Ballard Spahr has revamped its website. It’s clean, it’s fresh, and it has lots of stock photos and little comment pop-ups. One ATL reader urged us to take a closer look:
You guys have to check out the new Ballard Spahr website, it is hysterical. Click on any attorney, there are two pictures, face and body. It looks like a model portfolio or comp card for actors.
We did some clicking in Ballard Spahr’s “People” section, and we can confirm there’s some amusement value to the head shots paired with full body shots.
While we perused, we wondered whether it’s reasonable to ask associates, special counsel, and partners to go beyond the head shot. Some looked happier about it than others. Check out some of our favorite Ballard body shots and take our poll, after the jump.
Before the recession, this would have surprised me. Now, it seems relatively pedestrian. The Joplin Globe reports (via the ABA Journal):
BAXTER SPRINGS, Kan. — Lawyers Chris Meek and Nathan Coleman are taking it on the road. They have turned a 2002 Volkswagen Rialta into a mobile law office.
“It’s a convenience factor for our clients,” Coleman said of the recreational vehicle, sometimes called a Winnebago Rialta.
Yesterday we told you about the firm Trial Lawyers For Justice asking job applicants to send in some non-standard information. Among other things, the firm asked potential employees to send in a family photograph.
We asked Nick Rowley — who wrote the ad asking for applicants to send in their personal story and political beliefs along with their picture — to explain how these factors affect his decision making process for new hires.
He furnished Above the Law with a full response. We’re publishing it full after the jump. Let Mr. Rowley know if you agree with his reasons in the comments.
We all know that it is difficult to get a job in this legal market. But an advertisement posted on the Minnesota state bar website makes it look like we are just one step away from genetic testing for junior associates. At least in Iowa.
The request for new talent starts off very earnestly:
DECORAH, IA plaintiff firm is seeking a brilliant hardworking lawyer who would rather do research and writing than be in court. Firm practices catastrophic injury, medical malpractice, and wrongful death and is seeking a lawyer licensed or in the process of becoming licensed in Iowa and/or Minnesota willing to get licensed in both with a possibility of Wisconsin and California, who is willing to relocate to Decorah, IA. Position will be handling of the firm’s law and motion, discovery, legal research, and appeals (to work 50 hours per week, full time inside the office to prepare the firm’s trial lawyers who travel and spend most of their time in court). One month paid vacation per year, salary is negotiable and commensurate with experience and qualifications, the firm may be willing to provide housing in Decorah, IA. Writing samples, resume, and examples of briefs and projects worked on is required.
But then this plaintiff’s firm ad becomes … kind of creepy:
Much thought is going to be put into who will fill this very important position with the firm. Persons who are interested are requested to email a personal story of who the applicant is, what his or her political beliefs are, and what they believe about justice and personal injury litigation along with a recent personal and/or family photograph.
Political beliefs? A family photo? You know, this is one time where a little “X law firm is an equal opportunity employer …” tagline would be comforting.
What law firm put this advertisement together? Details after the jump.
A reader sent this Craigslist ad along, noting the “uninhibited freedom of expression afforded to smaller firms” in their advertising as opposed to “uber-processed biglaw ads.” Yes, MidLaw and SmallLaw, thank you for providing the fuel for our Adventures in Lawyer Advertising series.
The advertising California-based firm, Le Pelletier, has one of the strangest websites we’ve ever seen. There is only one attorney listed: the firm’s managing partner, Erin Carlstrom Pelletier. Her LinkedIn profile says she is a Yale undergrad, Pepperdine Law ’08 grad, who apparently started her own firm.
In case you can’t read it, here’s an excerpt from the ad:
Do you need a stealthy warrior specially trained in the unorthodox arts of law? How about a team that can sneak under the cover of darkness to silently assassinate your debt? Le and Pelletier, LLP can be your ninja! We will stalk your enemies like a shadow and strike before they ever knew what hit them.
The rest of the text and some gems from the firm’s site, after the jump.
We’ve seen a lot of interesting law firm websites in our time, but the MySpace page for the “Law Office of Mark Meisinger” is in a class of its own [hat tip to The Young Texas Lawyer]. The Law Office is “single,” and interested in “Networking, Dating, Serious Relationships, Friends.” Appropriately, the current mood for the Dallas-based Law Office is “adventurous:”
According to the “About Me” section, “representing those who mess with Texas” means taking on clients charged with DWIs, drug possession, probation violations, and traffic offenses. Other important bits about “The Law Office of Mark Meisinger:” it used to be a juvenile delinquent, it was a member of Phi Delta Theta, it has worked “with all kinds of different government agencies, and it “interned for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District Of Nebraska and prosecuted several federal cases.”
When we first came across it, we doubted that the MySpace page would effectively attract prospective clients, but Meisinger is quoted in a post on Criminal Defense Lawyer saying that it does:
“The people I’m going after [as clients] are on MySpace,” says Meisinger, who graduated from Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Neb., in 2004, and office shares at Gioffreddi & Associates in Dallas. “A whole bunch of people who party, who drink, whatever, those are the people on there who want to be my [MySpace] friend… I have gotten cases off there [MySpace]; there’s no doubt. One month, I got four DWIs off of there. It’s way more than the phone book’s doing for me.”
So… the screw-ups on MySpace are the clientele he’s targeting. Nice. He also friends hotties, judging from the posts on his wall:
Last year we wrote about Peter “P’Ta Mon” John, whom we named an ATL Lawyer of the Day. In an innovative advertisement, Peter John dubbed himself “The Thugs Lawyer,” with the following motto: “No Evidence — No Conviction!”
Now, a quick update. The latest edition of the Baton Rouge phone book contains Mr. John’s newest ad (see below). He no longer calls himself “The Thugs Lawyer,” but he still uses the “no evidence — no conviction” slogan. And he’s offering an “Expungement Special,” for just $500! (Plus filing fees.)
P.S. We don’t know about how state systems deal with this issue. But in the federal system, in most circuits, expungement is a tough row to hoe. We worked on one such case in the Third Circuit: United States v. Rowlands (PDF; via Third Circuit Blog). No jurisdiction to expunge criminal records in absence of challenge to underlying conviction [Third Circuit Blog] Earlier: Lawyer of the Day: Peter ‘P’Ta Mon’ John
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.
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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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.
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Ballard Spahr has revamped its website. It’s clean, it’s fresh, and it has lots of stock photos and little comment pop-ups. One ATL reader urged us to take a closer look:
