* Elie previously declared that Debrahlee Lorenzana, the too hot for Citigroup plaintiff, was “pretty,” but not “‘blood has stopped flowing to my brain’ pretty.” This video is proof that Elie underestimated her. [Dealbreaker]
* Ugly people get fired on Wall Street too. How many of these 1,200 Morgan Stanley layoffs are in the legal department? [Gothamist]
* Are large-firm gender issues actually gender issues, or just law-firm issues? [Technolawyer]
* Meet Eve Tushnet — daughter of Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet, sister of Georgetown law professor Rebecca Tushnet — the prominent lesbian writer who’s opposed to same-sex marriage. [New York Times]
* An update on that amusing oral argument in the Supreme Court: the government prevailed, with SCOTUS upholding the Bureau of Prisons method for calculating prisoner good-time credits. [Sentencing Law and Policy]
* Blawg Review #267: Venkat Balasubramani is blogging about… blogging! And social media, too. [Spam Notes via Blawg Review]
We’ve had plenty of unnamed sources insisting on the heterosexuality of Solicitor General and Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. The most notable was the anonymous administration official who told the Washington Post that Kagan isn’t gay, in response to an online column by conservative blogger Ben Domenech claiming otherwise.
But there have been other such sources. I previously mentioned one, a Clinton Administration official involved in vetting Kagan when she was nominated to the D.C. Circuit, who insisted to me that she’s straight. Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic cited “[p]eople who know Kagan very well” in reporting that she’s not gay.
Now we have an identified individual going on the record to say that the Divine Miss K enjoys the big D. From Politico:
Elena Kagan is not a lesbian, one of her best friends told POLITICO Tuesday night, responding to persistent rumors and innuendo about the Supreme Court nominee’s personal life.
“I’ve known her for most of her adult life and I know she’s straight,” said Sarah Walzer, Kagan’s roommate in law school and a close friend since then. “She dated men when we were in law school, we talked about men — who in our class was cute, who she would like to date, all of those things. She definitely dated when she was in D.C. after law school, when she was in Chicago – and she just didn’t find the right person.”
A denial that the likely 112th justice of the Supreme Court is a devotee of Sappho? This is just… so… ridiculous. But fun! God bless America.
Shortly after Justice John Paul Stevens announced his upcoming retirement from the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Elena Kagan emerged as a leading candidate to fill his seat. The phrase “Team Kagan” started popping up all over the place (as we noted in our Twitter feed). Numerous users of Twitter and Facebook, as well as many bloggers and observers of the Court, proudly proclaimed themselves members of “Team Kagan.”
Over the weekend, Team Kagan may have gained another prominent member: former President Bill Clinton. In an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” Clinton said that he and his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are simply too old for SCOTUS. “I’d like to see [President Obama] put someone in there, late 40s, early 50s, on the court and someone with a lot of energy for the job,” Clinton said.
Hmm…. Of the three leading candidates for the Court — Elena Kagan, Judge Diane Wood (7th Cir.), and Judge Merrick Garland (D.C. Cir.) — only one, Kagan, fits the “late forties / early fifties” demographic. Kagan is 49, turning 50 later this month (on April 28). Wood is 59 — although she’s in great health, and looks like a million bucks. Garland is 57.
Then ex-president Clinton took another step towards openly endorsing Kagan. He urged Obama to consider someone from outside the judiciary. Again, of the three leading candidates, Kagan is the only non-judge. (Judges Wood and Garland were appointed to their judicial posts — by President Clinton, as a matter of fact — in 1995 and 1997, respectively.)
Going into this weekend, Solicitor General Kagan was already viewed as the frontrunner for JPS’s seat. We’ve said so here at Above the Law (here and here), and she’s also the nominee predicted by our readers (and by Fantasy SCOTUS players, too). Tom Goldstein, over at SCOTUSblog, has flat-out declared that “[o]n October 4, 2010, Elena Kagan will ask her first question as a Supreme Court justice.”
The apparent support of a former president can only increase Kagan’s lead. But what about the issue of her (real or perceived) sexual orientation?
Don’t be misled by the photo — this isn’t another post about Snooki. It’s about Constance McMillen (pictured), a lesbian high schooler who wanted to bring her girlfriend to the high school prom.
(Query from Elie: Is “lesbian high schooler” the politically correct way to say “girls’ hockey team”?)
Both sides are claiming victory from a federal judge’s ruling Tuesday on a Mississippi school board’s decision to cancel the prom rather than allow a lesbian student to attend with her girlfriend.
U.S. District Court Judge Glen Davidson denied 18-year-old senior Constance McMillen’s request to reinstate the prom, noting “the court cannot go into the business of planning and overseeing a prom.”
To paraphrase Justice Blackmun: From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of teenage sex.
So if Judge Davidson declined to “so order” a high school prom, how can McMillen claim victory?
A question started percolating around the ATL offices this morning (your ATL editors do work out of an office, at least since our moms kicked us out of the basement): Is Kathleen Sullivan the FIRST female named partner in the Am Law 100?
We figured that surely there was at least one other firm that had a female partner with her name in lights. But we’ve thought about it, conferred with the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, and googled around a little, and so far we’ve come up empty.
According to a spokesperson from Quinn Emanuel, Kathleen Sullivan is the Alpha female of the Am Law 100:
We believe she is the first female partner to be a named partner in the Am Law 100.
Is this possible? Were all of the top 100 firms named after old white men until today? All of them?
If you know of an exception, send us an email or put it in the comments. Please tell us that we didn’t have to wait until 2010 to cross this threshold. Regardless, we’re always happy to see a woman on top.
