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”
Ed. note: This is the latest installment of The ATL Interrogatories, a recurring feature that gives notable law firm partners an opportunity to share insights and experiences about the legal profession and careers in law, as well as information about their firms and themselves.
What do Bob Dylan, Jerry Seinfeld, and Facebook have in common? Orin Snyder is their attorney. Orin is a litigation partner in Gibson Dunn’s New York office, and serves as Vice-Chair of the Crisis Management Practice Group and Co-Chair of the Media, Entertainment, and Technology Practice Group. He is also a member of the White Collar Defense and Investigations, Appellate, and Intellectual Property Practice Groups.
Continue reading “The ATL Interrogatories: 10 Questions with Orin Snyder”
In today’s increasingly interconnected world, economic opportunities present themselves at every turn. For example, you could leave the practice of law to start an import/export business. There’s money to be made, and satisfaction to be had, in taking great goods from one country and bringing them over to a new market. Free trade is a beautiful thing (unless you’re unskilled labor).
But how do you figure out what products to import or export? Today’s lawyer turned importer entered the business after buying the product for herself while on vacation. She checked it out with a friend and was blown away by the quality.
What kind of product are we talking about? Well, she started her legal career working for the U.S. Department of Justice, and now she’s a pot dealer….
Continue reading “Career Alternatives for Attorneys: Pot Dealing”
Raise a glass to this emerging trend: lawyers entering the alcoholic beverage industry. Some have gone into brewing beer, like Bailey Spaulding of Jackalope Brewing in Nashville and the three guys behind Black Acre Brewing in Indianapolis (whom we recently mentioned). Some have gone into wine, like Elizabeth Banker, proprietor of Slate Wine Bar in D.C. (previously profiled here).
But some might scoff: “Beer? Wine? That stuff’s for lightweights.”
Real lawyers turn to liquor — which brings us to today’s profile in career alternatives for attorneys….
Continue reading “Career Alternatives for Attorneys: Craft Spirit Curators”
It’s hard out here for a big-busted woman. Although being a well-endowed woman has its advantages, it can present problems as well. For example, if you are a large-breasted but not plus-size woman, finding an appropriately sized bra isn’t easy (or so I’m told).
That brings us to the latest profile subject in Bloomberg Law’s excellent series on “stealth lawyers” — attorneys who have left the law to pursue other passions. Today’s stealth lawyer is a big-busted woman who encountered difficulty in locating lingerie for herself.
So she launched her own business to cater to this market, trading Biglaw for big breasts. Let’s meet her….
Continue reading “Career Alternatives for Attorneys: From Biglaw To Big Breasts”
If you’ve ever been in a bookstore (and we hope that you have), you’ve seen the ubiquitous red Zagat guides, often situated right next to the checkout line to encourage impulse purchases. They’re wonderful resources for the restaurant-obsessed (note my avoidance of the f-word). The Zagat guides compile thousands upon thousands of user-generated reviews and distill them into clear, concise, often clever capsule reviews of restaurants in top cities around the world.
Last year, Google purchased Zagat for between $100 million to $200 million. That’s a pretty nice chunk of change — especially for a pair of former lawyers.
Yes, Tim and Nina Zagat are attorneys. Let’s learn about how they got their start….
Continue reading “Career Alternatives for Attorneys: Restaurant Reviewer Surveyor”
In Stealth Lawyers, their excellent ongoing video series on career alternatives for attorneys, our friends at Bloomberg Law have covered the range of human needs. They’ve written about lawyers who help us eat, drink, and laugh. Is there really more to life than that?
As a matter of fact, there is. It’s important that you smell good while doing all these things.
Bloomberg has you covered. In today’s installment, they profile a prosecutor turned perfumer. Before he switched careers, he saved up a lot of money….
Continue reading “Career Alternatives for Attorneys: Perfumer”
Mahbod Moghadam of Rap Genius
F. Scott Fitzgerald once opined that there were “no second acts in American lives.” Similarly, Biz Markie once opined “’cause we all pick our boogers sometime every day.” If you’re already lost, allow me to explain. This is the story of a former Biglaw attorney and his second act. He and his friends started a website devoted to rap lyrics. The website annotates rap lyrics, and it’s this system of annotation that the founders of the website hope will take over the web (including legal research). The website was recently funded by venture capitalists, and the resulting hype has ping-ponged across the web at a pace so rapid that you’d be excused if you made like Steinski and wondered, “What does it all mean?” (affiliate link).
The interviews that have fed the myriad profiles of the site’s founders have been nothing short of entertaining. Just last week, Gawker was prompted to write a guide to the site, rapgenius.com, which managed to sound both condescending and wildly equivocating and which did nothing but illuminate the author’s squeamishness. This promises to not be like that. I don’t know if Rap Genius is going to be Wikipedia or Pets.com.
What I do know is that a Biglaw dropout just ganked $15 million from Marc Andreessen and wants to edge out Westlaw and Lexis (good luck with that).
Keep reading to find out where he went to law school and what firm he worked at. And if you want to see his shirtless YouTube diss track (no homo)….
Looking for an epigraph for your departure memo? This man can help.
Writing your law firm departure memo: there’s an app for that? Well, not yet. (But you can certainly download the Above the Law app and read past farewell memos for inspiration.)
For now, the closest you can get is by starting your departure memo with a quotation from the late, great Steve Jobs. Like this one: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers….”
Yes, that’s how one fairly senior associate at a top law firm began his good-bye email. We received it from a few tipsters, one of whom called it “the best departure memo ever.”
Okay, I don’t know if I’d go that far. There are a few I’d rank higher — Shinyung Oh, Tyler Coulson, and maybe the tea bagger. But this one is definitely up there….
Continue reading “Departure Memo of the Day: ‘Here’s To The Crazy Ones’”
Last week, we searched this year’s Forbes 400, the list of the 400 richest Americans, for lawyers and law school graduates. Lat pointed out the newcomers and the dropouts since last year’s roundup, but there are still more than thirty other lawyers on the list.
Let’s take a closer look at these affluent attorneys. Their stories will either inspire you with visions of vast wealth or afflict you with jealousy at how many times over they could pay off your loan debt….
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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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