Law firm layoffs are running rampant, with Allen & Overy, DLA Piper, and Eversheds all confirming office closures, outsourcing to back offices or other overhauls affecting dozens of lawyers and staff, mainly in Europe. “As pricing pressure from clients continues, firms have become less tolerant of chronically underperforming lawyers, practice areas, and offices,” says Zeughauser Group consultant Kent Zimmermann.
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It looks like one for the record books. As of mid-January, the number of applicants for seats in American Bar Association-accredited law schools has fallen by 20 percent since last year. If the trend holds through the final months of the admission cycle, law schools could see a drop of 38 percent from a peak reached in 2010. A law school professor who has been tracking enrollment and economic trends says the ABA’s release last spring of detailed graduate employment statistics may have persuaded some would-be law students to reconsider.
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The D.C. Circuit has declared unconstitutional a series of recess appointments President Obama made to the National Labor Relations Board, setting up a potential government request that the U.S. Supreme Court weigh the scope of presidential appointment power. The ruling was a major blow to the Justice Department, which defended the appointments as a valid exercise of presidential authority.
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The nomination of Debevoise partner Mary Jo White as the next head of the Securities and Exchange Commission means the agency will continue with an aggressive approach to Wall Street enforcement, financial regulation attorneys say. As the first female U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, she became known for taking down white-collar criminals, terrorists and crime syndicate boss John Gotti. “You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo,” President Obama quipped at his announcement of her nomination. In an additional “get tough” message to Wall Street on Thursday, Obama renominated another former prosecutor, Richard Cordray, to continue to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Related stories: SEC Gets a Chair Who Knows Both Sides of Battlefield and Choice of White to Lead SEC Brings High Praise
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The nomination of Debevoise partner Mary Jo White as the next head of the Securities and Exchange Commission means the agency will continue with an aggressive approach to Wall Street enforcement, financial regulation attorneys say. As the first female U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, she became known for taking down white-collar criminals, terrorists and crime syndicate boss John Gotti. “You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo,” President Obama quipped at his announcement of her nomination. In an additional “get tough” message to Wall Street on Thursday, Obama renominated another former prosecutor, Richard Cordray, to continue to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Related stories: SEC Gets a Chair Who Knows Both Sides of Battlefield and Choice of White to Lead SEC Brings High Praise

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After achieving mixed results in its first suitable seating class action trial, Kmart is betting on new counsel to handle what could be a much larger battle. The head of Winston & Strawn’s San Francisco labor and employment group is off the case, along with two other partners, according to a court filing. A Paul Hastings partner whom Kmart retained on the eve of a bench trial will take over as head of its defense team.
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You drive your Segway scooter to the local bar. You drink. You get drunk. It gets to be last call, and perhaps the bar owner plays the song “Closing Time” (“You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here”) as he pushes you out the door. Can you drive your Segway home despite being drunk beyond the legal limit to operate a motor vehicle? In Minnesota, at least, the answer is … heck, yes! That issue was decided this week by the Minnesota Court of Appeals in the state’s case against Mark Greenman, who was rolling home on his Segway following a pool tournament at the Inn Kahoots bar last February. The Star Tribune reports that after Greenman veered into the road, police pulled him over (is that even the right phrase for a Segway stop?) and charged him with DWI after he blew a 0.19 on his breath test. Greenman said he was “incredulous” about being charged because this was not his first brush with Segway DWIs — he’d already “beaten an identical charge two years earlier,” the Star Tribune reports. The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the latest DWI charge against Greenman could not…

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President Barack Obama will nominate Mary Jo White, a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton and a former Southern District U.S. Attorney, as the next chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today, a White House official has confirmed. White, now a white-collar defense lawyer, has been at Debevoise since 2002. Her tenure in the U.S. Attorney’s Office was defined in part by high-profile terrorism cases.
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A former attorney with Wilmer Culter Pickering Hale and Dorr has filed a $5 million discrimination suit against the firm, in which she alleges that the firm retaliated against her taking leave to adopt a child. The complaint alleges discrimination “because of her age, sex and family responsibilities,” as well as for retaliation and wrongful discharge.
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