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Martindale-Hubbell is giving itself a technology face-lift. In addition to joining with social networking site LinkedIn to enhance its information searches, the 140-year-old legal directory unveiled new "visibility rankings" and is revamping its peer review ratings system.
The Supreme Court term that ended in late June was difficult to categorize. For much of the term, the justices seemed to be more harmonious and unanimous, but in the cases that won the most headlines, the Court's splits re-emerged. At ' seventh annual Supreme Court review, four expert appellate advocates -- each of whom argued at least one case before the Court in the past term -- analyzed the decisions and the trends that emerged and offered a preview of next term.
An Islamic charity is banking on public statements by Bush administration officials to give it standing to sue the government for warrantless wiretapping, according to a new complaint the charity filed Tuesday. A 2007 speech by an FBI official is the linchpin in Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation's continuing effort to prove that the U.S. government illegally monitored phone calls between one of the charity's directors and two of its U.S.-based lawyers.
The long history of sports corruption is peopled by defendants prosecuted for tangential misdeeds. Add to that list Tim Donaghy, the ex-NBA referee who was sentenced Tuesday by a federal judge to 15 months in prison for providing gamblers with tips on basketball games based on his insider access to the athletes. Donaghy's crimes? In addition to conspiring to transmit gambling information, he deprived his employer, the NBA, of the "intangible right" to his "honest services."
A former paralegal at prominent plaintiffs lawyer Richard Laminack's current and former firms alleges the Houston attorney is a "sexual predator" who once offered her $15,000 to stay with him for a weekend in Las Vegas and once suggested she perform a sexual act on an expert witness. Angela Robinson has sued Laminack, his current firm of Laminack, Pirtle & Martines and a former firm, alleging wrongful termination and mail fraud conducted in connection with fen-phen litigation.
Starting in mid-January 2009, New York will bar personal injury or wrongful death insurers from disclaiming coverage due to a late notice of claim, filed within two years of an accident, unless insurers were "materially prejudiced" by the delay. The new law also allows injured parties, where coverage is disclaimed for late notice, to seek declaratory judgments in personal injury or wrongful death cases to determine the extent of defendants' insurance coverage and whether suits are worth pursuing.
Miami firm Greenberg Traurig, which has offices in Houston and Dallas, will open an office in Austin on Aug. 1 with seven lawyers, including three who are leaving Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld's Austin office. Douglas Atnipp, Greenberg Traurig's managing shareholder in Houston, says the firm has eyed Austin since it opened its Houston office in 2005. Separately, on July 1, Hunton & Williams, based in Richmond, Va., announced it had hired eight Akin Gump labor and employment attorneys.
Citing "racist and disrespectful behavior to court staff," two judges have banned an Atlanta divorce lawyer from coming to the fifth floor of the DeKalb County Courthouse without being escorted by a sheriff's deputy. Paul R. Koehler, who is white, acknowledged in an interview that he had addressed an African-American court staffer as a "little monkey" but said he thought he was speaking to someone else he knew. He says he has apologized and won't appeal the order.
A man jailed for failing to pay child support was arraigned Tuesday in New York on charges that he conspired to buy a gun to kill state Supreme Court Justice William J. Kent III, whom he claimed "gave his house away" to his ex-wife. At a news conference, a prosecutor stated that Brian Orkiszewski had told fellow inmates that he was shopping for a gun to murder the judge, and that he boasted to one inmate, a week before his release, that the judge would "have a big surprise when I knock on his door."
At the opening session of the 9th Circuit's judicial conference rundown of recent U.S. Supreme Court cases, 9th Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee tried to make light of the divergence of views on the law between the high court and the circuit, widely viewed as the most liberal in the country. To illustrate the perceptions that the Supreme Court and other circuits have of the 9th Circuit, Bybee displayed images of Mongol hordes and a group of hippies sprawled across a psychedelic-colored bus.
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