Posts on ‘November 9th, 2009’

As Sullivan & Cromwell celebrates the promotion of four women among five new partners, experts warn that more work needs to be done to shrink gender disparity in partnership ranks. The proportion of women partners has increased only four points to 19.2 percent in the last decade, according to NALP. And a recently released National Association of Women Lawyers survey found that the “vast majority” of part-time lawyers terminated by law firms in the last year were women, which the NAWL president calls a “disturbing trend.”

An Association of Corporate Counsel law firm rating system unveiled last month has triggered a lot of interest from the association’s in-house lawyer members, who have submitted 1,500 reviews. But law firms have been crying foul on several fronts, foremost because the comments are anonymous and could cloak lawyers with axes to grind, such as disgruntled former law firm associates. That’s according to the Zeughauser Group, the legal consultancy, which declared that the ratings were “cause for concern.”

A Delaware federal judge’s transfer of part of a patent infringement case involving software giant Microsoft to the Eastern District of Texas is the latest example of the federal courts’ shifting approach to patent litigation venue battles. The decision is also notable in that the Eastern District of Texas, known as a plaintiff-friendly venue, has itself recently started to transfer cases to other venues in compliance with recent federal appellate decisions.

Federal prosecutors got a second punch in the gut over the Greg Reyes backdating case: The 9th Circuit has explicitly refused to back away from a finding that the government committed deliberate misconduct during trial. After a panel threw out the verdicts against the former Brocade CEO, finding that prosecutors misled the jury, the government asked that it eliminate any judgment that the prosecutors acted deliberately — a finding that triggers an investigation by the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

If you’re a fan of the U.S. Supreme Court bobbleheads that can be found on the desks of powerhouse lawyers and law professors nationwide, you’ll like the new brainchild of the bobbleheads’ creator: Supreme Court baseball cards. The first one, commemorating Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. as the Court’s “pitcher,” shows Roberts in the image of Mordecai “Three Fingers” Brown, the famed Chicago Cubs pitcher who, like the chief justice, grew up in Indiana.

Florida Judge Jeffrey Streitfeld has given TD Bank until noon today to turn over its records on embattled law firm Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler and its ousted chairman, Scott Rothstein, who investors say fleeced them out of more than $400 million. Friday the firm’s court-appointed receiver told Streitfeld the bank has “stonewalled” his records request and that he is “handicapped to the point where we can’t really do much in way of financial investigations” because federal agents seized the firm’s financial records last week.

Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton on Friday announced associate bonuses with rates that were, at most, half what the firm paid its most junior lawyers last year. Associates going into their second year in January will earn $7,500, down from $17,500. The most senior associates will earn $30,000, the same as in 2008. Cleary is only the second major firm so far to announce bonuses this year, with its bonuses matching levels announced last week by Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

In a case of first impression, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled last week that state troopers committed “outrageous government conduct” when investigating alleged prostitution at a massage parlor in the Lehigh Valley by giving money to an undercover informant to have sex four times with two different women at the parlor. On Thursday, the unanimous panel of judges upheld a 2008 order dismissing charges of prostitution and promoting prostitution against defendant Sun Cha Chon.

A federal expansion of tax breaks for businesses operating at a loss set off a flurry of calls between lawyers and real estate clients last week. The Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009, signed by President Obama on Friday, expands a stimulus provision to let businesses apply 2008 and 2009 losses against taxes paid in the prior five years, rather than the previous two. The original provision was to expire at the end of the year and applied only to small businesses and 2008 losses.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Lehman Brothers’ lead bankruptcy counsel, is in the process of turning over documents related to the controversial sale of some of Lehman’s prime assets to Barclays in the days after Lehman’s Sept. 15, 2008, bankruptcy filing. Many of those documents were formerly protected by attorney-client privilege, though it is unclear whether any of them will ever make it to the public eye, according to a source familiar with the matter.