Category: News Feeds

Several weeks ago, I wrote an article about how paralegals deserve more respect within the legal industry. The piece received a lot of positive feedback from paralegals across the country, and I also received some emails from legal secretaries about their own roles within the legal profession. Of course, legal secretaries have been impacted by technological changes within the legal industry, and this website has recounted numerous times how legal secretaries and other administrative staff are laid off in high numbers whenever a law firm faces financial issues. However, legal secretaries deserve more respect within the legal profession because they are often a vital part of any law firm.

The main reason why legal secretaries are so important to law firms is because they can help attorneys generate more revenue. Indeed, from my own experiences, reducing the number of legal secretaries at a firm can sometimes be “penny wise and dollar foolish.” As many attorneys understand from firsthand experience, legal secretaries can often free up time so that lawyers can bill additional hours on legal work. If a legal secretary can empower a lawyer to bill an extra hour of work, this may pay for more than a day of a secretary’s salary, and legal secretaries can ensure that a firm is as efficient and productive as possible.

In my own career, firms at which I worked that had more secretarial support were often far more efficient and productive than firms that had fewer legal secretaries. For instance, I once worked at a firm that had a small number of legal secretaries who rarely performed work for associates. At that firm, the other associates and I spent much of our time on the road taking depositions and appearing in court in our area and across the country. Several times a month, I had to submit all my travel receipts for reimbursement, and since I was often appearing for multiple clients (and our firm system for some reason could not automatically split expenses between multiple clients) I had to do extensive calculations and make many entries to submit expense reimbursement requests.

I spent hours each month submitting expense reimbursement requests, and all the other associates at the firm also spent a substantial amount of time on this chore. My morale, and I suspect the morale of other people at our firm, took a hit whenever we had a large amount of expense reimbursement requests to process, since it was a painful and laborious chore to submit those requests. Our firm could have freed up our time to spend on billable matters and improved our morale by hiring additional administrative professionals who could more efficiently handle this task. Indeed, I worked at firms at which legal secretaries handled expense reimbursements, and this freed up time for my colleagues and me to be more productive at our legal tasks.

There are so many other situations beyond expense reimbursements in which I could have benefited from a legal secretary even though my firm at the time did not provide much secretarial support to associates. One time, I was tasked with scanning and uploading deposition transcripts into a firm document management system for five days straight because that firm did not provide secretarial support to associates, and I was told to get this project done. The firm likely lost thousands of dollars of billing as a result of this inefficiency, and a legal secretary could have helped me with this purely administrative project. While working as an associate at a firm without many secretaries, every time I drafted a letter, printed it out on stationery, scanned it, and emailed and mailed it to an adversary, a secretary could have helped me so I would be able to move onto other billable tasks. The amount of revenue a firm could generate with secretaries is often more than without secretaries, and additional firms need to consider this dynamic more when they evaluate their administrative needs.

Furthermore, secretaries can add to the culture and institutional knowledge of a firm in important ways. I recently received an email from the first legal secretary who helped me out when I was a “baby lawyer” at a “street law” firm years ago. This legal secretary taught me more about the actual practice of law than my law professors, since she knew how to file documents, where court appearances took place, and other particularities of practicing law in our jurisdiction. In addition, the legal secretary knew exactly which exhibits I should bring to depositions, when I had to actually appear in court for appearances, and taught me our firm’s administrative procedures. Moreover, that legal secretary had been at the firm for decades, and she had endless stories of the partners as young lawyers and kept tabs on where alums of the firm had gone with their careers. This secretary was an institution, and the firm was much better off with her presence.

Furthermore, in my experience (and granted, this could vary at different shops), legal secretaries and other administrative staff are far more likely to handle the small things that boost morale at a firm. For instance, legal secretaries and administrative staff often handled the lottery pools at many firms where I worked, and this was often a huge deal at those shops. Moreover, legal secretaries were often far more likely to celebrate birthdays, bar passage, and other occasions that made it more fun to be at work.

All told, it is disheartening to see that the roles of legal secretaries are vanishing at many law firms across the country. Of course, law firm managers understand best how to adjust their overhead to increase their bottom line, and some smaller firms may not need secretarial support. However, law firm leaders should evaluate how much more productive and efficient attorneys can be with legal secretaries, since administrative staff can help attorneys bill more hours and generate additional revenue. In addition, legal secretaries are often institutions at their firms, and many shops benefit from the knowledge and experience of legal secretaries.

