When videos go viral online, sometimes law students decide to let their freak flags fly and have some fun on film. Such is the case with the recent Harlem Shake phenomenon. If you’ve ever seen our Law Revue Video Contest, these videos are kind of like that, only shorter (and seemingly taped while all of the participants are tweaking out of their minds).
Don’t know what the Harlem Shake is? You’re about to find out….
Continue reading “The Harlem Shake Takes Law Schools By Storm”
Mary Jo White
Mary Jo White? More like Mary Jo Green. President Obama’s pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission is deliciously rich, as revealed in her financial disclosures.
Although she’s barely five feet tall, making her a little litigatrix, Mary Jo White wears big shoes. In the words of my colleague Elie Mystal, a former Debevoise & Plimpton associate, she’s “one of those alpha dog partners…. the kind of partner that makes other partners stammer, shuffle papers, and try to look really busy and intelligent when she’s in the room.”
The sizable net worth of Mary Jo White shouldn’t surprise anyone. Not only is she a longtime Debevoise partner, but her husband, John W. White, has been a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore for more than 25 years (interrupted from 2006 through 2008 by a stint at the SEC, actually, where he served as Director of the Division of Corporation Finance).
Let’s get a sense of Mary Jo White’s fortune….
Continue reading “Just How Rich Is Mary Jo White, Debevoise Partner and Likely Future SEC Chair?”
Justice Sotomayor can be seen everywhere — from First Street to U Street to Sesame Street.
I had the pleasure and honor of meeting then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor, at the time a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, at a friend’s wedding in the spring of 2005. I wrote a quick story about it for my first blog, Underneath Their Robes. I praised Her Honor as “striking,” “glamorous,” and stylishly attired: “Based on her fashion sense, it sounds like she’d be more at home on a Paris runway!”
But what really struck me about Judge Sotomayor was how friendly and down-to-earth she was. She chatted amiably with everyone, just like an ordinary guest; she put on no Article III airs. And when the time came to cut the rug, she and Judge Barbara Jones — then of the S.D.N.Y., now of Zuckerman Spaeder — dominated the ballroom like it was their courtroom.
Now the rest of the nation is seeing the Sonia Sotomayor that I briefly glimpsed almost eight year ago. As reflected in recent media coverage, the Wise Latina is truly America’s judicial sweetheart. And super-nice to the neighbors in her U Street condo building — who have all sorts of fun dish on the justice….
Behind the blue door lies a world of great beauty.
You’d expect a top mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer to have excellent business sense. So it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that an M&A partner at a leading law firm bought a Manhattan townhouse for $837,000 that is now probably worth more than $7 million.
It’s a gorgeous home, very tastefully decorated (which can’t be said of all our Lawyerly Lairs). Let’s see some pictures and learn more about it, including the identities of the owners….
Continue reading “Lawyerly Lairs: An M&A Maven’s Magnificent Manse”
Happy New Year from your ATL editors: David Lat, Staci Zaretsky, and Elie Mystal.
We were pleasantly surprised by how many of you seemed to be interested in the pictures from our New Year’s party, and because we’re gluttons for punishment, we’ve decided to give you some more of what you want. And this time, you’ll have the opportunity to offer your delightful insights and commentary on our pictures.
So without further ado, we present to you some additional party pics for your viewing pleasure….
Continue reading “More Pictures From the Above the Law New Year’s Party!”
Your ATL editors: David Lat, Staci Zaretsky, and Elie Mystal.
Thanks a lot to everyone who came out on Wednesday night to attend the Above the Law New Year’s party!
The festivities were well-attended, and the bar was full of action — no seriously, there may or may not have been a couple making out the whole night. Thanks to our sponsor, Lateral Link, for such a great evening.
Yeah yeah, we know, it’s the internet, so of course this post is “WWOP.” So let’s get some pics up in here….
