Category: News Feeds

Attention Biglaw associates: You’ll be pleased to know that if your firm originally shied away from handing out special bonuses earlier this fall, you’ll soon find some extra cash in your accounts on top of your year-end bonuses, and you’ve got Cravath to thank.

Earlier this fall, when elite firms were falling over themselves to match the Davis Polk special bonus scale, others were in no rush, instead simply committing to make sure that associates would be properly compensated in the future. That’s what Goodwin Procter did back in early October. Lo and behold, today, the morning after Cravath announced that it would fall in line to match those generous pandemic bonuses, Goodwin has announced that it will be handing out special bonuses on the DPW scale.

But, there’s a catch. While the DPW special bonuses merely required associates to be in “good standing,” Goodwin’s special bonuses are hours-based by class year.

Here’s the firm’s scale for these special bonuses:

To get to the 1850 hours threshold, Goodwin will take the higher of (a) associates’ fiscal year 2020 hours (including billable hours, pro bono hours, legal services on behalf of the firm, and shadow training) or (b) associates’  annualized hours for the period May through October 2020. By doing it this way, the firm will be able to recognize more associates, even if their hours tanked because of the coronavirus crisis.

Sources tell us that special bonuses are also being paid to all other non-partner lawyers at the firm, including counsel, senior attorneys, department and discovery attorneys, science advisors, and science law clerks, which is a change from what other firms have been doing for their attorneys (i.e., not much at all).

Goodwin will pay out its regular year-end bonuses in January, which the firm already promised would be “competitive.” Since Cravath has already announced its bonus scale — a Baker McKenzie match — associates can likely expect to receive their own match in just a few months. Congrats to everyone at Goodwin!

(Flip to the next page to see the full memo from Goodwin.)

Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for salary announcements), please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks for all of your help!

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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.

Anyone who was worried about the economic team being put together for the president-elect by Gary Gensler and Ted Kaufman, uh, needn’t have been.

President-elect Joe Biden plans to nominate former Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, an economist at the forefront of policy-making for three decades, to become the next Treasury secretary…. In one speech last year to a housing trade group, she warned higher taxes might not be enough to put programs such as Social Security and Medicare on solid footing, warning of painful trade-offs. “This is root canal economics,” she said.

The coronavirus pandemic has dramatically accelerated the already-rapid pace of technological change in the legal industry. Yet lawyers remain famously resistant to innovation — and the proliferation of virtual events has fallen short in engaging attorney audiences and driving needed change.

In this spirit, Above the Law is bringing the legal technology conversation to the entire community, launching a “Non-Event” focused on where the rubber meets the road for lawyers and innovation. The Non-Event will be geared specifically toward lawyers — the key decision makers in a law firm’s buying decisions — as opposed to the niche technology professionals who are often served by technology events.

The Non-Event will allow lawyers to directly hear how technology can boost their career and optimize their practice — and, eventually, help lawyers research how to purchase and implement a variety of technology products. To fully explore these topics, Above the Law has partnered with its affiliate Evolve the Law, as well as the Legal Tech Media Group, whose buyers guides are the go-to resource for purchasers of legal tech.

We look forward to (not) seeing you there.

Interested in sponsorship opportunities within the ATL Non-Event? Please reach out to Ashley Spector for details.

* Law enforcement personnel have filed a lawsuit to stop the legalization of marijuana in South Dakota. The Super Troopers would have never done this… [Hill]

* The New York Attorney General is suing the Buffalo diocese for an alleged “sex abuse cover-up.” [BBC]

* New Jersey has passed a new law aimed at protecting home addresses and other information of judges and other public officials after the family of a New Jersey federal judge was attacked earlier this year. [NBC News]

* The Attorney General of Indiana must pay around $19,000 in expenses related to a disciplinary investigation stemming from groping allegations. [Chicago Tribune]

* A group of U.S. states is planning on filing another antitrust action against Google next month. Seems like there is a “googolplex” amount of antitrust litigation against Google… [Reuters]

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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.

Last week, we asked about Rudy’s last federal court case. But he had appeared in another state court matter since then. As helpfully pointed out by Eriq Gardner over at The Hollywood Reporter, Giuliani showed up in Los Angeles in 2014 to defend video game manufacturer Activision/Blizzard against a lawsuit brought by what former international leader?

Hint: The game was part of the Call of Duty series.

See the answer on the next page.

Less than an hour after Cravath officially kicked off the 2020 bonus season by matching Baker McKenzie’s year-end bonus scale and sweetening the pot by matching the Davis Polk special bonus scale, another elite law firm has jumped to match the market rate as quickly as possible.

Which firm is the first to match the official 2020 Biglaw bonus scale?

Paul Weiss is first firm to hop on the Cravath bonus bandwagon. Bonuses at the firm will be paid to associates on December 18.

It’s worth mentioning that almost two months ago, Paul Weiss refused to match the Davis Polk fall bonuses because it “would not be appropriate,” seeing as the firm’s clients and others were “experiencing unprecedented economic trauma” because of the pandemic. And yet… here’s the firm, matching those very bonuses now, when coronavirus cases are worsening, all because Cravath did it first.

