* Dewey need to send them a wedding present? Because to be honest, we really can’t afford one. Fifty of the firm’s European lawyers jumped ship to tie the knot with Greenberg Traurig in Poland. [WSJ Law Blog]
* “I don’t think there’s enough space in the legal market to absorb all the Dewey lawyers that aren’t prepackaged in a group.” When Dewey get on the unemployment line in New York City? [New York Law Journal]
* Ropes & Gray is expanding its Chinese private equity practice with plans to double its Asian-based lawyers by the end of the year. For now, the firm’s just poaching partners from Norton Rose and Paul Weiss. [Bloomberg]
* John Edwards’s legal team began his defense, and they still don’t know if he’ll be taking the stand. Not to worry, because he’ll be torturing his daughter, Cate Edwards, instead. [CNN]
* Remember the Catholic school that fired someone for getting IVF? They’re asserting the “ministerial exception” against Emily Herx — an unordained woman who doesn’t teach religion. [Washington Post]
* Apparently this only matters when top-tier schools do it, but like UC Hastings, George Washington Law will be reducing its class size in the hope of keeping new student enrollment below 450. [National Law Journal]
* California is cutting prisons. That’s step one. Step two is to shuttle all the prisoners to Los Angeles. Step three involves a series of earthquakes… [McClatchy]
* Private equity billionaire Stephen Schwarzman isn’t into 50 Shades of Grey (affiliate link). But David Lat apparently is. I dunno, if you are going to bother with that kind of stuff, you might as well hit Brazzers and get it over with. [Dealbreaker]
* I’m all for making sure that the Violence Against Women reauthorization prevents violence against women, not annoyances against women, or criticism against women. [The Volokh Conspiracy]
* Speaking of violence against women, I never blame the victim, but dating gun-toting dumbasses rarely helps matters. [Legal Blog Watch]
Venture capital activity in the Silicon Valley has been on the rise in 2011, and we are starting to see more opportunities open up for associates with venture capital, emerging markets, and private equity experience. Lateral Link is working with several law firms located in Northern California who are seeking to hire New York and Silicon Valley trained VC and PE associates. If you have the requisite experience and are ready to make a lateral move, don’t delay. It can take on average 3-4 months to find the right position. If you start the recruiting process now, you’ll be able to collect your bonus, take a few weeks of vacation, and start fresh at your new firm in early 2012. Jump-start your search by checking out the Job of the Week below.
Position: Venture Capital Associate
Description: Lateral Link’s client is seeking to hire a corporate associate with 1-4 years of venture capital, private equity, or fund formation experience at a premier law firm. This is a great opportunity to get hands-on experience in a vibrant and growing office. Candidates must have a superior academic record.
Location: Silicon Valley, California
If you are currently a Lateral Link member, please see position #9818. Not a member? Sign up for free at www.laterallink.com to access hundreds of law firm and in-house jobs, and to work with a recruiter in your market.
Lateral Link has assisted hundreds of candidates relocate to new cities for the right opportunity. If you are interested in moving to the West Coast, contact Lexy Tretter, Lateral Link Director for the San Francisco region, at ltretter@laterallink.com.
Lateral Link has an unique and exclusive opportunity for an attorney with the right experience to work in-house at a private equity firm in China. If you are a corporate attorney with fluent Mandarin language skills, then today’s Job of the Week is for you!
Position: Corporate Counsel
Location: Shanghai, China
Description: A U.S.-based, China-focused PE/VC firm seeks a sharp, business-minded attorney for a head legal counsel position. Candidates must have fluent Mandarin language skills and 3-8 years of experience with PE/VC transactions and fund formation, at least some of which must have been with an international law firm. Exposure to PRC capital markets (A shares) required.
Interested and qualified candidates should contact Justin Flowers and Annie Lin, Lateral Link’s international recruiters based in Shanghai, at asia@laterallink.com for more information on this job (position #8808), as well as several other opportunities available in the Asia Pacific region. Annie Lin is one of our newest Lateral Link recruiters, overseeing attorney placements and client services in Asia with a focus in China. Annie is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. She previously recruited for a leading Asia Pacific legal search firm, and prior to that she was with the business development and marketing department of White & Case LLP in Shanghai. She studied law in California and was admitted to the State Bar of California in 2008. Click here to learn more about Annie and the rest of the Lateral Link team.
Not a Lateral Link member, but want details on this or hundreds of other openings? Register for free at www.laterallink.com to work with an attorney recruiter who is an expert in your market.
Back in November, we told you that Thomson Reuters was looking to unload BAR/BRI, its bar exam preparation business. The news was huge, given BAR/BRI’s status as a de facto finishing school for would-be lawyers.
Today, it appears that BAR/BRI has found a home. According to various reports, BAR/BRI will be acquired by Leeds Equity Partners. Leeds is a private equity firm that specializes in educational products and services.
Above the Law just spoke with Jeffrey T. Leeds, the co-founder and president of Leeds. He called BAR/BRI a “jewel” for the firm. And since the man is a graduate of Harvard Law School (Class of ’83), he knows just how important BAR/BRI is to our system of legal education… .
