As we’ve been saying, it’s not that hard to give your associates a better bonus than what they’re doling out at Cravath. At the elite California firm of Irell & Manella, they do it every year.
Once again, Irell has issued bonuses that put Cravath’s to shame. No muss, no fuss — multiple sources tell us the the bonuses were much bigger than the Cravath bonuses.
So how much bigger are we talking about?
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Irell Whacks Cravath, Again”
Do you believe in life after law? More specifically, do you believe in life after Biglaw?
Many former partners at major law firms spend their post-Biglaw years living large — as well they should. After all, they worked very hard, for many years, to amass seven-figure, eight-figure, or even nine-figure fortunes. After leaving behind the life of billing 2000+ hours a year, they finally have time to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
But not all ex-partners find themselves on Easy Street. Take, for example, these two ex-partners in California — one whose civil suit against her former firm isn’t going so well, and one who might be going from Biglaw to the Big House….
Continue reading “Bad News for Former Biglaw Partners on the West Coast”
A war hero comes home.
* Lawyers with four to seven years of experience are apparently now in demand. You know why? BECAUSE THEY FIRED ALL OF THEM TWO YEARS AGO! [WSJ Law Blog]
* Occupy Wall Street is now getting free hugs. It’s like, when you register as a liberal, somebody comes in the night and shoves your testicles back up inside you. [Dealbreaker]
* I dream of a day when eyewitness testimony is viewed as unreliable as DNA evidence is now thought to be reliable. [An Associate's Mind]
* If you are a lawyer, it’s really never about you. [What About Clients?]
Morgan Chu
* Even in the extremely unlikely scenario that one of these radical tax plans is adopted, tax lawyers will still find work. Believe it. [Going Concern]
* Morgan Chu, the hotshot Irell & Manella partner accused of sexual harassment, won a motion to compel arbitration of the dispute. [Law360 (subscription)]
* If you took the “over” on the cold day in Hell when BP is allowed to drill in the Gulf again, you’re gonna lose that bet. [New York Times]
* It’s a bit anticlimactic. And we’ve been pulled apart by political divisiveness. But we are just about done with the Iraq War! Yay? Ticker tape in Times Square, or is it going to be all, “Welcome home, while you were away we misplaced all the jobs and money”? [Politico]
Juliette Youngblood and Morgan Chu
Last month, Juliette Youngblood, an ex-partner at the elite California law firm of Irell & Manella, filed suit against her former firm. In her lawsuit for sex discrimination and wrongful termination, Youngblood advanced a whole host of salacious allegations — including a report of sexual harassment by Morgan Chu, arguably the nation’s #1 intellectual-property litigator.
Irell did not respond to the lawsuit at the time. Now it has, in a blistering 22-page filing that calls Youngblood’s claims “meritless” and “utterly false, complete fabrications manufactured out of whole cloth.”
What does the firm have to say about the specific claims made by Youngblood — such as the allegation that a drunken Morgan Chu made inappropriate and offensive comments to her at a firm happy hour, including remarks about her physical appearance and about “objects entering [Youngblood's] body”?
And what do ATL sources, including readers familiar with both Youngblood and Irell, think of the situation?
For sale. Contact me for details.
* What kind of a lawyer can’t spot a Nigerian scammer before being bilked out of millions? If you fell for that, please hit me up. I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. [Washington Post]
* Will Juliette Youngblood, the self-proclaimed “luckiest girl in the world,” still feel the same way if her claims against Irell & Manella and Morgan Chu are sent to binding arbitration? [Am Law Daily]
* The Game may face charges over an alleged tweet that prevented police from responding to five emergency calls in two hours. Only five? I guess that’s what happens when you’re straight outta Compton, where snitches get stitches. [CNN]
* With Senator Kevin de León hoping to regulate the use of fitted and flat hotel sheets, one thing’s for sure. California isn’t becoming a nanny state. It’s becoming a maid state. [Los Angeles Times]
* You know Chris Stewart has had one too many concussions when he’s still talking about finishing law school after his NFL career is over. [Wall Street Journal]
* I might be a bad little Jew for saying this, but matzoh isn’t worth $9.9B. It’s like eating cardboard. If you want special prison food, at least sue for something that tastes good. [New York Daily News]
Morgan Chu
Legendary litigator Morgan Chu, former managing partner and current litigation chair at Irell & Manella, is one of the nation’s top intellectual-property attorneys and trial lawyers. He has tried multiple IP cases to nine-figure jury verdicts, and he has earned every professional accolade under the sun (see his Irell website bio). He is arguably the nation’s #1 IP litigator. (If you disagree, make your case for someone else in the comments.)
