Is anyone else sick of LEWW's logo? We've grown weary of the weird paper-doll figures holding hands -- they just don't say "celebration" to us.

So we're asking our readers to help us pick a new visual for Legal Eagle Wedding Watch. Some of you had gripes about ATL's new design -- here's your chance to put your stamp on a small corner of the site. Your submission can be a photo (an artistic detail shot from your own wedding, perhaps?) or a graphic of your own design. An allusion to the law would be a plus, but the most important thing is that the image convey the theme of impressive people getting married. (And, of course, it must not be an image that's copyrighted by someone else.)

Send us your entries (please e-mail them here and not to ATL's tips line). We'll pick our favorite and give you a big shout-out and heaps of gratitude for perking up this space.

And now, on to this week's finalists:

1.) Suzanne deVries and Adam Decker

2.) Kristy Hong, Jonas Blank III

3.) Elena Klau and Chad Silverman

4.) Natalie MacLean, Russell Leino

More about these candidates, after the jump.

Spring! Cherry blossoms, opening day, and pedigreed lawyers uniting in marriage. We're pleased to be back with another installment of Legal Eagle Wedding Watch, featuring these three impressive couples:

1.) Susannah Foster and Kenyon Weaver

2.) Kathleen DeLaney and Courtney Thomas

3.) Heath Kern and Joseph Gibson

More on our finalists, after the jump.

Here's an update to last week's post about how various law firms fared in recruiting summer associates for this year. That post, including the comments, featured oodles of info about the expected summer class sizes at different Biglaw shops.

Now we bring you a few more data points. First, just a few short hours after our post went up, this email went around the New York office of Latham & Watkins:

As we move forward into 2008, the Recruiting Committee and the Recruiting Department would like to thank each of you for your support and participation in last year’s recruiting efforts. Your involvement in the summer program and our fall recruiting efforts was “priceless”. Thanks to your efforts, our summer program and fall hiring results were incredibly successful. The recruiting efforts resulted in 61 first years (not including judicial clerks, which we are currently in the midst of recruiting) starting next fall and a summer class of 80 summer associates (our largest to date!). Thank you all again and a very happy and healthy 2008 to each of you.

It's nice when firms are so responsive to our inquiries.

In addition, a few tipsters emailed us unofficial information about how their firms did in the recruiting process. Check it out, after the jump.

White & Case has announced special and year-end bonuses for its New York associates and counsel. They are at market levels, and will be paid to associates "who are performing at or above the level expected by the Firm."

Memo after the jump.

This just in from a tipster. It can't possibly be true, so we're taking it as a joke.

If you're an associate at the firm, or work for Mr. Grinch at Biglaw, please let us know in the comments below. Tell us this can't be true.

Tell us you've seen worse. What is your firm's policy for the upcoming holiday season?

Ladies and Gentlemen:

We have had an unprecedented number of lawyers requesting vacation during the Christmas week this year (24-28 December). Although it is always difficult to predict what our respective work levels will look like so far in advance, given the number of vacation requests received to date, it is unlikely we can accommodate them all.

To those of you who have requested time away during this period, to those of you planning to do so, and to those of you who have received a tentative approval to be away during this particular period, I would ask that you consider taking your vacation at another time or being both patient and flexible as we determine as we get closer to Christmas, how best we can meet the needs of the firm and of our clients - which are paramount - while trying to accommodate, as we would very much like to do, our associates.

Please feel free to call me should you wish to discuss.

Regards,

Neal
Neal F. Grenley
White & Case LLP
1155 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036-2787

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

Here's some law firm merger scuttlebutt that's making the rounds:

Rumor is that White & Case is acquiring Moore & Van Allen, a native Charlotte firm with a national syndicated finance practice. Any truth to this?

We reached out to both firms for comment. A White & Case spokesperson issued this statement:

"We do not respond to inquiries of this kind."

Should we take that as a "yes"?

If we hear back from Moore & Van Allen, we'll let you know. If you have any info, please email us. Thanks.

Although the pace seems to be slowing, our open threads on Vault 100 firms continue to generate a decent quantity (and quality) of comments. So we'll press on, for the benefit of those of you who are now in the throes of the law firm application process.

Please pose questions about and share insights into these five law firms (in Vault 100 order, with prestige scores in parentheses):

16. Williams & Connolly LLP (7.234)
17. Sidley Austin LLP (7.232)
18. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP (7.158)
19. O'Melveny & Myers LLP (7.105)
20. White & Case LLP (7.092)

You can discuss them in the comments. Thanks.

