Divorce

The Attorneys’ Psychologist (Part 2)

By

Dr. N. Robert Riordan

Dr. N. Robert Riordan is a graduate of NYU School of Law and a former U.S. securities attorney for London- and Sydney-based Herbert Smith Freehills. After 10 years of practice in New York, London and Rome, he made the switch from corporate law to private practice as a clinical psychologist. Dr. Riordan now acts as a therapist to dozens of NYC attorneys. The following is the second of a two-part interview with Dr. Riordan. (You can read the first part here.)

ATL: In addition to professionals like attorneys, whom do you see in your private practice?

The remainder of my practice focuses on couples. I work with two distinct types of couples. First, I see couples whose romantic relationships are in crisis. The goal here is to improve their bond to one another. I happen to see many couples where both parties are professionals, and, most often, each member of the couple is struggling to balance personal and professional demands.

ATL: I would imagine that couples come to treatment for a variety of reasons.

I work with many couples whose connection to one another has been strained by things like demanding careers, childrearing, or an unexpected financial hardship. These couples are looking to recapture the connection that originally brought them together and to start working as a partnership again. Also I work with a handful of couples who are facing specific challenges, like infidelity or the loss of a child.

ATL: Has your training as an attorney prepared you for the conflicts that presumably arise in couples’ therapy?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “The Attorneys’ Psychologist (Part 2)”

Professor Dan Markel: Some Personal Recollections

By

Dan Markel

As I mentioned in my earlier story about the horrific killing of Professor Dan Markel, I knew Dan since our days working together on the Harvard Crimson. Back then, he was Dan E. Markel ’95 and I was David B. Lat ’96. We both wrote columns and would edit each other’s work. We didn’t often agree — I was even more conservative back then, and he was, well, not conservative — but we respected each other’s thinking and writing.

After graduating from Harvard College (A.B.), Cambridge University (M. Phil.), and Harvard Law School (J.D.), Dan went on to have a tremendous career in law practice and teaching. He clerked for Judge Michael Daly Hawkins on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and worked as an associate at Kellogg Huber, the insanely elite D.C. litigation boutique. He then joined the faculty of the Florida State University College of Law, where at the time of his death he held an endowed chair as D’Alemberte Professor of Law. A prolific scholar in the areas of criminal law and punishment, he published numerous law review articles, pieces for general-interest news outlets like the New York Times and Slate, and a book, Privilege or Punish: Criminal Justice and the Challenge of Family Ties (aff. link).

But Dan was much more than the sum of his résumé items. Here are some testimonials and memories, from myself and others who knew him….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Professor Dan Markel: Some Personal Recollections”

A Prominent Law Professor Is Shot At Home And Killed

By

Dan Markel

Professor Dan Markel of Florida State University College of Law, a well-known legal academic and law blogger, was shot in his home on Friday. He died of his wounds on Saturday. He was 41. We noted the news in Morning Docket and followed the news over the weekend on our Twitter feed.

I was friends with Markel, whom I knew since we worked together on the college newspaper, and in a subsequent story I will review his life and career and share some personal reflections. He was a great scholar and a wonderful person, as reflected in the outpouring of grief within legal academia, the legal blogosphere, and beyond.

In this post, I will summarize and analyze what we know (and don’t know) about Dan Markel’s terrible and tragic death….

(Please note the multiple UPDATES added to the end of this post.)

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “A Prominent Law Professor Is Shot At Home And Killed”

A Wachtell Lipton Partner’s Mysterious Departure

By

On Monday, we noted the surprising news of a young partner leaving Wachtell Lipton to start his own boutique firm. Given the rarity of partner departures from the super-lucrative Wachtell, my colleague Staci Zaretsky described the news as “basically like seeing a unicorn.”

Why did Jeremy Goldstein, a 40-year-old partner in the firm’s executive-compensation practice, leave WLRK? The American Lawyer piece about Goldstein’s move painted a happy picture of a lawyer striking out on his own to be more entrepreneurial and to run his own business.

But we wonder if there’s more to this story than meets the eye….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “A Wachtell Lipton Partner’s Mysterious Departure”

11 Comments

Women Are All Scheming Biatches Per Female Divorce Attorney

By

Attorney Marilyn York

No doubt divorce can be a messy game. Hurt feelings, name-calling, emotional tug-of-war on impressionable children, and a pitched battle for financial security are all par for the course. Divorce attorneys are thus often the most combative of the already combative breed of lawyers. It’s how you end up with lawyers telling the other side that they plan to anally rape them.

But usually divorce attorneys steep their public persona in platitudes about “fighting for you,” saving the nasty “anal rape” stuff for behind closed doors.

But this attorney has a different approach, putting out a TV commercial that riffs on every awful stereotype of women ever, to appeal to the jilted husbands of the world….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Women Are All Scheming Biatches Per Female Divorce Attorney”

35 Comments

A Messy Divorce Offers An Inside Look At Biglaw Partner Pay

By

Fighting over the Lawyerly Lair.

