gdp's Comments

Law Shucks : Thank you, SEALs

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:39:10 +0000

How so?

Law Shucks : Quick Shucks - 7/28/11

Mon, 1 Aug 2011 21:40:27 +0000

Thanks for the insight. More importantly, we look forward to your triumphant return to television. (For those who haven't heard the good news, Mike Judge and MTV just announced that Beavis & Butthead is coming back with all new episodes)

Law Shucks : Quick Shucks - 7/25/11

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:10:01 +0000

That's probably slightly less awful, but we've been interviewing a ton of candidates for "real life" stuff lately and are completely sick of these bullshit, contrived, self-serving answers. Just be honest. The stuff you're good at was enough to get you in the door. Being unable to demonstrate actual self-assessment and candor are far more likely to disqualify a candidate than any actual flaw.

Law Shucks : Suits - Better than the Deep End

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 18:35:16 +0000

We've watched every episode. The beginning scene of the pilot is actually him taking the LSAT, not the bar exam. It's only in a conversation later does the kid tell the other guy that he has passed the bar exam. Who cares about scores on bar exams? It's pass/fail for all intents and purposes. But as we've said, none of this matters as long as the show works as a drama. The real problem is that they're wearing thin the one-upsmanship. Every conversation is one person trying to show how much smarter they are than the other. They'd better come up with a new gimmick, because this one is getting tedious. But we still watch.

Law Shucks : Suits - Better than the Deep End

Wed, 6 Jul 2011 12:52:41 +0000

Because then you lose all the dramatic tension of them trying to keep anyone from finding out that the kid is a poser. Although even there, the only thing they're lying about is that he went to Harvard. The kid claims he actually passed the bar exam. If my 15 seconds on Google is right, though, you can't even take it in NY w/o a year of law school, so they could have had him drop out of law school instead of college and avoided the issue entirely while being consistent with reality. That's a quibbling detail, though, and making him a college dropout is "cooler" (see, e.g., Zuck, Gates, etc.)

Law Shucks : Quick Shucks - 5/11/11

Thu, 12 May 2011 22:57:22 +0000

No, there have been a couple of upticks, including three months ago. But we're still down across the board year-over-year and there are all sorts of regular seasonal upticks (e.g., September when the BigLaw horde of first year traditionally started)

Law Shucks : Is Ropes & Gray New York's Most Patriotic Firm?

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 23:05:36 +0000

Excellent, thanks. Updated. We're no better than sticker appliers when it comes to proofreading, obviously.

Law Shucks : Quick Shucks - 4/13/11

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 14:07:05 +0000

LOL. Good point.

Law Shucks : Quick Shucks - 3/24/11

Fri, 1 Apr 2011 22:05:19 +0000

No government could even afford to pay that much. It's 5x the US GDP.

Law Shucks : BigLaw Dead Pool

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:01:35 +0000

Yoss LLP, formerly Adorno & Yoss, makes it to honorable mention because even though it wasn't in the AmLaw 100, it was the largest minority-owned law firm in the US. RIP.

Law Shucks : BigLaw Dead Pool

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:14:44 +0000

They started with the AmLaw 50 in 1985, then 75 in '86, and 100 in '87. Here's a link to the original: http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/AmLaw50-1985.pdf

Law Shucks : BigLaw Dead Pool

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 18:54:15 +0000

They managed to pull themselves off the brink. We used them as an example of a firm that managed to avoid dissolution, albeit by the skin of their teeth : http://lawshucks.com/2011/03/the-biglaw-dead-pool...

Law Shucks : BigLaw Dead Pool

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:32:10 +0000

Hah, forgot about Myerson & Kuhn. Added them, because who doesn't want to read about a firm that lasted all of two years, before one partner, who was the former commissioner of baseball, went on the lam, and the other, who brought his bad luck from Finley Kumble, went to jail. Herrick & Smith only ever got to be "Boston's 15th-biggest firm" so I doubt they ever made the AmLaw 100.

Law Shucks : BigLaw Dead Pool

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:22:22 +0000

Interesting. Can't find them on the AmLaw 100s I have access to, but with 225 lawyers in 1986, it seems highly likely they were. Will keep looking, but they may well get moved up from Honorable Mention.

Law Shucks : BigLaw Dead Pool

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:13:01 +0000

I don't think they ever made the AmLaw 100, but they certainly seeded a bunch of firms that are on it. Added it to the Honorable Mentions unless someone can find an old ranking that it was on. Also used a more-colorful link.

Law Shucks : Jumping In(House): Strings Attached

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 19:35:07 +0000

Submit that to the inhouse-comp tracker! (And see where you stand compared to your peers) http://lawshucks.com/inhouse-comp/

Law Shucks : Part-Time Work Didn’t Correlate with Part-Time Pay for Sidley Partner Joining DOJ

Wed, 9 Feb 2011 18:32:07 +0000

Yes, that was one of the points of the 2007 profile. She was in at 6 and out at 3 to pick up her kids, they said "Only a big law firm would call that "part time.""

Law Shucks : Do the Weil Gotshal PPP Numbers Hint at Layoffs?

Tue, 8 Feb 2011 04:03:40 +0000

It's probably not that the bankruptcy group itself had problems, although nobody had the year they did in 2009. It's probably other, slower practice areas.

Law Shucks : The Year in Law Firm Layoffs – 2010

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:07:59 +0000

No doubt about it, and we said right up front that layoffs are underreported. We've railed against it for as long as we've been around. So if you know about layoffs, don't assume someone else is sending the information in. Contact us and we'll see what we can suss out.

Law Shucks : The Year in Law Firm Layoffs – 2010

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:53:40 +0000

We think about a few more than that - see http://lawshucks.com/layoff-tracker/#methodology We focus on the world's top firms because that's the only group that has enough homogeneity for there to be relatively meaningful comparisons and large enough sample sizes for meaningful analysis. When you start talking about firms with fewer than 100 attorneys or so, there are way too many variables to control for. If a focused perspective on large firms isn't what you're interested in, this isn't the site for you. You can find macro-level information on the entire legal sector in the BLS reports every month. Maybe that's more what you're looking for.