Category: News Feeds

The macabre word “headhunter” found its first usage in the 1940s. Although the term seems a bit predatory despite its common usage today, the images of taking someone’s head may remain true for some recruiting shops out there. With low barrier to entry, many new shops can come and go and drag the remains of a poor associate and partner’s career in their wake out the door. I’ve compiled a list of four things to ask yourself when a no name recruiting company calls you coldly.  

1) One Cravath Please. One of the hardest aspects of career management is being honest with yourself about the strength of your candidacy. Some recruiters will pitch you firms that sound appealing but in reality are aspirational. While you were fixated on your dream firm, the recruiter was busy loading the pellets to try to hit a bullseye with a sawed-off shotgun. This serves two purposes; once you inevitably are turned down for your dream position, they will present backup options, which you will choose to settle for or move onto your next recruiter. However, since they’ve now blasted your resume off to every firm in town, they’ve made the job of the next recruiter that much harder as they will try to claim origination credit. For a busy attorney, this is a frustrating waste of time; for a swamped recruiting department, this is a waste of resources and time; for a good recruiter, this would be a waste of their reputation with the firm and make it immeasurably harder to place another candidate in the future at that firm.

2) Every Rose Has It’s Thorns. You know that firm that you love that you’ve dreamed about working for your whole life? The one you can picture the golden elevators leading up to their marbel adorned floors on the 85th floor? Someone is walking out the door as soon as you walk in. The realities of any business are that there are pros and cons that create push and pull factors in an attempt to create a kind of workforce equilibrium. From a very superficial level, if you value free evenings, you’re not going to enjoy working for high powered litigation firms in Manhattan.  As we’ve discussed in past articles, relying on the insight of current or former attorneys at a firm can be dangerous. An unbiased recruiter will be your best insight into the firm culture, fit, and your prospects there. If a recruiter tries to sell you two tickets to paradise, they’re probably going to leave you stranded and freezing in Paradise Newfoundland. An honest recruiter will be realistic about the firm, and not just because we’re altruistic. If we place you, and you leave, we would lose out on the placement fee and engender distrust from the firm about our ability to accurately represent the firm to the candidate and appraise their interest. 

3) Tip Of The Joberg. Recruiters often serve as gatekeepers to the legal market. Though firms post their needs on their corporate websites, the posted needs are almost always just a fraction of their actual needs. The issue with listing all of these postings is that it invites a frenzy of resumes that legal departments cannot keep up with. If a recruiter tries to tell you there are no oil and gas openings in Seattle, that’s probably accurate. However, if they are trying to push you to a specific firm by telling you it’s one of your only options, and you’re not in a niche practice, the truth is that they probably have a favorable agreement with that firm. We believe in transparency and honesty which is why we list the available jobs on the market on our website, which you can register for here. The reality of the market is that recruiters often serve as the impetus behind new firm expansion by bringing to the firm stellar associates and partners that allow them to expand their services into new industries or take on new clients that require a higher leveraged structure. 

4) We Got The Titanic Screeners. As firms eventually collapse (see Dewey, Bingham, et al.) the rumblings often reach legal recruiters first. Recruiting firms actually play a fairly significant role in firm mergers as they facilitate the mass exodus or influx of lateral talent to the firms, creating a quandary for recruiters. By assuming that the firm will collapse, and pulling out as many attorneys as possible, we participate in facilitating a self-fulfilling prophecy that can derail the careers of the attorneys caught on the sinking ship. However, by helping a firm try to navigate around the iceberg by stemming the outflow of lateral talent, we run the risk of derailing those careers as well if the firm collapses. Instead of running this ethical trolley problem down one of the paths, we generally try to stay off the trolley altogether. If there are clear signs that the firm will collapse, we will assist attorneys in escaping the wreckage. Above all, we are clear about our expectations for the firm with our clients so that there are no surprises. The recruiting shops that show up quickly to the scene with a thousand lifeboats are they ones preying on fear in hopes of making a quick buck, and you can often use this as a gauge for their trustworthiness. 

Though the preceding paragraphs were reflective of the darker side of the legal recruiting profession, the goal was not to dismay you, but to enlighten you that there exist many superb, honest, ethical and trustworthy recruiting shops on the market – us included. Making a sound lateral move is greatly eased by using a good recruiter. If you or someone you know is interested in making a lateral move, my coworkers and I are happy to assist in any way we can. 

