A week has passed since our last bit of clerkship bonus news.
Have you heard anything on this subject that we haven’t previously reported? If so, please note it in the comments, or email us (subject line: “Clerkship Bonus Watch”).
Bonus question: With respect to the Dewey Ballantine / LeBoeuf Lamb merger, whose clerkship bonus policy will the new entity adopt? Dewey pays a flat $50,000 clerkship bonus, while LeBoeuf pays a $50K bonus for one clerkship and a $70K bonus for two years of clerkship experience.
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Oh! Whooo! Aye. Yeah, yeah, yeaaah! Oh! Hey! Ooh, ooh, yeah!
We press on with our open threads on Vault 100 law firms. Sure, these next five firms are ranked by their Vault prestige scores (indicated parenthetically). But in our opinion, every one of them is a winner:
71. Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP (5.358)
72. Chadbourne & Parke LLP (5.239)
73. Hunton & Williams LLP (5.230)
74. Nixon Peabody LLP (5.153)
75. Thacher Proffitt & Wood LLP (5.137)
Please discuss them in the comments. Thanks!
The Vault Top 100 Law Firms [Vault]
Earlier: Vault 1-5; Vault 6-10; Vault 11-15; Vault 16-20; Vault 21-25; Vault 26-30; Vault 31-35; Vault 36-40; Vault 41-45; Vault 46-50; Vault 51-55; Vault 56-60; Vault 61-65; Vault 66-70
Please accept our apologies. After breaking the story on Friday afternoon, we kinda dropped the ball on the merger of Dewey Ballantine and LeBoeuf Lamb.
We’ll write more about this transaction later. Sadly, we have to head offline for a bit. But in the meantime, here’s an open thread for people to discuss the merger.
We’ll get the ball rolling with a press-release-type statement that was sent to DB interviewees:
After receiving a callback from Dewey, the recruiting department sent me and all similarly-situated recruits the heads up: The new firm, to be dubbed “Dewey & LeBoeuf,” is set to roll out, “subject to approval by the partners in both firms.”
Below is the email that I was sent. I apologize if you’ve already been notified.
The email, from Dewey Ballantine partner Henry Ricardo, appears after the jump.
Congratulations to Nixon Peabody. All of the “winners” at that venerable law firm are winners once again. VH1′s Best Week Ever just named the firm’s non-theme-song song its Favorite Jam of Summer ’07!
We kid you not. See here:
“Everyone’s a Winner at Nixon Peabody” is officially our Favorite Jam of Summer 07! The type of tune that makes you want to get out the Bartles & James, brush n’ braid your long gray hair, tear off your stirrup pants and miniature horse cardigan, and make out with your 77-year-old husband on a nude beach somewhere in Pueto Vallarta.
You can read the full post here. Once again, congrats to NP!
Ladies and Gentlemen, It’s Never Too Late for a Hot Summer Jam, Courtesy of Blood-Sucking Law Firm [Best Week Ever]
We’re way behind on this story. Last night, from Roll Call (via Blogonaut):
Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in June at a Minnesota airport by a plainclothes police officer investigating lewd conduct complaints in a men’s public restroom, according to an arrest report obtained by Roll Call Monday afternoon.
Craig’s arrest occurred just after noon on June 11 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. On Aug. 8, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct in the Hennepin County District Court. He paid more than $500 in fines and fees, and a 10-day jail sentence was stayed. He also was given one year of probation with the court that began on Aug. 8.
A spokesman for Craig described the incident as a “he said/he said misunderstanding”….
As our friends at Wonkette quipped, “it was all just a simple he said/he said misunderstanding! Because Larry Craig was under the impression that the other gentleman wanted to have anonymous sex with him in an airport bathroom.”
Okay, we have to go chase after a bunch of other stories right now. But you can follow the Larry Craig sex scandal at Wonkette. And Matt Drudge is having a field day with the story, too:
Memo from Jonathan Lowe to all DC associates, after the jump.
Continue reading “Nationwide Pay Raise Watch: Alston & Bird Raises (in DC)”
* The next Attorney General? [MSNBC]
* Or will it be one of these folks? [CNN]
* If you’re going to bet on it, here are some odds and wild-cards. [Slate]
* NY Times investigates Fred Thompson’s early legal and political career. [NYT]
* Paris Hilton settles $10m defamation suit by former fiance’s ex-girlfriend. [CNN]
* Bears LB Briggs charged with Lamborghini hit and run. [ESPN]
Time for a walk down ATL memory lane. On April 20, we opened a poll about how much longer Alberto Gonzales would serve as Attorney General.
