Posts on ‘June 10th, 2009’

A former Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman associate who told clients that he was senior counsel at the law firm will have his license pulled for 60 days. A District of Columbia attorney disciplinary committee has recommended that Garland H. Stillwell hand over his license for misrepresenting his employment status at the Washington firm. The committee also found that Stillwell charged personal expenses to Pillsbury Winthrop’s pro bono accounts.

For law school deans troubled by the diminishing importance of litigation skills in a U.S. legal world where trials are becoming a rare occurrence, there will be an opportunity next month to commiserate and brainstorm on the topic. DePaul University College of Law on July 31 is hosting a two-day symposium in Chicago exclusively for law school deans. DePaul alumnus and personal injury attorney Robert Clifford is sponsoring the all-expenses-paid, five-star hotel trip for 185 law school deans.

Securities litigators Joel Cohen and George Schieren are preparing to exit Clifford Chance, Legal Week has learned. The news follows the departures of the firm’s global litigation and dispute resolution chief and its securities litigation head. The moves come as the firm prepares to shift its focus toward regulatory investigations, antitrust, commercial disputes and international arbitration — and away from the securities litigation work the firm inherited from its 1999 merger with Rogers & Wells.

The so-called green movement has sprouted a fresh crop of lawsuits: greenwashing claims, in which companies are getting sued for making bogus eco-friendly statements about their products. Consumer plaintiffs and environmental groups have caught on, lawyers warn. “This is the beginning of what may be an explosion in these kinds of cases,” said patent attorney Eric Lane of Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps, who tracks greenwashing litigation. “This is a hot area of false advertising.”

For anyone in IT struggling to support a law firm with a growing number of smartphones, take heart. Shook Hardy’s transition from a reactive to proactive support system using Zenprise mobile management software gave them the return on investment they needed to make a case.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Chrysler LLC’s sale to Fiat, turning down a last-ditch appeal by opponents that included consumer groups and three Indiana pension plans. Chrysler, Fiat and the Obama administration had warned that the high court’s intervention could have scuttled the sale. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had ordered a temporary delay just before a 4 p.m. deadline on Monday. A little more than 24 hours later, the Court freed the automakers to complete their deal.

Pillsbury said Tuesday it has temporarily reduced pay for some associates and counsel based on productivity levels, the latest sign that big firms are questioning traditional compensation models. The cuts were first reported on the blog Above the Law, which pegged them between 10 percent and 20 percent; a firm spokeswoman said the figure was “not entirely correct.” Pillsbury’s changes are limited to 2009, but some other firms have fully embraced the idea of moving from a lockstep pay scale to one based more on merit.

Paul Daugerdas, Erwin Mayer and Donna Guerin, three former shareholders in the Chicago office of defunct law firm Jenkens & Gilchrist, are among seven professionals charged Tuesday in an indictment that alleges they “participated in a scheme to defraud the IRS by designing, marketing, implementing and defending tax shelters.” The indictment also charges Daugerdas and Mayer with tax evasion based on their alleged use of fraudulent tax shelters to eliminate or reduce their personal taxes.

In some ways, being general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency is like any other top in-house legal job. There’s the usual stuff: employment issues, real estate transactions, contract disputes. And then there are the more unique questions: When do interrogation procedures cross the line into illegal torture? What happens if an agent accidentally kills a suspect during questioning? Such issues may soon land on the desk of Stephen Preston, who was tapped by President Barack Obama to be the CIA’s new GC.