What happens when you put thirty American lawyers in a London pub where the drinks are free for the evening? Well, let’s just say it’s rather different to what happens when thirty British lawyers are assembled in equivalent conditions.
The attendees at last week’s inaugural Benedict Arnold Society meeting for young and young-ish American lawyers in the United Kingdom, held at the Witness Box pub in the heart of London’s legal district, were impeccably behaved. No one collapsed, vomited or — in spite of my continual prying for insider information — gave away a single secret about their firms. In fact, I think I was the only one there who was drunk.
Still, my memories of at least the first part of the evening remain. What stood out was how nicely many of the assembled Yank expats had done by coming to London — be it because they had saved money on legal education costs, were enjoying heightened status due to their willingness to travel, or were appreciating the health-inducing lighter U.K. workloads.
Several had undertaken their legal studies in the U.K., thus circumventing the enormous fees charged by U.S. law schools….
Continue reading “Letter from London: Can Jobless U.S. Law Grads Find Work in Britain?”
“Oh, What a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive,” said Judge Guy Anthony, quoting Sir Walter Scott’s poem Marmion, as he sentenced British Biglaw attorney Francis Bridgeman to 12 months in prison on Friday. The former Allen & Overy (A&O) and Macfarlanes partner, who had already had his membership of the latter firm’s limited liability partnership terminated, then collapsed in the dock.
Until recently, Bridgeman, 43, was just another hotshot Biglaw equity partner enjoying a millionaire’s life-style. Educated at Oxford University, he joined Magic Circle firm A&O in the early 1990s and rose through the ranks so quickly that he made partner in 2000, aged just 32. Having got married, he bought a big house in the countryside outside London and became a governor at a local school. Three years ago, he capitalised on his success by moving to boutique financial law firm Macfarlanes, where profit per equity partner is still high for U.K. standards (last year it came in at £752,000) but the hours and stress are generally considered less than at the likes of A&O.
Then, on April 6 2010, everything changed for Bridgeman, in the most unexpected and surreal way….
Continue reading “Letter from London: Prison for Biglaw Partner With Fabricated Kidnapping Story”
“I thought Freshfields [Bruckhaus Deringer] was a supermarket when I got here,” says Kirsty Grant, a fourth-year associate in the London office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. Happily, Grant — a fast-learner who got through law school in L.A. while working full-time during the day — quickly figured out that the Anglo-German law firm, a member of the Magic Circle, wasn’t the place to fulfill her grocery needs.
The cultural assimilation enjoyed by the UCLA and Loyola graduate since she arrived in London last March hasn’t stopped there. “At first I couldn’t believe the drinking culture here,” she recalls. “The first Friday after work that I went to the pub, I thought, ‘I haven’t had any food; I can’t do this.’ And then the London lawyers went on until 5 a.m. I just don’t have the liver for it, but it shocks me less now.”
Not that Grant, 33, has oceans of spare cash to splash on boozy nights out. How do her finances as an American abroad compare to those of her Biglaw counterparts back home?
Continue reading “Letter from London: ‘I Thought Freshfields Was a Supermarket’”
* “It seems no one can use dirty words, except Steven Spielberg.” Well, sh*t, I’ll be damned. Is Elena Kagan going to be the voice of reason in the Supreme Court’s FCC profanity case? [Los Angeles Times]
* Ken Cuccinelli filed an emergency motion to get Virginia’s primary ballots printed. You can’t wait three days for Perry’s hearing? It’s on Friday the 13th. You know how that’s going to go. [Bloomberg]
* The Tenth Circuit upheld a ruling to block an Oklahoma law barring the consideration of Sharia law in court decisions. If this pisses you off, go and watch Homeland. You’ll feel better. [MSNBC]
* Dewey want to join the Magic Circle? Bloody hell, of course! Clifford Chance has snagged two mergers and acquisitions partners from Dewey & LeBoeuf. [DealBook / New York Times]
* What will an LL.M. get you in today’s job market? Not a whole lot. And if you’re counting that extra year of loan debt as something of value, then you’re just a masochist. [National Law Journal]
* Heather Peters, the former lawyer suing Honda in small claims court, may be SOL because of a SOL issue. Stay tuned for the results at her second hearing later this month. [Huffington Post]
The Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Awards ceremony, held in London last Wednesday, was most notable for the contrast between the puppy-like excitement of the lawyer nominees and the auto-pilot professionalism of the host, FT editor Lionel Barber, whose aura was of a man who’d rather be at home watching TV.
