* Representative Gabrielle Giffords will be resigning from Congress this week to focus on her recovery. Jared Loughner, the man accused of shooting her, is still way too loony to stand trial. [CNN]
* Because of this huge law firm, Dotcom’s bubble has officially burst. Hogan Lovells partner Robert S. Bennett has withdrawn from the Megaupload.com case, citing a conflict of interest with another client. [Reuters]
* In Egypt, even if your client is considered a modern-day pharoah, when you finish your closing arguments, you get a round of applause. And tons of jeers from other lawyers. [Boston Globe]
* Ben Roethlisberger settled his civil rape lawsuit. Neither side will comment as to whether money was a part of the settlement. (Hint: that means a lot of money was involved.) [Reno Gazette-Journal]
* Penn State’s former football coach, Joe Paterno, passed away this weekend. His grand jury testimony can’t be used in court, but the Sandusky litigation will continue. [San Francisco Chronicle]
* Seeing red: lawyers for Louboutin and YSL will face off in an appellate, trademark “shoedown” this week. What does Harvard Law’s fashionista, Jeannie Suk, have to say? [New York Times]
* Remember Doug Arntsen? He’s the ex-Crowell & Moring attorney who fled the country after allegedly embezzling millions. But he’s no flight risk — that’s “absurd.” [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
Yesterday Elie offered some predictions for 2012. I’ll get even more specific and offer a prediction for January 2012: energy lawyers will be making moves this month.
January is generally a popular time for partner moves, and energy lawyers are popular people. Right now their practice area is as hot as New York City is cold. As you may recall, this time last year a slew of energy attorneys moved from McDermott to Cadwalader.
We’ve recently received word that at least two prominent partners in the energy space are switching firms. Let’s find out who they are and where they are heading….
UPDATE (2:30 PM): After the jump, we’ve added an update with additional context, details, and partner names. A source states that five partners are leaving and that the departures constitute a major move — a much bigger deal than our original report might have suggested.
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: Energy Lawyers in Motion”
In our recent post on the top 10 most generous large law firms — based on analysis by ATL’s new director of research, Brian Dalton — the firm of Hogan Lovells placed second. Under the rankings, this meant that Hogan partners are taking the second-biggest hit to their own bottom lines in order to keep their associates happy and well-compensated.
But is this still the case today? Based on what we’re hearing about the most recent Hogan bonuses, announced shortly before Christmas, one wonders whether the Ho-Love partners have turned from Santas into Scrooges….
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Hogan Lovells”
He was clearly the salesman-in-chief, and he did a darn good job at it. I remember being told that despite the fact that the economy was essentially collapsing around everyone’s heads, 2008 was going to come in well over budget with record revenues and profits.
– Andrew Ness, former managing partner of the D.C. office of Thelen LLP, commenting to Washingtonian magazine about former Howrey chairman Robert Ruyak, the poetry-writing power lawyer who lured Ness and his Thelen colleagues over to Howrey.
(Ness is now a Jones Day partner.)
(Additional excerpts from and discussion of Marisa Kashino’s interesting article, A Tale of Two Law Firms: Hogan & Hartson and Howrey, after the jump.)
Continue reading “Quote of the Day: Lawyer, Poet, Salesman”
This morning’s news that Boies Schiller is making a mockery of the Cravath bonus scale simply reinforces the prevailing view (pace David Lat) around here that the 2011 Cravath bonus scale is fundamentally unfair.
Agreeing on this point is former Kirkland & Ellis partner Steven Harper (whose apparent pro-associate stance may make him a sort of Biglaw apostate). As Harper points out, “equity partner profit trees have resumed their growth to the sky. As the economy struggled, Cravath’s average partner profits increased to $2.7 million in 2009 and to $3.17 million in 2010 … That’s not ‘treading water.’ It’s returning to 2007 profit levels — the height of ‘amazing’ boom years that most observers had declared gone forever. Watch for 2011 profits to be even higher.”
And yet associate bonuses remain stagnant at 2009 levels. Furthermore, as ATL commenter “The Cravath Cut” is so fond of noting, when viewed as a percentage of profits, bonuses appear especially measly, at least from the associate p.o.v. (The current $7,500 market rate for first-years is just 0.23% of Cravath’s profits per partner. Back in 2007, first-year bonuses equalled 1.36%.) Despite these numbers, if history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone Biglaw’s rank and file will follow Cravath’s lead.
Cravath is among the most profitable firms in the world. We thought it would be interesting to see what the implications of matching Cravath are for those firms with much lower profit margins. Which firms’ partners willingly take the biggest hit by keeping up? Are these firms arguably more “generous”? After the jump, check out those firms that pay the largest percentage of PPP in bonuses.
