LOBBYING SPECIAL REPORT: Legal Times reporters David Ingram, Jeff Jeffrey, Brian Katkin, and Marisa McQuilken offer five articles that explore lobbying issues and campaigns that marked 2008: Lobbying When Everything's At Stake; Rescuing the $700b Rescue Plan; Fannie, Freddie's Last Dance; A Warm Feeling for K Street; Turbulence Over Air Force Bid. The Legal Times special report examines, among other things, the role lobby shops and trade groups played in reviving the financial industry bailout; how lobbyists reigned all over Capitol Hill advocating on every facet of the failed Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act; and the veritable arms race among top lobbyists as Boeing and Northrop scrap over a $35 billion contract to build refueling tankers.
BRRR. A WAGE FREEZE: Latham & Watkins confirmed to reporter Marisa McQuilken last week that the firm is freezing associate pay. Next year, first- and second-year associates will stay at the base salary of $160,000. Salaries for higher-level associates will also remain locked in current paygrades. “We are modifying associate compensation as part of a prudent business strategy in the face of challenging economic times,” Latham’s chairman and managing partner Robert Dell said in a statement to Legal Times. Amid these troubled economic times, firms have turned to layoffs and reduced bonuses. Latham is apparently the first major firm to freeze pay.
HOLDER'S RIGHT-HAND MAN: The speculation mounts on the identity of President-elect Barack Obama's deputy attorney general, the second-in-charge at the Justice Department. Joe Palazzolo reports that a Washington lawyer close to the transition says the nomination of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr partner David Ogden, who is heading the Justice Department transition team, is a sure-bet. Ogden left Justice in 2001 as the head of the Civil Division and is co-chairman of Wilmer’s government and regulatory litigation practice group. Obama has nominated Covington & Burling partner Eric Holder Jr. as attorney general.
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