A former Mayer Brown associate, Venus Yvette Springs, has filed a complaint against the firm. She alleges Mayer Brown discriminated against her and eventually fired her in 2008.

Springs was an associate in the real estate group of Mayer Brown, Charlotte. In her complaint, she claims that the head of the group, Frank Arado, said that he would make her a partner with the firm as recently as March 2008. But in May 2008, she was informed that she would be fired. She was officially terminated in September of 2008. The heart of her discrimination claim seems to be this paragraph:

In a statement obtained by Above the Law, Mayer Brown strenuously denied the claims:

Mayer Brown has not yet been served with the complaint filed by former employee Yvette Springs. However, based on our current review, we believe her claims have no merit. We will defend ourselves vigorously in this matter. Consistent with our policy of not commenting on personnel matters or pending litigation, we have nothing further to say.

Additional details after the jump.

When the economic meltdown started picking up steam last year, we were having brunch in the West Village with friends from the legal and financial worlds. One of the lawyers upset the financial folks at the table by rejoicing over the fall of Wall Street.

"Your massive salaries inflated the real estate market here. With financial folks being fired, Manhattan property prices will fall, and lawyers will be able to afford nicer places," said the J.D. holder, who might not be as smug these days after the waves of law firm layoffs. Still, those words may well have been prophetic.

The Sunday New York Times just had a piece on Manhattan's sinking housing prices, focusing on the real estate search of personal injury attorney Matthew Glassman and his wife. With their children out of the nest, they're moving from a house in Long Island -- which they sold for $1.61 million, a nice chunk of change -- to a condo in Manhattan. They scored a place in Chelsea for less than a million dollars. From the Times:

It was sunny when they visited the Cheyney on West 23rd Street. A two-bedroom condo of around 1,150 square feet, it had two exposures, to the street and to a garden courtyard, but needed a complete renovation.... [T]hey focused on the good layout, with a hallway separating the bedrooms from the living room. There was a real second bedroom, not just a windowless office....

And the price, which started at $1.45 million in September, was steadily falling. The Glassmans paid $998,000 and closed in February. The common charge and taxes are $1,667 a month.

Only six figures! But the condo is a little bit of a fixer-upper, requiring $100,000 more in renovations.

Perhaps Glassman hoped to help pay that bill with the business drummed up by the NYT article. As the tipster who sent it along to us noted:

Gotta love the PI attorney who wore a shirt with his website on it while being photographed by the NY Times.

Will it work? Due to the wife's blocking the shirt, we were misled and went first to Glassmanlaw.com. We were initially surprised that a personal injury attorney would specialize in immigration law and fiancee visas. But then we found the right site, Mglassmanlaw.com. We like that "Animal Bites" has its own category.

The Suburban Transplants [New York Times]

In these dire times, academia is regarded as a refuge. Sure, endowments are down, some schools have imposed hiring freezes, and budgets are being trimmed here and there. But the academy, especially the legal academy, hasn't seen anything like the carnage experienced by Biglaw.

Take the ivory tower of Columbia Law School, which apparently remains an impregnable fortress against the recession. Despite a few budget cuts at the university, the law school still provides professors with delicious digs. From the Sunday New York Times:

Many buyers say that jumbo mortgages are hard to come by these days. But don't tell that to Edward R. Morrison, a law professor and economist at Columbia University, who is something of an expert on these troubled times.

Last month Mr. Morrison and his wife, Anne, bought a restored two-family town house at 357 West 121 Street in Harlem for $2.575 million. Brokers said it was a record price for a town house in the neighborhood -- just down the hill from the Columbia campus in Morningside Heights, near Morningside Park -- and one of the top 10 town house sales in Harlem in recent years.

As we've told you before, to the Elect go all the spoils. (Ed Morrison clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia.)

Now, a $2.6 million townhouse is pretty sweet -- but it's not the nicest piece of real estate owned by a CLS faculty member. That title surely belongs to Hans Smit's $29 million mansion.

(Actually, make that $30 million, the price reflected in the current version of the listing. What recession?)

More details about the Morrison manse, plus a picture of the super-cute professor, after the jump.

Remember Kathleen DeLaney and Courtney Thomas? Almost a year ago, this comely couple was named an ATL couple of the week. In the words of Laurie Lin, "Team DeLaney-Thomas, you've shaken LEWW out of our winter doldrums with your sterling credentials and sizzling good looks. Congratulations!"

