Posts on ‘October 6th, 2009’

On Monday, the Princeton Review released its annual law school rankings, based on surveys of 37,000 students. Law school rankings of any kind are almost always a lightning rod for criticism and debate as to their underlying merits. There are some surprises in the Princeton Review’s findings, namely Baylor taking top honors for having the “most competitive” law students and New York City’s CUNY being a favorite of liberals and older students.

As intellectual property attorneys await word on whether the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will drop controversial rules facing a court challenge, the agency’s direction is quickly shifting under a new leadership regime. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has tapped Foley & Lardner partner Sharon Barner as deputy director. The appointment of Barner, chairwoman of Foley’s IP department, follows PTO director David Kappos’ announcement of a proposed overhaul to patent examiners’ deadlines and work evaluations.

The Supreme Court’s 91-page orders list from Monday disposed of more than 2,000 cases that accumulated over the summer. The list noted several justices recusing in some of the cases. New Justice Sonia Sotomayor recused most often, bowing out of 76 cases on the list. That’s to be expected, because she sat on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before becoming a justice this summer.

A new Web site called LegalTube serves as a video directory and lawyer-search resource. The site searches by practice area and state and yields video snippets of attorneys talking about their practice and legal experience, and answering general questions about specific areas of the law.

Who would have thought we’d be handing out kudos to Milberg LLP three years after firm predecessor Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman was indicted for kicking back legal fees to class action plaintiffs? Who would have thought the firm would survive — much less that it would continue scoring significant settlements? Funny thing about plaintiffs attorneys: They’re a tenacious bunch. The other firms included in the eighth annual National Law Journal Plaintiffs’ Hot List also had plenty to contend with.

What did Bank of America’s GC and outside lawyers advise CEO Kenneth Lewis in the weeks leading up to its acquisition of Merrill Lynch? Whether or not Lewis, who will step down Dec. 31, took his lawyers’ advice is at the heart of hearings before Congress and investigations by the SEC, DOJ and the attorneys general of New York and North Carolina. For one thing, the investigators want to know why Lewis was acting on certain information behind the scenes, while not disclosing that information to shareholders.

A Georgia company’s efforts to resist disclosure of communications with its lawyer provoked a rare discussion at the U.S. Supreme Court over the importance of attorney-client privilege. The case asks whether a party can file an interlocutory appeal of a judge’s finding that it has waived the privilege in an order releasing material for discovery. Several justices seemed skeptical that the attorney-client privilege should be protected any more strongly than other privileges or other grounds for appealing judicial orders