As we previously reported, a sizable portion of the art collection of defunct law firm Heller Ehrman was sold at auction yesterday. The auction took place at Bonhams in San Francisco, before a standing-room-only crowd.

We submitted absentee bids on the following:

• lot 1, Pale Orange Begonia (we bid $500; it sold for $1,159);
• lot 2, Glass of Water (we bid $500; it sold for $671);
• lot 99, Lover of Time (we bid $800; it sold for $1,830);
• lot 210, Bonsai and Bicycle (we bid $1,000; it sold for $4,575); and
• lot 290, Return of the Rice Cooker (we bid $2,000; it sold for $5,185).

All of the items we bid on went for well above their high estimates — bad news for us, but good news for Heller creditors.

So, how much dinero did the auction generate in total?

If you’ve always wanted to own a piece of defunct law firm Heller Ehrman, today is your lucky day. A sizable portion of the firm’s art collection is hitting the auction block in about an hour, at Bonhams & Butterfields in San Francisco.

We previously covered a prior Heller art auction, here in New York, but that sale involved just a handful of pieces. The auction taking place today — and starting very soon, at 10 a.m. Pacific time (or 1 p.m. Eastern time) — is much larger in scope.

So what’s up for sale? And how can you get a piece of the action?

The ABA is out with a new report that suggests the recession has negatively impacted diversity in the legal profession. The report also confirms reports we’ve heard about layoffs disproportionately affecting minority attorneys: The ABA Journal summarizes the findings:

“While law firms have increasingly come to recognize that diverse corporate clients and international markets often require lawyer diversity, the recession is drying up monies for diversity initiatives and creating downsizing and cutbacks that may disproportionately and negatively affect lawyer diversity—thereby undoing the gains of past decades,” states the report produced for the ABA Presidential Initiative Commission on Diversity.

The report, titled Diversity in the Legal Profession: The Next Steps (PDF), also urges law schools to take financial considerations into account in seeking greater diversity in admissions since diverse populations often are most affected by rising tuition costs and heavy debt loads.

That’s right, the ABA has some suggested solutions to this problem and — quite rightly — it starts with law schools.

Details from the report after the jump.

In the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.

— Barack Obama

Be nice to your secretary. It’s the right thing to do.

What, basic human decency doesn’t appeal to you? Alright, how about: be nice to your secretary — or else she might totally screw you over by revealing your secrets.

It’s advice product liability lawyer David Gross might have wanted to take. The ABA Journal reports:

An unhappy secretary has brought ethics troubles for a prominent product liability lawyer in New Jersey.

The New Jersey Disciplinary Review Board has recommended that litigator David Gross be disbarred for failing to share a $50,000 check with his law firm partners, the New Jersey Law Journal reports. Gross’ secretary, Claudette McCarthy, revealed the check to Gross’ partners at Budd Larner four years after he received it in 1998.

You know what, that secretary has CHARACTER.

I graduated law school in 2003, owing Harvard University just under $150,000. At the time, I had no idea what starting my professional career $150K in the hole would do to my life. I figured I’d work hard, make money, and pay my loans out of my general non-disposable income funds — kind of like my cable bill.

Seven years, two careers, numerous deferments and defaults, and one global economic meltdown later, I still owe a ton of money. Now, however, I pay it to various debt collection agencies and lawyers. When prospective landlords run a pro forma credit check on my application, they come back looking at me like I’ve been convicted of multiple war crimes. Every raise I’ll ever get will be eaten up by the collection agencies until sweet death allows me one everlasting and satisfying default. And, oh yeah, I don’t even want to practice law anymore — I quit my Biglaw job because, despite the debt, I really wanted to have a job that I enjoyed. So I essentially purchased a $150,000 disposable good. My time working in Biglaw was kind of like a very expensive vacation that I debt financed.

I mention all this because I am the cautionary tale prospective law students never want to think about. I mention all this because it is noble to crush false hope. I mention all this because there are way too many people poised to follow in my financially ruinous steps. The ABA Journal reports:

The percentage of law students expecting to graduate with more than $120,000 in student debt is continuing its upward climb.