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. Michael Allen is the CEO of Lateral Link. He is based in the Los Angeles office and focuses exclusively on Partner and General Counsel placements for top firms and companies. Prior to founding Lateral Link in 2006, he worked as an attorney at both Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Irell & Manella LLP. Michael graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, San Diego before earning his JD, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.

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Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices world-wide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.

It seems a hedge fund manager in London can buy anything (well, almost anything): seats at the Royal Opera House with complimentary coat rest; a pool, gym, sauna and steam room for the basement of their iceberg houses (neighbors be damned); Charles de Gaulle’s old place; early access to the Brexit results. Oh, and a sneak listen to what the head of the Bank of England has to say after an interest-rate decision.

The Bank of England said the audio feed of its news conferences, maintained as a backup in case the video feed fails, had been “misused by a third-party supplier to the bank since earlier this year to supply services to other external clients.”

The audio feed provided traders a five- to eight-second advantage over the video feed….

Is my argument as strong as it can be? Are there better cases out there? And did I find every weakness in my opponent’s argument?

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At this time of the year we spend a lot of digital ink at Above the Law waxing on about how much money lawyers at Biglaw firms are making. Associate year end bonuses are an important part of the Biglaw ecosystem, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t also talk about the money lawyers are giving out this season.

It’s generally a tradition for lawyers at Biglaw to give gifts — usually cash — to the support staff that make their job smoother. But how much you should give to that essential paralegal is not always clear. Our network of tipsters has reported a wide spectrum of support staff gifts, from a measly $20 on the cheap end to an impressive $1000 on the generous side.

We know there are a variety of norms at different firms. For example, some places pool attorney cash contributions that scale based on seniority and hand those out to the whole support team while others have a laissez-faire attitude towards attorney generosity and associates are left without a benchmark for what they should give.

So we are taking the question to you, dear readers. Let’s delve into how much you’re giving to the paralegal/admin/support staffer in your professional life.

For the purpose of this first question, assume you’re a midlevel associate (and that amounts would scale up slightly as a senior or down as someone pretty junior). So how much are you giving to a support staffer that is absolutely essential to your ability to get your job done?

Now lets see how much you give to support staff that’s on your team, but not part of your day-to-day workflow (think floater secretary that covers your group or a paralegal you only work with occasionally).

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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).

Recently one of the younger colleagues at our firm became distressed when reading an adversary’s brief in support of a motion to dismiss. It seemed that the adversary had cited to cases that looked a lot like ours where judges in the same district court in which we were proceeding had dismissed similar claims. One case after another seemingly like ours resulted in dismissal.

I urged the lawyer to breathe and then do as any lawyer should — read the authority — and then come back to me. The lawyer did and, of course, while the quotes from the authority seemed bad for us and, indeed, the referenced authority resulted in claims like ours being dismissed, there were two very big differences. First, the nuanced facts were different, as they often are, and more than enough to distinguish the authority from our cases. Second, and kind of sneaky, the referenced cases all regarded decisions on motions for summary judgment — where evidence was developed and the standard is very different than on a motion to dismiss.

It is often so. My younger colleague was, I acknowledge, probably a little starstruck, as young lawyers can be, by the Biglaw/Am Law 100 adversary we had, and, I think, didn’t believe that such lawyers could be so tricky. But many lawyers are, and young lawyers should be careful.

More to the point, the facts in those cases were what really mattered, not the broad legal principles those cases apparently stood for (and, in fact, anyway did not in the motion to dismiss context). We were able, easily, to show how those cases were different in our opposition brief by focusing on the facts.

It is hardly just in the motion context where this principle — the focus on facts is what helps you win — matters. This is the case for prosecutors and defense lawyers when arguing bail. The bail standards may be what they are, but the facts determine which way the judge will go. It is the case in dealing with applications for temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions. We can all recite the standards of irreparable harm, balancing of equities and all that, but emphasizing the facts is what will help you win for your client. It certainly is the case in a trial or evidentiary hearing where the judge or arbitrator or jury will have the chance to get all the facts. And, of course, those fact finders are supposed to apply the law as they understand it.  But you must present to them the facts that show why your side should prevail.

We are lawyers.  Rules, standards, and principles — the law — all matter. But to win for your clients make sure you don’t just act like a lawyer, but like a human being, where narrative determines so often what we decide. Focus on the facts.

