AP - The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to review the case of a man who successfully challenged a drug charge arising from his illegal arrest for driving on a suspended license.
AP - The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether voter identification laws unfairly deter poor and minority Americans from voting, stepping into a contentious partisan issue in advance of the 2008 elections.
There are really just two kinds of law firms these days: Those that pay their associates at “market,” and those that don’t get anywhere near it. Duval & Stachenfeld is doing both. The 50-lawyer firm starts first-year associates at $60,000 — or $100,000 below the starting salary at many Am Law 100 firms. Mid-year and senior associates, however, are promised the same total pay — or more — that they’d earn at Latham & Watkins or Skadden Arps. Recruiters call it a novel approach.
The estate of a woman who died the day after a New York judge awarded her $150,000 for future pain and suffering is still entitled to the award, her curtailed future notwithstanding, an appellate panel has ruled. “Moreover, under the circumstances of this personal injury action involving an elderly woman, where the defendant caused significant delays, this court’s interest in justice lies in affirming the judgment,” Justice William E. McCarthy wrote for the unanimous Appellate Division, 2nd Department.
’s annual survey of U.S. firms in London reveals that 47 percent of respondents would consider a merger with a U.K. firm, up from 39 percent last year and just 29 percent in 2005. The trend may signal that firms realize how hard it is to grow organically in the London legal market, which by some measures is now the most costly in which to operate worldwide. Putting additional pressure on U.S. firms: the weak dollar and the related disadvantage in attracting heavy-hitting London partners.
Sullivan & Cromwell has unveiled a plan to pay senior associates and counsels supplemental bonuses tied to the firm’s financial performance. According to an internal memo, the new bonuses are for fifth-year associates and up, as well as counsels, and which will be paid in addition to those lawyers’ base salaries and normal year-end bonuses. A Sullivan & Cromwell partner said the supplemental bonuses would probably range from about $15,000 for fifth-years to about $30,000 for eighth-years.
With the threat of formal sanctions bearing down on them, lawyers at Heller Ehrman and Day Casebeer Madrid & Batchelder — Qualcomm’s former litigation counsel — are asking for a rare exception to privilege so they can explain to a judge how their side failed to produce thousands of relevant documents during discovery in an ill-fated patent case against Broadcom. In advance of an October hearing to show cause why they should not be sanctioned, many of the outside counsel have hired their own lawyers.
It took seven years, but prosecutors are finally on the verge of putting famed plaintiffs lawyer William Lerach in federal prison. Several people briefed on the case said Monday that Lerach and the prosecutors had agreed on a binding deal in which Lerach’s lawyers would ask for a sentence of 12 months and prosecutors would seek 24 months. The agreement, said people familiar with the case, would have Lerach pay a fine of $8 million, and would get his former firm out from under the investigation.
AP - Republican Mitt Romney said Monday he would not necessarily have to agree politically with any appointees he would seek to place on the Supreme Court, but he would expect them to be strict legal constructionists in the model of Chief Justice John Roberts.
President Bush has settled on Michael B. Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York, to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general and will announce his selection Monday, a source familiar with the president’s decision said Sunday evening. Some legal conservatives and Republican activists have expressed reservations about Mukasey’s legal record and past endorsements from liberals, and are already drafting a strategy to oppose his confirmation.