Law Firms

What financially strapped homeowner wouldn't want to join other troubled owners in a last-ditch effort to save their homes from foreclosure? But beware of unsolicited mailings inviting your participation in a "mass joinder" lawsuit as a way to do so. Mass joinders can be just another way to separate desperate borrowers from their money — as much as $5,000 or more in upfront fees, according to the St. Louis Better Business Bureau. The bureau warned earlier this year that the mailings are the latest twist in scams that promise to force lenders to modify the loans of borrowers who no longer can afford their house payments or who owe more than their homes are worth.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Dozens of law graduates across the nation have joined class-action lawsuits alleging that law schools lured them in with misleading reports of their graduates' success. Instead of working in the law, some of the graduates were toiling at hourly jobs in department stores and restaurants and struggling to pay back more than $100,000 in loans used to finance their education. Others were in temporary or part-time legal positions. Michael D. Lieberman decided to enroll at Southwestern Law School after reading that 97% of its graduates were employed within nine months.

Barely a year after Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.'s death, major changes at his Los Angeles-based law firm have startled and angered many in the city's black community. Though Cochran became internationally famous for his successful defense of O.J. Simpson on murder charges in 1995, he previously made his reputation in legal circles and in the black community for taking on police abuse and civil rights cases.

Unless its celebrity customers such as teen idol Justin Bieber and actor Leonardo DiCaprio want to put a lot of their own cash into the business, it looks like hybrid sports car company Fisker Automotive is nearing the end of the road. Fisker has hired Kirkland & Ellis, a major bankruptcy law firm, to review the company's options while it continues to seek investment partners. “We are not commenting at this stage in the game,” said Roger Ormisher, a Fisker spokesman. “There are too many moving factors and a number of different directions this can go.” The automaker has been working for months to raise $500 million so it could restart production of the Karma, its only model, which is built in Finland.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Dozens of law graduates across the nation have joined class-action lawsuits alleging that law schools lured them in with misleading reports of their graduates' success. Instead of working in the law, some of the graduates were toiling at hourly jobs in department stores and restaurants and struggling to pay back more than $100,000 in loans used to finance their education. Others were in temporary or part-time legal positions. Michael D. Lieberman decided to enroll at Southwestern Law School after reading that 97% of its graduates were employed within nine months.

Two large law firms have agreed to long-term office leases - one in downtown Los Angeles and one in Century City. Greenberg Traurig will move from Santa Monica to Century City in April and Alston & Bird has agreed to a long-term lease in a skyscraper on downtown's Bunker Hill. Miami-based Greenberg Traurig will rent 70,000 square feet in four floors including the penthouse at 1840 Century Park East, according to real estate brokerage CBRE Group Inc. The 19 th floor penthouse will have a “sky lobby” and conference center that will hold approximately 100 people, said Matt Gorson, president of the law firm.

Storied law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf - which once advised the Los Angeles Dodgers on their restructuring - is itself filing for Chapter 11 protection as it prepares to liquidate. It's a far fall for the New York firm, which in its heyday employed a retinue of more than a thousand attorneys, commanded massive salaries for partners and kept offices in Abu Dhabi, Moscow, Hong Kong and elsewhere. Now, weighed down by debt, Dewey & LeBoeuf is looking to “preserve assets and wind down its business.” The company hopes to keep a skeleton crew of about 90 employees to help over the next few months (there's already been a recent exodus of 160 of the firm's 300 partners)

The early White House story line on Sonia Sotomayor emphasizes her pragmatism and a cautious, measured approach to the law developed over a years-long climb from exceedingly modest circumstances to becoming the first Latino nominee to the Supreme Court. But an incident in the fall of 1978 illustrates another side of Sotomayor. Then a daring and assertive Yale University law student, she took a stand against a white-shoe Washington law firm that could have jeopardized her career.

The nation's biggest law firms had been making impressive strides in hiring women, people of color and those with disabilities ? until the recession dried up legal spending and wiped out more than 5,800 lawyers' jobs. After two years of layoffs and hiring deferrals, the proportions of women and minorities at major law firms dropped in 2010 for the first time since industry analysts began collecting demographic hiring data in the 1990s. The statistical setbacks have been marginal ?

