Kaye Scholer

Morning Docket: 04.02.13

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Kaye Scholer welcomes you to Flori-duh!

* It looks like it’s time for yet another rousing game of Biglaw musical chairs. This time, 11 of Bingham McCutchen’s securities enforcement partners are hightailing it over to Sidley Austin en masse. [DealBook / New York Times]

* This week in on-shore outsourcing: there may be a job waiting for you at Kaye Scholer’s new operations center (so new we bet you didn’t know about it), so hurry up and apply, because the interviews are soon. [Tallahassee Democrat]

* “We’re trained in the law and persuasion, not firearms.” But maybe you should be? After the targeted killing of attorneys in Texas, prosecutors are now on high alert. [New York Times]

* When looking at the current law school model, Paul Caron of TaxProf Blog urges law deans to take advice from Jimmy McMillan because “law school tuition is simply too damn high.” [Businessweek]

* Change our admissions practices amid the worst legal economy we’ve seen in decades? “Ain’t nobody got time for that,” scoffed Sarah Zearfoss, director of admissions at Michigan Law. [AnnArbor.com]

* Drexel Law will accept applications for its two-year law degree program in May 2014. The higher-ups at the ABA are scheduled to laugh their asses off on or about the same date. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

* “[F]or James Eagan Holmes, justice is death.” In a move that shocked absolutely no one, the prosecution in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater massacre case is seeking the death penalty. [CNN]

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Associate Bonus Watch: Kaye Scholer Rewards Big Billers

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Now that Sullivan & Cromwell has weighed in on bonuses, there’s not much suspense left regarding associate bonuses at the major New York lockstep firms. Attention will now turn to top firms with individualized bonuses, like Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins.

Most of the big New York-based firms have matched the Cravath scale. But at least one — besides Boies Schiller, home of the whopper (aka a $250,000 bonus) — is going above and beyond Cravath.

At Kaye Scholer, high billers get something extra stuffed in their stockings. How much are we talking about?

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Dewey Partners Get Any Capital Back? Good Luck With That!
(Plus more partner moves, including Ralph Ferrara.)

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Photo (no, not a photoshop) by ATL reader 'Anna.'

As we reported over the weekend, it’s looking like Dewey & LeBoeuf will soon find itself in bankruptcy (perhaps voluntarily, perhaps not). The specter of bankruptcy raises a question for the many former partners of Dewey: dude, where’s my car capital contribution?

Let’s find out — and get the latest dispatches on the Dewey death spiral, including news of a new home for former vice chair Ralph Ferrara….

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(Plus more partner moves, including Ralph Ferrara.)“

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Associate Bonus Watch: Updates and Addenda

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In the world of Biglaw, the subject of bonuses is a hot-button issue. People will disagree, often vehemently, on whether the bonuses paid by a particular firm are generous or cheap. To paraphrase an old joke, if you ask two people about bonuses, you’ll get three opinions.

Given these frequent differences of opinion, whenever we publish an Associate Bonus Watch post, we’re eager to get opinions and additional information from you, our readers. As you can see from looking back at our prior bonus coverage, we often update our bonus posts to add new information or another point of view. You can send us reactions to your firm’s bonuses — or news of bonuses we have not yet covered — by email or by text message (646-820-8477 / 646-820-TIPS).

Some of our recent bonus posts have generated salient updates and dissenting opinions. After the jump, we bring you postscripts regarding bonuses at several major law firms, including Cravath, Kaye Scholer, Quinn Emanuel, Sidley Austin, and Weil Gotshal….

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Associate Bonus Watch: Kaye Scholer Tries to Confuse By Matching Cravath’s Year-End Bonus and Last Year’s Spring Bonus

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Read carefully, because Kaye Scholer is hoping you won’t.

Last night, Kaye Scholer announced a match of the Cravath bonus scale from this season. And a match of the Cravath spring bonus from last season. But that has nothing to do with 2012 spring bonuses, which Sullivan & Cromwell alluded to last night. So even as Kaye Scholer associates are being “made whole” from the firm’s cheap stance on the last bonus season, it looks like they’re already starting this bonus season in the hole.

Keeping you updated about the latest bonus shenanigans is what Above the Law is here for….