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.

By now, we’re all familiar with the “new normal” of navigating through a pandemic. For lawyers counseling businesses, these COVID-challenged times have required a quick refresher on the finer points of concepts including contracts, liability, and risk – and a scramble for answers to brand-new questions.

In a new treatise from PLI Press, COVID-19 and Other Pandemics: Business and Legal Challenges, public health and safety regulation experts James T. O’Reilly and Philip Hagan offer background and analysis that lawyers can use. The first publication to address these complex, evolving issues, the treatise combines practical advice with the latest scientific research and guidance from key government agencies.

Here are some key points for businesses – and their counsel – to consider as they begin to assess the impact of COVID-19 and to prepare for its long-term consequences:

Contracts are key. If you haven’t brushed up on force majeure since law school, now is a good time to revisit this and other contract concepts. A chapter on “COVID-19, Contracts and Frustration Defenses” provides an overview of contract law for businesses who may have seen their operations interrupted by the pandemic when they, their vendors, or third parties were unable to fulfill contracts. In addition to force majeure clauses, O’Reilly and Hagan explore issues of foreseeability, and defenses to non-performance like impossibility, impracticability, and frustration of purpose.

Employers should continuously evaluate risks and liabilities in their workspaces. OSHA has provided recommendations for how businesses can evaluate the risk of COVID-19 spreading in their workplaces and design systems for preventing transmission. These include both engineering controls, such as workspace redesign and upgrades to office air filtration systems, and administrative controls, which reduce person-to-person contact through “staggered work shifts, downsizing operations, delivering services remotely, and other exposure-reducing measures.” In the treatise, O’Reilly and Hagan adapt these and other recommendations into actionable guidelines.

The book includes an overview of workplace liability claims, looking at potential employer liability for employees who contract the virus on the job. The authors discuss potential theories of liability that employers should be aware of and the evidentiary difficulties that the parties will encounter. In that context, they also dive into the complexities of contact tracing as it relates to employer liability and evidence of infection. In addition, they discuss liability risks arising not just from employees catching the virus, but from customers and other members of the public catching the virus. The authors provide an overview of certain tort concepts, an explanation of workers’ compensation programs, and once again draw on OSHA guidance, or lack thereof, and explain the interaction of these concepts with respect to employer liability.

Focus on active response. Regardless of their type of business, all employers should maintain active response plans that minimize potential COVID-19 exposures to their employees and customers, the authors say. The CDC and other government entities provide guidance that can be incorporated into business operating scenarios.

Plan for “black swans.” In other words: expect the unexpected. Now that a rare event with extreme global consequences has in fact occurred, businesses will endeavor to structure contracts and business plans with risk scenarios in mind. When counseling businesses on planning and liability, think about these “black swan” events and develop strategies accordingly.

To download a complimentary chapter of COVID-19 and Other Pandemics: Business and Legal Challenges from PLI, click here.

Visit PLI’s Coronavirus Developments page to access related webcasts and on-demand programs.

About PLI

Practising Law Institute is a nonprofit learning organization dedicated to keeping attorneys and other professionals at the forefront of knowledge and expertise. PLI is chartered by the Regents of the University of the State of New York and was founded in 1933 by Harold P. Seligson. The organization provides the highest quality, accredited, continuing legal and professional education programs in a variety of formats which are delivered by more than 4,000 volunteer faculty including prominent lawyers, judges, investment bankers, accountants, corporate counsel, and U.S. and international government regulators. PLI publishes a comprehensive library of Treatises, Course Handbooks, Answer Books and Journals also available through the PLI PLUS online platform. The essence of PLI’s mission is its commitment to the pro bono community. View PLI’s upcoming live webcasts here.

— Attorney and former television host Adrienne Lawrence, in comments about Jeffrey Toobin’s Zoom masturbation incident. Toobin’s indiscretion occurred earlier this week during a Zoom call between his colleagues at the New Yorker and WNYC. He has been fired from the New Yorker and is taking leave from CNN.

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.

