Posts from ‘April, 2009’

The good news for lawyers is, less e-discovery can be more, say Baker Hostetler attorneys Frederick Chockley III, Elizabeth Scully and Rebecca Barnes. Through strategic planning, careful organization and technological savvy, costs can be cut significantly by improving efficiency.

Mayer Brown co-vice chairman Paul Maher has confirmed to partners that he is considering leaving the firm. London-based Maher told the firm’s partnership Tuesday that he will be taking a short sabbatical to consider his options in the wake of a series of management changes at the Anglo-American firm. Maher’s position at Mayer Brown has been the subject of speculation since the firm confirmed earlier this month that it is to overhaul its management structure.

Attorney ethics can be complex and potentially dangerous to one’s legal career. And a large majority of ethics grievances are filed against solo practitioners or lawyers at small law firms. Solo practitioner Brian J. Fruehling discusses why this might be the case. He also provides tips on how lawyers can avoid ethics problems and what to do if they face an ethics grievance. Fruehling’s pointers can help attorneys in every state, but particularly lawyers in New Jersey, where he practices.

Senior lawyers from all over the U.S. who have been honored by the Best Lawyers of America ratings organization gathered last week at a conference marking the group’s 25th anniversary. Law school deans who made up a panel discussing the future of legal education agreed with lawyers in the audience that law schools must retool legal education, but said that exactly how to do so is still unclear. Meanwhile, another panel discussed the sources of attorneys’ general frustration with where the profession is headed.

A Swedish heiress has sued Proskauer Rose for nearly $9 million, accusing the law firm of manipulating its billing practices to overcharge her by millions of dollars. In a separate malpractice claim, she alleges that the firm mishandled her suit against a jet-setting media mogul who bought an Andy Warhol silk screen that she claims was stolen from her. And then there’s the matter of a certain internal Proskauer memo.

By a narrow 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the Federal Communications Commission acted reasonably in banning even the single-time utterance of “fleeting expletives” over broadcast airwaves. But the decision in stopped short of deciding whether the ban violates the First Amendment, as broadcasters had argued. In announcing the opinion, as well as in the text of the decision, Justice Antonin Scalia used euphemisms and asterisks instead of the real words at issue.

For the first time since 1991, both average profits per partner and revenue per lawyer dipped last year among Am Law 100 firms, the top-grossing firms in the United States. The downturn was widespread but not ubiquitous. On average, it was felt most acutely among the firms that we classify as New York, national and international — and even in a down year, there were bright spots. Still, given the weakness in the market thus far in 2009, another decline seems likely this year.

A recent CNN poll showed that 75 percent of Americans are upset about the way things are going in this country. That could be bad news for corporations because today’s angry citizen is tomorrow’s angry juror. Somehow or other, the lawyers who defend business need to reduce the fury in the courtroom before their clients get burned by the anti-corporate backlash. Two of the most potent tools for swinging the incensed jury panel are humor and emotional redirection, says attorney Michael D. Jones.

The recovery legislation enacted in February amends the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which contains restrictions on executive compensation applicable to institutions receiving financial assistance under the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Attorney Joseph E. Bachelder III analyzes the changes, which expand the number of executives covered, impose stricter limitations on compensation payments, prohibit severance payments to certain executives and add new corporate governance standards.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement service, known as ICE, the investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has been aggressively cracking down on U.S. corporations suspected of hiring illegal aliens — and seizing their assets. The number of work site arrests has exploded tenfold since 2003. But if company executives think they can suss out ICE’s next move, they’re wrong. In fact, execs caught with illegal workers have no idea what ICE will do to them or ask of their company, says one expert.