Prestige
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ATL Career Center Survey, Biglaw, Career Center, Career Files, Law Schools, Law Students, Lawyers, Rankings, U.S. News, Vault rankings
From the ATL Insider Survey: Overlooked Firms and Schools
Wherein we give some credit to overlooked law firms and law schools based on positive responses to the ATL Insider Survey. -
Biglaw, Law Schools, Rankings, U.S. News, Vault rankings
Against Prestige
Is the concept of "prestige" ruining the legal profession? - Sponsored
How Transactional Lawyers Can Better Serve (And Maintain) Their Clients
Sign up and join us for our CLE webinar. From importing your checklist to delivering the closing book, you can bolster client service throughout the… -
Alston & Bird, Biglaw, Blogging, Bloomberg, David Boies, Health Care / Medicine, Law Schools, Mergers and Acquisitions, Money, Non-Sequiturs, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, SCOTUS, Securities and Exchange Commission, Securities Law, Supreme Court, Ted Olson
Non-Sequiturs: 11.26.12
* As soon as Mary Schapiro announced she was stepping down as chairwoman of the SEC, Obama nominated another woman to take her place. Congrats to SEC Commissioner Elisse Walter! [WSJ Law Blog] * In other breaking news that no one will care about now that bonus season is upon us, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg swapped out her neck doily for a blingy necklace from Glamour. [Josh Blackman's Blog] * You know what the ancient Romans would’ve hated more than watching the fall of the Roman empire? The Citizens United decision. Cato, Cicero, and Julius Caesar wouldn’t have been impressed with this. [Slate] * Why go to law school if you’re already doing well financially? Perhaps you’re just another prestige hunter. If you are, then all the better for you, because that seems to be what all of the law schools are selling these days. [Inside the Law School Scam] * Don’t cry for Argentina: they may be in the middle of a billion-dollar bond dispute, but the uber-prestigious lawyers on either side of the case (Boies; Olson) are enough to make you forget about their troubles. [Reuters] * A Biglaw attorney from Alston & Bird with a rare sleep disorder confronts Big Pharma and… doesn’t win. At least not yet. But on the bright side, she’s not sleeping for 18 hours anymore. [The Last Word on Nothing] * We’re honored to announce that Above the Law was named as one of the ten law blogs in the ABA Journal’s inaugural Blawg 100 Hall of Fame. Please click here if you’d like to help us win again this year. [ABA Journal] * After the jump, Bloomberg Law’s Lee Pacchia speaks with a Bill Lawlor, a Dechert partner, who claims that “hope springs eternal for M&A attorneys.” Will the mergers and acquisitions market begin to boom once again?
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Clarence Thomas, Clerkships, Law Schools, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Supreme Court Clerks, U.S. News
When It Comes to Hiring SCOTUS Clerks, Clarence Thomas Doesn't Care About the U.S. News Rankings
Let’s check out some thoughts from Justice Clarence Thomas on clerkship hiring, Supreme Court decisions, and more... -
Biglaw, Dewey & LeBoeuf, Munger Tolles & Olson, Rankings, Vault rankings, Williams & Connolly
The Best Law Firms To Work For (2013)
Which law firms made the latest list of best law firms to work for? -
Biglaw, Rankings, Vault rankings
2013 Vault Law Firm Rankings: Prestige Can't Buy You Money
Paying top dollar is no longer necessary to achieve "prestige" in the Vault rankings... -
Job Searches, Law Schools, Rankings, Student Loans, U.S. News, Unemployment
Open Thread: 2013 U.S. News Law School Rankings (The Second Tier)
The latest U.S. News law school rankings are out, and you know what that means. It’s time to allow students and alumni to weigh in on their law school and their brand new rank. -
Law Schools, Media and Journalism, Rankings, U.S. News
The U.S. News Law School Rankings Are Out!
The latest U.S. News & World Report law school rankings are out - and there's a surprising amount of movement among the top schools. Who are this year's winners and losers? - Sponsored
Why Do AI And Legal Professionals Make The Perfect Partnership?
For many legal departments, generative AI is the technology they’ve been waiting for. -
Biglaw, Job Searches, Law Schools, Partner Issues
Are Graduates of Elite Law Schools 'Too Good' for Biglaw?
