We know how much our readers enjoy greeting cards. Our annual holiday card contest here at Above the Law is one of our site’s most popular (and positive) features.
But what about cards for other occasions? So many of them are clichéd or lame. And the number of events that they speak to is definitely underinclusive.
A former Biglaw associate is here to help….
Continue reading “Career Alternatives for Attorneys: Greeting Card Maker”
Some time ago there was an attorney up for United States Attorney General, I believe, and she got stung for having hired illegal aliens as nanny and chauffeur for which she paid no taxes. She had to withdraw from consideration and was fairly embarrassed by the whole fiasco. So was the Clinton Administration. Then, a federal judicial nominee was hit with the same charges – though her employment of the nanny in question was legal at the time it occurred, the court of public opinion ruled the day. I bring up these two examples of ethical dilemmas that lawyers can find themselves in and how relatively easy they are to avoid…
Steven Davis
The retirees and former partners with whom I have spoken feel shocked and betrayed. It’s very hard to reconcile the principal architect of the debacle paying nothing at this time while the retirees and innocent partner victims have had to pay back money to the firm. Davis’s note is regarded as a sham.
– David Bicks, a retired Dewey & LeBoeuf partner, offering remarks on the iniquitous nature of former D&L chairman Steven Davis’s promissory note filed in proposed settlement of the firm’s claims against him. Under the agreement, Davis, who is currently unemployed, owes the firm $511,145, and has until 2019 to pay up; thereafter, the rest will be forgiven.
Over the years, we’ve seen some strange and surprising law firm departure memos. They come not just from associates but from partners as well. See, e.g., this famous (or infamous) Skadden partner’s departure memo.
Today we bring you another weird farewell message penned by a partner. It’s strange because it burns bridges in a big way, making all kinds of incendiary allegations against the Am Law 100 firm involved.
You’d think that a leading employment lawyer would show greater discretion on his way out the door. Well, think again….
Justice Sonia Sotomayor is not a fan of the “having it all” concept. As she wrote in her recent (and excellent) memoir, My Beloved World (affiliate link), “having it all, career and family, with no sacrifice to either… is the myth we would do well to abandon, together with the pernicious notion that a woman who chooses one or the other is somehow deficient.”
Even though their panel had the phrase “Having It All” in the title, the participants in an interesting discussion on work/life balance at last week’s big NALP conference would probably agree. One theme that ran through the discussion was that sacrifices, on the work front or home front or both, are inevitable — and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Still, the panel’s emphasis on the need for working parents to rid themselves of guilt didn’t stop some people from shedding a few tears during the discussion….
Every Biglaw firm has a leader, or at least a public face — sometimes the chairman, sometimes the managing partner. At some firms, one boss is actually two, co-managing the firm into a future of profitable bliss. Nowadays, most of these “personalities” undergo serious media training, so that the firm’s most recent “report card” can be spun to the legal media in the sunniest of fashions. For some unfortunate firms, frequently mentioned on ATL (whose logos Lat has bookmarked for easy cutting-and-pasting), the head honcho is also a crisis-management aficionado.
And in today’s age of the global Biglaw firm, the boss is well-informed regarding the business-class product of various airlines. They probably have a favorite seat on well-traveled routes. “United to San Francisco from Newark? You definitely want 2B, and tell the stewardess right off the bat that you want the coffee hot when you wake up from your nap.” It has become a Biglaw tradition for the head of the firm to visit every office on at least an annual basis. For the boss, it is a chance to give a nice state-of-the-firm pep talk, and spend some quality time with the one or two partners in that office who really matter. For everyone else, these visits mean everyone needs to get dressed up, look enthusiastic at the partner lunch or post-work cocktails in the conference room, and try to look alert in your office (all day long, unfortunately) in case of an unanticipated visit….
Although I won’t name names here (because my employer is, among other things, the insurance broker to the stars, and I can’t afford to offend clients or potential clients), I just stumbled across an article that indirectly told me how to pick outside counsel.
