Proskauer Rose

Dewey Have Anyone Left To Turn Out the Lights?
(Plus an actual lawsuit, a possible lawsuit, and a partner’s theory of blame.)

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That’s the question the WSJ Law Blog just asked about the [pick your favorite adjective: beleaguered / collapsing / flailing / troubled] law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf. Today brings big, bad news for Dewey: bankruptcy superstar Martin Bienenstock is taking his practice to Proskauer Rose. He’s moving with five other partners — Philip Abelson, Irena Goldstein, Timothy Karcher, Michael Kessler, Judy Liu — and nine associates.

Dewey’s loss is Proskauer’s gain. “He is absolutely the crown jewel over there, a fantastic lawyer who will be a great partner,” a current Proskauer partner told us. “This is going to vault us into the company of Kirkland and Weil, giving us one of the top bankruptcy practices in the country. We are really thrilled.”

As you may recall, Bienenstock was a member of the five-person Office of the Chairman at Dewey. As my colleague Staci Zaretsky wondered earlier today, “Dewey seriously have one chairman again?” With Bienenstock to Proskauer, Jeffrey Kessler to Winston & Strawn, Richard Shutran to O’Melveny & Myers, and Steve Davis off to who knows where, only Charles Landgraf remains in the chairman’s office. (Note that Landgraf’s bio is still on the Dewey website.)

Bienenstock’s departure doesn’t mark the end of Dewey’s difficulties. Let’s review the latest news….

Of course we’ve added UPDATES, after the jump.

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(Plus an actual lawsuit, a possible lawsuit, and a partner’s theory of blame.)”

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Morning Docket: 03.21.12

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* Here’s a reason why Proskauer Rose and Chadbourne & Parke might skip out on spring bonuses this year: millions of dollars worth of blowback from Allen Stanford’s Ponzi scheme. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* And speaking of spring bonuses, a lot of people noticed that Sullivan & Cromwell seems to have misled associates. “Just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t.” Yeah, right. [Am Law Daily]

* Next up in the war on women: a senator from Idaho thinks that women are such strumpets that they might be lying their way into abortions by claiming rape. Because that’s not incredibly insensitive. [Washington Post]

* Apparently George Zimmerman, the man accused of fatally shooting a boy armed with a pack of Skittles, wanted to become a police officer. Looks like it’s time to kiss that dream goodbye. [Los Angeles Times]

* Give me your lunch money, kid! Teachers aren’t supposed to be bullying students, but that’s what one Baltimore mother is alleging in a $200K lawsuit against the city’s school board. [New York Daily News]

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Morning Docket: 01.19.12

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* Occupy Wall Street supporters, please take note: this is how you stage a protest. Yesterday’s internet blackout definitely made lawmakers think twice. SOPA bill backers dropped like flies. [New York Times]

* The American Bar Association may be taking baby steps toward improving the way law schools report graduate employment and salary statistics, but progress is progress. [National Law Journal]

* A judge has nixed Duncan Law’s request for injunctive relief against the ABA. Because really, what’s the harm in a memo about a lack of accreditation when you never had it in the first place? [ABA Journal]

* Proskauer Rose is down to get dirty with Edwards Wildman. Gregory Rasin, a labor and employment partner, will be representing the firm in its love triangle lawsuit. [Am Law Daily]

* New Jersey needs nugs now! A civil lawsuit against the Garden State’s health department is in the works due to an alleged delay in implementing its medical marijuana program. [Star-Ledger]

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Keeping Up With the Cravathians: The Ten Most Generous (or Foolish?) Law Firms

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This morning’s news that Boies Schiller is making a mockery of the Cravath bonus scale simply reinforces the prevailing view (pace David Lat) around here that the 2011 Cravath bonus scale is fundamentally unfair.

Agreeing on this point is former Kirkland & Ellis partner Steven Harper (whose apparent pro-associate stance may make him a sort of Biglaw apostate). As Harper points out, “equity partner profit trees have resumed their growth to the sky. As the economy struggled, Cravath’s average partner profits increased to $2.7 million in 2009 and to $3.17 million in 2010 … That’s not ‘treading water.’ It’s returning to 2007 profit levels — the height of ‘amazing’ boom years that most observers had declared gone forever. Watch for 2011 profits to be even higher.”

And yet associate bonuses remain stagnant at 2009 levels. Furthermore, as ATL commenter “The Cravath Cut” is so fond of noting, when viewed as a percentage of profits, bonuses appear especially measly, at least from the associate p.o.v. (The current $7,500 market rate for first-years is just 0.23% of Cravath’s profits per partner. Back in 2007, first-year bonuses equalled 1.36%.) Despite these numbers, if history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone Biglaw’s rank and file will follow Cravath’s lead.

Cravath is among the most profitable firms in the world. We thought it would be interesting to see what the implications of matching Cravath are for those firms with much lower profit margins. Which firms’ partners willingly take the biggest hit by keeping up? Are these firms arguably more “generous”? After the jump, check out those firms that pay the largest percentage of PPP in bonuses.