This was a shame, not only for the confused lawyers struggling to understand why Barber wasn’t high-fiving them as they collected their trophies, but because it overshadowed the setting of a world record. Never before has the adjective “innovative” — or its derivations “innovate,” “innovation,” and “innovator” — been used with such frequency in a single evening.
Between them, these four words featured in 14 of the 15 award names, peppered the subsequent acceptance speeches, dominated the copy of the awards brochure, and strangled the dinner conversation. Hypnotised by the repetition, I was convinced by the end that lawyers could see the future and were responsible for all of the great achievements of humankind.
However, having regained my sense of reality during the Tube ride home, it slowly dawned on me that most of the innovation I’d spent the last five hours being bombarded with wasn’t innovation at all, but simply lawyers doing their jobs. The “innovation in corporate law” award, for example, went to two law firms which acted on a merger, and the “innovation in dispute resolution” prize was given to a firm that won a case.
At other times, “innovation” was employed as a euphemism for not especially original ways to cut jobs….
Continue reading “Letter from London: Beware of the Innovative Lawyers”
Oh happy Indian man, you know this globalization trend works both ways, don't you?
Protectionism is a song as old as time. We do it, and other countries do it to us. Every country is trying to figure our how to maximize the benefits of globalization without making their own people join a frenzied “dey tuk er jerbbbs” mob.
And that’s fine. This economic competition is good for standards of living all across the world — unless, of course, it leads to nuclear war.
But sometimes the lack of global reciprocity can become maddening. Take the outsourcing of legal work. For years we’ve been talking about how entry level, “document monkey” jobs are going from junior Biglaw attorneys to cheaper workers in India and a few other countries. Ever since the American Bar Association changed its rules in 2008 and allowed American legal work to be done offshore, competition from India over low-end legal work has been a key factor for those who care about the future of Biglaw.
And yet India remains a closed legal market to U.S. and British firms. Western firms are not allowed to do legal work in India, even though Western firms and clients are free to send work to India at the cost of American jobs.
Does this mean whoever keeps an eye on the Indian legal economy is doing a far, far better job than our own American Bar Association? Sure. But it’s hardly breaking news that the ABA is ineffective.
What’s far more newsworthy is that this fundamental inequity between the two legal markets might be changing — not because the ABA is magically getting its act together, but because Indian authorities might be willing to stop being a$$holes….
Continue reading “India Considers Becoming A Little Less Racist Protectionist”
It takes a while to get over squandering an empire. As our habit of placing the prefix “Great” before “Britain” suggests, we’re still not quite there yet. But deep down we know we blew it. The evidence is everywhere: from our dentists, who don’t really know what they’re doing anymore, to our universities, which are crumbling, just like our schools, hospitals, and public transport.
Somehow, though, the U.K’s legal system has avoided being dragged into this spiral of decline. Yes, we’re still good at law — so good, in fact, that London is the top destination in the world for international companies to settle disputes, and English law the most popular among international in-house counsel (40% use it, with just 14% opting for New York law). And, in spite of the relatively tiny size of the British domestic legal market, our law firms manage to give yours a run for their money, with the Magic Circle quartet of Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Freshfields and A&O outdoing most of their U.S. rivals in terms of turnover and profits.
Doubtless part of this success stems from the fact that Britain is the home of the Common Law, which, unless some joker on Wikipedia is deceiving me, was invented around the 1150s by King Henry II. And as we saw during the April nuptials between Prince William and his bride Kate, our “Ye Olde Ingland” nostalgia sells very nicely to foreigners….
Continue reading “Letter from London: How To Squander an Empire”
Maybe it was the hypnotic effect Pippa Middleton’s ass had on Prince Harry? Or perhaps it was simply that Chelsy Davy didn’t want to marry into the crazy old royal family? Either way, shortly after William and Kate tied the knot in April, Harry and Chelsy split up.
