Montana Mohair Pelt Traders Wary of Kagan Confirmation

Posted on August 16, 2010 by

GREAT FALLS, MONT. (LFA): The recent confirmation of Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court has raised many questions about how her judicial philosophy may alter the country’s legal landscape. Now, Montana’s mohair-pelt traders are awash in speculation as to ways their industry may be affected.

Kagan chose not to comment during her confirmation hearings on her specific beliefs regarding mohair-pelt trading, primarily because no questions regarding the topic had been posed to her. As she had not previously served as a judge, she has not written any judicial opinions that would accurately predict her stances on mohair-trading issues. However, that has not stopped the state’s pelt cultivators from conjecturing.

Mohair Fur Dressers

“Bleeding-heart judicial activists, like that Elena Kagan woman… they’re just itching to give constitutional rights to Angora goats,” said Dale Prattner, 72, of Loring, who has been in the mohair-pelt business since he was 13 years old. “All it’ll take is one crazy lawsuit and we’ll have all have to follow strict shearing government regulations, just like the Communists.” To date, no litigation regarding mohair pelts has ever been filed in federal court.

Other traders say they welcome the confirmation as a sign that fair competition in the mohair market is right around the corner.

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Midwest Law Firms Merge

Posted on August 13, 2010 by

These days, it’s an all-too-frequent occurrence: Two large regional law firms merge to attain efficiencies of scale. And when Froyheuser Block Cotler Yodie Steinshock Umbreen Port Rothower Hortimer Tenglen Farthley Smith announced it was joining forces with Sothensby LLP, the capability for synergy was obvious. For years, rumors swirled that Sothensby, a 70-person litigation boutique, was in the market for more names, and it was only a matter of time before one of the so-called “mega-named” firms swept into accommodate.

Merger of Black Holes

Many firms these days are seeking to add name depth in order to compete with firms that can have hundreds, up to thousands, of names, a group of legal outfits collectively referred to as “BigName.” Debra Parksner, Sothensby’s managing partner, was recent quoted as saying that she had been in the market to acquire a legal outfit containing regal surnames, only to find that demand far exceeded supply and such firms demanded exorbitant buy-outs prior to any partnership.

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Economy Watch: Nation’s Top Attorneys Being Hired as Secretaries

Posted on August 10, 2010 by

Can things be any worse?

If you’re a lawyer and have struck out while looking for that perfect counsel position, you are not the only one. A special LawsForAttorneys investigation has revealed that some of the country’s most able and accomplished lawyers have, within the past few years, accepted secretarial positions.

Secretariat

Take, for example, a certain Yale Law School graduate who was a Congressional legal counsel and the first female head of the Legal Service Corporation.  Also on her resume: the first female partner at Rose Law Firm, and did we mention that she was a U.S. Senator? After making an ill-advised choice to quit her job to run for a higher office — in an election that she lost — she found herself, like many other attorneys, looking for a job in an atrocious economy. But the legal world was astonished when the best position Hillary Clinton could find was as a secretary. Now, when all the foreign countries need to schedule a meeting with the United States, the once-great Hillary Clinton, a lowly secretary of state, writes them into the appointment book.

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14-Year-Old Impresses Law Firm With Document-Review Abilities

Posted on August 9, 2010 by

Until recently, Daren Maddox, a 14-year-old attending Jacobson Middle School in St. Louis, never considered a profession in the legal world.  For teenagers such as Daren, summertime is usually filled with outdoor activities, or, for the more ambitious, a first entry into the workforce.  Daren, in fact, had plans this summer to take his first paid job for minimum wage at Cleansies, the area laundromat.

Document

Earlier this summer, however, Daren accidentally submitted his resume through Craigslist to Barings & Whitmore, a top St. Louis law firm, for a document-review job.  “The posting said I’d have to scan lots of incoming documents,” said Daren. “I thought I was applying to work in the mail room.” After e-mailing in his short resume on a Saturday evening, Daren was surprised to receive an offer Sunday night to start work the very next morning.

“We were in an intense time crunch.  Our firm needed to review millions of documents in a very short time,” said Kenneth Barings, managing partner of the firm. Considering Daren was on summer vacation until September, the immediate start date worked perfectly.

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Cash For Partners Program Kickstarts Flailing Legal Economy

Posted on August 4, 2010 by

Chances are, if you hire lawyers, you’re more than curious about how to take advantage of the new “Cash For Partners” scrappage program that was included in the latest round of federal bailouts. If so, you’ve been missing out so far: Designed to inject consumer interest into the failing legal services industry, Cash For Partners has been a huge success. With an Aug. 31 deadline approaching, however, you’ll need to know how to take advantage of this lucrative opportunity. We’ll walk you through the basics and get you primed to trade in your aging lawyer for a newer, sleeker, time-efficient model.

Partner

Officially known as the Partner Allowance Rebate System of 2010 (PARS), the legislation has already been credited with the hiring of more than 50,000 graduating law students and newly minted attorneys. In a time when many wondered if the U.S. legal system could no longer compete against cheap arbitration firms and foreign doc-review factories, Cash For Partners has helped make a law degree profitable once again.

Here’s the gist of the program: Clients receive up to a $125,000 credit toward legal services when they fire an attorney that is 65 years or older and replace their counsel with a first-year associate. Aging lawyers are often time guzzlers, polluting the corporate environment with their golfing and yachting even as the economy collapses around them. Meanwhile, newer lawyers are more attractive, better at managing precious time resources, and educated right here in the U.S.A. Any incentive to boost graduate hiring would not only benefit consumers, but also the national legal market in general.

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BARBRI To Offer Bar Review Lecture Videos in 3D

Posted on August 2, 2010 by

CHICAGO (LFA) — Staying a step ahead in the increasingly competitive market for bar-review services, BARBRI announced today that its new video bar-review lectures will utilize 3D technology.

Attorneys

“BAR/BRI has always combined legal education with a touch of entertainment,” said the company’s CEO, Jacob Bruck. “With new eye-popping 3d technology, professors will literally step off the television screen to talk at length about the minutiae of state statutes.”

With the aid of special viewing glasses, students will experience lectures in which both the teacher and podium appear to have depth. Those who have participated in trial runs reported that the experience was remarkably lifelike.

“It felt like I was really listening to a live lecture in person,” said Kyle Meckle, a third-year student at Washington Law. “As a result, I retained much more of the information that the teacher discussed.”

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InstaClassAction(TM): New class action iPhone application released

Posted on July 29, 2010 by

Nowadays, it seems there is an iPhone application for everything. Most serve useful purposes, whether it’s showcasing the day’s news headlines or tomorrow’s weather forecast.  But as many such programs have came into being during the recent iPhone-app explosion, they pale in number compared to the glut of frivolous lawsuits paraded before our courts each day. Now, just a single new iPhone app could spur an even greater surge of work for the litigation-minded.

The InstaClassAction app eliminates unnecessary litigation paperwork.

Marrying the interests of iPhone users and those of class-action lawyers, the recently released InstaClassAction(TM) touts itself as the world’s first phone application that enables litigation to go “viral.” With just the simple touch to an icon on their iPhone screen, users can, automatically and instantly, join almost any class-action lawsuit in the nation. Potential plaintiffs choose from one of three categories of class-action lawsuits: active, pending, or “dream,” a category comprised of class-action ideas that have been uploaded by other users.

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