“They’ve set up an Iron Curtain so you can’t get out the New York Post story which I happened to know is 100 percent accurate,” America’s Mayor told a North Dakota radio host on Tuesday. “But even if it isn’t accurate, the American people are entitled to know it.”

Is there a First Amendment right to slander the children of your political opponent, or … ?

Never mind.

Rudy Giuliani’s fantastic claims about Hunter Biden abandoning a laptop containing evidence of extensive corruption in a repair shop 3,000 miles away from his home in California have landed with a thud. Apparently, no one believes that Hunter Biden used his laptop to text “his siblings” (wait, he only has one surviving sibling!) bitching about having to “collect money for his father, take care of the family expenses, and kick back half of it to Joe Biden. For 30 years.” Hunter Biden is 50, so apparently he’s had to pay a vig to the old man since college. Harsh!

Even though Giuliani admitted that he chose the New York Post because “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out,” multiple reporters at the outlet refused to put their names on an unvetted story with such obvious credibility problems. The Post found its Twitter account throttled, with most social media platforms limiting the spread of the story, and despite Fox hyping the story all hours of the day — a story the network itself passed on as beneath its own journalistic standards — it’s having no effect on the race.

So Giuliani and the Mensa Squad have kicked it up another notch. What if … KIDDIE PORN? Hey, it’s working for the Q-anon loons. Why not, right?

Hence Giuliani’s seamless pivot to the “Hunter Biden: Sex Pervert” storyline.

And if you can’t trust One America News Network, who can ya trust?

The problem, as we pointed out on Monday, is that possession of child pornography is a crime. So if Rudy and the gang have been making copies and passing this stuff around for weeks without notifying law enforcement, they might be in deep shit themselves.

Which may or may not have been the impetus for Giuliani’s field trip, accompanied by the ever-upstanding Bernie Kerik (he was pardoned!), to visit the New Castle County Police Department and turn over whatever he’s got.

That’s Giuliani sharing with a Newsmax anchor what is either a hacked or fake text of Hunter Biden explaining that his sister-in-law was worried about the impact of his drug use on his children. It is clearly an excruciatingly painful family conflict, but in no way suggests the existence of child pornography. Nonetheless, Giuliani intones ominously that “this is supported by numerous pictures of underage girls.”

If the subpoena published by the New York Post is genuine, then the FBI has had these documents since late 2019, and no arrests have occurred. But if anyone’s taking advantage of a child, it’s Giuliani and the Post, which used a family photo of Hunter Biden and his minor children, their faces completely unpixelated, to “authenticate” its story.

Local law enforcement seems to have been underwhelmed by Giuliani and Kerik’s shocking, belated disclosures, swiftly lobbing Rudy’s printouts back into the FBI’s court.

“In light of ongoing questions about the credibility of these claims and multiple reports that the FBI is investigating their veracity, law enforcement is referring this matter to the FBI,” the Delaware Department of Justice said in a statement to The Daily Beast.

But speaking of ill-advised images, The Guardian got a look at the new Borat movie, and …. UHHHH.

In the film, released on Friday, the former New York mayor and current personal attorney to Donald Trump is seen reaching into his trousers and apparently touching his genitals while reclining on a bed in the presence of the actor playing Borat’s daughter, who is posing as a TV journalist.

Following an obsequious interview for a fake conservative news programme, the pair retreat at her suggestion for a drink to the bedroom of a hotel suite, which is rigged with concealed cameras.

After she removes his microphone, Giuliani, 76, can be seen lying back on the bed, fiddling with his untucked shirt and reaching into his trousers. They are then interrupted by Borat who runs in and says: “She’s 15. She’s too old for you.”

Criminy.

Rudy Giuliani faces questions after compromising scene in new Borat film [Guardian]
Rudy Giuliani says he sent alleged sexually explicit materials involving underage girls from Hunter Biden to Delaware police [WashEx]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Like a canary in the T14 coal mine, Harvard Law School has decided what it’s going to do about the Spring 2021 semester. HLS was the first elite law school to announce Fall 2020 was going to be entirely online, and as COVID-19 infection rates are soaring with the overwhelming majority of U.S. states in “uncontrolled spread” territory and vaccines unlikely to return life to normal any time soon, well, some sort of decision had to be made about the upcoming semester.

Yesterday, Dean of Harvard Law School John Manning announced that the Winter and Spring 2021 terms will be fully online.

