- Steps in Wrongful Convictions
Recent legal news from around the nation has included some positive steps in a pair of unsettling pro bono cases. One is the case of Michael Morton, who was wrongfully convicted in 1987 of beating his wife to death and is set to be formally exonerated this week thanks to DNA evidence that Texas prosecutors did not want tested. As the Times article notes, what is potentially groundbreaking or at least unusual is that his lawyers, including private firm attorney John Raley and a team from the Innocense Project, are also filing a request for a special hearing to determine if the prosecutor on the original case, Ken Anderson – now a state district judge – violated any laws or ethics rules by withholding evidence. Anderson has denied wrongdoing. Separately, AmLaw Daily has an update on Cleary Gottlieb’s 15-year pro bono efforts, specifically that a Tennessee appeals court tossed aside the 1985 murder conviction of firm client Erskine Johnson and ordered a new trial. IP litigation counsel David Herrington has been working on Johnson’s case since he was a fifth-year associate. It is now up to the state attorney general to decided if he wants to retry Johnson.
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| 07:55 AM Dec 19, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- SEC-Citigroup Deal Rejected
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in New York has rejected the proposed $285M settlement between the SEC and Citigroup over allegations related to the sale of mortgage securities that contributed to the financial crisis. As noted in the WSJ report, Rakoff has been critical of the SEC’s handling of these cases, specifically that the agency allows “defendants to enter into consent judgments without admitting or denying the underlying allegations,” thus hindering his ability to assess the adequacy of the proposed relief. The highly respected judge did not mince his words: “It is harder to discern from the limited information before the Court what the SEC is getting from this settlement other than a quick headline.”
Rakoff is also mentioned in our article on Unraveled, a new documentary about Marc Dreier by attorney-filmmaker Marc Simon. Rakoff sentenced Dreier to 20 years in federal prison, despite calls from prosecutors to give him 145 years. The WSJ also ran a profile of Rakoff earlier this month, noting he has “a reputation as a populist.”
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| 10:55 AM Nov 28, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- Joe Paterno Turns to J. Sedwick Sollers
It was inevitable that ousted Penn State football coach Joe Paterno would retain counsel as scrutiny increased over who knew and did what in response to sexual abuse allegations. By all accounts, Paterno made a solid choice in J. Sedwick or “Wick” Sollers, who made the 2008 Lawdragon 500 list for his overall excellence in high-stakes criminal and civil white-collar cases. For that year, we noted that Sollers of King & Spalding had obtained a trial acquittal for Qwest’s former controller, and had also won a significant Supreme Court case in Leocal v. Ashcroft over what crimes can be used to remove a lawful permanent resident from the U.S. The “matters” section of his web bio also lists an impressive array of criminal and civil work over the years and reveals a talent at preventing investigations from turning into indictments.
The AmLaw Daily provides a helpful rundown of the many lawyers now involved in various aspects of the scandal. Among the most notable, the university trustees hired Penn State alum Kenneth Frazier to conduct an internal investigation into how the sexual abuse charges were handled. Frazier had been the GC of Merck and is now its president and CEO. He made our Lawdragon 500 guides in 2005 and 2006.
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| 06:27 AM Nov 14, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- Howrey Bankruptcy Heating Up
The AmLaw Daily has an article on Allen Diamond, the Chapter 11 trustee of Howrey, the once large and respected firm that cratered last year and formally dissolved in March. Diamond says he’s been working on the bankruptcy “night and day” since being appointed to his position in October, as he sets a strategy to recovery as much money as possible. According to the article, the firm has more than $33M in unpaid bills, many of them old, and thus Diamond of Diamond McCarthy in Houston expects to file lawsuits to get them paid down.
Another possibility is Jewel v. Boxer claims in California that allow defunct firms to get some of the profits of work taken to other firms. Diamond also wants to liquidate Howrey’s art assets, worth about $1.2M. He has worked on other high-profile bankruptcies, including that of Dreier LLP, which went into bankrupcty after Marc Dreier’s investment-fraud scheme was discovered. He expects Howrey cases to be at least a few months away, saying "There are only so many things they can ask me to do in one day."
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| 07:07 AM Oct 30, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- School Data Scrutiny Intensifies
After being criticized by two U.S. senators, the ABA appears to be taking action on the controversy over job placement data released by law schools. The National Law Journal reports this week that the ABA is drafting a new rule that would levy punishments against law schools for giving inaccurate data. The past several months have seen a flurry of articles about students angry over misrepresentations and the admissions by two law schools – at Villanova and University of Illinois – that admitted to falsifying numbers. The ABA had already been expanding the type of job data it will collect directly to improve oversight, as noted in the ABA Journal story on this topic.
At least 15 class actions have been filed against law schools around the country, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian, which also has a helpful article on the issue. The article states that Penn Law “is already ahead of the curve” by publishing detailed job data online, including distinguishing between full and part time jobs.
