Lawyers Behaving Badly

I could write my entire Professional Responsibility exam about this guy: The New Jersey Disciplinary Review Board is recommending disbarment for a lawyer who manufactured fake billings for nonexistent clients, first at Fox Rothschild and then at Margolis Edelstein. The board found that Kenneth Denti, 51, violated ethics rules against fraud by drawing a salary [...]

Don we now our tacky apparel

Of all the peculiar customs associated with Christmas, the wearing of hideous sweaters is surely the most bizarre–more disturbing even than carrying around a ribbon-festooned horse’s skull on the end of a stick. As if Christmas sweaters aren’t inherently awful enough, the horror is compounded for me, because of an association from my time in [...]

Hell hath no fury like a law firm associate scorned

Edward Harrington Heyburn left New Jersey law firm Levinson Axelrod in 2004, apparently on bad terms. More than five years later, it seems Heyburn still bears a grudge. In September of this year, he launched a website, “Levinson Axelrod Sucks“, where he has been trash-talking his former employers. The firm is now threatening to strike [...]

Bush-connected law firm in Iraq oil imbroglio

BigLaw powerhouse Baker Botts (“as in former Secretary of State James Baker”1) made its bones representing Texas oilmen. So it should come as no surprise that the firm has been dipping its toes in the Iraqi oil fields. The firm recently helped client Hunt Oil Company arrange a deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government for [...]

Wal*Mart launches new market-based initiative to change law firm employment practices

Wal*Mart has written its outside legal counsel, complaining about recent pay hikes for law firm associates. The retail giant — which, coincidentally, labels its own wage-slaves “associates” — is unhappy that the firms have tried to pass along the cost in the form of higher billing rates. Wal*Mart — which, coincidentally, is currently the defendant [...]

The trouble with BigLaw diversity

Commenting on my earlier post about the “Better Legal Profession” project, Stanford Law Professor Michelle Dauber, a member of the project’s board, defends the mission of advocating for greater diversity in attorney hiring by BigLaw firms. Her response highlights the severe limits of the project’s scope and the fundamentally conservative nature of its ambition. Michelle [...]

Rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic

A group of Stanford Law School students are issuing report cards to law firms based on the gender, racial, and sexual diversity among their attorneys. So students from elite law schools will know at which firms woman, people of color, and LBGT people have the best opportunities to make bucketloads of money working on behalf [...]

Best law firm name ever

Forget “Sioux, Grabbit & Runne”, “Dewey, Cheatum & Howe”, and their kindred spoofs. Payne & Fears is the real deal.

Take this agreement, or shove it

The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has lambasted mega-law firm O’Melveney & Myers (whose website boasts, “We are a values-driven law firm, guided by the principles of excellence, leadership, and citizenship”) over an unconscionable arbitration clause it imposed on employees. Having spent the past year litigating against OMM in a case over their client’s [...]

Silly law firm office policies

Toni Bowers at TechRepublic writes: Liz Ryan, in her column for BusinessWeek, keeps a list of the best and worst corporate policies that she has encountered while being a consultant. This month, she added referral bonus programs to her list of Best Corporate Policies and anti-moonlighting policies to her list of Worst Corporate Policies. We’ve [...]