Posts on ‘August 4th, 2009’

Maurice Allen and Mike Goetz, two top banking partners recruited last year from White & Case, are to quit Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer less than 18 months after joining. Freshfields insiders said the decision was amicable and that Allen and Goetz were expected to look for a more entrepreneurial environment. The move, which ends weeks of speculation regarding the pair, marks a dramatic — and swift — end to one of the most high-profile lateral hires ever made in London.

His law school professors taught attorney Jason Braun case analysis, courtroom techniques and legal research skills, but they overlooked one important area: the practical realities that exist within a firm. So to help young lawyers, Braun has some advice — but it may not be easy for new associates to hear. For instance, Braun says associates should always strive to provide a partner with perfect work, and if a partner tells you to cut your hair or shave your goatee, you should start shaving — with a smile.

A tangled case stemming from what the plaintiff’s attorney called an insurance agency’s “simple failure to send a fax or e-mail” has cost the agency, along with the insurance company whose policy it sold, more than $1 million, including $400,000 in attorney fees. An attorney for Pacific Insurance Co. said it will appeal the $881,000 portion of the judgment it was ordered to pay to the plaintiff, Regency Savings Bank.

Heller Ehrman’s former employees are demanding better representation on the bankrupt estate’s unsecured creditors committee because of what they call a lack of aggressiveness in pursuing former shareholders and collecting accounts receivable. The employees say they “lack an adequate voice on the committee” and are demanding that the U.S. Trustee appoint a former Heller employee to the committee who is not a former shareholder “nor aligned with former shareholder interests.”

A judge has ended two months of plaintiffs lawyers’ squabbling and picked two firms to take the lead in a class action potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars against Aetna Health. Rejecting the plaintiffs’ proposed compromise plan of dividing the leadership role among seven law firms, the judge sided with Aetna counsel, who argued the litigation would be a mess without a single point of contact on the plaintiffs’ side.

Citing what they called the “pathetic track record” of the court-appointed trustee in charge of liquidating Bernard Madoff’s investment securities firm, three Pennsylvania residents who invested with Madoff have urged a bankruptcy court to reject the request of Irving H. Picard and his counsel for more than $15 million in interim fees.

Bank of America agreed on Monday to pay $33 million in response to charges it allegedly misled investors about billions in bonuses it agreed to pay Merrill Lynch executives when the bank was on the verge of acquiring Merrill for $50 billion in a 2008 merger. The payment settles a civil suit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.