A renowned Chicago lawyer and former Illinois governor testified yesterday that he approved $200 million in payments as a corporate director and audit committee chair without documentary support. In his second day of cross-examination yesterday in the trial of press baron Conrad Black and other executives accused of participating in…
Brian Sloan did not follow a stereotypical legal career path after graduating from Penn State Dickinson Law School. Rather than practice law, he started selling goods on eBay. A few months ago, he began to include human skulls in his inventory. That is how some 15 police officers wound up…
Prosecutors and public defenders in Florida are leaving their low-paying jobs at alarming rates, according to the offices that employ them. The Miami Herald cites statistics from the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office. It lost 126 out of 291 attorneys in 2005 and 2006. The public defender’s office there lost 63…
A study by several Massachusetts bar associations finds that almost half of women lawyers in the state who leave their law firms don’t remain in the law. The report also found that women lawyers leave private law practice in far greater numbers than men. Some of the findings, as summarized…
Cisco Systems Inc. spurns hourly billing arrangements by its law firms, spending about 75 percent of its legal budget paying fixed fees. The company is a leader in alternative billing, a growing trend, the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) reports. Such arrangements are made possible by electronic billing and matter-management…
When Everett Rice first met Barry Cohen, the two were adversaries in a lawsuit filed by Cohen over the prosecution of a client on vessel homicide charges. Rice is a former sheriff in Pinellas County, Florida, and the department was among the law enforcement agencies named as defendants. Now, nearly…
Looking for a new career? How about a virtual one? CNNMoney.com lists “Second Life Lawyer” as one of five hot new careers. But it appears lawyers aren’t actually making money by practicing law in the online virtual world. Instead they are generating business by meeting potential clients online. The ABA…
More than half the lawyers responding to a survey admit they sometimes do unnecessary work to hike their billable hours. Two-thirds of the lawyers surveyed also say they have specific knowledge of bill padding—that is, billing a client for work not performed, the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog reports. The…
Brian T. Dougan, a litigator at Boston based Gibson & Behman, has become the ultimate island hopper. This spring, Dougan starts splitting his time between offices in Rhode Island and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The much-publicized case of the so-called D.C. Madam has sparked a new business practice for a number of Washington, D.C. lawyers. After she said she planned to name names of some of those on her 15,000-client list in her ongoing federal racketeering prosecution, at least five local attorneys telephoned Deborah…
A Los Angeles lawyer says his yoga classes have helped him get in shape and combat stress on the job. John Shaeffer brought in yoga instructors to teach lawyers at his previous law firm, the Wall Street Journal reports. But at his current firm, Spillane Shaeffer Aronoff Bandlow, his penchant…
In a lawsuit characterized as “downright bizarre” by a Seattle newspaper blog, a timber industry lawyer who formerly worked for the Bush administration has made a legal claim based on draft environmental regulations. Mark Rutzick, now a private practitioner in Portland, Ore., was formerly a special counsel at the National…
Chicago-based Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal has established a new office in Charlotte, N.C., raiding one of the local offices of Atlanta-based Kilpatrick Stockton in order to do so. A total of 18 lawyers have moved from Kilpatrick’s Charlotte office to Sonnenschein’s new venue there, leaving only 11 attorneys on the…