In light of yesterday’s announcement that Gonzales will be stepping down as AG effective September 17, the correct answer would have been five months. But it looks like almost all of us were wrong, since the closest answer — six months — received less than one percent of the vote:
The world is full of surprises. Well, at least we now have something to talk about, during what is traditionally one of the slowest and sleepiest weeks of the year (thanks to everyone taking pre-Labor Day, pre-back-to-school vacations).
Earlier: The Alberto Gonzales Deathwatch: What Do You Think?
* Oh, those crazy French people. They eat the darnedest things! [Conglomerate]
* A shameless (and belated) plug: we were interviewed last week by NPR’s Mike Pesca, for an interesting story about Jonathan Lee Riches and his wacky pro se lawsuits. (We appear around the 2:30 mark.) [NPR]
* Blawg Review #123 — in the form of a judicial opinion. Very clever! [Texas Appellate Law Blog via Blawg Review]
Our open threads on Vault 100 law firms seem to be drawing fewer comments. But we’ll finish what we’ve started. We don’t want to give you a case of these.
So here is this afternoon’s set of Biglaw shops (with Vault prestige scores in parentheses):
66. Greenberg Traurig, LLP (5.631)
67. Kaye Scholer LLP (5.591)
68. Holland & Knight LLP (5.498)
69. Steptoe & Johnson LLP (5.403)
70. Foley & Lardner LLP (5.360)
Among these firms, the special ATL shout-out goes to Greenberg Traurig. GT is the firm that incites the strongest passions in people.
Please discuss these five fine firms in the comments. Thanks.
The Vault Top 100 Law Firms [Vault]
Earlier: Vault 1-5; Vault 6-10; Vault 11-15; Vault 16-20; Vault 21-25; Vault 26-30; Vault 31-35; Vault 36-40; Vault 41-45; Vault 46-50; Vault 51-55; Vault 56-60; Vault 61-65
Judge Loretta K. Preska (S.D.N.Y.) has it all: a lifetime appointment to the federal bench, a rich husband, and killer shoes.
As well as, it appears, no patience for lawyers who play fast and loose with the rules. From the WSJ Law Blog:
Cleary Gottlieb conjures images of Ivy League bookishness and international savoir faire, not bare-knuckled litigation tactics. But last week a federal judge sanctioned the firm and found them to have acted in bad faith. “Civil litigation is not always civil,” began a ruling by Loretta Preska, a federal judge in Manhattan. Here’s the opinion (PDF).
The judge concluded that Cleary tried to dissuade a witness from attending a deposition, in part because of a concern the witness would testify adverse to the firm’s client. Preska ordered Cleary to pay the plaintiff’s attorneys fees and costs ─ an amount to be determined ─ and ruled that “the sanction is imposed as a formal reprimand and should be circulated to all attorneys at Cleary.”
And Cleary partner Jean-Pierre Vignaud was ordered to write “I will not interfere improperly with the discovery process,” five hundred times, on a dry-erase board in a firm conference room.
Cleary Gottlieb — which, by the way, picked fellow white-shoe law firm Simpson Thacher to represent it — said in a statement that it intends to appeal.
Judge Sanctions Cleary: “Civil Litigation Is Not Always Civil” [WSJ Law Blog]
Kensington Intl., Ltd. v. Republic of Congo [WSJ Law Blog (PDF)]
Right now some of you are probably thinking: “Enough already about Alberto Gonzales and Michael Vick! Isn’t there anything else you can write about?”
Of course. Let’s go back to the story of Nixon Peabody, and its ridiculous law firm theme song!
(In preemptive response to those of you who are sick and tired of this story: relax. It’s on its last legs. But if the New York Times writes about us, of course we’re going to acknowledge it. Capice?)
For those of you were on vacation last week — and we know many of you were, based on all the “Out of Office AutoReply” messages we received — you missed a fun story here at ATL.
But don’t worry. If you don’t have time to read our voluminous coverage of the Nixon Peabody theme song, here are some cheat sheets.
You can read this New York Times story, by Michael de la Merced, which nicely summarizes the saga. Or this post, by Peter Lattman, over at the WSJ Law Blog.
Best of all, for those of you who can watch videos — some of you can’t, ’cause you don’t have a private office — check out this awesome video. It appeared over the weekend, but we’re reposting it, because many of you don’t visit ATL on the weekend (and it would be a shame for you to miss it).
Unauthorized Enjoyment of Song Irks Law Firm [New York Times]
Everyone’s a Winner at Nixon Peabody! [WSJ Law Blog]
Re: Nixon Peabody [YouTube]
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LeGaL, the LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York, would like to cordially invite you to the 2014 Annual Dinner of the LeGaL Foundation on Thursday, March 20, 2014 at Capitale. We are incredibly excited for our event this year as LeGaL celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of the bar association and the twentieth anniversary of the foundation (30/20 Celebration).
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