And what did the Zimbabwean blonde bombshell do next? She became a lawyer. Yes, last week the ex-girlfriend of Princess Diana’s youngest son started life as a trainee with top London law firm Allen & Overy.
“Let’s watch Chelsy,” the Sun newspaper crowed on Wednesday, after snapping suit-clad Davy making her way through London’s financial district to the Magic Circle giant’s office. The article, fascinatingly, went on to note that Davy “really was legally blonde.” And that was it. End of story. In fact, according to an A&O press officer I spoke with the other day, Davy starting work at the firm is “no story at all.”
But I beg to differ….
Continue reading “Letter from London: Chelsy Davy Joins Biglaw”
Deidre Dare
Last month, we reported on the latest adventures of Deidre Dare, the sexy expat lawyer who once worked in the Moscow office of Allen & Overy. Her London lawsuit against the firm was dismissed, but Dare is now suing A&O here in New York, seeking $35 million in punitive and compensatory damages.
In the same post, we mentioned that Dare was seeking to raise $25,000 to publish Expat, a book based on her time in Allen & Overy’s Moscow office. Dare described it as “a novel about a group of Westerners living and working in Moscow, Russia and their extravagant but dangerous lifestyle,” with a plot “inspired by a British Petroleum scandal that happened when I was there.”
Dare was trying to raise the $25K on Kickstarter, the popular website that serves as a fundraising platform for creative types with a surplus of ideas and a shortage of cash. Did she succeed?
Continue reading “An Update on Deidre Dare, Allen & Overy Associate Turned Aspiring Authoress”
For those of you who have missed Deidre Dare, the expat lawyer who was terminated from the Moscow office of Allen & Overy after writing a smutty steamy online novel, give thanks. She’s baaaaaack.
Deidre “To Russia With Donkey and Dwarf Love” Dare is struggling with the cash flow these days. The Columbia Law grad’s London lawsuit against Magic Circle firm A&O for unfair termination in its Russia office was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, so she filed a new complaint in New York. As you might expect from an amateur sex novelist, the complaint is rather juicy. Dare (a.k.a. Deidre Clark), who was a senior attorney in A&O’s London, Singapore and Moscow offices from 2007 to 2009, claims that she was terminated after giving into — and later spurning — her supervising partner’s sexual advances. (Excerpt: “[Tony] Humphrey made sexual advances on Clark, who was intoxicated at the time. This conduct included intimate sexual contact. Humphrey kept saying “I love sex.”)
Dare is upping the ante on the lawsuit. In London, she sued for £3.5m, but in her Big Apple lawsuit, she’s hoping to take a bigger bite out of A&O: namely, $35 million in punitive and compensatory damages.
“I think NY will take jurisdiction,” Dare, a member of the New York Bar, told us by email. “And thank god for that.”
In the meantime, Dare is working on another project that is, er, rather racy….
Continue reading “Deidre Dare Wants $$$ For Her Sexy Little Adventure Story”
Ed. note This is the final installment in London-based journalist Alex Aldridge’s series of stories for Above the Law about the royal wedding of HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton. You can read the prior posts here and here.
Well, they got married.
Best man Prince Harry remembered the ring. None of Wills’ disgruntled exes opted to speak now rather than forever hold their peace. And Kate — who has been made a Duchess rather than a Princess — even smiled. So now for the party!
Unless, that is, you work at one of London’s U.S. law firms, where lawyers staffing American deals are missing out on the public holiday everyone else in Britain is enjoying. “There are no celebrations here,” one cheery soul told me this morning in that weird Madonna accent Yanks acquire when they’ve been in London too long.
Don’t worry, though, the joke will be on us on next week, when we enter the existential crisis that customarily follows royal hysteria.
“What the hell happened there?” we’ll mutter, warm beer still on our breath.
“Oh no, we’ve only gone and got over-excited about that bunch of royal weirdos again,” we’ll groan, as we remove our commemorative Wills & Kate mugs from view and pour our tea into alternative vessels.
“Why do we, the country that brought the world the rule of law, have a royal family at all?” we’ll wonder indignantly, gnashing our yellow teeth and feeling a touch murderous….
