Posts on ‘July 24th, 2009’

Law school career services offices are responding to the anemic job market by adding a hire or two, paying more attention to markets outside their home turf and serving up more tailored advice. The efforts are driven by growing demand from students as well as alumni, career professionals say. Susan Robinson, associate dean for career services at Stanford Law School, said her office is encouraging students to come in for more one-on-one guidance. “In this market, it can be hard to give generalized advice,” she said.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has agreed to pay up to $35 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of 88,000 workers at Washington state stores who were forced to skip meal and rest breaks or work off the clock. The retailer and lawyers for the workers jointly announced Wednesday that a judge has given final approval to the deal. Plaintiffs lawyers will receive $10.5 million to cover eight years of legal fees.

Given this week’s news that the Justice Department has entered into a whistleblower settlement with the state and city of New York worth more than $500 million, one might assume that a qui tam lawyer is celebrating a whopper of a payday. But that doesn’t appear to be so. New York state has agreed to pay $210,950 in attorney fees and costs to the whistleblower’s lawyers. The bill is low because Hedy Cirrincione originally filed her suits pro se, says attorney David Koenigsberg of Menz Bonner & Komar.

A lawyer who was arrested in a Queens courtroom after calling a court officer an obscene name has successfully sued New York state for false arrest. Solo practitioner Joseph A. DePaula and court officer Charles Rey agree that Rey confiscated DePaula’s phone and that DePaula used an expletive in referring to Rey — but beyond that, their recollections of the incident diverge.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday officially disbarred San Francisco solo Francis Fahy for changing his vote while on a jury for a medical malpractice trial. It turns out that Fahy wanted to break the deadlock so he could get back to his law practice — something he eventually admitted in a signed declaration. He’s believed to be the first California lawyer to be disbarred for misbehaving as a juror.

Quinn Emanuel has deferred eight incoming associates in its San Francisco and Silicon Valley offices until January, firm Chairman John Quinn said Wednesday. The deferrals affect half the incoming class in the Northern California offices, hitting the associates just two months before they were slated to start. None of the firm’s five other offices are affected, Quinn told The Recorder in an e-mail Wednesday.

Just when the legal community moved on to tracking the demise of next year’s summer associate programs, Dechert went back to some cost-cutting measures the Philadelphia legal community hasn’t seen in significant numbers in months: layoffs. The firm continued to make staff and attorney cuts, laying off partner-track and staff associates as well as paralegals on Thursday.