With three new firms joining the top tier this year, more than 30 firms are now paying first-year associates $160,000, our salary survey shows.
Law firms across the United States are racing to hike the pay for first-year associates, according to our city-by-city survey of the country's top legal markets.
Many employment defense attorneys agree that wage-and-hour cases have taken up more and more of their time in recent years. Now, thanks to a report published by Seyfarth Shaw LLP, there is hard evidence to back up this speculation.
Class action settlements reached all-time highs in 2006, thanks to significant payments in mega-class action cases, especially in the financial services industry, according to a report published by Seyfarth Shaw LLP’s employment attorneys.
Intellectual property disputes resulted in judgments and settlements worth $3.4 billion in 2006, markedly down from the previous year, according to our annual survey.
The number of second requests in U.S. merger reviews dropped to just 1% in the fiscal year ended Sept. 31, despite a sharp rise in merger and acquisition activity, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The number of company bankruptcy filings dropped 20% in fiscal year 2006, the fifth straight year a decline was reported, according to statistics released Tuesday by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
Although the National Labor Relations Board settled some big cases and decreased its total number of backlogged cases this year, the board still reported a 6% decline in total decisions reached in the 2006 fiscal year.
Mortgage fraud has continued to escalate, reaching $1 billion in 2005, with Los Angeles at the top of the list as the city with highest incidence of suspicious activity, according to a new report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Despite growing fears that the United States may lose its edge in the worldwide tech race, the nation remains the global biotech powerhouse for the moment, according to a new study by the Milken Institute.
Employment-related litigation in federal courts has been on the decline since 2003, but a handful of firms have managed to grow their labor and employment practices through vastly different strategies.
An onslaught of litigation against the airline and health care industries has led to a large jump in antitrust class actions, our survey of court dockets shows.
With the entire airline industry entangled in a global probe into alleged price-fixing, some of the world's largest law firms have snapped up lucrative representations.
Routing the competition, Fish & Richardson was by far the most in-demand patent litigation firm last year, according to our survey of the 100 most frequently hired litigation practices in the United States.
Empowered by Capitol Hill and flush with cash, the Securities and Exchange Commission is continuing to widen its campaign against corporate fraud, with the latest numbers for 2005 showing the agency will again beat its record from the previous year. The trend is offset by a dramatic decrease in filings of private securities fraud lawsuits, which typically complement SEC investigations.
Recently, the Sixth Circuit and Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals each issued decisions on important intellectual property issues in bankruptcy: Dominic's Restaurant of Dayton Inc. v. Mantia and Sunbeam Products Inc. v. Chicago Am. Mfg. LLC, respectively, say Hugh McCullough and Brad Duncan of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.
In U.S. ex rel. Heineman-Guta v. Guidant Corp., a Massachusetts federal court recently found that a relator’s complaint was barred by the False Claims Act’s first-to-file requirement and dismissed the relator’s complaint, intensifying a developing divide among courts about the breadth of the FCA’s first-to-file rule, say attorneys with Ropes & Gray LLP.
To resolve two Foreign Corrupt Practices Act-related charges, Data Systems & Solutions LLC paid a criminal penalty of $8.82 million and entered into a two-year deferred prosecution agreement. There are several noteworthy aspects of the settlement, says Jacqueline Ferrand of Miller & Chevalier.
The Bankruptcy Court in the Jefferson County, Ala., Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy case recently issued a decision in The Bank of New York Mellon v. Jefferson County, siding with creditors by limiting the county's use of revenues generated by its sewer system. As a consequence, the court has advanced the legal argument that, in Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcies, bankruptcy courts should respect and protect a pledge of net special revenues, say attorneys with Fulbright & Jaworski LLP.
An amendment to Florida’s surplus lines law, the “Zota fix,” has largely succeeded in stabilizing Florida’ surplus lines market. It has also expressly created a new exposure for surplus lines insurers: liability for an insured’s attorneys fees and costs, say John Dearie and John David Dickenson of Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP.
Decisions by bankruptcy courts in the Second, Third, Fifth and Eleventh circuits have favored enforcement of subordination agreements that go beyond mere subordination of payment rights. Meanwhile, bankruptcy courts in the First, Fourth and Seventh circuits have reached a contrary conclusion. Creditors who are parties to subordination agreements that contain waivers of bankruptcy rights should approach bankruptcy with the unsettled state of the law in mind, says Eric Daucher of Chadbourne & Parke LLP.
While federal courts have treated the Robinson-Patman price discrimination law negatively in recent years, the Sixth Circuit's opinion in Williams v. Duke Energy strongly suggests that businesses need to continue to include Robinson-Patman Act issues in their business risk assessments of pricing strategies, say attorneys with Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC.
In “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” Tuco tells Blondie, “If you miss, you had better miss very well.” So it is with In re Clark, where the Fifth Circuit ruled that a reporter has constitutional standing to challenge a confidentiality order in a criminal case that restricts the speech of trial participants, but denied all relief in the case, says Joseph Larsen of Sedgwick LLP.
A likely unnoticed June 13, 2012, durable medical equipment and forfeiture indictment in Nashville signals the first of what could become a new model of future federal health care fraud prosecution, says Scott Newton of Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC.
The North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners is seeking review of the Federal Trade Commission's finding that the board was not entitled to protection from antitrust scrutiny under the state-action doctrine. The case could have wide-ranging implications for the future of antitrust enforcement, in cases that arguably implicate state conduct, say Ryan Marth and Scott Kranz of Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi LLP.