Wilson Sonsini

Biglaw Firms Join the San Francisco Start-up Gold Rush

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Out west, we’re in the middle of a gold rush. Programmers, marketers, and young business school grads are flocking to the Bay Area all with big dreams of striking start-up gold.

If you wander down Market Street, you’ll hear people mumbling a mantra: “Internet business. Internet business. Internet business.” Or perhaps, “Please let Google buy me. Please let Google buy me.”

Lawyers don’t usually play too much into this equation, except for the unfortunate in-house counsel tasked with explaining to a start-up’s management why playing beer pong in the conference room during work hours may be an unwise decision.

Or are attorneys much more relevant here than the layman might realize? Yesterday, the New York Times profiled a storied Biglaw firm that’s playing quite a part in the current tech bubble boom. It’s not this firm’s first time at the rodeo, but other firms smell dollars in the air, too, and there’s a battle brewing over who will represent the next Google, Facebook, what have you.

Which Biglaw firm is leading the charge?

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Lawyerly Lovebirds Accused of Planting Pills and Pot Now Face a Civil Suit From Alleged Victim

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Back in June, we brought you a story about some mom-and-dad law grads who had been accused of planting a potpourri of pills and pot on a parent volunteer from their son’s school. Kent W. Easter, a UCLA Law graduate, is (or was) a partner at Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, a midsize California firm. His wife, Jillianne B. Easter, is a Boalt Hall grad and former lawyer who dabbles in crime fiction writing (and bad plastic surgery, from the looks of it).

Apparently the Easters thought that they could get away with the perfect crime, but alas, that only happens in books written by partner wives. Now, the Easters are looking at additional legal troubles: their alleged victim, Kelli Peters, has filed a civil suit against the couple that contains some interesting allegations. In fact, the page-turner of a complaint reads like it was written by a crime writer far more talented than Mrs. Easter (aka Ava Bjork).

Let’s check out the complaint, and see what the Easters are up against….

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Morning Docket: 08.01.12

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* In the Apple-Samsung trial yesterday, Apple’s attorneys accused Samsung of intentionally copying the iPhone. Samsung’s attorney was like, Bro, step off. And then Judge Lucy Koh and all the members of the gallery and the jury crowded around in a circle and started yelling Techno-fight! Techno fight! [Wall Street Journal]

* Matthew Kluger, formerly of Wilson Sonsini and more recently convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison for insider trading, gives an interview about what motivated him to commit his crimes. [Bloomberg]

* France is not happy that Google did not delete all its Street View information from the country after it promised to. Shockingly, some parts of the world apparently still value data privacy. How quaint! [New York Times]

* Former Perkins Coie partner Harold DeGraff must arbitrate his compensation battle with his former law firm. But the process will not have to be kept confidential. [Thomson Reuters]

* I’m pretty sure at this point the DOJ is just consulting a Ouija board in its increasingly feeble attempts to prosecute Megaupload. [Wired /Threat Level]

* UBS is not happy that it lost $356 million on the Facebook IPO. Now it’s suing NASDAQ over the snafu. [CNNMoney]

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A Law Firm Partner and His Boalt Hall Wife Stand Accused of Planting Drugs on an Elementary School Volunteer

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Parenting can be an extremely difficult task, but an even more difficult task is proper helicopter parenting. It’s got to be an intense job to keep an eye on your child’s every move, day and night, wherever he may roam. In fact, some people have started to call these people lawnmower parents — after all, why choose to hover overhead when you can destructively mow down all obstacles that you perceive to be in your child’s way on the road to success?

Today, we’ve got a story about an attractive California couple who stand accused of being textbook examples of the worst kind of lawnmower parents, and they just so happen to both be lawyers. Daddy is (or was) a securities litigation partner at a midsize firm, and Mommy is a graduate of top law school. Trust us when we say that you do not want to mess with their kid, because you may wind up facing drug charges….

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Morning Docket: 06.05.12

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QE's Kathleen Sullivan as Lawyer Barbie

* Dewey know the firms that have been tapped to represent the groups that this failed firm owes money to? Yes, we do! Brown Rudnick for the unsecured creditors’ committee, and Kasowitz Benson for the former D&L partners. [Am Law Daily (sub. req.)]

