Career & Practice

Cost-Cutting Helps Cadwalader Post 28% Hike in Partner Profits

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft is reporting a 28 percent jump in partner profits after losing 21 percent of its equity partners. Profits per partner were $2.41 million in 2009, the Am Law Daily reports. The increase is the first hike since 2007. In 2008, profits per partner dropped 30 percent.…

Jan 20, 2010 12:33 PM CST

Uncomfortable About Blowing Own Horn, Lawyer Talks About Electric Car in TV Ad

Uncomfortable about directly seeking clients for his auto accident practice, a South Carolina attorney and admitted car buff urges viewers to promote electric-powered vehicles on a television ad. “I think it’s awful when lawyers go on there begging for someone to have a crash,” Gary Ling tells the Post and…

Jan 20, 2010 12:41 AM CST

Ethics Win for Lawyers Who Paid for Leads from Total Attorneys Site

Five Connecticut lawyers who got leads on potential clients from a website operated by Total Attorneys Inc. have won dismissal of ethics complaints alleging they broke the law by paying nonlawyers for the referrals. The short opinion by Connecticut’s Statewide Grievance Committee did not explain the decision, according to the…

Jan 19, 2010 2:37 PM CST

Lawyer Who Inflated Grades Gets Recommended 18-Month Suspension

A lawyer who inflated his law school grades to get a summer associate position at Sidley Austin got something of a reprieve from an Illinois ethics review board. In April, a hearing board had recommended that Loren Friedman be suspended for three years for altering his transcript from the University…

Jan 19, 2010 1:51 PM CST

Depression Is Rising as Lawyers Lose Jobs and Sense of Entitlement

Mental health professionals and a legal blogger are noting a change in lawyer attitudes and depression rates. Jobs and bonuses are being cut as the legal profession “lurches through its worst slump in decades,” the New York Times reports. The article notes the tally by the legal blog LawShucks, which…

Jan 19, 2010 1:04 PM CST

Seyfarth Axes About 40 Attorneys and Staff in Latest Round of Layoffs

In a new cost-cutting move, Seyfarth Shaw announced in an internal memo yesterday that the law firm is laying off approximately 20 attorneys and 20 staff members nationwide. Describing 2009 as “one of the most challenging years in generations for our clients, our peers in the legal profession and for…

Jan 15, 2010 8:10 PM CST

Merger Helps Propel K&L Gates Past $1B Revenue Mark

A merger has helped put K&L Gates in the $1 billion in revenue club. The law firm posted $1.034 billion in gross revenue last year, an 8 percent increase, the Am Law Daily reports. The revenue jump was largely due to a March 2009 merger with Chicago-based Bell, Boyd &…

Jan 15, 2010 7:03 PM CST

BigLaw News Isn’t All Bad: More Work and Steady Partner Profits Reported

Updated: Revenue at the nation’s largest law firms dipped an average of 4 percent last year, but the news isn’t all bad. Some law firm leaders tell the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) that they are seeing an increase in litigation, public offerings and regulatory work. They are also seeing…

Jan 15, 2010 3:08 PM CST

Debt Collection Law Firm Abruptly Closes; Thousands of Cases Dismissed

A debt collection law firm with 24 offices around the country has abruptly closed, resulting in dismissal of tens of thousands of cases in Maryland alone. The Rockville, Md.-based law firm, Mann Bracken, and its clients had been accused in civil suits of using high-pressure tactics and violating debt-collection laws,…

Jan 15, 2010 1:10 PM CST

Ex-Client Sues Debevoise for $55M re ‘Variety of Chimera & Boondoggles’

It’s a truism that a law firm that sues a client to collect an unpaid bill is almost asking for a malpractice claim. And a $6 million unpaid-bill suit filed by Debevoise & Plimpton last year against a former client is not the exception that proves the rule. In an…

Jan 14, 2010 7:03 PM CST

DLA ‘Working Lawyer’ Explains Why He and 8 Others Moved to Jackson Lewis

Labor and employment partner Richard Hafets worked at DLA Piper for 34 years, but he has some gripes about the firm that is spurring him to jump to Jackson Lewis along with three other partners and four associates. At DLA, Hafets told the Maryland Daily Record, the firm’s billing rates…

Jan 14, 2010 3:39 PM CST

Fla. Bar Probes at Least 35 Lawyers in Alleged Ponzi Schemer’s Firm

The Florida Bar is investigating at least 35 lawyers who practiced law with alleged Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein. Ethics investigators are probing whether senior lawyers from Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler made false representations to the Florida Bar when they certified client trust accounts and whether they misappropriated money from the accounts,…

Jan 14, 2010 12:44 PM CST

China Cyber-Attack May Have Targeted Law Firm & Other Companies, Too

A Los Angeles law firm representing a software maker in a federal-court piracy case against the Chinese government may have been targeted in an apparent China-based cyber-attack that led Google Inc. to threaten this week to suspend Internet service in the Asian country. Gipson Hoffman & Pancione says in a…

Jan 14, 2010 1:43 AM CST

Jones Day Practice Head Joins Winston; Other Lawyers Likely to Follow

The head of the employee benefits and executive compensation practice group at Jones Day has moved to the San Francisco office of Winston & Strawn, where he expects other lawyers from his former firm to follow him. Although Jones Day has a bigger global footprint, James Baker points out that…

Jan 13, 2010 10:13 PM CST

Lawyer Is Charged in Practice-Related Case Brought by Opposing Candidate’s Office

Attorney John Andrew Mattingly Jr. has been seeking election to the post of St. Mary’s County state’s attorney. But now it appears that the 40-year-old Leonardtown, Md., lawyer and Democratic candidate could lose not only the race for the prosecutor’s job but his law practice as a result of law…

Jan 13, 2010 6:14 PM CST