Lawyer - News

Amid a rash of recent departures, San Francisco-based Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner has notified staff and attorneys that the firm wants to pursue another merger, while saying that no particular deal is in the works. At the same time, the firm is weathering another major departure. A team of four partners led by Mark Weitzel, the head of Thelen's project development and finance practice, has given Thelen notice that they will be leaving the firm, Thelen spokesman Kevin Livingston confirmed. No comments

The D.C. Circuit has ruled that sleeping is a "major life activity" under the federal Rehabilitation Act. Reversing its own precedent, the court also held that a plaintiff doesn't have to show that his sleep disability affected his waking activities in order to move forward with a discrimination claim. The plaintiff in the case had alleged that the FBI discriminated and retaliated against him because of a post-traumatic stress disorder that substantially limited him in the major life activity of sleeping. No comments

Recessions have forced many law firms to make dramatic and, oftentimes, drastic changes. Managing partners are beginning to believe that the difficult business decisions that have to be made by some firms when planning for a recession will erode the sense of loyalty and close working relationships that once existed between partners and between partners and associates. Consultant Joel Rose describes several strategies that a managing partner should consider when developing a plan to survive a recession. No comments

Recognize hard work. Pay attention to detail. Treat everyone with respect. Those are some of the tenets Alex Gonzales follows every day as managing partner of Winstead's Austin, Texas, office. They've contributed to his success as a law firm leader. They've guided his relationships. And they're among the many lessons he learned from his first job -- at McDonald's. Gonzales is one of many lawyers who realizes that an early gig with a fast-food restaurant delivered life lessons with lasting merits. No comments

A sailing ship in calm water needs kedging -- one team drops a small anchor ahead, while the other pulls the ship forward. Alvin Podboy of Baker Hostetler encourages a similar cooperation between law firm libraries and vendors to keep legal information on a clearly plotted course. No comments

A New York law firm can be held liable for the failure of a Florida firm it retained to file a client's claim to more than $1.2 million from a Florida estate, an appeals court decided Thursday. Client Alice Whalen was not aware that her Albany firm, DeGraff, Foy, Conway, Holt-Harris & Mealey, was going to arrange for the Florida firm to file the claim when the estate of Julius Gerzof opened in Florida in 1996, and she relied "completely" on DeGraff Foy to stake her claim to the money, the panel ruled. No comments

Mattel won a major victory Thursday in its copyright infringement lawsuit against the maker of the rival Bratz dolls. A jury ruled that a designer conceived the doll characters while working for Mattel. Sales of the Barbie doll -- once a near rite-of-passage of American girlhood -- have slid since the hugely popular line of sassy urban Bratz dolls came on the scene. The ruling could potentially mean millions of dollars for Mattel when the jury considers possible damages during a separate proceeding. No comments

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft on Thursday disavowed the now-defunct legal reasoning used to justify harshly questioning terrorism suspects, but dug in his heels to defend White House officials who pressured him while he was hospitalized four years ago to approve terror surveillance programs. At the heart of the House Judiciary Committee hearing was whether interrogators acted legally in using harsh tactics on captured terror suspects, including waterboarding, in the years immediately after 9/11. No comments

Federal Judge James Robertson denied a request Thursday by Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, to halt his war crimes trial. Hamdan's lawyers had asked Robertson to delay the proceedings so they could test the commissions' underlying legal principles in federal court. Robertson's decision is a key victory for the Bush administration in the wake of the Supreme Court's June decision in , which held Guantanamo Bay detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus. No comments

The mortgage crisis has spawned a class action by African-Americans in a San Francisco suburb, alleging that the city of Antioch, Calif., has tried to force out minorities who rent homes using federally subsidized housing vouchers. The lawsuit alleges that, as the foreclosure crisis prompted homeowners to rent, instead of trying to sell, the city began subjecting minority renters to warrantless searches of their homes and local police threatened landlords who continued to accept the housing vouchers. No comments