Real Estate

Lawyerly Lairs: A Quinn Emanuel Attorney’s Housing Hunt

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I’ve previously mentioned how much I enjoy The Hunt, Joyce Cohen’s weekly column in the New York Times in which she describes the housing search of someone brave enough to take on the NYC real estate market. Prior installments of the column have featured lawyers and even law students.

Last week’s installment featured a lawyer at Quinn Emanuel, who went house hunting with his wife, who works at a test-preparation company. The home they wound up getting would probably be viewed as bike storage by John Quinn, but it’s plenty nice by the standards of mere mortals.

How much did they pay, and how much space did they get? Would you be impressed if I told you they got 1,500 square feet for less than $750,000?

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If You Want To Own A Home, Don’t Borrow Money To Go To Law School

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How do I know that these people are not lawyers?

Now that my wife and I have a baby, people keep telling us that we shouldn’t just find a bigger rental, we should buy something and put down roots. My wife, politely, laughs and says, “We’re thinking about it.” I angrily roll my eyes and say, “Why don’t you think about going and f**king yourself.”

You see, we are both law school graduates who debt-financed our educations and now live in New York. Property ownership is not something that will happen for us… unless we just want to give up and move to an oil-soaked subdivision in Arkansas.

But I am not alone. A law professor has crunched some quick numbers and determined that at least half of the class of 2011 wouldn’t be able to own a home….

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Lawyerly Lairs: Million-Dollar Listings in Washington, D.C.

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D.C.’s largest lawyerly lair?

A few days ago, conservative political bloggers had some fun with the news of left-leaning commentator Matthew Yglesias buying a $1.2 million condo. But I tend to agree with Jonathan Chait: unless you’re a full-blown communist, there’s nothing inconsistent between being somewhat liberal and owning a nice place. I don’t even have a problem with so-called “limousine liberals” (although owning a $1.2 million apartment is hardly limousine land).

The news of Yglesias’s real estate purchase first appeared in Washingtonian magazine, which has fantastic coverage of the D.C. real estate market. The same column also contained news of several lawyers cutting seven-figure housing deals….

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The Practice: Moving Offices

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Last year, I wrote about the thing that gets me yelled at almost as much as when I rail on SEO and tech hacks — when I dare to mention that practicing lawyers looking to build their practice should have an office.

Your practice may be “built.” You may be getting more calls than you can handle. You may be a low-volume lawyer that only needs/wants a couple cases a month, and your referral sources take care of that for you.

But I’m talking about the rest of the profession. The debt-laden, the hungry, the ones still trying to get to that place where they have the types of clients and cases they want.

This is not a post about the merits of having an office, it’s about when it’s time to move — to something nicer, closer to the business center of town, or closer to the courthouse you are in three days a week. If you’ve already decided that having an office is the worst thing you could ever imagine because “no one has an office anymore,” stop reading here and go yell at that law dean, or Wallerstein, or my boyfriend Elie….

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Buying In: Biglaw Real Estate

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“Where do I sit?” seems like an important question. Especially for second-graders on the first day of school. Or for zit-spocked high schoolers angling to spend some class time in the proximity of their crushes. And just like second-graders or hormonal high schoolers, Biglaw partners are known to obsess about their office locations. For example, I have seen partners I used to work for studying the floor plan like a treasure map, for uncomfortably long periods of time.

Surely they were mentally imagining their names transposed over a corner office, or next door to the big conference room, or for the real aspirants, within touching distance of the managing partner’s office. While this behavior is strange when taken to the extreme, it highlights an important reality of Biglaw.

Where you sit, matters….

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It’s Justice Sotomayor’s Beloved World; The Rest Of Us Are Just Living In It (Plus Tales From Her Honor’s Neighbors)

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Justice Sotomayor can be seen everywhere — from First Street to U Street to Sesame Street.

I had the pleasure and honor of meeting then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor, at the time a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, at a friend’s wedding in the spring of 2005. I wrote a quick story about it for my first blog, Underneath Their Robes. I praised Her Honor as “striking,” “glamorous,” and stylishly attired: “Based on her fashion sense, it sounds like she’d be more at home on a Paris runway!”

But what really struck me about Judge Sotomayor was how friendly and down-to-earth she was. She chatted amiably with everyone, just like an ordinary guest; she put on no Article III airs. And when the time came to cut the rug, she and Judge Barbara Jones — then of the S.D.N.Y., now of Zuckerman Spaeder — dominated the ballroom like it was their courtroom.

