Posts on ‘February 9th, 2010’

Who’s getting hired? What practice areas are showing particular strength? Are law firms picking up partners who’ve been laid off? These were just some of the issues on the agenda during a roundtable discussion involving the chairs of three top firms — J. Warren Gorrell of Hogan & Hartson, R. Bruce McLean of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Thomas Milch of Arnold & Porter — and prominent legal recruiter Lynn Mestel, who noted that the lateral partner market “is the most robust it’s been in 22 years.”

Winston & Strawn has expanded its restructuring practice by hiring a three-lawyer team from Dewey & LeBoeuf: partners Lawrence A. Larose, who acted as lead counsel for MBIA Insurance in its restructuring effort last year, and Samuel S. Kohn, who was counsel at Dewey. Associate Sarah Trum also made the move. In addition, Winston has hired a former M&A partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher as senior counsel. The hires come as Winston & Strawn looks to grow its New York office to 300 attorneys from nearly 200.

Three litigation partners have signed on to join King & Spalding’s Washington, D.C., and New York offices. The team, which is joining the firm from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, includes Diana Weiss, James Capra Jr. and James Cusick. Weiss will be based in Washington, and Capra and Cusick will work from King & Spalding’s New York office. Weiss said the opportunity to work alongside former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who leads King & Spalding’s appellate practice, was a plus for the group.

A California appeals court came down on a Superior Court judge in a strongly worded opinion, criticizing the way the trial court handled the contempt case of an elderly, cash-strapped attorney who failed to pay $10,000 in discovery sanctions and was ordered to serve five days in jail on three occasions. The appeals court wrote that judges need to know the due process rights associated with different types of contempt, and that the court’s actions “did not measure up to that law, not by a long shot.”

At the heart of a mortgage fraud trial that opened Monday in San Francisco are millions of dollars in loans that never should have been made, the lawyer for a family estate told the jury in opening statements. U.S. Bank sued on behalf of a mortgage pool to try to recover $1 million from the estate following its sale of a property. The estate, in turn, has countersued the mortgage pool and others, claiming it shouldn’t have to pay because the loan was allegedly given under fraudulent circumstances of which it was unaware.

After the Association of Corporate Counsel launched a rating system that included members-only access to performance evaluations of law firms, some critics cried foul. Now, law firms that have been critiqued by in-house counsel can also see their ratings online. Since the ACC began its “value index” in October, in-house lawyers from dozens of countries have submitted more than 1,800 evaluations of some 600 law firms.

The three-decade legal career of a former federal prosecutor, Marine
Corps Reserve investigator and one-time candidate for Georgia attorney
general has turned into a nightmare. James R. Harper III stands accused
of racketeering and theft from his former client, international gun
maker Glock Inc. A grand jury has charged Harper and two others with
conspiring to take $3 million of the company’s money while they worked
on an investigation of other executives accused of stealing from Glock.

Industrial gas producer Airgas filed suit against Cravath, Swaine & Moore on Friday over the firm’s role as legal adviser to rival Air Products on that company’s $5.1 billion bid for Airgas. Air Products announced on Friday its unsolicited offer for Airgas, which for months has resisted its larger rival, including rejecting an offer whereby Air Products would assume $1.9 billion in Airgas debt. Airgas has retained takeover defense experts from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to deflate the Air Products bid.

A federal judge in Chicago late last week gave final approval to the allocation of $6.2 million among 235 former Sears, Roebuck & Co. employees in the largest settlement ever reached by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in an Americans with Disabilities Act class action. The former workers, who said the company fired them after they went on disability leave, will receive between $2,500 and $122,500 each, depending on their individual circumstances.

More Chicago partners are jumping to new law firms or seriously contemplating a move after a year in which demand for profitable partners outstripped the number willing to leave stable positions, the city’s recruiters and law firm managers said. Lawyers are more willing to take the risk as they see an uptick in client demand in the corporate, litigation and transactional areas. “2010 will not be a dead year,” says Chicago-based legal recruiter Amy McCormack.