In today’s Morning Docket, we mentioned the recent benchslap administered to Sidley Austin by Judge Diane Cannon (pictured), an Illinois state court judge. Lynne Marek of the NLJ reports:

A court hearing on Tuesday in Chicago at which former Northwestern University journalism students planned to fight a subpoena for their records and grades turned into a judicial lambasting of their Sidley Austin lawyers.

It started when Judge Diane Gordon Cannon of the Cook County Circuit Court called the lawyers, partner Richard O’Brien and associate Linda Friedlieb, to the bench before prosecutors from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office had even arrived. She asked who had written the brief she was holding. O’Brien and Friedlieb responded that they had submitted the reply supporting the motion to quash the subpoena.

Judge Cannon was, suffice it to say, not happy about the Sidley Austin brief.

Her Honor’s complaints — plus discussion of whether they were justified, and a reader poll — after the jump.

Ed. note: This post was originally published at 4:27 p.m. today. We have changed the timestamp to place it at the top of the page, but we will eventually return it to its original place.

We have confirmed the news of a Cravath bonus match with multiple sources at Cleary Gottlieb. One exchange went something like this:

ATL: Any good news today?

CGSH: No. Cravath news. Bonus FAIL.

So the 2009 bonus market is probably going to coalesce around the Cravath-level bonuses — unless S&C shows up and trumps CSM. Stay tuned.

The timing of the announcement is telling. Usually bad news is saved for Friday afternoons, so it gets lost in the pre-weekend shuffle. Did CGSH view its bonus numbers as potentially disappointing to the recipients?

Perhaps. In our reader poll on the Cravath bonuses, a majority of respondents said the CSM bonuses made them either “unhappy” or “very unhappy” (the most popular choice). Approximately 30 percent said the bonuses made them “neither happy nor unhappy.” Under 20 percent said the bonuses made them “happy” or “very happy.”

The Cleary memo and another READER POLL, after the jump.

Lately, Big Law firms have been changing their salary structures more often than associates can keep up with. With an increasing number of firms abandoning lockstep compensation, associates have been left in the dark about what compensation levels actually are.

This week, our ATL / Lateral Link survey asks for your help to track the latest changes to starting salaries and the salary ranges for firms that have moved away from lock-step compensation. We’ll use the information to update the ATL Career Center and bring you the results next week.

If you have information about your firm that you want to share with other Career Center users, please email us at careercenter@abovethelaw.com.

Celebrity newlyweds Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner won last week’s Couple of the Week poll handily, demonstrating that even with ATL readers, beauty, fame, and vast wealth can compensate for lack of a Supreme Court clerkship.

Now, Ivanka and Jared move on to the Couple of the Month round, where their competition is less-credentialed than last week’s, perhaps, but also a tad more attractive. Will the celebrities continue to steamroll over the real lawyers? You make the call.

After the jump, a quick refresher on our four October Couples of the Week, and a reader poll.

Year-end bonuses have been announced at the market-leading firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. And they are even lower than last year’s Cravath bonuses.

But look, this is 2009. Welcome to the Great Recession. Your true bonus is: you get to keep your job. That shouldn’t be taken for granted, even at Cravath.

Anyway, here’s the Cravath bonus scale for 2009 (via the WSJ Law Blog):

Class of 2008 — $7,500
Class of 2007 — $10,000
Class of 2006 — $15,000
Class of 2005 — $20,000
Class of 2004 — $25,000
Class of 2003 — $30,000
Class of 2002 — $30,000

Cravath’s bonus announcement is always important because the market tends to follow Cravath — as it did last year. Skadden’s 2008 bonuses, at roughly twice Cravath’s levels, were ignored.

Could this year be different? Are the Cravath bonus levels low enough such that a firm of similar or even lower prestige will try to better CSM? Or will other Biglaw shops simply avail themselves of the political cover provided by Cravath — which is arguably what happened last year, when Skadden’s generous bonuses went unmatched (excluding Wachtell)?

So, readers, what do you think? Read the FULL MEMO, take a READER POLL, and COMMENT — after the jump.

Happy belated Halloween, ATL readers. We hope your holidays were fun and free of criminal activity.

Over 2,000 people checked in over the weekend to vote in our caption contest. The winner after the jump.

Yesterday we reported on this announcement by Brooklyn Law School:

This semester we have received several warnings from our Internet service provider that copyrighted movies and TV shows are being downloaded illegally via our wireless network. The Information Technology office is now ascertaining who is doing this. Once we have names of the individuals involved, we intend to give them to the copyright holders for enforcement purposes.

