Author: TSA Press

* A New Jersey lawyer has been suspended from practice for submitting a fabricated law school transcript to Williams & Connolly falsely listing his GPA as a 3.825 when he actually had a 3.269. Kuddos to the firm for catching this! [ABA Journal]

* A lawsuit in New Hampshire is arguing that New Hampshire’s governor does not have the authority to limit crowd sizes to 50 people or less. [Boston Globe]

* A Maryland attorney has been disbarred for convincing a client to invest settlement proceeds in litigation matters at the firm and then lying about the results of those cases. [Bloomberg Law]

* Some government entities are looking to release prisoners who may be vulnerable to COVID-19. [Boston Globe]; [Washington Post]

* A GoFundMe campaign for two University of Michigan Law School cafe workers has raised over $30,000 in two days. It’s good to have a feel-good story in these trying times. [Michigan Live]

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

Joe chats with Adam Balinski, founder of Crushendo, a test prep program focused on maximizing human memory. Auditory courses with a strong emphasis on tried and true memory hacks like location association and mnemonic devices, all worked into short, repeatable episodes you can listen to while going about your day.

Special thanks to Logikcull and Crushendo, for sponsoring this episode.

Well, we may not know what 2020 will bring for the economics of Biglaw, but we are getting the 2019 results right about now. While not every firm has yet reported their financials, we do know what Kirkland & Ellis — the reigning top revenue pile in Biglaw — did in 2019. And, you guys, they had a banger of a year.

That’s right, in 2019, Kirkland saw their revenue rise by an impressive 10.6 percent, bringing them to a crazy $4.154 billion in revenue. Wow. And profits per equity partner were also up — 3.13 percent to $5.195 million.

The firm is also busy getting bigger.  In 2019, Kirkland’s headcount went up 12.6 percent, with the London office leading the way with a 3.3 percent headcount increase, bring that office to ~307 lawyers. However, all the headcount growth does have a downside, with revenue per lawyer dipping 1.8 percent to $1.59 million.

As reported by Law.com, a big part of the firm’s growth — in both headcount and money — has been their mergers and acquisitions practice:

Among the deals Kirkland lawyers worked on last year was the $90 billion acquisition of Celgene Corp., a Summit, New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company, by Bristol-Myers Squibb, in one of the largest pharma industry acquisitions ever.

The firm’s 2019 lateral hires reflected its continued focus on M&A and private equity work. Among the 20 lawyers Kirkland poached from Proskauer Rose in March 2019 were several partners whose work centered around private equity. The firm also added Adrian Maguire from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; corporate lawyers Vincent Ponsonnaille and Laurent Victor-Michel; Latham’s Debbie Yee; and David Klein of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison to its ranks over the past year.

They also had some big-ticket litigation victories on behalf Boeing and Facebook. Plus the restructuring practice also had a great year. They worked on the Toys “R” Us restructuring as well as the bankruptcies of FullBeauty Brands, Things Remembered, Forever 21, Destination Maternity, Pier One, Acosta, McDermott International, Vanguard Natural Resources, Jones Energy, and Murray Energy.

Congrats to Kirkland on a great 2019.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

To help legal professionals who are having to work from home or make other adjustments during the coronavirus crisis, I have created a page where I will track offers of free products and services from legal technology companies and others.

I have started it here: Coronavirus Resources.

If you have something to add, email me (ambrogi-at-gmail.com) or tweet at me (@bobambrogi).

Image by thedarknut from Pixabay.

Be kind to one another in this most stressful of times. Remember to maintain your perspective about legal disputes, given the larger life challenges now besetting our communities and world. Good luck to one and all.

SO ORDERED this 17th day of March, 2020.

—  an except from an order written by Judge Amy Totenberg of the Northern District of Georgia, directing parties to behave as if there’s a global pandemic going on and treat each other with respect. Judge Totenberg included this order in all of her current cases.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.