Law Firms

After months of anxious planning, it was time for Hugh Verrier (pictured) to finally press send. In his two years as chairman of White & Case, the venerable Wall Street law firm, Mr. Verrier had already laid off 70 young lawyers and shuttered offices in Bangkok, Dresden and Milan. He had watched top partners flee […]

Nearly two out of three bankruptcies stem from medical bills, and even people with health insurance face financial disaster if they experience a serious illness, a new study shows. The study data, published online Thursday in The American Journal of Medicine, likely understate the full scope of the problem because the data were collected before

Richard W. Fields says he has come up with a win-win financial strategy for the downturn. He is investing in lawsuits. Not in trip-and-fall cases, mind you, but in disputes that are far larger, more costly and potentially more lucrative, often pitting major corporations against each other. Mr. Fields is chief executive of Juridica Capital

Logic suggests that when the economy tanks, opportunities for in-house lawyers ought to improve. After all, legal disputes rise when the Dow takes a dive, and who better to tackle this growing workload than cost-efficient staff attorneys? Yet the nation’s in-house bar—however vital its role in hard times—is shrinking at a rate that tracks the

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber, who oversaw the biggest asset sale and the largest financing loan in court history, will show an exacting style of inquiry during General Motors Corp.’s reorganization, lawyers said. A U.S. judge in New York’s Southern District since 2000, Gerber’s experience in handling Chapter 11 cases such as Adelphia Communications Corp.

Welcome to ZZ’s world: a whirl of good weed, wild parties and wilder girls. In Beijing. This is no joke. The seat of China’s age-old civilization is as seamy on the inside as it looks imposing from the outside, judging from “China High,” a memoir scribbled under the nom de plume ZZ by a Shanghai-born,

Clifford Chance’s global head of litigation and dispute resolution has quit the firm in the wake of a practice overhaul that will see a number of associates laid off in the U.S. Mark Kirsch, who has held the global role since early last year, handed in his resignation on Thursday. He has also headed up

Twelve years ago, Sonia Sotomayor went before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on her nomination to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, only to face a surprise grilling. Republican senators quizzed Sotomayor about judicial activism and her rulings in cases about gays and gangs in prisons. They even asked if she had once

Nothing grows forever. For the first time since 1991, both average profits per partner and revenue per lawyer dipped last year among the Am Law 100 firms, the top-grossing firms in the nation. And, given the weakness in the market thus far in 2009, another decline seems likely this year. Those are the headlines from