This stance proved unpopular with BLS students, as well as ATL readers. In a poll, about 75 percent of readers answered “yes” when asked, “Should Brooklyn Law School do more to protect its students from being sued for illegal downloading?”

It seems that Brooklyn Law School has had a change of heart. Check out the email that went out this afternoon, plus selected reader comments, after the jump.

Apparently so. From a student at Brooklyn Law School:

Today we received this e-mail from the administration, which is causing quite an uproar among the student body.

The gist of it seems to be that, contrary to the practice of other schools, BLS will begin actively investigating [illegal] downloading and proactively providing names of people to media [companies] so [the individuals in question] can be sued.

I believe the typical practice at other schools (graduate and undergraduate) and institutions is to wait for a subpoena and either cooperate or fight the subpoena, not to go out of their way to inform on their students.

The total cost of attendance at Brooklyn Law for the 2009-2010 academic year, for full-time students not living with their parents (God forbid), is a shade over $66,000. Shouldn’t that buy BLS’s silence?

Or is the law school in the right here? Shouldn’t law students, i.e., future lawyers, know and follow the law?

UPDATE: Brooklyn Law has announced a change in this policy.

Read the email and take a poll, after the jump.

Are you familiar with the use of computer animations for presentations? Have you used 3D animation for mediation and/or trial presentations?

Please take our short, anonymous survey, sponsored by WesCary3D. To take the survey, please click here (or on the link below).

Thanks!

WesCary 3D Survey ATL [Survey Monkey]

As tends to be the case every year, August and September were fabulously prestigious months here on the Legal Eagle Wedding Watch. Three SCOTUS clerks were featured in this space during that period (two in the same announcement!), as well as a minor AutoAdmit celebrity, an astrophysicist, and Biglaw names like Cravath, Mayer, Jenner, and Covington.

Today, we’re asking readers to sort through all this excellence and choose the two most impressive couples of the bunch to advance to the Couple of the Year round.

After the jump, you’ll find recaps of our write-ups on each set of newlyweds, as well as two reader polls, one for each month. Voting ends on Thursday at midnight; we’ll announce the winners on Friday.

Ed. note: This post has been updated from the original version. Please see below.

The only thing worse than being tied to your BlackBerry at all hours is missing something important because you were not tied to your BlackBerry the hour you were needed.

Wait, this just in. There is something worse than missing a crucial request because you weren’t checking your BlackBerry. That would be when the partner you are working for emails all of the firm’s associates reminding them to compulsively check their BlackBerries because of your mistake.

Welcome to the world of a Quinn Emanuel associate. The associate apparently didn’t send a fax because he hadn’t been checking emails after business hours. QE partner Bill Urquhart decided to use the incident as a teaching moment for the entire firm:

From: A William Urquhart.
To: Attorneys.
Time: 9:21 a.m.
Re: CHECK YOU [sic] EMAILS OFTEN

Now more than ever there are many talented lawyers and law firms competing for our business. Doing really good legal work is not enough. Clients expect that and well they should given what we charge for our services You must all realize that we are in a service business. In this day and age of faxes, emails, internet, etc. clients expect you to be accessible 24\7. Of course, that is something of an exaggeration—but not much.

LESSON NUMBER ONE: You should check your emails early and often. That not only means when you are in the office, it also means after you leave the office as well. Unless you have very good reason not to (for example when you are asleep, in court or in a tunnel), you should be checking your emails every hour. One of the last things you should do before you retire for the night is to check your email. That is why we give you blackberries. I can assure you that all of our clients expect you to be checking your emails often. I am not asking you to do something we do not do ourselves. I can assure you that John Quinn, Peter Calamari, Mike Carlinsky, Faith Gay, Fred Lorig, etc. all check their emails often.

Yesterday I was working with a relatively new associate on a project which both he and I knew was a rush. It was for a relatively new client whom we were trying to impress. The associate did a nice job under pressure. Before I left the office at about 7:30 I sent an email to this associate asking him to perform a task—fax a draft letter for review and comment. I assumed the task was done. Turns out the associate left the office and did not check his emails until this morning. I assumed the task had been completed. It had not been. In this case it was no harm no foul, but I think we can all imagine scenarios when this could be a disaster.

CORRECTION: The original version of this post had a line in the blockquote that was not in the Urquhart email. (It was actually commentary on the email from a source.) That line has been removed. I apologize for posting an incorrect version of the email.

That’s harsh. But is it fair?

To paraphrase this video, inspired by an Avenue Q song and submitted to Above the Law’s first-ever Law Revue Contest, “What can you do with a JD from Cardozo?”

