Posts on ‘July 1st, 2009’

Clifford Chance has reported a spectacular 37 percent fall in profits per equity partner for the 2008-09 financial year. A fall in profits was expected, given Clifford Chance’s exposure to the financial sector — it has one of the leading banking practices of any U.K. firm. But such a steep decline comes as a surprise. The percentage fall in PPP at Clifford Chance is greater than the decline in profits at Cadwalader, which at 30.8 percent saw the biggest fall in profits among Am Law 100 firms.

The Supreme Court’s unusual order Monday delaying a decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and setting it for re-argument Sept. 9 may introduce more pressure on the Senate to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and have her on the bench by then. Retired Justice David Souter was a reliable vote in favor of campaign finance regulations and Sotomayor’s record suggests she would be a likely supporter too. Without her, the outcome on an eight-member Court would be uncertain.

With venture capital all but dried up, government contracts lawyers say they are getting a lot of questions from high-tech companies eager to compete for stimulus funds. But government money comes with quite a few strings attached, which means more red tape to explain to clients. That’s not necessarily a roadblock, lawyers said, but clients will need good compliance infrastructure as they go down that road.

Sedona Conference founder Richard Braman wants law schools to teach lawyers to collaborate during e-discovery and drop the gladiatorial style of litigation to deal with mounting volumes of data. Less adversarial EDD is the goal of his Cooperation Proclamation.

Environmentalists suffered a stunning 0-for-5 outcome in the U.S. Supreme Court this term, their “worst term ever,” according to advocates and scholars. The defeats left the environmental community — and even its traditional antagonist in these cases, the business community — wondering where the Court is heading in this increasingly important area of the law. Is the Roberts Court pro-business, anti-environment, pro-government — or something else?

The legal world has been transformed in the last year, and so has The American Lawyer’s seventh annual A-List, which ranks the nation’s elite law firms — those that are best at balancing a thriving business with their obligations to the profession. Only four firms held on to the ranking that they had in 2008. Four firms — all based in Manhattan — fell off the list, while others slid down the ranks, due in part to a methodology change involving diversity scoring.

News of Monday’s $1.67 billion patent verdict against Abbott Labs had patent lawyers slack-jawed across the United States. But perhaps even more surprising to some was the lawyer on the losing side: WilmerHale’s William Lee, one of the biggest names in intellectual property litigation. The award broke the previous record, a San Diego jury’s $1.52 billion verdict against Microsoft. That verdict was later tossed by the trial judge, and observers say the same could happen with the Abbott Labs case.