An ATL favorite, Quinn Emanuel, is making a change to its firm name. From the Quinn press release:
John B. Quinn announced today that the firm he and Eric Emanuel founded 25 years ago will change its name, and henceforth be known as Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP. The decision to add Kathleen M. Sullivan as a name partner was made in recognition of her extraordinary contributions to the firm and the profession. Sullivan is a partner in the firm’s New York City office and heads the firm’s national appellate practice.
Congratulations to former Stanford Law School dean Sullivan.
Of course, now that she’s a name partner, we are eagerly awaiting for the ATL community to honor Kathleen Sullivan with her own meme. John Quinn doesn’t use capital letters. Bill Urquhart … really likes capital letters. We can’t wait to see what Sullivan comes up with.
Read the full press release, plus an UPDATE with some observations from Lat, after the jump.
Let’s give credit where credit is due. The Human Rights Campaign has released its annual Best Places to Work list. It shows that law firms are great when it comes to creating a non-discriminatory environment for gays and lesbians. The ABA Journal reports:
In 2006, the first year law firms were included in the Human Rights Campaign survey, 12 got a perfect rating of 100 percent [on the Corporate Equality Index]. This year an unprecedented 88 law firms got perfect ratings, “eclipsing every other industry represented on the index,” according to a press release. The group evaluated 127 law firms in all; 124 of them were among the nation’s largest 200 law firms.
Our industry deserves a large pat on the back. In a time of massive layoffs, it is great that law firms are still committed to equality when it comes to sexual orientation.
Check out the list of firms that are good for gays here (PDF).
Let’s close out the week with one more post about everyone’s favorite summer associate scandal: the girl-on-girl kiss that got two summer associates fired from the Minneapolis law firm of Lindquist & Vennum.
Earlier today, we alluded to rumors of “additional lasciviousness” at Lindquist, and now it’s time to deliver. We wouldn’t want to be accused of being teases.
Now some of you may be getting lesbian kiss fatigue (although some of you may say, “no such thing!!!”). But having received this tip, we can’t sit on it, or we’d be accused of giving you only part of the story.
From a tipster (who provided additional identifying information to explain how he’s in a position to know this, which we’ve omitted to preserve his anonymity):
“[The Kiss] happened at a bar with a bunch of summer people after dinner at a partner’s house. [One of the summers] was probably just fired as a scapegoat, because that same night [another summer] made out with a married partner. I bet they didn’t fire that girl because they were afraid of employment discrimination suits.”
Well! All this scandalous talk — faux-lesbian kisses, orgiastic firm retreats — is making us blush.
We retract any and all prior remarks suggesting the folks at Lindquist are prudes and squares. To the contrary, it sounds like the place is so buck wild that lesbian lip-action is on the mild side of the spectrum. We are — involuntarily, mind you — imagining Nancy Vollertsen dancing on a table.
Okay, this scandal may have run its course; all good things come to an end. But we remain open to corrections, in case we’ve gotten anything wrong. Feel free to send any info our way, by email (subject line: “Lindquist and Vennum Summer Associate Scandal”). Thanks.
When we recently lamented the lack of summer associate scandals, in the New York Observer, did we speak too soon? Although we may be in the home stretch, law firm summer associate programs are not yet over — and neither, thankfully, are the salacious tales they generate.
Here’s a story we’ve known about for a while — it happened late last week — which has already surfaced elsewhere on the web. We’ve delayed on reporting about it because we wanted to get more confirmation and give the parties involved a chance to comment.
We reached out to numerous representatives of the firm — managing partner Daryle Uphoff, chief marketing officer Greg Wolsky, recruiting director Lisanne Weisz, diversity coordinator Nancy Vollertsen — by phone and by email, yesterday and today. We also contacted the two summers involved, via Facebook message. Nobody has gotten back to us, despite ample time to do so. We’ll have to push ahead without them.
Since we’ve heard the story from multiple sources, all offering generally consistent accounts, we are fairly confident in its accuracy. But if you have any corrections or additions to offer, please email us (subject line: “Lindquist and Vennum Summer Associate Scandal”).
Here are some of the versions we heard (many tipsters sent it in):
1. Word through the grapevine is that two female summer associates at Minneapolis firm Lindquist & Vennum were fired recently for getting drunk at a firm event and making out with each other.
2. I’m an associate at a large Minneapolis firm, and word is that two female summer associates at Lindquist & Vennum, another of the large firms in town, got drunk at a summer associate event and were making out with each other. They were fired on Friday.
3. [Two summers at] Lindquist & Vennum were fired over the weekend. Drinking was involved; however, the firm supplied it to them during a boat cruise in 90+ degree weather. Can you get this posted? I want more information.
4. I am a summer associate at a Minneapolis law firm. I can tell that you that two female Lindquist and Vennum summer associates were recently fired (within the last week). I could not tell you for sure why they were fired, but the rumor is that they were drunk at some sort of firm social event (one that had partners present), and started to make out with each other.
And they got fired for this? We’re surprised the old-white-male partners didn’t cheer them on.
Update / Correction: According to reports received after this post was published, whether the SAs were “making out” or merely kissing on the lips is unclear. Furthermore, the event in question was not the boat cruise, but a post-dinner gathering at a bar. For an update post containing additional information and corrections, see here.
One tipster pointed us to some corroborating evidence:
Lindquist has removed all photos/references of the two from its summer associate section on its website.
This is true. We verified it ourselves, by comparing the current summer associate page, which lists eight summers, to an older version, which lists ten summers. (But please do not post in the comments any links to archived or cached versions of the page.)
You can read more, if you want to — if you don’t, then don’t — after the jump.
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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