Posts on ‘July 23rd, 2009’

In Cooley partner Michael Stern’s estimation, Richard Susskind’s “The End of Lawyers?” is a dry, sometimes boring, often infuriating, small-print book written by a supercilious academic who thinks “the law is not there to provide a livelihood for lawyers,” but rather that their incomes are, at best, a byproduct that society must incur as the price of the rule of law. But you should still read it. Why? It’s a road map to the archipelago of legal innovation emerging all around us. Ignore it at your peril.

Troutman Sanders said Tuesday it is expanding its New York office by hiring five intellectual property lawyers who were left adrift after the abrupt collapse in December of Dreier LLP. The group, led by senior patent litigator Albert Jacobs Jr., has had a bumpy ride. Jacobs brought his team to Dreier from Greenberg Traurig in 2007. But 18 months later, Marc Dreier was under arrest for fraud and Jacobs’ group was rushing to escape the fallout. “It’s not the way I wanted to spend my Christmas, let’s just say,” Jacobs said.

At the request of a Democratic Senate, the Bush administration in 2006 produced a list of 38 members of the Republican legal elite who helped Samuel Alito Jr. practice the answers he would give to senators during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. But this time around, the Obama administration says it won’t name those who participated in practice sessions with Sonia Sotomayor, declining to give a clear reason for keeping the information hidden. Republicans haven’t pressed the White House for a list.

Five competing plaintiffs firms in a class action for millions of Aetna insureds and doctors have agreed to share the role of interim class counsel rather than pick one to take the lead. But Aetna doesn’t like the idea. Its defense counsel maintains that a five-headed leadership would be unwieldy, would worsen bickering among the firms and would drive up litigation costs — something a federal judge sought to avoid when warning earlier this year against a class counsel feeding frenzy over fees.