The latest word on the street (per Greedy NY): Sullivan & Cromwell has matched the market with respect to associate bonuses. We are investigating.
Update (10:54 AM): We’ve left messages with S&C’s spokesperson and with H. Rodgin Cohen, the firm chairman. We’ll let you know when we hear back from them.
Update (12:14 PM): Consider this CONFIRMED. More details, plus the boilerplate of the bonus memo(s), are available here.
S&C Matched [Infirmation / Greedy NY]
Sullivan & Cromwell
- Biglaw, Bingham McCutchen, Jenner & Block, King & Spalding, Magic Circle, Money, Musical Chairs, Partner Profits, S.D.N.Y., Sullivan & Cromwell, U.S. Attorneys Offices
Musical Chairs: 10.26.06
By David LatNew Partners:
* Sullivan & Cromwell: Jeffrey Chapman, Michael Escue, Hydee Feldstein, Stacey Friedman, Brian Hamilton, Julia Jordan, Eric Kadel, Jr. and Juan Rodriguez.
The partnership promotions will be effective January 1, 2007. Congratulations, kids!
Like many other top New York firms, Sullivan still has a single-tier partnership structure. All partners are equity partners.
And all S&C partners are doing very well for themselves. In 2005, the firm enjoyed average profits-per-partner of $2.4 million. See here (subscription required).
Lateral Moves:
* Private equity lawyer Stephen Culhane, to Linklaters (10 points — Magic Circle!!!), from King & Spalding.
Government to Private Sector:
* Harry Sandick, to Jenner & Block, from the venerable S.D.N.Y. U.S. Attorney’s Office (where he served as deputy chief appellate attorney and, before that, as acting chief of the violent crimes unit).
* Hawyood Haywood Gilliam, to Bingham McCutchen, from the well-regarded San Francisco U.S. Attorney’s Office (N.D. Cal.).
[Ed. note: See this comment, and this juicy article. It appears that the office has slipped in the past few years.]
Haywood Gilliam headed the securities fraud section of the U.S.A.O. and worked on various stock options backdating cases. His move to private practice is timely, given the explosion of backdating scandals in Silicon Valley. But Gilliam will presumably be conflicted out of a bunch of cases that he worked on while at the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
UK Firm Adds Another NY Partner [NYLawyer.com]
Former Federal Prosecutor Joins Firm in NY [NYLawyer.com]
In Timely Hire, Firm Grabs Backdating Prosecutor [NYLawyer.com]
- Arent Fox, Greenberg Traurig, HP, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, Musical Chairs, Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, Sullivan & Cromwell, Venable, William Rehnquist
Musical Chairs: 10.13.06
By David LatSupreme Court Scions:
* Janet Rehnquist, daughter of the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, is leaving Venable to start her own health care law practice. She will be based out of the Washington offices of Arent Fox.
Rehnquist previously served as Inspector General of the Health and Human Services Department, before she resigned amid controversy. It was rumored that Chief Justice Rehnquist was upset over how his daughter’s departure from HHS was handled.
Janet Rehnquist isn’t the only SCOTUS spawn with a successful legal career. Her brother, James Rehnquist, is a litigation partner at Goodwin Procter and a former federal prosecutor. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s daughter, Jane Ginsburg, is a law professor at Columbia. And one of Justice Antonin Scalia’s sons, Eugene Scalia, is a partner at high-powered Gibson Dunn, a former Solicitor of the Department of Labor — and an ERISA hottie.
Damage Control:
* Jon Hoak, former general counsel to NCR, joins HP as its chief ethics and compliance officer.
Lateral Moves:
* Hedge fund lawyer Bruce Kahne, to Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham, from Seward & Kissel.
* Corporate and securities lawyer Daniel Raglan, to Greenberg Traurig, from Sullivan & Cromwell (where he was an associate).
* Public finance lawyers Pauline Schneider and Darrin Glymph, to Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe (DC), from Hunton & Williams. (Schneider, a former D.C. bar president, comes in as a partner; Glymph joins as counsel.)
NY Partners Switching Firms [NYLawyer.com]
Supreme Daughter Hangs Out Her Own Shingle and More DC Lawyers On the Move [NYLawyer.com]
H-P Hires Former NCR General Counsel As Chief Ethics Officer [WSJ Law Blog]
- Attorney Misconduct, Bad Ideas, Biglaw, Pranks, Rank Stupidity, Sullivan & Cromwell, Summer Associates
Low-Hanging Fruit: Summer Associate Stories, Please
By David LatOkay, kids, it’s official. We’ve reached Labor Day weekend, and summer is pretty much over. Officially summer doesn’t end until next month (September 23, to be exact). But at law firms, the summer fun is done.
