Mitt Romney’s unfortunate comment at the most recent presidential debate, in which he boasted about receiving “binders full of women” while trying to build a diverse cabinet as Governor or Massachusetts, has become a wildly popular internet meme. If you’re looking for some good laughs, check out this Tumblr or this slideshow.
Happily, there’s a Biglaw connection to all of this. At which leading law firm can you assemble your own “binder full of women”?
The relatively new Boston office of Latham & Watkins seems to be going gangbusters. Even though it’s just a year old, it already boasts at least 24 lawyers. (For what it’s worth, they seem to be an unusually attractive bunch; I haven’t seen such a good-looking crop of Boston lawyers since the days of Ally McBeal.)
And their ranks are about to grow. Above the Law has learned that at least three litigation partners are leaving their current firm to join Latham’s Beantown outpost.
Who are they, and where are they coming from?
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: Litigators Leaving Goodwin Procter for Latham & Watkins”
Say what? One of Above the Law’s favorite subjects, celebrity lawyer and author Elizabeth Wurtzel, got attacked by a penguin?
Yes — in a manner of speaking. Penguin Group, the publishing mega-house, recently sued the bestselling and critically acclaimed authoress, seeking the return of her advance money. Other prominent authors have been sued as well.
How much does the publisher want back from La Wurtzel? What are her possible defenses? And who are some of the other high-profile defendants being pursued by the angry Penguin?
Continue reading “Lawsuit of the Day: Penguin v. Wurtzel (and Other Authors)”
You know it’s going to be a great day when you get to write about allegations of attorney misconduct that took place at a store that markets itself as a “purveyor of adult accoutrements, toys and lingerie.”
Do you remember Courtney King, the Ice Miller attorney who allegedly told the police to Google her before she was arrested? Well, today we’ve got another tale of a female attorney who allegedly attempted to pull rank during what seems to have been a rather drunken escapade in Chicago. Trust me, girl, the hangover is going to be that much worse for a prosecutor who has become the prosecutee.
Just because you were allegedly causing a ruckus in an adult store doesn’t mean that you have to go all BDSM on everyone, and start biting people when you’re asked to leave….
We’ve learned this before: sometimes lawyers and alcohol are like peas in a pod. But other times, lawyers and alcohol are like a box of dynamite and a book of matches. Get too close and everyone comes out looking a lot worse for the wear.
That’s the long and short of an incident that allegedly happened over the weekend in Atlanta, involving a Fulton County assistant district attorney.
The young litigatrix was arrested after allegedly fighting with cops outside a bar. Police had arrived to deal with her male friend, who had been asked to leave and reported for allegedly playing some unwanted grab-ass.
What a hot mess in Hotlanta. Time for ATL to pay a visit to ATL…
Continue reading “Lawyer of the Day: Literally Fighting for Her Right to Party”
Every day it seems the Apple v. Samsung trial couldn’t get any more exciting, but somehow every day, the court proceedings seem to ratchet up the ridiculousness. Samsung has rested its case, and commentators expect closing arguments to happen on Tuesday.
But the trial won’t close out quietly. The vitriol from all sides shows no signs of slowing down — least of all from Judge Lucy Koh, who has quite simply had it up to here with the tech giants’ bickering.
Yesterday she again tried to convince the parties to settle, without much success. Today, the judicial badass inquired as to whether or not counsel was on drugs. Good times!
Can you guess which side received the verbal beating?
As the Apple v. Samsung trial continues speeding along at the speed of, well, a first generation iPhone with low battery, we finally had some real developments in court yesterday, breaking up the recent monotony of expert witnesses and attorney v. attorney quibbling.
Apple rested its case, and Samsung managed to score a minor victory by getting a few of its phones dropped from the case. Seeing as there are more than a dozen phones at issue, it’s definitely a minor victory, but it’s better than nothing — especially since Samsung’s Quinn Emmanuel lawyers haven’t exactly been the popular kids in court so far…
So, the Apple v. Samsung trial is on break for one more day, but that doesn’t mean the digital drama is fading. The trial has become ubiquitous in the news. We’ve got a clip from Conan O’Brien mocking opining on the proceedings… or more specifically, Samsung. And we’ve got word that another Quinn Emanuel partner is in the hot seat.
UPDATE (5:09 PM): We have added Quinn Emanuel’s official response to the newest controversy at the end of this post. It’s a doozy.
In the meantime, one news outlet is heralding the case as the trial of the century, while another says the outcome is irrelevant anyway. So let’s take a step back and think about what it all means…
Continue reading “What’s Really at Stake In Apple v. Samsung?”
As we mentioned yesterday in Morning Docket, Judge Marcia Gail Cooke (S.D. Fla.) recently issued an omnibus order on multiple motions for sanctions in the high-profile case of Coquina Investments v. TD Bank. The plaintiff, Coquina Investments, moved for sanctions related to various alleged discovery violations.
At a contempt hearing held back in May, Judge Cooke heard testimony from employees of TD Bank and current and former lawyers from Greenberg Traurig, which previously represented the bank. She took the matter under advisement — but not before saying things like, “It is hard for me to describe in words the difficulty throughout this trial related to documents and discovery.”
Now Her Honor has ruled. What did she decide?
Continue reading “Benchslap of the Day: Judge Cooke Sanctions Greenberg Traurig and TD Bank”
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Last week, Elizabeth Wurtzel left Boies Schiller & Flexner. The bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Prozac Nation and other books, and a contributor to such publications as the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal, Wurtzel started working at the formidable firm in 2008. She was personally hired by legendary litigator David Boies, after she graduated from Yale Law School.
We heard some interesting rumors about what led to La Wurtzel’s departure from BSF. On Friday afternoon, one tipster breathlessly told us the following: “Wurtzel was fired from Boies Schiller after she demanded a window office (she had been working in an internal office similar to what staff use). The partners looked at her hours — which are so minimal that it’s amazing she is still employed at all — and gave her the boot. She is also still not licensed. She passed the bar — but what about character and fitness?”
(The potential character and fitness issues arise out of Wurtzel’s wild pre-law life. As the New York Times put it, Wurtzel is someone “whose attempted suicide, drug use, self-mutilation and indiscriminate sex have made her famous” — thanks to her turning these experiences into the books Prozac Nation and More, Now, Again. To learn more, read her nomination blurb in our contest for Yale Law’s most disgraceful graduate.)
The notion of Wurtzel getting fired over a dispute about office space struck me as a little… well, like Office Space. Did she demand a red Swingline stapler too?
I reached out to Liz Wurtzel and Boies Schiller to find out what actually went down. Here’s what I learned….
Continue reading “Elizabeth Wurtzel Bids Bye-Bye to Boies Schiller”
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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.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
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?
Keep reading »
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