Law firms are relatively secretive institutions. Since they’re not public companies — at least not here in the United States, in the year 2014 — they aren’t required to reveal that much about their internal workings. Here at Above the Law, we do what we can to shed light on how law firms work, but there’s only so much we can do.

Every now and then, public filings disclose information about law firm operations — including information about one of the most sensitive subjects, partner pay. Sometimes we learn about partner compensation when a partner files for bankruptcy. Sometimes we hear about it when a partner goes through an ugly divorce.

That’s once again the case today. A complicated divorce, complicated enough to spawn ancillary litigation in the form of contempt proceedings, sheds light on how one white-shoe law firm pays its partners….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “A Messy Divorce Offers An Inside Look At Biglaw Partner Pay”

12 Comments

Smokey Robinson Sues Ex-Wife To Prevent Her From Claiming 50% Of His Recaptured Motown Hits

By

If there’s anything as labyrinthine as copyright law, it’s divorce law. Smokey Robinson, the composer of several Motown hits, is combining both.

Smokey Robinson sued his ex-wife, Claudette Rogers Robinson, seeking declaratory judgment that he may terminate and “recapture” the copyrights to all the songs he wrote during their marriage, and that she cannot claim interest in them under California community property law.

Robinson is reclaiming the rights to his pre-1978 songs from Jobete Music Co., something many artists are doing as copyright termination goes into effect. Robinson’s main problem, oddly, isn’t Jobete arguing that the songs were “work for hire,” but rather that his ex-wife (who he divorced in 1985) believes she should be entitled to 50% of whatever income these songs generate.

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Smokey Robinson Sues Ex-Wife To Prevent Her From Claiming 50% Of His Recaptured Motown Hits”

1 Comment

Non-Sequiturs: 01.10.14

By

The kid, however, does understand what ‘divorce’ means.

* In the annals of “do we have to explain everything to you idiots?” a woman is suing her lawyer for failing to explain that her divorce would end her marriage. [Gawker]

* Recess appointments make for strange bedfellows. Like C. Boyden Gray, the former ambassador to the EU, or William J. Olson, formerly a Director of the Legal Services Corporation, who are hoping the Supreme Court robs President Obama of his recess appointment power. Even though Gray and Olson were, themselves, recess appointments (they claim they were “real” recess appointments defined as “before the Democrats taught everyone to run fake sessions and pretend it’s a session). Or maybe “being partisan hacks in a conservative echo chamber” makes for strange bedfellows. [New York Times]

* Let’s check back in with Law Grad Working Retail and the unfortunate concept of G-G-MILFs. [Law Grad Working Retail]

* If you’re going to steal a car, turn off your phone first. The money quote is at the end of the article when the alleged thief makes the police detective an… interesting offer. [The Journal]

* The long-running debate over legal ethics and LinkedIn endorsements has prompted the networking site to change its settings to address concerns raised by the Florida Bar. Dare I “endorse” this move? [Daily Business Review]

* San Diego used to be on the lookout for racial profiling. Now they’ve just stopped caring and a bunch of folks are rightly concerned. But what more can you expect from a city founded by the Germans in 1904? [Voice of San Diego]

* Elie was on Mike Sacks’s Legalese It! this afternoon along with Professor Garrett Epps and Professor Lisa McElroy. Video embedded after the jump… [HuffPo Live]

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Non-Sequiturs: 01.10.14″

0 Comments

Above the Law’s Top 10 Most Popular Posts of 2013

By

As 2013 draws to a close, let’s look back at the 10 biggest stories in the legal profession over the past year. This is an annual tradition here at Above the Law, which we’ve done in 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009. We’ll fire up the old Google Analytics machine to get data on our most popular posts, based on pageviews, and share the results with you.

Before turning to specific stories, let’s look at the top general discussion topics here at ATL. For 2013, our most trafficked category page was Biglaw, which bumped Law Schools out of the top spot — a spot that Law Schools held from 2010 through 2012. Now that the word is out about the perils of getting a law degree, leading to plummeting applications, perhaps it’s time to move on from the “don’t go to law school” narrative.

After Biglaw and Law Schools, our third most-popular category page was, as usual, Bonuses. This wasn’t a terribly exciting year for bonuses — there were no spring bonuses, and Cravath and its many followers paid out the same bonuses as last year — but people still want to know the score.

Our fourth most-popular category page was small law firms. Small firms, including boutiques, are an area of increasing focus and readership for us — and also where many of the job opportunities are these days.

Moving on from the topic pages, what were the 10 most popular individual posts at Above the Law in 2013?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Above the Law’s Top 10 Most Popular Posts of 2013″

4 Comments

Ashley Madison Presents: The 21st-Century Cuckolded Man

By

One of Ashley Madison’s lawyers?

Would the courts also hold a hotel room accountable? A cellphone operator if his wife called her lover on it? The car she drove? I think it would be an incredibly slippery slope to attempt to espouse blame to all the technology and inanimate objects that were utilized in an affair.

– Former lawyer Noel Biderman, founder of the website Ashley Madison, commenting on a lawsuit filed by Robert Schindler, a jilted husband who blames the infidelity service for his marital breakup.

16 Comments
Page 1 of 1212345...12