Partner Issues

Founding Partner Warns: ‘Get Your Ass To Work’

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Does this look like 'lunch' to you?

Did you show up to work on time this morning? Did you? You better show up to work on time, every day, or else Gary K. Shipman will come and get you.

Don’t know who Gary Shipman is? Well, you are about to. He has his own small law firm in North Carolina, and he is goddamn tired of people showing up to work late. And yeah, 9:00 a.m. is late, according to Shipman. Hey, you don’t get highlighted in the Wilmington Star News for your “aggressive nature” and “work ethic” without starting to bust heads at 8:30.

I guess when you have your own firm, you can send around any email you want — even slightly nonsensical emails about when “lunch hour” is supposed to start…

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Musical Chairs: A Cahill Gordon Partner’s Mysterious Departure

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Recent news about Cahill Gordon has been very positive. In December, the firm announced year-end bonuses that made Cravth’s widely-adopted year-end bonus scale look paltry by comparison. Cahill can afford to be generous: last month, Am Law reported that the firm enjoyed record profits and revenue in 2010, with profits per partner last year of $3.23 million.

(This has caused some to wonder whether Cahill will be paying spring bonuses, like Cravath and many other firms. In light of the spring bonus phenomenon, how does Cahill compensation compare to Cravath et al.? One Cahill source suggests Cahill is still ahead, but we’d love to see the numbers run by someone who knows the full Cahill scale. Feel free to send us an email, or comment on this post.)

The most recent news out of Cahill, though, is strange rather than glowing. Last week, a prominent partner was escorted out of the building by security and removed from the Cahill website. A firm-wide email then went out informing all staff that he was no longer a member of the partnership. (We haven’t seen this email, but feel free to send our way.)

So who’s the Cahill Gordon partner in question?

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Latham Officially Launches Its Boston Office

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It’s about time. We’ve been writing about the new Boston office of Latham & Watkins for weeks now (here and here), revealing a number of their top lateral hires.

On Wednesday, Latham made its official announcement — and confirmed the accuracy of our prior reporting. All of the partners we previously named as Latham-bound, taken from such top firms as WilmerHale, Proskauer Rose, and Bingham McCutchen, are mentioned.

Let’s take a closer look at the L&W crew, and also learn about additional attorneys who are joining up (including associates)….

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Ropes & Gray Sued for Age and Sex Discrimination By Former Partner

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On Tuesday, Ropes & Gray was sued in Manhattan federal court by a former partner, Patricia A. Martone. Martone’s lawsuit claims age discrimination, sex discrimination, retaliation, and interference with protected retirement benefits in violation of ERISA (the basis for federal jurisdiction in the S.D.N.Y.).

As you might expect from an ex-Ropes partner, Martone has some high-powered counsel: Anne Vladeck, one of New York’s top labor and employment lawyers, widely regarded as the queen of employment discrimination law. Vladeck famously (and successfully) represented Anucha Browne Sanders in her sexual harassment lawsuit against Isiah Thomas and the Knicks.

Patricia Martone is a veteran intellectual-property litigatrix, a specialist in patent litigation, with almost 40 years of practice under her belt. She made partner at Fish & Neave, the well-known patent law firm, in 1983, and then became a Ropes partner in 2005, when Ropes absorbed Fish. She’s now a partner at Morrison & Foerster, which she joined in October 2010.

Why did she leave Ropes? Let’s have a look at Patricia Martone, and her lawsuit….

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Inside Straight: In Praise Of Mediocrity!

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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.

All this perfection crap.

One reader wrote to me to complain. Surely, he said, there’s room in the world for a law firm that does work that’s “good enough for the occasion at a fair price.” Isn’t perfectionism the enemy of the reasonable bill?

That reader is undeniably correct.

Small matters, whether transactional or litigation, may not bear the freight of comprehensive factual or legal research. And lawyers who don’t recognize this — whether they work in-house or at firms — won’t last very long. For many matters, “good enough” is good enough.

But I’m not going to spend much time fretting about this, for three reasons.

First, there’s plenty of mediocrity in the world. Although it may engender outrage to type these words, the average lawyer is . . . well . . . average. You don’t have to search very far to find people who produce average work….

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Musical Chairs: Leading Litigatrix Leaves Akin for Skadden

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Michele Roberts

Although I now live in New York, I lived in D.C. for several years before moving back to NYC. And while I was in Washington, few trial lawyers were more renowned around town than Michele Roberts. A legendary litigatrix celebrated for her skill in the courtroom, Roberts was at Akin Gump — home to other top talent, such as John Dowd, now defending Raj Rajaratnam — from 2004 until recently.

Very recently. Yesterday the news broke that Roberts was leaving Akin Gump and joining global mega-firm Skadden. Skadden trumpeted the news in a press release, noting that Roberts “is widely recognized as one of the nation’s premier trial lawyers,” with over 100 jury trials under her belt.

Roberts has a somewhat unusual background for a Biglaw litigation partner. Let’s learn more about her….

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More Proof That Lawyers Will Fight Over Anything

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Sometimes you just have to whip it out and wait for somebody to bring over a ruler. That’s just a part of life.

But some lawyers seem to sit around all day just waiting for an opportunity to drop drawers and call for the chains.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this guy from SNR Denton. He was reading the Middle East Practice Area ABA listserv and came across an innocent question and follow-up discussion. Instead of answering the question or providing any helpful information whatsoever, he shot off a quick little response about his firm’s own magnificence.

And to make matters worse (and hilarious), it turns out he didn’t even know what he was talking about in the first place…

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Inside Straight: ‘How To Be A Crappy Partner’

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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 need your help here.

I occasionally give “book talks” about my silly little ditty, The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law. During those talks, I explain that my book is written in the voice of a jaded old coot who rants at young lawyers about how to do their jobs. I explain that I would have liked to include in the book a chapter called, “How To Be A Crappy Partner.” That chapter would have been written in the voice of a young lawyer ranting at an older one about the ways the old guy messes up his job. I didn’t include that chapter because it would have required changing the authorial voice from an old coot to a young one, and I couldn’t figure out how to execute the switch.

(Why are there so many great words for nasty old men, but none for nasty young ones? We have “curmudgeon,” “coot,” “crank,” “grouch,” and probably a bunch of others for the old guy. But there are so few (that you can type in public) for the younger version of that character. I propose to add “snark” to the lexicon, meaning a nasty young coot.)

If I’d been able to include the missing chapter, I would have included many examples of how to be a crappy partner. For example….

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Associate Bonus Watch: Seyfarth Shaw

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This week, Seyfarth Shaw announced the arrival of two construction litigators from Howrey, David Mancini and James Newland Jr. The two partners have been on the Seyfarth website for a while, as we noted last week, but Seyfarth made it official on Monday with a press release.

The other big news this week at Seyfarth: payment of bonuses. Alas, this news isn’t being as warmly received as the Howrey partners.

“Very individualized and below market as usual,” said one source. “No mention of spring bonuses either.”

A second tipster was even more angry….

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How Much Money Do You Need To Feel Rich? Let’s Start With $7.5 Million.

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And now is the time on Above the Law where Elie gets to say “I told you so.”

About five months ago, I mentioned on this site that making $250,000 a year does not make you rich. People got angry with me for saying that. In the comments and around the internet. Apparently stating an obvious fact in a society that is dealing with a widening gulf between the haves and have-nots is controversial.

But at least I confined my financial musings to people in the six-figure range. A new report from Fidelity Investments says that people who are sitting on seven figures of wealth don’t feel rich until they have about $7.5 million.

[Throat-clearing noise.]

I TOLD YOU SO….

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