Last week, we opened the polls in our October 2006 Couple of the Month competition. And today — Election Day, natch — we closed ‘em.
It was an exciting race. Lori Alvino and Matthew McGill took an early lead, which they held through the weekend. But Katherine Dowling and Marc Axelbaum started gaining on them — fast.
This morning, Katherine and Marc moved within striking distance of Lori and Matt McGill. And then, earlier today, they overtook them. So congratulations to Above the Law’s newest Couple of the Month:
If you’re wondering where your favorite October Term 2005 Supreme Court clerk wound up — like, for example, this Kathryn Judge groupie — the National Law Journal has the answers. Check out this juicy article (free access):
Latham & Watkins is the “in” spot this year for recent U.S. Supreme Court clerks leaving the rarified atmosphere of the highest court in the land for the hands-on practice of law.
The firm, home to more than 1,900 attorneys in 22 offices in the United States and abroad, hired six clerks from the October 2005 term — the largest number of hires from a single term by a single law firm in recent years.
Here are the six Lathamites:
Three of the six clerks hired by Latham are going to Washington: Lori Alvino (Ruth Bader Ginsburg), Dan Kearney (Roberts) and Jeff Pojanowski (Anthony M. Kennedy). Two are going to San Francisco: [Benjamin] Horwich (O’Connor / Alito) and Kathryn Judge (Stephen G. Breyer). And Dan Lenerz (John Paul Stevens) is going to San Diego.
As any owner of an NBA team can tell you, talent doesn’t come cheap. You could buy a nice house with the bonus money bestowed upon those six clerks:
[Latham partner] Richard Bress said that his firm paid the market-level hiring bonus for U.S. Supreme Court clerks — about $200,000 [per clerk] — and considers the money well spent. “We’ve found they can come in and immediately operate at a very high level,” said Bress.
High enough to earn out that bonus, plus the standard six-figure salary paid to an associate of the relevant seniority level? We have our doubts.
But let’s not look at this through an economic lens. The ability to boast of having a SCOTUS clerk at your firm — plus, of course, the ability to boss around said SCOTUS clerk — is priceless.*
(We recommend the full NLJ article to you. It also reports on clerks who have gone to other firms, legal academia, and government posts.)
* Of course, you can’t really abuse that power too much. If you force Supreme Court clerks to sully their hands with, say, document review, they may spread the word among the Elect that you’re a horrible place to work — and you’ll never bag another SCOTUS clerk again. Latham is the ‘in’ spot for high court clerks [National Law Journal]
Yesterday Lori Alvino and Matthew McGill crushed their competition in Legal Eagle Wedding Watch. And perhaps their margin of victory should have been even larger.
We would have given them extra points had we known about these legal celebrity sightings at their wedding:
Other guests of note: former Solicitor General Ted Olson, and former D.C. Circuit nominee — and possible Supreme Court nominee — Miguel Estrada. (Both are now partners in the elite D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.)
So, if you think about it, you’re talking about two legitimate Supreme Court justices and, but for the cruel hand of fate, three other contenders for the Court.
WOW. Not much else to say, except: WOW.
If you were a guest at this star-studded gathering, and can offer an eyewitness report on the festivities, please drop us a line. We have so many questions. For example:
Did the abstemious Justice Ginsburg eat any wedding cake?
Did Chief Justice Roberts and Jane Roberts cut the rug at the reception — and if so, how were their moves? Is the Chief ready to appear on Dancing With the Stars?
We’re still a little behind here at Legal Eagle Wedding Watch, but we’re working diligently to catch up. This post reviews and rates couples featured in the New York Times weddings page on October 1, 2006.
The weekend of September 30-October 1 was not a big one for lawyer weddings. But we did find three couples worthy of review:
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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.
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Last week, we opened the polls in our October 2006 Couple of the Month competition. And today — Election Day, natch — we closed ‘em.
