Partner Issues

Hunton & Williams Gets Colbert Report’ed

By

The cutting-edge information and security practice of Hunton & Williams is getting the firm lots of media attention these days — but not of the positive variety. The firm’s lawyers are getting coverage due to their information becoming insecure after a hacktivist group leaked emails they exchanged with security firm HBGary.

Last night, the firm’s logo was flashed several times on the Colbert Report, as Stephen Colbert named the firm as the link between the DOJ, HBGary, and Bank of America, in coming up with questionable tactics for undermining liberal activists. (See our prior post, Hunton & Williams Gets WikiLeaked.)

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, who we know isn’t a fan of the firm, was a guest on last night’s show, telling Colbert:

What is most significant here is that you have these plans that are clearly crossing a legal line, with very serious players involved. Law firms like Hunton & Williams are the most powerful in D.C. And no one at any point said, “Maybe this goes a little too far, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.” So willing to cavalierly to put a plan like this that clearly proposes illegal steps down on paper. It clearly shows that this sort of stuff in this world of corporate and government consortium of power is pretty normal, is par for the course.

Moral of the show: BigLaw + BigGov = Evil. Check out Colbert’s telling of the “techno thriller” tale (after the jump). Think Star Wars, with Bank of America as Darth Vader, HBGary and Hunton & Williams as commanders of the Imperial Forces, WikiLeaks as Princess Leia, and Anonymous as Han Solo….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Hunton & Williams Gets Colbert Report’ed”

16 Comments

Skadden Name Partner Joe Flom, R.I.P.

By

Earlier this month, the son of Joseph Flom — name partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and a legendary figure of the M&A bar — wrote a moving tribute to his father. He explained that the 87-year-old Flom was gravely ill and not far from death.

This morning, Skadden confirmed the sad news of Joe Flom’s passing….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Skadden Name Partner Joe Flom, R.I.P.”

40 Comments

Howrey Going To Get Out of Here?

By

A report surfaced yesterday claiming that Howrey has now more or less given itself an end date: March 1, according to the report on Shark Tank Legal.

Partners who have received offers to join Winston & Strawn are expected to accept them by March 1st. After that, Howrey will be in full dissolution mode.

Even Howrey people must want this thing to just be over already. But before the end, we could see more ugliness, like segregated floors to keep the partners with safe landing spots safe from their desperate colleagues…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Howrey Going To Get Out of Here?”

75 Comments

Hunton & Williams Gets WikiLeaked

By

Hunton & Williams is having an uncomfortable week, and will get its very own page in the WikiLeaks saga. Thanks to a feud between hacktivist group Anonymous and a security firm, emails that Hunton lawyers exchanged with that security firm were leaked in a major document dump last week.

Journalist (and lawyer) Glenn Greenwald of Salon is now calling the firm’s lawyers the “central cogs” in a devious plot to take down WikiLeaks and its supporters (he’s especially miffed as he was named in a secret PowerPoint as one of those supporters). The New York Times named Hunton as the intermediary between security firms offering up unseemly sabotage tactics and clients like Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

So how unseemly were these alleged tactics, and which Hunton partners are getting blasted by the press?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Hunton & Williams Gets WikiLeaked”

41 Comments

Howrey Losing More Partners? Construction Lawyers Might Be Next to Leave

By

After all, there are fewer partners for Howrey to lose with each passing day, as the Howrey lawyer diaspora continues to grow. Let’s review the recent activity — and discuss some possible future defections.

On Friday we reported that IP litigator Mark Whitaker would be joining Baker Botts. That news has now been publicly announced.

Back on February 4, we mentioned that government contracts lawyer Barbara Werther was leaving Howrey, most likely for Ober|Kaler. She’s now on the Ober|Kaler website (although the firm apparently didn’t issue a press release touting her arrival, as it did for two first-year associates).

UPDATE: Just this morning, Ober|Kaler issued a press release on Werther and insurance coverage litigator Stephen Palley (who also joined from Howrey).

UPDATE (4/5/11): All in all, five Howrey construction lawyers joined Ober|Kaler.

Other outlets have noted additional partner departures. K.T. “Sunny” Cherian, described by The Recorder as a “top IP litigation rainmaker” with a book of business worth more than $10 million, joined the San Francisco office of Hogan Lovells this past weekend. Four other partners will join him in soaking up the Ho-Love: John Hamann, Sarah Jalali, Constance Ramos, and Scott Wales (who had been the hiring partner for Howrey’s S.F. office).

Also in S.F., Pillsbury Winthrop picked up IP partner Duane Mathiowetz. The news was reported by the Daily Journal (subscription), which noted that Mathiowetz, who worked as a mechanical engineer for a decade before going into law, has taken five patent cases to trial in the past five years (winning four).

Who might be the next to leave Howrey? Here’s some speculation….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Howrey Losing More Partners? Construction Lawyers Might Be Next to Leave”

31 Comments

Inside Straight: Loving Laterals

By

Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.

Why are lateral partners like pigs?

No, no! I didn’t mean it that way!

I’m just remembering the line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm — “Four legs good, two legs bad!”

