Law Firms

The Supreme Court’s first case – Act versus MP Donna Awatere Huata – started chaotically yesterday with a shortage of seats leading to some reporters being barred from the opening stages of the historic first sitting. Oddly for a courtroom, the venue for the first real sitting of New Zealand’s replacement for Britain’s Privy Council […]

Britain’s biggest law firms continue to dominate the world in terms of revenue, despite growing competition from their American counterparts. Four of the top six firms in a definitive new analysis of the world’s leading 100 firms by revenue were British. They are Clifford Chance, which remained the world’s largest firm, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters,

The European Union (EU) Court of First Instance has upheld sanctions slapped by the European Commission against Microsoft Corporation, ordering the world’s largest software company to change business practices and reveal some trade secrets. The latest ruling by the Luxembourg-based court also forced Microsoft to take steps, including producing a version of Windows without its

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, leading a broad probe into insurance industry fraud and price-fixing, said Friday he intends to pursue criminal charges against executives as high as possible up the corporate ladder. Spitzer in an October lawsuit accused Marsh & McLennan & Cos., the world’s largest insurance broker, of rigging bids for insurance

Keker & Van Nest, a 49-lawyer firm based in San Francisco, won The American Lawyer’s first Litigation Boutique of the Year contest. Keker & Van Nest was cited for a series of litigation successes, including major cases in intellectual property, legal malpractice, and white-collar defense. In his report on the firm, senior reporter Paul Braverman

Lynne Stewart, an outspoken lawyer known for aggressively defending a long list of unpopular clients, has been convicted by a federal jury in Manhattan of aiding Islamic terrorism by smuggling messages out of jail from a terrorist client. . Stewart was convicted Thursday on all five counts of providing material aid to terrorism and of

A tiny upstart in the cigarette business threatens to topple a comfortable cartel engineered by big tobacco companies and their strange bedfellows, the state attorneys general. Big tobacco was supposed to come under harsh punishment for decades of deception when it acceded to a tort settlement seven years ago. Philip Morris, R.J.Reynolds, Lorillard and Brown

Franklin C. Brown is in. Once the top lawyer at Rite Aid Corp., Brown reported to prison last week to begin serving 10 years for the role he played in accounting fraud that forced the third-largest U.S. pharmacy chain to retroactively reduce earnings by $1.6 billion. And in the next few days, Bernard J. Ebbers

As the number of Vioxx-related cases mounts, Merck (MRK:NYSE – commentary – research) is discovering that some of its insurers don’t want to pay for the company’s defense against the lawsuits. Merck says it will fight the insurers’ efforts to reduce or eliminate coverage. Merck disclosed the insurance battle Friday after markets had closed. It

The Internal Revenue Service has collected more than $3.2 billion in back taxes, interest and penalties from participants in a single tax shelter, including $100 million from one taxpayer and $20 million each from 18 others, the agency said today. The total take for the agency from participants in the shelter is expected to top