The Presidency of the Joes: more like INFRASTRUCTURE WEAK

https://mobile.twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1358483413246877703

https://mobile.twitter.com/alexburnsNYT/status/1358471444024410113

$960 per hour for an associate is absolutely insane.

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It‘s also the first word Ross‘s son said („He can‘t say Mama yet, but once he said Yemen“).
Bit being from Europe this probably only puts me in the top 2-3%.

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Theodore J. Boutros, Jr. $1525
Scott A. Edelman $1395
Nathaniel J. Bach $960
Marissa B. Moshell $740
Daniel Rubin $625

It’s like the more obnoxious and stupid your name is the more you get paid

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I got an offer from a state sponsored testing program. I can get covid tests for current/past infections for free by participating. And if that wasn’t enough, I get a $30 gift card!

If Biden doesn’t come through, maybe I can use the gift card to buy a vaccine.

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https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/1358462525705236484?s=20

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I thought every big company like that had litigation relationship managers that negotiated rates and audited invoices when hiring outside firms. If MSNBC had one of those roles, wtf was that person doing.

It’s a heluva story to tell at brunch… “Yeah, I showed them, got 1 off the most expensive lobster Theodore J. Boutrous, Jrs you ever seen for the conspiracy channel in the law suit.”

It’s usually AGI, so standard deduction wont’ reduce.

Probably even worse things back in Yemen, too.

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Heh, I was billing out at more than that in my last year as an associate, and that was a few years back.

FWIW, the billable hour is an accounting fiction, so the headline rate is not the most important thing. Ultimately the client is hiring the senior partner, and the amount the senior partner gets paid depends heavily on how highly levered the team that does the work is. In practices that are not highly levered, they have to get paid by eye-watering rates on their associates. An M&A associate is not getting billed out at that rate because there’s so, so much associate time on an M&A deal. Indeed, I believe the limit on how much a firm can charge for associate time is one of the things that entrench the hours-mill model—the most palatable (or least toxic) way for a firm to bill $1 million is for it to have a junior associate work 200 hours at $500/hr, even if the senior associate billing $900 is 5x as productive. Having the senior associate do the same thing in 40 hours is a disaster because you can’t charge more than $1000 for associate time.

I think you hit on a core absurdity of BigLaw, which is clients effectively paying to train young lawyers who frankly don’t know anything yet, in addition to paying eye watering but probably often worth it rates for senior partners.

If you pay the senior partner $2,000 per hour for two weeks (obviously it doesn’t happen this simply but whatever), that’s like $200k, which probably is fine when dealing with transactions/matters in the hundreds of millions and above. But when you stick 10 functionally worthless associates on it at $500 per hour, that’s another $500k to add very little value.

What’s going on is the Megacorp general counsel thinks the top lawyer w/ decent support staff (that doesn’t necessarily need to be overpaid associates) is worth $700k on these large transactions or high stakes matters but cannot get an invoice paid that has the top lawyer at $30k/hr or whatever the insane rate would be so you get this bizarre pyramid fee structure instead.

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I initially misread a tweet, the house has $15 min wage and Bernie is all in for it. Not sure why Biden is saying no?

I just listened to the press secretary answering this exact question like an hour ago. Basically the Biden administrations position is that the parliamentarian over in the Senate gets to decide whether or not it can go into reconciliation. If it can it stays.

Right, but I thought they could always just get a new parliamentarian. Also why is Biden fucking preemptively conceding defeat on that point?

Lets play “what would the Republicans do.”

I don’t think Biden is a flat out “no” he just didn’t think they could get it passed along with COVID relief so he was willing to drop it to get the $1.9 trillion moving. According to Politico though the CBO says that the $15 minimum wage would be OK to pass with a reconciliation bill so it might get to stay in the COVID relief legislation.

If Mitch McConnell was in our shoes he’d blow the filibuster up immediately and pass a bill legalizing weed, raising the minimum wage, and giving everyone a bunch of money.

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Imagine having the power to all but ensure you will stay in power for decades and choosing not to use that power because norms. After Merrick Garland and all the rest.

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