Floyd Abrams

Stop Online Piracy Act Wants Biglaw Support; Biglaw Says, ‘Aw, Hell No’

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Unless you drowned yourself in a bathtub full of eggnog over the holidays, hopefully you are at least superficially aware of the Stop Online Piracy Act.

The House of Representatives is considering the bill, known as SOPA for short, that people fear will destroy the Internet as we know it.

Last week, Elie and I were “debating” the insidiousness of SOPA on Gchat. Our conversation went something like this:

Elie: SOPA is terrible.
Chris: It’s pretty much the worst thing ever.
Elie: It’s f***ing disastrous.

Elie and I aren’t the only ones upset. The Internet has whipped into a tizzy over the act. We mentioned it last week in Non-Sequiturs. And I wrote about it back in November. But the story has kept picking up speed. Reddit has gone mad over the bill. Just before the new year, a bunch of Biglaw firms got mistakenly dragged into the fray.

Keep reading for a primer on SOPA and its sister Senate bill, the Protect IP Act. And see why a bunch of Biglaw firms were unintentionally listed as supporters after the jump.…

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Career Center Survey Results: Top Partners to Work For – New York (Part 1)

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Floyd Abrams of Cahill and Evan Chesler of Cravath: two great lawyers who are also great to work for.

With all the negative press surrounding partners lately — see, e.g., here and here — it’s about time for some good news, about good partners.

Last month we asked you to nominate the best partners you work for, tell us why they are the best, and rate them in six categories: expertise within the practice area, quality of work given to associates, hands-on training given to associates, provision of feedback on associate work, respect for associates’ schedules, and professionalism with associates. And we didn’t even have to pay these associates to say nice things about the partners they nominated.

Over the next few weeks, the ATL Career Center, hosted by Lateral Link, will bring you the list of the best partners to work for, divided up by geographic region. This week we will focus on New York, Above the Law’s home base, and give you the top 24 partners to work for in the Big Apple as nominated by you, our readers.

Let’s look at the first eight, shall we?

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Quote of the Day: You Can’t Handle the Truth

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I’d rather not get into it. You’d fall off your chair.

– Leading First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, declining to discuss with the New York Times what he and Cahill Gordon are charging the ratings agency S.& P.

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Why Citizens United Is Not the End of the World

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This morning I attended a very interesting panel discussion sponsored by the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law, Citizens United: Mountain or Mole Hill? Because the talk was sponsored by my rather left-leaning alma mater, I expected the answer to the question presented to be “Mountain” — and not just any mountain, but Mount Doom.

I was pleasantly surprised. The deeply thoughtful discussion pointed more in the direction of “Mole Hill.” This was especially surprising given the liberal bona fides of the three star panelists:

  • Floyd Abrams, the longtime Cahill Gordon partner and celebrated First Amendment lawyer, who argued in the case for Senator Mitch McConnell (as amicus curiae, in support of Citizens United);
  • Heather Gerken, the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and a leading scholar of election law and voting rights; and
  • Samuel Issacharoff, the Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law, and an expert in voting rights and civil procedure.

Both Professors Gerken and Issacharoff worked on the Obama campaign. And we all know what President Obama thinks of Citizens United.

But what did this eminent trio of panelists have to say about the case?

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