The Vault Top 100 Law Firms [Vault]

Earlier: Vault 1-5; Vault 6-10; Vault 11-15

The subject of today's perk post may not jump to mind as a perk or fringe benefit, but we think it's important and worthy of inclusion here. From a reader:

Please do a “perks” thread on pro bono work. What kind of opportunities are presented? How are the hours counted (if at all), both de jure and de facto?

Speaking for myself, it’s the main thing that makes White & Case different from other firms. The hours are counted 1:1, without limitation. I am permitted to seek my own pro bono assignments, and function at a very high level on those cases. I have “billed” 200-300 hours to pro bono every year I’ve been here, and received no feedback but encouragement (although my “real” hours have always been in the defensible range without consideration of the pro bono).

That's impressive. We had a friend at a top 10 firm who spent hundreds of hours on pro bono work (which got the firm some nice publicity in the New York Times). But at a certain point, she got called in for a talk about how she was spending too high a percentage of her time on pro bono.

More discussion after the jump.

We're big fans of Miami. We greatly enjoyed the visit we paid back in March, when we got to meet up with readers at an ATL Happy Hour.

So we're more than happy to make Miami the next stop on our tour of the nation's legal markets. Here's a summary of the lay of the land, courtesy of the Daily Business Review:

Playing its hand in the South Florida associate pay stakes, Greenberg Traurig raised the starting base salaries of its rookie lawyers in Miami and Fort Lauderdale to $135,000 and their total compensation packages to more than $150,000....

The base salary of Greenberg’s first-year lawyers now will match that of White & Case, which in February announced that it had raised first-year salaries to $135,000 in Miami.

Holland & Knight, Hogan & Hartson and Akerman Senterfitt recently raised salaries for rookie lawyers to $130,000 in South Florida.

Hunton & Williams has raised its first-year salaries to $145,000 in Miami. Two New York-based firms, Weil Gotshal & Manges and Boies Schiller & Flexner, pay first-years $160,000 in their South Florida offices.

This article was published back in April. A quick spin through the NALP forms suggests this information is still correct.

But sometimes the NALP forms aren't updated immediately. Has anything changed since April -- or is anything about to change in the near future?

Please discuss associate compensation in the Miami legal market in the comments. Thanks.

Business of Law: Greenberg raises first-year salaries, urges pro bono work [Daily Business Review]

Related: Open threads focused on Denver, Hartford, Philadelphia, Seattle, New Jersey, Phoenix, Atlanta, Charlotte, Ohio.

Today seems to be White & Case day here at ATL. This morning we wrote about Emily Pataki, a supervised legal intern an associate at White & Case, acing the New York bar exam. And now we have some W&C news on the clerkship bonus front.

In an earlier comment thread, there was debate over the size of White & Case's clerkship bonus. Was it $15,000? Or $35,000?

That debate is now moot. We just received word from official sources at the firm:

White & Case -- Judicial Clerkship Bonuses Update

DC, Los Angeles, Palo Alto and New York at $50,000

Miami at $35,000

For Biglaw-bound law clerks, this is very good news. As various commenters noted here, White & Case falls just outside the Vault Top 20 (and below most other members of the $50K Club on that list). But now that White & Case has raised, we expect many more firms -- and pretty much everyone in the top 20 -- to step up to the plate.

Three cheers for White & Case!

We realize we're rather late in writing about this. But considering our extensive coverage of her past exploits, we really must share this information with you, however tardy.

Here's the big news:

EMILY PATAKI HAS PASSED THE BAR EXAM!!

Guess the second time's a charm. Congratulations, Emily!

P.S. If you're wondering why we're bothering to write about this event, please read this post. Or click here, and scroll down through our Emily Pataki archives.

P.P.S. Some words of advice to first-year associates not-yet-admitted legal interns working at large law firms (e.g., White & Case, Stroock & Stroock & Lavan): If you're ever seized by the desire to send a firm-wide email, JUST SAY NO. Otherwise you'll regret it in the morning. We promise.

But if you decide to go ahead with that blast email to hundreds of your beloved colleagues, please cc your friends at ATL. We love nothing better than to receive (and post) career-destroying, or at least highly embarrassing, office-wide emails. Thank you.

