You didn’t think we’d just get one day out of the Gregory Berry story, did you?
Since we posted about Berry, the former Kasowitz Benson associate who is suing the firm for $77 million, Above the Law readers have been sharing their opinions about working with him.
Some of our readers went to Penn Law School with Berry. Others worked with him when he was busy “conquering” Silicon Valley. They remember an interesting guy.
Let’s take a look at their opinions….
Gregory Berry: the $77 million man.
This morning we mentioned a lawsuit filed against litigation powerhouse Kasowitz Benson and two Kasowitz partners by Gregory S. Berry, a former first-year associate at the firm. Berry’s 50-page complaint, filed in New York state court, contains 14 causes of action, including wrongful termination, fraud, and breach of contract. Berry seeks a whopping $77 million in damages — $2.55 million in estimated lost income, and $75 million in punitives.
After working as a software engineer in Silicon Valley for several years, Gregory Berry matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He graduated from Penn Law in 2010 and was admitted to the New York bar in 2011. He summered at Kasowitz in 2009 and started working at the firm full-time in September 2010. Less than a year later, in May 2011, he was fired.
According to Berry’s complaint, he “immediately began doing superlative work” at Kasowitz. Alas, the law firm was unable to accommodate his “superior legal mind.” After he began seeking greater responsibility in a way that rubbed some colleagues the wrong way, he got canned.
“There’s simply no room in a big law firm for an intelligent, creative lawyer with real-world experience,” Greg Berry told Thomson Reuters News & Insight. “I had to find that out the hard way.”
Let’s have a look at his interesting allegations, plus hear from some tipsters….
Earlier this month, we asked you: Who are this year’s celebrity summer associates? In recent years, major law firms have hosted famous figures as summer associates, including a successful author and reality TV hottie.
This summer, sadly, the celebrity wattage seems to be considerably lower. Biglaw is less big than it was a few years ago, and landing a summer associate gig isn’t easy, even for the famous. But we still have a few names to pass along (and welcome additional submissions, by email).
This morning Elie referenced one of my favorite films: Mean Girls, starring the talented but now tormented Lindsay Lohan. This reminded me of one of our celebrity summers, who has had the pleasure of acting alongside LiLo. Unlike his famous co-star, however, he is now studying the law rather than breaking it.
Who is he, where is he a law student, and where is he working this summer? Let’s find out….
Continue reading “Celebrity Summer Associate: An Ex-Colleague of Lindsay Lohan”
Welcome Texas!
As you are all know, the University of Texas School of Law has moved into the “top 14″ in this year’s U.S. News law school rankings. It’s a bit of cheat for U.S. News: Texas is technically tied for 14th, which means that the magazine has actually managed to cram 15 schools into its top 14. I’d complain more, but I’m a fan of a Big (We Can’t Count To) Ten school.
While we all know that Texas is in the top 14, very few of you remember the significance of the top 14 in the first place. The top 14 isn’t as arbitrary as it sounds. Since U.S. News started publishing these law school rankings, no school that ranked in the inaugural top 14 has ever been ranked outside of the top 14, and no school that did not rank in the top 14 that first year has ever cracked that list. Until now.
The top 14 has been a way to distinguish elite institutions that are nearly interchangeable with one another from really good law schools that are just a cut below. When viewed that way, Texas’s inclusion was probably long overdue.
Let’s take a look at some of the other movement in this rarefied group of law schools….
Continue reading “Open Thread: 2012 U.S. News Law School Rankings (7 – 14)”
As David Lat said earlier this week, “Here at Above the Law, we’re trying to help you.” Honestly, think of Above the Law as the MPRE, but for situations people in the legal community are actually likely to face. Don’t conduct sensitive firm business on a crowded train. Don’t offer hand-jobs in school-wide emails.
And here’s a good one: don’t reuse exam questions just because you are teaching at a different law school. It’s called “the internet,” professors. Your students have access to it and can find your old questions. If you put in just a little bit of work, you can come up with entirely new exam questions.
It’s your job! You get paid for it!