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| 06:05 AM Oct 18, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- Supreme Court Preview
The National Law Journal has published part of the transcript from its Supreme Court roundtable held Sept. 21 at George Washington University Law School. Veteran Supreme Court reporter Tony Mauro moderated the discussion that included Hogan Lovells partner (and former Acting Solicitor General) Neal Katyal; Alan Morrison, an associate dean at GW Law; former Solicitor General and current Bancroft PLLC partner Paul Clement; and Arnold & Porter appellate head Lisa Blatt.
The roundtable began with a look at last term, with the panelists agreeing that it was not as boring as some observers thought. Still, the upcoming term is already bringing a lot more excitement thanks to the pending challenges to what is commonly referred to as “Obamacare.” Clement is representing states challenging the healthcare law, and Katyal recently defended it for the Obama administration. Other interesting potential high court cases, which have not yet been granted, include challenges to an affirmative action policy in Texas and an immigration enforcement law in Arizona. Among the cases already set for this term include a challenge to the use of GPS technology to track criminal suspects over long periods and the FCC v. Fox case over the use of “f-bombs” on the air.
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| 05:10 PM Oct 2, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- Power Shift To Prosecutors
The New York Times has an important article on the effects of years and years of increasingly harsh sentencing laws and the resulting power shift in favor of prosecutors – at both state and federal levels – often at the expense not only of alleged criminals but also judges and overburdened prison systems. The main point of the piece is how prosecutors can use the threat of additional charges and aggravating factors – which can carry mandatory minimums – to bully defendants into plea deals. Obviously, there are good aspects to plea deals, especially given the budget problems of state court systems. But experts worry that the “trial penalty” is too coercive and “is used to punish defendants for exercising their right to trial.”
One judge, U.S. District Judge John Kane in Denver, believes that prosecutors are now more powerful than judges. In 1977, when Kane joined the federal bench, the plea to trial verdicts ratio was four to one, and now it’s 32 to one. Kane also noted that there is a lack of data, because it is impossible to know how many times a mandatory sentence is used to obtain a plea deal.
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| 04:57 AM Sep 27, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- Prop. 8 Proponents Likely to Win Standing
Most observers of the proceedings before the California Supreme Court this week seemed to agree that the court appears likely to rule that proponents of the state’s Prop. 8 gay-marriage ban have standing to defend the measure in court. The Los Angeles Times article reported that, in over an hour of arguments, the justices seemed reluctant to rule “that only elected state officials may defend measures passed by voters, as gay-rights lawyers claimed.” In this case, the state has chosen not to defend the measure, leaving the task to proposition-sponsor ProtectMarriage.
As we noted in January in coverage of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the 9th Circuit punted this important question of standing to the state Supreme Court as it was weighing the appeal of the U.S. District Court finding that Prop. 8 was unconstitutional. Now, it appears as though the case will continue to move slowly towards its eventual resolution at the U.S. Supreme Court, once the 9th Circuit makes its ruling. “We would all like this to move faster,” Ted Olson, a lead attorney for opponents of the ban, was quoted in saying in the New York Times article.
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| 07:57 AM Sep 7, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- Lawyers Give Big to Obama
The AmLaw Daily has provided a summary of the campaign money President Obama is raising for his reelection efforts, and lawyers not surprisingly are helping out one of their own in a big way. The legal and lobbying trade has given $4.3M to the Obama Victory Fund, totaling 11 percent of the $39M raised, more than any other industry, according to the article, which cites a report by Center for Responsive Politics. The article also notes that a few of the biggest contributing firms have Republican ties, such as Gibson Dunn, whose appellate chair (Ted Olson) represented President Bush in Bush v. Gore. The firmwide total for contributions was $124,000. Meanwhile, individuals at O'Melveny & Myers have given $87,100 to the Obama fund. The chair of that firm, A.B. Culvahouse, led John McCain’s VP-vetting efforts. The biggest contributor, however, was Skadden, with a total of $141,500. That firm’s most high-profile recent political connection is Greg Craig, who joined Skadden after his term as White House counsel.
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| 02:47 PM Aug 28, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- Industry Expects Wave of Claims
A number publications have been noting that many of the world’s most famous musical artists, including the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, will be attempting to reclaim the rights of their songs from record companies, setting the stage for a huge wave of copyright battles. A provision in U.S. copyright law gives artists termination rights after 35 years if they apply two years in advance, meaning songs from 1978 are ready for such claims. The Times did a general feature story on the issue and then followed up with an article on the filing by Victor Willis (of the Village People) to regain ownership of the popular song “Y.M.C.A.” According to that story, the companies with publishing rights – Scorpio Music and Can’t Stop Productions – are contesting the claims on the grounds that Willis was a “writer for hire” and thus has no rights to the song. Willis is represented by Brian Caplan of Caplan & Ross, who called the dispute an important test case.
But Stewart Levy of Eisenberg Tanchum & Levy, who represents the companies, disagreed and said that the Willis claim has nothing to do with the types of claims filed by songwriters like Springsteen or Dylan. Unlike them, he said the Village People was a concept created by his clients and that the group members really were more like employees. Nevertheless, in the earlier feature story, the RIAA, seeing yet another blow to sagging revenues, made it clear that it will make working-for-hire argument in many of the cases.
