Posts on ‘December 3rd, 2008’

Rutgers University GC Jonathan Alger has built a reputation as a legal expert on affirmative action and an ardent champion of diversity. He also has a long-standing interest in employment law. As Alger recently told in-house lawyers at a seminar, their companies’ new employees may request accommodations on a smorgasbord of issues: mental conditions, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and emotional well-being. “These are the claims that are coming your way,” he warned, “if they haven’t already.”

The myUTN-50 from SEH is a USB device server for Ethernet networks. Legal Technology editor Sean Doherty connected the USB server into his home-office network and found that it was a plug-and-play way to share pricey USB devices with other users in the office without a sneakernet.

While some boutique firms have suffered serious blows from the economy, many are seeing distinct advantages over larger competitors when it comes to weathering the storm, say boutique leaders and law firm observers. Boutiques generally have much lower overhead costs, little to no major debt, and more flexibility when it comes to costs and billing rates. One boutique chairman likens the difference between big firms and boutiques to the difference between driving a Lincoln Town Car and a Ferrari.

More information is needed to determine if a Manhattan law firm’s fee of $40 million for five months’ work is unconscionable, the New York Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday. The court declined to grant a motion by the estate of Alice Lawrence to dismiss Graubard Miller’s petition for payment, sending the matter back to a lower court. At issue is a 2005 contingency fee agreement under which the firm was to get 40 percent of a final settlement of the disputed real estate holdings of Lawrence’s late husband.

Morgan & Finnegan, one of the oldest IP boutiques in the U.S., has suffered a series of partner defections during the last few years. An apparent administrative error revealing a filing in a sealed lawsuit has shed light on how far the firm has gone to stem the tide. The filing in question shows the boutique altered its partnership agreement to create financial disincentives for partners looking to leave — just a few days before one of its top rainmakers departed for Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.

For 25 years, White & Case’s far-flung offices have operated as individual fiefdoms, with little directive from above on how to grow business, choose clients or cut costs. But with 2,500 lawyers spread around the world and growing competition from other, more focused global powers, White & Case implemented a new structure this week, one that spells a power shift. The firm’s chairman spoke about the reorganization for the first time in an exclusive interview with The Am Law Daily on Tuesday.

When the British government dropped a bribery probe of BAE Systems, Europe’s largest military defense contractor had a major management shake-up, including the hiring of new GC Philip Bramwell who is leading the company’s reform efforts. So why have the Americans jumped into the fray? The Justice Department won’t comment — indeed, a wall of silence has come down across the department about the BAE case. And Bramwell says he can’t talk about the probe. But sources and court records suggest several reasons.

After nearly two years at Cozen O’Connor, former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman will leave the firm over what she says are conflicts that limited her book of business. She denied rumors that her departure has anything to do with the size of her book or a public outcry over a political e-mail she signed during the presidential campaign that warned Jewish voters of a potential “second Holocaust” if Barack Obama were elected president. Newman later apologized for the e-mail.