Posts on ‘June 2nd, 2009’

The House Judiciary Committee Task Force on Impeachment is preparing to start hearings Wednesday on retired U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent, who was indicted in January on six counts of alleged sexual abuse of two court staff members. But Kent won’t be there, says his lawyer Dick DeGuerin. Not only that, Kent intends to turn in his resignation to President Barack Obama on Tuesday, DeGuerin says, but the resignation isn’t effective until a year from now.

In this volatile economy, merely dropping rates is not the best way for large law firms to get more business from their biggest corporate clients, according to consultant Michael B. Rynowecer and a midyear survey on outside legal spending by Fortune 1000 companies. That means firms that want their business need to handle their matters more efficiently within predictable, fixed budgets, he said. They also need to understand a client’s business well enough to help corporate counsel assess and mitigate risk.

There is a right and a wrong way for attorneys to approach content creation and revision to avoid document corruption. For lawyers who are more comfortable typing than dictating, the Assistant-at-Law offers these gentle suggestions to avoid seeing the message “This document is corrupt.”

In battles over prayer in school, the cutting-edge cases are coming from kindergarten classes. In one such case, the 3rd Circuit rejected the First Amendment claims of a student’s mother who sued after not being allowed to read verses from the Bible — which she said was her son’s favorite book — during an “All About Me” program. Writing for the court, Chief Judge Anthony J. Scirica said parents “may reasonably expect their children will not become captive audiences to an adult’s reading of religious texts.”

General Motors, the nation’s No. 1 automaker, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Manhattan on Monday. The decision, coupled with Chrysler’s April bankruptcy filing, gave two New York bankruptcy judges a central role in an extraordinary government effort to salvage a once-mighty but now-humbled American industry. Harvey Miller of Weil Gotshal & Manges, which represents GM, urged approval of $15 billion in interim financing for GM, pushing for quick action because the company faces a “crisis of confidence.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday set the stage for a landmark decision on the patentability of 21st century creations from software to biotech — an issue on which Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor could make a significant difference if confirmed. Justices agreed to review the case Bilski v. Doll, a challenge to last fall’s Federal Circuit ruling, which narrowed the patentability of so-called “business methods,” shorthand for a broad range of processes not tied to manufacturing.

In this climate of increased enforcement, it is imperative that firms doing business in foreign markets, both currently and in the future, become familiar with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Both the anti-bribery and books-and-records provisions present significant issues for any company doing business abroad. Attorney Michael Crites provides four essential preventative measures individuals and businesses can use to protect themselves from possible violations of the FCPA.