Continue reading “The Royal Wedding: A Legal Look (Part 3)”
Ed. note This is the second in a series of posts that Alex Aldridge, a London-based journalist who covers legal affairs, will be writing for Above the Law about the upcoming royal wedding of HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton. You can read the first post here.
In Britain, middle-class people who don’t know what to do with their lives have the option of trying to wed a royal.
If that doesn’t work, the situation is much the same as in the US: they become lawyers. A case in point is Prince Harry’s on-and-off girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, who will begin a traineeship with “Magic Circle” law firm Allen & Overy in September, having failed to secure the ginger hell-raiser on a permanent basis. Had Kate Middleton’s 2007 split with Prince William proved final, our future queen — whose ex is an in-house lawyer — may well have gone down the same route.
Needless to say, royals don’t do law. It’s too aspirational. They don’t even sue; one lawyer who has had dealings with The Firm once told me (in jest, possibly): “The royal family don’t take people to court, they kill them.”
Perhaps this explains why they’re so keen on the military: Wills and Harry have followed family tradition by going into the air force and army, respectively. They probably won’t stick around long, though. Like Princes Charles and Andrew before them, the pair will soon be eased into a middle age of government handouts and state-provided housing. Royals, bless ‘em, are basically very rich poor people.
So is a union between a very rich poor person and a member of the middle class likely to work?
Continue reading “The Royal Wedding: A Legal Look (Part 2)”
Memorial Day weekend is almost here, and we all know what that means: the arrival of summer. And we all know what summer means: people taking their clothes off, at the beach or pool.
People taking their clothes off got us thinking about one of our favorite personalities here at Above the Law: Deidre Dare, the sexy ex-associate in the Moscow office of Allen & Overy, who started writing about erotic exploits on the internet. Dare presented her work as fiction, but she did hint that it was in part autobiographical (a point she underscored by posing online in her undies).
Alas, the powers-that-be at A&O were not amused by Dare’s literary endeavors. After seeing that the project finance lawyer’s writing talents extended to sex scenes as well as sale-leasebacks, they terminated her employment. Dare then turned around and sued the firm, seeking £3.5 million in damages.
And now Deidre Dare is once again in the news….
Continue reading “A Deidre Dare Update: Allen & Overy Lawyer Turned Sex Columnist Makes Controversial Claims About Rape”
Angela Reinholz: Apparently getting pregnant didn't screw her enough.
It takes balls to file this kind of lawsuit.
A man working for the British firm Eversheds filed a sexual discrimination lawsuit after being fired from the firm. He claimed that the firm should have fired a woman out on maternity leave — but Eversheds didn’t because it was worried that the woman would file a sexual discrimination lawsuit.
Catch-22 for Eversheds? Maybe. The English Employment Tribunal ruled in favor of the laid off man. The Daily Mail (gavel bang: ABA Journal) reports:
John de Belin won £123,000 in damages after one of Britain’s biggest law firms ‘deprived him of his livelihood’.
Mr de Belin, 45, was one of two associates facing redundancy from Eversheds’ property division in Leeds. The other was Angela Reinholz, 40.
To decide who would be sacked, the firm undertook an assessment of both Mr de Belin’s and Mrs Reinholz’s abilities, including financial performance, discipline history and absence records.
Mr de Belin was fired in February 2009 after losing by just half a point, scoring 27 out of 39 in the exercise against Mrs Reinholz’s 27.5.
The problem was that Reinholz’s score was “inflated” while she was out on maternity leave…
Continue reading “Man Wins Sexual Discrimination Case Against Law Firm”
This morning, the Lawyer reported that Clifford Chance was changing the requirements for associate bonuses in London:
Clifford Chance is set for a radical overhaul of its associate bonus system, with the maximum award now open only to senior associates and payments no longer based primarily on hours worked….
A spokesperson for Clifford Chance said: “While billable and investment hours continue to be important, the bonus will not be directly linked to achieving a target number of hours. We’ll weigh a number of factors to ensure a balanced and flexible bonus scheme.”
Dear Lord, it looks like the American epidemic of moving towards merit-based compensation just hopped a transatlantic flight.