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Keeping Up With the Cravathians: The Ten Most Generous (or Foolish?) Law Firms

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This morning’s news that Boies Schiller is making a mockery of the Cravath bonus scale simply reinforces the prevailing view (pace David Lat) around here that the 2011 Cravath bonus scale is fundamentally unfair.

Agreeing on this point is former Kirkland & Ellis partner Steven Harper (whose apparent pro-associate stance may make him a sort of Biglaw apostate). As Harper points out, “equity partner profit trees have resumed their growth to the sky. As the economy struggled, Cravath’s average partner profits increased to $2.7 million in 2009 and to $3.17 million in 2010 … That’s not ‘treading water.’ It’s returning to 2007 profit levels — the height of ‘amazing’ boom years that most observers had declared gone forever. Watch for 2011 profits to be even higher.”

And yet associate bonuses remain stagnant at 2009 levels. Furthermore, as ATL commenter “The Cravath Cut” is so fond of noting, when viewed as a percentage of profits, bonuses appear especially measly, at least from the associate p.o.v. (The current $7,500 market rate for first-years is just 0.23% of Cravath’s profits per partner. Back in 2007, first-year bonuses equalled 1.36%.) Despite these numbers, if history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone Biglaw’s rank and file will follow Cravath’s lead.

Cravath is among the most profitable firms in the world. We thought it would be interesting to see what the implications of matching Cravath are for those firms with much lower profit margins. Which firms’ partners willingly take the biggest hit by keeping up? Are these firms arguably more “generous”? After the jump, check out those firms that pay the largest percentage of PPP in bonuses.

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

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Partners are usually best remembered for behaving badly, or worse, treating associates badly. But not the partners who made our “Top Partners to Work For” list.

Last week, we asked you to nominate the best Biglaw 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.

Over the next several weeks, we will reveal who these exceptional partners are in a multi-part Career Center survey results series, sponsored by Lateral Link. We kick off the series this week with the New York partners, and then we’ll make our way around the country.

Let’s get to know the first eight partners and find out why associates say they are the best to work for….

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In Defense of Kaye Scholer

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While performing here at the ATL Cabaret on Wednesday night, the celebrated drag queen of Biglaw, Kaye Scholer, was pelted with rotten fruit — by her own associates. If you haven’t done so already, do check out their rage-filled rants. (If nothing else, they’ll make you feel better about your own firm.)

As we’ve stated before, we’re committed to presenting both sides of a given story here at Above the Law. Sometimes we don’t hear the other side of a story because the sources on that side don’t care to contact us. But when we do have both sides available to us, we present them.

In the case of the People v. Kaye Scholer, we did hear from a character witness on behalf of the defendant. What did this individual have to say?

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Growing Discontent at Kaye Scholer

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We previously compared the law firm of Kaye Scholer to a drag queen. Kaye Scholer, Kay Scholer — geddit?

Well, some associates at Kaye Scholer claim they’ve seen underneath all the make-up — and it’s not pretty. This contestant would not go far in RuPaul’s Drag Race.

In terms of responses to our recent discussion of which firms aren’t paying spring bonuses, however, Kaye Scholer emerges a winner. We’ve heard from KS associates in droves over the past day or two — and the depth of their fury is impressive.

What are they so upset about? It’s not just the lack of spring bonuses. Let’s find out….

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Associate Bonus Watch: Kaye Scholer Rewards High Billers

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If we were to hold a contest for “Law Firm Whose Name Sounds Most Like That of a Drag Queen,” the clear winner would be Kaye Scholer. Just drop that first “e” to form “Kay Scholer” — doesn’t she sound fierce? Scroll through this list of drag queen names. Wouldn’t Kay Scholer fit right in?

(Hey — this sounds like a fun idea for a post. If you have an idea for a law firm whose name could inspire a drag name — e.g., Morgan Lewis, Proskauer Rose (“Rose Proskauer”), Saxena White — please put in the comments or email us, subject line “Drag Name.” If we get enough submissions, we’ll hold a contest.)

Sorry, where were we? Ah yes, Kaye Scholer. Earlier this week, the firm announced its 2010 bonus schedule.

For the most part, it’s the Cravath scale, with an hours requirement (1950 hours, 1800 billable). But associates who go over 2400 hours (2250 billable) will find something extra in their stockings this year….

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