And now Morgan Chu is the subject of sexual-harassment allegations. In a lawsuit filed in California Superior Court on Friday, former Irell partner Juliette Youngblood alleges that Chu sexually harassed her, then retaliated against her after she rejected his advances.
Morgan Chu is widely admired — at Irell, where his rainmaking monsoon-making helps generate robust partner profits (over $2.9 million in PPP in 2010), as well as above-market associate bonuses; in IP litigation circles, where he is a fearsome adversary; and among Asian-American lawyers, where he stands as proof that we can excel at litigation as well as transactional work.
It’s hard to believe that such a beloved figure has been hit with such salacious allegations (which we must emphasize are mere allegations at this point, nothing more). But let’s forge ahead and check them out — along with the pertly pretty plaintiff who is making them….
In late December 2010, the elite California law firm of Irell & Manella announced 2010 year-end bonuses that reportedly doubled the benchmark Cravath scale. Although some felt the firm could have been even more generous, given its strong performance in 2010, most Irell associates were quite pleased.
Discontent grew, however, over the following months. Sullivan & Cromwell announced spring bonuses, Cravath announced better spring bonuses, and most top firms followed suit. But not Irell.
Spring turned into summer. Some at Irell feared that the firm was done doling out bonuses until December.
But that fear was misplaced. Yesterday the firm announced “mid-year” bonuses.
So, how much are we talking about?
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Irell Announces Mid-Year Bonuses”
In its recent obituary for Warren Christopher, former U.S. Secretary of State and former senior partner at O’Melveny & Myers, the New York Times referred to O’Melveny as “the most traditional and prestigious of Los Angeles law firms.”
Well, if you want to be one of the “most prestigious” Los Angeles law firms — or national or global law firms, to the extent that O’Melveny has outgrown L.A. — then you need to pay your people appropriately. So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a shock to learn that OMM has announced spring bonuses.
We received confirmation and details of the O’Melveny spring bonuses from multiple sources. Amusingly enough, about half of our sources on this story are anxious associates at Gibson Dunn….
Over the holiday break, Irell & Manella announced its associate bonuses. Multiple sources are telling us that the Irell bonuses doubled the bonuses offered by Cravath, Sullivan & Cromwell, or their followers.
That’s great news, but Irell associates are not particularly impressed. Irell doubled the small bonuses of Cravath and S&C last year, too. And since Cravath et al. paid essentially the same bonus as last year, Irell associates ended up with the same bonus as last year, notwithstanding any increase in profit the firm may have achieved in 2010 over 2009.
Still, Irell is following a proven strategy to get noticed. Remember, it wasn’t all that long ago that Cravath was the most prestigious firm (according to the Vault rankings). But then Wachtell started consistently blowing Cravath away in terms of compensation, and now the Cravath’s and S&C’s of the world seem to be just playing for second place. The same thing could be happening to Irell: the firm shot up from #50 to #37 in the most recent Vault rankings, and I’d imagine that another year of paying double the market will help Irell continue its rise.
Actually, does Cravath really even constitute the “market” for top-end Biglaw associate compensation anymore? In 2008, Skadden doubled Cravath’s bonuses. In 2009, Cravath took advantage of a cratering economy to push bonuses to new lows, but there were still firms like Irell that found a way to beat the Cravath bonuses. And during the 2010 bonus season, it feels like the only firms even pretending that Cravath pays top associate compensation are the huge ones that really want to keep the associate compensation market as depressed as possible.
Let’s make a list of the firms that can see the Cravath bonuses in their rearview mirrors. We’ll get you started, and hopefully you can fill us in on anybody we’ve missed….
We’ve gotten away from plowing through the latest Vault Rankings, but fear not. Your firm is coming up soon.
We’ve been through the top 30 firms. But now we’re getting into a group of firms that really utilized the cost-cutting measures of salary cuts and layoffs to weather the recession of 2009. Did these guys take a big prestige hit? Not really. Here’s the next batch of firms:
31. Mayer Brown
32. Milbank
33. Paul Hastings
34. Akin Gump
35. Allen & Overy
36. Fried Frank
37. Irell & Manella
38. Freshfields
39. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe
40. Willkie Farr & Gallagher
Just off the top of my head, does anybody else think that Irell is coming in a little low?
Anyway, let’s get into these firms…
Continue reading “Fall Recruiting Open Threads: Vault 31 – 40 (2011)”
This summer is not as thrilling for law students as summers past. Firms have tightened their belts, and the law students lucky enough to snag one of the few summer associate positions out there are not getting the royal treatment. Or they are, but now the royal treatment is defined as allowing summers to order anything they want off the McDonald’s Dollar Menu (“All the McChickens and baked apple pies you can eat, 3Ls! But get it to go. There’s work to be done.”).