Thirty years ago, law firms took pride in having only homegrown partners: “Homegrown good, laterals bad!” There was a certain logic to that. If you’d worked with a lawyer from his first day out of law school or a clerkship and seen the lawyer progress in the law, then after six (or eight, or ten) years, you had a pretty good sense of that human being, both as a person and as a lawyer. When you made a partnership decision, you could be fairly comfortable that you were working from a decent base of knowledge.

Law firms knew this, and they flaunted it.

Places bragged that all (or nearly all) partners were homegrown. Firms tried to convince their lawyers to stay put. (In 1979, one former Cravath lawyer told me that the firm had a mantra, “You only leave Cravath once.” There was no going home again.) Firms didn’t hire laterals, and firms bragged about it: “Homegrown good, laterals bad!”

That was then; now is now. Based on where I sit, on the receiving end of many law firm marketing communications, times have changed….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Inside Straight: Loving Laterals”

39 Comments

Amazing Tribute From Son to Joseph Flom

By

Joseph Flom

Apparently Joseph Flom — name partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom — is gravely ill. On Friday, his son took to the internet to talk about the life of his father.

It’s a pretty amazing tribute. One of the knocks on making it big in Biglaw are the family life sacrifices. But if his son’s words are any indication, Joe Flom attained that elusive “work/life balance”….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Amazing Tribute From Son to Joseph Flom”

66 Comments

Associate Bonus Watch: Skadden Matches the Cravath Spring Bonuses!

By

This shouldn’t come as a shock: Skadden is paying spring bonuses. And it’s doing so on the top-of-the-market Cravath scale. Yay!

According to a memorandum sent to the Skadden Arps partnership by email this morning — before 8 a.m., so prior to the Davis Polk announcement — the firm was originally planning to match market for the most junior ($2,500) and most senior ($20,000) associate classes. As for mid-level associates, it was going to split the difference between the Cravath scale and the Sullivan & Cromwell scale: “We are planning a mid-level associate bonus range which is somewhat higher than the general pack, but not the highest levels currently announced.”

But then came the Davis Polk announcement, at around 10:30 a.m., in which DPW went with the Cravath scale. And now Skadden has too.

Did the Davis decision change the thinking at Four Times Square? Let’s look at the memos….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Skadden Matches the Cravath Spring Bonuses!”

42 Comments

This Is Howrey Do It: Partner Departures and Other Updates

By

This week has been fairly quiet in terms of news about the troubled Howrey law firm. A post over at the Howrey Doody Time blog — with a brilliant punny title (wish I had thought of it myself) — describes the current state of affairs as “a painful holding pattern.”

Well, this morning we do have some Howrey news to report. Above the Law has learned that IP partner Mark Whitaker is leaving the D.C. office of Howrey, his professional home for the past decade or so, to join Baker Botts.

“He’s going to Baker Botts to be the 337 guy,” said a source, referring to Section 337 (19 U.S.C. § 1337), which governs fast-track intellectual property litigation before the International Trade Commission (ITC). “He has a very nice stable of clients he has developed independent of Howrey.”

Mark Whitaker

The hiring of Mark Whitaker — described to us as a “great, great guy,” as well as a former Navy officer (like fellow Howrey partner Richard Beckler) — is a nice coup for Baker Botts, since § 337 expertise is an in-demand area. And luckily for Whitaker, the move won’t mess with his commute: both Howrey and Baker are in the Warner Building, at 1299 Pennsylvania Avenue.

We understand that Whitaker was part of the group of Howrey partners invited to join Winston & Strawn, but he had other plans underway when the Winston talks were announced. His departure from Howrey comes just a few days after WilmerHale’s announcement that it was picking up another noted Howrey IP litigator, Robert Galvin (in Palo Alto).

So that’s the latest Howrey partner news. What’s going on with associates and staff?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “This Is Howrey Do It: Partner Departures and Other Updates”

35 Comments

Inside Straight: Why The Focus On Written Work?

By

Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.

This column comes from a narrow perspective — that of a litigator and, in particular, an in-house head of litigation.

I suspect that in-house SEC lawyers, or M&A lawyers, may have entirely different perspectives on this topic. But as a litigator, I pay a lot of attention to briefs and other written work. Why is that?

Because I can.

When I was a partner at a firm, I’d let junior lawyers argue motions. For significant matters, I’d chat with the lawyers beforehand, to discuss how to approach an argument. But I almost never attended those arguments. Maybe I should have (for reasons of associate training and evaluation), but I generally viewed sending myself as an observer to be over-staffing an event. I thus rarely saw associates on their feet in court.

I also didn’t double-staff depositions. In mass torts (which was a lot of my practice, way back when), senior lawyers typically defended depositions, and more junior lawyers typically took them. This is partly driven by the nature of mass torts; in that environment, deposition defense is critical. If the senior VP of research and development gets her clock cleaned in deposition, that testimony will come back to haunt the client in hundreds of later cases. In mass torts, senior lawyers play deposition defense….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Inside Straight: Why The Focus On Written Work?”

29 Comments
Page 60 of 731...565758596061626364...73