Posts on ‘September 3rd, 2009’

The lawyer trying to unravel what the government calls a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme run by Texas businessman R. Allen Stanford has fired back at critics who said his request for $27 million in fees is excessive. Court-appointed receiver Ralph Janvey escalated the rhetoric in his unusual public battle over attorney fees with the Securities and Exchange Commission in court papers filed Tuesday evening.

Another male bastion has bitten the dust. This summer, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett elected partners Sarah Cogan and Laura Palma to its executive committee — the first women to join the elite group in the firm’s 125-year history. It’s been a surprisingly long haul for women to break into the 12-member club. Simpson Thacher anointed its first female partner, antitrust lawyer Eleanor Fox, nearly 40 years ago.

As other major law firms order layoffs and pay cuts, GrayRobinson is giving an average 8 percent raise to its associates. Tuesday’s pay raises were as high as 15 percent, and 90 percent of associates received raises, said law firm president Byrd “Biff” Marshall Jr. The merit-based increases were decided on an individual basis. All support staffers at the firm, which has 10 offices throughout Florida, also are getting higher pay, he said. The raises were announced at a firm retreat last weekend.

“Doing more with less” has long been a goal, even a mandate, for law librarians, but now it’s “do much more with far less.” Money is part of the story according to The American Lawyer’s 14th annual survey of law firm library directors. And “Nothing is a sacred cow anymore.”

Lawyers chafing under their firms’ mandatory retirement policies might consider the type of in-house post a Connecticut federal judge recently deemed outside the scope of executive jobs that can legally include a retirement age. U.S. District Judge Vanessa Bryant ruled on Aug. 27 that Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act by forcing Robert Raymond, chief patent counsel and vice president for intellectual property, to retire at age 65 in 2004.

Ropes & Gray took the lead among several firms in advising Pfizer on its decision Wednesday to pay $2.3 billion in fines and penalties to settle charges it illegally marketed several drugs for off-label uses and paid kickbacks to doctors, according to lawyers on the deal. The settlement is believed to be the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history, according to the Justice Department. In all, six whistleblowers will split $102 million in proceeds from the settlement; the legal fees paid are confidential.

The watchdog of the Securities and Exchange Commission has found the agency consistently mishandled its five investigations of Bernard Madoff’s business, despite ample complaints over 16 years about the multibillion-dollar fraud. But SEC inspector general David Kotz’s report found no evidence of any improper ties between agency officials and Madoff. Despite speculation that senior SEC officials may have tried to influence the probes, a summary of Kotz’s 450-page report released Wednesday found no evidence of that.