Twenty-nine percent of law students surveyed said they expect to owe more than $120,000 at graduation, up from 23 percent in 2008, 19 percent in 2007 and 18 percent in 2006. The findings come from the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (PDF), which garnered responses from 26,641 law students at 82 law schools in spring 2009.

The insanity doesn’t end there. Check out the world these students think they are about to enter.

Last week, Kramer Levin announced its bonuses. The firm is paying bonuses on the Cravath scale, to associates “in good standing.” So it looks on the surface like a market match.

But the memo contains the following language worth noting:

As has been our practice, eligibility to receive the Year-End Bonus will be based on merit and achievement of hours thresholds (which are expected to be the same as the last couple of years); associates who do not satisfy these components may be eligible to receive Year-End Bonuses in lesser amounts.

Do these merit and hours requirements keep a significant number of associates from receiving the full bonus? We don’t have enough data points to say; feel free to discuss in the comments. Also note that bonuses won’t be paid for a while — not until February 15, 2010.

The full memo appears after the jump.

Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

Fairest Marin,

I moved offices in the middle of this year, and as a consequence I lost my lovely and very helpful administrative assistant to a Partner who was staying where she was. Since August, I have had a new, and also quite helpful, administrative assistant. I am very demanding of my assistant’s time. I am not an inconsiderate jerk, but I am very busy and thus need to delegate small tasks like copies, scheduling rooms, making binders and creating indices quite often. Both have been quite helpful in the past year.

Should I be splitting my customary holiday gift between the two of them? Right now I am thinking 60% for my original assistant and 40% for my new assistant. What are your thoughts? And how much should I pay out? $200? $150?

— King Solomon Emeritus

Dear King Solomon Emeritus,

The holidays are a time for family, friends and quiet self-reflection. And if you’re a secretary, they’re also a time for judging and bragging. Within hours of receiving your gift, the entire secretarial staff is aware that you purchased a $96 Omaha Steaks gift card for your admin, and has swiftly judged you for the 20% decrease in desirability and price from last year’s $120 Dead Sea mud wrap gift certificate.

This system obviously rules out splitting your $200 gift 60/40 between your old and new secretaries, respectively, unless you feel like booking your own conference rooms in the future. And even if you didn’t have your 2 secretaries/1 wallet problem, cash only is never a good idea anyway because the thing with money is that people can sometimes figure out how much you spent.

On Wednesday’s open thread, several commenters stated that they were giving their secretaries some cash amount and a “small gift.” Your d*ck in a box won’t cut it, but after the jump there is a list of presents that will.

It’s that time of the year again, says one ATL reader:

now would be a good time for the old “how much are you giving your secretaries for the holidays?” story

it’s customary for associates at large law firms to give a cash gift to their administrative assistants, often along with a card or small gift. Not everyone opts for cold, hard cash — some do AmEx or Visa gift cards.

This year has been a tough one. Some associates have had their salaries frozen and have gotten “baby bonuses” in comparison with years past. Are you planning to let the economic pain trickle down?

Some discussion and advice from last year, after the jump.

Last week, we shared with you a very interesting internal document from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett: a collection of notes or informal minutes from a June 2009 partners’ meeting. The notes discussed attorney headcount, possible layoffs, and compensation, among other subjects.

Today we have even more deliciousness for you: an internal memorandum from executive committee chairman Pete Ruegger to the executive committee, transmitting the complete minutes of the June 8 partners’ meeting. As it turns out, the version of the meeting notes that we previously published was accurate, but not complete.

Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite. If you think that a return to the heady days of 2007 is just around the corner, as the economy improves and Wall Street strengthens, think again:

• As we dig out of the recession, hopefully with increased utilization and decreased headcount, we should do better in 2010 and beyond, but we do not think our gross revenues and premiums are going to return to 2007 levels and our net income is unlikely to return to 2007 levels in the next couple of years.

As the matrix shows, if we can get our average hours back up over 1800, we can still have a $1M+ [partnership] point at 88% realization. But, Simpson Thacher and our peer firms are going to be less profitable businesses than they were. Pricing and margins are going to continue to be challenging. At least in the short to mid-term.

Indeed. Additional analysis and the complete documents, after the jump.