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John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

“We do not condone personal surveillance on employees as part of our compliance,” Credit Suisse Chairman Urs Rohner said 10 weeks ago. Well, the bank may not condone it, but it sure does seem to do a lot of it. Rohner was apologizing the CS’ former wealth management chief, Iqbal Khan—who was forced out for apparently wanting to cut down some of CEO Tidjane Thiam’s trees, and then tailed for fear that he might take some Credit Suissers with him to UBS—and was either being dishonest or demonstrating his incompetence, because hardly had the doors stopped swinging after Thiam’s right hand/scapegoat stepped through them that a second allegation emerged. And now, a third.

The holiday season is upon us, and yet again, you have no idea what to get for the fickle lawyer or law student in your life. We’re here to help.

We’ve got an eclectic selection of fantastic legally themed holiday gifts for you to choose from, so settle in by that stack of documents yet to be reviewed and dig in.

We have so many offerings this year that we’ve categorized everything so you can either peruse the whole post or click on the link below to jump directly to the category that you think best suits your shopping mission:

Books
Apparel & Accessories
Games
Food & Drink
Desk Toys & Office Decor
Movies & Television
Luggage

(Disclosure: When available, we have used affiliate links.)

Books

Do you have a reader on your hands? Of course you do, you’re buying for an attorney! Grab a nice book to curl up with this holiday season — or to read on their next flight to some far-flung deposition.

Former Acting SG and current Hogan Lovells litigator Neal Katyal (with Sam Koppelman) just released Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump, a straightforward account of the mounting evidence against the president. You can check out an ATL interview with Katyal about the book here.

My Mom, The Lawyer is a children’s book from Michelle Browning Coughlin, founder of MothersEsquire, a nonprofit organization devoted to gender equity in the legal profession. All proceeds benefit MothersEsquire in its mission.

With the movie set to be released this month, this is a good time to check out Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson’s 2015 account of the Walter McMillian case. I’m not sure “spoilers” applies to non-fiction, but if you’re buying for the type that wants to see the movie cold, just get the book and they can read it later. Speaking of movies, Dark Waters with Mark Ruffalo is already out, and you can read all about that legal battle against DuPont in Exposure.

You’d think a lawyer wouldn’t need a book like this, but then you hear the positions the SG’s office is willing to take these days and realize everyone could use a refresher, like How To Read The Constitution and Why by CBS Legal Analyst Kim Wehle. Eric Foner also has a historical look at The Second Founding charting the effort to remake the Republic.

Finally, two entries charting the epic failures of the system and the delinquent efforts to right the ship. Rachel Denhollander’s What Is A Girl Worth? discusses her role in breaking the silence surrounding USA Gymnastics and its years of covering for Larry Nassar. Ronan Farrow covers some of the same ground in Catch & Kill: Lies, Spies, and the Conspiracy To Protect Predators

apparel & accessories

RBG has gotten the Goddess Coin treatment over at Awe Inspired. Dissent Pins also sells a line of pins and necklaces in honor of the justice and Etsy offers some cute Supreme Court pins as well.

ESK Esq. has a whole line of apparel for the lawyer out there including a stylized view of glorious Blackacre of Property Law fame and an International Shoe logo for Civ Pro nerds. If you’re buying for a law student this season, consider this Lawyer-Loading shirt or this shirt featuring the refrain of law students everywhere.

Here’s a shirt for every good Sunny fan who knows the benefit of a solid education in Bird Law. Here’s a Nelson & Murdock shirt for the comic book set — I’m still searching for a Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway shirt for the fan that wants to be really obscure.

There’s even a shirt for the office holiday party.

Here’s a Legal Pad Bow Tie. Is the lawyer in your life a nerd or a complete nerd? Because if it’s the latter, then you absolutely have to buy this legal pad bow tie, the perfect sartorial statement against the kids and their damn computer note-taking.

What better stocking stuffer than… stockings.

Games

Looking for a diversion from billable hours?

The LAWSUIT! board game makes a fantastic holiday gift for clients, lawyers, friends, and family. The game’s setting is the day-to-day operation of a law firm where players bring fictitious lawsuits with whimsical premises, and can elect to settle or appeal cases.

Makers of the official chess set of the Supreme Court Historical Society! Approach the Bench makes great gifts for attorneys, law students, or anyone in the legal profession. They offer courtroom-themed chess sets, Judge, Blind Justice, and Attorney bottle stoppers, ornaments, and lawyer, Judge, and Blind Justice chocolate bars!

FOOD & DRINK

This wine bottle holder is so delightfully weird that it comes all the way back around into awesome. There’s some serious detail work on this thing.

Or for the more honest out there, we have this World’s Okayest Lawyer Mug.

