Posts on ‘June 1st, 2009’

Last fall, when the Federal Circuit took a look at the Patent and Trademark Office’s rejection of Bernard Bilski’s application for a patent on a method to hedge risk in commodities trading, Bilski was represented by The Webb Law Firm, a small Pittsburgh shop. Bilski lost, in a landmark ruling that significantly tightened the standards for business method patents. But on Monday, Bilski and his new lead counsel from Finnegan Henderson learned that the high court had granted their petition for certiorari.

Chalk up the latest victims of the recession: new law schools. A slowdown in contributions, coupled with state budget cuts, has clipped the wings of fledgling institutions nationwide. Nearly a dozen new law schools have been in the works during the past year. Given the economic climate, some institutions that had planned to open law schools in 2010 are considering pushing back those start dates. Others are scaling back building plans and fundraising.

These are hard times for most people who work at big law firms. For some, they are unbearable. Though deeply individual tragedies, the recent suicides of Kilpatrick Stockton’s Mark Levy and a laid-off Simpson associate are also horrible reminders of the toll that a profession’s stresses can take, especially in an ailing economy. And the truth is, lots of lawyers have been unhappy for years. It’s time for lawyers at big firms to reassess their priorities and values, writes Susan Beck, who warns: You just can’t keep going like this.

Traditional tools for finding a new job are not likely to work for the growing multitude of lawyers who have been laid off, according to a panel of recruiters and consultants who spoke in Atlanta last week. Resumes and recruiters are not going to be nearly as helpful as relationships and self-reliance, they said. And while it’s important to talk with a recruiter and rewrite a resume, the key is working full time at looking for a job.

In today’s economy, what’s a savvy technology chief to do to cut firm costs? One answer is to rethink the way the firm deploys its applications and consider a thin client approach. Instead of running an application on each user’s PC, run it on a centralized server all users can access.

While internal changes are few and far between at midsize firms, the world outside is morphing into a land of opportunity. Large corporate clients are on the hunt for better value and, more and more, they’re setting their sights on smaller, regional firms. Many midsize firm leaders and legal experts say this shift could lead to permanent changes in the legal landscape as midsize and smaller firms gain more footing in markets previously cornered by megafirms.

General Motors, the battered American auto giant, has filed for bankruptcy protection in a plan that will see the U.S. government take control of the company. The restructuring, planned as a section 363 sale, comes after months of negotiations with the Obama administration over the terms of government bailout funds for GM, suffering from the recession, frozen credit markets and the increasing ascendance of foreign car makers such as Toyota and Honda.

The predictable menu of issues is already being written by senators and special interest groups for Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. But key issues affecting businesses, workers, consumers and criminal defendants, though generally ignored, will have a profound impact on more people than will perennial favorites such as abortion and the death penalty, say some lawyers and scholars. And, they add, Sotomayor’s views on those issues would be more predictive of her role as a justice.