Posts on ‘June 18th, 2009’

Even though as recently as last year Big Law Summer Camp was a fantasy land, The Snark knows that Summer Campers this year are suddenly in a cutthroat competition for the precious few positions Big Law is likely to offer. But mixed in with the pity The Snark feels toward the Summer Campers is also some fear — because the sheer competitive gunner-ness that The Snark is seeing as Summers turn up their game makes The Snark’s hair stand on end. One popular Summer Game this year: “Stalk the Decision Makers.”

Defending her membership in an elite all-women’s club, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor said in a letter submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the group doesn’t discriminate unfairly by gender and includes men in many of its activities. GOP senators questioned Sotomayor’s membership in the Belizean Grove, a group of prominent professional women, because federal judges are bound by a code that says they shouldn’t join any organization that discriminates by race, sex, religion or nationality.

An attorney who formed a company that used non-lawyers to provide closing services for the U.S. government’s sale of foreclosed properties has been censured by a New York appellate court. John C. Garas maintained that the services at issue were “clerical in nature involving not the exercising of legal judgment, but the repetition of a series of routine procedures hundreds and hundreds of times in succession.” But the court disagreed, finding that Garas aided non-attorneys in the unauthorized practice of law.

A Wisconsin judge has struck down Milwaukee’s sick-leave law, a fledgling ordinance that never really took off since voters approved it last fall. The judge held that the ordinance, which would have required local businesses to provide employees with paid sick days, was unconstitutional and invalidly enacted. Milwaukee, San Francisco and Washington are the only three cities in the country to have adopted paid sick-leave laws in recent years, although no legal challenges have surfaced elsewhere.

A federal judge on Wednesday said she had “serious” doubts about whether a purported meditation on the relationship between author J.D. Salinger and his creation Holden Caulfield is a fair use of material from Salinger’s classic novel “The Catcher in the Rye.” Southern District of New York Judge Deborah A. Batts ended the hearing by blocking publication of “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye” for 10 days while she ponders the issues, including whether purely literary characters can be copyrighted.

Morgan Lewis announced Wednesday it has hired five banking and leveraged-finance partners from Bingham McCutchen, along with a half-dozen associates. The partners include Jonathan Bernstein, the former co-chair of Bingham’s banking and leveraged-finance group. Between the credit crisis and recession, it may seem like an odd time for a firm to add lawyers who specialize in lending. But the former Bingham partners say they are busy on new loans, credit restructurings, and debtor-in-possession financings in bankruptcies.

R. Allen Stanford, Stanford International Bank and two other Stanford-related entities are seeking to disqualify Baker Botts from representing receiver Ralph Janvey in a fraud suit the SEC filed against Stanford, two of his colleagues and three of his companies. They allege that, from 1985 to 1987, Baker Botts represented Stanford and his father, James Stanford, in organizing Stanford International Bank. The firm denies a conflict of interest, saying it has no record of ever representing Stanford or the bank.

The 11th Circuit has rejected objections to a $445 million settlement of a securities fraud suit against HealthSouth. Absent further appeals, Wednesday’s rulings against former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy and AIG Global Investment Group appear to remove all impediments to the settlement, which resolves massive securities fraud claims against HealthSouth, its insurance carriers and some of its directors and officers — but not Scrushy, who is serving a prison sentence for an unrelated bribery charge.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered a conservative-leaning swing vote in two 5-4 decisions Thursday morning. In District Attorney’s Office for the Third Judicial District v. Osborne, the Court ruled that criminal defendants have no federal constitutional right of postconviction access to DNA evidence. In Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., the Court said plaintiffs in “mixed motive” ADEA cases must prove that age was the “but for” cause of the employer’s action.

With the economy down and bankruptcy filings up to near-record levels, the federal judiciary is asking Congress to approve additional bankruptcy judgeships to handle the workload. The Judicial Conference, the policymaking arm of the federal courts, is seeking 13 new, permanent bankruptcy judgeships in 10 judicial districts; the conversion of 22 existing temporary bankruptcy judgeships to permanent in 15 judicial districts, and the extension of two existing temporary bankruptcy judgeships for five years.