Schulte Roth & Zabel

Adventures in Gold Digging: Soros Case Welcomes a New Lawyer

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A couple years back, Brazilian TV star Adriana Ferreyr, 29, filed a $50 million lawsuit against her ex-boyfriend. The ex-boyfriend in question is George Soros, known as a billionaire financier to liberals and Lord Voldemort to conservatives. Everyone agrees that the suit grew out of the couple’s breakup and Soros’s refusal to buy her a $1.9 million apartment (or a subsequent $4.3 million pad she found). He also gave the apartment that Ferreyr claims she picked out to another woman (new fiancée Tamiko Bolton), because Soros rolls like that.

To channel Kanye, I’m not saying that she’s a gold digger, but this image sums up the relationship. After seeing that picture, well, to paraphrase Jules from Pulp Fiction, that would have to be one very charming pig.

Now Ferreyr has hired a new high-profile lawyer to pursue her claim for the $50 million she’s obviously owed for dating a billionaire….

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Funny Man Partner Now Spreads Joy With Reply-All Responses To Spam

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Everybody’s a comedian.

Can you imagine what would happen if somebody who used to be an extra on Saturday Night Live tried to make a go of it as a Biglaw associate? I think it would be a spectacular failure. Law firms don’t usually reward things like “creativity” and “humor.” Biglaw values drones, and in many situations, you have to check your personality at the door.

But what if you got in on the “ground floor” of a firm that was growing into a Biglaw power? If you got lucky, you might stick, things might work out for you. And in that happy circumstance, you might end up being a partner in Biglaw who can let your personality flourish in all sorts of ways.

Today, we have a story about that kind of would-be comedian turned law firm partner. And somebody gave him an email account….

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Leading Lady Lawyers: Ranking the Am Law 100 By Women in Leadership Roles

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Here at Above the Law, we’ve been writing about the “Biglaw boys’ club” for quite some time. According to the latest report compiled by the National Association of Women Lawyers, when it comes to firm life in the fast lane, women continue to have difficulty ascending to the ranks of firm leadership. In fact, that study concluded that in the Am Law 200, women hold only 20 percent of the positions on firm governance committees. What’s worse is that only four percent of Am Law 200 firms have a firmwide managing partner who’s a woman. So much for girl power.

But when it comes to Am Law 100 firms, the American Lawyer recently conducted a similar study, and the results were less than awe-inspiring — in their discussion of the results, the editorial staff go so far as to refer to it as “the law of small numbers.” Lovely. Apparently the glass ceiling is still strong in Biglaw.

So what does the leadership hierarchy look like for women in the Am Law 100? Let’s find out….

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Ranking 2012′s Summer Associate Programs: Spare Us the Wining and Dining, We’re Too Terrified to Have Fun

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Less ‘mentally taxing’ than social events?

Things have definitely changed since the summer associate days of yore. There are no more Aquagirls, no more lesbianic lip-locks, and no more Katten kreeps. These days, we’re looking at a group of law students who were so scared about being no-offered that they actually wished their firms would’ve worked them harder instead of forcing them to have mandatory fun.

At least that seems to be the conclusion to be drawn from the American Lawyer’s 2012 Summer Associate Survey. Am Law polled 4,138 interns at 138 firms about their summer experiences and used the results to rank 111 summer programs. Truth be told, it seems like they were too anxious to really enjoy their time as summers, because when asked to rank their “worry level” on a 1-to-5 scale, the average was higher than it has been since 2009′s summer of discontent.

But even so, the overall rankings were still pretty good. If you’re a law student trying to figure out where to spend your summer, you’re probably asking: which law firms came out with the highest scores?

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ATL Summer Associate Event Contest: The Winner!

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Thanks to everyone who participated in this year’s summer associate event contest. Many of you nominated events, and almost 1,500 of you voted in the reader poll to crown this year’s winner.

We had five fantastic finalists, coming from five leading law firms: Latham & Watkins, Quinn Emanuel, Ropes & Gray, Schulte Roth & Zabel, and Weil Gotshal & Manges. They covered a wide range of activities, from karting to karaoke and from hiking to Heat-watching (the Miami Heat, that is).