What better way to get into the holiday spirit than to enjoy some holiday spirits? Caskers, founded by Harvard Law grads, curates all varieties of the best craft spirits from around the world and offers discounts of up to 40% of retail prices.

Teak & Twine offers gift boxes for all people and occasions. While everything is customizable, here are a few suggestions for curated boxes that the folks there suggested:

• For the attorney who has everything, The Tuxedo: Sophisticated and classic, this gift features elevated edibles.
• For your top clients, The Foodie – The most mouth-watering of our gifts and our top corporate seller.
• For the hardworking law student, The Dream Job – A fine notebook and coffee: law school essentials!

Do we have puns? Sure! And another one. Even this stretch of one.

Chocolate Text lets you send chocolate messages to anyone you desire. Personally, I’d go for “You’ve Been Served.” You can also order a “Selfie Tin.” Simply upload a picture and Chocolate Text places it on a tin of your choice of sweet treats. The perfect place for that photo of your favorite lawyer shaking hands with a Supreme Court justice or walking up to get their degree.

Is a lawyer having a good day or a bad day? This wine glass will let everyone know. Meanwhile this wine glass explains why the lawyer is drinking today.

Finally, a Zazzle user has a take on the ubiquitous “Keep Calm” motif, with these “Keep Calm and Call A Lawyer” candy jars.

Desk Toys & Office Decor

Lawyers spend most of their lives behind their desks, so why not spice them up a little? Sure they might appreciate a framed picture of their loved ones, but these thoughtful trinkets might make for better conversation pieces.

This is a cute business card holder of a female lawyer sitting at her desk — making it very meta. This glass card holder can be personalized.

And then there are Funko Pops. You know, those big head toys that seem to be everywhere these days. They even make Golden Girls Funko Pops now, which seems like the border of market saturation. But there are some legal Pops out there like this one of Matt Murdock or this lawyer She-Hulk one. There’s a Citadel-dwelling Lawyer Morty from Rick and Morty. And, obviously, there’s Saul Goodman and Jimmy McGill. For that matter, Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer.

It’s not exactly meant for the desk, but this is a nice decorative touch for the office. It’s a framed copy of the patent artwork for the gavel. Specifically, U.S. Patent 2,755,833 — also known as the Hollow-Headed Gavel With Telescopic Handle Section.

Someone at CafePress has a billable hours clock available to mix decor with some wit.

movies & Television

Lawyers may not have a lot of free time, but when they have a chance to catch up with the world, they can thank you for providing them something fantastic for their viewing pleasure.

Like the complete series of Law & Order. If you wanted to know what twenty season bundle of disks looks like, well there you go.

Speaking of series, the complete runs of Perry Mason, Matlock, and Ally McBeal are all available. Personally, I’d take the various seasons of Harvey Bridman or Better Call Saul though.

There was a stellar RBG documentary last year that you can pick up. We reviewed the film here.

Classical movie buffs might appreciate this 50th Anniversary Edition of 12 Angry Men or an opportunity to revisit Atticus Finch before he became a racist in Go Set A Watchman. On the ridiculous side, perhaps they’d enjoy Al Pacino’s turn as Satan in Devil’s Advocate. Then there’s the greatest courtroom film of all time, My Cousin Vinny.

Luggage

The essential gift for a traveling lawyer! The ScanFast Briefcase from Mobile Edge is a TSA-compliant laptop bag that allows the traveler to keep their laptop inside their bag while passing through TSA security checkpoints. This makes traveling with your laptop simple while keeping your laptop secure.

For a less standard design, check out this option (which also comes in three other color combinations). The bag is still TSA-compliant and boasts rich pink suede and brown faux-leather exterior highlighted by a bright color-accented satin lining. A matching shoulder strap, separate zippered workstation for files, and a trolley strap for rolling luggage included. Carries a Lifetime Warranty!

Seriously, peruse all of the MobileEdge offerings while shopping.

If you come across any more cool holiday gift ideas for attorneys, send them our way! We’re always looking to add more to the annual guide.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

The findings of the Blickstein Group’s 2019 Law Department Operations Survey reveal a majority of legal teams are successfully improving how they operate. But much work remains to be done as they strive to overcome a variety of challenges for law department transformation. In addition, with 33 percent of the legal operations professionals being new to their roles within the last one to three years, this suggests considerable opportunity and room for maturity evolution.

Survey participants reported business process improvement, cost containment and savings, and management of the budget as top challenges, followed closely by concerns over the management and retention of department resources, staying abreast of technology, and managing outside counsel. I would say technology is one of the commonalities across all these issues.