Now ATL would like to congratulate the DeLaney-Thomases on something else: a fabulous new home. Once again, they make their appearance in the New York Times:

For three years, Kathleen DeLaney Thomas and her husband, Courtney Thomas, lived in a Chelsea rental of 900 square feet. "That apartment felt big when we moved in and small when we moved out," Mrs. Thomas said....

The place had scarce closet space and an unnecessarily large second bedroom, carved from the living room, that made for a claustrophobic feel. Wedding gifts were stacked in the hall or stored at Mr. Thomas's mother's house in New Jersey.

ATL readers from Texas, this is your cue: "In Texas, you could live in a 5,000 square foot mansion for the same amount!"

The sluggish elevator drove the couple mad. If they were paying so much in rent -- around $3,300 a month -- they would rather get a return on their outlay. Once they saved enough for a down payment on a condominium, Mrs. Thomas said, "we were totally ready to go."

And go they did -- to Brooklyn, where all the cool kids live nowadays.

Read more about their fabulous new pad, after the jump.

Talks between Thacher Proffitt and King & Spalding, a story we broke here, remain ongoing. From the Legal Times:

Atlanta-based King & Spalding is in talks to acquire most, but not all of Thacher Proffitt & Wood's lawyers, say two sources aware of the discussions. In order to avoid dissolution, New York-based Thacher hopes to find a partner to acquire it, these sources say.

One New York legal consultant says the discussions have been ongoing for the past three to four months, and that the firms hope to reach an agreement by year-end. The consultant says King & Spalding is considering taking on about 100 of Thacher's 195 lawyers, but that it's not yet clear which practices and offices the 100 lawyers would come from. "There's a tremendous amount of uncertainty about who's going to be invited to the party," says the consultant, who asked not to be named.

Not sure we'd call it a "party." But the alternative to a K&S acquisition isn't appealing:

[Thacher's] overall headcount is down more than 100 lawyers compared to last year -- and so are its profits. Profits per partner fell more than 22 percent in 2007 to $1.02 million, according to the Am Law 200.

The firm has had a constant stream of high-profile departures, including its vice chairman Thomas Leslie, who decamped for Greenberg Traurig in October, and Washington managing partner Richard Schaberg, who left for Hogan & Hartson's D.C. office last month. The New York consultant and another individual familiar with the discussions say that if the deal falls through, Thacher Proffitt will likely go under.

It's worth noting that TPW has placed its New York headquarters up for sublease (as reported by Lindsay Fortado and David Levitt of Bloomberg). If TPW is seeking a subtenant for all five floors it leases at Two World Financial Center, then one has to wonder if the firm plans to continue operations (at least in its current form).

As for King & Spalding, it's growing strategically, despite the downturn. The firm recently snagged three energy partners from Kirkland & Ellis. KS hopefully has room in the lifeboat for Thacherites seeking a new home.

To Avoid Dissolution, Thacher Proffitt Talks With King & Spalding [Legal Times via WSJ Law Blog]
Thacher Proffitt Puts Up New York Office Space for Sublease [Bloomberg]
King & Spalding Adds Three Energy Partners in Washington, D.C. [King & Spalding]

Heller Ehrman continues to stave off involuntary bankruptcy, despite not being able to pay employees their accrued vacation time. But Heller's breakup continues to take weird twists.

The latest bizarre news comes from Seattle, where some associates have wondered whether they are about to be evicted from their offices. Tension was so high that Heller management had to send around a clarification email:

TO ALL HANDS (SEATTLE):

I have heard various rumors in the hallways to the effect that the Seattle office will close imminently and therefore that everyone needs to move out pronto. To clarify, here is the status.

The landlord has not issued a notice to vacate. If such a notice were issued, the notice period would be ten days. For reasons too long to explain, we overpaid rent throughout 2008. When those overpayments came to our attention, the firm asked that they be applied to cover (completely) the October rent obligation. The landlord has since asserted that the overpayments instead should be applied toward a fee that was due in connection with our give-back of space on 58. The Dissolution Committee is working with our outside counsel and communicating with the landlord to hopefully resolve this issue, and to clarify with the landlord any issues relating to removal of property from our space. To the best of my knowledge, closure of this office is not imminent and the date of closure remains to be determined, based on the pace of collections versus ongoing costs and also based on the banks' decisions about what spending they will approve.