Continue reading “The ATL New Year’s Party: A Fun and Fabulous Photo Essay”
The Beresford, at 211 Central Park West.
Renowned diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who came very close to becoming Secretary of State, passed away in December 2010. His wife, noted journalist Kati Marton, recently sold the magnificent apartment they shared at the Beresford, the legendary prewar co-op on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Over the years, as noted in the building’s Wikipedia entry, the Beresford has been called home by such celebrities as “comedian Jerry Seinfeld, singer Diana Ross, tennis player John McEnroe, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, actor Tony Randall, and musician Laura Nyro.” (I was going to say that Nyro’s publicist must be a Wikipedia admin, but it seems that Nyro passed away back in 1997.)
UPDATE (1/16/2013, 11:45 AM): We just heard from a longtime Beresford resident who advises us that Diana Ross never lived in the building (although the Diana Ross Playground is across the street).
Now the Beresford will be graced by a former Biglaw partner, who bought Holbrooke’s home for an eight-figure sum. Sharing an elevator with Jerry Seinfeld will be….
Continue reading “Lawyerly Lairs: Former Partner Purchases Holbrooke’s Home”
We keep telling our readers to sign up for our New Year’s party, but since we know that some of you are professional slackers and procrastinators, we’re giving you one more chance to do so. Come hang out with all of your favorite Above the Law editors, say hello to some of our columnists, and most importantly, enjoy our open bar!
The Above the Law New Year’s party will be held on Wednesday, January 16, at a secret location in NYC to be disclosed later. This exclusive shindig is generously sponsored by Lateral Link, the fastest growing legal search firm with twelve offices in the United States and Asia. Only with us will you get the true VIP experience lawyers deserve.
Please keep in mind that you must sign up to be placed on our exclusive guest list. We’ll let you know if you make the cut and provide details on the venue via email. Good luck, and we hope to see you there!
A few months ago, we wrote a story about the $160K-Plus Club: those law firms that pay their first-year associates more than $160,000 a year, the going rate within Biglaw. Earlier this week, we covered which cities give young lawyers the biggest bang for their buck — i.e., cities where the buying power of the median salary for that city is the greatest.
Let’s mash up these two stories. Today we bring you news of a law firm that (1) pays a starting salary of more than $160,000 and (2) is based in a city that’s in the top ten for buying power. Associates at this firm are — by our calculations, based on the NALP Buying Power Index — living as well as someone earning $414,000 in New York City. That’s a staggering sum for a first-year associate.
So which firm are we talking about? And are they hiring?
Continue reading “The $160K-Plus Club Welcomes A New Member”
Who wouldn’t want to party with us? Like we told you earlier this week, we’re ready to celebrate the new year with all of our loyal readers, and as anyone in the legal profession can attest to, the best way to do that is with the assistance of our favorite social lubricant: alcohol!
The Above the Law New Year’s party will be held on Wednesday, January 16, at a secret location in NYC to be disclosed later. This year’s bonus might’ve made you feel small compared to the salad days of Biglaw, but trust me, getting an invite to this private party is sure to make you feel like a real VIP. As always, at our parties, you’ll get all the juicy gossip and backstory that was too salacious to print.
Be prepared to have some fun times with all of your favorite Above the Law editors — you can bask in Lat’s prestige, look at Elie’s cute baby pictures, and watch me act out some of your favorite scenes from ATL’s very own commentariat fanfic stories. THEY IT IS! Say hello to some of our columnists — who knows, maybe Tannebaum will show up to call you a moron! And most importantly, don’t forget to enjoy our open bar!
Please keep in mind that you must sign up to be placed on our exclusive guest list. We’ll let you know if you make the cut and provide details on the venue via email. Good luck, and we hope to see you there!
P.S. When you RSVP, it’s going to look like you haven’t, but I promise, you have. It’s just a little glitch we put in so you have some plausible deniability if someone who’s uncool asks if you’ve RSVP’d to our party yet.
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
Keep reading »
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
