Posts on ‘October 28th, 2008’

Thacher Proffitt & Wood, the beleaguered law firm that bet big on commercial mortgage-backed securities only to see that market disappear, lost its vice chairman and lawyers in the firm’s now-closed White Plains, N.Y., office on Monday. Thomas Leslie leads a group of eight lawyers who have decamped to Greenberg Traurig to open a new office for that firm. Leslie’s group marks the latest in a series of defections from Thacher, which had a heavy presence in structured finance.

A former law firm partner who prosecutors called the “money man” in a lucrative class action lawsuit kickback scheme targeting major corporations was sentenced Monday to six months in prison. David Bershad was a key player in the scheme that paid people to act as plaintiffs in cases that brought roughly $239 million in legal fees to New York-based Milberg Weiss, now known as Milberg.

Companies now face the most significant re-engineering effort of the past two decades as a result of the global economic slowdown. These changes pose challenges for the legal and human resources managers. Particularly at issue are companies whose U.S. work force includes visa holders and candidates for permanent residency. Strategic planning for such employees means assessing the restrictions and requirements of immigration and employment laws that affect corporate restructuring.

In its third year, the Masters Conference has undoubtedly matured into a resourceful and reflective assembly to discuss, in detail, e-discovery challenges with experts. According to consultant Brett Burney, this year’s conference was a solid success in both substance and attendance.

Lawyers are expected to be highly rational, unemotional types. They can’t let silly things like feelings get in the way of analyzing how to merge a client with a competitor. But in these turbulent times of a bipolar stock market, frozen credit markets, layoffs and foreclosures, emotions are running high. Humor columnist The Snark stresses that associates must be careful about what emotions they display. Because being in touch with — and in control of — emotions is key to success at Biglaw, he says.

Some firms are downsizing their recruiting plans for next summer in the wake of stock market upheaval and the nation’s liquidity crisis. “We are reaching out to small and midsized firms for our students, because we know in this market, you need to,” says Rhonda Beassie, an assistant clinical professor and assistant dean of career development at the University of Houston Law Center. She says her students are not as aware of a possible downturn in the hiring market “as I would like them to be.”

A federal jury found Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens guilty on all seven counts in his corruption trial on Monday. Stevens, 84, was convicted of intentionally failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts and home renovations between 2000 and 2006. Each count carries a maximum of five years in prison. The conviction is a win for the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which had made some serious gaffes during the trial. But many criminal defense lawyers predict that Stevens will get no more than six months in prison.

A widely watched trial over Chevron’s Nigerian operations featured a new online frontier Monday in the battle for jurors’ hearts and minds. A federal judge ordered Chevron to take down a company-sponsored Google link that allegedly directed Internet searches for the lead plaintiff’s name to a Chevron-created Web site. Nigerian plaintiffs allege Chevron is responsible for wrongful death and torture related to a ‘98 protest, but Chevron says it lawfully called in military forces during a violent hostage taking.

In-house lawyers, legal organizations and law firms won the first round of a fight with the Financial Accounting Standards Board over a plan calling for greater disclosures of lawsuits and other loss contingencies on financial statements — but they’re girding for a longer battle. After a flood of complaints from lawyers, but support from investors, the accounting board decided that it would develop an alternative plan and test the new and existing plan to see which works better.