The Philadelphia Inquirer laments the decline of the summer associate experience:
The programs themselves, with trips abroad and lavish entertaining, could seem more like summer enrichment for precocious college students than real employment. But as a general rule, that sort of treatment is a thing of the past.
More typical is the summer program at the Wilmington office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom L.L.P., where Temple second-year Nick Mozal is spending his summer in corporate law. Mozal said there has been some entertaining, but the big event so far has been a night at a Phillies game.
Well, it is Wilmington. Are there better options than that?
But even in much more glamorous Philadelphia, the summer experience is lackluster:
James Lawlor, a Reed Smith partner who recruits and hires summer associates, said the firm has been doing less entertaining of summer associates, and when it does, it is more likely to schedule events at the firm’s Center City offices rather than at costly restaurants.
“We took away some of the bells and whistles,” Lawlor said.
Not all firms have silenced their bells and thrown out their whistles, though. After the jump, check out this year’s contenders for best summer associate event. And vote for the firm that should take home the shorter and smaller prize…
Continue reading “ATL Summer Associate Event Contest: The Finalists”
Congratulations to the associates at Irell & Manella. The firm announced its 2009 bonuses last week, and they were good — very good.
Irell took the Sullivan & Cromwell bonus scale, which is effectively “market” for the top New York firms, and then DOUBLED IT. There was no memo — the information was communicated in an associate-wide meeting — but we have confirmed the following:
The success of lockstep firms like Irell raises the question: Is lockstep the way to go? If you’ll be in Irell’s hometown of Los Angeles this Thursday, Elie and yours truly are doing two events, and one of them is a debate about lockstep. For information and RSVP details, see here.
The full Irell bonus table, plus additional information, after the jump.
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Irell & Manella Pays Twice S&C”
As we finish off the Vault top 50, we look at some firms went through some tough layoffs.
Here’s the list:
41. Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe
42. Baker & McKenzie
43. Goodwin Procter
44. DLA Piper
45. King & Spalding
46. Jenner & Block
47. Dewey & LeBoeuf
48. Proskauer Rose
49. Vinson & Elkins
50. Irell & Manella
It might not look like it, but there is a lot of carnage on this list. Orrick is down four spots. Proskauer is down four spots. King & Spalding is down 3 spots.
And many of the firms here that are marginally up or holding steady still went through significant layoffs.
After the jump, Law Shucks offers some stats.
Continue reading “Fall Recruiting Open Thread: Vault 41 – 50 (2010)”
* The NYCLU is suing the NYPD to protect Yankees fans’ right to hate America. [Gothamist and New York Law Journal]
* Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan is resigning this weekend. Among those gunning for his job are two Foley Hoag partners: Michael B. Keating and Martin Murphy. That’s a little awkward when it comes to intra-firm politics, no? [Boston Globe]
* Former ATL ‘Lawyer’ of the Day Howard Kieffer was back in the courtroom this week, being convicted of mail fraud and making false statements. [Associated Press]
* Easter’s celebration of resurrection has inspired Eliot Spitzer. He’s contemplating another run for Attorney General. [New York Post]
* Earlier this week, a judge ruled that law firms need to make it clear that they are representing the company and not individual employees during the course of their investigations– Irell & Manella was on the short end of that ruling. Stanford Group’s former CIO was likely following that case closely. She has filed a malpractice and conspiracy complaint against Proskauer Rose and others for the same practices. [Courthouse News Service]
* More on the monster $55.1 million Lehman bill submitted in Manhattan bankruptcy court by Weil Gotshal. In addition to over 100,000 billable hours over four months, the bill includes “$200,000 for business meals, $439,000 for computerized and “other” research, [and] $115,000 on local transportation and $287,000 on duplicating charges.” Sigh. Just when Americans were starting to hate bankers more than lawyers. [Wall Street Journal (subscription)]
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.
We’re surprised that the firms in this latest group of Vault 100 law firms aren’t ranked more highly. Some of them are quite profitable (Dechert),* prestigious (Munger), or high-profile (Boies Schiller, home of legendary litigator David Boies).
But who are we to argue? For communal discussion, here is this morning’s batch of Biglaws:
46. Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP (6.026)
47. Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP (6.004)
48. Dechert LLP (5.973)
49. Irell & Manella LLP (5.952)
50. McDermott, Will & Emery (5.946)
Please trade thoughts on these firms in the comments. Thanks.