Now the rest of the nation is seeing the Sonia Sotomayor that I briefly glimpsed almost eight year ago. As reflected in recent media coverage, the Wise Latina is truly America’s judicial sweetheart. And super-nice to the neighbors in her U Street condo building — who have all sorts of fun dish on the justice….

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Job of the Week: Say Shalom to a Very Unique Real Estate Position in South Florida

By Above the Law

Lateral Link has a fantastic, unique, and VERY RARE opportunity for a CEO position with one of the country’s largest real estate companies.

This position requires Hebrew fluency (or near fluency) and extensive experience in real estate management, finance, and sales and acquisitions, as well as previous corporate management experience. If you have 5+ years experience in the real estate fields described above, Hebrew fluency, and corporate management experience, this job could be for you.

Position: Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

Location: South Florida

Description: Leading real estate company is looking for a Chief Executive Officer with 5+ years of sophisticated real estate experience, including management of large scale residential properties, real estate finance, and real estate sales and acquisitions. This position requires Hebrew fluency (or near fluency) and previous corporate management experience.

Legal experience is very helpful but not required.

If you are a Lateral Link member, please see position #14993 on the Lateral Link site. If you are not a Lateral Link member, you can sign up for free at www.laterallink.com. If you are interested in this position or any other of our great positions in Florida, Atlanta or other parts of the Southeast, please contact Scott Hodes directly at shodes@laterallink.com.

Lawyerly Lairs: An M&A Maven’s Magnificent Manse

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Behind the blue door lies a world of great beauty.

You’d expect a top mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer to have excellent business sense. So it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that an M&A partner at a leading law firm bought a Manhattan townhouse for $837,000 that is now probably worth more than $7 million.

It’s a gorgeous home, very tastefully decorated (which can’t be said of all our Lawyerly Lairs). Let’s see some pictures and learn more about it, including the identities of the owners….

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Lawyerly Lairs: Former Partner Purchases Holbrooke’s Home

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The Beresford, at 211 Central Park West.

Renowned diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who came very close to becoming Secretary of State, passed away in December 2010. His wife, noted journalist Kati Marton, recently sold the magnificent apartment they shared at the Beresford, the legendary prewar co-op on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Over the years, as noted in the building’s Wikipedia entry, the Beresford has been called home by such celebrities as “comedian Jerry Seinfeld, singer Diana Ross, tennis player John McEnroe, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, actor Tony Randall, and musician Laura Nyro.” (I was going to say that Nyro’s publicist must be a Wikipedia admin, but it seems that Nyro passed away back in 1997.)

UPDATE (1/16/2013, 11:45 AM): We just heard from a longtime Beresford resident who advises us that Diana Ross never lived in the building (although the Diana Ross Playground is across the street).

Now the Beresford will be graced by a former Biglaw partner, who bought Holbrooke’s home for an eight-figure sum. Sharing an elevator with Jerry Seinfeld will be….

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Morning Docket: 01.10.13

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Dean Evan Caminker

* Eric Holder has agreed to serve once more as attorney general during President Barack Obama’s second term, but he still plans to leave at some point — after all, he’s no “Janet Reno of the Justice Department.” [Blog of Legal Times]

* AIG will not join the lawsuit against America. To put that in terms that should be just as outrageous, former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg is still suing America. [Washington Post]

* For those who care about Biglaw firms and the landlords who love them, fear not, because there’s a whole lot of moving and shaking in terms of commercial real estate deals for Arnold & Porter, Goodwin Procter, and Sidley Austin. [Am Law Daily]

* Jacoby & Meyers scored at the Second Circuit: its attack on New York’s ban on non-lawyer firm ownership was reinstated. Soon Walmart will own a firm with “Low Prices. Every day. On everything.” [Bloomberg]

* Who’ll step in to fill Evan Caminker’s $400,000+ shoes as the next dean of Michigan Law? None other than Mark West, who’d like to improve financial aid and loan repayment programs. [National Law Journal]

* Gun nuts, commence your rioting… now. If passed, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s sweeping gun-control proposal would make New York the state with the strictest gun laws in the country. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* Speaking of needless gun violence, by Friday, we’ll know whether there’s enough evidence to move forward with a trial for James Holmes, the accused shooter in the Aurora movie theater massacre. [New York Times]

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