Former Gov. Pataki's eldest daughter passes bar exam [Associated Press]
Passing Candidates from February 2007 (O-R) [New York State Board of Bar Examiners]

Earlier: Political Kids and the Bar Exam: What Gives?
Additional ATL coverage of Emily Pataki (scroll down)

Congratulations to Emily Pataki. It appears that her employer, White & Case, is raising base salaries for its associates. Here's the memo:

WHITE & CASE LLP

Date: January 25, 2007
To: All New York Associates
From: David N. Koschik
Re: Salary Increases

I am pleased to announce that effective January 1, 2007 the base salaries for New York associates in the following classes will be increased as follows:

Class / 2007 Base Salary
2006 $160,000
2005 $170,000
2004 $185,000
2003 $210,000
2002 $230,000
2001 $250,000
2000 $265,000
1999 $280,000

Increases for associates in the class of 1998 and senior will be determined on an individual basis. All increases, including the retroactive portion to the beginning of the year, will be reflected in your February 14 paycheck. On behalf of the Firm, I would like to personally thank you for all of your dedication and hard work.

cc: New York Partners

Biglaw bonus season is lurching towards its inevitable, anticlimactic close. Yesterday there were a few more announcements of market matching, from White & Case and Fried Frank.

Pretty standard-issue. The only noteworthy difference: the math-challenged folks at Fried Frank, instead of paying the class of 2006 the usual bonus of $30,000 prorated, announced a flat bonus of $10,000.

We didn't receive these tips from verified sources at these firms. They came from anonymous ATL commenters, and from Infirmation / Greedy NY. So they haven't been "confirmed" in the same way as prior bonus announcements.

But at this point, is confirmation really necessary? Do we need confirmation that the earth revolves around the sun, or that Justice Thomas is the least-active questioner at SCOTUS oral argument?

A memo, a table, and links, after the jump.

Lateral Moves:

* Antitrust lawyer Paul Kaplan, to Bryan Cave (NY). from Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton.

* Bankruptcy lawyer Alan Gover, to White & Case, from Dewey Ballantine, where he was co-head of the bankruptcy practice.

(Dewey Ballantine is the process of becoming Dewy Orifice. Perhaps Gover's departure is related to the merger.)

* Same move, different city: energy lawyers Earle O'Donnell and Donna Attanasio, to White & Case from Dewey Ballantine, but in Washington rather than New York.

* Government contracts lawyers Gregory Smith and Kevin Mullen, to Cooley Godward Kronish, from DLA Piper.

New Office:

* Howrey has opened a New York office, headed by Thomas Engel and James McCarney, formerly of the litigation boutique Engel McCarney & Kenney (which Howrey swallowed up).

On The Move: Paul M. Kaplan to Bryan Cave [Antitrust Review]
Paul M. Kaplan Joins Bryan Cave in New York [Bryan Cave]
NY Practice Leader Switches Firms [NYLawyer.com]
Bonus Season Doesn't Stop Partner Pair From Switching Firms [NYLawyer.com]
With Boutique Raid, Firm Opens NY Office [NYLawyer.com]
The Churn [New York Times]

Both Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes have a "message recall" feature. Of course, it's a bit late for Emily Pataki to invoke it, so as to retract the office-wide email she sent to her White & Case colleagues about failing the New York bar exam.

But if Emily agrees with the majority of you, she probably wishes she had never sent that e-mail. Here are the results of our ATL reader poll:

We're a bit surprised at the tally; we expected the vote to be closer. We didn't think so many of you would disapprove of her handling of the situation. But this is your verdict, for what it's worth.

Maybe the best advice can be found in this reader comment: "Repeat after me: an office wide email is never, ever a good idea."

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Emily Pataki (scroll down)

PG of De Novo, in a post entitled Bad Judgment at White & Case and ATL, had this to say about our Emily Pataki coverage:

I'm disappointed to see that someone forwarded this to David Lat, and that he chose to publish it. The July 2006 New York Bar Exam pass list is not yet public, and while I might expect someone online to pick through the list when it is, pointing out people who were known to have taken the bar yet not passed, to publicize a single person's failure and her reaction to it is a particular kind of bad taste that I hadn't expected of either White & Case employees or of Above the Law.

Reprinted below is the comment that we left on De Novo in response:

I actually can't take credit for breaking this story. I actually first learned about it in a mainstream media blog, the WSJ Law Blog:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/11/14/emily-patakis-email/

But the Wall Street Journal didn't break this story either. The source with the scoop was actually ANOTHER MSM blog, the New York Observer's widely read politics blog, The Politicker:

http://thepoliticker.observer.com/2006/11/first-setback.html

So, PG, please don't hang this all on me just because I'm a blogger (and we bloggers are such easy targets, especially on matters of journalistic ethics). I only touched this story after two MSM organs did -- even though I had the email much earlier.

Of course, once the Wall Street Journal and the New York Observer decided to cover this story -- a story which, you must admit, lies squarely within the territory of Above the Law -- I couldn't just sit on the sidelines.

PG posted a response to our response; if we get around to it, we'll offer our rebuttal later today.

