Posts on ‘February 22nd, 2010’

How bad was it in 2009? The National Law Journal’s annual Go-To Law School List paints a pretty sorry picture of first-year associate employment at the nation’s 250 largest law firms last year. The No. 1 law school sent just 55.9 percent of its 2009 graduates to NLJ 250 law firms. In 2008, the highest percentage of graduates heading to those firms was 70.5 percent. Importantly, the 2009 percentages include deferred associates, so an even smaller group actually went to work last year.

Camulos Capital wants Blank Rome disqualified from representing former
fund partner William Seibold, who claims the hedge fund owes him $67
million and wrongfully forced him out. Camulos claims Blank Rome was
still representing it in corporate matters when it began representing
Seibold as he prepared the suit he ultimately filed against Camulos. In
the underlying matter, Camulos claims Seibold regularly napped at his
desk, fell asleep at meetings and stole confidential client information
to form his own fund.

E-discovery, once the sole concern of Big Law in large-scale litigation, is now increasingly becoming an issue in smaller cases for smaller law firms. Small and solo lawyers are learning some hard lessons about the benefits and burdens of obtaining electronic evidence in litigation.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo gave federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff something more to think about Friday as the judge aimed to release today his opinion about the latest proposed settlement between the SEC and Bank of America stemming from the bank’s $50 billion acquisition of Merrill Lynch. And with a scheduled trial only one week away, a new controversy is brewing over whether Cuomo’s depositions of five individuals, including the bank’s former general counsel Timothy Mayopoulos, should be made public.

Eight years after Justice Department lawyer John Yoo and Assistant AG Jay Bybee generated the now-infamous “torture memos,” the DOJ has officially concluded their actions did not constitute professional misconduct. The DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility had earlier produced two draft reports, which recommended referring Yoo and Bybee to disciplinary authorities. But in crafting the final report, Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis was clearly swayed by arguments submitted by Bybee’s and Yoo’s attorneys.

The last time Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas asked a question during oral argument was four years ago today. His reticence is often shrugged off as a harmless personal preference that is either unimportant or oddly admirable, but it may be time to take his silence more seriously. A recent law review article asserts that Thomas’ silence actually damages the Court and its decision-making process — not to mention Thomas’ own reputation, especially when it appears that wakefulness, as well as words, escape him.