Posts on ‘January 2nd, 2009’

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheila M. Gowan has been selected as the Chapter 11 bankruptcy trustee for the Dreier law firm. Currently a litigation partner at the boutique firm of Diamond McCarthy, Gowan has an hourly rate of $495, according to an affidavit. The 250-lawyer Dreier firm collapsed after the December arrest of the firm’s sole equity partner, Marc S. Dreier, on charges connected to what prosecutors now say is a $380 million fraud.

Most pyramid schemes don’t lead to any good. But here’s one creative use of a financial pyramid with a happy ending. This year the legal department at insurance conglomerate ACE Limited put together a novel program that leveraged contributions from in-house lawyers into a $200,000 donation for three public interest groups. According to ACE general counsel Robert Cusumano, the ACE Rule of Law Fund is the first privately funded corporate legal foundation.

This year, corporate leaders will have their work cut out for them. The tough economy will force them to work smarter, even with tightened belts and half-empty wallets. With this in mind, gingerly approached in-house legal advisers for their 2009 personal and professional resolutions. Many plan to update technology and systematize business practices. Others hope that more rewarding leisure activities will ease work’s stresses.

With a focus on productivity, Joyce Hamel of Rusin undertook a re-evaluation of the firm’s stand-alone digital dictation technology. Hamel opted for a software solution, BigHand, with a reputation as a legal workflow system designed for attorney and secretary relationships.

If there’s a silver lining to the economic meltdown, it’s that a lot of large firm lawyers have time to do pro bono work. In fact, Dechert Chairman Barton Winokur announced that at least seven associates would be doing pro bono work full time due to a slowdown in the firm’s structured finance practice. Esther Lardent, president of the Pro Bono Institute, says the current increase is a distinct change from the last recession around 2001, when many firms actually clamped down on pro bono hours.

For Wiley Rein, perhaps the second time is the charm. On Monday, a Washington, D.C., Superior Court judge dismissed on summary judgment the $30 million malpractice suit brought against the firm by Blackwater Security Consulting. She’s the second judge to throw out the case since it was filed last January. Blackwater alleged that Wiley botched its defense of the security contractor in a wrongful death case brought on behalf of four Blackwater guards killed in Iraq in 2004.

In his year-end report on the state of the federal judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. praised the courts as frugal, dedicated and crucial to the life and economic recovery of the nation. But he said that to keep the courts strong, Congress needs to pass pay raises, or at least cost-of-living increases, for federal judges as soon as possible. Roberts’ use of exclamation points in the written report betrays his frustration that calls for judicial pay increases have fallen on deaf ears in Congress.

Dozens of public interest legal organizations have been hit financially by the collapse of Bernie Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme and are scrambling to make up the shortfalls. Organizations from the Center for Constitutional Rights to the American Civil Liberties Union found out before Christmas that they will have their budgets slashed by up to one-third, due to the fallout from the Madoff case.

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.

The unauthorized placement of a pinball machine in the 2000 film “What Women Want” might have technically violated the copyright laws but it is not actionable, a federal judge has ruled. Tossing out a suit by the machine’s trademark owner, New York Judge Denny Chin noted that the Silver Slugger appeared for no more than a few seconds at a time, was always in the background, and that the machine “is never mentioned and plays no role in the plot.”