Lateral Hiring

Non-Sequiturs: 05.06.11

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Burka in the court?

* The three defendants in the civil wrongful-death action brought by Robert Wone’s widow are keeping their mouths shut. [National Law Journal]

* But their former house is open — and once again on the market, for the tidy sum of $1.6 million. [Who Murdered Robert Wone?]

* Professor Eugene Volokh wants to know, with respect to wearing religious head coverings to court, can’t we all just get along? [Volokh Conspiracy]

Lavi Soloway

* Congratulations to Lavi Soloway and his client, Henry Velandia, whose deportation proceedings have been adjourned — due in part to a recent decision by Attorney General Eric Holder, vacating a BIA decision in another case involving a same-sex couple. [Poliglot / Metro Weekly]

* Speaking of judges and gay marriage, maybe Justice Kennedy should trade Salzburg for São Paulo this summer. [ABA Journal]

* What is behind the spring bonus phenomenon? One big factor: the boom in the lateral hiring market. [Vault's Law Blog]

* Speaking of the state of the legal economy, we’ve already linked to the big Economist article on the legal profession — but check out this great photo, in case you missed it. [The Economist / Tumblr]

* Are harsh sanctions for discovery violations a good thing? Ben Kerschberg thinks so. [Law & Technology / Forbes]

* Don’t forget to wish your mom a Happy Mother’s Day! (Unless your mom is Vivia Chen.) [The Careerist]

* Litigators: Do you know about the usefulness of Rule 56(f) 56(d)? [What About Clients?]

* When Glenn Reynolds is away, Ann Althouse will play. [Althouse via Instapundit]

* Were your law school classmates this attractive? Probably not. [YouTube]

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Inside Straight: Moving Laterally

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.

I spoke on a panel with two other in-house lawyers at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law a little while ago, and I learned two interesting things about lateral mobility. I’m not one to keep secrets (other than client confidences, of course), so I figure I’ll share.

The first item came from a question a law student asked of Steve Beard, who’s the general counsel of Heidrick & Struggles, a recruiting firm. The student asked when the best times are during your legal career to make a lateral move. I didn’t have a clue, and Beard works for a headhunter, so I figured it was time to listen.

Beard said that headhunters will call you most aggressively at three times in your life. First, you’ll get calls when you’re roughly a third-year associate. At that point, the market perceives that you’ve been trained in the fundamentals of being a lawyer. If someone is looking for a competent person still early in a legal career, that’s more or less the time.

You’ll then apparently have to endure a few years of relative silence. The phone won’t start to ring regularly again until you’re six or seven years out of law school. The market will then perceive you as having become a fully formed lawyer, capable of performing most of the tasks in your niche. Corporations figure that they can hire a sixth-year associate, train the candidate about a particular business, and fit the person easily into a corporate structure….

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Inside Straight: Loving Laterals

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.

Why are lateral partners like pigs?

No, no! I didn’t mean it that way!

I’m just remembering the line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm — “Four legs good, two legs bad!”

Thirty years ago, law firms took pride in having only homegrown partners: “Homegrown good, laterals bad!” There was a certain logic to that. If you’d worked with a lawyer from his first day out of law school or a clerkship and seen the lawyer progress in the law, then after six (or eight, or ten) years, you had a pretty good sense of that human being, both as a person and as a lawyer. When you made a partnership decision, you could be fairly comfortable that you were working from a decent base of knowledge.

Law firms knew this, and they flaunted it.

Places bragged that all (or nearly all) partners were homegrown. Firms tried to convince their lawyers to stay put. (In 1979, one former Cravath lawyer told me that the firm had a mantra, “You only leave Cravath once.” There was no going home again.) Firms didn’t hire laterals, and firms bragged about it: “Homegrown good, laterals bad!”

That was then; now is now. Based on where I sit, on the receiving end of many law firm marketing communications, times have changed….

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NALP 2010: New Litigators be Warned

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As you may have heard, I’m in Puerto Rico covering the 2010 NALP Annual Education Conference. There are so many panels and talks scheduled at precisely the same time that I’ve had to prioritize what will matter most to ATL readers. I’m tweeting about the conference, so if you want me to check something out, just let me know.

Sadly, I already decided to skip the “How to do a body shot when you’re 40″ break-out session. Instead, I went to “Recruiting in the Aftermath of the Recession.”

It was a fascinating talk. The panelists:

- Frank Kimball, Owner, Kimball Professional Management
- Helen Long, Director of Legal Recruiting, Ropes & Gray

I figured ATL readers would like to get a peek at this one because Kimball and Long were talking directly to firm recruiters about lateral hiring. I was not disappointed. During Kimball’s opening, he wondered if “some legal recruiter will say in 2013, ‘In order to gain the competitive advantage, let’s raise starting salaries to $185,000.’”

Meanwhile, Long predicted “The Lateral Hiring Crisis of 2013.” I don’t know who this 2013 person is, but I’d sure like to meet her.

But sadly, Kimball and Long predict that 2013′s potential bounty will fall on only a select few associates…

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Non-Sequiturs 11.24.09

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washingtonian issue.jpg* Washingtonian Magazine’s December issue is devoted to lawyers. The magazine enlisted Kash and Lat to write the cover story: “Why Lawyers Make So Much Money.” Staff writer Marisa Kashino, formerly of the National Law Journal, names D.C.’s 30 top lawyers and writes about what it takes to make partner these days. Check it out on newsstands now. [Washingtonian Magazine]

* One website is tracking lateral hiring in the legal world. [Legal Blog Watch]

* Black taco? [Gothamist]

* I’d make a joke about ATL favorite Paul Bergrin, but I’m afraid of him. [TPM Muckracker / Talking Points Memo]

* Maybe Justice Scalia can’t separate his intellectual life from his spiritual life, but I sure can. Of course, it helps that my priest doesn’t read Above the Law. [Slate]

* Criminal justice work at the NAACP is about to get a huge shot in the arm. We are all on notice. [People]

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Musical Chairs: O’Melveny Litigation Rainmaker Moving to Skadden

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Back in March, we reported that Skadden D.C. lost important members of its litigation team when Andrew Sandler and Benjamin Klubes left to start their own firm. Have those losses been replaced? Sources report Skadden is in the process of poaching a big name from O’Melveny & Myers. Apparently, John Beisner is leaving OMM for Skadden, and he’s taking Jessica Miller and Steve Harburg with him.

Beisner is based out of Washington, D.C. and is the chair of O’Melveny’s firmwide Class Actions, Mass Torts, and Aggregated Litigation Practice. A source says this about Mr. Beisner’s importance to O’Melveny:

Beisner’s cases are an unbelievable percentage of the entire litigation portfolio – this has been a huge fear now realized among associates/counsel.

After the jump, O’Melveny responds.

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