Posts on ‘October 21st, 2008’

In a bitter divorce proceeding, a New York Supreme Court judge has refused to award interim attorney fees to the husband, citing his high income as a lawyer. The husband is a part-time tax associate who earned $200,000 last year. The wife is a professor who earns $47,500 per year and who received about $306,000 last year from a family trust. The court eschewed a recent appellate court decision stating that courts should normally grant such requests from a “nonmonied spouse” in the absence of good cause.

Corporate spending on outside counsel has dropped to its lowest level in eight years, and in-house lawyers expect to finish 2008 without any increase in payment to law firms, a report released Monday found. The annual survey found that while legal costs incurred by U.S. companies continue to climb, much of that spending has gone to paying in-house lawyers. The findings come as the economic crisis is forcing corporations to examine their budgets to find expenses to shave, including legal costs.

Three laid-off Heller Ehrman employees filed a class action complaint against the dissolving firm on Monday, asking for a jury trial over pay. The complaint proposes various classes, to potentially cover “hundreds” who have been or will be terminated. An attorney for the plaintiffs alleges that Heller failed to pay wages to its terminated employees that it owed in accordance with the federal and California WARN Acts, vacation laws in California, and Heller’s own employee “contracts” on vacation payouts.

In track, a runner “jumps the gun” when he or she begins running before the gun has sounded. A similar concept occurs when two competing firms that have agreed to merge begin coordinating their activities or combining their distribution networks before the merger closes. The penalties for gun-jumping include fines, injunctions and potentially prison terms. Thus, an understanding of what merging firms can and cannot do before the gun sounds is critical. Attorney James T. McKeown offers some do’s and don’ts.

Many executives fail to understand that any violation of an open-source license is a violation of copyright law, which gives rise to significant damages. Epstein Becker’s William H. Venema surveys the legal and technical dangers of open source and advises how to manage the risks.

Recruiting consultant Jerry Kowalski sums up this year’s summer associate hiring season in one word: grim. Law students have good reason to be particularly anxious about landing a summer associate position, he says, because he estimates there will be 30 percent to 35 percent fewer summer associate positions nationwide in 2009. With fewer spots available overall, some recruiters have noticed that law students are casting a wider net as they search for positions, including looking at smaller firms.

Robert Graham, a former senior lawyer at General Re Corp., faces life in prison for doing what his defense attorney calls a “few hours work” on a fraudulent deal. Prosecutors want to sentence Graham to a “substantial” term — up to 230 years behind bars — because more than 250 American International Group investors lost at least $544 million from the fake deal with Gen Re. The defendants have countered with an expert who maintains that there was zero loss and no victims.