Posts from ‘June, 2009’

Just two female arbitrators appeared in Focus Europe’s first survey of large arbitrations in 2003. Six years after that first scorecard, those two women, Gabrielle Kaufmann-Kohler and Brigitte Stern, have risen to become the second- and third-busiest arbitrators in the survey, with 20 or more cases apiece. But while the highest echelon of the club has clearly been integrated, women have a precarious foothold in the rest of the list, representing only 4 percent of the arbitrators in this year’s survey.

After three years of law school, a hundred grand of debt and weeks sweating out a bar review and exam, it’s time to start practicing law in earnest, right? At a handful of firms, the answer is fast becoming “not yet.” These firms are putting new recruits through additional apprenticeship programs that they say will better train their attorneys for life at a law firm and for handling clients. The new programs may appeal to clients, but not everyone’s buying the idea that they’re better for new associates.

As much as he might have liked to see his landmark ruling favoring same-sex marriage stand, California Chief Justice Ronald George knew he was doing the “right thing” when he upheld Proposition 8 late last month. In an interview Friday, he said, “I’ve been on the bench for 37 years and have had to let the law take me where it had to, regardless of my own personal views.” He spoke about his reasoning and the reaction it produced, and noted that the public has the option of returning to the ballot box if it wishes.

A federal judge says he will decide by this afternoon on whether to revoke a bond for Texas financier R. Allen Stanford that would let him be free while he awaits trial on charges he swindled investors out of $7 billion. Prosecutors argued Monday that Stanford’s international ties make him a serious flight risk.

Emulex’s suit accusing Broadcom of covering up a “decade of criminal behavior the likes of which has rarely been encountered in corporate America” will return to state court, thanks to a California federal judge’s ruling this week. In his ruling Monday, Judge Andrew Guilford wrote, “As the Supreme Court stated in Grable, it is improper for district courts to use the mere presence of a federal issue as ‘a password opening federal courts to any state action embracing a point of federal law.’”