Manning provided a detailed look at the law school decision making process in an email to all students (available in full on the next page). Notably, the dean said HLS considers a hybrid instructional model the most likely alternate outcome, but they rejected that as inferior pedagogically and as inequitable.

So, it’s fully online for the remainder of the 20-21 academic year at HLS. Manning also said that the law school is looking to augment the online experience in the coming terms, and laid out a detailed set of initiatives to make online learning as good as it can be:

• Creating, this spring, as we did this fall, new courses in time-zone friendly teaching blocks for students in remote time zones.

• Providing additional opportunities for small group interactions with teachers and fellow students through:

–          The creation of opportunities for new HLS students (1Ls, transfer students, and LL.Ms) to get to know faculty and one another through a series of spring Reading Groups modeled on the 1L reading groups;

–          The establishment of Writing Groups that will give upper-level students (2Ls, 3Ls, and LL.Ms) the chance to work in small groups with a professor and peers to develop, write, and workshop student papers;

–          Resumption of student-faculty coffee and student-faculty lunch opportunities (in an online format), with food paid for by the Law School;

–          Continuation of enhanced support for additional Teaching Fellow positions.

• Making available new on-campus housing options for students who have encountered unexpected challenges pursuing an online education in their home environments.

• Providing emergency dependent care support for students.

• Renewing support to those eligible for the Technology Assistance Fund and expanding covered equipment expenses to include standing desks, ergonomic chairs, and other academic-related supplies.

• Providing a stipend for textbook shipping expenses for international students.

• Providing student funding to cover the cost of printing course packs during the period of remote learning.

• Streamlining the recording request process to cut the time required for requesting a class recording for personal or medical emergencies from three days to three hours in most instances.

As frustrating as the situation is, at least Harvard has provided their students with some clarity.  It’s going to be interesting to see what other law schools decide to do.

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).

From: Manning, John
Date: Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 2:47 PM
Subject: [STUDENTS]: HLS Winter and Spring Terms 2021
To: students@lists.law.harvard.edu

Dear HLS Students,

I write today to update you on our plans for Winter and Spring Terms 2021. Though we had very much hoped to be able to resume teaching and learning on campus, we have with great disappointment concluded that it is neither prudent nor equitable for us to resume in-person instruction. We miss seeing you all in person tremendously. And we understand and regret that today’s decision will land hard with many of you. We did not come to it lightly. After dedicated teams of faculty and staff conducted extensive fact-gathering, careful analysis of alternatives, and consideration of input from students, faculty, staff, and public health experts, the choice, though difficult, was for several reasons clear.

First, our foremost consideration is keeping our community safe amidst growing uncertainties surrounding the pandemic’s trajectory. Alongside a resurgence of COVID-19 internationally, the U.S. is now experiencing its third spike in COVID-19 cases since March, and cases have recently been on the rise in Massachusetts, as more communities in and around Boston and the eastern half of the Commonwealth have been deemed high risk. With large unanswered questions about the impact of cold weather on the virus’ transmission and the potential interaction of COVID-19 with seasonal flu, we believe that the risks and uncertainties associated with the pandemic in the Winter and Spring Terms are simply too great to justify a significant return of students, staff, and faculty to campus.

Second, what we have learned this fall is that our faculty have found creative and effective ways to adapt online practices to the distinctive pedagogy of law school; that our students have been present and engaged in the classroom and clinical experience; and that classes and clinics are generally going well. After broad consultation at HLS and with colleagues at other schools, we have concluded that pedagogical considerations not only justify, but favor, the continuation of online instruction at present. In making the decision we are sharing today, we exhaustively considered all aspects of offering classes on the HLS campus under current public health regulations and best practices, including CDC and state guidance for required physical distance. Under applicable constraints, the alternative to online instruction is not, as we all would wish, in-person instruction, but rather a form of hybrid learning. For example, in a typical Socratic class, only a fraction of the students could be present in the classroom on any given day; others would have to participate remotely from home; and both the teacher and in-person students would be required to wear masks, hindering the ability of everyone, especially those participating from home, to hear what is being said and to read expressions in a way that would contribute nonverbal communication to classroom dialogue. Even for small-class experiences, moreover, we concluded that hybrid learning does not capture the benefits of either fully in-person or fully online instruction.

