Kirkland & Ellis

One 2L’s Innovative Approach to Job Hunting

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A reader alerted us to the following Google ad, which showed up in a Gmail sidebar next to a law-related email chain:

Whoa! Is this for real? Is a second-year student at Cardozo Law School actually advertising himself via text ads on Google, promoting himself as “[a] great choice for Summer Associate”?

Are Cardozo law students truly this desperate? Is this why the career services dean quit to teach yoga? Should Cardozo focus less on teaching students how to walk and more on teaching them how to conduct job searches?

Or is this too harsh an assessment? Let’s learn more about the 2L behind this unusual ad.

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Career Center Survey Results: Top Partners to Work For – Washington, D.C. (Part 2)

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Today we take one last look at some of the finest Washington, D.C. partners to work for (if you missed Part 1, click here).

Not only are these six partners great at what they do, but perhaps more importantly, they are great people as well. And they work at some of the top law firms in the nation: Dewey & LeBoeuf, Cooley, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Crowell & Moring, and Bingham McCutchen.

Kudos to these partners for making Biglaw a little less brutal….

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Career Center Survey Results: Top Partners to Work For – New York (Part 1)

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Partners are usually best remembered for behaving badly, or worse, treating associates badly. But not the partners who made our “Top Partners to Work For” list.

Last week, we asked you to nominate the best Biglaw partners you work for, tell us why they are the best, and rate them in six categories: expertise within the practice area, quality of work given to associates, hands-on training given to associates, provision of feedback on associate work, respect for associates’ schedules, and professionalism with associates.

Over the next several weeks, we will reveal who these exceptional partners are in a multi-part Career Center survey results series, sponsored by Lateral Link. We kick off the series this week with the New York partners, and then we’ll make our way around the country.

Let’s get to know the first eight partners and find out why associates say they are the best to work for….

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Morning Docket: 10.04.11

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Karolina Stefanski

* Anna Nicole Smith is still screwing old white men from beyond the grave. Biglaw firms want Heller Ehrman’s claims to be decided in federal court, not bankruptcy court. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Kirkland & Ellis is pledging $2.75M to Stanford Law over the next five years in an effort to convince more students to take douchey pictures in front of their office signage. [Stanford Daily]

* Slow and steady wins the race, especially when it comes to reporting the news. A few news sites were eager to let readers know that Amanda Knox lost her appeal… except she didn’t. [Atlantic Wire]

* The Supreme Court has rejected yet another Obama birther lawsuit. Legal reasoning? “STFU, we’ll probably only have to deal with this dude for another year.” [CBS News]

* TWU to NYPD: Please don’t force us to listen to these Occupy Wall Street fools. We’d rather have our regular crazies on board. Of course, their lawsuit says it a bit more eloquently. [Wall Street Journal]

* Karolina Stefanski is being sued by an ex over some blank checks to the tune of $80K. Seriously, who cheats on a Playboy model? I mean, come on, boobs. [New York Post]

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The Biggest Law Firms in the World: Meet the Global 100

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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….

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Best Way To Brag About An Offer: Now With Pictures

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Last week, we told you the story about a University of Chicago Law School student who received an offer and found a charitable way of bragging about it to his friends.

I should have known that we’d end up doing a series of posts about this. “Bragging” about getting an offer is something that everybody does in their own way, and something that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

And so our next installment of law student puffery involves photos, which is always fun. But in truth we can’t be totally sure if this guy is bragging about getting an offer.

Given the firm the kid is bragging about, he might just be happy to be there…

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Supreme Court Clerk Bonuses Are Heading Higher

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Walking the hallways at One First Street.

Last month, the Supreme Court law clerks for October Term 2010 finished their clerkships, turning over their clerkly duties to the October Term 2011 class of clerks. As in past years, many of the OT 2010 clerks are joining private law firms — which welcome them with six-figure signing bonuses. These bonuses are paid on top of base salaries reflecting their seniority (many SCOTUS clerks join firms as second- to fourth-year associates), as well as the usual year-end bonuses.

For the past few years, at least since 2007, law firm signing bonuses for members of The Elect have hovered around $250,000. But this year, at least a few firms are offering even more.

So how much are we talking about?

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Pregnant Woman Takes Bar Exam While in Labor, Delivers Baby Right After!

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'These MBE questions are way easier than the practice ones!'

We thought we had a winner for most gutsy bar exam performance of July 2011. On Thursday, a woman taking the New Jersey bar exam passed out during the test — then picked herself up off the floor, and went right back to typing.

That’s impressive — but we may have spoken too soon. Here’s a labor-intensive story that tops it.

“A friend of mine went into labor while taking the Illinois bar exam,” a tipster told us. “She calmly finished, went to the hospital, and had her baby an hour or two later. Girl’s a real trooper.”

“A certain Northwestern Law alumna went into labor during the second day of the Illinois bar,” said a second source. “She finished the exam and had her baby, her first, at 5:58 p.m. I think that is worth noting.”

You better believe it’s worth noting. If ever there was a baby immaculately conceived by a lawgiver, this might be the one.

We have all the details — including a picture of the Bar Exam Baby, whom we’ll nickname “Baby Bar”….

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Mystery Departure Solved: Ex-Kirkland Partner Hit With Federal Criminal Charges

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Ted Freedman

Last October, we wrote about the mysterious departure from Kirkland & Ellis of Theodore Freedman. Freedman was a prominent bankruptcy and restructuring partner at the firm, based out of the New York office.

As we mentioned in the story, our coverage of Freedman’s departure was prompted by “interesting rumors.” We hoped that our post would result in additional corroboration of what we were hearing. Alas, our write-up just prompted the usual attacks from Kirkland Kool-Aid drinkers, who accused us in the comments of harboring ill-will toward K&E and engaging in shoddy journalism.

Well, this time we’ll enjoy the last laugh (not because we have anything against K&E — we don’t — but because we like being proven correct). We can share what we know about Ted Freedman, because the rumors are now embodied in a federal criminal indictment….

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The 2012 Vault Rankings: Proof Of Short Memories

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On February 27, 2009, Latham & Watkins laid off 440 associates and staff. These official layoffs came after months of quietly and stealthily laying off employees.

That year, Latham fell from #7 to #17 on the Vault 100 list of the most prestigious law firms. It was one of the biggest single year drops ever on the Vault list. At the time, I asked: “Is this as far as [Latham] will fall?”

Two years removed from that question, I’m staring at the brand-new Vault 100 rankings. Latham & Watkins is ranked #11.

Memory, my friends, is not something they screen for on the LSAT…

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