It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The season of law firm holidayparties, for starters. And, better yet, bonuses. This year, Santa Cravath stuffed stockings with a goodly amount of cash.
But the parties and paychecks pale in comparison to what’s about to get underway: Above the Law’s fourth annual holiday card contest!
Last year, Haynes and Boone, a frequent finalist in the contest, took home top honors. Will they repeat in 2012, will a prior winner reemerge, or will a totally fresh face grab the Christmas card crown?
Read on — and read carefully, counselors — for the official contest rules….
Our coverage of lateral partner moves is admittedly somewhat idiosyncratic. To be honest, we tend to be most interested in lateral moves when we can be the ones to break the news, in advance of any official announcement.
(For moves where we aren’t first, we tend to be more discriminating and write up only the most major ones. So if you’d like us to cover some notable partners joining your firm, please email us well before you send out your press release, and give us the scoop.)
Today we bring you news of partner moves from the Lone Star State. Some seven partners are leaving the Dallas office of Haynes and Boone. Who are they, and where are they going?
Even though the job market for new lawyers is still stagnant and depressing, going to and graduating from law school, especially a highly-ranked law school, is still looked upon by friends and family as a huge accomplishment. It’s something to be proud of, something to brag about.
After all, law school graduates have completed three to four years of relatively difficult work, and most take a state bar examination — neither of which is viewed as a simple feat by the general public. Factor into this equation being a middle-aged working mother, and these achievements seem even greater.
Imagine what would happen if someone claimed that she had finished all of this rigorous legal training, when in fact, she never had. It’s all pomp and circumstance until someone discovers that you’ve allegedly been lying through your teeth for years.
That is exactly what happened in Texas recently, and now campus officials are investigating a woman who claims that she attended a law school that was, until recently, a top 50 law school in the U.S. News rankings….
Our law firm holiday card contest is still underway, but we’re in the home stretch. Voting closes tomorrow, January 9, at 11:59 p.m. (Eastern time). If you haven’t done so already, review the finalists and vote over here.
In the our earlier post, we promised a post in which we’d (1) give shout-outs to some holiday cards that were strong but narrowly missed our cut and (2) poke fun at some of the Christmas cards we found especially disappointing. Here is the promised post.
Let’s look at some of these honorable and dishonorable mentions. Perhaps your law firm’s card is among them?
Late last night, we received a tip that has become all too common in the dog days of August. This tipster sent us this letter from the career services office at Georgetown Law:
Haynes and Boone, LLP has just informed us that they will no longer have a summer program in their Washington, DC and Austin, TX offices. Please contact me if you are interested in switching your interview to either the Dallas, TX, Houston, TX, or New York, NY offices or if you would like us to cancel your interview.
These late-breaking summer program cancellations, partial cancellations, or substantive summer-program changes really need to stop…
It’s still early in 2010, but the runaway leader in the clubhouse for feelgood Biglaw story of the year is coming out of Haynes and Boone. It was widely reported last week that Matthew Deffebach, a partner at Haynes and Boone, donated a kidney to the son of a staffer at the firm.
Deffebach didn’t know the staffer personally, but when another partner asked for volunteers to help this child, a number of Haynes and Boone partners were tested. Deffebach was a match. Texas Lawyer has this amazing quote from Deffebach:
Deffebach says he’s going through the surgery because he couldn’t stand the thought of the man’s son growing up without a father. “I met him the day after I found out how bad his situation was,” Deffebach recalls.
The reports say that the surgery went smoothly.
I can’t get enough of this good news story shining through in the middle of this bad news recession. After the jump, we’ve got some comments from the staffer, and a note from Matthew Deffebach.
Congratulations to Akin Gump, winner of Above the Law’s inaugural holiday card contest. Check out their very funny and clever card over here.
The voting wasn’t even close. There were seven entrants, but Akin walked away with over 44 percent of the vote. It was the commenters’ favorite, too:
“I work at HayBoo [Haynes and Boone], and really like our card. But I was actually laughing (alone in my office) at Akin Gump’s. A little cliched, but still, well-executed.”
“Akin hands down. All others were simply dreadful.”
“OK, the Akin Gump ‘holiday’ card (we all know we are talking xmas cards here) is hands down the best by a very wide margin, although the Goodwin Procter ‘gift’ of a pile of blow on the mantle at the end of their e-card was a nice touch.”
(That does look like cocaine, doesn’t it? Check out the Goodwin Procter card here.)
Once again, congratulations to Akin Gump on a well-deserved victory!
P.S. We received a few nice late submissions, like Proctor Heyman (inspired by the Abbey Road album cover) and Howard Rice (donating the savings from sending electronic rather than physical cards to a charity chosen by readers). Unfortunately, we were unable to include them because voting was already underway. Check ATL early and often, so as not to miss our contests and other features.
Before Christmas, we highlighted one law firm holiday card that we particularly enjoyed (from Haynes and Boone). We also invited readers to email us with other holiday cards we might enjoy. We stated that, if we received sufficient submissions, we might even hold a contest.
Lo and behold, we did receive enough entrants. So we are happy to hold Above the Law’s first holiday card contest.
Check out the nominees and vote — you’re stuck in the office between Christmas and New Year’s, and you’re bored — after the jump.
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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It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The season of law firm holiday parties, for starters. And, better yet, bonuses. This year, Santa Cravath stuffed stockings with a goodly amount of cash.
