Denver-based Holland & Hart has merged with Hale Lane Peek Dennison and Howard to form a 415-attorney law firm, with 63 attorneys in Nevada. Hale Lane has a general business practice, while Holland & Hart focuses on litigation, corporate law and natural resources.
Less than two weeks after the state’s high court upheld marriage rights for same-sex couples, California Supreme Court Justice Joyce Kennard all but announced another win for the gay community Wednesday when she asked lawyer Jennifer Pizer, who represented a San Diego County lesbian who had been denied intrauterine insemination, whether she would be satisfied with a narrowly tailored ruling in her client’s favor, or whether she was hoping for a ruling that touched on a variety of issues.
A Florida appeals court breathed new life into thousands of pending asbestos-related lawsuits Wednesday by invalidating retroactivity in a state law designed to limit the number of people eligible to sue. Plaintiffs attorneys hailed the ruling as a victory for thousands of people still awaiting their day in court, while an industry lawyer expressed disappointment and said an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court is likely.
An attorney’s failure to provide a clear definition of extended or complex litigation purportedly justifying fees above a cap for court-appointed attorneys has led a New York federal judge to lop more than $2,000 off his proposed fee. In addition to questioning the complexity of the case, Judge Shirley Wohl Kram said the attorney gave insufficient detail on part of one billable hour, deserved less than requested for sentencing briefs and made some requests that were illegible.
Don’t grow so enamored of your favored e-discovery solution that you lose sight of its utter impracticality, says EDD Special Master Craig Ball. Stay on the right track with low-cost, out-of-the-box approaches that preserve metadata but don’t requre technical expertise.
Sabine Chalmers, the chief legal officer for InBev, the world’s largest brewing company in terms of volume, has published a list on how to get and keep her business. And since billing is the area with “the greatest potential for conflict,” she gave six rules for firms to follow.
Thanks to the resuscitation of a venerable financial aid program at New York University School of Law, 16 graduates filed out of the commencement ceremony with mortarboard tassels shifted, sheepskins in hand, jobs awaiting and the comfort of zero tuition, which retails for about $120,000. For the first time in more than two decades, the Root-Tilden-Kern Scholarship Program has been able to give a full three-year ride for select NYU Law students committed to public service careers.
This month Congress came to the rescue of businesses being sued under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 for printing credit card expiration dates on receipts. An attorney who’s filed a dozen FACTA suits calls Congress’ unanimously passed retroactive bill “an act of amnesty” that is “extremely rare and inherently unfair.”
A Manhattan judge has rejected a legal recruiter’s attempt to collect a merger fee from Blank Rome, which rejected the recruiter’s proposed combination with a small New York firm but later completed the deal with the help of a different search firm. The e-mail exchange between Mark Bruce International and Blank Rome did not constitute an enforceable contract because the parties had not agreed on the terms of a fee, Supreme Court Justice Herman Cahn ruled.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Retchin on Tuesday threw out the $30 million legal malpractice suit brought by Blackwater Security Consulting against Wiley Rein and a former partner, saying that Blackwater’s complaint “couches several legal conclusions as factual allegations.”