Dechert

Morning Docket: 11.30.11

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* Facebook settled with the FTC over its privacy violations. Mark Zuckerberg will be adding a “dislike” button to the site so he has an appropriate way to deal with this. [National Law Journal]

* The lawsuit seeking to overturn gay marriage in New York will proceed. Eric Schneiderman just got disinvited from more holiday parties than he can even count. [New York Times]

* On appeal, Dechert will get to walk away from the Dreier drama without losing a single dime, but not if Marc Kasowitz has anything to do with it. [New York Law Journal]

* Herman Cain’s defamation lawyer, Lin Wood, is apparently living on a very nice planet where “guilt by accusation” isn’t already the norm in the realm of politics. [Washington Post]

* What’s with all of the child predator attorneys flocking to New Jersey? Solo practitioner Tobin Nilsen got 12 years for trying to have sex with a 7-year-old girl. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

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Summer Associate Offer Rates: Another Update
(Now we’d like to hear about the no-offering….)

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Welcome to our latest round-up of summer associate offer rate news. This post contains the latest list of law firms and offices with 100 percent offer rates. In future posts, we’re going to shift gears and focus on firms with lower-than-average offer rates.

An offer rate that’s lower than 100 percent is not necessarily newsworthy. The fall recruiting process by which summer associates are selected isn’t perfect. Sometimes candidates look great on paper and do well during interviews, but then do something during the summer — turning in disappointing work product, getting drunk and acting inappropriately — that causes them to get no-offered. And sometimes people get no-offered for reasons that aren’t their fault — office politics, discrimination. Stuff happens.

We’re not expecting 100 percent offer rates all around. At the same time, there is such a thing as an unusually low offer rate. If you know of an office with an unusually low offer rate — which we will arbitrarily define here as something under 66 percent, or two-thirds — please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Offer Rate”).

Now, on to the updated list of firms and offices with 100 percent offer rates….

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(Now we’d like to hear about the no-offering….)“

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Summer Associate Offer Rates: An Update

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Smile if you received an offer!

Since our initial call for information about summer associate offer rates at major law firms, a number of people have contacted us with reports. As it turns out, there’s a lot of good news floating around out there for summer associates.

This leads us to two conclusions:

  • Biglaw firms only brought in people they could actually hire.
  • You class of 2011 people are some boring individuals.

Honestly, listening to your summer stories is like looking at the Facebook photos of a Mormon school group’s vacation to Amish country. We know that people are worried about getting offers in this tough market, but the risk-aversion of the summers this year borders on cowardice.

Live a little, have a drink, ask her for her number. It’s a job interview, not an audience with the Pope.

In any event, 100% offer rates abound. Let’s round them up….

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Summer Associate Offer Rates: Open Thread

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Summer offer rates are back and better than ever.

Last week, summer associate programs began to draw to a close. After a summer of fun extravagance work, summer associates are eager to find out if they’ll be getting offers of full-time employment.

We expect the answer to be yes at most places. Sure, during the height of the recession, no offer rates spiked. But Biglaw firms seem to have corrected that problem. As almost any jobless 3L can tell you, firms simply started hiring fewer people to be summer associates in the first place.

What’s bad news for many 3Ls is good news for those who were lucky enough to snag summer associate positions. You know what they say: getting in is the hardest part. Right?

Above the Law has received various reports from summer associates at Biglaw firms, crowing about 100 percent offer rates….

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Morning Docket: 05.24.11

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* DSK did a very French thing and pulled out while getting screwed. I guess no one told him that being the Director of the IMF doesn’t mean you get to do to people what the IMF does to countries. [Wall Street Journal]

* Career associates get to have “lifestyle” jobs at Biglaw firms — but really, what kind of a lifestyle is it when you have to live in a crappy city with an even crappier salary? [New York Times]

* Opinion polls could influence the Prop 8 legal battle at the Supreme Court. It’s too bad that big, rising polls will gain no favor with our straight male justices. Justice Kagan, on the other hand… actually no, never mind. [Los Angeles Times]

* Why are there fewer women at top law schools? Because most of us are intelligent enough to know that it’s less expensive to get an MRS in college. [The Careerist]

* A New York appellate judge, James M. McGuire, will be joining Dechert, because he can’t afford his 3,500 square foot wife on just $144K a year. [New York Law Journal]

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Associate Bonus Watch: Dechert Announces Spring Bonuses

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There’s lots of good news these days over at Dechert. For example, as we mentioned last week, the firm is launching a new Los Angeles office, built around a group of lateral partners lured over from Orrick.

This morning brings good news for Dechert associates and counsel as well. The firm just announced Cravath-level spring bonuses, to be paid to qualifying associates. We discuss the qualifications and reprint the full memo below.

