Law Firm Management

In December, Cravath, Swaine & Moore circulated an internal memo setting associate bonuses according to the same scale set in 2014 by Davis Polk & Wardwell. First- and second-year associates will receive up to $15,000, while senior associates can make as much as $100,000.

The criminal fraud trial of three former executives of Dewey & LeBoeuf last year cast a spotlight on an arcane, often tedious but essential part of the operations of any big law firm: accounting practices.

Over the last five years, there's been a sea change caused by cell phones and tablets that affect how clients find lawyers. Today, most clients go online to find a lawyer. In fact, more clients searching for an attorney found one from Internet content than they did from referrals.

Change is constant and hard ' and usually lumpy. Understanding some of the differences between a traditional marketing function and business development is key to evaluating current practices and future expectations for this department.

The courts have taken varying approaches to determining the basis of stock that is received by an insurance policyholder in exchange for the policyholder's surrender of membership rights in a mutual insurance company, in a "demutualization" transaction. While this may seem to be a narrow and abstruse question, the approaches taken by the courts may have application in other areas of the tax law affecting analogous transactions.

The criminal fraud trial of three former executives of Dewey & LeBoeuf last year cast a spotlight on an arcane, often tedious but essential part of the operations of any big law firm: accounting practices.

What if you invented a better mousetrap, but the world didn't beat a path to your door? What if you developed a promising new medicine for a troubling condition, but when the doctor prescribed it, the patient refused to take it, simply sticking it in the desk drawer while continuing to complain about the malady?

Newsjacking is a method of leveraging hot news items to generate brand recognition and client visibility. Successful newsjackers track breaking news and emerging trends, and use clever thinking to either make connections that put their clients front and center, or to simply insert their clients into a high-profile conversation that otherwise would never have included them.