We’re surprised that more people in the legal profession don’t know about Kasowitz Benson. The firm is relatively young by Biglaw standards — founded in 1993, as a spin-off from Mayer Brown — but very successful. Much of this success is traceable to the leadership of Marc Kasowitz, who continues to run the firm with an iron hand (even though it’s twenty times larger today than at its founding; it started with 18 lawyers and is now up to 350).
Earlier this week, Nate Raymond of the New York Law Journal took a detailed look at the Kasowitz firm. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights….
We’ve gotten away from plowing through the latest Vault Rankings, but fear not. Your firm is coming up soon.
We’ve been through the top 30 firms. But now we’re getting into a group of firms that really utilized the cost-cutting measures of salary cuts and layoffs to weather the recession of 2009. Did these guys take a big prestige hit? Not really. Here’s the next batch of firms:
Earlier this month, we mentioned the possibility of a merger between Mayer Brown and the U.K.-headquartered firm of Simmons & Simmons. Today we learn that the merger won’t be happening. Legal Week reports:
Simmons & Simmons and Mayer Brown have called off merger talks, the two firms have confirmed in a joint press statement sent today (29 June). The statement confirmed that the two firms have held preliminary talks about a potential merger but have jointly decided not to go through with a combination.
So what are the reasons behind termination of the talks?
The financial services boutique of BuckleySandler, which launched just a little over a year ago, is expanding at a rapid clip. At the time of launch, it had about 50 attorneys (most of them from the firm formerly known as BuckleyKolar); now it’s approaching 100.
The two latest hires are noteworthy. From the BLT:
BuckleySandler is continuing its push to recruit top-level lateral partners. Today, the firm brought on David Krakoff, who previously co-chaired Mayer Brown’s white collar litigation practice, and Christopher Regan, also a former Mayer Brown partner.
First Hogan & Hartsonmerged with Lovells. Then Sonnenscheinmerged with Denton Wilde. Now comes news that Mayer Brown is looking for a transatlantic partner — again. (Mayer previously merged with London-based Rowe & Maw.)
Mayer Brown and Simmons & Simmons have resumed merger talks, with both firms’ management set to brief their respective partnerships next week on the merits of a potential union.
Will this go merger go through? You know what they say: one is an accident, two is a trend, three is a problem…
Congratulations to Mr. Chuck and his co-conspirators. It appears that their efforts to exert grassroots pressure on Mayer Brown, with the goal of getting the firm to inform them of the terms of their offers, have borne fruit.
As first mentioned in the comments on our post from yesterday regarding Winston & Strawn, incoming associates at Mayer were recently informed of their offer terms. Their time in limbo is now over.
When we reported on the silence of Mayer Brown regarding start dates for incoming associates, I specifically mentioned that Mayer Brown’s greatest gadfly — Mr. Chuck — had nothing to do with the story. Alas, that did not stop other people from assuming that Mr. Chuck was continuing his crusade to force Mayer Brown to say something about start dates.
Never one to shy away from the limelight, Mr. Chuck decided that the fact that he wasn’t a part of the story shouldn’t preclude him from making himself part of the story. Here’s the subject line of the email he sent to all Mayer Brown incoming associates last night:
Pls, This Was Not Initiated By Me (Today’s Mayer Brown Above-The-Law Fiasco))
No, Mr. Chuck didn’t start it, but damnit he’s going to end it make sure it continues…
Mayer Brown associates got a disturbing email this morning:
After careful consideration, the firm has decided to implement a job reduction in our US offices that will affect 28 associates and counsel and 47 staff members.
This can’t be good news for the firm’s incoming mutineers who are still waiting to hear back about their start dates. Though the memo, available in full after the jump, suggests that despite laying off these 75 people, things look bright there:
Despite this necessary action, we see encouraging signs for 2010. Thus far, the year is off to a positive start. Taking this step will enable us to maintain our financial strength and continue investing in our practices, our global platform and the professional development of our people – and thereby enhance our ability to provide clients with the high standard of legal work and service that defines Mayer Brown.
We hope the 75 people losing their jobs today were left off the distribution list, because that smarts…
We haven’t received the official memo, but sources report that Mayer Brown (New York) has matched the Cravath scale for 2009 bonuses. A tipster simply reports:
Mayer Brown New York announced cravath bonuses today
That’s good news for the New Yorkers at the firm.
But for our tipster, wow, way to yawn about free money. You’re like the nutcracker that gets pissed about getting nuts for Christmas. (Sorry, those commercials are really annoying here in NYC.)
Perhaps the reason for the tipster’s ennui is that Mayer Brown hasn’t said anything about 2010 salaries yet. Details after the jump.
Last week, we brought you the story of a former Mayer Brown associate who is suing the firm. We have some more back story on the plaintiff, Venus Yvette Springs, and she certainly sounds like a colorful person.
Before joining Mayer Brown, Springs worked at Cadwalader. According to our tipsters, she left CWT in an interesting fashion:
In her departure email from Cadwalader, she quoted all sorts of religious passages and talked about how she wanted to devote her life to pro bono.
Shortly thereafter, she wound up at Mayer Brown — one of the largest and most profitable law firms on the planet.
In her complaint against Mayer Brown, Springs alleged that the firm did not count her pro bono hours as it had promised. Of course, working in the real estate department at a major firm hardly sounds like a life “devoted to pro bono.” She wants to work with clients who can’t pay, but wants to make sure she gets a plump pay check anyway.
But maybe she needed to support her family. Unconfirmed reports say that her husband is Jules Springs. Jules Springs recently pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud. No word on whether or not Mr. Springs was an equal opportunity defrauder.
After the jump, Venus Springs compares her plight at Mayer Brown to the Holocaust. I wish I were making that up.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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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.
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We’re surprised that more people in the legal profession don’t know about Kasowitz Benson. The firm is relatively young by Biglaw standards — founded in 1993, as a spin-off from Mayer Brown — but very successful. Much of this success is traceable to the leadership of Marc Kasowitz, who continues to run the firm with an iron hand (even though it’s twenty times larger today than at its founding; it started with 18 lawyers and is now up to 350).
Continue reading “Kasowitz Benson’s Benovelent Dictatorship”
