The physical offices of Above the Law might be in New York, but we have writers — and readers — all over the country. Next week, we’re taking the show on the road, hosting a reception for our readers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
We are pleased to invite you to a cocktail party in San Francisco on Wednesday, May 15th, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. Our guest speaker, Therese Stewart, Chief Deputy City Attorney for San Francisco, will discuss recent litigation to advance LGBT rights and major cases currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. ATL’s Managing Editor, David Lat, will moderate. With LGBT Pride Month and historical SCOTUS decisions around the corner, such discussion is most timely.
This event will be a great opportunity for attendees to hear from legal leaders, meet Above the Law writers, and network with peers. Cocktails and canapés will be provided. Thanks to our friends at Recommind for sponsoring.
Please click on the link below to RSVP. We look forward to seeing you next week.
In recent months, we’ve held Above the Law events in New York, Washington, and Houston. Next month we’re making our way to California, to spend time with our many readers on the West Coast.
We are pleased to invite you to ATL’s reception in San Francisco on Wednesday, May 15th, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. Our guest speaker, Therese Stewart, Chief Deputy City Attorney for San Francisco, will discuss recent litigation to advance LGBT rights and the implications of cases currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. ATL’s Managing Editor, David Lat, will moderate. With LGBT Pride Month and historical SCOTUS decisions just weeks away, such discussion couldn’t be more timely.
This event will be a great opportunity for attendees to hear from legal leaders, meet Above the Law writers, and network with peers. Cocktails and canapés will be provided. Thanks to our friends at Recommind for sponsoring.
Please click on the link below to RSVP. We hope to see you there!
The Supreme Court seems divided over same sex marriage. The liberal justices favor it, while the conservatives oppose any lifelong sacred union between two men — unless, of course, it’s Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Did you know public drinking fountains were a Prohibition-era program to provide an alternative to liquor and beer? More factoids from Ken Burns’s Prohibition at 11:00.
It’s about to be law school “prom” season. This is a fun season for Above the Law. Law students go out, get drunk, and have adventures. Then we write stories about it.
Then the law schools get embarrassed and make rules and engage in hand-wringing over adults drinking like children. It’s the circle of life.
I think concern over rampant student binge drinking is a little overwrought, but then I heard about the school that will be rationing free water at the prom this year and thought, “Boy, way to not do the one thing that would really help….”
Our friend Bruce MacEwen has written a trenchant analysis of the predicament currently facing the large law firm business model: Growth is Dead: Now What? In the words of Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp, the book “is an extraordinary body of work that reflects enormous insight and ought be required reading by managing partners of law firms,” as well as “a much-needed wake up call for our profession.”
Originally a twelve-part series on Adam Smith Esq., Growth is Dead will soon be released as a paperback. Next Tuesday, February 26, ATL will host a salon-type event for law firm partners in celebration of this release, at a sleek new venue in a convenient area of Manhattan. Peter Kalis, global managing partner of K&L Gates and author of the foreword for Growth is Dead, will introduce Bruce, who will then (briefly) discuss his book and take a few questions. This will be followed by a free evening of cocktails and thought-provoking conversation. We’ve had a robust response so far, but limited spaces are still available. Law firm partners, please join us; you can RSVP here.
By way of preview, we spoke with Bruce about his book. How did it come about? What did he find out in the course of writing it that was most surprising? Encouraging? Discouraging?