* The Ninth Circuit is supposed to be issuing an order today regarding an en banc reconsideration request on the Prop 8 case. They really ought to slap a big fat denial on that motherf’er and call it a day so we get some SCOTUS action. [Poliglot / Metro Weekly]

* Matthew Kluger, most recently of Wilson Sonsini, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison, which is the longest sentence that anyone’s ever received in an insider trading case. Uh yeah, he’ll be appealing. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* Hughes Hubbard & Reed has billed more than $17M in the first four months of its work on MF Global’s unwinding. Will the firm will be handing out spring “special” bonuses like they did last year? [Reuters]

* Mattel is appealing MGA’s $310M copyright award, claiming that the judgment was based on “erroneous billing invoices.” Don’t you call my billable hours into question, Kathleen Sullivan. [National Law Journal]

* Jerry Sandusky’s accusers will be named in court thanks to this judge’s ruling. But don’t worry — there’s no tweeting, texting, or emailing allowed in his courtroom. Like that’ll make a difference. [Legal Intelligencer]

* Trust me, I’m a lawyer: a now-disbarred Colorado attorney managed to scam a convicted con artist out of more than $1 million. Now that’s some pretty sweet karmic intervention for you. [Missouri Lawyers Media]

* A bus driver is suing a hospital because he claims that instead of treating his painful erection, the staff watched a baseball game on TV. Whatever, that was a really great Yankees game. [Associated Press]

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Associate Bonus Watch: Wilson Sonsini Announces Bonuses and Base Salary Scale

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Today everyone’s talking tech, thanks to Facebook’s upcoming IPO. In light of how Silicon Valley is dominating the news cycle, it seems fitting to discuss the recent bonus and salary news from Wilson Sonsini — one of SV’s top firms, and counsel over the years to many startup companies turned tech giants.

(But not Facebook, at least with respect to the IPO. That’s being handled by Fenwick & West and Simpson Thacher.)

So what kind of bonuses did WSGR just announce? Let’s find out….

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Morning Docket: 12.13.11

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No glove, no love.

* The Supreme Court will hear Obama’s challenge to Arizona’s immigration law. Upside: we can probably expect a decision by June. Downside: Lady Kaga has to sit her ass out. [New York Times]

* Depressing fact of the day: unless you’re earning six times your law school’s annual tuition, you’ll probably never be able to afford a home. Thanks a lot, student loan debt. [National Law Journal]

* Wilson Sonsini has announced its 2011 partnership class. Of ten new partners, only three are women. At least they’re beating Cravath’s partnership diversity scale. [DealBook]

* Los Angeles is suing to block an initiative that would force porn stars to wear condoms. Why? It wastes taxpayer money, and would be disastrous to spank banks nationwide. [Courthouse News]

* Stephanie Van Groll may be the “tall, young, hot nymph” whose sexting lawsuit against Kenneth Kratz survived a motion to dismiss, but he is still the prize. [Appleton Post-Crescent]

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Career Center Survey Results: Who Labored on Labor Day?

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Almost half (48%) of Career Center survey respondents said they were too busy billing on the Labor Day holiday to fire up the barbie. That’s more than the 35% of survey respondents who reported working on the Fourth of July, but less than the 73% of respondents who worked on Presidents’ Day, and the 66% of respondents who worked on MLK Day.

The most popular reasons given for skipping out on the Labor Day celebrations were:

56% said that nobody specifically asked them to do work, but they had work they needed to get done. 29% said a partner or associate asked them to do work. 14% said a client asked them to do work. 10% said they needed the hours. 7% said everyone else in their office was working. 3% said that Labor Day is not recognized as an official firm holiday.

Now let’s find out in which practice areas and at which Biglaw firms associates were most and least likely to work on Labor Day….

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Which Law Firms Are Most Diverse? Let’s Look at the Rankings

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An old white male and his younger diverse peeps.

Law firm diversity matters. It matters to corporate clients, many of them public companies that want to demonstrate their commitment to diversity through their selection of vendors and service providers — which is what law firms are, at the end of the day. It matters to the law students and lawyers that firms are trying to recruit — which is the premise behind the data collection conducted by Building A Better Legal Profession.

So there should be keen interest in the latest edition of the American Lawyer’s Diversity Scorecard 2011, which the magazine just released. As Am Law explains, the Scorecard constitutes its annual ranking of large law firms by their percentage of minority attorneys and minority partners.

Let’s take a look at the top firms for diversity. Did your firm make the list?

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Nationwide Pay Raise Watch: West Coast Action

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We recently reported on Wilson Sonsini restoring associate base salaries to pre-recession levels. Wilson Sonsini associates in five major offices — New York, Palo Alto, San Diego, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. — are now paid on what might be called the New York market scale or the $160K scale (a scale I’ve committed to memory: 160/170/185/210/230/265).

In our story, we quoted a WSGR associate who viewed the firm’s raise as a response to salary hikes by two Silicon Valley peer firms, Cooley and Gunderson Dettmer. At the time of our story, however, Cooley and Gunderson had not raised SV associate salaries to NYC market levels.

UPDATE: To be precise, Cooley had announced a raise at the time of the WSGR memo, but the raise had not yet taken effect. Gunderson did not announce until yesterday.

Let’s learn more….

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