A law firm on the edge of solvency "overpaid" their rent? We hope that the explanation for this oversight is too long and difficult to get into, but we wonder if it is just too embarrassing.

Meanwhile, the Heller refugees that ended up at Covington have officially started .

Associates that we are speaking to say that it is just starting to sink in that they will be out of a job soon. Hopefully the Seattle associates will get as much time as possible to come to grips with this reality, instead of showing up at the office one day only to find locks on the door.

Update: The Blog of the LegalTimes reports that Arnold & Porter has picked up the latest Heller refugees. The big fish is Kenneth Chernof, Heller's managing partner in the D.C. office. Any associates coming along for the ride?

Homeless In Seattle? [Heller Highwater]
Heller partners join Covington & Burling [Business Journal]
Arnold & Porter Picks Up Heller Partners [The BLT: Blog of the LegalTimes]

Earlier: Anatomy of a Dissolution: BoA & Citi Tell Heller Ehrman There's No Money For Vacation Time

Here's an idea for how Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft -- America's Firingest Law Firm™, which laid off 35 lawyers in January, and then 96 more last month -- can keep its surviving attorneys (plus all those incoming first-years) gainfully employed.

Have them work on the litigation over managing partner Robert Link's Hamptons house.

Cadwalader Managing Partner In Hamptons Real Estate Squabble [Am Law Daily]
Robert O. Link, Jr. v. Richard Sarcona: Complaint (PDF) [Am Law Daily]
3 Halsey Path, Southampton, NY [Zillow]

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Robert Link (scroll down)
Prior ATL coverage of CWT (scroll down)

If you'll be interviewing at law firms this fall, make sure you double check the address of the place you're headed to. Law firms are constantly on the move and trading spaces. From the New York Observer (which follows commercial real estate as obsessively as we follow law firm layoffs):

Entertainment law powerhouse Pryor Cashman, whose clients include Penthouse founder Bob Guccione and numerous American Idol contestants, is in negotiations for 100,000 square feet at 605 Third Avenue, the 44-story glass box of a building owned by Fisher Brothers....

[T]he firm right now occupies about 100,000 square feet of contiguous space in three buildings, which means three leases--all of which expire at the end of next year--and three landlords.

That sounds rather inefficient -- and annoying. But there are other firms that occupy multiple buildings in the same city. E.g., Skadden and Mayer Brown, in D.C.

Pryor Cashman isn't the only law firm in search of new digs. The Observer reports that Paul Weiss and Fitzpatrick Cella are also in search of over 100,000 square feet apiece.

Favored American Idol Lawyers Negotiating Lease at 605 Third [New York Observer]

* Why does Wall Street get all the juicy scandals? We're jealous of our DealBreaker colleagues. [Dealbreaker]

* Larry Ribstein's take: "it's hard not to think that it's really all about dispute a few weeks ago between [the NYT's Andrew Ross] Sorkin and Dealbreaker's John Carney." [Ideoblog]

* Are you in the top one percent of U.S. taxpayers ranked by adjusted gross income? And which states are home to the richest of rich taxpayers? [TaxProf Blog]

* "Would you trust a law professor to be President?" [Althouse]

* Speaking of law profs, they may boycott the annual AALS meeting, due to the hotel owner's opposition to same-sex marriage. [National Law Journal via TaxProf Blog]

* An interesting interview of Fried Frank partner Jonathan Mechanic, a superstar of the real estate bar. [New York Observer]

* Russian judge: "If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children." [Telegraph (U.K.)]

[Ed. note: This post is by ALEX, one of the finalists in ATL Idol, the "reality blogging" competition that will determine ATL's next editor. It is marked with Alex's avatar (at right).]

Biglaw lawyers:

Every single one of your non-lawyer friends and family members think that you know "the law" because you're lawyers. You don't. You work in biglaw. Don't worry, ATL will give you some small-building law to use when the inevitable email arrives or you need some lawyerly advice yourself.

Today's topic: landlord-tenant law.

August is almost upon us. Lots of people are moving. Summers, law-school grads, Cadwalader attorneys. Maybe there's still time to knock some dollars off of your last rent check. I spoke to an attorney who handles landlord-tenant issues in New York. He works in a really small building and likes to golf on Thursday afternoons.

