Posts on ‘June 18th, 2009’

A top Justice Department attorney under criminal investigation for withholding evidence in the case against former Sen. Ted Stevens has been removed as the supervisor of another congressional corruption trial. Justice spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said William Welch remains head of the department’s Public Integrity Section but will no longer oversee the prosecution of former lobbyist Kevin Ring, a former associate of imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy last fall was a nightmare for Lawrence Bortstein, the company’s global head of technology law. But it also presented him with the opportunity to realize a dream. First it spurred him to consider his career options. Then, after he decided that he was ready to start his own law firm, it gave him his first client: the Lehman estate. Bortstein’s new firm is doing some of the same things for the estate that his old in-house team did for the company before it collapsed.

As a large firm, Burns & Levinson was continually struggling with document stability and maintaining a consistent look with the documents it created. Esquire Innovations iCreate and iRedline were the best fit to establish a consistent branding across stable and functional documents.

Moving beyond all the talk of alternative fee arrangements, Saul Ewing has put its fixed-fee programs in writing — on its Web site at least. The firm launched this week its “cost certainty commitment” with two different programs in which either a fixed fee or a cost per attorney, per day, will be used on specific types of matters. New matters have already started to come in as a result, and the firm plans to have practice group leaders expand the program.

In granting a woman’s bid to void a settlement stipulation because her pro bono divorce attorney — a former Skadden staff attorney — made serious errors and was inadequately supervised, a New York state judge has cautioned law firms that, in taking on pro bono cases, they should ensure that counsel “receive appropriate support and supervision, so that they can provide pro bono clients with the same careful legal representation that they provide to paying clients.”

While many law firms say “better late than never,” when it comes to associate start dates, the most profitable Am Law 100 firms disagree. The top 10 Am Law 100 firms in profits per partner are largely avoiding the use of deferrals to deal with a potential overstaffing crunch this fall. “Our start date is, and has always been September for new associates,” says a spokesperson for Paul Weiss. The only top 10 firm making deferrals mandatory this year is Schulte, Roth & Zabel, requiring all new associates to start in 2010.

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.”