Bloomberg Law is reporting that a New York real estate lawyer was suspended for four months and ordered to undergo up to one year of counseling for aggressive litigation techniques.

Adam L. Bailey drew the sanction because he failed to apologize for his actions and because he had twice previously been admonished by the state attorney grievance committee for “excessively aggressive behavior while representing a client.”

Bailey’s conduct violated several state professional conduct rules, including threatening criminal charges solely to obtain an advantage in a civil matter and conduct that adversely reflects on counsel’s fitness as a lawyer, the court said.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

The term “net royalty acre” is used by mineral and royalty buyers to price a mineral or royalty interest that is subject to an oil and gas lease. It is related to, but different from, a “net mineral acre,” explains John McFarland of Graves, Dougherty, Hearon & Moody in the firm’s Oil and Gas Lawyer Blog.

“Mineral buyers often make offers in terms of dollars per net royalty acre. If the recipient of the offer does not know for sure what she owns, it can be difficult to evaluate the offer,” he writes.

In the article, McFarland explains the difference between the two terms and provides formulas that can be used to calculate each one.

Read the article.

Corporate energy lawyer Jimmy Vallee has joined Winston & Strawn LLP‘s Houston office.

Vallee joins Winston from Paul Hastings where he was a partner in the Corporate Department. He has advised clients in more than $100 billion worth of global energy transactions, Winston & Strawn said in a release.

Vallee’s practice focuses on mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, joint ventures, and corporate governance matters, primarily for energy companies, investment banks, and investors involved in the oil and gas exploration and production, midstream, and oil field services industries. His clients include public and private corporations, master limited partnerships (MLPs), sovereign wealth funds, and private equity funds.

Vallee is a frequent speaker on mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, MLPs, energy regulation and transactions, and securities law. He is also the author of the 2017 Amazon best-seller “Giant Shifts: Energy Trends Reshaping America’s Future.”

He earned his law degree from the Texas Tech University School of Law and is a graduate of Lamar University.

Jim Loveless has joined Orsinger, Nelson, Downing & Anderson, LLP, opening the firm’s Fort Worth office.

In a release, the firm said Loveless, a fourth-generation Texan from Fort Worth, has been board certified in family law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization for 39 years. He has been recognized on the The Best Lawyers in America list since 1987 and the Texas Super Lawyers list since 2003.

Loveless is former president of the Texas Academy of Family Law Specialists, a Fellow – one of only 318 U.S. members – with the International Academy of Family Lawyers, and an emeritus member in the invitation-only group of 100 attorneys with the American College of Family Trial Lawyers. He is a graduate of South Texas College of Law and Texas Tech University.

Amy Boardman Hunt of Muse Communications, writing in the company’s blog, provides an overview of search engine optimization, or SEO, as it relates to the marketing of law firms.

She turned to Sarah Hadden of Words and Pictures Marketing for some expert advice.

Hadden answers questions such as: How does SEO work? What common SEO mistakes do you see people make? What’s your favorite piece of SEO advice? How do SEO concepts apply to clients who get their business through referrals, rather than organic searches? What are your favorite SEO tools? If content is so important, what’s the game plan for making sure it does the job? And, Why is SEO expensive?

Read the article.

Ira Meislik of Meislik & Meislik, writing in the firm’s Ruminations real estate law blog, examines the use of subrogation clauses in real estate leases in relation to insurance policies.

He states that the term “waiver of subrogation” is a misnomer when it comes to a lease provision.

“It is the insurance policy where the carrier waives its subrogation right. It isn’t the lease that waives an insurance company’s subrogation right. What the lease needs to do is waive claims. Secondarily, but importantly, a lease needs to require each party to have insurance policies that aren’t invalidated by such a waiver of claims,” he explains.

Read the article.

Parties to a construction project can have a better agreement by addressing six topics described in a post in The Lien Zone blog.

Alex Barthet, author of the post, advises contract drafters to define the scope of the work that will be provided, list all the exclusions, explain the change order process, verify the schedule, refine the dispute resolution procedure, and make sure the winner gets legal fees.

Read the article.

Many considerations go into drafting appropriate audit rights, including the types of services that the customer is receiving, and the industry in which the customer’s business operates, explain Anastasia Dergacheva and Katherine B. O’Keefe in Morgan Lewis Tech & Sourcing blog.

“In many cases, the customer is the auditing party and the service provider is the audited party, but there are situations where the roles will be reversed,” they write.

The article provides an overview of several key issues to consider when drafting audit rights for services agreements.

Read the article.

The law firm Polsinelli recently defeated a motion to dismiss a client’s judicial review of an arbitration award, successfully arguing that adopted arbitration rules that waive appellate rights do not waive a party’s right to judicial review under the Federal Arbitration Act.

A post on the firm’s website introduced the case:

The case presented a conflict between the parties’ contractually-adopted arbitration rules and an individual party’s statutory rights under the FAA. Although ultimately successful, the case served as an important reminder for parties to thoroughly review contractual arbitration provisions – and any procedural rules referenced therein – before agreeing to them.

Read the article.