Here’s the Paul Weiss bonus scale:

Congratulations to Paul Weiss associates on the nice bonuses!

(Flip to the next page to see the Paul Weiss bonus memo.)

Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for salary announcements), please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks for all of your help!

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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.

The sharp words, big losses and parting of ways signal the end of one of the great one-way bromances in Wall Street history, that between Bill Ackman and Warren Buffett, they say. Yes, the former, as so many others, idolized the latter; yes, Buffett’s timeless wisdom was the turning point in Ackman’s career. But all things must come to an end, and so, it seemed, had the Oracle of Omaha’s usefulness to the Asshole of 11^th Avenue.

In fact, it seems, Ackman believes Buffett’s loss of relevance to him is mirrored more broadly. A new oracle is needed, one to whom America can turn in its time of need. And if Buffett isn’t going to be that man, Ackman believes he is his rightful successor.

It’s felt like a long time coming, what with Baker McKenzie making a bonus move already (though without accounting for the COVID appreciation bonuses that swept through Biglaw this fall), but actually, it’s right on schedule. The Monday before Thanksgiving is pretty much when you’d expect to see bonuses from perennial leader in the Biglaw compensation carousel, Cravath.

Of course, this year was  pretty unique in the Biglaw bonus world. This fall, Cooley started the COVID bonus trend, but then Davis Polk blew the Cooley scale out of the water, and a number of Biglaw giants matched. But Cravath was not one of them, preferring instead to wait until year-end to thank associates with money for their hard work during the pandemic. And now, that patience has been rewarded.

Here’s the bonus scale Cravath is offering, payable to associates on December 18th (full memo available on the next page):

Very nice bonuses indeed, but nothing truly… exciting. They’ve matched the DPW special bonus scale and matched the the year-end bonuses Baker McKenzie put out (which match last year’s numbers as well). But, for good or for bad, Cravath is still considered the gold standard of compensation, so we expect Biglaw to fall all over themselves to match this scale.

As always, we depend on you when it comes to bonus news at other firms. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) or text us (646-820-8477). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish.

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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).

2020 has been the story of a world in flux. Though some in-house counsel would argue that their world has always been one in flux. Which is not too far from the truth.

COVID-19, however, meant that very few (if any) spheres have gone unaffected; the legal profession is no exception. Thankfully, there are still a few fundamental concepts that did not test positive for anything but longevity.

The three keys:

• Integration
• Optimization
• Maximization

Integration

As in-house counsel, your primary form of integration is getting law and business to gel. It doesn’t work the same way as a traditional law firm, with billable hours. In fact, it’s not really client-facing at all. The purpose of an in-house counsel is to use their legal expertise for the betterment of the company.

Usually, lawyers are too downstream to have much of an impact on contract negotiations. That dynamic creates several problems, however, including that the very people who are most aware of possible ramifications and remedies of the contract are excluded from the drafting process. So, it is the responsibility of the in-house counsel to take initiative and make themselves more involved. They should integrate with other departments by giving input on risk profiles and emphasizing the necessary role they play in every type of agreement and at every level of complexity. Their so-called tribal knowledge could be quintessential to problem-solving, and they will be useful in documenting the correct and optimal processes of governance.

To find out more about negotiation, tribal knowledge, and the importance of governance, check out my interview with Jeanette Nyden.

Optimization

Optimization is about making things as efficient as possible. In order to do that, counsel must be prepared to make changes and to prepare the company to adopt them more broadly. It is your chance to innovate and introduce new processes.

We have long passed the BC years. We’re now in AD, the era of Automating and Delegating. Automating leverages technology (which holds obvious benefits) and delegating enables you to intentionally build a proper legal department. In addition to lawyers, you should be hiring the likes of project managers and data analysts –- doing so will ensure your team has a diverse set of skills and will optimize the individual areas within the legal department. Data, in particular, plays a key role because it enables you to have feedback loops. You cannot optimize what you do not measure, and data collection and analysis will enable you to evaluate KPIs and quantify the ROI of the alterations.

To find out about the ideal (I.D.E.A.L.) legal department, have a listen to this conversation I had with Laurie Ehrlich.

Maximization

In my interview with Ken Ito (see below), we had a fascinating conversation about his journey to becoming general counsel. To sum it up: resilience and upskilling.

Ken shared how he battled to find legal work following the 2008 crash but managed to do some work for family friends for a few years. Throughout that time, he kept scouting for legal jobs and later got a position as an auto insurance defense attorney — even though it wasn’t what he wanted to be. We then talked about the importance of acquiring a broad skill set and how varying your work and interests can help you to develop nuanced skills, many of which will help you to be a better in-house counsel because they deal with virtually every kind of situation. It is imperative that you maximize both time and opportunity. If it can add to your CV, applicable knowledge base, or skills, then it is definitely worth the persistence required to achieve it.

Ken is now a GC and wouldn’t trade his unique journey for anything.

The keys to unlocking potential, progress, and performance are found in integrating, optimizing, and maximizing. Strive for synergistic relationships with other people and departments as you leverage any advantage — technological and otherwise — to better you, your department, and your processes. It’ll help you survive any flux –- and we might need it for 2021.

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Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.