Lawyer - News

Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird and John Grisham’s The Firm and The Client, all come to mind when thinking about classic books written about the law. On Lawyer2Lawyer, co-host and Law.com blogger, Bob Ambrogi, will induct two more books into that classic category, by exploring a classic in the legal community and an upcoming book that is bound to be an instant classic. Bob talks books with Mark Herrmann, partner resident in the Chicago office of the international law firm, Jones Day and the author of The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law and turns to his co-host, J. Craig Williams, author of How to Get Sued©, to discuss his new release. They will discuss how they got involved in writing, how their experience as attorneys served as a source for their books, the inspiration that led them to write and feedback they have received from their peers in the legal community. No comments

An accusation of screwing up a patent application is one thing. But allegedly not telling the client about the gaffe? An electronic billboard maker suing a Morgan Lewis patent lawyer for malpractice says that's on a whole different level. Damages could be in the millions, according to a lawyer representing the plaintiff. No comments

Doug Atnipp -- who helped open Greenberg Traurig's Houston office -- is one of a growing number of home-grown lawyers to jump firms in recent years, leaving an established Houston firm for a national firm opening an outpost in Space City. In the booming Houston legal market, it's a buyer's market for lawyers -- particularly those with an energy practice. Competition is so fierce that some firms offer lucrative and rare three-year compensation guarantees and get into bidding wars over energy partners. No comments

Sensitive metatdata in a sex discrimination case against General Electric was recovered from redacted digital documents downloaded from the federal court filing system, PACER. This breach underscores the need for software and know-how to ensure sealed data stays concealed. No comments

The stock option backdating era is drawing to a close. So what's the SEC going after now? The answer, according to securities defense lawyers and Marc Fagel, co-acting regional director of the SEC's San Francisco office, is that local SEC lawyers are now handling a mix of investigations: insider trading, some of the fallout from the subprime mortgage debacle, overseas bribery and age-old public company financial frauds. "I don't think there's any one dominating type of case," Fagel said. No comments

After some setbacks to its Silicon Valley presence, New York's Dewey & LeBoeuf has snatched a team of in-house lawyers from global biotech company Affymetrix, including GC Barbara Caulfield. At Affymetrix, Caulfield had implemented an unconventional strategy to cut outside counsel costs by creating an in-house unit to handle some litigation. That unit had four members, including the three attorneys joining Dewey with Caulfield. No comments

As Melvyn I. Weiss awaits sentencing for his role in the payment of kickbacks to named plaintiffs in shareholder suits, a conservative think tank is set to release a study purporting to show that the scheme injured shareholders. The American Enterprise Institute Legal Center is releasing today an article by a law professor that takes on the argument that the kickbacks constituted a victimless crime because the payments came out of legal fees and named plaintiffs had incentive to maximize class recoveries. No comments

Former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard A. Grasso's struggle to retain his $185 million pay package will test the dimensions of the state attorney general's power of parens patriae when the case is heard in the new session of New York state's high court. The solicitor general will argue that the AG's parens patriae powers enable the office to go after Grasso's compensation package as "unjust enrichment." The public outcry that ensued over Grasso's package led to his forced resignation in 2003. No comments

At about the same time the Supreme Court was issuing decisions Tuesday morning, an important trial about the Supreme Court was getting under way at the D.C. Superior Court. Thirty-five anti-war demonstrators who were arrested inside and outside the Supreme Court on Jan. 11 went on trial for violating a statute governing assemblages on the Court grounds. Most of the defendants in court Tuesday were dressed in orange jumpsuits meant to symbolize Guantanamo detainees. No comments

Melvyn Weiss -- a plaintiffs lawyer who made millions of dollars by suing corporate America and who recently pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy for paying kickbacks to clients in many of those cases -- deserves recognition as "one of the greatest humanitarians of our time," according to a sentencing memo his lawyer filed Friday, pleading for leniency. Attached to the memo are letters from 240 legal luminaries, family members and even a parking attendant attesting to Weiss' good works. No comments