Posts from ‘August, 2009’

Times are tough for today’s law students. Big law firms are reducing the size of their summer classes and even graduates of top-ranked law schools are having a tough time finding a job. Given the state of the economy, it seems an appropriate time to compare two recent surveys to consider whether attending a cheaper, less prestigious law school can still land students lucrative jobs at Am Law firms.

A pair of recent court rulings is giving unions new and potentially potent ammunition against furloughs of public employees. On Aug. 18, a federal judge struck down a furlough plan in Maryland, holding that the plan violated the U.S. Constitution by unilaterally cutting wages guaranteed through collective bargaining. On July 29, a state judge in Hawaii issued a similar ruling, saying a furlough violated the state constitution, and criticizing officials for making the move without union negotiations.

Former Greenwood, Miss., attorney and judge Bobby Fisher’s cooperation with federal authorities has allowed him to remain free more than three years after pleading guilty to a mortgage scam. Fisher says he continues to help U.S. attorneys on mortgage fraud cases and will be sentenced once those wrap up. In January 2006, Fisher and former real estate agent Jim Pruett pleaded guilty to a scheme of falsifying mortgage application documents. Pruett was sentenced and died in prison in 2007.

Aggressive lawyering at two of New Jersey’s high-profile litigation firms is under attack in cases the state Supreme Court has added to its agenda for the new term. A case in which Sills Cummis & Gross is facing sanctions and disqualification gives the court an opportunity to make significant refinements in the law governing companies’ control over employees’ electronic communications. At issue in a case against Bruce Nagel of Nagel Rice is whether he or his client should pay a frivolous pleading fee award.

Each category of software has one application that becomes the standard for comparison: Microsoft Outlook for e-mail, Word for documents and Adobe Acrobat for PDFs. But there are plenty of reasons to use alternatives, says consultant Brett Burney as he reviews Nuance PDF Converter 6.

Although federal workplace discrimination laws don’t cover sexual orientation discrimination, a federal appeals court has ruled that an effeminate gay man must be allowed to pursue a Title VII claim alleging that he was targeted for harassment because he failed to conform to “gender stereotypes.” The 3rd Circuit found that a lower court erred when it declared that plaintiff Brian Prowel’s sex discrimination claim was nothing more than “an artfully pleaded claim of sexual orientation discrimination.”

While the high-profile legal fight against California’s Prop 8 captures headlines, a carefully planned case quietly under way in Massachusetts federal court could be the gay marriage test with the greatest national impact. The challenge is one of four lawsuits around the country that ask federal courts to strike down the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act. The suits, and the Massachusetts case in particular, according to advocates and scholars, are just the opening shots in a struggle destined for the U.S. Supreme Court.

A group of investor clients of Stanford Financial Group has filed a class action against Proskauer Rose and partner Thomas V. Sjoblom. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas, alleges that the law firm and Sjoblom aided and abetted Stanford Financial’s alleged fraud and that it conspired with Stanford Financial. The class action claims that under Texas law Proskauer Rose is liable for the $7 billion in total fraud losses.