Nutshell after the jump.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri Beth Cohen is expected to rule this week in a trial between county taxpayer and former Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman and the county itself, as to whether the county must put to referendum its plan to spend $347 million in taxpayer money to build a new baseball stadium for the Florida Marlins. The stadium initiative is part of a wider county spending package that is intended to rebuild much of Little Havana, as well as create a tunnel to the Port of Miami and a new streetcar system.

For those of you not following this case, in February 2008 the thirteen Miami-Dade County commissioners approved plans to build a new 37,000-seat, retractable-roof baseball stadium to induce Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria to keep his team in Miami beyond expiration of the club's 2010 lease (previously blogged about here). Although the deal only calls for Loria to contribute $155 million toward the new ballpark, it offers Loria full rights to all stadium revenues throughout the year, including permission to keep all proceeds from selling ballpark naming rights. Even when compared to most recent public-private stadium partnerships, this agreement is a sweetheart deal for Loria, an owner who never invested much of his own money into the team.

Last week, Braman argued in court that Miami-Dade County cannot approve this spending package without a public referendum for two different reasons. First, a recent Florida Supreme Court ruling in Strand v. Escambia County (PDF) (2007) holds that Article VII, Section 12 of the Florida Constitution requires a referendum on any property tax money pledged to finance bonds for a project extending beyond one year. Although funding for the new Marlins stadium technically comes from tourist taxes (and not property taxes), Braman contends this distinction is irrelevant because, according to him, Miami-Dade County is playing a "shell game" by shifting tourist tax funding for other projects to the stadium bonds, and then replacing lost funding from those other projects with property-tax money.

In addition, Braman claims the stadium project does not serve a paramount municipal purpose, as is required for public funding under the Florida Constitution. This claim relies heavily on the 1966 Florida Supreme Court decision in Brandes v. City of Deerfield Beach, which held that building a professional baseball stadium is not a predominantly municipal purpose. A more recent Florida Supreme Court decision, Poe v. Hillsborough County (1997), actually allowed public spending to build a football stadium for shared use between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and various public high school teams. However, Braman, in a recent Miami Herald editorial, differentiates Poe because in Poe the funding was first put to public vote. (Note: one could also differentiate Poe because building that stadium benefited public high school football players.)

Read more, after the jump.

Yesterday, at 4 p.m. Pacific time, Judge Marsha Pechman was supposed to issue her ruling in City of Seattle v. Professional Basketball Club, LLC, regarding whether the City of Seattle could specifically enforce its lease agreement and require the Sonics basketball team to play in KeyArena through the 2009-10 season. After waiting more than an hour for Pechman's ruling, however, it was finally announced that the parties had privately settled the matter.

According to several published reports, the City of Seattle agreed to allow Clay Bennett's ownership group to get out of their lease, opening the door for the Sonics to immediately move to Bennett's hometown of Oklahoma City, OK. In exchange, Bennett will have to pay the city $45 million in immediate damages, as well as potentially an additional $30 million in future damages, if the Washington legislature authorizes at least $75 million in public funding to renovate KeyArena and the City of Seattle still does not obtain a new NBA franchise by 2013.

Bennett's ownership group will also have to leave the Sonics name and colors behind in Seattle -- something the group probably does not mind in the least.

An assessment of the settlement, below the fold.

Today's Washington Post has this interesting article about the living conditions of "enemy combatant" Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. Marri has been held in solitary confinement for 6 1/2 years. Although he has been accused of being an al-Qaeda sleeper agent, he has yet to be tried for any crime.

The bulk of the article focuses on concerns that Marri's lawyers have raised about his well-being and mental health. They argue that years of isolation have impaired his ability to participate in his own defense.

Their concerns appear to be serious and well-founded. But the real estate voyeur in us found this paragraph to be the most interesting:

Marri has a 1,000-square-foot dayroom with cable television and recently was given access to a computer. He also can read books from an approximately 400-volume library, including religious texts; has his own exercise equipment; and can read articles from USA Today and a local newspaper, except for news about the counterterrorism effort, along with magazines such as Men's Fitness and PC World.

With 1,000 square feet of living space to himself, Marri is living better than most Manhattanites. But that periodical selection leaves something to be desired. Were those Marri's selections, or the Pentagon's picks? Why not, say, the New York Times and Vanity Fair?

(But photoshop those Miley Cyrus pics to put her in a burqa.)

Lawyers Fear for Marri's Sanity [Washington Post via How Appealing]

The bad news continues to roll in. Becker & Poliakoff, which just announced across-the-board pay cuts for its lawyers, isn't the only Florida firm that's hurting.