Continue reading “Keeping Up With the Cravathians: The Ten Most Generous (or Foolish?) Law Firms”
Today we head into the nation’s capital to bring you six of the best partners to work for as chosen by our readers.
These partners go above and beyond the call of duty, and do so while working at some of the finest law firms: Akin Gump, SNR Denton, Hogan Lovells, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, Fried Frank, and Chadbourne & Parke.
Who are these phenomenal partners?
Continue reading “Career Center Survey Results: Top Partners to Work For – Washington, D.C. (Part 1)”
It’s late October, so Biglaw bonus news could drop any day now. In 2010, Cravath didn’t kick off the season until November 22. But back in 2009, Cravath announced bonuses on November 2. And in 2007 — yes, the glory days, before the Great Recession — Cravath announced bonuses, regular and “special,” on October 29.
In light of the economic gloom and doom, including the possibility of a double-dip recession, it wouldn’t be shocking if bonuses are modest this year. Better to conserve the cash and avoid layoffs, right? Or maybe repeat what happened in 2010 and save some money for spring bonuses in a few months, when firms might have a better idea of the direction of the economy?
Regardless of how bonuses turn out, there are other pockets of good news in the world of large law firms — even news requiring law firms to open their wallets. Check out the growing number of firms that offer the perk we’ve dubbed the gay gross-up….
Continue reading “Biglaw Perk Watch: Has the Gay Gross-Up Hit the Tipping Point?”
Say hello to the Global 100 for 2011. This is the American Lawyer’s list of the world’s 100 largest law firms, ranked by total revenue.
There’s a lot of economic anxiety these days, with fears of a double-dip recession running rampant. But looking back — the list is compiled based on 2010 revenue numbers — the legal business seems to be hanging in there. As noted by Am Law, total revenue for the Global 100 increased by 3 percent last year.
Lawyers are a competitive lot. So you’re probably less interested in the overall figures than in how different firms fared in the rankings….
Continue reading “The Biggest Law Firms in the World: Meet the Global 100″
Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the day a little-known heroin addict called Russell Brand turned up for work dressed as Osama Bin Laden, and was promptly fired by his then-employer, MTV.
After some ensuing years knocking around the lower echelons of British light entertainment, Brand got himself together and landed a role presenting the VMAs — from which he launched himself into mega-stardom when he branded George W. Bush a “retarded cowboy fella.”
Now, you don’t get career paths like that in law. Having said that, I do know of a London Biglaw associate who was once asked to replace his brightly-coloured socks with a more sober pair in advance of an important client meeting, in which he performed impressively.
Please don’t interpret that as a snarky suggestion that all lawyers are boring. As legal market-watchers well know, many attorneys — especially the litigators — are often anything but. They’re just good at hiding the madness. Usually, anyway….
Continue reading “Letter from London: Barristers Behaving Badly”
Almost half (48%) of Career Center survey respondents said they were too busy billing on the Labor Day holiday to fire up the barbie. That’s more than the 35% of survey respondents who reported working on the Fourth of July, but less than the 73% of respondents who worked on Presidents’ Day, and the 66% of respondents who worked on MLK Day.
The most popular reasons given for skipping out on the Labor Day celebrations were:
56% said that nobody specifically asked them to do work, but they had work they needed to get done. 29% said a partner or associate asked them to do work. 14% said a client asked them to do work. 10% said they needed the hours. 7% said everyone else in their office was working. 3% said that Labor Day is not recognized as an official firm holiday.
Now let’s find out in which practice areas and at which Biglaw firms associates were most and least likely to work on Labor Day….
Continue reading “Career Center Survey Results: Who Labored on Labor Day?”
Neal Katyal
* “Dominique Strauss-Kahn Gets Off, As Did Everyone Else Who Stayed In His Room At The Sofitel.” Or: what you don’t want to know about your high-end hotel room. [Dealbreaker]
* F**k yeah — trademark law! Or: some reflections on the “immoral or scandalous” bar to trademark registration, by fashion lawyer Chuck Colman. [Law of Fashion]
* The New Jersey Supreme Court just issued a major new decision calling for changes in the way that courts handle eyewitness identifications — an issue that will also be going before SCOTUS in the coming Term. [The Innocence Project]
* Congratulations to Professor Neal Katyal, former acting U.S. solicitor general, who’s apparently headed to Hogan Lovells. [Am Law Daily]
* Professor Orin Kerr is not impressed by how Dean Linda Ammons has handled the controversy over Professor Larry Connell. [Volokh Conspiracy via Instapundit]
* They have lots of lawyers over at the IRS (former workplace of Michele Bachmann). Do you really expect them to be good at math? [Going Concern]
* Does signing a bill into law with an autopen present constitutional problems? Professor Terry Turnipseed explains how it might. [Slate]
* Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain thinks that President Obama’s decision not to defend DOMA constitutes an “impeachable defense.” [Poliglot / Metro Weekly]
Have you ever dreamed of changing the Biglaw model, of making the law firm a pleasant place to work? If so, we might have just the opportunity for you.