* Dechert’s 2006 profits per partner clocked in at just under $2 million. But it should be noted that the firm has multiple partnership tiers and only 169 equity partners (out of 898 lawyers).
The Vault Top 100 Law Firms [Vault]
Earlier: Vault 1-5; Vault 6-10; Vault 11-15; Vault 16-20; Vault 21-25; Vault 26-30; Vault 31-35; Vault 36-40; Vault 41-45
The website of Irell & Manella touts the firm as “An Elite CA Law Firm.”
Immodest? Perhaps. But true, insofar as Irell pays its associates as “an elite CA law firm” should.
The Irell & Manella pay raise memo, after the jump.
Continue reading “West Coast Pay Raise Watch: Irell & Manella”
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
Oodles of juicy moves today, especially out of and into the federal government. As the leaves change, so do the lawyers.
Government to Private Sector:
* Federal prosecutor John Hueston, a leader of the team that prosecuted Enron execs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, is heading for the greener pastures of Irell & Manella.
All around the country, AUSAs with white-collar criminal experience are leaving U.S. Attorney’s Offices — including our former workplace — for the more lucrative precincts of private practice. The trend is especially pronounced in the legendary Southern District of New York, as noted by Anna Schneider-Mayerson.
Private Sector to Government:
* Corporate and securities lawyer Michael Halloran, a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop, has been appointed to serve as deputy chief of staff and counselor to Christopher Cox, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Lateral Moves:
* Broker-dealer compliance specialist Steven Lofchie, to Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, from Davis Polk & Wardwell. (In this day and age, compliance is a hot area. We’re guessing Lofchie got offered a nice deal.)
* Tax lawyer John Narducci, to Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, from White & Case.
* IP lawyer Robert Wasnofski Jr., to Dorsey & Whitney, from Baker Botts.
* M&A lawyer Sandy Feldman, to Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham, from Torys.
Retirements:
* Plaintiffs’ lawyer Alan Schulman, of Bernstein, Litowitz — and formerly of the indicted Milberg Weiss — is retiring at the end of the year.
Not Going Anywhere — Yet:
* Apple CEO Steve Jobs and HP CEO Mark Hurd are sticking around — despite the problems that their companies face.
NY Practice Leader Leaves One Elite NY Firm for Another [NYLawyer.com]
More NY Partners Switching Firms [NYLawyer.com]
Milberg Weiss: Merger Talks Break Down; An Alum Retires [WSJ Law Blog]
Enron Prosecutor John Hueston to Join Irell & Manella [WSJ Law Blog]
The Gang That Shot Straight Is Disbanding, For a Profit [New York Observer]
Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past five years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com
Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December.
As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / China), please note that thus far in January ’12, we have already made seven US associate and counsel placements in Asia. This is an especially impressive number, considering the biglaw lateral hiring market in Asia is down right now (see state of the market brief overview below). These new placements are of new hires in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, who were interviewing with their new firm for a month or more and they are spread out among different practice areas, including project finance, litigation, fund formation, M&A and cap markets. We are close on four additional new associate placements, in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, that we expect to close soon. We do not discuss partner placements in these articles, but the pace of partner recruitment in Asia (a large part of our business) has continued.
Hedge Fund In-House Openings in Hong Kong
We are seeing a small run of new in-house openings in Hong Kong at hedge funds. We are currently filling three different in-house positions at three different hedge funds in Hong Kong, two of these searches we are handling on an exclusive basis. All three will most likely be filled by a US associate, with about 4 to 6 years of experience. Mandarin not required. Candidates from NYC and London will be considered, but at one of these funds the new hire will likely come from Hong Kong / China or Singapore (with HK being the strong preference).
Please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com if you are interested in these hedge fund openings. As you probably would expect, the competition for these spots will be fierce and the funds will be very selective when choosing which candidates to interview.
In 2009, a small group of Harvard Law School students noticed an absurd monopoly in the bar prep space, held by an unchallenged leader with a non-evolving product. In response, these students teamed up with Harvard Law alumni to launch BarMax on January 14, 2010.
The mission: democratize bar prep by embracing new technologies to provide the very best bar exam review courses at a fraction of the cost normally associated with these courses.
Since then, with the encouragement of thousands of students and an unwavering commitment to their success, BarMax has established itself as a comprehensive alternative to the stagnant, over-priced status quo.
As we continue to expand, we do not want to lose sight of the basic premises that led us to create BarMax in the first place. If you are a law student who believes that there is something fundamentally wrong with being forced to take out yet another loan to pay for a $4,000 bar exam prep course, you are not alone.