Effective Use of Technology Rises but Contract and Document Management Trail Behind 

Survey participants reported improvements across the board in the effective use of technology, as compared with 2018 survey results. Notably electronic signatures and e-billing were both ranked as 8s on a 10-point scale for the first time in the 12-year history of the survey.

But contract management and document management, despite some improvements, continued to trail behind all other technologies for effective use. 

It’s not that they are less useful, but rather that they are not being utilized to the fullest. 

There can be any number of reasons to explain less than peak effective use, for example insufficient training or poor implementation (such as when a platform might be shoehorned into department processes). Process analysis and well-designed workflows are often critical to utilization success.

Technology can be underutilized too. For example, an e-billing system could be used simply to process invoices. But a more effective use would include spend analysis of the data to identify potential opportunities for process improvements or to determine whether additional in-house resources may be justified. Even small improvements can add up to significant departmental savings.

In fact, this seems to be what law departments are doing. 67 percent of survey participants reported tracking accruals or budgets in e-billing, up from 55 percent in 2018. That’s effective use!

Survey participants also overwhelmingly gave a thumbs up regarding their perception of the effective use of information that metrics can provide, an increase from about 45 percent in 2018 to nearly 72% in 2019 who had a positive view about the value of these metrics. 

Law departments seem to recognize that other technologies need to be equally well utilized. 

Nearly half of all survey participants said they are now planning on or actively developing a strategy to address how they integrate, evolve and replace existing systems in support of their legal department needs and processes. 

If we look at contract management specifically, half of departments report an intent to update, evaluate, or implement new systems over the next 12 months. Analyzing the data in these systems can be a great way to help determine the best course of action.

It will also be crucial to gain an understanding of how processes really work, and especially from the perspective of the people who will be using the technology, which can be a nice way to acknowledge the importance of the work they do. 

Overall the survey findings show that the trend for law department transformation is not transient. Legal teams are strongly committed to changing how law works and, where there is disagreement among legal operations professionals, it is usually about the degree of change.

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Heidi Rudolph is a Managing Director at Morae Global, the full-service, technology-enabled, integrated solution provider for the legal and compliance function around the world.

If your firm expects you to have the most expensive data plan, shouldn’t they be giving you something for the inconvenience? I mean, perhaps it’s not an inconvenience because you’re busy streaming Friends episodes on the subway and forcing yourself to pretend you’re watching something clever. But the firm doesn’t know that you’ve got terrible taste in television.

Practicing law in the 21st century requires more costly tools than it used to. Attorneys need laptops, smartphones, wifi access at the bare minimum, and potentially licenses to a suite of security products. Firms rarely issue all of these products anymore, both out of respect for the choices of individual associates and in recognition that cloud-based solutions make the specific product choice largely irrelevant. But many firms recognize that they’re still making an ask of their attorneys and respond with a little something to ease the burden.

Firms like Simpson and Paul Weiss offer tech stipends. Brown Rudnick even tops those offerings. It’s a nice gesture to cover the cost of equipment that firms absolutely expect an associate to have. For years, we’ve advocated for every firm to follow suit and kick in to cover the cost of the tools of the trade.

But unfortunately some firms are starting to pull back. Womble Bond Dickinson just informed its associates that it will no longer subsidize their data plans:

We all know how much the UK appreciates its counterproductive austerity, and even though the US entity is technically quasi-independent, maybe the Brits are rubbing off on the firm.

Make no mistake, this is a compensation cut. When every associate relied upon this reimbursement, taking it away cuts their take home, after tax, compensation by… what?… a few hundred or so? It’s not a lot, but that’s a student loan payment for these people. Or maybe half a student loan payment.

In any event, this is a troubling sign that firms might be moving toward the nickel and diming  their own associates. So if you’re looking at firms, remember to take some time to check out the perks.

Earlier: Biglaw Firm Blows Competition Out Of The Water With Tech Spending Stipend For Associates
Actually, THIS Tech Stipend Blows The Competition Out Of The Water

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

God and some of his earthly representatives may be infallible, but his chosen bankers are not. At least, the Elect have to tell the Justice Department that they’re not (and certainly the Goldman Sachs Compliance Department appears to lack a hotline to the all-seeing one, or if they’ve got it to not have used it in the case of one T. Leissner) to make this whole Malaysian money-laundering/bribery/responsibility for The Wolf of Wall Street thing go away. That and a bigger legal reserve should do it, though.