* Former Biglaw associate Tabber Benedict, whom we’ve mentioned before (in happier times), reportedly threw a lavish “going away” party — going away to prison, that is. [Daily Mail]
* Take your pick: is government an “impetuous vortex” or a “hideous monster [with] devouring jaws”? [Althouse]
* Some thoughts from Juan Haines, a current San Quentin inmate and jailhouse lawyer, on wrongful conviction. [Life of the Law]
* “Given health care, I don’t care if he speaks in tongues.” Chief Justice John Roberts botched Barack Obama’s presidential oath at his first inauguration, but this time he managed to get it right. [New York Times]
* What was more important to Justice Sonia Sotomayor than swearing in Joe Biden as VP at noon on Sunday? Signing books at Barnes & Noble in New York City. Not-so wise Latina. [Los Angeles Times]
* D.C. Biglaw firms — like Holland & Knight, Covington, K&L Gates, and Jones Day — allowed others to bask in their prestige at their swanky inauguration parties. [Capital Business / Washington Post]
* It’s been 40 years since SCOTUS made its ruling in Roe v. Wade, and this is what we’ve got to show for it: a deep moral divide over women being able to do what they want with their own bodies. [Huffington Post]
* The latest weapon in the fight against terrorism is the legal system. The Second Circuit recently issued a major blow to those seeking to finance militant attacks in secret. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* “Firms don’t just hire a body anymore.” The 2012 BLS jobs data is in, and if you thought employment in the legal sector was going to magically bounce back to pre-recession levels, you were delusional. [Am Law Daily]
* Three months have come and gone since Hurricane Sandy rocked law firm life as we know it in Manhattan, but firms like Fragomen and Gordon & Rees are still stuck in temporary offices. [New York Law Journal]
* This seems like it may be too good to be true, but it looks like New York’s chief judge may be on board to grant law students bar eligibility after the completion of only two years of law school. [National Law Journal]
* Law professors may soon be in for a nasty surprise when it comes to their salaries if their schools follow Vermont Law’s lead and remove them as salaried employees, paying only on a part-time basis. [Valley News]
* Resorting to a life of crime to pay off your law school debt is never a good thing — unless you’re doing it while wearing a Bucky Badger hat. We’ll have more on these allegations later. [Wisconsin State Journal]
This is a lot safer when Mom and Dad are holding you up.
I get pretty annoyed when the state tries to act like everybody’s mother. But the worst application of the “nanny state” is when the state actually supersedes the judgment of a caring parent. It just makes it worse when the government tries to ruin a family’s holiday season.
This summer, we had a report about a partner who was accused of providing alcohol for his daughter and a bunch of her friends during a party for her graduation. The charge has since been dismissed. Today, a tipster sent us a link about another Biglaw partner who has been charged with providing alcohol to her teenage daughter and some of her daughter’s friends, this time at a New Year’s Eve party.
Can we take a step back and ask why the government is running around charging people for letting teenagers drink at family parties?
Who wouldn’t want to party with us? Like we told you earlier this week, we’re ready to celebrate the new year with all of our loyal readers, and as anyone in the legal profession can attest to, the best way to do that is with the assistance of our favorite social lubricant: alcohol!
The Above the Law New Year’s party will be held on Wednesday, January 16, at a secret location in NYC to be disclosed later. This year’s bonus might’ve made you feel small compared to the salad days of Biglaw, but trust me, getting an invite to this private party is sure to make you feel like a real VIP. As always, at our parties, you’ll get all the juicy gossip and backstory that was too salacious to print.
Be prepared to have some fun times with all of your favorite Above the Law editors — you can bask in Lat’s prestige, look at Elie’s cute baby pictures, and watch me act out some of your favorite scenes from ATL’s very own commentariat fanfic stories. THEY IT IS! Say hello to some of our columnists — who knows, maybe Tannebaum will show up to call you a moron! And most importantly, don’t forget to enjoy our open bar!
Please keep in mind that you must sign up to be placed on our exclusive guest list. We’ll let you know if you make the cut and provide details on the venue via email. Good luck, and we hope to see you there!
P.S. When you RSVP, it’s going to look like you haven’t, but I promise, you have. It’s just a little glitch we put in so you have some plausible deniability if someone who’s uncool asks if you’ve RSVP’d to our party yet.
It’s finals time already. For professors, that means another semester is in the books. Sure they still have to grade the exams, but that’s what stairs are for.
With their teaching duties done, the faculty at the University of Memphis School of Law decided to have a holiday party, with a band, in the reading room of the library while students were studying for finals.
Kind of brings new meaning to the term “tone deaf,” doesn’t it?
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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As the leading discovery commerce platform, Birchbox is redefining the retail process by offering consumers a unique and personalized way to discover, learn about, and shop the best grooming and lifestyle products out there. It’s a full 360-degree process: try, learn, buy. Once you sign up and fill out your profile, head over to Birchbox Man’s online magazine to find article and video tutorials on how to get the most out your monthly box products. Pick up full-size versions of anything you like in the Birchbox Shop and earn points for every purchase.
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.
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
The physical offices of Above the Law might be in New York, but we have writers — and readers — all over the country. Next week, we’re taking the show on the road, hosting a reception for our readers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
