Patton Boggs

It doesn't matter which party you are from, or what your political platform is. It doesn't matter if you believe Obamacare is exactly like your own health care plan, or if you think marriage is a sacred vow shared by a man, a woman, and millions of viewers on The Bachelor. But what does matter is whether you have competent legal counsel.

* The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a lawsuit asking courts to force major companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Sotomayor spent the entire oral argument asking attorneys how she could fit more Miami Sound Machine on her Zune. [New York Times] * Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who can be seen every Thursday night […]

In a follow-up to Kash’s post on Monday regarding the newly formed Big Law Society, I volunteered to check out their first happy hour Tuesday night at the BlackFinn American Saloon in D.C. At first I thought it would be amusing to see the type of people who would attend such a gathering. But by […]

With fall recruiting gearing up, and the lateral market warming up, we continue our annual series of open threads about the law firms featured in the Vault prestige rankings. These threads provide ATL readers with a forum to discuss the different firms and their various strengths and weaknesses. The end of the Vault 100 is […]

Earlier this year, in one of its many format changes, Facebook forced users to make their profile info more public via Community Pages. Facebook created pages based on users’ lists of interests, jobs, and favorite things to help people find others “who share similar interests and experiences.” So if you, for example, listed “document review” […]

There are a number of firms that aren’t up to speed with this whole “social media thing.” But they should be, because their clients are. American Lawyer Media, Zeughauser Group and communications firm Greentarget surveyed 164 in-house counsel about their social media habits. Lo and behold, they are making use of blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and […]

[Brett Favre] decided to play the game at his age and all that goes with it, and the effect he had on Minnesota and on that team and a lot of sports fans was enormous. I think the excitement and the challenge is something that is very alluring, and if I can play a small […]

Yesterday we reported that Patton Boggs was having an all associates meeting and wanted its people to be there in person. With everybody gathered around, Patton Boggs unleashed a torrent of news. First things first. Here’s the bonus announcement, from a statement the firm released to Above the Law about the meeting: As usual, we […]

What is going on, D.C.? As you know, Above the Law will be inside the Beltway tomorrow. And we know a lot of D.C. associates are wondering whether their bonuses will be on the level that Cravath has set for the New York market. We could be getting our first piece of solid information on […]

We continue our slog push through the nation’s 100 top law firms, as ranked by our friends over at Vault. Here are the next ten firms, to be discussed in the comments to this post: 71. Reed Smith72. Bryan Cave73. Perkins Coie74. Hunton & Williams75. Patton Boggs76. Arent Fox77. Schulte Roth & Zabel78. Howrey79. Chadbourne […]

Can you imagine having to pay your firm money over the next couple of months because the firm overcompensated you at the beginning of 2009? That is the situation facing a number of Patton Boggs associates over the next couple of weeks. Patton Boggs has a three tiered associate compensation system. A firm spokesperson explained […]

The Vault 100 march continues! In this series of open threads, we list the firms, and you all discuss their upsides and downsides. We’ll be wrapping this puppy up this week. Here are the next ten (with prestige scores in parentheses): 71. Nixon Peabody LLP (5.218) 72. Hunton & Williams LLP (5.208) 73. Perkins Coie […]

Andrew Bruck takes a question at Wednesday’s press conference. Every now and then, we leave our apartment. We did so on Wednesday, to attend the press conference of Law Students Building a Better Legal Profession, where the organization unveiled its law firm diversity rankings (accessible here; Los Angles Times article here). It was quite informative. […]

Despite the unseasonably warm temperatures we’ll be seeing here in D.C. later this week, summer is over. But that doesn’t mean our inbox is closed to stories of summer associate scandal. Check out this great pair of controversies, from the summer program of Washington powerhouse Patton Boggs: There have been rumors flying around Patton Boggs […]

We received this information from a tipster last night, and a firm spokesperson confirmed it for us this morning. Here it is: Patton Boggs just raised starting salaries to 160,000 for first years for 1950 billable hours. This is a 50 hour bump and a $15,000 bump. They also introduced a new 1800 billable track […]

This farewell email was sent out last month by a librarian who left Patton Boggs, the prominent D.C. law firm. It pretty much speaks for itself. We would just note that Patton Boggs, as one of the biggest lobbying shops in Washington, is chock-full of both lawyers and ex-politicians. From: [redacted]Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 […]

The NYT has served up a relatively weak batch of candidates this week. That’s okay with us; we needed to be brought down to earth after the heights of last week’s eminence-fest. Still, a warning: There’s not an Ivy League degree to be found in this column, so those of you who are nauseated by […]

Lateral Moves: * Litigator DeMaurice Smith, to Patton Boggs, from Latham & Watkins (DC). When asked about the move, Eric Bernthal, managing partner of Latham’s D.C. office, said that Smith’s practice “will probably fit a little better over there.” (Meow? Or just a matter-of-fact statement relating to areas of specialization, client conflicts, etc.? We hope […]