From a report by Julie Kay, for the upcoming issue of the National Law Journal:

In another sign of the hard times facing the legal industry, particularly in real-estate heavy South Florida, two local law firms -- Holland & Knight and Shutts & Bowen -- have laid off non-lawyer staffers.

On a day that could be dubbed Black Friday in South Florida legal circles, Tampa-based Holland & Knight, one of Florida's largest and most venerable firms with 1,150 lawyers, laid off 70 staffers Friday, including legal secretaries, IT and accounting staff. No lawyers were laid off.

The layoffs of about four employees in each of Holland's 17 offices represented 5% of Holland's non-lawyer workforce.

Shutts & Bowen, a 200-lawyer, Miami-based firm, Friday laid off nine people, all entry level file clerks or paralegal clerks. No lawyers or legal secretaries were affected.

Holland & Knight spokeswoman Susan Bass told the Daily Business Review that the firm "had some redundancies and inefficiencies." Seventy staffers is a whole lot of redundancies.

Read more -- about prior layoffs at H&K, and the situation over at Greenberg Traurig -- below the fold.

Earlier this month, there was some discussion in the comments about law firms possibly cutting associate salaries to cope with the economic downturn. The scenario sounded far-fetched -- but maybe it's not as far-fetched as some might have hoped.

Look, we aren't saying that the sky is falling. There's a world of difference between a law firm based in Fort Lauderdale, with 128 lawyers and extensive exposure to Florida real estate, and the giants of Biglaw, with hundreds of millions (or even billions) in revenue, profits per partner well into the seven figures, and diversified practices.

But still, nobody would call this good news. From the Daily Business Review:

Attorneys at Becker & Poliakoff are being hit with a 12 percent pay cut for the foreseeable future to help the real estate-dominated firm deal with a drop in profitability and delays in collections.

Becker & Poliakoff is the first major South Florida firm to turn to its lawyers to make cuts to help it deal with the economic slowdown and real estate downturn. Other firms have trimmed staff jobs, including paralegals and secretaries, and cut back on other expenses to help cope with the economic landscape.

Alan Becker, the firm's managing shareholder, informed attorneys and support staff about the pay deferment plan via podcast Wednesday. The cut took effect Thursday and affects only lawyers. No layoffs are expected.

So that's the silver lining to the proverbial cloud. You've suffered a 12 percent haircut on your salary, but at least your job is secure.

We don't know what the Becker & Poliakoff pay scale is, but we're guessing it's well below the $160K scale. Back in 2003, it looks like their starting salaries were in the $63K-$70K range.

But just out of curiosity, what would Biglaw salaries look like if they were trimmed in this manner? If a 12 percent reduction were applied to the first three steps of the standard New York pay scale, salaries would go from 160-170-185 to 141-150-163.

More discussion, after the jump.

In Lawyerly Lairs, we follow the real-estate moves of leading lawyers and law firms. The focus is typically residential. For example, last year we visited the Park Avenue apartment of this year's commencement speaker at Georgetown Law, Joel Klein.

But every now and then, we go commercial, and write about law firm offices. E.g., Cleary Gottlieb; Gibson Dunn; Cravath.

Today's featured tenant: Paul Weiss. From the New York Observer:

High-powered law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison is in negotiations with Vornado Realty Trust for more than one-third of the tower planned for atop the Port Authority bus station, a move that, if cemented, would extend the legal establishment’s apparently inexorable drift westward from the white-shoe stronghold of midtown.

A source close to the negotiations confirmed that Paul, Weiss is in serious, though early, negotiations to take 500,000 square feet in the middle of the 42-story building slated to rise from a platform atop the seedy bus terminal.

Seedy is right -- but there are advantages to being based at Port Authority. Check out this list of shops and restaurants. It will be easy for beleaguered associates to slip away to Duane Reade, to fill that prescription for anti-anxiety medication. And lavish lunches at Munchy's Gourmet -- second floor, South Wing -- will seal the deal for PW recruits.

Meanwhile, another top law firm is venturing beyond midtown. Also from the Observer (which covers the commercial real estate world as thoroughly as we cover Biglaw):

The largest tenant in the GM Building is relocating a portion of its operations from the gilded midtown tower to the decidedly humbler environs of downtown Brooklyn.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a global law firm with a New York staff of 1,300, has signed a lease for 35,000 square feet at Brooklyn’s 15 Metrotech Center, owned by Forest City Ratner.