For top law school students, summer-internship programs at major law firms have helped open the golden door to lucrative full-time employment. But at some firms, that door is starting to swing shut. Many prominent law firms report substantially smaller internship programs this summer, as firms cope with the downturn in the legal marketplace and clients' demands that only seasoned lawyers be assigned to their matters. What's more, firms are shortening their programs and paying summer associates less.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's revolving door is spinning as feverishly as ever. Lawyers who leave the SEC for private law firms often immediately begin lobbying on behalf of their new corporate clients, frequently trying to weaken agency regulations or proposed reforms, according to a new report. The issue of top officials leaving the agency has been a concern for years in public-advocacy circles. It is common for young lawyers to put in a few years at the SEC or other government agencies before leaving for far more lucrative jobs in private industry or with high-powered law firms.

Alan Jackson, a veteran Los Angeles County prosecutor whose bid to become district attorney ended in defeat in November, is leaving the district attorney's office to join a private, downtown firm that practices civil law. Jackson, 47, said his last day in the office he sought to lead will be Feb. 15. He will pursue a career as a civil litigator with Palmer, Lombardi and Donohue, whose three partners were political supporters of his election campaign....

The gig: Hal Rosner is a partner at San Diego's Rosner, Barry & Babbitt, one of the largest law firms in the country specializing entirely in consumer auto fraud cases. Founded by Rosner in 1985, the firm employs 10 full-time attorneys and reviews 200 to 400 potential cases a month, taking on about 10% of them. To date, Rosner has handled more than 1,000 auto fraud cases in the Golden State, winning millions of dollars for his clients. It has won him begrudging respect from the auto industry; last year the head of the California New Car Dealers Assn.

We all know what corporate law firms are for, right? To represent their clients' interest fairly and professionally, of course. To obfuscate, obstruct, delay, misdirect - sometimes that too. So the saga of JPMorgan Ventures Energy Corp. and a slick little two-step it engaged in with its two law firms to fend off the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission bears exceptional interest, not least because its outcome may hint at a new approach to enforcement by that long-overmatched agency.

As schematic and derivative as it is, as invested in piling on the feel-good moments past the point even of suspended disbelief, there is something quite likable about "Made in Jersey," a light new legal drama - "dramette," if you will - that premieres Friday on CBS. Created by Dana Calvo (a former writer on "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and a former reporter for this paper), it stars Janet Montgomery as Martina Garretti, a scrappy, street-smart, New Jersey-bred attorney making her way in a high-powered Manhattan law firm.

One after another, people stepped before the Costa Mesa City Council to decry the blight and lawlessness on tiny Ford Road -- prostitutes, thieves, home invaders. What the city needs, they pleaded, is more cops. Councilman Jim Righeimer, a GOP activist and an architect of the city's controversial plan to radically slash its workforce, perceived the parade of concerned citizens as the pawns of a police union and its law firm, with its statewide reputation for bare-knuckle tactics.

Sy Nazif's new workplace is not your Wilshire Boulevard law firm. The pinstriped suit he wears to court mostly lives on a hanger in an office lacking adornment, unless you consider the helmet, saddlebag and leather jacket stacked on a filing cabinet to be installation art. The Canoga Park firm's seven lawyers prowl their warren of cluttered rooms in jeans and sport shoes, few showing up much before noon to cater to a clientele with few morning persons.

Former Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo began a new career Wednesday, joining the Los Angeles law offices of Goodwin Procter LLP. Delgadillo, who left office in June, is joining the firm's 400-lawyer litigation department and also will focus on its public-private partnership work throughout California. Although Delgadillo will be a full-time lawyer, the firm negotiated an arrangement that will allow him to devote more time to his possible run for state attorney general.

WASHINGTON - Hard economic times have helped push millions of Americans deeply into debt, plunging many into a dark world filled with relentless collection agents, aggressive lawyers and companies that profit mightily if they can get people to pay up. Aided by outdated laws and lax oversight, debt collection has become a $12-billion-a-year business as people increasingly have fallen behind on their bills for credit cards, student loans, hospital stays...

Question: My homeowners association has contracted with the same attorney firm on retainer for more than 25 years. The attorney also receives 40% of any money collected from dues and fines, and the association is demanding more in settlements to recoup its attorney expenses. In response to questions of this practice at a board meeting, the president said that "we have no choice in this economy due to the high number of delinquencies but to use the attorney's services, and all HOAs are doing this now. " Many of my longtime neighbors are walking away from their homes because they can't meet these higher re-payment demands by the board.