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Let the good times roll. That's the counterintuitive conclusion from 's annual Pro Bono Awards survey. The towers of finance are toppling, knocking over law firms on their way down. Yet the firms left standing still realize that their futures depend in large measure on keeping young associates productive, happy and committed, and that pro bono might be a way to do that. The argument about whether pro bono makes business sense is over, says a senior manager at Deloitte Consulting.
WilmerHale has lost a bid to force a trial court to throw out a fraud claim in a $7 million lawsuit alleging the law firm overbilled former McAfee CFO Prabhat Goyal, who was convicted in 2007 of securities-related fraud. McAfee asserted that the $6.8 million of the $12 million it cost to defend Goyal included unjustifiable fees and expenses for numerous WilmerHale partners and associates, in addition to charges for luxury hotel rooms, limousines and bar tabs. The law firm has denied the overbilling.
A steady rise in corporate bankruptcy filings throughout 2008 is expected to crescendo in 2009 and 2010, with collapses spreading from the retail, auto-related, real estate and financial industries to almost any area affected by the downturn in consumer spending, lawyers say. In response, law firms are reviewing the size of their bankruptcy teams to make sure they've lined up the attorneys needed to attract and manage cases.
The Securities Investor Protection Corp. and the trustee handling the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities said Monday they mailed more than 8,000 claim forms to customers who lost money during the alleged investment fraud. The bankruptcy court overseeing the liquidation set an initial deadline of March 4 for claims to be filed. Trustee Irving Picard will oversee the liquidation of assets from Madoff's investment firm as the SIPC attempts to help investors recoup their money.
Your data can be stolen by hackers, lost in a system failure or exposed through metadata. What are you doing about it? Larger firms have IT specialists to protect and back up data, but for data security "do-it-yourselfers," attorney Robert J. Ambrogi identifies Web sites that can help.
Big tech companies haven't stopped patenting their inventions, but more than ever they're also buying others' patents as a weapon in intellectual property litigation. In-house counsel know that the best defense against a high-stakes IP suit can be the ability to threaten the other side with suits based on your own portfolio. But with more patents on the market than ever, companies are on a shopping spree that a recessionary economy is only likely to fuel.
The trio of smiling professionals on a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based firm's Web site -- a black male, a white male and a white female -- are paid models, not lawyers. Although the Florida Bar hasn't raised any enforcement issues over the use of models on Web sites, why do some firms do it?
A presidential inauguration is a rare moment of visibility for the Supreme Court, but it is only tradition, not law, that joins the Court and the presidency at a crucial time of transition in the nation's life. President-elect Barack Obama will be sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., whose confirmation he voted against -- and Obama stands poised, depending on vacancies, to populate the Court with colleagues who may cause Roberts grief. If it turns out to be awkward, it won't be the first time.
Most of us begin the New Year with a handful of resolutions. Doesn't your career deserve the same attention as your waistline? This January, spend a few hours setting resolutions and goals for your own professional development, recommends Kathryn C. Newman, a senior associate at Jenner & Block. Newman provides some tips for setting up realistic development goals and discusses several possible avenues for achieving them. Newman notes that the best-laid career plans -- like portfolios -- are diversified.
The clients of the top litigation boutiques spotlighted by say the firms typically deliver what they promise: They are nimble, efficient, flexible and smart. They're also often a lot less expensive than their big-firm competitors. Several boutiques even report that they turned away work in the last year. How many big firms can say the same?
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