Are you here in Washington, DC? And are you by any chance free this evening? If so, then please consider attending Banding Together 2007. It’s a battle of ten D.C. law firm bands — good stuff. And even if you have doubts about the music, remember: it’s for a good cause!
Kirkland & Ellis partner Walter Lohmann, chair of the firm’s diversity committee, contacted ATL with this information….
Continue reading “ATL Public Service Announcement: Banding Together 2007″
Holy never-used bread machine, Batman — none of this week’s couples has a Williams-Sonoma registry! What the hell? Is the engaged set abandoning the yuppie respectability of W-S for the groovier vibe of Crate & Barrel?
The answer is yes! They’re also registering for sterling-silver gravy ladles at obscure New Orleans establishments.
Here are the three daring couples who’ve spat in the face of Chuck Williams:
1. Maya Alperowicz and Justin Florence
2. Elizabeth Bangs and Brent Landau
3. Avery Gardiner and Edwin U
More about this week’s couples, after the jump.
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 06.09: We Luv U”
Some more good news on the associate pay raise front:
1. Kirkland & Ellis: “The Firm Committee has approved increases to our associate base salaries in our California, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. offices, retroactive to May 1, 2007.”
So K&E is now on the $160K scale — not just in California and D.C., which was inevitable, but also in Chicago. Expect the other Chicago shops to follow suit
2. Sheppard Mullin: The firm has raised to the $160K scale in California and Washington. Not super-exciting; but it’s always nice to welcome a new member to the club.
Associate pay raise memos from Sheppard Mullin and Kirkland & Ellis, verified by multiple sources at both firms, appear after the jump.
Continue reading “Nationwide Pay Raise Watch: Kirkland & Ellis and Sheppard Mullin”
Lawyers are taking over the NYT weddings section like mold on warm cheddar! Once again, we had a tough time picking three contestant couples from the horde of JDs this week. An unusually high number of law firm partners (and a GC) tied the knot (see here, here, and here for some that didn’t make the cut), and partly as a consequence, some younger associate-level couples were left out in the cold. LEWW even had to suck it up and cut one of our law school classmates from the finals!
Here are the carefully selected contestants:
1. Soogy Lee and Nathan Taft
2. Alyssa Qualls and John McCormick
3. Eve Brensike and Richard Primus
Continue reading about this week’s couples, after the jump.
(And if you haven’t already voted, don’t forget about the April Couple of the Month race — we’ll close the poll soon.)
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 5.6: Ann Arbor Amour“
Some notable moves within the legal profession:
Government to Private Sector:
* Former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, to LeBoeuf Lamb in DC. Last November, Steele lost his bid to represent Maryland in the U.S. Senate.
* Michele Hirshman, who served as Eliot Spitzer’s top deputy at the Attorney General’s office before he became Governor, is joining Paul Weiss, as a litigation partner. Described by the New York Times as “very smart, very tough and rather short,” she sounds perfectly diva-licious.
Lateral Moves:
* Antitrust superstar Charles “Rick” Rule, to Cadwalader, from Fried Frank. This truly IS like musical chairs: Cadwalader, Rule’s new home, recently lost its antitrust group to Skadden.
* Celebrated criminal defense lawyer Abbe Lowell — who did an excellent job defending Hamlet against murder charges — is moving from Chadbourne & Parke to McDermott Will & Emery.
* Mark Holscher and Jeffrey Sinek are joining the Los Angeles office of Kirkland & Ellis. They’re coming from O’Melveny & Myers and Thelen Reid, respectively. From the Law Blog:
Holscher and Sinek are best friends. They were roommates when they served as federal prosecutors in Los Angeles. Holscher, 44, served as an assistant U.S. Attorney from 1989-1995; Sinek, 46, served from 1989 to 1994. Sinek was the best man at Holscher’s wedding; Holscher was a groomsman in Sinek’s. Both graduated from Boalt Hall law school. Holscher told the Law Blog they’ve always wanted to work together.
Such ambiguously gay commentary led an anonymous reader to quip: “Hope that Alexandra Korry doesn’t read about this…”
On The Move: Charles “Rick” Rule [Antitrust Review]
Kirkland Beefs Up West Coast White-Collar Practice [WSJ Law Blog]
Abbe Lowell to Join McDermott from Chadbourne [WSJ Law Blog]
Former Maryland Pol Michael Steele Joins LeBoeuf Lamb [WSJ Law Blog]
Spitzer’s Longtime No. 2 Michele Hirshman to Join Paul Weiss [WSJ Law Blog]
The U.S. Supreme Court building at One First Street, on the morning of Monday, March 19. Like rock star groupies, SCOTUS fans camped out overnight for a chance to breathe the same air as the nine robed ones.
As we previously explained, we didn’t make it in to see the argument in Morse v. Frederick, aka the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case, before the Supreme Court on Monday. But our trip wasn’t a complete waste, since we did get some video footage (here, here, here, and here).
Oh wait — you HATED our videos. Well, at least give us credit for mixing things up a little around here. Every now and then, we like to try new things, to keep ATL from getting hidebound. Not every experiment works; but that’s why they call them experiments.
Anyway, hopefully you’ll like our still photography more. We’re post them in two batches. The first set of pictures, of Dean Kenneth Starr and two colleagues, appears after the jump.
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]
A Kirkland & Ellis memo and a table were posted in the comments recently. We have verified them with sources at the firm; they’re the real deal. Accordingly, we have reprinted them after the jump.
Also, Paul Hastings — which previously announced pay raises for a bunch of its offices — has now announced what it intends to do in Atlanta. It’s raising associate salaries by $15,000, which means that first-years will earn $130,000. More details here.
Paul Hastings raises associate salaries [Fulton County Daily Report]
Continue reading “Skaddenfreude: Kirkland & Ellis, Paul Hastings (Atlanta)”
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
Some of you have asked for more information about compensation paid to law firm associates outside of New York. You might be interested in this tip, which recently showed up in our inbox:
Thought you might be interested to know that Kirkland & Ellis has announced that it is raising its salary to $145,000 for first-years in both Los Angeles and San Francisco.
With Quinn Emanuel and Skadden already there, this might be enough to push the Big Three — Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Latham & Watkins, and O’Melveny & Myers — to match.
Over at Greedy LA, a list has been posted of which Los Angeles firms pay their first-years a starting salary of $145K (consistent with New York levels). If you have any updates, corrections, or more details, please share them with us.
Firms in Los Angeles Salary Chart [Infirmation / Greedy LA]
Earlier: Prior Skaddenfreude posts (scroll down)
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
Keep reading »
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
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