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| 06:28 AM Aug 17, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- Big Shift in Summer Offers
The industry was already expecting and seeing a fundamental shift in the handling of summer associate classes, but the numbers from American Lawyer’s Summer Hiring Survey still pack a punch. In 2010, 1,791 summer associates received offers while 2,679 had the year before; also, 56 firms made fewer offers and just 16 made more before 2010 and 2009. As the article explains, a significant factor was the fact that summer classes were smaller “across the board.” Large and prominent firms account for some of the largest dips, such as Skadden, which extended 66 percent fewer offers, from 207 to 71. As for the size of this year’s classes: “the firms surveyed, on average, had slightly fewer summer associates this year than last.”
Fried Frank was one of the firms to show a sizable increase, from 35 to 53 offers. Interestingly, summer associates were offered jobs at a better rate in 2010 than 2009, though that's because the 2010 class sizes were so small. NALP executive director James Leipold, quoted in the article, was hesitant to speculate about this year’s offers, but expected most firms to remain conservative.
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| 02:31 PM Aug 2, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- Budget Fallouts Continue
The financial crisis of state budgets is decimating court systems around the country, apparently no more so than in California, though we also recently noted the ongoing pay-freeze in New York state. California’s Judicial Council approved a whopping $350M in cuts from a $1.5B budget. The San Joaquin County court may have to stop hearing small claims cases, while San Francisco County Presiding Judge Katherine Feinstein said that her court had to send layoff notices to 41 percent of her staff and will have to close 25 of 63 courtrooms. State judges clashed with court administrators over the cuts last week, where judges “warned that democracy itself was in danger,” as reported by the L.A. Times and other papers.
The San Jose Mercury News also reported estimates that, in San Francisco County, it “will now take up to five years for some lawsuits to come to trial and an average of 18 months to finalize divorces.” Because criminal trials have to proceed in a timely fashion, the civil division gets all the cuts. Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said the budget situation has “never been worse.” While the situations are most dire in San Joaquin and San Francisco Counties, courts in all 58 counties are in their third year of cuts, and there is no guarantee next year will be any easier.
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| 05:33 AM Jul 25, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- MoloLamken Supreme Court Analysis
The firm MoloLamken has put together a Supreme Court Business Briefing that summarizes the numerous U.S. Supreme Court rulings from the 2010 term that affect businesses. MoloLamken is a litigation boutique started by former biglaw attorneys Steven Molo and Jeff Lamken, both Lawdragon 500 honorees from last year’s list. We also did a Lawyer Limelight Q&A with the Supreme Court specialist Lamken, who has worked on several high-profile cases in the past few years and talked with us about the challenges of starting a new firm.
Even with the recent Wal-Mar case, MoloLamken takes issue with the commonly held belief that the present court is particularly pro-business. The briefing notes that rulings in the areas of securities fraud and workers’ rights potentially create more liability for businesses. The authors present 12 cases that they believe have the greatest impact on companies today.
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| 03:44 AM Jul 11, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- Low Pay Hurts State Judiciaries
The problem of low pay for state judges (at least relative to private jobs) seems to be hitting something of a critical mass, according to an article in the New York Times. In New York state, about one in 10 judges are leaving the judiciary annually, often citing pay as the reason. This is a topic we covered a few years ago in our Lawyer Limelight interview with Judith Kaye, now at Skadden, the former chief judge of the New York state courts who battled for improved compensation.
New York used to have the highest paid judges, but their salary level now ranks at 46 among all states thanks to the longest continuing pay freeze in the nation. As the article notes, becoming a judge used to be the culmination of a legal career, usually only ending in retirement or death. But now more and more judges are returning to private practice. A recent example cited is James McGuire, a former state appellate judge with a salary of $144K who joined Dechert, where average partner pay is at $1.4M. The article says that low pay is a problem in many states, though perhaps more so in New York. As the present chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, says, “Why would a talented lawyer want to join an institution that hasn’t had even a cost of living increase in 12 years?”
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| 01:02 AM Jul 5, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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- Wal-Mart Decision Hits Firm
As is typical of a major case dominating the news, Lawdragon 500 members are in the middle of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision rejecting the massive employment discrimination suit brought by Wal-Mart employees. Reuters did an article on perennial star Joseph Sellers and his firm, Cohen Milstein, which was lead counsel to the plaintiffs and had spent $5M in attorney time and $2M in experts and discovery work on the case, thanks in part to the two million pages of documents the plaintiffs team had to go through. All of that is “at risk,” Sellers said of the firm’s investment in the case. He said the firm received “overtures” from outside litigation funders but decided against that, and added that the court's decision will make it harder to get such funding for the smaller cases that move forward.
Still, Sellers later told the Times and other reporters that he will pursue EEOC claims, smaller class actions and individual discrimination cases: “Instead of one case, this case will be splintered into many pieces.” Sellers co-counsel on the case is fellow Lawdragon 500 member Brad Seligman of the Impact Fund, and their victorious opponent was another list-maker, Ted Boutrous of Gibson Dunn.
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| 01:34 AM Jun 22, 2011 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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