A leading City law firm has challenged its rivals to donate hundreds of thousands of pounds that they earn as interest on client accounts to cash-strapped legal aid centres. Allen & Overy, one of the “magic circle” of top five firms, is to give voluntary legal agencies all the extra interest retained from clients’ cash […]
When the founders of King & Wood — now the largest law firm in the People’s Republic of China — chose that name 11 years ago, it wasn’t about ego. “Actually, we do not have a Mr. King and a Mr. Wood,” says Wei Zhang, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based partner in the firm. Instead, the
The Securities Commission and former Tranz Rail chief financial officer Mark Bloomer have settled the landmark insider trading action launched last year by the sharemarket watchdog. Bloomer has not admitted liability, but has agreed to pay $156,000 and, if requested by the commission, make himself available as a witness in the continuing litigation. The Australia-based
A Russian court today declared Mikhail Khodorkovsky guilty of charges including fraud and tax evasion and sentenced the founder of Yukos, the former oil giant, to nine years in prison. The verdict and sentence came in the twelfth day of the laborious verdict-reading process in the most closely watched trial of post-Soviet Russia. Mr Khodorkovsky
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
Baker & McKenzie and DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary are fighting it out to take control of Coudert Brothers. Coudert’s long-established Chinese practice remains the jewel in a depleted crown but the two firms are also keen on the firm’s Russian practice and the corporate practice in its New York headquarters. DLA Piper refused to
Federal prosecutors here have charged a retired Palm Springs, Calif., lawyer with taking kickbacks from a prominent New York law firm in exchange for serving as plaintiff in dozens of class-action and shareholder lawsuits that earned the firm $44 million over 20 years. The indictment against 78-year-old Seymour M. Lazar, unsealed Thursday, stems from a
Merck & Co. should have told doctors and consumers “the good, the bad and the ugly” about Vioxx long before pulling it from the market last year, a plaintiff’s attorney said Wednesday in closing arguments in the nation’s first civil trial involving the once-popular painkiller. Mark Lanier, who represents the widow of a Texas man
ET Merck & Co. will consider settling a limited number of lawsuits over its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx, a spokesman said Friday. The drug’s link to heart attacks and strokes has spawned thousands of lawsuits and a $253 million jury verdict in Texas. As recently as Wednesday, company lawyers were still saying they planned to fight
At his confirmation hearings this week, Judge John G. Roberts Jr. will be asked to respond to questions about documents he wrote as a young government lawyer. The questions are sure to be sharp, but at least he can take solace in the fact that his mentor, and the man whom he seeks to replace,