Over the past few years, Brooklyn has been booming, growing increasingly attractive as a residential option for young professionals. But if you're a Manhattan snob and Weil associate, have no fear. The Brooklyn digs will house information systems, finance, and operations; the lawyers will stay in the GM Building.

P.S. Speaking of the GM Building, here's a digression on "safe email." One ATL tipster likes to email us, using a non-work email account, from a computer in that building's Apple store.

But you don't need to be quite that cloak-and-dagger. It's usually safe to email us, from a non-work account, using the web browser on your wireless device (like a Blackberry or iPhone); that traffic doesn't pass through your law firm's servers.

Of course, to be ultra-cautious, wait until you get home, and email us from your personal computer. Thanks.

Law Firm Nears Lease Atop Bus Terminal [New York Observer]
Big Manhattan Law Firm Exits GM Building for ... Downtown Brooklyn [New York Observer]
Terminal Information & Services [Port Authority of New York and New Jersey]

Why do the gay lawyers land all the fabulous real estate? Just a few days after this installment of Lawyerly Lairs, profiling the palatial pads of two same-sex couples, we learn of a third such couple living large in New York.

A reader sums it up nicely: "This seems right up our alley for Lawyerly Lairs: Manhattan / East Hampton real estate, Yale Law alum (then Paul Weiss before going in-house), Ivy League pedigree on both sides of the same-sex partnership, and shout-outs by the New York Times."

Indeed it is. Read about the charmed life of architect Michael Haverland and lawyer-turned novelist Philip Galanes, follow their successful adventures in NYC real estate (and furniture collecting), and ogle photos of their luxurious Upper East Side and East Hampton homes, in this NYT article.

Starting Over, and Over, and Over [New York Times]
Philip Galanes biography [galaneshaverland.com]

Earlier: Lawyerly Lairs: Gay Gotham Edition

* Renomination of Steven Bradbury to head OLC seen as diss to Dems. [New York Times]

* Barry Bonds seeks dismissal of perjury charges. Depends on what the meaning of "is" is? [San Francisco Chronicle via How Appealing]

* Senate debates whether to grant phone companies immunity from suits arising out of their helping out on warrantless wiretapping. [Washington Post]

* Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan seeks Supreme Court review of his conviction. [Chicago Tribune via How Appealing]

* Also turning to the SCOTUS: cheeky pro se litigant who forestalled foreclosure for 11 years. [WSJ Law Blog]

* You've got mail? Maybe not, at least at the White House, which is having some email archiving problems. [Washington Post]

Or maybe yesterday. From Tuesday's New York Times, an article that still sits on top of the Most Emailed Articles list:

Marty Ummel feels she paid too much for her house. So do millions of other people who bought at the peak of the housing boom. What makes Ms. Ummel different is that she is suing her agent, saying it was all his fault.

Ms. Ummel claims that the agent hid the information that similar homes in the neighborhood were selling for less because he feared she would back out and he would lose his $30,000 commission.

Real estate lawyers and brokers say the case, which goes to trial in North County Superior Court on Monday, is likely to be the first of many in which regretful or resentful buyers seek redress from the agents who found them a home and arranged its purchase.

It's an interesting case. We're a bit skeptical, but maybe that's just us. Read the full NYT article, which contains more of the facts, then feel free to take our poll if you like:

Feeling Misled on Home Price, Buyers Sue Agent [New York Times]

In Chicago, gay lawyers get to attend exclusive parties. In New York, they enjoy a finer prize: luxury real estate.

The law schools of Columbia and NYU have been battling over faculty superstars for several years. And now NYU is bringing out the heavy artillery: multimillion-dollar condo purchases. From the New York Times:

Columbia University, in a never-ending search for a larger campus, has long had an outpost for faculty housing at 455 Central Park West -- 53 apartments in an 26-story tower attached to the French Renaissance chateau at West 106th Street.

So it was something of a surprise when a foundation associated with New York University bought a large condominium in the complex. The unit, which cost $5.2 million, is built into one of the huge turrets of the chateau.... The duplex apartment has a round living and dining room with 37-foot high ceilings and Central Park views, along with three more conventional bedrooms.

Sounds fabulous! Who gets to inhabit this fabulous pad?

Find out, after the jump.