In a relatively high-profile situation, a government entity recently had to retain an outside law firm. The government naturally retained an outside adviser to help the government make its choice. (How else could one possibly pick counsel?)
The outside adviser — I think you’d call the outfit a management consultant, although the website left me a little confused — has lots of MBAs on staff, but there’s not a lawyer to be seen. No matter: The MBAs created a questionnaire for the law firms to fill out, and the law firm that accumulated the most points won the business.
This is great! It’s time (once again) for me to stop thinking and start copying! We’ll revamp our whole system for choosing counsel! In the future, we’ll give the law firms who want our business a form to complete. We’ll add up the points — even I can do that. And then we’ll choose the law firm with the most points, thus retaining the best firm in the world to handle our matter through an objectively defensible selection process, in case anyone ever wants to second-guess our choice of counsel.
Shoot! If only I’d gone to business school, I could have been this smart! Let’s take a look at the questionnaire, so I’ll know the form that I’m copying to choose counsel for my next case . . . .
Continue reading “Inside Straight: An Objective Formula For Choosing Counsel”
A needed essential for Justice Breyer?
Ed. note: Apologies for the technical difficulties that have prevented us from posting until now. Thanks for your patience!
* Attention prospective law school applicants: affirmative action, at least as we currently know it, may not be long for this world. A decision in the Fisher v. University of Texas case is expected as early as this week. Stay tuned. [Reuters]
* Justice Stephen Breyer had to get shoulder replacement surgery after having yet another bike accident (his third, actually). Please — somebody, anybody — get this man some training wheels. Justice is at stake! [New York Times]
* “We’re not going to take it, goodbye.” That’s what retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wishes the high court would have said when it came to the controversial Bush v. Gore case. [Chicago Tribune]
* Thanks to the sequester, the Boston bombings case may turn into a “David and Goliath” situation. Sorry, Dzhokhar, but your defense team may be subject to 15 days of furlough. [National Law Journal]
* George Gallantz, the “founding father” of Proskauer’s sports law practice, RIP. [New York Law Journal]
* Leo Branton Jr., the defense attorney at the helm of the Angela Davis trial, RIP. [New York Times]
As we mentioned in Morning Docket, the American Lawyer recently released its highly influential, closely watched Am Law 100 law firm rankings. They say that “slow and steady wins the race,” and with regard to economic recovery, Biglaw firms seem to have taken that up as their new motto.
Yes, partners are still living as large as they ever were, but their success now comes in the form of single-digit returns with regard to key financial metrics. The divide between the “haves and the have-nots” in the world of major law firms has grown to epic proportions, and some Am Law 100 staples have fallen out of the top hundred firms altogether. Welcome to the new normal.
Are you ready to get excited about “modest” and “spotty” gains across the board? Let’s dig in….
Continue reading “The 2013 Am Law 100: A Year of ‘Slow Growth’”
Your final destination… is not a Biglaw job.
The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) has new numbers on the legal job market for recent graduates, and like it has been every year since the start of the Great Recession, those numbers are a horror show. A freaking horror show. They might as well put three recent graduates in a room with one job offer in it, handcuff the graduates to a pole, and give the offer to the one that eats through his arm first.
The other two would then get to leave the room unemployed, with some bite wounds, instead of unemployed with over $100,000 in debt, which is how people are actually leaving law school.
Do you want some good news? The lateral hiring market is hot. NALP executive director Jim Leipold called it a “feeding frenzy” for experienced associates. So if you got a job and held onto it through the 2009 layoffs, pick up your phone. It’s probably a recruiter calling. Congratulations on all your success.
If instead you were not lucky enough to be born five years earlier and have just graduated or are about to graduate, I don’t have anything for you — other than this here hacksaw. Chop, chop….
Continue reading “NALP13: Entry Level Associates Need Not Apply”
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
Keep reading »
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.
Keep reading »
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