International

Freshfields Wins Age Bias Claim

A London tribunal has sided with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in a claim by a former partner who contended the law firm’s new pension plan discriminated against older lawyers. The Central London Employment Tribunal said the law firm had made the changes in a proportionate manner for a legitimate aim, Legal…

Oct 11, 2007 10:54 AM CDT

Mom Supplied Pot to Keep Kids Off Street

Concerned about obvious risks when she found out her teenage children were using marijuana, Nicola Cooper called a family meeting. Then the self-described “liberal parent” decided to act to protect them from street drug-dealers by supplying them with pot herself. “Some people give their children alcohol and cigarettes at an…

Oct 10, 2007 5:58 PM CDT

EU Tiptoes Toward Mass Torts

Class actions as we know them in the U.S. are virtually unheard of in Europe, and corporations located in the EU would like to keep it that way. Hence, a proposal by the European Commission to allow individuals to hold EU corporations accountable in court for price-fixing and defective products,…

Oct 10, 2007 12:21 AM CDT

Blogger Back Online, Trumping Lawyers

Seemingly on the ropes after a Uzbekistan billionaire’s lawyers pressured his former Web host into taking down his site, an Internet critic is back online today in an ongoing Internet slugfest that has drawn worldwide attention to the way libel issues are handled in the blog world. Craig Murray, a…

Oct 8, 2007 3:13 PM CDT

London Snubbed So Far in White & Case Restructuring

White & Case’s London office doesn’t have a single representative on the firm’s newly restructured management committees—so far. The firm’s new chairman, Hugh Verrier, has already selected the members of his new executive committee, the American Lawyer reports. And only two spots are still open on the partnership committee, elected…

Oct 8, 2007 11:30 AM CDT

Freshfields Restructuring Helped Boost Profits

London-based law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has recently undergone a cultural shift that emphasizes the bottom line. Underperforming partners have been let go, and the partnership structure has changed to allow nonequity partners, the American Lawyer reports. More than 100 equity partners left in a two-year period. The changes produced…

Oct 8, 2007 10:49 AM CDT

Pay Cuts for Top Partners at London Firm?

Although at least three quarters of the partners at Ashurst voted recently to approve a change in the London-based law firm’s lockstep compensation structure, many are now reportedly nervous about how the new pay scale will be implemented. “Around 75 of Ashurst’s most senior partners will see their position at…

Oct 4, 2007 5:36 PM CDT

Chinese Human Rights Lawyer Abducted and Beaten

A Chinese human rights lawyer says he was abducted, beaten and warned to leave Beijing last weekend. Li Heping told the New York Times that after his captors released him, he returned home and found his law license and some legal files were missing. He told the Associated Press that…

Oct 3, 2007 3:35 PM CDT

Mayer Brown Loses Another Partner

In the latest partner defection from Mayer Brown’s office in Los Angeles, corporate and securities practitioner Kenneth Kohler has joined the Los Angeles office of Morrison & Foerster. A number of other partners also have left Mayer Brown’s Los Angeles office in recent months, including Louis Eatman, the former national…

Oct 2, 2007 9:41 PM CDT

Inquest: Did Royal Family Kill Diana?

After fighting a lengthy legal battle to force a British inquest into the death a decade ago of Princess Diana in a Paris car crash, Harrods department store magnate Mohammed al-Fayed is going to have his day in court. An inquest began today in London’s High Court with the judge’s…

Oct 2, 2007 6:07 PM CDT

Top India Law Salary: $7K + Stock Options

The starting annual salary for a graduate of one of India’s top law schools working in an outsourced position for a major U.S. law firm is less than an American counterpart earns in a single month if employed by the firm directly. But the job has some nice benefits, at…

Oct 1, 2007 9:51 PM CDT

Manhattan Work at Mumbai Prices

Inside India’s hottest legal outsourcing team

Oct 1, 2007 8:43 PM CDT

Surveillance Backlash in Britain

The U.K.’s famously state-of-the-art national surveillance system (at least compared to the U.S.), is suddenly taking it on the chin. A blog post today by the Pinsent Masons law firm says up to 95 percent of the closed-circuit television systems in Britain and Wales are illegal—and that may soon be…

Oct 1, 2007 6:50 PM CDT

Lerners Goes Luxe

When Janet Stewart joined Lerners, in London, nearly 40 years ago, she was one of seven lawyers there. Today, the law firm has 100 attorneys in London and Toronto, and she is managing partner. Lerners has long since gotten used to making do with smaller-than-optimum space, but moved this week…

Oct 1, 2007 5:04 PM CDT

It’s a Small World

Rule of law will be the ABA’s focus over the next year

Oct 1, 2007 3:53 PM CDT