Posts on ‘October 23rd, 2009’

WilmerHale laid off 57 staff members at four of its offices on Thursday, with the biggest cuts coming in Washington, D.C., and Boston. To date, WilmerHale has avoided large-scale attorney layoffs, although in June the firm said that an undisclosed number of associates and counsel had been warned that they would need to start looking for new jobs, and were given until the end of fall to move on. The firm insisted that was not a layoff.

Managers sending “friend” requests to staff via Facebook or Twitter constitute a growing and troublesome trend in the workplace, say employment lawyers. Online relations between boss and employee can trigger a host of legal claims, including harassment, discrimination or wrongful termination, as well as touch off cries of favoritism if the boss “friends” only a select few subordinates.

Bong water can count as a controlled substance, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a decision that raises the threat of longer sentences for drug smokers who fail to dump the water out of their pipes. In a 4-3 decision, the state’s highest court said a person can be prosecuted for a first-degree drug crime for 25 grams or more of bong water that tests positive for a controlled substance. The decision reverses two lower court rulings.

Every law firm that is successful today has someone who managed change effectively. Paul Lippe, founder and CEO of Legal OnRamp, talks with John Alber of Bryan Cave and Mary Abraham of Debevoise & Plimpton about how technology is likely to impact the practice of law in the next few years.

A plaintiff in a hostile work environment case who claims that her boss’ sexual innuendo was offensive and humiliating cannot block the jury from hearing about the dirty jokes found on her own workplace computer, a federal judge has ruled. In such cases, the judge found, the plaintiff’s own sense of humor — shown in her e-mails with co-workers and friends — may be relevant to the jury’s inquiries about whether she would be offended by her boss’ attempt at salty humor.

In-house lawyers at the Association of Corporate Counsel’s annual meeting this week conferred on ways to combat the rising number of lawsuits and government investigations faced by their ranks. Suits in which in-house lawyers have been named as parties include actions ranging from bankruptcy to corporate waste. And even when they’re not the targets of a lawsuit, in-house lawyers are increasingly being deposed as witnesses, according to seminar panelists.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed an amended complaint in the Bank of America case, and two things caught our attention. First, the new complaint doesn’t include any additional defendants. Second, the SEC now asserts for the first time that Bank of America should have disclosed to shareholders the secret disclosure schedule that contained details about the $5.8 billion allotted for Merrill Lynch bonuses, and that it failed to release a list that properly identified the contents of any omitted schedules.