Um…. David Letterman? From Bitten & Bound:

David Letterman was the victim of a $2 million extortion plot and we have now discovered that according to New York public records, Stephanie Birkitt, 34, a former intern on The Late Show, lived with the accused extortionist Robert Joe Halderman, a CBS 48 Hours producer, and may have unwittingly fed him the information through the pages of her diary, photos and personal correspondence….

According to TMZ, Birkitt is one of the women who engaged in an affair with her boss, but ended it in 2003, prior to the birth of Letterman’s son….

Birkitt began working as a page for CBS New, 48 Hours, and The Late Show while still in college [at Wake Forest] in 1996. She spent a short time as an associate producer on segments for correspondent Erin Moriarty but soon decided that she wasn’t a news hound. That was when Letterman hired her as a personal assistant. She was initially brought on to handle his charities and his Indy car racing team, but her duties expanded over time.

Apparently so. Anyway, here’s the legal connection:

Birkett went on to the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City beginning in 2005 and passed the Connecticut bar exam in February 2009.

UPDATE: As noted in the comments, Birkitt also passed the New York bar exam in February. Congrats on passing two state bars, Steph!

FURTHER UPDATE: Actually, Birkitt’s relationship with Letterman may have lasted much longer. See here.

Now, before the elitists among you start ranking on Cardozo Law, there’s something you should know.

Apologies for not getting to this story earlier. Sometimes things fall through the cracks around here. (We were offline for much of Thursday and Friday, attending Lavender Law.)

Last week, a federal magistrate judge questioned the propriety of the U.S. Attorney’s Office moving to dismiss a marijuana possession charge against Andrew Sullivan. Yes, that Andrew Sullivan — the noted political pundit, author, and blogger (and proponent of marijuana legalization).

Judge Collings issued his saucy opinion (PDF) on Thursday. Later that day, the story was broken by The Docket. The case has also been covered by Gawker, Wonkette, and the WSJ Law Blog, among other outlets (links collected below).

So we won’t rehash what you’ve probably already read. But feel free to take our reader poll and to discuss the case in the comments.

Judge angered by special treatment for Andrew Sullivan [The Docket / MLW]
United States v. Sullivan [PDF] [U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts]
Andrew Sullivan’s Federal Pot Favors [Gawker]
Friendly D.A. Saves Andrew Sullivan From Life Sentence In Gitmo, For Smoking Marijuana [Wonkette]
On Marijuana, a Famous Blogger, and One Skeptical Judge [WSJ Law Blog]

Over the long holiday weekend, Duke and Harvard duked it out in the ATL Douchiest Law School contest. Though many commenters argued that Duke Law School’s reputation was being unfairly influenced by that of its douchey undergrads, those Duke Law defenders were not persuasive enough to sway voters. Duke triumphed with 55% of the vote.

Duke is the Douchiest Law School!

Who was the star player in this match-up? A Duke Law School grad named Tucker Max. More on him, and a round-up of the choice comments explaining Duke’s douche dominance, after the jump.

Ed. note: As previously mentioned, LEWW is on vacation this week. Regular weekly posting will resume with a double issue on Friday, August 28.

Today we ask readers to choose the most impressive lawyer newlyweds of the past two months. Early summer traditionally represents the height of the wedding season, and this year’s June and July couples have not disappointed. Below the fold, you’ll find two SCOTUS clerks, a Harvard JD/MD, the GC of a major corporation, a Google millionaire, and two managing editors of the Harvard Law Review, plus the typical amount of prestigious Biglaw employment.

Click on the link below to review our prior write-ups of the Couple of the Week winners and vote for your favorites. (And remember: The two lucky couples who are selected will be eligible for Couple of the Year consideration.)

Earlier this week, we showed you a photo of a protest before an undisclosed law firm, then asked you to suggest captions. We now have six finalists and would like you to vote for the best of the bunch. To refresh your recollection, here’s the photo:

And here are the finalists:

A. “Laid off associates try a new strategy after their restatement section 90 claims fail.”

B. “Firms run a risk of bad publicity when they lay off both labor lawyers and the print shop staff at the same time.”

C. “So you say they underpay their staff and associates, treat all employees poorly, and offer no medical or retirement benefits whatsoever? … Are they hiring?”

D. “What do we want?”
“Jobs!”
“When do we want ‘em?”
“No earlier than January 2011, economic concerns permitting!”

E. “Shame on Firm X for only laying off 2 employees. Doesn’t it realize we’re in a recession?”

F. “In a classic labor protest rookie mistake, the former associates wasted their budget on a fancy sign and failed to reserve funds for doughnuts, resulting in awkwardly low participation.”

