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Many large law firms may be paying young lawyers to stay away, but one small firm associate had to work to get his firm's OK to take this summer off. Myles Solomon, a fifth-year at Bassi Edlin Huie & Blum, who also started a sports agency co-owned by the firm partners, will be leaving this month to volunteer in Africa for three months. Managing partner Noel Edlin says that allowing the sabbatical means a trade-off in extra hours for other lawyers, who have to use nonbillable time to learn Solomon's cases.
Phil Spector was sentenced Friday to 19 years to life in prison for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, who was shot through the mouth in the music producer's home six years ago. Much of the case hinged on the testimony of five women from Spector's past who said he threatened them with guns when they tried to leave his presence. A prosecutor called the case "rock solid," but Spector's defense attorney said an appeal will assert that the judge erred in allowing the women to testify.
After their sentencing last week, it took less than 24 hours for three of the five defendants in United States v. Holy Land Foundation to file notices of appeal with the 5th Circuit, and an attorney for one of the defendants said all five will appeal. The HLF defendants received a combined total of 180 years in prison on charges that they engaged in a conspiracy to help funnel at least $12.4 million to Hamas through a now-defunct Texas-based Muslim charity, among other things.
When filmmaker Joe Simon-Whelan decided to sell a Warhol self-portrait he had purchased in 1989 for $150,000, an art authentication board established by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts twice declared it a fake, even though the foundation had previously authenticated it. Simon-Whelan sued, claiming a "20-year scheme" to control the market for Warhol paintings. Last week, a New York federal judge ruled that there is sufficient evidence to allow most of the antitrust claims to go forward.
Federal investigators in the Luzerne County, Pa., judicial corruption probe are said to be looking at whether two indicted former judges may have helped fix criminal cases, sources have told The Legal Intelligencer. An investigation by the paper has turned up at least three criminal cases in which individuals with ties to the corruption probe or with political or personal ties to former Judges Michael T. Conahan and Mark A. Ciavarella appeared in front of them and received relatively light sentences.
After a season of layoffs and furloughs, most of the largest private New York law offices also have reduced the size of their incoming summer associate classes. According to the New York Law Journal's annual survey of the top 25 largest law offices in New York, some of the biggest cuts were made in firms that had already reduced their work force during the past year. "Historically, the game was kind of the other way, we wanted to see as many people as possible," said Cadwalader's New York hiring committee chair.
Samuel B. Kent is set to report to federal prison on June 15, but even before the disgraced retired U.S. district judge begins to serve a 33-month sentence, the U.S. House will crank into high gear proceedings that could lead to Kent's impeachment. Kent, as well as the two former staff members he has admitted to sexually assaulting as part of a guilty plea to obstruction of justice, reportedly will testify at an evidentiary hearing Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee Task Force on Impeachment.
At Sheppard Mullin, CIO Donna Paulson needed a disaster recovery infrastructure that could live up to the strictest data protection and business continuity standards. After intensive product testing, Paulson's team chose InMage's DR-Scout for its continuous data protection technology.
The coming addition of five labor and employment attorneys from Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll in Washington, D.C., is the latest indication that Eckert Seamans has been on a bit of a growth spurt. The firm has brought on 38 laterals so far this year through a combination of good timing and an environment in which it can offer parallel compensation, but a more flexible rate structure, says CEO Timothy Ryan, and it's focusing on expanding its Washington, D.C., and Boston offices through lateral hires.
For Drew Schaffer, a recent veteran of combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and now a first-year law student, any classroom jitters are relative: "Having been in some pretty stressful situations, you realize getting a low grade on an exam is not life threatening." The former Army Ranger applied to law school from Afghanistan, studied for the LSAT between combat patrols and took the test under threat of Taliban artillery fire. Now he's started a group to ease the application process for other overseas soldiers.
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