Posts on ‘November 5th, 2009’

The Korean government is planning a major deregulation of the nation’s legal and other professional services markets, the Korea Herald reports. A number of measures aimed at reducing regulation have been recommended to the government by the Korean Development Institute, a think tank. Perhaps most controversially, the KDI has proposed that non-lawyers and conglomerates be permitted to own stakes in law firms. Local bar groups are not happy about the move toward less regulation of the trade.

In the wake of the UBS tax evasion debacle, a bill combining proposals from the U.S. House, the Senate and the Obama administration is getting attention in legal and financial circles for the effects — some unintended — the legislation could have as it attempts to prevent the use of overseas accounts to hide taxable assets. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2009 would provide the Treasury Department with significant new tools to find and prosecute Americans who hide assets overseas from the IRS.

One of the side effects of lean economic times at Big Law is an increase in internal competition for work and hours, writes The Snark. In the boom times, there was more than enough work for all of Big Law’s worker bees. But when the work gets slow, and everyone needs to fill their own billable-hour quotas, everyone starts scampering. The Snark addresses a couple of questions that Cogs wish they could ask, such as how to face a partner’s wrath for answering a client’s question while the partner was out.

A bitter battle involving photographs of a topless woman, and charges of sexual discrimination and extortion, took a new turn Wednesday when a New York judge sanctioned a lawyer for bringing what he called a harassing lawsuit against his adversary. After attorney Douglas H. Wigdor allegedly refused to return racy images of Sandra Piedrabuena Abrams unless his clients were paid $2.5 million to settle claims of harassment, Abrams’ lawyer sued Wigdor and his firm, calling the demand “nothing short of blackmail.”

With the number of foreign bribery cases soaring, corporations in mergers or acquisitions are spending more time and legal resources making sure they don’t acquire a nasty prosecution along with the new business. That’s one of the findings in Shearman and Sterling’s semiannual report on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The report also predicts that the government will emphasize going after individual employees, a shift from past practice.

Judge Dennis Montali has canceled the first hearing on a liquidation plan in the Heller bankruptcy, pending the outcome of mediation talks between former shareholders and creditors. The stakes in the mediation are high. Creditors want $150 million from Heller’s former shareholders, claiming the firm fraudulently conveyed that amount to them, while at least one group of shareholders has hired John Keker of Keker & Van Nest if the case goes to trial, according to confidential mediation briefs obtained by The Recorder.

Fifty-five percent of participants in a recent seminar on associate compensation said they believe that associate salary cuts are temporary. But Altman Weil consultants presenting the webinar said lower salaries are here to stay and are part of a “fundamental and profound reset” after two decades of “steady, sometimes spectacular growth” for the profession. Associate pay did not drop enough in the recent round of big law firm cuts and should have been restored to 1998 levels, said Altman Weil’s James Cotterman.

A former partner at New York’s Reitler Brown & Rosenblatt agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice for hiding what he knew about a “pump and dump” scheme involving an unnamed investment firm in Newport Beach, Calif. According to documents filed at D.C. federal court, Brown also helped an executive from the firm, as well as the CEO and a member of the board of directors of a Chinese company, fraudulently transfer more than $25 million through a series of shell companies into accounts they controlled.