Earlier: ATL Caption Contest: Shame on You

We’ve heard from many frustrated law students who bid on a particular law firm for on-campus interviewing only to learn, after using up a bid or an interview slot, that the firm in question wouldn’t be coming to OCI after all. We’ve even heard from students who were told, mid-interview, that the office they were supposedly interviewing for wouldn’t be having a summer program (but more on that later).

Law firms are certainly entitled to pick which schools they want to interview at. But, as a matter of basic professional courtesy and respect, they should make those decisions as early in the process as possible. When a law firm withdraws from the fall recruiting process at a given school at the eleventh hour, it causes great inconvenience to law students and schools.

What do most law schools do when firms pull out from OCI at the last minute? As far as we know, nothing. In this economy, law firms are in the driver’s seat. They’re the people with jobs to dole out.

But at least one law school has decided to take a stand against rudeness. After Reed Smith announced its late withdrawal from the recruiting process at Fordham Law, the school struck back, banning the firm from recruiting at Fordham for the next five years.

Dean William Treanor announced the move to the law school in a saucy email that truly puts the “F.U.” in Fordham University. The Fordham law folks are located at Lincoln Center rather than Rose Hill, but this message suggests they can brawl like their Bronx brethren.

Update (8/13/09): The firm’s response to the situation appears here.

Read the dean’s complete email message, and vote in our reader poll — yes, another one, we can’t help ourselves (we love to get your opinion on such matters) — after the jump.

Yesterday we heard from legal ethics experts about whether Elizabeth Wurtzel’s referring to herself as a “lawyer,” despite not having passed the bar yet, could get her in trouble. The two we consulted, Professors Steven Lubet and Stephen Gillers, did not see it as a big deal.

There’s an interesting follow-up over at Gawker, which obtained the following comment from La Wurtzel herself:

This is my understanding: if you graduate from law school/receive a JD, you are a lawyer; if you are licensed, you are an attorney. That’s what I’ve always been told.

Not too many nice things to say about the Bar Exam. Every year, some very gifted people fail it (Hillary Clinton, Kathleen Sullivan of Stanford Law School)—and every year, a lot of real idiots pass it. Hard to know what to make of that ;-)

Regarding Wurtzel’s understanding of the difference between the terms “lawyer” and “attorney,” other folks have been told that too. See the comments to this post from last year on the subject.

But there is disagreement. Read more, and take a READER POLL, after the jump.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor and Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who was covering Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings, both sported electric blue blazers over black blouses today. Kelly — who is, by the way, also a lawyer (Albany Law / Jones Day) — joked on air that she called up President Obama and got advance word of Sotomayor’s outfit, so they could coordinate.

A reader poll, inspired by the regular US Weekly feature, “Who wore it better?” — after the jump.

This year’s batch of summer associates are roughing it at Biglaw summer camp, with fewer meals out on the firm and less lavish events. To make matters worse, some summers are being told now that their future job will be deferred. Summer associates at Skadden and Ropes & Gray have been informed that they can’t come back to the camping ground until 2011. Tents can’t be repitched at Orrick until 2012.

This seems like a good time to focus on the light side of the summer associate experience. For the past month, we’ve been soliciting entries for our Summer Associate Event Contest of 2009. They came trickling in slowly, whether because there aren’t many events to brag about or because summer associates are too busy (or too scared) to email us. One SA was so fearful of “tipping” us that the announcement about the firm’s event was sent anonymously via snail mail. [FN1]

One ATL reader from a small firm had this to say about the environment at firms this summer:

Our firm does a lot of corporate bankruptcy work, so we’re faring better in this economic storm than most, but we had to scale back our summer associate program a bit. We do not have as many summer associates as we used to, and we are not having as many major, expensive events. No more big-ticket concerts; no more dinner theater on a river boat; no more renting out an entire movie theater for a pre-release movie showing….

Certainly, the difficulties of this economy are showing in the makeup of our summer class: because we have a summer program at all (unlike many law firms), we’re getting students from higher ranked schools. Most of them are from Top 20 law schools, all of them from Top 75 law schools, none of them from the fourth-tier local law school that usually supplies some of our summer class. And our summer associates are noticeably more stressed about the experience and their prospects than I’ve seen in the past 10 summers.

Despite the foregoing, we have a nice selection of events for the contest. We ask you to vote on the best one, plus offer a few honorable mentions (for events involving public urination and broken bones), after the jump.