Legal Blog Watch

Legal Blog Watch

Lawyers Could See Record Payday An Iowa court is expected to rule today on whether to approve two attorneys' request for $75 million in fees and costs for a class action lawsuit they brought against Microsoft Corp. According to an Associated Press report, the award, if approved, would be a record for the state. The fee request comes from lawyers Roxanne Conlin of Des Moines and Richard M. Hagstrom of Minneapolis, who settled the case in April for $179.95 million, but not before three trips to the Iowa Supreme Court and some seven years of litigation. In their motion asking to the court to approve the fees, the lawyers say they are warranted by  "the complexity and difficulty of the case and the excellent result obtained." According to AP, eight Iowans have filed letters with the court opposing the fee request. "How in the name of all that is sacred can you even imagine that to be equitable?" one wrote. Another called the request "an obscene amount of money to pay to Roxanne Conlin for bothering the court with this witch hunt." Conlin points out that the request includes $8 million the attorneys have spent in costs and more than 117,000 hours of work over seven years. Meanwhile, Conlin and attorneys from Hagstrom's firm Zelle, Hofmann, Voelbel, Mason & Gette have already won approval of $48 million in attorney fees for a similar class action in Minnesota. And Hagstrom is asking for another $24 million in fees in a related lawsuit against Microsoft in Wisconsin. Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on August 31, 2007 at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) Honoring Lifetimes of Achievement For the fourth year running, I have failed to win one of The American Lawyer magazine's lifetime achievement awards. But that's OK: I've still got a few years left in me, and the magazine's editors have managed to find eight high-achieving lawyers who actually deserve the award. As announced yesterday, recipients of Am Law's fourth annual lifetime achievement awards are: James A. Baker III, Baker Botts, Houston. A former secretary of state and White House chief of staff, Baker's years of public service were bookended by stints as a partner at Am Law 100 firms. Despite his client commitments, he hasn't left the public sphere, most recently co-chairing the congressionally appointed Iraq Study Group. Thomas A. Gottschalk, Kirkland & Ellis, Washington, D.C. Gottschalk left K&E 13 years ago to become general counsel at General Motors Corp., where he set the in-house standard for promoting diversity and pro bono. He returned to his former firm after retiring from GM last year. Shirley M. Hufstedler, Morrison & Foerster, Los Angeles. A leader in the pioneer generation of women lawyers, she served as secretary of education under Jimmy Carter and for 11 years as a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. She and her husband, Seth, headed an elite litigation boutique known for its high-quality work and its willingness to take on difficult public interest cases. Nathaniel R. Jones, Blank Rome, Cincinnati. Jones was NAACP general counsel for a decade, beginning in 1969, taking several cases to the Supreme Court. President Carter named him to the 6th Circuit, where he served for 23 years. Ira M. Millstein, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, New York. Even his friends say that Millstein, one of the partners who built a small Manhattan shop into a global powerhouse, didn't invent corporate governance; he just keeps being asked to perfect it. Throughout his career, Millstein has served as one of New York's leading private citizens, coming to the aid of projects as diverse as restoring Central Park and redeveloping lower Manhattan. E. Barrett Prettyman Jr., Hogan & Hartson, Washington, D.C. A clerk to three Supreme Court justices and a leading appellate advocate in his own right, Prettyman also helped mentor a new generation of Supreme Court specialists, most notably John Roberts. Along the way, he was a pro bono stalwart, first president of the D.C. consolidated bar and a public servant, serving in the Kennedy Justice Department and as D.C.'s inspector general. Jerold D. Solovy and Thomas P. Sullivan, Jenner & Block, Chicago. Partners for decades, Solovy and Sullivan are cornerstones of Jenner's formidable litigation department and the firm's extraordinary pro bono record. Both have been at the forefront of a variety of criminal justice issues, ranging from promoting counsel for the indigent to arguing pro bono appeals to the U.S. and Illinois Supreme Courts. The honorees, said The American Lawyer editor-in-chief Aric Press, "have exemplified the legal profession's twin values of client service and public duty." They will be honored at an Oct. 24 dinner in New York City. Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on August 31, 2007 at 03:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) Rowe Today, Gone Tomorrow Today marks the last day of existence for the Chicago-based law firm Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. Tomorrow it becomes just Mayer Brown. The reason for condensing its name, according to this Aug. 23 announcement: "To build a stronger and more defined brand in a fiercely competitive market." The firm's current name, as Brenda Sapino Jeffreys reminds us at Tex Parte Blog, came to be in 2002, when the Windy City's Mayer, Brown & Platt merged with London's Rowe & Maw. With this move to a shorter and sweeter name, the firm joins a trend that is increasingly popular among law firms, as Martha Neil observes at the ABA Journal's Law News Now. And with the new name comes, of course, a new logo, in which a diamond, not an ampersand, separates Mayer and Brown. In that, Peter Lattman at the Wall St. Journal's Law Blog see a trend towards firms not only shortening their names but also adding typographical symbols. Unfortunately for Mayer Brown, the name change will do nothing to change the $2 billion lawsuit it faces for allegedly helping to mislead creditors and investors of commodities and futures broker Refco Inc. Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on August 31, 2007 at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) 6th Circuit Chides Lawyers on Law The case before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals questioned whether the state of Michigan could bar strippers from dancing bottomless. But in this Detroit Free Press report about the case, one sentence that stood out was this: "The judges also chided state lawyers for misapplying legal theories, relying on outdated law and inadequately explaining how the ban furthered state interests." That piqued my curiosity, so I pulled up the case, Hamilton's Bogarts Inc. v. Michigan, decided yesterday. As it turns out, that one paragraph from the Free Press sums up virtually the entire decision, which chastises the state's lawyers for the legal inadequacy of their case on three major points: The state "appears to confuse the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel." Even though the state's brief argued the former, the court "forgave" it and treated it as an argument for the latter, noting, "Latin is a dead language anyway." The state "relies almost entirely" on a 21st Amendment legal argument that, while once considered viable, the Supreme Court expressly disavowed a decade ago. Given this, the state's primary legal argument "is no longer correct." The state fails to address the most critical First Amendment issue, that of whether the regulations on nude dancing are content-based or content neutral. "We are left to guess about the governmental interest at stake ..., not to mention the critical question of which standard governs the case." The case is not over. The appeal to the 6th Circuit addressed only the lower court's refusal to enjoin enforcement of the nude-dancing ban pending litigation. The circuit court said the injunction should be granted and remanded the case for further proceedings, adding, "Hopefully the case will be litigated differently after remand." Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on August 31, 2007 at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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