Vault's Law Blog: Legal Careers and Industry News

Wednesday morning round-up

•   While some grumble about Cravath setting the stage for a ‘quarter Skadden’ bonus season, The New York Law Journal quotes one BigLaw leader as he saying he was "quite honestly surprised that a major New York firm was paying bonuses this year."

•   Madoff’s accountant:  “I’m a victim.”

•   Toronto Raptors forward Chris Bosh has won custody of  nearly 800 domain names wrongfully appropriated from professional athletes and celebrities.  Through his social media firm, Max Deal, Bosh is offering to return the domain names free to their rightful owners.

•   The open thread at the WSJ Law Blog on the amazing  D. Marvin (“I got cut off and missed an exit”) Jones lawsuit against Minkin et al. has only generated 17 comments.  Hilariously, ATL closed comments on the topic  “out of respect for the judicial process.” The complaint itself begs the question, “Law professor or pro se prisoner litigant?”

•   Blatant copyright infringement no barrier in gubernatorial race.

                                   -posted by brian 

3 looks at LoveHog

1. Bruce McEwen is positive :

[T]his deal makes superb sense. … As for the New York/London divide specifically, we are informed by a UK legal publication that the architects of this deal should be grateful Hogan doesn't have its roots here in the Empire State: "A conservatively-run practice like Hogan, with a centre of gravity outside the brittle egos of Manhattan, shouldn't be the hardest American firm to align with a UK practice."…The point is simply this: As an industry, we are not nearly as "internationalized" as our clients, and certainly not remotely as global as the premier clients we all aspire to serve.

It sounds to me as though the leadership of Lovells and of Hogan & Hartson are focusing on genuine strategic objectives and not on "who's on first."

2. Larry Ribstein is skeptical:

3.  Aric Press on what it means:

Killjoy, Esq.

•   Don’t smoke 

From the notable newspaper corrections file

The “incorrect reference”?  That Scalia said that he would have joined the dissent in Brown v. Board of Education.  When in fact he said would have joined the dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson.  So like the total opposite.  Good grief.

Read Yale Law Prof Jack Balkin’s post for some thoughts on newspapers and the blogosphere, which gleefully promoted the original fake story (e.g., here and here).

                                                       -posted by brian

ACC promotes flexibility, secrecy

At the Association of Corporate Counsel's annual meeting last week in Boston, Wal-Mart announced it will be adding flextime policies to its current list of law firm measures, joining cost-effectiveness, performance and diversity.   Apparently, it will not be enough for Wal-Mart’s firms to merely implement flextime programs, “the policies themselves [must] be flexible.”  According to an associate general counsel at Wal-Mart, “We've found that even those firms that have flextime policies, they haven't communicated to attorneys in the firm that it's OK to use them without fear or shame.” 

In any event, some will find it strange that flextime is included on the list of evaluative criteria.  "Cost effectiveness" et al. are ends, whereas flextime is a means (the presumed goal of which, "diversity," is already on the list).

Meanwhile, also at the Boston ACC meeting, in-house counsel were given the chance to rate (and comment upon) their outside law firms. The scores as well as the (open-ended, anonymous) comments will eventually be available on the ACC Value Index, where they can only be viewed by fellow in-house counsel.  Legal marketing guru Larry Bodine compares the Value Index unfavorably to Yelp.com:

The difference from Yelp.com is that the law firms have no ability to see the reviews about them. […] The secrecy employed by the ACC is troublesome, because it seems fair for a law firm to be able to request a copy of what is being said about it, so the firm can make improvements and correct problems.

Corporations are being encouraged by the ACC to use the Value Index when deciding to hire a new law firm, or retain a current one.  Law firms have no way of knowing whether they have been defamed or whether a comment about them is totally false.

                                               -posted by brian