Here’s some very belated bonus news. Earlier this month, the New York office of Linklaters announced bonuses that matched the Cravath scale.
As usual at Linklaters, there was no hours requirement. The news was communicated via individual memo.
A Cravath match, especially in a bonus season when some firms are paying significantly more, kinda sucks isn’t that exciting. A Cravath bonus won’t get a Linklaters associate a pad as palatial as that of Linklaters partner Michael Bassett. Heck, $35K — the top of the Cravath scale — probably won’t even cover the cost of Bassett’s wallpaper.
But we’ll point out two nice things about Linklaters, both relating to tax issues….
[T]he supposed legal benefits of marriage are often illusory, and in any event they are probably more than offset by legally created burdens. Marriage confers fewer rights now, but still many obligations. The question for any mature couple then is simple: Why do it?
We’ve set up our liveblog of the Ninth Circuit oral arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the Proposition 8 / same-sex marriage case. For a comprehensive account of what has happened in the litigation thus far, see this great FAQ by Chris Geidner, over at Poliglot.
You can watch streaming video of the arguments over at C-SPAN. And you can join our liveblog, after the jump….
Sorry, we’re still waiting for the Biglaw bonus shoe to drop. While you wait, here’s some good news in the Biglaw benefits area (a la Proskauer’s iPad announcement).
At least one law firm is stepping up to the plate to help domestically-partnered employees with their health-benefit-related tax burdens. The firm of Morrison & Foerster issued the following statement to Above the Law, from firm chair Keith Wetmore: “Starting in 2011, Morrison & Foerster will begin offering an additional benefit payment to assist with the tax obligation that same-sex and opposite sex Staff and Non-Partner Attorneys pay when they elect Domestic Partner health benefits.”
This is excellent news, and we commend MoFo for taking this step. Hopefully it will inspire additional firms to move in this direction. Note also that the policy applies not just to same-sex couples, but also to opposite-sex couples who are similarly situated — which might be a way of addressing the criticismsof some that the gay gross-up is unfair to heterosexual couples.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in “law firms being nice to gay people” news, let’s give some props to Shearman & Sterling….
UPDATE: Shirvell just got fired, according to the Detroit Free Press, “for conduct unbecoming a state employee” (including misuse of state resources).
* Our colleague Bess Levin wants to know: Does Wall Street have a problem with felony charges? [Dealbreaker]
* Professor Ann Althouse wonders why people are talking about marrying tables and clocks. Personally we prefer shoe marriage. [Althouse]
* Professor Tim Wu, something of a cult figure at Columbia Law, is writing a week-long series of posts over at Slate based on his new book, The Master Switch. [Slate]
* Is NYU Law gearing up for Above the Law’s next Law Revue Video Contest? Here’s a musical tribute to the Erie Doctrine. [bl1y]
* What do military leaders think of a possible “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal? [Metro Weekly]
Our last installment of the Wedding Watch was almost unbearably non-elite, but we’re happy to announce that the Times weddings section has bounced back. Three prestigious law firms beautify our wedding update today: Jenner & Block, Boies Schiller, and the ever-fabulous Skadden Arps. And two of our grooms (there are four) are partners!
All things considered, I’m feeling pretty good this morning. It’s a lot easier to tear something down than to build something up. For over a year, the Tea Party has been like the developmentally disabled kid in kindergarten whose main talent is knocking over other people’s Lego creations. Now that they’ve got their own house of government, we’ll get to see what they can actually build. Seriously, let’s see them govern. Let’s see the actual legislation they pass. Yesterday was a loss for progressives, but it was also a loss for moderate Republicans. Obama can now continue to ignore his left, the TBD Republican nominee will be pulled to his or her right. Let’s see how that works out for the GOP in 2012.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Christine O’Donnell, I know the difference between winning and losing. If you hate gay people and pot why do you live in California? I feel like Justice Anthony Kennedy went to Wisconsin and personally executed Russ Feingold. But at the end of the day, I live in New York. Cuomo, Schumer, Gillibrand, new A.G. Eric Schneiderman, I mean if Boehner and friends get too annoying we could always secede.
There’s only one result from last night that seems totally idiotic. The good people of Iowa ousted all three of the judges targeted by out-of-state, anti-gay groups. Way to go Iowa, nice of you to let your random dislike of gay love to motivate you all the way to the polls…
Dear God, please allow the IRS to attack my church, so I can take them all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
– Iowa pastor Cary K. Gordon, who is campaigning against three Iowa Supreme Court justices who voted for same-sex marriage, even though tax-exempt churches are prohibited from campaigning for or against specific political candidates.
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.
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?
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Here’s some very belated bonus news. Earlier this month, the New York office of Linklaters announced bonuses that matched the Cravath scale.
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