Posts on ‘July 28th, 2009’

The Snark asks: Are you self-destructing? In the current environment of record-low voluntary attrition, many Cogs are clinging to Big Law jobs they might otherwise have left for a lateral spot in a new city, a sweet in-house gig or a smaller firm. But as The Snark notes, some of these Cogs who are going through the motions are slowly taking baby steps off the grid toward the abyss. Is this you? Is this your neighbor? The Snark says some warning signs include appearance changes and communication breakdowns.

Ending a tumultuous legal battle, the California Supreme Court late Monday ordered the State Bar to allow Sara Granda, a 29-year-old quadriplegic, to take the bar exam, which starts today. Granda submitted her online exam application earlier this summer but left blank a space for credit card payment information. Granda, whose sole source of income is a monthly disability payment, doesn’t have a credit card and contends that the state Department of Rehabilitation paid her $648 application fee.

On Monday a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit affirmed a ruling by a Miami federal district judge that denied class certification to FedEx hourly employees in Florida. In their wage-and-hour class action complaint, the plaintiffs had alleged that FedEx paid them only for their scheduled work time, not for the full time period between when they punched in and out on a manual clock. They also alleged that FedEx did not pay them for breaks, as required by state law.

Trial began Monday in the prosecution of Robert Simels, a prominent New York defense attorney charged with plotting with a client to threaten and bribe witnesses to prevent them from testifying. In defending his client, drug kingpin Shaheed Khan, Simels employed a “win at all costs” strategy, the prosecutor told the jury. But according to Simels’ attorney, Simels was simply practicing the careful “art of extracting information,” with “never an intention” to tamper with witnesses.

Less than a month after Cooley Godward Kronish lost a trio of high-profile deal lawyers to Dewey & LeBoeuf, another partner has left for another New York-based firm. James Donato, an antitrust lawyer and past president of the Bar Association of San Francisco, joined Shearman & Sterling’s San Francisco office as a partner Monday. The firm announced the hire along with three other lateral additions in its Washington, D.C., office.

Morris, Manning & Martin announced Friday that, effective Aug. 1, pay in the firm’s real estate, lending and tax groups will drop by 15 percent and pay for other associates will drop by 10 percent. The firm’s managing partner, Robert E. Saudek, said a decline in legal work, a readjustment of the associate salary market and a desire to avoid cutting jobs were factors in deciding to implement the salary cuts.

Two Democratic senators said Tuesday they’re not happy with how the Senate Judiciary Committee conducts confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees. As the committee prepared to vote on Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., bemoaned what he called a “familiar pattern” in confirmation hearings. Nominees, he said, take the “path of least resistance” when they refuse to answer almost all of senators’ questions about the substance of law.

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to halt all proceedings in its en banc review of controversial patent prosecution rules until after the Senate confirms a new director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The department, along with the other parties in Tafas v. Doll, is seeking the delay to give the new director an opportunity to examine the rules and determine what course the USPTO should take, including whether to rescind the rules.

The chances are dwindling that a substantial number of Republicans will vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, now that Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has ended months of indecision and announced his opposition. The announcement eliminates one of the last, best chances Sotomayor had of winning over prominent conservatives and means the confirmation vote will likely stick close to the partisan divide, continuing a trend of polarization over judicial nominations.

Lawyers from Latham & Watkins and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz are nervously eyeing a call by the chair of the Senate Judiciary committee on Monday for antitrust review of the $2.5 billion merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster. The deal was criticized by both music fans and musicians when it was announced in February for merging the concert-promoting operations of Live Nation and ticket-selling capacity of Ticketmaster into one industry behemoth.