Law Firms

Gary Dubin spent 19½ months in a California federal prison and returned to Hawaii in October 1996 to practice law. The state’s Office of Dis­ciplinary Counsel, in an extremely unusual decision concerning a matter of moral turpitude, determined that a finding of pro­fessional misconduct was “not warranted.” Later, even the U.S. Internal Revenue Service reversed […]

“Over the course of the summer, leaders at the country’s biggest law firms have come to an unpleasant realization: They’re about to employ more lawyers than they need,” writes the WLJ’s Ashby Jones. The credit-crunch, writes Jones, along with “a strange and rigid hiring process that has been entrenched for a long time,” have conspired

Toymaker Mattel has been awarded multi-million dollar damages in a copyright case against the maker of the popular Bratz dolls, MGA Entertainment. A California jury made the award after a court ruled that the creator of Bratz dolls, Carter Bryant, came up with the idea while he was working for Mattel. The payout is thought

The most widely watched ranking of U.S. law schools may move to stop an increasingly popular practice: schools gaming the system by channeling lower-scoring applicants into part-time programs that don’t count in the rankings. U.S. News & World Report is “seriously” considering reworking its ranking system to crack down on the practice, says Robert Morse,

Solo practitioner Ronald Henry Pierce of Mississippi will have to pay a $1.5 million verdict against him for having an affair with a client’s wife, the Mississippi Supreme Court has ruled. The court affirmed the verdict for intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract and alienation of affection in an Aug. 14 opinion (PDF),

A booking agent for a prostitution ring whose clients included former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer pleaded guilty on Monday to a conspiracy charge relating to prostitution. Tanya Hollander, 36, was one of four people charged with running the Emperors Club VIP, a high-priced prostitution ring broken up this year. She pleaded guilty to a

Since 2001, the legal industry has been characterized by double-digit profit growth, strong demand, solid productivity and controlled expense growth. That all started to change in the second half of 2007, and now, the first half of 2008 looks very different from the previous six years. In a trend that started last year, expense growth

Sen. Joe Biden, now a Democratic candidate for vice president, paid off a sizable amount of debt last month from the presidential campaign he ended in January. Among the bills paid were some from son Hunter Biden’s Washington law firm, Oldaker, Biden & Belair, which was owed $52,000 at the last filing, according to a