* A full run-down of the suspension of a 7-year-old for brandishing a danish shaped like a gun. He was loaded for bear… claw. [Lowering the Bar, Part I; LTB, Part II]
* U.S. drones are helping out the French in Mali. Jeez, drones are getting used everywhere from here to Timbuktu. [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Do you need to report to the SEC if your company gets hacked? Probably… if you don’t tell them about possible violations how would they ever know? [IT-Lex]
* Someone wants help finding a WordPress theme for their law firm. Totally Best Magazine, bro. That’s hawt. [Yahoo Answers]
* Just a reminder, Ms. JD’s Fellowship applications are due March 8. [Ms. JD]
If you have a mediocre law firm, here’s a new trick — just buy the ad-search rights to the names of better law firms. Every time someone searches for the better firm, a nice big ad for your firm will pop up.
Does that sound dirty? It kind of seems like cashing in on the good will of another firm. Not to mention the personal identities of the lawyers at the better firm.
So, yeah, it sounds dirty and not possibly legal.
Well, a state appeals court decided it was totally legal….
You and your partner are going separate ways. It sounded like a good idea — you left the same firm together, or quit the prosecutor’s office at the same time. You got a little corner of another firm’s space, a wood sign with silver letters, a nice desk, and those two chairs in front of it that would make the clients believe they were in the right place. You plugged in a new phone system and off you went.
But your partner isn’t bringing in business, or maybe it’s you. Maybe a small law firm isn’t for you and you’re headed back to Biglaw or in-house. Maybe your partner can’t seem to get in before 10 or your contingency cases are way too contingent.
Lawyers split up; they have issues like any other type of relationship. They fight about money, space, others (read: clients) in their lives, and who knows, maybe they even sleep together. Sometimes the split occurs over time, and sometimes it happens suddenly.
Texas attorney Ray Marchan (Stanford ’82) has leapt from the Queen Isabella Bridge before turning himself in to federal authorities to serve a 3 1/2 year prison term. Marchan was convicted of six counts of racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, aiding and abetting extortion, and mail fraud in connection with the bribing of former 404th District Judge Abel C. Limas to the tune of over $11,000
At this time, it’s unknown if Marchan was killed in the fall. Investigators are considering the possibility that he used the fall to escape….
Okay, we can all stop worrying. Lindsay Lohan’s new attorney Mark Heller is pretty sure he knows how to “fix” the actress and he’s written a letter to the prosecutors extolling his power to succeed where all others have failed. And it involves establishing the “Lindsay Lohan Foundation.” I’m eagerly awaiting the mission statement for that organization.
The judge is not pleased with Heller’s letter. The exact term used in reports of the judge’s reaction is “pissed.” Pissing off the judge within the first month on the case. Hey, Lindsay, maybe Heller isn’t the best choice for representation. I mean, who is this guy?
Mark Heller’s decades-long legal career is described by observers as publicity-seeking and erratic.
Oh, wait. So maybe this is actually a match made in Heaven to work with LiLo….
There are very few things more disheartening than rejection. Whether you’re the dork in high school trying to work up the courage to ask that special someone to go on a date, applying to school, or looking for a job, no one wants to be rejected. And in an attempt to calm your nerves, loved ones will often say, “What’s the worst that could happen?”
But all the good thoughts and best wishes in the world don’t provide much comfort when you’re searching for your first law job and everyone else is doing the exact same thing (not to mention they went to much better law schools than you did). While it may not be the end of the world, rejection can really hurt. The mere fear of rejection can paralyze some, and if there’s constant rejection, it’s not uncommon for depression — or in my case at the moment, extreme pessimism — to start kicking in.
Knowing this fact, employers generally attempt to soften the blow of rejection to the furthest extent possible. They say comforting things like “you are highly qualified” or “have impressive training.” If they really liked you, you may even get a more personal statement that actually acknowledges something in your résumé, which at least means that they read it and tried to make believe that they cared.
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….
I recently met with Keith, a long-time friend who worked for years in Biglaw before leaving the practice of law entirely. We were reminiscing, and he reminded me of an incident I had forgotten about:
He had worked on an appeal in which the amount at stake exceeded $10 million. He spent dozens of hours conducting legal research and probably another 100 or so writing the brief.
He finished his draft months before the brief was due. So when he turned in the brief to his supervisor, it was not immediately reviewed. Every week or so, Keith would send a reminder, but the weeks turned into months.
Keith planned to file the brief with a Court of Appeals on the East Coast via Federal Express. E-filing was not yet available and, in any event, onerous binding of the exhibits and other requirements made that impossible.
Last year, we introduced you to San Diego’s self-proclaimed Legal Baller, the upstanding criminal attorney offering to pay “attractive hip females” $10 an hour to be his legal assistant.
While some thought that the previous ad seemed like a joke and questioned whether the Legal Baller truly existed, it turns out he is very much real. Meet Raymundo Pacello, Jr., the “Multi-Dimensional Trial Attorney” and former muscle man whose interests include ancient rhetoric and “Causing a Riff in the Tide of Power!” Because we all know the tide of power could stand to be musically spiced up a little.
So who is the man behind the Legal Baller legend and who is he looking to hire now? Keep reading to find out….
Has anyone seen that movie Secretary? It’s about a law firm love affair — woman gets released from mental hospital, gets a job as a legal secretary, and enters into a BDSM relationship with her boss. Pretty standard, really, because you’d have to have some sadomasochistic tendencies to willingly subject yourself to a partner’s whims on a daily basis.
As some of you know (admit it, you do), when these illicit law firm relationships occur, they’re usually only discussed in secret behind closed doors. But when one of the those allegedly involved is an unwilling participant, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump away from allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace, and your darkest sexual proclivities will be revealed for all the world to see.
Despite the fact that many women wish they had a Christian Grey to dominate them, it’s a little less sexy when the man who’s allegedly at the center of this would-be torrid affair is just shy of his full retirement age. But hey, even old farts are allowed to dream.
Let’s find out who the players are in this failed office romance. Be sure to remember your safe word….
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.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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* A full run-down of the suspension of a 7-year-old for brandishing a danish shaped like a gun. He was loaded for bear… claw. [Lowering the Bar, Part I; LTB, Part II]