Which Biglaw firm took home the big prize?

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ATL Summer Associate Event Contest: The Finalists

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We recently requested entries for our summer associate event contest. Even if being a summer associate at a large law firm is more work than play these days, there is still fun to be had.

Here’s a comment on the post from “Dewey & LeBoeuf Summer Associate”:

It’s tough to choose just one event from my summer to nominate for The Best Biglaw Summer Associate Event of 2012. First, there was “Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day,” which was so successful the firm extended the event for the entire summer. Another one of my favorites was the cooking class I attended, “Upgrading Your Kitchen: 101 Ramen Recipes.”

Some of the firm’s events were also educational. I particularly enjoyed the invaluable seminar “Dodging Your Debts,” featuring guest speaker Elie Mystal. And each week I looked forward to the “Friday Bonfire,” where the other summer associates and I gathered to roast off-brand marshmallows in the tall fire we’d built with that week’s haul of rejection letters as we basked in the glow of the flames of our legal careers.

Fortunately, most summer associates are working at firms that aren’t in bankruptcy. Let’s take a look at our quintet of impressive entries for this year’s summer associate event contest….

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Summer Associate Offer Rates (2012): A Round-Up

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He got an offer. Did you?

Truth be told, I’m not a fan of law firms giving offers to 100 percent of their summer associates. Whatever happened to selectivity? Given how perfunctory the hiring process is, there has to be at least one mistake in any summer class of decent size, right?

A commenter on our last post about offer rates put it well: “[A] 100% offer rate is not always a good thing. If we don’t want to work with the little weirdo who managed to slip through by pretending he was normal in 20-minute increments in callbacks, there’s a good chance the other SAs don’t either. Firms shouldn’t be so captured by the desire to have 100% offer rates that they give offers to people with serious social issues or work product problems, particularly in small offices where their general offensiveness will really have an opportunity to shine.”

Another reason I don’t like 100 percent offer rates is that I enjoy hearing funny stories of summer associate misbehavior, which often culminate in a no offer or a cold offer. You can share such stories with us by email or by text message (646-820-8477; texts only, not a voice line).

Alas, Biglaw firms are not obliging me. Let’s find out which firms are indiscriminately doling out offers to their summers….

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Summer Associate Offer Rates (2012): Open Thread

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Smile if you got an offer!

We’ve had a decent amount of drama involving summer associates at major law firms this year. We’ve heard stories of dramatic helicopter rescues in Canada, showstopping performances at the Apollo, guns found in drawers, and steamy lesbianic trysts (which are, of course, nothing new for summer associates).

Are these antics affecting offer rates? Here’s what we’ve heard about a handful of firms that have announced offers….

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L’Affaire LeBoeuf: The Latest Links and News

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In our last full post on Dewey & LeBoeuf, the fast-fading New York law firm, we tried to find some moments of humor in this generally depressing story. Now we’ll return to the hard — and gloomy — Dewey news. (We mentioned several D&L items in today’s Morning Docket.)

Without further ado, let’s find out what’s going on….

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Associate Bonus Watch: Schulte Roth & Zabel Leaves a Trail of Bonus Crumbs

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Schulte Roth & Zabel really came up with a creative way to make this terrible bonus season even worse for SRZ associates.

Schulte is matching the Cravath scale, but not all at once. Half of the bonus is being paid now, the other half in March. It’s Schulte’s way of issuing a retention bonus without actually spending any extra money.

It also sets Schulte up nicely to avoid paying spring bonuses next year. Not that Schulte management really cares what people think about them. The firm didn’t pay spring bonuses last year. Even though the firm is making people whole with a “spring bonus” payment to those who should have gotten one last spring, the money is still tied to hitting 2011 hours targets.

It’s really one of the most disingenuous bonus memos we’ve seen. While technically the firm is matching Cravath, it’s doing it in a nickle-and-dime way that makes it pretty clear the Schulte partnership begrudges every last cent they have to pay out in bonuses.

If the associates don’t like it, they know where the door is….

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