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A law firm retreat can serve as a practical management tool to accomplish many purposes, writes consultant Joel A. Rose. Law firm management frequently takes an opportunity to consider strategic plans, but a retreat may also improve communications and relationships between lawyers.
A New Jersey appeals court ruled Wednesday that liquor establishments are not protected by a state law that bars drunken drivers involved in accidents from suing other parties for economic and noneconomic damages. While the decision is the first by a state appeals court to explicitly deprive licensed premises of immunity in such cases, dram shops are not the first class of defendants to see plaintiffs overcome the general bar on claims by drunken drivers arising from their accidents.
A Mississippi judge has upheld $10 million in fees paid to lawyers for handling a state lawsuit against Microsoft. The software manufacturer reached a $100 million settlement with the state last June, agreeing to pay $10 million to lawyers hired by the attorney general's office to handle the case. The state auditor sued, arguing the fees should be paid with money appropriated by the Legislature.
Former Luzerne County Common Pleas Judge Michael T. Conahan agreed Thursday to plead guilty to accepting, along with another judge, more than $2.8 million from the builder and former co-owner of a private juvenile detention facility. The plea deal limits Conahan's exposure to one racketeering conspiracy charge, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Sources have said Conahan essentially ran the county and was the epicenter of corruption in the courthouse.
The misconduct of a woman who misled her husband into believing that he was the father of a child she had had with another man was not so outrageous as to affect the division of their property, the New York Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. The court in a 6-1 ruling declined to find that the wife's adulterous behavior rose to "egregious" levels that would disturb the presumption in New York domestic relations law in favor of equitable distribution in marital actions.
A law firm partner's advances on partnership profits are subject to administrative levies imposed by the Internal Revenue Service, the 2nd Circuit ruled Thursday, finding that advances, or partner "draws," at personal injury firm Moskowitz, Passman & Edelman constitute "salary or wages" under ยง6331(e) of the Internal Revenue Code. The firm will now have to pay the government nearly $1.5 million. The court said it was unpersuaded by Moskowitz Passman's "bold attempt to evade the levies."
The managing partner of Lovells' Beijing office is leaving for Chinese firm Allbright Law Offices. Because Chinese restrictions on foreign lawyers prevent Robert Lewis from being a partner, he will be a senior international legal consultant in the Beijing office of Shanghai-based Allbright. The move makes the 52-year-old Lewis -- a Beijing partner at U.K.-based Lovells since 2001 and before that Asia GC for telecommunications firm Nortel -- one of the most senior Western lawyers to join a domestic law firm in China.
James Kaufman, a registered sex offender who is locked up in state prison in Wisconsin, has been trying for six years to renounce his citizenship, arguing that he is entitled to do so inside the United States during a state of war. But the Justice Department has fought Kaufman's effort to shed his citizenship while still in the country. And now that fight has gone to the D.C. Circuit, where the DOJ is challenging a ruling that favored Kaufman.
One-time top Miami forensic accountant and attorney Lewis Freeman conspired with two of his employees to help conceal his embezzlement of $2.6 million from client trust accounts for more than a decade, federal prosecutors charge. Former Lewis B. Freeman & Partners comptroller Jose Wong and former bookkeeper Steven Jockers were charged Tuesday by criminal information with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and could face up to five years in prison if convicted.
David Boies -- "the Michael Jordan of trial attorneys," as he was introduced at the Lawyers' Club of San Francisco annual California Supreme Court lunch -- called for members of the legal profession to do more to help people get justice in a cost-effective way. "It costs too much to litigate today," said Boies, founder and chairman of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, upon accepting his Access to Justice award at the Wednesday lunch. Boies said attorneys should pare cases down to their essentials early on.
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