Posts on ‘December 18th, 2008’

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey recused himself from Congress’ investigation into the alleged $50 billion pyramid scam run by financier Bernard Madoff, because his son, Marc Mukasey, a partner at Bracewell & Giuliani, is representing a financial officer at Madoff’s investment firm. Democratic Rep. Paul Kanjorski said he will convene an inquiry next month to examine the fraud and find out why the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators “failed to detect these substantial evasions.”

A new judge was assigned Wednesday and a hearing set for Friday in the day-old bankruptcy of scandal-scarred Dreier LLP. The chief judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, Stuart M. Bernstein, was randomly assigned to replace Judge Robert E. Gerber. No explanation was provided. A hearing also was scheduled for the appointment of a trustee to marshal and distribute the firm’s assets. The law firm also disclosed that it expects that funds will be available for distribution to unsecured creditors.

Allen & Overy has announced its year-end bonuses for its U.S. associates, with lawyers pocketing up to $32,500 at the upper end. The Magic Circle firm’s rates represent a drop of around half compared to last year, when lawyers took home between $35,000 and $65,000 in a January payout. The move mirrors that of U.K. rival Clifford Chance, which publicly announced earlier this month that it was cutting its bonuses in half.

Former administrative judge Roy Pearson?s infamous $67 million pants case has finally ended, and according to a ruling handed down Thursday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the pants are hardly worth that sum. The opinion marks the conclusion of a lawsuit filed more than three years ago when Pearson sued the owners of now-defunct Custom Cleaners in 2005 for $54 million, for losing a pair of pants he dropped off for dry cleaning.

The New Jersey Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a new trial for a former PaineWebber in-house attorney who claimed she was fired for complaining to supervisors about allegedly unethical conflicts of interest in the legal department. Justice Helen Hoens said the lower courts wrongly interpreted precedential rulings in concluding that mere voicing of complaints about corporate behavior within the corporation is not sufficient to uphold a retaliatory discharge claim.

This is the story of how Parker Poe, with no prior experience in portal technologies, formed close partnerships between law firm departments and its vendor XMLAW to create Parkway, an invaluable intranet resource for attorneys and staff. It wasn’t easy, but here’s how it happened.

As legal work recedes amid an ailing economy, some firms are finding that they have far too many lawyers in nonequity limbo, making them rethink their business model. K&L Gates Chairman Peter Kalis says he is “very” comfortable with his firm’s business structure, which he likens to a diamond with the nonequity partners comprising the widest portion. But one firm’s diamond may be another’s detritus. Consultant Ed Wesemann says many law firms are laboring with “a big inner tube around the middle.”

In a ruling that could send shivers up the spines of some employers, a federal judge has refused to dismiss a libel suit against Rite Aid Corp. brought by a worker who claims he was falsely accused of theft in a report to an employment screening database. In the suit, the plaintiff claims that the false report sent by Rite Aid to ChoicePoint Inc. made it impossible for him to get a new job as, one by one, he was turned away by CVS, Walgreens and Target as a result of a “bad report” from ChoicePoint.

Arguments got a tad personal Tuesday afternoon as a 9th Circuit panel reviewed the behavior of its fellow Judge Richard Tallman, who ran a bizarre murder-for-hire trial by designation. Judge Harry Pregerson reacted viscerally to a witness who wore a fake Purple Heart, and to Tallman’s refusal to remedy it. Pregerson also took a not-so-veiled shot at Chief Judge Alex Kozinski for talking too much during en banc hearings.

A former Brown & Wood partner was among the three defendants in the KPMG tax shelter case convicted Wednesday by a Manhattan federal jury. Raymond Ruble was convicted on 10 counts of tax evasion while investment consultants Robert Pfaff and John Larson were convicted on 12 counts. Fourth defendant ex-KPMG partner David Greenberg was acquitted on all counts. In the case’s final tally, 19 defendants were charged, two pleaded guilty, 13 had charges dismissed, three were convicted at trial and one was acquitted.