Law Firms

A mid-market private equity fund with £255 million to spend has become the first investment house to say it is actively targeting the legal sector ahead of radical changes that will allow law firms to take on outside investment for the first time. Lyceum Capital — whose previous investments include Asquith Nurseries and Southern Cross, […]

An activist lawyer with close ties to a jailed Chinese dissident is missing, a rights group said Friday. Teng Biao did not return home from his Beijing office on Thursday, despite telling his wife he would be back around 8:30 p.m., the Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group said on its Web site.

The legend of Richard Scruggs is by now well-known. His fame took root in the 1990s, when he won settlements for shipyard workers in Pascagoula, Miss., who had been exposed to asbestos. It blossomed in 1998, when the former Navy fighter pilot pressured tobacco companies to agree to a $248 billion settlement. And, in recent

Fidelity Investments Vice Chairman Peter Lynch, former head trader Scott DeSano and 11 employees accepted more than $1.6 million worth of gifts from brokers jockeying to trade for the world’s largest mutual-fund company, U.S. regulators said. Fidelity will pay $8 million to settle the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s claims, the agency said yesterday in

Enough people have signed on to Merck & Co.’s pending $4.85 billion Vioxx settlement to keep the deal moving forward, the drug maker announced. The company said more than 44,000 of the 47,000 claimants who registered injuries eligible for compensation have submitted some or all of the documentation required to seek a share of the

Conrad Black, the former newspaper magnate who lived lavishly, socialized with rich and powerful people on both sides of the Atlantic and gave up his Canadian citizenship to join British nobility, reported to the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex on Monday where he’ll be known as inmate No. 18330-424. Quickly, quietly and just over two hours

Mr. Voge, who heads the finance practice, can recite when each of the firm’s investment banking clients opened offices in the Middle East. And he knows how many law firms have established outposts there too: 20 since 2005. “This is the Silicon Valley, if you will, of the world,” Mr. Voge said. “It’s just beginning

Robert Frost once said: “A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.” Although obviously a quite cynical view of our country’s jury system, Frost’s statement confirms the reality that clients have opinions about lawyers and act on those opinions. Yet, for nearly 150 years, clients’ opinions about their lawyers

Britain’s efforts to deport terrorist suspects including the radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada were dealt a serious blow by the European Court of Human Rights yesterday. In a unanimous decision, the court in Strasbourg ruled against an attempt by Italy to return a Tunisian to his home country. The Italian authorities had sought to have

Iraq’s three-member Presidency Council has approved the execution of Ali Hassan Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein known as “Chemical Ali,” said a high-ranking Iraqi government official today who was not authorized to speak on the subject. The official said there was no date set for the hanging, which must be carried out within 30