Sometimes you need to leave a place for a while to figure out what makes it unique. After two and a half years down in Washington, I’ve just returned to New York, which I consider home. My time away has caused me to notice things I never paid much attention to before. Like the trash. Read More
Summer associates—law students who Read More
Last January, Glenn Close Read More
Here’s a fun game: At the start of the summer, weigh the thousands of summer associates employed by the Am Law 100—the nation’s 100 top-grossing law firms, according to The American Lawyer magazine. Then weigh these thousands of summer associates after their summer programs, before they head back for their final year of law school. Read More
In the 1980s sitcom Mr. Belvedere, the mother of the family, Marsha Owens, worked for a time in a shopping-mall law firm called Legal Hut. It seemed like a good gag at the time—a law office that was part of a big chain, located in the quotidian precincts of a shopping mall, basically a business Read More
Mr. Spinelli-Noseda, a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, was a young and well-regarded partner in Sullivan & Cromwell’s Latin American practice, as well as the firm’s hiring partner. At some point in the past few weeks—it’s not clear exactly when—his Read More
L’Affaire(s) Spitzer may be old news, but New York lawyers won’t stop talking about it. The Harvard Law School graduate and former attorney general left the law for politics when he assumed the governorship, but based on what I’m seeing and hearing in person, in print, and online (a search for “Spitzer” and “prostitute” on Read More
The trouble started on a Tuesday night. Shortly before I entered a bar to meet a friend for drinks, I updated my Facebook status on my BlackBerry, with an opinion about the upcoming Clinton-Obama debate.
If the major presidential candidates were top New York law firms, which ones would they be? It’s not an easy question to answer. Unlike their Washington counterparts, which are unsurprisingly more political—e.g., WilmerHale skews leftward, Wiley Rein leans right—New York firms generally lack strong partisan allegiances. This city is driven by transactional work and commercial Read More
The availability of conference rooms at Cadwalader is Read More
We’re barely a week into the new year, and you know what that means: almost 12 whole months without a raise for New York’s most beleaguered six-figurines, Big Law associates. Yet despite the jump to $160,000 a year for first-year grunts (and don’t forget those bonuses, kids!), a culture of complaint—and, sometimes, litigation—was the Big Read More
In recent years, however, stories of scandal have become Read More
First things first: Who’s getting what? Well, it seems you don’t have to be a Supreme Court clerk anymore to leave those black robes in the dust. At top firms such as Cravath, Swaine & Moore, first-year associates—those who graduated from law school in 2006—are getting year-end bonuses of $35,000 and one-time “special” bonuses (about Read More
So exactly how much did it cost Sullivan & Cromwell to make Aaron Charney go away? That’s the parlor game New York lawyers have been playing since late last month, when a settlement was reached between the white-shoe law firm and its former associate, who had sued S&C for sexual-orientation discrimination. Most memorably, Charney said Read More
Founded in 1792, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft is “the oldest continuing Wall Street law practice in the United States,” as its website proudly notes. Name partner George Wickersham was attorney general under President Taft, and name partner Henry Taft was the president’s brother. In addition to being one of New York’s oldest firms, Cadwalader is Read More
