The year is quickly drawing to a close, but we have unfinished business to conduct here at Above the Law. Come on, people, we still have to crown our Lawyer of the Year for 2012.
Thank you to everyone who responded to our call for nominations, in the comments or via email. We’ve narrowed down the nominees to a field of nine (although you’ll see only eight options in the poll because one is a joint nomination). As in past years, the contenders run the gamut from distinguished to despicable.
The year 2012 draws to a close under decidedly moribund circumstances. It’s hard to feel a lot of holiday cheer when kids are shot to death at school and the response from nearly half the country is “I better buy some more guns.”
Still, time waits for no one, and as we approach the end of the year, “time” is always on the minds of Biglaw lawyers. How much time did you bill, and how much of that billed time can you collect? The billable hour retains its potency because it is an objective, even if imperfect, measure of a lawyer’s yearly productivity. And the annual reckoning is at hand.
With just two weeks left in the year 2012, we thought that now would be a good time to ask you, our loyal readers, to submit your nominations for Above the Law’s sixth annual LAWYER OF THE YEAR competition.
We’ll be running the show just like we’ve done it in the past: you submit your nominees (in the comments to this post), we’ll review them and pick a slate of finalists, and then you’ll vote on them in a reader poll — and hopefully your efforts won’t be mooted by the coming Mayan Apocalypse.
The winner will receive the glorious and honorific title of Above the Law’s Lawyer of the Year for 2012. Feel the prestige, my friends!
So, what are the criteria for nominations? We’ll break it down for you….
It’s time to announce the winner of November’s Lawyer of the Month competition. Our five contestants all made the news recently for their deeds of derring-do, be they on the bench on the bike path. As usual, one of them stole the show, both in your votes and in national media coverage.
From Above the Law, to the Huffington Post, to the New York Times, November’s winner rocked the legal profession and caused many to reevaluate their lives — and ultimately, their happiness. As it turns out, sometimes the wonderful world of Biglaw isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
November brought us many things to be thankful for, ranging from time spent with family to hurricane relief efforts to the lawyerly antics worthy of representation in our Lawyer of the Month competition.
In what’s probably a first, the majority of this month’s contestants are judges, with a mere sprinkling of lawyers here and there. But when it comes to laying down the law — at least insomuch as this contest is concerned — these controversial jurists are top notch.
Let’s check out our nominees for November’s Lawyer of the Month….
‘…to take a survey (if you’re a non-practicing lawyer).’
You almost never hear of someone enduring the rigors of med school, becoming a doctor, practicing medicine for a few years, and then just ditching the profession altogether. The same could be said of licensed plumbers and electricians. Yet lapsed lawyers are everywhere: making chocolate, writing novels, blogging, leading the free world, whatever.
Obviously, there are myriad reasons for leaving the profession. Some ex- (or “recovering”) lawyers were nudged out or fired, while others left of their own free will to follow their muses onto different career paths. Some simply hated being a lawyer. Some hated the clients (e.g., “[W]hat do I care about some stranger let alone his problems?” — Columbia Law grad turned soldier-of-fortune Denis Clifford).
Not everyone buys into the idea that a law degree is so versatile (hi, Elie), but some non-practicing JDs do find that that their legal training was great preparation for the next stage of their careers.
We are reaching out to lapsed lawyers to ask them their personal stories. Why did you choose the law in the first place? Why did you leave? What are you up to now? Looking back at your time practicing law, how would you describe your experience? And so forth.
Are you an ex-lawyer? Please click here to take our survey and share your experiences. This survey is the first in a series of research projects in partnership with our friends at AdamSmithEsq, where the Lapsed Lawyer survey will also be hosted.
Do you remember the BP oil spill? Environmental disaster, engineering fail, news media miss… except for Aaron Sorkin and his amazing hindsight reporting. You know, the BP oil spill.
Yesterday, BP accepted criminal responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon explosion and agreed to pay $4.5 billion in fines and restitution. That’s a record. And, sure, that $4.5 billion is less than a quarter’s worth of profits at BP, but what are you going to do?
And BP isn’t done paying for this. Civil penalties will be coming to a theater near you.
But is all this too much? BP has been selling assets and firing staff to pay for these penalties. On the other hand, something tells me that they’re still going to aggressively drill for oil wherever they’re legally allowed to do so….
We have a winner in our legally themed Halloween Costume contest. But before we get there, I just want to take a second to say thank you to all who participated. Don’t let the haters get you down. Haters like this guy:
Anyone here know if a contract between my bros and I to beat the living sh*t out of me if I ever consider wearing a legally themed Halloween costume would be enforceable under NY or CT law?
One could argue that if you are over the age of ten, you shouldn’t be spending all that much time playing dress-up. Unless you are an attractive woman, and the dressing “up” part is just foreplay.
But if you are going to don a costume, why not a legally themed one? At least then you might win a t-shirt….
It’s time to announce the winner of October’s Lawyer of the Month competition. Our four contestants ranged from the devilishly handsome to the depressingly drunk and disorderly, but somehow, for the second month in a row, our readers were able to pick a winner who was actually deserving of the Lawyer of the Month title for his truly heroic deeds.
In September, our readers selected a prosecutor who was willing to take a literal beating to help strangers in need of assistance. In October, our readers favored the courageous efforts of yet another valiant man.
Like in that Bruno Mars song, this guy would jump in front of a train for ya….
October brought a lot of tricks for the legal community, but there were some treats, too. From death-defying deeds of dumbness to dastardly weather disasters, last month seemed to have it all as far as we’re concerned.
Which attorney allegedly dropped a joint in front of cops in a courthouse? Which attorney allegedly got so wasted that she threw herself in the garbage? And which lawyer was so sexy that he won money for it?
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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The year is quickly drawing to a close, but we have unfinished business to conduct here at Above the Law. Come on, people, we still have to crown our Lawyer of the Year for 2012.