Although Dechert is now a major international firm, it’s still associated in many people’s minds with Philadelphia, where it got its start. Does Dechert’s spring bonus announcement place pressure on firms that are headquarted in Philly or have significant presences in the City of Brotherly Love?

By the way, it appears that we never reported on Dechert’s 2010 year-end bonuses, which were announced in early February 2011. We discuss them as well, after the jump.

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Non-Sequiturs: 04.07.11

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Judge Linda Van De Water

* Musical chairs: Orrick partners to Dechert and Gibson Dunn; Weil Gotshal partners to McDermott. [Am Law Daily; McDermott Will & Emery]

* Some of the questions in this survey, designed to assess how law students use online media when evaluating law firms, are amusing. If you’re a law student, please take the survey — you can win a gift card — and talk about how important Above the Law is to your assessment of firms. [Survey Gizmo]

* Judge of the Day candidate #1: Linda Van De Water, for allegedly “kicking and jumping on her ex-boyfriend’s car after confronting him outside the home of another woman.” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

David Zornow

* Judge of the Day candidate #2: Tom Carney, for allegedly wielding a gun like a gavel, in an incident with another motorist. And don’t forget that snazzy pink necktie. [Erie Times-News]

* Peter Lattman looks at David Zornow, the global head of litigation at Skadden, and Zornow’s obsession with Bob Dylan — reflected in a mock indictment of “The Judges,” drawn up by “special assistant U.S. attorney Bob Dylan.” [DealBook / New York Times]

* There’s a new post up on the blog of Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, daughter of Yale law professors Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld. Critics of Amy Chua have speculated about whether her “Tiger Mother” ways have damaged her daughters psychologically. But based on her blogging, young Sophia seems grounded, charming, and funny. [new tiger in town]

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Tropical Depression: The Latest in ‘Clerkship Lit’

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Move over, chick lit. Make way for “clerk lit”!

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a number of novels focused on the clerkship, a professional rite of passage for many a prestige-obsessed young lawyer. In these books, plucky law-clerk protagonists have tried to do justice while also holding on to their jobs (and their sanity, and even their lives).

One of the first was The Tenth Justice (1998), a thriller by Brad Meltzer that went on to become a bestseller. More recent examples of “clerk lit” include The Law Clerk (2007), by Scott Douglas Gerber, and Chambermaid (2007), by Saira Rao. (Rao’s buzz-generating book, which generated controversy because it was seen as based heavily on her clerkship for the notoriously difficult Judge Dolores Sloviter (3d Cir.), was discussed extensively in Above the Law’s pages.)

Today we bring you news of a new novel featuring a law clerk protagonist: Tropical Depression, by Arin Greenwood. It tells the story of Nina Barker, a neurotic young lawyer toiling away at a large New York law firm, who decides — after losing her job and her boyfriend — to leave it all behind, by accepting a clerkship with the chief justice of a faraway tropical island.

Let’s learn more about Tropical Depression and its author, Arin Greenwood — who, like her protagonist, graduated from a top law school and worked at a leading law firm, before accepting a clerkship on a remote Pacific island….

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Non-Sequiturs: 12.21.10

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Hal Turner: This blogger must go to prison.

* Professor Paul Caron has taken the data gathered by Princeton Review and come up with new law school rankings. Which school comes out on top? (Stanford is #2.) [TaxProf Blog]

* Are business students better than law students at making clever musical parody videos? Check out “Those CBS Girls” (Columbia Business School girls), set to the tune of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” (sic). [Dealbreaker]

* Hal Turner, the New Jersey right-wing blogger / shock jock who blogged “these judges must die,” has been sentenced. How much time did he get? [Huffington Post]

* Congratulations to the fabulous Judge Leslie Kobayashi, who was recently confirmed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii (along with other Obama judicial nominees confirmed to various courts around the country). [angry asian man; Associated Press]

* When non-whites play golf, bad things happen. [ESPN]

* The juicy lawsuit filed by Ariel Ayanna against Dechert got lost in the bonus news shuffle around here. But here are some thoughts from Jane Genova. [Law and More]

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Inside Straight: Business Development (Part 3)

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s new column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.

Is blogging a useful business development tool?

The folks who sell blogging platforms to lawyers say that blogging is the route to riches. But bloggers themselves are far less certain whether blogging actually generates business. What’s the truth?

Let me start with my personal experience; I’ll conclude with a thesis. The personal experience is just the facts — what I did as a blogger, how successful the blog was, and how, if at all, I profited from the experience. (I’ve previously recited parts of this story in both the print media and elsewhere. I’ll try to add a few new thoughts here.)

What did I do as a blogger? For three years — from October 2006 through December 2009 — while I was a partner at Jones Day, I co-hosted the Drug and Device Law Blog with Jim Beck, of Dechert. We wrote almost exclusively about the defense of pharmaceutical and medical device product liability cases. We affirmatively chose to have the blog co-hosted by partners at two different firms, for two reasons….

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