The recession will make fools of us all before the end. Especially those of us who spent unwisely during the good times.

I know that the general, late night commentariat doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for law students and young lawyers who didn’t budget properly before the recession took hold. But I have sympathy for those not blessed with the financial planning gene. And I hate seeing young lawyers pay the price for their poor decisions.

So it is with great sadness that I inform you that one would-be Biglaw associate can no longer afford to keep his pool table. He has to sell it, but he would rather trade it for a job.

After a moment of silence, let’s check out his plea for employment.

The bonus machine keeps on rolling. Milbank Tweed announced its 2009 associate bonus schedule just before Thanksgiving. The firm will be matching Cravath.

It’s interesting that Milbank decided to match the bonus market, considering the firm has already greatly reduced the size of its summer program. In July, we reported that Milbank canceled its 2010 summer program in its Los Angeles office. So it doesn’t appear that Milbank matched the market because it is all that concerned about recruiting.

Then again, with the bonus market set where it is — unless Sullivan & Cromwell wants to turn everything upside down — there is not a lot of recruiting that will be done on the back of this bonus.

Current Milbank associates probably don’t care very much about future recruitment at Milbank. They just want their reward for a hard year of work. Enjoy your bonus, Milbank friends.

Read the full memo after the jump.

Back in July, we wrote about Robert Bowman, whose application for admission to the New York bar was derailed by debt. A panel of five appellate judges concluded that, in the words of the New York Times, “his student loans were too big, and his efforts to repay them too meager, for him to be a lawyer.

Bowman sought reconsideration of the ruling. His effort was unsuccessful.

Details after the jump.

Is announcing associate bonuses on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving a trend in the making? Will we get a few more announcements this afternoon, to match those by Davis Polk and now Debevoise & Plimpton?

Debevoise has had a relatively busy year, from what we understand. But is there life after Siemens? Being conservative with bonuses may be a wise move, unless the firm has lined up another mega-matter to ride out the storm.

So Debevoise has decided to match the Cravath-level bonuses. The full Debevoise memo appears after jump.

Well, here’s an early Thanksgiving present from the partnership at Davis Polk & Wardwell to their associates. Bonus news.

DPW will be putting the same meal on the table as Cravath:

We are pleased to announce that associates in good standing will receive a bonus payment as outlined below. Bonuses will be paid on December 24th, 2009 in the same manner as the regular December monthly payroll, and will be subject to proration for those who arrived after January 1, 2009 and those on part-time schedules or other special arrangements. Bonuses for counsel and other attorneys will be determined on an individual basis and will be communicated and paid according to the normal time schedule.

Class of 2008: $ 7,500
Class of 2007: $10,000
Class of 2006: $15,000
Class of 2005: $20,000
Class of 2004: $25,000
Class of 2003 and senior: $30,000

We thank you for your efforts over the past year, and wish you and your family a wonderful holiday season.

The Management Committee

In this season of thankfulness, some DPW associates feel they deserve a few more blessings than what the firm is offering.

Bonus season is now in full swing. Sources report that Willkie Farr has announced bonuses that match the Cravath scale.

Here’s the breakdown:

From: The Executive Committee
To: ASSOCIATES - NY; ASSOCIATES - DC
Cc: PARTNERS - FIRMWIDE
Sent: Fri Nov 20 11:11:01 2009
Subject: 2009 Associate Bonuses

The Executive Committee is pleased to announce the following year-end bonuses for associates:

Class of 2008: $7,500
Class of 2007: $10,000
Class of 2006: $15,000
Class of 2005: $20,000
Class of 2004: $25,000
Class of 2003: $30,000
Class of 2002 and senior: $30,000

Bonuses will be paid on December 18, 2009, consistent with our customary practices. The Firm greatly appreciates the efforts of our associates over the course of the year.

Don’t feel bad, guys; there are a lot of great things you can do with $7,500.

More on Willkie’s bonuses after the jump.

Somewhere Mr. Pink is smiling. The Express-Times reports:

Moravian College senior Leslie Pope and John Wagner, a Lehigh University graduate student, were handcuffed and transported from the Lehigh Pub to Bethlehem police headquarters Oct. 23 after failing to pay a mandatory 18 percent gratuity.

