Entrepreneurship

The Richest Lawyers (or Law School Graduates) in America: Lawyers on the Forbes 400

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If you were a billionaire, you could sleep on a pile of these.

For whatever reason, this week has been heavy on stories about money. We’ve written about starting salaries for law firm associates, average pay packages for partners, and which countries have the highest paid lawyers.

So let’s stick with the theme. Today let’s take a look at the richest lawyers — or, to be more precise, the richest law school graduates — in America. (As we noted last year, many of these moguls never practiced law, or practiced only briefly, before making their fortunes in business.)

Our friends over at Forbes just released the Forbes 400, their annual ranking of the 400 wealthiest Americans. As in years past, the list contains a number of lawyers and law-degree holders. How many?

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A Guide for Surviving On-Campus Interviewing With Style

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Would that it were easy for women to dress professionally without being critiqued on every aspect of their ensemble. If that were the case, then we wouldn’t have so much to write about when it comes to the intersection of fashion and women’s issues. From hairstyle to hemline to heel height, women are constantly bombarded with differing opinions as to what’s acceptable to wear in the workplace.

With on-campus interviewing season right around the corner, you’ll need to look and act the part. The hour has drawn nigh for some tips that will allow our female readers to maintain a stylish appearance from a day in the office to a night out, all at the click of a button. Because fashion should be a piece of cake, even for lawyerly ladies who are too busy to shop….

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Super-Rich Law School Graduates: Lawyers on the Forbes 400

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Some J.D. holders are swimming in money.

For some holders of the Juris Doctor degree, “J.D.” has depressing meanings: Just Debt, Job Disabled, Justifiably Depressed.

But for others, “J.D.” stands for something happier: Just Dollars. Lots and lots and lots of them.

Partners at large law firms do quite well for themselves. So do general counsel at major corporations.

But they are pikers compared to members of the Forbes 400, the annual list of the 400 richest Americans prepared by Forbes magazine. The 2011 list has been issued — and it contains a number of lawyers and law school graduates….

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Milk, Milk, Lemonade, Around The Corner…

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Kids running a lemonade stand: victims of overregulation? (Photo by Lat.)

When I was a little kid, my cousin and I set up a produce stand in front of my grandparents’ house. Splayed out on an uneven card table, we offered a variety of bruised, battered, and misshapen produce. From an oblong cantaloupe to a nicked-up watermelon, our “stand” carried the bounty of my grandfather’s patch of land, located somewhere on the Island of Misfit Fruit. My grandmother bought the cantaloupe, the watermelon ended up being thrown at my head, and we closed up shop after two hours of intense dumbf**kery.

I tell you this because my own experience suggests that (a) children are neither cute nor intelligent and (b) kids’ efforts to make money selling stuff are always doomed to failure. And so it was that a band of towheaded tykes got jacked by county officials when they attempted to sell lemonade and other beverages outside the Congressional Country Club golf course, site of this year’s U.S. Open. The kids were fined $500 by the Montgomery County Department of Permitting, for operating without a license.

Let’s go to the tape….

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Size Matters: Growing Up Together

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Oprah is ending on May 25. Like most Americans, I am exhibiting signs of Empty Oprah Syndrome. During this time, as I mourn the loss of my “ultimate girlfriend,” I find myself asking one key question: why does Gayle King get to be Oprah’s actual best friend? I would be way better.

There are a few answers to that question. One answer, I guess, could be attributed to the fact that I have never met Oprah Winfrey. The other answer is that Gayle has something I do not. She has a shared history with Oprah, spanning thirty years. In other words, these women grew up together; they were friends before Oprah Winfrey became Oprah.

Why am I talking about Oprah and Gayle? Because I have Empty Oprah Syndrome, remember? And because there might be a lesson here for small-firm lawyers….

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A Challenge to Startup Lawyers, from Fred Wilson

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Fred Wilson wants to know why you're so expensive.

A prominent venture capitalist, Fred Wilson, has a question: Why do lawyers cost so darn much?

That’s the gist of Wilson’s recent blog post, A Challenge To Startup Lawyers, in which he discusses a recent investment his fund closed, a seed round. The parties used standard form documents, without negotiation, and the investors had no counsel: “We just signed the standard documents, which were tweaked to reflect the round size, share price, and board provision in the term sheet.”

The legal fees for this rather straightforward deal came to $17,000. That’s pocket change for a successful financier like Fred Wilson, but he still wasn’t happy about it. Given how little work was involved, couldn’t the legal bill have been even lower?

This experience led Wilson to come up with a challenge to lawyers who represent startup companies….

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The Cupcake Stop… Stops

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The Cupcake Stop has rolled to a halt.

Today is a sad day for businesses established by lawyer-entrepreneurs. First we learned that David J. Stern, the South Texas Law grad who went on to become “Florida’s Foreclosure King,” will be relinquishing his crown and closing his once-thriving practice. And now we hear that Lev Ekster, the New York Law School alum who founded a popular mobile-cupcake business called Cupcake Stop, has decided to call it quits.

Longtime readers of Above the Law will recall Ekster and his business selling cupcakes out of a truck that roved around Manhattan. We first wrote about him in May 2009, when we were charmed by the NYLS grad’s creative response to being unable to obtain a law firm job. Spring 2009 wasn’t the best time to be looking for a Biglaw gig, as you might remember.

A few days after our first post, we got to taste Ekster’s cupcakes (and interview him). The cupcakes were delicious (not as amazing as my cousin’s, but pretty darn good).

In the months that followed, Ekster’s cupcake truck picked up momentum, literally and figuratively. On Twitter, @CupcakeStop acquired almost 16,000 followers.

And then today it all came to a screeching halt. What happened?

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Is the Florida Foreclosure King Abdicating? David J. Stern Will Close His Law Firm

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Back in September 2010, we bestowed Lawyer of the Day honors upon David J. Stern, aka Florida’s “Foreclosure King.” We noted Stern’s rise into the ranks of self-made millionaires, despite not having attended some fancy first-tier law school. (Stern graduated from the South Texas College of Law, a fourth-tier school.)

We marveled at Stern’s wealth: a $14 million mansion here, a $7 million condo there, Ferraris and Porsches galore, and a 130-foot, $20 million yacht. We noted that Stern, thanks to the success of his booming foreclosure-law practice, was “running financial circles around all those Stanford and NYU law grads who wound up as Biglaw partners.”

Alas, in the past few months, David Stern’s fortunes have taken a turn for the worse….

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Small Firm Lawyers Balk at ASU 3L’s Request for Sponsorship

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While bonuses are burning up the comments here at Above the Law, there’s another discussion raging over at the ABA’s SoloSez Listserv — where solo and small firm lawyers from around the country share resources, practice tips and the occasional anecdote.

It seems that a 3L at Arizona State’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law is seeking sponsors for the remainder of her law school and bar study days. (We noted the development in today’s Morning Docket.)

Claiming the debt load for the average ASU grad has increased by $40,000 since she applied, the 3L is “reaching out to the online community to help [her] pay for it.” Good choice, since everyone knows that bloggers are just rolling in cash.

Given its entrepreneurial nature, this seems right up the small firm alley. But the plan has been received quite poorly by a majority of practitioners.

More about the sponsorship, what she’s willing to do for it, and the identity of the student, after the break…

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