Attorneys

Within minutes of the first reports of Michael Jackson's cardiac arrest, the TV trucks and platoons of reporters had moved into place outside Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Cellphones flashing and glances darting, fretful news-hounds lacked only one thing that afternoon eight days ago: a single news source capable of filling the desperate information vacuum. Then Brian Oxman arrived. He delivered quote after emotive quote. He worked his cellphone. He held reporters' hands.

Emeka Orjiakor spent his first six months as a real estate lawyer in a sleek glass-and-steel downtown high-rise. Now he's feeling more down to earth in the humble offices of a public-service practice, helping the poor fight foreclosure and eviction. Orjiakor, an associate at Sidley Austin LLP since September, is on loan -- at a substantial pay cut -- to the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice through a program designed to retain young talent whose jobs are disappearing in the recession.

In the sweltering hub of Nicaragua's once-thriving banana industry, Juan Dominguez saw an opportunity. He arrived in Chinandega in 2002, shortly after watching a CNN report about men claiming they had become sterile from exposure to DBCP, a pesticide used on banana plantations in the 1970s. Until then, Dominguez was best known as the mustachioed personal injury lawyer pictured on the backs of Los Angeles buses and had no experience in international law.

Legal aid lawyer Louis Rafti was leading a group of law students on a tour of skid row when he saw it in the corner of a homeless shelter. The cot. The very one, he could swear it was, that he had slept on during his last night on the row a few years before. Rafti froze. He didn't say a word, but a sense of wonder overwhelmed him. Wonder that he did not have a crack pipe in his hand. Or a needle in his arm. That he had a home, a job, a life.

A lawsuit filed in federal court last week alleges that a company that purports to offer legal services to low-income people nationwide instead preys on them. According to the suit filed in Denver, the victims had asked for assistance from Legal Aid National Services of Aurora, Colo. -- or one of a dozen related entities -- thinking that they were dealing with a legitimate provider of services for low-income persons.

Civil rights groups filed a petition in federal court Thursday seeking a restraining order against immigration officials who allegedly blocked workers detained in a raid at a Van Nuys manufacturing plant from consulting with their attorneys.

Insurance lawyer David Grais has been poring over equations in finance books to get up to speed on his new specialty: lawsuits stemming from the sub-prime mortgage debacle. With his traditional insurance practice slowing down, the 55-year-old partner at a small New York firm began segueing into sub-prime in June, after a friend predicted at lunch that it would become the next legal blockbuster. "This whole area is a new dawn" for lawyers, Grais said. First came the sub-prime mortgage boom.

The owner of a celebrity jet service who secretly videotaped Michael Jackson talking with his lawyers while the singer flew from Las Vegas to Santa Barbara to turn himself in to face child molestation charges in 2003 was ordered to pay $20.25 million to the pop star's attorneys. The order by Los Angeles County Superior Judge Soussan G. Bruguera, made public Monday, followed a two-week bench trial held in January 2007.

Two local immigration attorneys were sentenced Monday for filing false employment visa applications for foreign nationals, including more than a dozen who worked at their San Fernando Valley law firm. Daniel E. Korenberg, 58, of Encino, a founder and senior partner at ASK Law Group in Sherman Oaks, was sentenced to 24 months in federal prison and three years' probation, including six months in home detention with electronic monitoring, authorities said.