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Associate Bonus Watch: Proskauer Matches

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Let’s keep the bonus news rolling. On Friday, our sources reported that Proskauer Rose matched the Cravath 2011 bonus scale. We now have the official firm memo.

Apparently this news is likely to anger many Proskauer associates. Given that fact, I’m not exactly sure why the firm was eager to be one of the early adopters of Cravath’s bonus scale….

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Career Center Survey Results: Top Partners to Work For – Smaller Legal Markets (Part 1)

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After making our way across the country, which included stops in New York, Washington, D.C., and California, the final leg of this Career Center series on the Top Partners to Work For will cover some of the smaller legal markets.

Today we head back to the east coast to focus on Boston’s best Biglaw partners who work at the following top firms: Foley Hoag, Proskauer Rose, Skadden, Mintz Levin, Cooley, Greenberg Traurig, and Ropes & Gray.

Let’s see which partners made the cut….

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What’s Going on at McDermott Will & Emery?

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Last week, the American Lawyer shined a spotlight on extensive partner departures from McDermott Will & Emery. According to Brian Baxter of Am Law Daily, a whopping 38 partners have left MWE in 2011 so far.

Some of these defections have come in clumps. Most notably, as we mentioned back in January, nine partners left McDermott for Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, as part of CWT’s raid on MWE’s energy law practice.

But that explains just a quarter of the year-to-date partner departures from McDermott. Let’s look at some of the others, explore possible implications for the firm, and discuss what might be motivating the movement toward the exits….

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Morning Docket: 10.10.11

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Anwar al-Awlaki

Ed. note: In honor of Columbus Day (and Canadian Thanksgiving), we’ll be on a reduced publication schedule today. We’ll be back in full force tomorrow.

* If you are curious about that legal memo justifying the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, Charlie Savage describes its contents in this very interesting NYT piece. [New York Times]

* Ten years after the start of the anthrax attacks, some observers are asking whether Bruce Ivins, the Army microbiologist blamed for the attacks by the FBI, , was wrongly accused. [How Appealing]

Paul Bergrin

* Jury selection gets underway this week in the trial of notorious New Jersey lawyer Paul Bergrin (who’s being represented by a famous defense lawyer). [Newark Star-Ledger via WSJ Law Blog]

* Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor turned U.S. Senate candidate, is making “a proper case for liberalism,” according to E.J. Dionne Jr. [Washington Post]

* Andrew Cohen’s review of Justice John Paul Stevens’s new book, Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir (affiliate link). [The Atlantic]

* In case you missed it last week, here is Proskauer’s response to the discrimination lawsuit filed against it by its former CFO, Elly Rosenthal. [Am Law Daily]

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Morning Docket: 09.15.11

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Life's a Blitsch, and then you die.

* “If you love me you’ll pass this bill.” Sorry, Obama, but even the Democrats are busy washing their hair on this one. How about we pass a resolution like this instead? I’d totally love Obama for that. [New York Times]

* What’s with town clerks in New York and gay marriage licenses? If you refuse to do your job, you shouldn’t be forced to resign, you should be fired. Proskauer’s nicer than me, though. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Gary Giordano, the man accused of killing his swinging gal pal in Aruba, has hired a new attorney. Apparently Jose Baez is now the go-to guy for defendants with shady pasts and even shadier alibis. [Daily Mail]

* “Leicester, you are not the father!” If only this had happened on an episode of Maury. Lawyer Leicester Stovell’s paternity suit against LeBron James has been dismissed. [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]

* The Blitsch is back, and she’s got Gloria Allred on her side to file a motion to dismiss. Why? Because all women should have the right to embarrass ex-lawyerly lovers online. [New York Post]

* A case of puff puff politics? You know what, if they gave out free pot before every major election, I bet a lot more people would register to vote. [CNN]

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Summer Associate Offer Rates: Another Update
(Now we’d like to hear about the no-offering….)

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Welcome to our latest round-up of summer associate offer rate news. This post contains the latest list of law firms and offices with 100 percent offer rates. In future posts, we’re going to shift gears and focus on firms with lower-than-average offer rates.

An offer rate that’s lower than 100 percent is not necessarily newsworthy. The fall recruiting process by which summer associates are selected isn’t perfect. Sometimes candidates look great on paper and do well during interviews, but then do something during the summer — turning in disappointing work product, getting drunk and acting inappropriately — that causes them to get no-offered. And sometimes people get no-offered for reasons that aren’t their fault — office politics, discrimination. Stuff happens.

We’re not expecting 100 percent offer rates all around. At the same time, there is such a thing as an unusually low offer rate. If you know of an office with an unusually low offer rate — which we will arbitrarily define here as something under 66 percent, or two-thirds — please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Offer Rate”).

Now, on to the updated list of firms and offices with 100 percent offer rates….

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(Now we’d like to hear about the no-offering….)“

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