Are graduates of elite law schools "too good" for Biglaw? Interestingly enough, they tend not to stick around large law firms. Grads of many lower-ranked schools make partner at higher rates than grads of certain top law schools. -
Biglaw, Rankings
Apparently They Don't Brand for Prestige
We like to talk a lot about prestige around here, but at Cravath, associates are learning that you can't spend "prestige points" on your student debt repayments. Branding is a little easier to take to the bank. It's something that firm managers and leaders work hard to develop and maintain that can directly lead to business opportunities. As we mentioned in yesterday's Morning Docket, Am Law Daily published an Acritas report on firm branding. The results will surprise the prestige conscious among you.... -
Alex Kozinski, Clerkships, Federal Government, Federal Judges, Feeder Judges, Job Searches, New York Times, Richard Posner
The Price of Prestige: Clerkship Application Chaos
Over the weekend, we mentioned a very interesting New York Times article on the chaotic state of the clerkship application process, and said we'd have more to say about it later. Well, now is later, quite a bit later -- so let's discuss.... -
Biglaw, Clerkships, Federal Judges, In-House Counsel, John Roberts, Law Professors, Law Schools
Inside Straight: How The Legal System Brands The Beef
Many prominent people have raised their voices about the increasing irrelevance of academic writing to practicing lawyers and judges. Yet, despite railing at the academy, those judges -- and law firms, and sophisticated purchasers of legal services -- all rely on the academics to identify talented lawyers. Law schools brand the beef, and purchasers buy based on the brand. Why is that process natural and appropriate? -
Biglaw, Rankings, Vault rankings, Williams & Connolly
The 2012 Vault Rankings: Proof Of Short Memories
On February 27, 2009, Latham & Watkins laid off 440 associates and staff. These official layoffs came after months of quietly and stealthily laying off employees. That year, Latham fell from #7 to #17 on the Vault 100 list of the most prestigious law firms. It was one of the biggest single year drops ever […]
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AI’s Impact On Law Firms Of Every Size
How solo lawyers, midsize firms, and global large law firms have an opportunity to adjust the way they work.
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Law Firms Now Have A Choice In Their Document Comparison Software
Six months on since its launch, over 200 firms worldwide are now using Draftable Legal for accurate and reliable document comparison, including UK Top 50…
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Why Do AI And Legal Professionals Make The Perfect Partnership?
For many legal departments, generative AI is the technology they’ve been waiting for.
Sponsored
Sponsored
Generative AI In Legal Work — What’s Fact And What’s Fiction?
Zach Warren from the Thomson Reuters Institute discusses the potential and the pitfalls.
Sponsored
How Transactional Lawyers Can Better Serve (And Maintain) Their Clients
Sign up and join us for our CLE webinar. From importing your checklist to delivering the closing book, you can bolster client service throughout the…
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Courtship Connection, Romance and Dating
Courtship Connection: Is Prestige an Aphrodisiac?
The Courtship Connection has been on hiatus since the infamous night of the melon-baller. We are back with a vengeance now. We’re doing a last sweep of D.C.’s single lawyers and then moving on to a new town. We’ll let you vote on which lucky city and its lawyers get to be subjected to my […] -
Biglaw, Law School Deans, Money, Quote of the Day
Quote of the Day: Wall of Shame, or Wall of Virtuous Restraint?
This is what you see in the law firm world. Law firms try to keep up with Cravath, but it might not be financially prudent. You try to keep up with Cravath, and then two or three years later you go bankrupt. — Dean Frank H. Wu of UC Hastings Law, discussing the legal profession’s […] -
Biglaw, Lawyer Advertising
Is Cravath Getting Soft?
Consider the evidence, from the website of Cravath. We’re guessing this change was made a while ago, perhaps when Cravath overhauled its home page last June, but we didn’t notice it until a Cravath alum pointed it out to us just now. Let’s take a look…. -
Law Schools, Rankings, U.S. News
Open Thread: 2012 U.S. New Law School Rankings (1 - 6)
Drums please. The U.S. News law school rankings for 2012 are here, y’all. Time to pay tribute to that which is more important to legal educators in this country than anything else. As is customary here at Above the Law, we will be posting a series of open threads, running through at least the top […] -
Law Schools, Media and Journalism, Rankings, U.S. News
The 2012 U.S. News Law School Rankings Are Out!
Santa Claus — aka Bob Morse, rankings czar at U.S. News & World Report — is letting us open our presents early (or at least before midnight). The U.S. News law school rankings were supposed to come out on Tuesday, March 15, but Morse and his colleagues at U.S. News kindly posted them sometime around […] -
Law Schools, Media and Journalism, Rankings, U.S. News
The U.S. News Top 10 Law Schools
The U.S. News law school rankings come out tomorrow, Tuesday, March 15. In the meantime, however, U.S. News has given us a little teaser. They’ve posted the top 10 law schools, over on their website. Let’s take a look, shall we? -
Associate Bonus Watch 2010, Biglaw, Bonuses, Money, Vault rankings
Spring Bonus Mania: Freshfields, Cadwalader.... Where Will It End? Could Your Firm Be Next?
One of my favorite law firm names is Freshfields — Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, to be precise, but I prefer Freshfields. It makes me think of rolling green hills, crisp laundered linens, or a dairy, producing the creamiest milk in all the land. As it turns out, Freshfields is a law firm — a top international […]