Posts on ‘January 15th, 2009’

Mentally ill criminal defendants who are found to be competent to stand trial don’t automatically have the right to act as their own counsel, a New Jersey appeals court held Wednesday. The ruling, made possible by a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that gives state courts discretion to decide such issues, upheld a trial judge who assigned a lawyer to represent an accused thief who proclaimed he was the acolyte of an ancient civilization’s princess.

Bryan Marsal, who replaced longtime Lehman Chief Executive Richard Fuld at the end of 2008, told a bankruptcy judge Wednesday that liquidators could finish their work of winding down Lehman within two years, instead of the 10 years others have predicted. Once the nation’s fourth-biggest investment bank, Lehman filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history on Sept. 15. Separately, the judge extended Lehman’s exclusive control over the case, pushing back a deadline to file a reorganization plan to July 13.

President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph Biden visited the Supreme Court Wednesday for a highly private courtesy call that included chatting with eight of the justices. The visit had personal meaning for both Obama and Biden. When Obama graduated from Harvard Law School, he explicitly rejected a path that almost certainly would have led to a Court clerkship. As for Biden, as a longtime Senate Judiciary Committee member, he has voted on the confirmation of all nine of the justices now sitting.

Contesting an SEC order to freeze Marc Dreier’s assets, attorney Gerald Shargel told the Am Law Daily on Wednesday that he has reached an agreement in principle with SEC attorneys to release $50,000 that the former law firm managing partner can use to pay his legal bills. Shargel says he still plans to contest a judge’s decision to hold Dreier without bail. The subject of financier Bernard Madoff’s house arrest may still play a role in bail arguments to be made on Dreier’s behalf.

In several colorful moments during Supreme Court arguments Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. confessed to a sweet tooth, Justice Antonin Scalia cited an Aesop’s fable, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave arguing counsel a lesson in 1950s cinema.

A federal judge on Monday rejected an antitrust attack on the $25 billion settlement reached in 1998 between the nation’s major cigarette manufacturers and 46 states as it has been implemented in New York. Judge Alvin Hellerstein in also dissolved a preliminary injunction he had issued barring enforcement of a 2003 New York law aimed at leveling the playing field between manufacturers who participated in the settlement and those that did not.

Lack of diversity and work-life balance are often treated as separate problems in the legal profession, but a new initiative headed by the Project for Attorney Retention is seeking solutions that address both. The Diversity and Flexibility Connection will bring together managing partners from firms with a dozen general counsel from major U.S. companies to develop a list of best practices to promote diversity and work-life among attorneys, and a metrics system to weigh how effective those practices are.