Corporate attorneys are in demand again, and Am Law 100 firms are looking to add to their associate ranks. The Job of the Week, brought to you by Lateral Link, is for an attorney with private equity experience in the Big Apple. If you are looking for a new job in New York or elsewhere, you should consider using Lateral Link’s team of experienced recruiters and deep employer networks.
Description: The New York office of a top international firm is looking for an associate with 3-5 years of solid private equity experience. The ideal candidate should have experience in fund formation and investments, leveraged buyouts, private equity and venture capital funds and their respective portfolio companies. The candidate will also have familiarity with mergers and acquisitions, general corporate finance, securities transactions, workouts and restructurings. All candidates should have large law firm experience and exceptional law school academic credentials.
‘Tis the season for… litigation between law firms and their ex-clients? What happened to the holiday spirit of peace and good will for all?
First Simpson Thacher (malpractice), then Debevoise (last item — unpaid fees), and now, Paul Hastings (malpractice). From the New York Law Journal:
A financing unit of Cerberus Capital Management L.P. has sued Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, claiming the law firm gave it bad advice in connection with a loan the private equity firm made last year to a company looking to bring retailer Steve & Barry’s out of bankruptcy.
Ableco Finance LLC, a unit of Cerberus with more than $6 billion under management, filed an amended complaint Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court against its former lawyers seeking more than $55 million it said it lost because of the $125 million loan. Ableco claims it would never have made the loan last year if the Paul Hastings team had advised it that the buyer would not have rights to all of Steve & Barry’s inventory, which Ableco understood would back the loan.
“No competent, diligent finance lawyer would have put his client in such a vulnerable position,” Ableco’s complaint reads in part.
Ouch. We agree with Ashby Jones of the WSJ Law Blog: “It’s never good for a law firm to get sued by one of its clients. But when the client is a deep-pocketed heavyweight like private-equity giant Cerberus, the news is probably especially unwelcome.”
But Paul Hastings is fighting back, with the help of high-powered counsel.
Gawker reports that Incisive Media — the legal media giant behind the American Lawyer magazine, Law.com, and many other excellent and influential print and online publications — is taking back its old name: American Lawyer Media (ALM).
ALM adopted the Incisive moniker back in 2007, after being acquired by Incisive Media for $630 million. Incisive itself was acquired in 2006 by Apax Partners, a private equity firm.
The full memo about the ALM rebranding appears after the jump. Here’s the most interesting part:
While we will continue to be majority-owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, our lender, Royal Bank of Scotland, will swap a portion of its existing ALM debt for a 49% equity stake in the company and become a minority owner of ALM.
Turning over almost half of the equity in the company to a lender — that doesn’t sound good, does it?
But there’s more to the story here.
As some of you have noticed, we have an article in today’s New York Times, in the DealBook Special Section. It’s about fee arrangements in the (highly lucrative) context of mergers-and-acquisitions work. Here’s a teaser:
For some firms, billable hours are just the beginning. As the boom rolled on, law firms specializing in mergers and acquisitions increasingly engaged in premium billing, charging fees in excess of their total hourly billings. Think of it as a tip for good work. Whether a client pays a premium depends upon its satisfaction with the result, the size and complexity of the transaction, and the nature and length of the attorney-client relationship.
But since the credit market began to tighten this summer, an event that brought new deals to a crawl and has upset several old ones, many lawyers have been wondering whether the premium party is over…
And here’s one of the more juicy portions:
One firm, though, has moved beyond billable hours to the flat fee preferred by bankers: Wachtell, Lipton. A former Wachtell lawyer described a typical bill as follows: “There’s a paragraph stating something like, ‘For legal services rendered in connection with Transaction X,’ then a dot leader, then a number followed by six zeros.” He said he worked on some deals where Wachtell was paid more than the bankers.
Wachtell charged a flat fee when it advised the Bancroft family, which controlled Dow Jones & Company, during the $5 billion bid by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation For its work on the deal, Wachtell first submitted a bill for $10 million.
That seems to be the theme of this very interesting article, by Ben Hallman and Aruna Viswanatha, in the current issue of the American Lawyer. It echoes the problems we discussed back in this post, concerning the $70 million malpractice suit filed against Cadwalader, in connection with the firm’s mortgage-backed securities practice.
Here’s an excerpt from the American Lawyer piece:
Even scarier for Debevoise, and for all firms with big private equity practices, was the fact that no new deals were popping up to take the place of those that were stuck. Those fears are shared by lawyers who work on mortgage-backed securities, a market that has completely shut down.
The fears are well justified for both groups, and for any lawyer whose business is linked to the availability of easy credit. In June there were nearly $100 billion worth of private-label mortgage securitization issuances. The next month, they were half that. “There’s always an element of cyclicality,” says Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison structured finance partner Jordan Yarett, “but the implosion of credit is somewhat shocking.”
Indeed. More depressing discussion, after the jump.
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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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?
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