Law Admin

The UK magic circle had a truly ropey year in 2004. Indeed, anyone espousing the cause of the European independent firmmight have felt vindicated. Average profits at the UK/European big four slipped across the board. Clifford Chance’s average profit per equity partner (PEP) dropped from €913,000 (£644,000) to £562,000; Linklaters’ from €1m (£734,000) to £674,000;

In a defeat for New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, former Bank of America Corp broker Theodore Sihpol on Thursday was acquitted by a Manhattan jury of 29 counts of helping a hedge fund trade mutual funds illegally. New York Supreme Court Justice James Yates declared a mistrial on four other counts on which the

A Justice Department decision to seek $10 billion for a stop-smoking program in its suit against the country’s leading tobacco companies, instead of the $130 billion suggested by one of its expert witnesses, set off a firestorm on Wednesday. Several Democratic lawmakers with a longtime interest in smoking and health issues attacked the department for

HealthSouth, the scandal-plagued healthcare services group, said on Wednesday it agreed to pay $100 million to settle claims brought against it by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC sued HealthSouth in March 2003, accusing the firm of overstating profits. The settlement pact resolves that litigation only, said HealthSouth, which is involved in several other

Hundreds of criminals accused of money laundering or handling stolen goods could be freed from prison after judges upheld the appeals of four men accused of a £171m drugs conspiracy. The ruling yesterday is expected to have wider implications for similar conspiracy cases in which the Crown has failed to show that the defendant knew

The prospect of winning massive, multimillion dollar verdicts has turned the original mass tort–asbestos litigation–into the ultimate mass farce. There are now about 49,000 asbestos plaintiffs awaiting trial in Lexington, Fayette, Port Gibson, Pascagoula, and other propitious plaintiffs’ venues in Mississippi, and at least 200,000 more cases nationwide–mainly concentrated in other favorable plaintiffs’ locales sprinkled

A former Merrill Lynch lawyer who last July settled a sex discrimination case with the U.S. bank, said on Tuesday a reference it gave her was the “death knell” for her chances of getting into a prestigious U.S. business school. Elizabeth Weston, who left Merrill in March 2004, alleges she was victimised in a reference

The US Supreme Court’s decision this week asserting federal control over marijuana used for medical purposes would seem to bring that controversial practice to a halt. Uncle Sam – not the states – has the last word here, the court ruled. But the 6-to-3 ruling may have raised more questions than it answered – and

Microsoft cleared a major stumbling block on Monday and won praise from the European Commission for finally putting forward acceptable proposals to comply with European Union antitrust sanctions. The risk that the EU executive might hit the world’s largest software company with a fine of up to $5 million a day receded because Microsoft’s proposal

The movement of attorneys from huge to smaller law firms is becoming more common, according to some recruiters. As big practices get bigger and pursue hefty clients to match that growth, many attorneys who service smaller clients find their careers at odds with their firms’ strategic plan, he said. In those cases, moving on to