And if you do your job with minimal diligence, you won’t end up like Penn Law professor William Wilson Bratton, and we won’t have to write about you…
We were somewhat surprised to learn that this actually isn’t the most depressing day of the year. That honor goes to the third Monday in January, not the first. There’s a whole mathematical formula about it. Anyway, here’s some LEWW cheer to brighten your gray Monday.
Administrative note: Signs are indicating that LEWW will soon be presenting Mr. LEWW with another heir. Wedding coverage will be scaled back somewhat while we recover from the blessed event, but you won’t care because it’s January, and nobody gets married in January.
But some got married in December — like these three couples:
1. Ellen Tobin and Todd Kaminsky
Check out their bios and photos, after the jump.
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Jews Versus Episcopalians”
Biglaw isn’t all about high-stakes mergers and bet-the-company litigation. Many Biglaw firms take their commitment to pro bono very seriously. Obviously, these firms need to pay the bills, first and foremost. But when they can, many firms do try to give back.
As many of you already know, Skadden takes that commitment quite a bit further, with its Skadden Fellows program. We highlight this worthy program every year. The Skadden Fellowships are for law school graduates who want to devote their lives to public service, and the firm makes a major financial commitment to its fellows. From the Skadden Fellows website:
Fellowships are awarded for two years. Skadden provides each Fellow with a salary and pays all fringe benefits to which an employee of the sponsoring organization would be entitled. For those Fellows not covered by a law school low income protection plan, the firm will pay a Fellow’s law school debt service for the tuition part of the loan for the duration of the fellowship. The 2011 class of Fellows brings to 620 the number of academically outstanding law school graduates and judicial clerks the firm has funded to work full-time for legal and advocacy organizations.
It’s a sweet gig if you can get it.
And if you take a look at the list of Fellows — perhaps you know some of them? — you’ll notice that quite a few of them attend the top law schools in the country….
Continue reading “Congratulations to the 2011 Skadden Fellows”
Our last installment of the Wedding Watch was almost unbearably non-elite, but we’re happy to announce that the Times weddings section has bounced back. Three prestigious law firms beautify our wedding update today: Jenner & Block, Boies Schiller, and the ever-fabulous Skadden Arps. And two of our grooms (there are four) are partners!
Here are our lucky finalists:
DeVere Kutscher and Duane Pozza Jr. (Stanford, Jenner)
Esther Lederman and Scott Gant (Harvard, Boies Schiller)
Elana Bernstein and Geoffrey Bauer (UPenn, Skadden)
You can read much more about these couples, plus check out our round-up of all the legal nuptials, after the jump.
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Thunder in the Night”
First, a couple of notable non-legal nuptials: Kelly McGillis (of Top Gun and Witness) married her long-time girlfriend. Short ceremony, long write-up.
There’s also perhaps the most painfully stylish wedding we’ve ever come across. The bride is the daughter of modernist architect Richard Meier, who keeps his homes “very relaxed and casual but everything has to be perfect” — “[e]ven the Snapple bottles are lined up perfectly in the pantry.” (Oh . . . so not really relaxed and casual at all.) Watch the slideshow of the uber-posh wedding, and take note of those origami flowers; you’ll be seeing poorly executed versions in weddings near you for the next few years.
Now, our legal eagle couples. Here are the finalists:
1. Nicole Moen and Michael Skoglund
Marvel at these couples’ résumés, after the jump.
Most weeks nowadays, the New York Times weddings announcements — and our coverage of same — focus quite properly on the newlyweds and their impressive accomplishments. But occasionally, a few announcements hearken back to a simpler day, when nobody cared much about the bride and groom, because the game of social one-upmanship was played on the parental level.
This is one of those weeks. Our featured newlyweds are impressive, but some of their parents are even more so. The finalists:
1. Tenley Laserson and Geoffrey Chepiga
2. Charlotte Anne Levy and David Gudis
More on these couples and their illustrious parents, after the jump.
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch June 2010: Board-dom”
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.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
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.
Keep reading »
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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