Third, and as important, we believe that considerations of equity strongly favor continuing with online instruction. Hybrid classes differentiate the educational experience among students not only on any given day, but also across the semester. Such classes are not equally accessible to students who come from countries subject to a travel ban, who face other difficulties securing visas, who have family or personal obligations or challenges that compel them to remain where they are now, or who suffer from underlying conditions that place them at high risk of serious illness should they contract COVID-19. Especially given the nature of our pedagogy, it seemed to us problematic to create a tiered experience in which only some of our community could engage in the forms of classroom instruction being offered.

In short, given the range of imperfect options before us, we have concluded that it is best for faculty to continue to focus on delivering the best online academic program possible to all students equally, rather than moving to hybrid courses that, given the public health constraints, treat students differently without any assurance of providing a superior learning experience.

While we recognize that the public health situation may change between now and the new year, and we of course very much hope that scientific developments will allow greater in-person activity very soon, we also recognize that students, staff, and faculty must have sufficient time to make appropriate plans for the remainder of the school year. We know that this decision will be disappointing to many and, as we’ve said before, we remain committed to resuming in-person instruction and regular campus life when it is safe and feasible to do so. In the meantime, please know that in the weeks ahead, we will continue to listen and solicit feedback as we find ways to improve the online experience and to mitigate the challenges that some students have reported this fall. Reflecting some of your feedback to date, we are launching a number of new initiatives and continuing several others, including:

• Creating, this spring, as we did this fall, new courses in time-zone friendly teaching blocks for students in remote time zones.
• Providing additional opportunities for small group interactions with teachers and fellow students through:

–          The creation of opportunities for new HLS students (1Ls, transfer students, and LL.Ms) to get to know faculty and one another through a series of spring Reading Groups modeled on the 1L reading groups;

–          The establishment of Writing Groups that will give upper-level students (2Ls, 3Ls, and LL.Ms) the chance to work in small groups with a professor and peers to develop, write, and workshop student papers;

–          Resumption of student-faculty coffee and student-faculty lunch opportunities (in an online format), with food paid for by the Law School;

–          Continuation of enhanced support for additional Teaching Fellow positions.

• Making available new on-campus housing options for students who have encountered unexpected challenges pursuing an online education in their home environments.
• Providing emergency dependent care support for students.
• Renewing support to those eligible for the Technology Assistance Fund and expanding covered equipment expenses to include standing desks, ergonomic chairs, and other academic-related supplies.
• Providing a stipend for textbook shipping expenses for international students.
• Providing student funding to cover the cost of printing course packs during the period of remote learning.
• Streamlining the recording request process to cut the time required for requesting a class recording for personal or medical emergencies from three days to three hours in most instances.

In addition, mindful of the fact that, because of the pandemic, many students will be unable to be on campus their final year here or, in the case of LL.Ms, their entire time at HLS, we will also be consulting with students, staff, and faculty in the weeks ahead to identify creative ways to bring Class of 2021 students back to campus, when the pandemic abates, to spend meaningful time with classmates, friends, and teachers.

Knowing there will inevitably be many questions that arise for each of you, we’ve updated our Academic Year 2020-2021 FAQs to provide as much information as possible. We will continue to add new information as more details are developed. Our Student Services offices are also available to consult with students about their individual circumstances. Contact information and office hours can be found here.

We understand that, for a variety of reasons, another semester of online learning may not be optimal for some of you. To ensure that every student has sufficient time to consider this important question, we are extending the leave of absence deadline for Winter Term and Spring Term leaves to December 1, 2020. (The form for requesting a leave is available here.) We encourage anyone who may be considering a leave to reach out to one of our Student Services offices for additional information and support.

This has been a challenging year for everyone at HLS and around the globe. The circumstances that each of you has faced vary greatly, and we know that adapting to the changes required by this pandemic has been difficult. If you are struggling and in need of support, please reach out to the Dean of Students Office or the Counseling and Mental Health Services at HUHS. Please know that we are here for you.

Please also know that we are fully committed, as always, to providing you with an exceptional education and to working together to build an inclusive community of learning and service. In this time of great difficulty, I am grateful to be part of this dedicated and remarkable community. We may be physically separated at present, but we remain united in our shared educational mission and in the common purpose of finding new solutions to serious and deeply rooted problems that excellent lawyers can and must help solve. We look forward to teaching, learning from, and working with you in the months ahead.