Bad Judgment at White & Case and ATL [De Novo]

As we discussed yesterday, Emily Pataki -- daughter of lame duck New York governor George Pataki, a graduate of Columbia Law School, and now an associate a supervised legal intern at White & Case -- did not pass the New York bar. This fact became widely known after Emily sent around an office-wide email about the matter.

We're taking a reader poll to obtain your thoughts on whether or not this was a wise move. We'll close that poll soon; if you'd like to vote, click here. Several of you also discussed the issue in the comments (where opinions were all over the map).

Also, some of Emily Pataki's law school classmates responded to our request for firsthand information about her. We've collected these responses, which you can read after the jump.

Failing the New York State bar exam. And emailing her White & Case colleagues about it.

We've already covered this story; click here. But since it's what everyone is buzzing about today, we'll give in to your appetite for more discussion. Two requests for your assistance:

1. If you work at White & Case, went to Columbia Law School or Yale College with Emily Pataki, or are otherwise acquainted with her, we'd love to hear from you.

What's Emily like in person? Any thoughts on why she didn't pass? How are people at the firm reacting to her email? If you have information to share, please email us.

2. We're curious about whether other people think it was wise or unwise for Emily to send out that mass email to her White & Case colleagues about her failing the New York bar exam.

So please share your views in the comments to this post. And cast your vote in this reader poll:

Thanks!

Earlier: Political Kids and the Bar Exam: What Gives?

The late JFK Jr. failed the New York State bar exam twice, before passing it on the third try. And now Emily Pataki, the highly attractive daughter of outgoing New York governor George Pataki, is halfway towards matching that feat.

Here's the email message that Emily, an associate a supervised legal intern at White & Case in New York, sent to her colleagues yesterday morning, shortly after bar exam results were released:

From: Emily R. Pataki
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2006, 10:05 AM
To: NY All
Subject:

There are many things I have been blessed and graced with in this life.

I am blessed to work at a brilliant place like White and Case. Although failing the Bar Exam is not something I would wish on my worst enemy, it is something I have to accept at this point in time.

I do not know all of you personally, and I may not ever get to know you all, but for those of you I've had the pleasure of working with and getting to know, I hope you know I did my very best, and have come to a crossroads where my best just was not good enough, the first time around.

I'll try and keep my chin up and will work even harder to earn the respect of you all, please know already that you have mine.

Sincerely,
Emily Pataki

Hmm... Emily, a graduate of Yale College and Columbia Law School, has impeccable academic credentials. She has obviously aced many a test in her life. So in the weeks leading up to the bar exam, was she spending too much time partying, and not enough time at BarBri?

But look, it's a lovely and gracious e-mail. We commend Emily for her damage control skills. It's a wise move to get in front of a story like this one, to manage the bad news (which would have gotten out sooner or later).

We'd also tell Emily not to be too hard on herself. In not passing the bar exam the first time around, she could very well be in good company.

P.S. While we have your attention, Emily: Please convince your dad not to pursue a doomed bid for the presidency. Thank you.

P.P.S. As is always the case here at ATL, please note that our merely linking to something does not constitute an endorsement or acceptance of the content we've linked to. The internets contain all kinds of crazy rumors.

First Setback [New York Observer via WSJ Law Blog]
Emily Pataki: Republican Babe of the Week [JerseyGOP.com]
Guessing Game Results: The Cokehead Daughter [Wonkette]

Lateral Moves:

* Four litigation partners, and possibly a dozen associates, are leaving White & Case to join the New York office of Linklaters -- a "Magic Circle" firm (insert squeal of delight here). The group's practice focuses on white-collar criminal, antitrust, and other regulatory matters.

The four partners are Lawrence Byrne, a former assistant U.S. attorney (S.D.N.Y.) and deputy chief of the DOJ's organized crime section; Joseph Armao, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan; Lance Croffoot-Suede, who was hired by Linklaters based solely on his fabulous, British-sounding name; and Paul Alfieri, who was not.

* Corporate lawyer Michael Student and bankruptcy lawyer Neil Pigott, to Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels, from Holland & Knight and Mandel Katz, respectively.

* Private equity lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, to Jones Day, from Latham & Watkins.

From the New York Law Journal: "Mr. Kennedy is not related to the former U.S. attorney general and New York senator whose son is a well-known environmental lawyer and political activist."

RFK. Jeez, poor guy. And it doesn't even help him get restaurant reservations.

NY Firm Loses Four Partners, and 12 Associates May Follow [NYLawyer.com]
NY Partners Switching Firms [NYLawyer.com]
Firm Adds NY Private Equity Partner [NYLawyer.com]