Shearman & Sterling

Musical Chairs: Shearman & Sterling and Baker Botts Partners Start New Firm

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New Shingle new law firm.JPGYesterday the news broke that Steven Molo, of Shearman & Sterling, and Jeffrey Lamken, of Baker Botts, were leaving their respective firms to start a new litigation boutique. It will be called MoloLamken and start out with offices in New York and D.C. Am Law Daily reports that the firm represents the new recession model for business generation:

If there is a firm model built for the dawning post-recession era, it’s probably a litigation boutique with low overhead and a flexible billing structure….

The firm will start with four partners and two associates, and will work on both plaintiffs and defense cases. Within five years, Molo says he hopes to have around 50 lawyers. “Over time, clients have become far more sophisticated in hiring firms,” he said. “They understand how a firm like this can be small but every bit as efficient or even more so than a larger firm.”

But are they hiring? Details after the jump.

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 9.20: Maddening

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We suppose it’s fitting that on Yom Kippur, when our Jewish friends are fasting at home, today’s Legal Eagle Wedding Watch is a total WASP-fest. (Last weekend was Rosh Hashanah, which explains the unusual dearth of Jewish nuptials in the NYT announcements.) We look forward to receiving plenty of tasteful feedback about how there are “too many gentiles” this week.
Here are your six finalists — all Biglaw associates, as it happens:

1. Elisabeth Madden and Wesley Mullen
2. Ann Parker and Robert McKeehan
3. Emily Harris and Matthew Mauney

Read all about these couples and evaluate their credentials, after the jump.

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 9.13: Devine Inspiration

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Supreme Court clerks continue to flood the NYT wedding pages this month, creating grim LEWW odds for mere-mortal Cornell grads and Skadden associates. Like Troy playing Florida or North Texas playing Alabama, these folks are welcome to suit up, but the only question is how bad their whuppin’ is going to hurt.
Here are your three finalist couples for the week:

1. Rebecca Mancuso and Andrew Brunswick
2. Erin Gustafson and David Curtiss
3. Kathleen Devine and David Newman

Evaluate these newlyweds, after the jump.

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Fall Recruiting Open Thread: Vault 21 – 30 (2010)

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comparing.jpgYou can still call yourself prestigious if you work at the firms that make up today’s fall recruiting open thread. But once you are outside of the Vault top 20, people start talking about “firm culture” at least as much as they talk about prestige.
Here’s the next batch:

21. Shearman & Sterling
22. O’Melveny & Myers
23. Quinn Emanuel
24. Ropes & Gray
25. Hogan & Hartson
26. Clifford Chance
27. Morrison & Foerster
28. Mayer Brown
29. Linklaters
30. Boies Schiller & Flexner

The slide continues for Shearman & Sterling. The firm was ranked #19 last year, and is down two spots this year. Is there any specific reason for the fall?
After the jump, let’s look at the firms rising up through the rankings.

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 6.21: The Thorn-Nerds

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Gentleman, how emasculated would you feel if your future father-in-law shuttled your bride down the aisle, and then, instead of pecking her on the cheek and handing her over, actually turned around and performed the wedding ceremony? Talk about control issues. That’s exactly what this groom endured last Sunday, as he was married by his father-in-law, United States Federal District Judge Jed S. Rakoff.
The Rakoff wedding didn’t make our final three. Neither did a couple of lesbian unions, a WGWAG, and several other worthy contenders. Here are the three who made the finals:

1. Devon Quasha and Jeffrey Thorn
2. Saralisa Brau and William Van Horne
3. Linda Cho and James Brennan

More about these impressive legal-eagle newlyweds, after the jump.

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 6.14: Chemistry Lesson

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We’ll bottom-line this week’s contest, folks: The SCOTUS clerk wins. Yep, after a long absence, LEWW’s favorite credential makes a welcome appearance in the NYT weddings section, and we’ve got the details for you.
But first, congratulations to Sabrina Charles and Jamie Dycus, who readers overwhelmingly voted Legal Eagle Couple of the Month for May, demonstrating that — in the words of one commenter (and apparently, in the minds of ATL readers) — “Wachtell > Sotomayor > Olympic medal.”
Here are our finalists:

1. Kathryn Whitfield and Adam Fotiades
2. Christina Krause and Peter Henderson
3. Pamela Bookman and Jeffrey Perlman

More about these couples, after the jump.

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Shearman & Sterling Start Date Watch: You Better Hurry

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Incoming first years at Shearman & Sterling have been trying to figure out when they can start at the firm. A couple of months ago, the firm said that December 2009 would be the earliest start date. But Shearman also encouraged its incoming first years to defer until September 2010, while promising those deferrals that the incoming class of 2010 would not be starting on time.
Was the firm’s ambiguity about its regular start date a subtle attempt to get more people to take the year long deferral?
We don’t know how many incoming first years took the year long deferral option. But today, we have news that Shearman has confirmed its regular start date(s). But you’d better hurry to secure your space now.
More details after the jump.

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 5.3: One Word: “Awesome”

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champagne glasses small.jpgSix impressive lawyers headline our survey of this week’s NYT wedding pages. Even more impressive is that four of them are still clinging to Biglaw jobs — assuming, of course, that bad news does not await any of our returning honeymooners.
Here are the finalists:

1. Neda Karamouz and Stephen Vander Stoep
2. Danielle Cohen and Bradley Friedman
3. Leslie Tobin and Nathan Ostrander

Click on the link below to get the story on these newlyweds’ degrees, jobs, and china patterns.

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Shearman & Sterling Offers Voluntary Year-Long Deferral to All Associates

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Shearman & Sterling logo.gifShearman & Sterling has decided to mimic the Skadden Sidebar program and offer all of its associates the option to defer for a year. The program is essentially the same set of options that Shearman offered its incoming first year associates a month and a half ago.
The money from Shearman’s “External Development Program” is not as good as what Skadden offered:

Participants in the External Development Program will receive a stipend of $65,000. Associates participating in the program will not be employees of the firm during the program year, but the firm will pay for medical benefits during the program year.

That works for junior associates. But Skadden offered all associates one third of their salary, making the option more viable for mid-level and senior associates.
Shearman’s health care benefits are a nice touch (Skadden made COBRA contributions). But one of the nice perks from Skadden’s program was overlooked in the mainstream media gushing over “$80,000 to do nothing!” Skadden also offered $1,000 a month for student loan repayment. Shearman does not.
Some additional details and the full memo, after the jump.

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Stealth Layoff Watch: 5% Litigation Cuts at Shearman & Sterling

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Shearman & Sterling logo Above the Law blog.jpgStealth layoff rumors have been swirling around Shearman & Sterling for months. We’ve reported on the quiet cuts before. But today, it looks like the firm cut a little too deep to keep it under the radar.

Shearman & Sterling has not responded to our multiple requests for comment, but several sources independently confirm that Shearman is laying off roughly 5% of its litigation associates and some associates in other practice groups.

According to our sources, all of the cuts are coming in the guise of an April performance review:

Shearman & Sterling has started another round of “reviews.” These reviews are resulting in so-called merit-based probations and firings and do not seem to discriminate by class year.

Generally, litigators have been more safe than their corporate brethren. After the jump, we try to explain why Shearman is disproportionately firing litigators now.

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