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Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has become the first leading U.K. law firm to announce its associate salary rates for 2010, with the firm lifting the freeze on associate lockstep it put in place last year. The Magic Circle firm, which also led the market last year when it froze both pay levels and lawyers' progression through them, told staff Thursday that the freeze would be lifted at the start of the new financial year.
Lateral partner hiring by U.S. firms in London fell to its lowest level since 2004 last year, according to new research from Legal Week. A survey of hiring trends at the London operations of 37 of the biggest U.S. and trans-Atlantic firms found there were just 59 lateral partner moves in 2009, with many firms shying away from expansion against the backdrop of the global recession. Greenberg Traurig Maher, which launched in London in June 2009, was responsible for a quarter of those hires.
Turning 50 has triggered some reflection by consultant Frank Michael D'Amore on what he's learned in 25-plus years in the legal profession. He discusses four important lessons that can help lawyers in both their professional and personal lives, including, "Don't hold happiness hostage."
Bernard Madoff's claim to have pulled off his multibillion-dollar swindle without assistance unraveled further on Thursday, as one of his longtime aides was charged with helping him cook the books. Daniel Bonventre, an accountant who worked for Madoff since the late 1960s, faces conspiracy, securities fraud and tax charges. Bonventre was also sued Thursday by the SEC, which accused him of falsifying records both to disguise Madoff's fraud and also to illegally enrich himself. Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence.
A New York state judge has refused to throw out the $22.5 million verdict awarded by a jury in a 28-year-old polio vaccine suit. The jury found Pfizer, as successor to Lederle Laboratories, liable for negligent manufacture of the oral polio vaccine from which plaintiff Dominick Tenuto allegedly contracted polio while changing his infant daughter's diapers in 1979.
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who turns 90 on April 20, is
closing in on some other major milestones. In about three months,
Stevens, who joined the Court in 1975, will pass Chief Justice John
Marshall in terms of length of service. A month after that he'll pass
Justice Stephen Field's length of tenure as well, lagging behind only
William O. Douglas, whose record tenure was 36 years, six months and 25
days. All these statistics are now available at the ever-useful Oyez
Project Web site.
A sprawling antitrust class action against computer memory manufacturers is about to settle. The deal avoids a risky oral argument in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and will end years of litigation between companies -- like Micron Technology, Hynix Semiconductor and Infineon Technologies -- and indirect purchasers of DRAM memory chips, which includes California and several other states.
A Philadelphia judge declined to vacate an arbitration award in a case brought against Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis by a retired partner over interpretations of amendments to the partnership agreement. Clinton Stuntebeck asked the judge to toss an arbitration award that found that changes to the firm's pension plan, including a move from lifetime benefits to a 10-year limit on payouts, was applicable to Stuntebeck. The judge said the arbitrator's interpretation of the contract was not reviewable by the court.
Thursday's televised "summit" on health care proved to be a new forum in which Republican lawmakers could press for limits on medical malpractice awards, and another chance for the plaintiffs bar to play defense. Listing a tort overhaul as one of his party's priorities. Sen. Lamar Alexander, who is third in the U.S. Senate's GOP leadership, said there are too many "junk lawsuits against doctors." A lobbying group for plaintiffs lawyers responded in a Twitter feed with some counterclaims.
Anti-corruption enforcement is bulking up. Already the acknowledged leader in global enforcement, the Department of Justice unit that prosecutes Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases will soon grow "substantially," according to the lawyer who runs it. Mark Mendelsohn, deputy chief of the fraud section's criminal division, said his section "may grow as much as 50 percent in size in the next year or two." At the same time, he added, he expects companies to play an increasingly aggressive role in thwarting corruption.
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