Posts on ‘February 17th, 2010’

Today, there’s no need to leave the legal profession if you no longer wish to practice law. Attorneys are well-suited to several administrative roles within a law firm setting, as discussed by Saul Ewing’s Leslie Kart Gross and Jennifer Smuts of Connolly Bove Lodge & Hutz.

Robert Mitchell and Margaret Sheahan left the partnership at Pullman & Comley to start a firm in mid-January, catering mainly to Connecticut-based small businesses and individuals. “We deal with a market segment different from Pullman & Comley that couldn’t be supported with the rates we were charging,” says Sheahan. Meanwhile, Russell Savrann and Irvin Sandman’s new Connecticut firm has formed associations with small firms in Boston and Seattle so that it can get additional help as needed on big deals.

Kaye Scholer has announced a leadership shake-up that would have a Chicago-based restructuring lawyer, Michael Solow, taking over for longtime managing partner Barry Willner upon his retirement. Solow will initially become co-managing partner with Willner — and, along with Stephen Gliatta of the firm’s New York real estate department, will also co-chair the firm’s executive committee with Willner. The addition of the two partners to the 470-lawyer firm’s management is part of a generational handover, said Willner.

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., has given new life to a suit brought by two PricewaterhouseCoopers employees who allege they were denied promotion to partnership due to their age. The D.C. Circuit on Tuesday remanded the case to the trial court after reversing the dismissal of state claims brought under the New York Human Rights Law.

In a dispute between a New York man who sent his vintage Camaro to Pennsylvania for the installation of custom parts and the repairmen who allegedly took the car apart and did not put it back together, a court has ruled that the repair shop’s “thoroughly passive” Web site is not, by itself, grounds for personal jurisdiction in New York over the shop owner. However, the panel found that the site, along with other circumstances, supported the jurisdiction assertion, and affirmed the denial of defendants’ motion to dismiss.

A law firm is not entitled to collect interest on an arbitration award of fees that accrued because the firm refused to release the funds to a client who balked at signing a waiver of malpractice, a unanimous appeals panel in Manhattan ruled last week in an unsigned opinion. Separately, the panel ruled that arbitrators hearing fee disputes under a court-authorized system have authority to grant interest even though court rules do not address the issue.

Despite the economic downturn, revenue and profits remain on an upward trajectory at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, according to the firm, which has released its financials for 2009. Gross revenue rose nearly 4 percent to $995 million, marking the best income performance in the firm’s history. Profits per equity partner also increased, albeit by a more modest 1.6 percent, to 1.905 million. “In the context of what was happening,” says firm Chairman Kenneth Doran, “it was an extraordinarily strong year for us.”