Posts under ‘Legal Jobs’

In these troubled economic times, fixed fees for particular legal matters have appeal for law firms and their corporate clients. Ben W. Heineman Jr., former GC for General Electric, and William F. Lee, co-managing partner for WilmerHale, strongly believe that this is an idea whose time has come. Fixed fees provide reduced billing hassles, more predictable cost to the client and more predictable payments to the firm. Heineman and Lee address how to set price with quality and achieve cost and value alignment.

Hard times bring opportunities, and the network of small and midsize law firms called Meritas hopes that more general counsel come knocking as their companies look for ways to cut costs. Cost savings isn’t the only reason to use one of Meritas’ 170 firms, which are based in more than 60 countries (and 49 states). The firms and their clients also tout personal service, geographic reach and quality control.

Jenner and Block’s Michael K. Lowman and Andrew F. Merrick examine SEC v. Founding Partners Capital Mgmt., a recent federal court ruling that significantly curtails the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission to pursue ill-gotten gains from relief defendants in an SEC enforcement action. The ruling is significant for practicing securities lawyers because it confirms that there are important boundaries that circumscribe the SEC’s authority to pursue claims against relief defendants.

New York state is launching an investigation into whether some traders used illegal tactics to drive down the stock price of several Wall Street firms, including Lehman Brothers Holdings, Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley. AG Andrew Cuomo said his office has received a “significant number” of complaints about short sellers, or investors who hope to profit by placing bets that a financial company’s stock will fall. The investigation comes amid growing international scrutiny over short-selling.

In what could be a precedent-setting move, the district court judge in the prosecution of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has ordered the Justice Department to publish defense trial exhibits on a government Web site. The firm representing Stevens, Williams & Connolly, had argued that it doesn’t have the same resources as the government for daily online publishing. In another defense victory, the judge ruled that the defense is entitled to medical records about a head injury suffered by the government’s chief witness.

Plaintiffs seeking to derail Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid by claiming he is not a natural born U.S. citizen are being stymied by four Washington, D.C.-based Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher associates. Aided by former U.S. Solicitor General and current Gibson Dunn partner Theodore Olson, the team of legal volunteers has spent the past several months representing McCain and the Republican National Committee in courtrooms throughout the country. The latest suit was decided in McCain’s favor this week.

About 42 percent of practicing attorneys said the recent collapse of Lehman Brothers and the sale of Merrill Lynch would hurt their careers, up from 27 percent who expressed similar detrimental effect when the government bailed out the former Bear Stearns earlier this year, according to a survey by legal recruitment firm Lateral Link. Lawyers and law students in New York had more concerns than those in other parts of the country.

With no fanfare, the U.S. Department of Labor has dropped its controversial audit of 2,500 green card cases handled by the nation’s largest immigration law firm, Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy. In June, the department issued a press release to announce its audit of the firm’s permanent labor certification applications based on information that the firm might be violating regulations. The firm sued the DOL in August, claiming that the audit had “inflicted massive injury” on the firm’s reputation.

The scope of a property owner’s obligation to make a public accommodation accessible to the disabled when alterations are made to the property was fleshed out Thursday by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Reversing a lower court, the circuit said a resort in Montauk, N.Y., underwent significant enough renovations so that it might be required under the Americans With Disabilities Act to make changes to allow access to customers who use wheelchairs.