Some Hogan Lovells attorneys were recently offered the opportunity of a lifetime, courtesy of “The Office of Mr. Monfort in Partnership with Hogan Lovells International.” Mr. Monfort invites all Hogan Lovells employees to join the Lawyers Transformation Program, which will “allow a lawyer to identify the excesses and wrongdoing of the current law firm model in order to accomplish the transition into a long-term and sustainable law firm approach.”
In case this wasn’t sufficient to get Hogan Lovells attorneys on board, the invitation goes on to list in detail the crazy lofty ideals of the Lawyers Transformation Program, promising nothing short of revolution and greatness.
The only problem? Hogan Lovells, not surprisingly, has no idea who Mr. Monfort is. Find out how you can join the Biglaw utopia movement and read the Hogan Lovells response, after the jump.
Continue reading “Adventures in Lawyer Spam: Join the Biglaw Revolution”
I feel like I’ve stepped into a time machine that has taken me all the way back to 2009.
According to an internal memo obtained by Above the Law, the international law firm of Hogan Lovells is offering a voluntary separation program to U.S. staff. The memo, posted in full below, talks about needing to bring the firm’s support staff into alignment with overall firm needs.
The program is voluntary, but as we learned during the height of the recession, “voluntary” programs don’t always stay optional….
Continue reading “The Return of Staff Layoff Watch? Hogan Lovells Offers ‘Voluntary’ Separation Program”
Is your law firm this transparent?
Greetings from lovely Palm Springs, California, home to 2011 annual education conference of the Association for Legal Career Professionals (better known to many of you as NALP). The setting is beautiful, the weather is fabulous, and the conference panels have been stimulating thus far. Who needs SXSW?
Yesterday I attended a very interesting session, covering a topic near and dear to the hearts of many Above the Law readers. The apt title of the panel: From Black Boxes to Glass Houses: Evolving Expectations of Law Firm Transparency.
The lively discussion covered a wide range of topics — and also offered some advice for law firms for dealing with the increased transparency of the digital age….
Continue reading “NALP 2011: Law Firm Transparency – From Black Boxes to Glass Houses”
Every day that major law firms do not announce spring bonuses makes them look like below-market, “non-peer” institutions. It has become very clear that firms claiming to pay market compensation need to be providing spring bonuses.
The latest firm to yield to market realities is Hogan Lovells. The relatively new Ho-Love, formed by the merger of Hogan & Hartson and Lovells, showed love to its hos on Friday. The firm matched the Cravath scale for spring bonuses.
You can read the full memo below. But you should also listen to how surprised and happy Ho-Love associates are about the bonuses. Hogan associates are like bizzaro Sidley associates….
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Ho-Love Gives Bonus Love”
After all, there are fewer partners for Howrey to lose with each passing day, as the Howrey lawyer diaspora continues to grow. Let’s review the recent activity — and discuss some possible future defections.
On Friday we reported that IP litigator Mark Whitaker would be joining Baker Botts. That news has now been publicly announced.
Back on February 4, we mentioned that government contracts lawyer Barbara Werther was leaving Howrey, most likely for Ober|Kaler. She’s now on the Ober|Kaler website (although the firm apparently didn’t issue a press release touting her arrival, as it did for two first-year associates).
UPDATE: Just this morning, Ober|Kaler issued a press release on Werther and insurance coverage litigator Stephen Palley (who also joined from Howrey).
UPDATE (4/5/11): All in all, five Howrey construction lawyers joined Ober|Kaler.
Other outlets have noted additional partner departures. K.T. “Sunny” Cherian, described by The Recorder as a “top IP litigation rainmaker” with a book of business worth more than $10 million, joined the San Francisco office of Hogan Lovells this past weekend. Four other partners will join him in soaking up the Ho-Love: John Hamann, Sarah Jalali, Constance Ramos, and Scott Wales (who had been the hiring partner for Howrey’s S.F. office).
