Posts on ‘January 30th, 2009’

Revenue at Quinn Emanuel was $441.9 million in 2008, up 15 percent from the prior year. Profits jumped 10 percent, to $260 million. Profits per partner — already near the top of the Am Law 100 in 2007 — rose 11 percent to $3.3 million. According to managing partner John Quinn, lawyers racked up an average of 200 hours a month during a peak period. A major case for the firm in 2008 was the Bratz copyright trial, in which Quinn Emanuel successfully represented Mattel against MGA Entertainment, maker of a competing doll.

Richard Fuld, ex-chairman of Lehman Brothers Holdings, “sold” his oceanfront Jupiter Island, Fla., mansion to his wife for $10. But he may have made himself vulnerable to more trouble as the investment bank’s massive bankruptcy case unfolds. Under Florida’s Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act, prospective creditors could contend the transfer was intended to avoid repaying them, say bankruptcy attorneys. In March 2004, the couple paid $13.75 million for the property, which is now assessed at $13.3 million.

Boston-based Ropes & Gray cut 106 staff positions, or 10 percent of its
non-lawyer staff, on Thursday, announcing the news in a firmwide memo
sent by Chairman Brad Malt, who stated that the firm’s clients and
marketplace “have been seriously affected by the continuing global
economic downturn.” Intellectual property firm Fish & Richardson also
conducted a non-lawyer staff layoff on Thursday, letting go 30 employees
across eight U.S. offices.

The legal divorce between Joe Francis of “Girls Gone Wild” fame and his soon-to-be-former lawyers from The Bernhoft Law Firm might soon be appropriately nicknamed Lawyers Gone Wild. Faced with a March trial on federal tax evasion charges, Francis all but accused The Bernhoft Firm’s two main partners of malpractice. But in a three-page declaration filed on Thursday before a district court judge in Los Angeles, one of the partners hit back at the client he can’t seem to get rid of fast enough.

A military judge at Guantanamo rejected on Thursday a White House request to suspend a hearing for the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, creating an unexpected challenge for the administration as it reviews how America puts suspected terrorists on trial. The judge, Army Col. James Pohl, said his decision was difficult but necessary to protect “the public interest in a speedy trial.” The ruling came in the case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The bombing killed 17 U.S. sailors.

The former New York judge who appointed Steven T. Rondos to oversee at least seven of the guardianship accounts that Rondos is charged with fleecing expressed dismay at the news in a phone interview Thursday. “I am disappointed — I just thought he was really one of the good guys,” said former Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Leonard Scholnick. A spokesman for the Office of Court Administration acknowledged on Thursday some “flaws” in the system for overseeing guardians’ work but said those flaws were now corrected.