law perspective. And there’s more:

Rob Muller, the owner of goldmansex.com, tells the Law Blog in an email that the name has nothing to do with the investment bank; instead, it came from his nickname “Goldman,” which his friends gave him because they “thought I was always lucky in my life.”…

After the NAF ruling, Muller pressed his luck and continued to use another domain name it owned — goldmEnsex.com (emphasis added). Last week, according to Muller, he received a fax from the NAF informing him that Goldman Sachs had started a new proceeding against his company.

Frivolous litigation arbitration. Why can’t the banking behemoth just laugh it off, and let poor Rob Muller go on his merry way? Consider this:

“Goldmansex was in a completely different business than GS, with no chance of confusion, we were not referring to Goldman Sachs on our website, the site had a complete different look and feel and we own a valid trademark in the domain name,” says Muller. “The only similarity between Goldman Sachs and Goldmensex is the verbal equivalence.” He adds: “Furthermore Goldmensex is not a porn site; it is an advertisement portal for adult entertainers offering information very similar to information offered by Google and Yellow Pages.”

And the verbal equivalence isn’t even that great. “Goldman Sachs” sounds like “Goldman Sex” only if you pronounce it with a really heavy Russian accent.

This is so wrong. Rob Muller needs your help, ATL readers. Anyone looking for a good pro bono [sic] project?

After Taking Down Goldmansex, Goldman Takes On Goldmensex [WSJ Law Blog]
There Is No Sex in Goldman Sachs [DealBreaker]