Also in S.F., Pillsbury Winthrop picked up IP partner Duane Mathiowetz. The news was reported by the Daily Journal (subscription), which noted that Mathiowetz, who worked as a mechanical engineer for a decade before going into law, has taken five patent cases to trial in the past five years (winning four).
Who might be the next to leave Howrey? Here’s some speculation….
Continue reading “Howrey Losing More Partners? Construction Lawyers Might Be Next to Leave”
I like it when the artifice drops and Biglaw is shown to be dominated by greed. I don’t necessarily use the word “greed” pejoratively. I like money, you like money, and if somebody offered you more money to do what you are doing already, you’d take it.
I just like it when people can admit that the only thing they care about is money. It just makes things more efficient. What do you want? More money! When do you want it? Now!
Associates get a lot of flack for being unabashedly greedy, but an excellent report in today’s Wall Street Journal illustrates that Biglaw partners are just as obsessed with money has anybody else.
And the only problem is that the partners losing out on the money grab are kind of pissed….
Continue reading “When Poaching Partners, It’s All About the Benjamins”
Sometimes lawyers at Cadwalader are the victims of theft. And sometimes they’re the ones doing the stealing.
Here’s the promised follow-up to yesterday’s post about Cadwalader’s successful raid on the energy law practice of McDermott Will & Emery. It’s big news in Biglaw. As of now, nine partners are moving — Paul Pantano, Karen Dewis, Greg Lawrence, Greg Mocek, Tony Mansfield, Ken Irvin, Rob Stephens, Daryl Rice and Doron Ezickson — but if they’re followed by associates, a few dozen lawyers could be involved.
In an email sent out on Wednesday by MWE leaders Jeff Stone and Peter Sacripanti, reprinted in full after the jump, McDermott tried to minimize the losses. Stone and Sacripanti pointed out that “[t]his group of partners focused mainly on one aspect of our overall energy practice, which was commodities and derivatives trading for financial clients,” and that “the departing partners’ total collections in 2010 amounted to about three percent of overall firm revenue.”
Still, three percent of total MWE revenue is nothing to scoff at. In 2009, McDermott had total revenue of $829 million, according to the American Lawyer. Assuming that 2010 revenue is similar (the Am Law numbers aren’t out yet), three percent amounts to $24.87 million. Dividing that out over nine partners yields revenue per partner of about $2.8 million — not a bad book of business.
Let’s check out some reader views on this news….
Continue reading “More on Cadwalader’s Capture of Energy Lawyers from McDermott”
Last week, Hogan Lovells announced its associate bonuses. It’s the first bonus season for the firm since the merger of Hogan & Hartson and Lovells. Unfortunately for some associates, the transatlantic deal apparently did not pay off for them at bonus time.
The memos are individualized, but the associates who have reached out to Above the Law are not happy. Here’s one tipster’s report:
Most people with whom I’ve spoken received $2500-$5000 less than the Cravath-model for billing around 2150 (our hours requirement is 1950). This is true no matter the class year.
A number of associates left the office as soon as the memos came out because they were so disgusted. I predict a mass exodus of associates leaving HoLove this coming year, because a lot of people have been pissed about the hours anyway and these bonuses are just insulting.
But according to a Hogan Lovells spokesperson, the HoLove bonuses matched the market. So why are associates upset?
(Please note that we’ve added some UPDATES after the jump.)
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Unhappiness at Hogan Lovells?”
With fall recruiting gearing up, and the lateral market warming up, we continue our annual series of open threads about the law firms featured in the Vault prestige rankings. These threads provide ATL readers with a forum to discuss the different firms and their various strengths and weaknesses.
The end of the Vault 100 is in sight. We’re covering the firms in batches of 20 now. Here are the firms ranked #61 to #80, which will provide today’s discussion fodder:
61. Greenberg Traurig, LLP
62. Holland & Knight LLP
63. Fish & Richardson P.C.
64. Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP
65. Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP
66. Foley & Lardner LLP
67. Perkins Coie LLP
68. Nixon Peabody LLP
69. Patton Boggs LLP
70. Kaye Scholer LLP
71. Hunton & Williams LLP
72. Reed Smith LLP
73. Steptoe & Johnson LLP
74. Chadbourne & Parke LLP
75. Howrey LLP
76. Bryan Cave LLP
77. Lovells (US) [now part of Hogan Lovells]
78. Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
79. Crowell & Moring LLP
80. Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP
This is a very eclectic group, including a few New York-centric firms, some D.C.-dominated places, and a bunch of national and even international giants.
Let’s take a closer look at some of these shops….
Continue reading “Fall Recruiting Open Threads: Vault 61 – 80 (2011)”
