Posts on ‘March 27th, 2009’

A former attorney who pleaded guilty to stealing millions of dollars from a prominent New Orleans law firm and a casino operator he once represented was sentenced Wednesday to just over 15 years in prison and ordered to repay about $23 million. U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon scolded James Perdigao before sentencing him, telling the former Adams and Reese partner, “You let yourself down, you let your family down, you let your profession down, and you let your country down.”

More than one quarter of lawyers said their organizations would add personnel in the next 12 months, with bankruptcy and litigation anticipated to be the practice areas with the most growth potential, according to a recent survey conducted by Robert Half Legal, a legal placement firm. The survey, which took place from Feb. 11 to 27, involved 300 attorneys at law firms and corporations in the United States and Canada.

The Heller Ehrman estate appears to have collected only $8 million of the $77 million owed to it by clients since its bankruptcy filing nearly three months ago, a monthly operating report shows. Most of the firm’s receivables, the largest portion of Heller’s potential assets, are older than 90 days, which make them pretty stale. With no one to pound down the doors of debtors, bankruptcy lawyers said, there’s a diminishing chance of collecting on those accounts.

Attorneys accepting assignments under the federal Criminal Justice Act will see their fees bumped from $100 per hour to $110 per hour, thanks to funds Congress recently appropriated. Enacted in 1964, the CJA established a system for appointing and compensating lawyers representing defendants unable to retain counsel in federal criminal proceedings. Defender organizations, along with the more than 10,000 private “panel attorneys,? represent the majority of individuals prosecuted in federal courts.

A key group of Democratic senators has introduced a bill to increase funding for the Legal Services Corp. — established in 1974 by Congress as a nonprofit that funds civil legal aid — and to lift many of the restrictions on LSC-funded attorneys, such as the prohibition on the filing of class actions and the collection of attorney fees. The senators said the bill was necessary because the federal commitment to legal services is not as effective as it needs to be.

A Florida jury delivered a defense verdict Wednesday for R.J. Reynolds and Altria in , which was brought by the widow of a smoker who died of lung cancer. After a 2 1/2 week trial, the jury took only 90 minutes to clear the tobacco companies. This week’s verdict contrasts with those from two other recent Florida cases, which resulted in a $7 million verdict against Liggett Group and $8 million in damages against Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris.

New York Governor David A. Paterson and legislative leaders said Friday they’ve agreed to dismantle the last vestiges of the Rockefeller Drug Laws by stressing treatment rather than incarceration for most nonviolent offenders. Paterson said the agreement will be in the 2009-10 state budget to be voted on in the next few weeks. The agreement would give judges the discretion to place many nonviolent addicts in court-approved alcohol and substance abuse programs instead of prison, even if prosecutors object.

With more information conveyed and stored in electronic form, IT professionals and senior managers are grappling with how to implement best practices to manage company data through dissolutions, divestitures, mergers, acquisitions and reductions in force. Attorneys Regina A. Jytyla and R. Jason Straight explore solutions to common data-management quandaries and offer a few simple steps to achieve regulatory compliance and mitigate risks inherent to the failure to preserve electronically stored information.

In 1996, Peter Gutmann prescribed a regimen of 35 varied overwriting passes to thoroughly erase data — a “Gutmann Method” erasure. Although he later called it “pointless,” it lives on as a feature of modern drive erasure tools. So what’s the truth about multipass erasure?

Despite a sagging economy, recent layoff announcements and the discontinuation of a summer associate program by one large Texas firm, 17 of the 25 largest firms in Texas confirm they are continuing with their 2009 summer associate programs. But these are tough times, even in Texas. Most of the 17 firms, as anticipated, hired smaller 2009 summer classes than they did in 2008. And some firms have already confirmed that they’ll be scaling back entertainment costs for their summer programs this year.