Midsize Firm

Warner Norcross opens in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and is looking for more office space there

Last year, a Kalamazoo, Mich., law firm dissolved when two name partners decided to join Warner Norcross & Judd. Now the 230-attorney, Grand Rapids-based business firm is adding more lawyers from Miller Canfield and is looking for additional space in Kalamazoo, its eighth office in Michigan, MLive.com reports. The article…

May 21, 2014 6:10 PM CDT

Park memorial honoring murdered law firm partner draws fire due to jailed founder’s notoriety

For years, no one apparently noticed that a park memorial for crime victims in South Florida had been paid for by a law firm now associated with a massive swindle. Funded in honor of murdered Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler partner Melissa Britt Lewis, the site at a Broward County nature park…

May 15, 2014 9:25 PM CDT

Bar to pursue case against 3 lawyers accused of setting up opposing counsel for mid-trial DUI arrest

The Florida Bar has found probable cause to pursue a legal ethics case against three lawyers accused of playing a role in setting up opposing counsel for a mid-trial drunken-driving arrest. No formal ethics complaint has yet been filed against attorneys Robert D. Adams, Stephen Diaco and Adam Filthaut, but…

May 9, 2014 10:00 PM CDT

Snell & Wilmer lays off about 40 staffers

A well-known Western regional law firm with more than 400 attorneys on its roster has laid off about 40 staff members. Snell & Wilmer notified them this week of the reduction in force, said chairman John Bouma in a written statement provided to Above the Law. “This decision was made…

May 9, 2014 6:35 PM CDT

Quarles & Brady opens office in Indianapolis with Frost Brown litigation team

Four litigators from Frost Brown Todd are opening a new office in Indianapolis as partners of Quarles & Brady, along with another lawyer who formerly was a partner at Krieg DeVault. D. Linden Barber, who serves as director of Drug Enforcement Administration compliance and litigation for Quarles, within the firm’s…

May 9, 2014 3:50 PM CDT

Business law firm to pay $8M to settle class action over its work for hedge-fund client

Ater Wynne wasn’t aware that a client was helping to run a million-million-dollar scam under the guise of a hedge fund, the lawyer for plaintiffs in a securities class action against the firm says. But that didn’t prevent the Portland, Oregon, business law firm being named as a defendant, due…

May 8, 2014 3:50 PM CDT

Office managing partner of Florida firm is killed in bike wreck

The managing partner of the Fort Myers, Florida, office of a Tampa, Florida-based firm has been killed in a bicycle-car accident. James Chelius Jr., 61, died Sunday after the bicycle he was riding was struck by a car, the Naples Daily News reports. Chelius was managing partner of the Fort…

May 7, 2014 8:44 PM CDT

Airlines and World Trade Center leaseholder don’t have to pay cleanup costs for 9/11 attacks

An appellate court has upheld a decision shielding American Airlines, United Airlines and the World Trade Center leaseholder from paying environmental cleanup costs relating to the 9/11 attacks in New York City. According to Reuters, a unanimous three-judge panel for the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held…

May 2, 2014 9:36 PM CDT

Bankruptcy firm to close its doors; at least 3 of 25 lawyers have found new jobs

Citing a decline in Chapter 11 filings, a 25-attorney Los Angeles-based bankruptcy firm has announced that it will close its doors May 1. Founded in 1948, Stutman Treister & Glatt also has offices in New York and Utah, Reuters reports. In a written statement provided to the Los Angeles Daily…

Apr 23, 2014 10:59 AM CDT

Law firm’s revised debt-collection letter results in $49.5K settlement of federal class action

A New Jersey law firm and a co-defendant have agreed to pay, and a federal judge on Tuesday approved, a $49,500 class action settlement over the language Mattleman, Weinroth & Miller used in a collection letter. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act specifies what must be said in the so-called…

Apr 17, 2014 3:10 PM CDT

Gross revenue falls 20 percent at Dickstein Shapiro in an ‘investment year’

Dickstein Shapiro had “an investment year” in 2013 when its gross revenue fell 20 percent, according to firm chairman James Kelly. Net income saw a bigger drop of almost 35 percent, but revenue per lawyer declined only 3 percent, Legal Times reports. In an interview with Legal Times, Kelly said…

Apr 17, 2014 11:45 AM CDT

Former law firm CFO charged in $1.2B swindle is 18th to face a criminal case, feds say

The former chief financial officer of a defunct South Florida law firm has been charged with a role in the $1.2 billion swindle for which its former managing partner Scott Rothstein is now serving a 50-year federal prison sentence. Irene Shannon, 50, who was formerly known as Irene Stay, faces…

Apr 16, 2014 8:55 PM CDT

After lawyers exit, Downey Brand lays off 17 staff members; remaining lawyers are busy, leader says

Downey Brand laid off 17 staff members Wednesday, adjusting for the 23 lawyers this year who have either already left the firm or will leave the Sacramento, Calif.-based law firm by the end of this month. The layoff group “includes no lawyers because we remain very busy with legal work,”…

Apr 10, 2014 5:25 PM CDT

Attorney who complained to state AGs about law firm is now herself facing scrutiny

A Kentucky lawyer who wrote the attorney general’s office in 40 states expressing concern about the operations of a Florida law firm for which she formerly worked is now herself facing a legal ethics case over similar allegations. Michele Stephens got a letter (PDF) last week from the disciplinary board…

Apr 9, 2014 10:45 PM CDT

Job outlook for newly minted lawyers still bleak, data shows

The job outlook for newly minted lawyers remains bleak, new figures show. Fifty-seven percent of all 2013 law school graduates were employed in full-time, long-term legal jobs requiring bar passage as of Feb. 15, according to data released Wednesday by the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the…

Apr 9, 2014 2:45 PM CDT