Pope and Wagner, members of a party of eight during happy hour, refused to pay a $16.35 service charge on top of their $73.87 tab because of what they say was shoddy service as well as a surcharge that was nearly 5 percent higher than the 18 percent listed on the menu.

“Gratuity is thanking you for your service,” Pope, 22, said. “You can’t give us terrible, terrible service and expect a tip.”

These kids don’t have any idea about what they’re talking about. These people bust their ass. This is a hard job.

According to Pope and Wagner the service was really bad. After the jump, a tipster throws out some counterclaim ideas.

Our recent Career Center survey asked about compensation structure for salaries and bonuses at your firms.  The results reveal that reports of the death of lockstep compensation have been greatly exaggerated: a large majority of respondents — over 75% — say their firm still pays base salaries on a lockstep scale.  And despite the tough economy, over 96% of respondents expect a bonus this year.   

Check out the full survey results after the jump — and visit the Career Center, powered by Lateral Link — for more on which firm has announced an end-of-year salary freeze, the latest firm to join the hybrid-lockstep compensation bandwagon, and which firm is now rescinding offers to new associates.

Full survey results, after the jump.

That’s the most shocking revelation in an interesting New York Times profile of H. Rodgin Cohen, the nation’s top banking M&A lawyer and chairman of the venerable Sullivan & Cromwell. From the NYT:

After [Cohen and his wife Barbara] had paid their [restaurant] check, they went to fetch the car, and Mr. Cohen, a Boston fan since his days at Harvard Law, glanced down at his BlackBerry to check on the Red Sox. He drives a Subaru, a humble ride for a man who earned millions last year arranging shotgun weddings for the busted firms of Wall Street, and standing next to Barbara in the darkness, Rodge Cohen, a titan of the banking bar, struggled with his automated key, initially unable to — woop woop woop — release the lock.

Unlocking car doors by remote control — where’s a good associate when you need one?

Now, in re Subarus, we have nothing against them; they are fine cars. Some of our best friends drive Subarus. One of our co-clerks — a member of the Elect, no less — drives a Subaru Forester. The judge for whom we clerked — Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain (9th Cir.), a top feeder judge — used to drive a purple Subaru (affectionately nicknamed “Grimace” by his clerks).

But as we know from the judicial pay controversy, federal judges don’t get compensated like partners at Sullivan & Cromwell. And Cohen is no ordinary S&C partner — he’s the chairman of the firm and its top rainmaker, generating tens of millions in business every year. A Subaru is shockingly downmarket for him. We realize that true wealth doesn’t have to advertise itself, and six-figure cars are for the nouveau riche, but this still seems a tad extreme.

More to the point, why is Rodge Cohen even driving himself? Wouldn’t it be more efficient for him to have a chauffeur-driven Maybach — john quinn, holla — so he can spend every waking minute on the phone, negotiating billion-dollar bank mergers? Isn’t it a waste of the brilliant Cohen’s brain cells to have him paying attention to yield signs when he could instead be thinking about yield curves?

More tidbits from the Rodge Cohen profile, along with commentary, after the jump.

Over the weekend, the New York Times had an interesting article about compensation for Wall Street bankers. The article explained how, due to criticism from the public and from Congress, banks shifted employee comp away from cash and towards stocks and options. This shift was supposed to align pay with performance, averting an AIG situation of rewarding failure.

Now, thanks to the recovery in bank shares — fueled in part by generous government bailouts, and not necessarily the brilliant performance of bank employees — these stock and option grants are turning out to be super-lucrative. Here’s an interesting excerpt:

Goldman Sachs, for instance, sharply cut nearly all bonuses it paid last year but gave some executives more options than usual.

The company gave its general counsel, for example, 104,868 stock options and 14,117 shares in December, when the bank’s stock was around $78.

Now the bank’s shares have more than doubled in value, making that stock and option award worth nearly $12 million, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm in Redwood Shores, Calif.

Sullivan & Cromwell partners, eat your hearts out. Not only does Goldman GC Gregory Palm get to boss you around, he also makes more money than you do.

Way more. Get a hint of how much, after the jump.