Be well.

All best,

John Manning

Welcome listeners to this exclusive Above the Law Lexis+ Special Report Podcast: Introducing a New Era in Legal Research, brought to you by LexisNexis.

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It took more than a decade for it to happen, but employment outcomes for law school graduates are now even better than they were before the recession. The class of 2019 had a truly excellent showing — for almost everyone but Black graduates. In a year that’s been marked by a reckoning on racial inequality in America, this really stings.

As we noted previously, according to the latest figures from the National Association of Law Placement (NALP), the class of 2019’s employment outcomes were very strong. The overall graduate employment increased to 90.3 percent (0.9 percentage points over the class of 2018), which is the highest employment rate recorded since the the class of 2007 saw an overall rate of 91.9 percent. On top of that, the number of graduates employed in full-time, long-term jobs where bar passage was required was 74.3 percent (an increase of more than 3 percentage points), a percentage higher than rates measured before the recession. It’s actually the highest level ever recorded.

But for minority law school graduates, this data paints a much more dismal picture. Despite the fact that law firms have focused on diversity and inclusion in recent years, for the class of 2019, Black and Native American law school graduates had the lowest overall employment rates. In fact, Black graduates were employed in bar passage-required jobs at a rate 17 percentage points lower than their white classmates.

NALP Executive Director James Leipold acknowledged this news in a press release:

I find it particularly discouraging this year to have to report employment findings that highlight stark disparities by race and ethnicity, among other demographic markers, but this should serve as a wake-up call to everyone involved in legal education and the legal profession. In a year when the overall class secured jobs and salaries at higher rates than we have seen since before the Great Recession, many subsets of graduates, but especially Black law school graduates, still meet with lower levels of success in the job market than the rest of the graduate pool.

How do we solve the diversity and inclusion issues that remain in private practice? When white law school graduates are finding jobs that require bar passage at a rate of 79.8 percent and their Black colleagues trail behind at 62.4 percent, it’s clear that whatever law firms think they’re doing to improve diversity and inclusion is still not enough. It’s disheartening to see these kinds of numbers, and even though it’s difficult to remain hopeful for the future, with Generation Z optimism taking over law schools across the country, change is on the horizon.

Law students have started to boycott law firms for their policies and practices, and it seems to be working. The power is truly in law students’ hands to change things. Take up this issue and help bring much-needed progress and change to the legal profession.

NALP’s New Employment and Salary Report Highlights Disparities in Outcomes by Race and Ethnicity [NALP]

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.

Could it be? Is there a Biglaw firm out there that’s bold enough to offer its associates a fall bonus after Cravath put the kibosh on doling out cash before the end of the year?

Yes! Finally!

Akin Gump — a firm that came in at No. 34 on the most recent Am Law 100 ranking, with $1,135,014,000 in gross revenue — has bucked the trend and is matching Davis Polk’s generous scale. In an email entitled “Good News and Appreciation,” chair Kim Koopersmith acknowledged her attorneys’ dedication during these difficult times, writing, “You have been making extraordinary contributions in the most challenging of circumstances. In recognition of your dedication and contribution to our firm, we will be paying a special fall bonus to our associates and counsel in good standing.”

In case you’ve forgotten what the DPW scale looks like (and you probably have by now since it’s been so long), here it is:

• Class of 2019: $7,500
• Class of 2018: $10,000
• Class of 2017: $20,000
• Class of 2016: $27,500
• Class of 2015: $32,500
• Class of 2014: $37,000
• Class of 2013+: $40,000

(Flip to the next page to see the full Akin bonus memo.)

Associates are thrilled as can be. “Nice to see Akin Gump ignore the trend of firms refusing to pay this bonus—especially considering how busy everyone has been this year and how well the firm has done,” said one associate. “Feels great, especially for those of us in exceptionally busy practices,” said another.

Akin Gump’s special bonuses will be paid out on November 30, and the firm has committed to offering its “usual year-end [bonuses] at the market scale.”

Congratulations to everyone at the firm. Will your firm step up and offer fall bonuses?

Please help us help 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.

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.