Posts on ‘November 11th, 2009’

Virginia-based law firm LeClairRyan arrived in California last year through the merger of Wright, Robinson, Osthimer & Tatum. The firm says it will dedicate next year to building up its nine-lawyer San Francisco outpost and 11-lawyer Los Angeles office. The target is to have 100 lawyers statewide by 2013. At the moment, the firm is looking to add labor and employment, intellectual property, real estate, corporate and other practices to its base of defense-side tort litigators in California.

When solo attorney Deron Freeman took on John William Lomax’s case, he didn’t know he’d be thrust into the biggest case of his life. Lomax is facing murder charges in connection with the Oct. 18 killing of University of Connecticut football player Jasper Howard at an on-campus dance. “It’s been crazy. I’ve gotten hundreds of calls from different media outlets around the country,” Freeman says. And his older brother, Justin Freeman, whose office is next door, is representing another partygoer facing separate charges.

A New York federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Dooney & Bourke’s co-founder to a year and a day in prison for his role in a scheme to bribe government officials in Azerbaijan, but granted his request for bail pending appeal. The government had asked that Frederic Bourke Jr. get the maximum of 10 years, but Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled she was able to depart from sentencing guidelines. Said the judge: “It’s not entirely clear to me whether Mr. Bourke was a victim, a crook, or a little bit of both.”

The Federal Trade Commission has filed contempt charges against solo practitioner Jeffrey Benice for refusing to fork over $238,300 in fees he was paid by the operators of an illegal Ponzi scheme. In court papers, Benice argued that he could not afford to comply with the order, but offered to pay $2,500 a month. The FTC says this is not enough, noting that Benice in a deposition said he makes an average of $400,000 a year. The FTC also noted that he spends more than $3,100 a month in car payments alone.

The government is making the former GC and CEO of investment bank Merriman Curhan Ford pay for the sins of a rogue banker. Former GC Christopher Aguilar and CEO Jon Merriman, as well as the firm, settled SEC charges that they failed to properly supervise David Cacchione, who pleaded guilty to fraud in March for e-mailing customer accounts to a fraud artist. The SEC did not find that Aguilar and Merriman participated in the fraud, but the SEC concluded the two senior executives should have done more to prevent it.

A hearing at which former Northwestern University journalism students planned to fight a subpoena turned into a judicial lambasting of their Sidley Austin lawyers, as Judge Diane Gordon Cannon castigated partner Richard O’Brien for a brief she said was “dripping with sarcasm.” After the hearing, O’Brien said the brief was similar to thousands he has filed over his 30-year career. The subpoena seeks records from students who uncovered evidence that could overturn the trial verdict of an inmate convicted of murder in 1978.

Covington & Burling announced Tuesday that it would freeze associate salaries at offices outside New York City “based on an assessment of the market.” The firm announced the freeze on the same day Reed Smith announced a 20 percent cut in first-year associate salaries and a similar cut in first-year billing rates.