But don’t worry Clifford Chance New Yorkers, your bonus requirements will not be affected by the changes in London…
Continue reading “Clifford Chance: Cancels Hours Requirement for Bonuses in London, But No Change in NYC”
Our coverage of the London legal market tends to be episodic. We tried offering more regular coverage for a while, with our Letter from London column, but we put the feature on hold to focus on domestic developments. (We might revive the London column if we can find a sponsor for it.)
We will, however, cover major news out of London — such as last week’s massive defections from White & Case to Latham & Watkins.
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: White & Case Loses Lawyers to Latham in London”
Cheerio, old chap! This week brings news of bonuses — and a salary “unfreeze” — in the New York office of Allen & Overy.
Allen & Overy — a global mega-firm with over $2 billion in annual revenue, headquartered in London but with a worldwide footprint — is making a go of it here in the United States. And, as reflected in this latest news, A&O intends to play with the big boys in New York. They’re paying market-level bonuses this year.
And, effective January 2010, they’re paying market-level salaries. The increase in salaries undoes the salary freeze from earlier this year. Green shoots?
But there is a catch. Read the full memo, from New York managing partner Kevin O’Shea, after the jump.
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch (and Salary Thaw): Allen & Overy”
It appears that Magic Circle firms have fallen in love with outsourcing. Most American associates will hope that like Mad Cow disease, the outsourcing craze stays on English side of the ocean. The Lawyer reports:
Allen & Overy (A&O) has become the first magic circle firm to outsource legal work as an increasing number of UK firms embrace legal process outsourcing (LPO) in a bid to reduce their overheads.
The firm has partnered with LPO provider Integreon to outsource basic litigation document review to teams in New York and Mumbai, in what could generate a 30-50 per cent cost saving.
Anybody think we’ll see some geographic hypocrisy in the comment thread? Outsourcing to New York = good, outsourcing to Mumbai = bad? Or will everybody simply agree that outsourcing = apocalyptic?
After the jump, The Lawyer has an excellent chart that shows us where British firms stand with regards to outsourcing.
Continue reading “British Firms Catch Outsourcing Fever”
Could transatlantic law firm mergers become the hot new trend? Last week brought news of merger talks between Hogan & Hartson and Lovells. And now we’re hearing rumors of a possible merger involving Allen & Overy, a top U.K. firm and a member of the prestigious Magic Circle.
This is not, of course, the first time we’ve heard such buzz. A year ago, the word on the street was that A&O was thinking about getting with Shearman & Sterling.
For the record, Allen & Overy denies the latest rumors. Here’s the firm’s official statement, responding to an inquiry from Above the Law:
As a global player who has been quite open about the importance of the US market, we are often subject to such rumours. We have openly stated for a number of years now that we have the desire to expand in the US market and as such we would consider any opportunities that may arise with a suitable US partner. That remains the case, but at the current time we are not in any merger talks whatsoever with a US partner. Your [reports seem] to refer to a global call our management held with all partners recently on our current view on strategy, though your questions below do not reflect the content of what was said whatsoever.
Find out what they were reacting to, after the jump.
Continue reading “Law Firm Merger Mania: Allen & Overy and a Mystery Suitor?”
Ed. note: The legal world is much bigger than New York, or Washington, or even the United States. Welcome to Letter from London, a weekly dispatch from the other side of the pond. Our U.K. correspondent, Isaac Smith, will expose ATL readers to the latest goings-on in the London legal world. You can reach Isaac by email, at isaacsmithlondon@googlemail.com.
The G20 summit, accompanied by its anti-capitalist sideshow, arrives in London this week – and UK Big Law is feeling a little scared.
Law firms are warning employees not to wear suits on Wednesday or Thursday so as to avoid being targeted in the violent protests planned around London’s financial district.
Which provokes an interesting question: how ghetto does a corporate lawyer need to dress in order to avoid arousing suspicion as to their true identity?
We’ll soon find out.
It all seems a bit unfair, really. It’s not as if lawyers got the super big bonuses. And now their salaries are actually falling. If those nasty anti-capitalists had bothered to have a quick scan of The Lawyer last Wednesday, they’d have seen that Shearman & Sterling’s London office had followed Freshfields in cutting newly qualified associate salaries by 8%.
Are we going back in time? More after the jump.
Continue reading “Letter from London: Where Magic Happens”
