Law firms

ATL March Madness: The Coolest Law Firm!

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Every year, in honor of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament (Pervis Ellison is not walking through that door, Louisville fans), Above the Law runs a law-related bracket. Law firms or schools advance based on the outcome of reader polls.

Last year was a particularly fun tournament. We crowned the Douchiest Law School in all the land. Duke won (big surprise), but even now people at UVA are still pissed and effectively demanding that we redo the poll to take into account their recent douchtastic behavior.

But there is a more important bracket that needs a second look. Back in 2008, we asked you to name the Coolest Law Firm. Guess who won.

In 2008, Above the Law readers declared Latham & Watkins to be the “coolest” law firm in the country. Yes, that Latham.

That was three years ago. Lehman was still a respected investment bank back then. Does anybody want to try this again? Let’s get to it…

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U.S. News Launches First Official Law Firm Rankings

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We told you this day would come. Way back in July 2009, we reported that the rankings behemoth, U.S. News & World Report, would soon be ranking law firms. In February 2010, we reported that the American Bar Association — so toothless in the face of U.S. News’s law school rankings — was worried about how this new U.S. News product would affect the profession.

Well, for better or for worse, the day has finally arrived. As of midnight (give or take a few minutes), U.S. News went live with rankings of 8,782 firms across 81 different practice areas. From their press release:

These inaugural rankings, which are presented in tiers both nationally and by metropolitan area or by state, showcase 8,782 different law firms ranked in one or more of 81 major practice areas. Full data is available online for the law firms that received rankings, from the largest firms in the country to hundreds of one-person and two-person law firms, providing a comprehensive view of the U.S. legal profession that is unprecedented both in the range of firms represented and in the range of qualitative and quantitative data used to develop the rankings.

It’s like Christmas morning — if only Santa were a jolly red prestige whore. Let’s get to it…

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Mentoring: Just Another Thing the Baby Boomers Don’t Do Well

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As the Baby Boomers continue to age, we’ve been documenting their reluctance to gracefully leave the Biglaw stage. One would think that all these lingering old people would at least be a good mentoring resource for the younger generation. Kash suggested as much when we debated the topic earlier this year.

But an article up on American Lawyer this morning suggests that aging Americans don’t view “mentoring” the young as part of their job description. A former Kirkland & Ellis partner, Steven Harper, writes about the mentoring gap in Biglaw. His starting point is an interesting article from former Reagan speechwriter, Peggy Noonan:

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird,” Peggy Noonan, writing recently in The Wall Street Journal, hit on an important truth that law firm leaders should heed. In lamenting what she called the national need for “adult supervision,” Noonan wrote, “there’s kind of an emerging mentoring gap going on in America right now … a generalized absence of the wise old politician/lawyer/leader/editor who helps the young along, who teaches them the ropes and ways and traditions of a craft.”

Dear Baby Boomers, please look to your own house before you criticize Gen Y for its Twitter-aided navel gazing…

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