Summer associates are heading back to law school (if they’re not back already). For permanent associates, who got to tag along on lavish meals with the summers, the conventional wisdom is back in force: there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
To commemorate the change of the season in the world of Biglaw, we’d like to bring you stories of some of the most stupid, funny, or embarrassing things that summer associates did while at your law firm this summer. As usual, we need your help. Please send us such tales by email, to tips(AT)abovethelaw.com (subject line: “Summer Associate Stories”).
Please send us stories from this summer. We know all about the summer associate stories from years past, the ones that have become the stuff of legend. Like the Sullivan & Cromwell summer who got rip-roaringly drunk and started hitting on the hiring partner’s wife, before puking his guts out all over the restaurant. Or the summer who, without authorization, blew his firm’s cash on round-trip business class travel to London (and a pair of snazzy sunglasses). Or the summer caught having sex with his girlfriend late at night in the ladies’ bathroom. (That guy probably got an offer — the partners love it if you can satisfy all your needs without leaving the building.)
So send us your craziest summer associate stories. We’ll read through your submissions, pick out the best ones, and share them in these pages. If we get enough good ones, maybe we’ll even have a contest in which you can vote on your favorites.
It’s the Friday afternoon before Labor Day weekend. What the heck are we still doing here?
- Associate Salaries, Biglaw, Bonuses, Cravath, Partner Profits, Proskauer Rose, Quinn Emanuel, Skaddenfreude, Sullivan & Cromwell
Skaddenfreude: An Amendment
By David LatIn light of the recent debut of Skaddenfreude, ATL’s column chronicling attorney compensation, it’s a neat coincidence that the New York Times has an entire article discussing compensation for first-year associates at major law firms.
We’ll get to that article in just a second. First, though, a brief amendment to our prior Skaddenfreude request. We received this thoughtful email from a reader:
is it too late to add a line for hours billed? that would add more of an element of schadenfreude too, don’t you think? this is more like freudenskadden — feeling sick about how much more money they make.
Good point. We stand corrected! So yes, in your Skaddenfreude submissions — we’ve received a bunch already, thanks, keep ‘em coming — please include your annual billable hours (either an estimate of this year’s or last year’s actual).
If you’re not a law firm attorney, feel free to include an estimate of how many hours you work in a year. If you’re a legal academic, throw in some bragging about how you make six-figures, or close to it, for only nine months of work.
Okay, that’s the Skaddenfreude amendment. Now, on to discussion of the Times piece — after the jump.
- Biglaw, Cleary Gottlieb, Cravath, Davis Polk, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Simpson Thacher, Skadden Arps, Sullivan & Cromwell, Vault rankings, Wachtell Lipton, Weil Gotshal
Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Most Prestigious of All?
By David Lat
Each year, just in time for fall on-campus recruiting season, Vault releases its prestige rankings of the nation’s biggest law firms. Here’s a report on the results of the latest survey, from The Recorder:
In big law, prestige is important. And an annual survey from career-oriented Web site Vault attempts to gauge just how impressive it is to work at the country’s top firms by asking more than 15,000 associates to rank their prestige factor.
The top ten firms were: Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Sullivan & Cromwell; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Davis Polk & Wardwell, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton; Latham & Watkins; Weil, Gotshal & Manges; and Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
Executive summary: New York firms rule the roost. Nothing new there.
But lawyers at Latham & Watkins, based out in La-la-land, were happy with their top 10 finish:
“It’s certainly important and it is impressive that Latham has the reputation it has,” said Kimberly Posin, a fourth-year associate in Latham’s Los Angeles office. “Clients look to and appreciate the prestige factor.”
It’s also a key factor for law students who are interviewing at various firms and scouring the rankings to help make decisions, she said.
Within the firm itself, it was fun to get the e-mail detailing the results.
“It’s something that’s nice to talk about,” Posin said, “[to] call our friends at competing firms and say ‘Look at this.’”
Calling your friends to brag about how your firm is more prestigious than their firm? Isn’t that a tad obnoxious, Kimberly?
Top 100 Law Firms [Vault]
Associate Survey Finds NY Firms Win Bragging Rights [The Recorder]
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