King & Spalding

You’ve Got (No) Mail! Major Law Firm Blocks Employee Email Access

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Personal email accounts introduce possible threats to firm computers. A careless employee could open a trojan horse attachment and unleash a virus on the system. Even if the attack only infects the local drive, confidential information may be at risk.

This puts firms in a bind. Either invest time and energy teaching basic Internet skills to their employees — lessons like, “don’t open attachments from unknown email addresses” — that most of us learned when we still had Prodigy emails, or condescendingly cut off access to a modern necessity because the employees are too hopeless to understand the rules.

Yesterday, a major law firm chose the latter route…

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Morning Docket: 11.08.12

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* Now that Barack Obama has secured his seat as a two-term president, in-house counsel in the financial sector can kiss their dreams of Dodd-Frank being repealed goodbye. Here are some issues to think about in light of its new footing. [Corporate Counsel]

* “We’re in the early innings of adjusting what value means.” And these days, it looks like “value” is synonymous with “making less money.” Given the results of this third quarter analysis, it’s quite clear that flat is still the new up for Biglaw. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Blow my whistle, baby? A DLA Piper partner filed a $4M suit against the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on claims he was maliciously prosecuted as revenge for whistleblowing. [Daily Business Review]

* After being arrested on domestic violence charges, it seems that Steven Guynn of King & Spalding has left the firm. He doesn’t need to sweat his unemployment, because his house is for sale for $3.3M. [Am Law Daily]

* From Biglaw to Midlaw: Morrison Cohen, a midsize firm, managed to poach a partner from Willkie Farr. But how? Apparently this guy was no longer interested in billing “$900-plus” per hour. [New York Law Journal]

* Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords will be present at Jared Lee Loughner’s sentencing hearing today, though it is unknown if she herself will speak. His expected sentence is life without parole. [ABC News]

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Lawyerly Lairs: A Castle Fit For A King (& Spalding Partner)

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Steven Guynn

Back in March, we wrote about Steven Guynn, who at the time was a corporate partner at King & Spalding. Above the Law readers who work at K&S are happy campers, giving the firm a solid grade of B+ in our Career Center. Alas, the allegations against Guynn would seem to merit an F. As you may recall, Guynn was accused of assaulting his alleged mistress, Jeannette Schaefer.

Today we have some updates about Steve Guynn (all via Teri Buhl). First, Guynn is reportedly getting divorced from his wife, Kristie Guynn. Second, the criminal case against him no longer appears in the online docket for the Connecticut courts (perhaps because it has been moved to a domestic violence docket). Third, he is no longer at King & Spalding.

(We reached out to King & Spalding to confirm Guynn’s departure from the firm. They did not respond to our inquiry, but Guynn’s bio has been pulled from the firm website. Here is a cached version, which shows Guynn’s impressive educational and professional background, including the two other top firms where he was once a partner.)

The allegations against Steven Guynn have never been proven. But here is one thing established beyond a reasonable doubt: his multimillion-dollar mansion is fit for royalty. Shall we take a peek?

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Dewey Partners Get Any Capital Back? Good Luck With That!
(Plus more partner moves, including Ralph Ferrara.)

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Photo (no, not a photoshop) by ATL reader 'Anna.'

As we reported over the weekend, it’s looking like Dewey & LeBoeuf will soon find itself in bankruptcy (perhaps voluntarily, perhaps not). The specter of bankruptcy raises a question for the many former partners of Dewey: dude, where’s my car capital contribution?

Let’s find out — and get the latest dispatches on the Dewey death spiral, including news of a new home for former vice chair Ralph Ferrara….

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(Plus more partner moves, including Ralph Ferrara.)“

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Dewey Know Where the Firm Leaders Are Going? Heads of Departments Head for the Exits

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Partner departures from the fast-sinking Dewey & LeBoeuf have reached a point where it’s difficult to track them in real time. We’ll focus our coverage on the biggest defections. There are multiple other resources for monitoring all the moves, the latest being the Wall Street Journal’s interactive graphic. (Similar trackers are available from Am Law Daily and Thomson Reuters.)

Last week, an internal memo gave Dewey partners the green light to consider “alternative opportunities” with other law firms. Many partners have availed themselves of that permission, with dozens of partners leaving the firm since the memo’s issuance. According to Thomson Reuters, about 150 of Dewey’s 300 partners have resigned since the start of 2012.

And now one of Dewey’s leaders — the chair of the firm’s Global Litigation Department, and a member of the multi-partner Office of the Chairman — is departing. Where is he going?

As usual, various UPDATES — including news of another departure by a department head and Chairman’s Office member, and additional details of litigators on the move — after the jump.

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Moscow and the Middle East: Dewey Have A Problem?
(Plus more about Dewey’s loan covenants.)

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About two weeks ago, we covered reports about Dewey & LeBoeuf possibly shedding some of its overseas offices. We noted at the time, however, that the reports were vague, and we added that some D&L sources denied the existence of plans for closing any specific foreign office.

Well, the reports are getting increasingly detailed. Word on the street is that D&L might shutter three of its offices in the Middle East. And the firm’s Moscow office is reportedly being courted by other major U.S. law firms.

Which offices are being considered for closure? And who are Dewey’s suitors in Moscow?

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(Plus more about Dewey’s loan covenants.)”

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Maybe King & Spalding Thinks There’s A Whole Country Of Gay People Somewhere?

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King & Spalding has had fun times navigating the world of LGBT political correctness. The firm took some heat when one of its partners at the time, former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, signed on to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. Then K&S took even more heat when it nixed Clement’s DOMA representation, causing Clement to resign.

You know that King & Spalding just wants to stay as far away as possible from any LGBT issue. The only thing they want to have sex with is fees.

But sometimes, attempts to be PC lead directly to hilarity…

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This King & Spalding Partner Allegedly Kicks Ass

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Corporate law partners are supposed to have kick ass deal books, but they’re definitely not supposed to kick their mistress’s ass. Unfortunately for one King & Spalding partner, this is the wild allegation that’s strewn across today’s issue of the New York Post.

After reportedly partnering with his side piece for years, according to police documents, K&S partner Steven Guynn allegedly flew into a rage and slapped his girlfriend four times in the head “in a punching manner.” Last May, Guynn reportedly beat his mistress and threatened to kill her.

Let’s learn some more about the charges that Guynn is facing….

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Where’s LeBoeuf? An Update on Doings at Dewey

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Over the past few weeks, we’ve been receiving interesting reports about Dewey & LeBoeuf. They were nothing but vague rumblings for a while, but they’ve now reached the point where we have enough to write about.

So let’s check in and ask: How do things stand at this major, top-tier law firm? In other words, “Where’s LeBoeuf?”

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King & Spalding Lawyer Received Key Email As Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty Against Stephen McDaniel

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As we mentioned in Morning Docket on Friday, prosecutors will be seeking the death penalty against Stephen McDaniel if he is convicted of the murder of Lauren Giddings, his former neighbor and classmate at Mercer Law School.

The Bibb County District Attorney calls the crime “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved depravity of mind,” which is one standard the prosecution has to meet to seek the death penalty in Georgia.

The Macon Telegraph conducted a long interview with Lauren Giddings’s boyfriend, David Vandiver. The King & Spalding lawyer wonders if Giddings’s final email to him was entirely hers….

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