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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

CASH 4 CLERKS -  A federal clerkship is a good gig if you can get it. Yesterday, litigation-focused Am Law 200 firm Boies Schiller Flexner revealed that it would be offering a $110,000 signing bonus to federal law clerks this year, Law.com's Bruce Love reports. In a letter to clerks from managing partners Matthew Schwartz, Sigrid McCawley and Alan Vickery, obtained by Law.com, the firm wrote that "because judicial clerks are crucial to our success, BSF has increased the signing bonus for all federal district and appellate law clerks to $110,000 for one clerkship." The managing partners went on to say that clerks joining the firm can choose their own compensation structure, electing between BSF's "formula compensation," which the firm says often results in "performance-based bonuses surpassing the market," or the firm's "market compensation system" that pays "top-of-market salaries." The $110,000 signing bonus is believed to be at the higher end of bonuses for a federal clerkship, which tend to average around $50,000-$75,000 in Big Law.

SMALL CHANGE - Corporate legal departments with 10 or fewer attorneys are finding that moving the needle on diversity comes with plenty of challenges. As Law.com's Trudy Knockless reports, those often range from having fewer resources for recruiting and lower pay scales to just not having enough positions on staff for minorities of similar backgrounds to build a sizable community. "If you have very small departments, then you have more limited opportunities to include each of those as a dominant diversity," said Melba Hughes, national in-house diversity practice leader at Major, Lindsey & Africa. Still, some legal departments have found ways to make those limited opportunities count. "The ability for everyone to generally know each other better and have more regular interactions gives smaller legal departments the nimbleness" to change course quickly and operate more effectively, said Stephen Kim, chief legal officer of Avicanna, which is developing cannabis-based medical products. Kim said that to fill a recent opening, he targeted smaller law schools, alumni of historically black colleges and universities, as well as affinity groups for lawyers of various diverse backgrounds.

WHO GOT THE WORK?℠ - Krystal B. Swendsboe and Rebecca L. Saitta of Wiley Rein have stepped in to represent Koonz, McKenney, Johnson & Depaolis in a pending lawsuit. The action, filed Jan. 31 in the District of Columbia District Court by Goodell Devries Leech & Dann on behalf of former Koonz McKenney partner William P. Lightfoot and May Lightfoot PLLC, contends that defendant accessed William Lighfoot's 'google my business' account on several occasions in an alleged attempt to divert business. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, is 1:22-cv-00238, Lightfoot et al v. Koonz, Mckenney, Johnson & Depaolis LLP. >>Read the complaint on Law.com Radar and check out the most recent edition of Law.com's Who Got the Work?℠ column to find out which law firms and lawyers are being brought in to handle key cases and close major deals for their clients.

FINANCIAL DISSERVICES? - Banco Santander, a Spanish commercial bank and financial services company, and other defendants were hit with a civil RICO lawsuit Sunday in California Northern District Court. The suit, filed by attorney Andrew G. Watters on behalf of Filomeno Medina and Arlene Valdefiera, contends that a group of individuals are using a retired attorney's information to scam plaintiffs into sending fees to Mexico for a timeshare in Cancun, Mexico. The suit further contends that Banco Santander and other defendants have knowledge of the ongoing scam and have failed to stop it. Counsel have not yet appeared for the defendants. The case is 3:22-cv-01762, Medina et al v. Newfold Digital, Inc. et al. Stay up on the latest deals and litigation with the new Law.com Radar.  

EDITOR'S PICKS

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

NOT SO FAST - For many international law firms, the decision to pull out of Russia was a difficult one. Now comes the really hard part. One employment partner for a U.S. firm in London told Law.com International's Jack Womack they believe firms face a monumental challenge in figuring out what to do with their people. While lawyers in either Moscow or St. Petersburg who are overseas citizens or working there on secondment will most likely be relocated elsewhere, the partner said there is a trickier issue when it comes to staff on the ground who are Russian. "Some firms will relocate their personnel to other regions, and some won't. For the lawyers [in Russia] who don't get relocated, the two fundamental questions for firms are—what do you pay them, and how do you pay them?" Another London-based employment head said it's remarkable how quickly international firms have withdrawn from Russia, given that the conflict in Ukraine is not even a month old: "When the dust starts to settle, we might see firms start to go back in. If there is a ceasefire and a more permanent kind of peace, we may see the business world moving relatively quickly back to where it was. Firms might regret being so emphatic right now—and look to revisit their decisions."

WHAT YOU SAID

"This was one of those opportunities where the mission is so in line with who I am as a person."

— Karim Marshall, on being named the first-ever GC of the nonprofit Juneteenth Foundation.