Cleveland-based BigLaw firm Jones Day, which has struggled with its reputation in the past as a diverse and inclusive workplace, is being sued for gender, pregnancy and maternity discrimination to the tune of more than $200 million, reports Crain’s Cleveland Business.

“The firm’s admitted practice of pay confidentiality, combined with the “nearly absolute control” exercised by Jones Day’s Managing Partner Steve Brogan, has resulted in an opaque review system that allows bias and retaliation to run unchecked, Nilab Tolton, Andrea Mazingo, and four Jane Does say in their April 3 complaint,” writes Crain’s Jeremy Nobile.

“Jones Days’s fraternity culture presents female attorneys at Jones Day with an unpalatable choice: participate in a culture that is at best inhospitable to women and at worst openly misogynistic or forego any hope of success at the Firm,” the lawsuit states.

Read the Crain’s article.

Lawyers at Pond Lehocky Stern Giordano had a beef with a Philadelphia workers compensation judge who ruled against them, so they told a member of the governor’s staff that the judge was romantically involved with a local workers’ comp lawyer.

Three months later, Judge Andrea McCormick was out of a job, reports The Inquirer of Philadelphia.

“State investigators say they responded to Pond Lehocky’s complaint by pulling eight years of McCormick emails and determined that she had violated multiple policies: using her work computer to make online purchases and exchange personal photos, and sharing court decisions before they were officially posted online, among other alleged offenses,” writes the Inquirer‘s William Bender.

“We never asked for anyone to be terminated,” Pond Lehocky partner David Stern said in an email.

Read the Inquirer article.

An Ohio probate judge committed misconduct by hearing multiple cases in which he was previously the attorney of record and failing to notify clients after his judicial appointment that he was terminating his representation, the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled.

Bloomberg Law reports that Judge Robert Nathaniel Rusu Jr. heard about 170 cases where he had previously served as the attorney of record, according to the court’s findings.

In most of the cases, Rusu signed or stamped a deputy clerk’s form letters. In other cases, Rusu waived reporting requirements, approved settlement distributions, and appointed fiduciaries.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

NAVEX Global has published the 2019 Ethics & Compliance Hotline Benchmark Report and made it available for downloading at no charge.

“One simple act of documenting open-door conversations and emails allows you to capture and address employee concerns more effectively,” the company says on its website.

The report includes statistics on:

• Case Closure Times
• Harassment Reporting Trends
• Anonymous Reporting Statistics
• % of Reports Substantiated

Download the report.

Fears Nachawati trial lawyer Matthew McCarley will be featured in an upcoming episode of the true crime show “In Ice Cold Blood,” detailing the murder-for-hire of a 69-year-old woman who was killed for her $5 million life insurance policies.

In 2014, Anita Fox was found fatally stabbed inside a Colleyville house where she worked as a housekeeper, according to a recent post by Androvett Legal Media & Marketing. Bernard “Little Joe” Gorman and his father, Bernard “Big Joe” Gorman, were arrested for the murder, with the police investigation uncovering a complex insurance fraud scheme involving Ms. Fox’s daughter and son-in-law, Virginia and Mark Buckland.

The investigation revealed that over the course of several years, the Bucklands had taken out a series of life insurance policies on Fox, naming themselves as sole beneficiaries. Following the recommendation of an insurance agent, the couple brought in the Gormans, members of a nomadic ethnic clan known as Irish Travellers, as third-party investors. Looking for immediate returns, the pair allegedly stalked and murdered Fox, who has been identified as a member of the English Travellers, another nomadic ethnic group, according to the Androvett post.

Represented by McCarley and Brice Burris of Fears Nachawati, Fox’s son and estate executor, Al Fox III, filed suit to prevent the Bucklands from profiting from the insurance policies. Though the couple has never been charged criminally in the murder, a jury in the 2018 civil case found that they were instrumental in crafting the insurance scheme that led to Fox’s death. Jurors awarded her son $166 million.

“Five years after her death, the scheme is still shocking in its sheer audacity,” said McCarley. “They have not faced criminal charges for their role in the murder, but the one thing that Mr. Fox can take comfort in is knowing that his sister and brother-in-law will never profit financially from his mother’s death.”

Hosted by actor and rapper Ice-T, “In Ice Cold Blood” is broadcast on the Oxygen Network. The episode “Gypsy Grandma” will premiere at 7 p.m. CDT April 8.

Rebecca Rettig has joined FisherBroyles, LLP, as a partner in the firm’s New York office. Rettig is a partner in the firm’s Litigation department, as well as a member of the Fintech and Blockchain practice group.

In a release, the firm said Rettig is the latest attorney to join FisherBroyles from Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, where she practiced for more than eight years.

Rettig’s litigation practice involves securities, shareholder derivative, general commercial, contract disputes, copyright and trademark disputes, employment disputes, insurance coverage, and auditor and accountant liability. She has served as trial counsel in cases and arbitrations around the country, and has represented Fortune 100 companies, large financial institutions, major airlines, pharmaceutical companies, technology companies, private equity funds, and hedge funds, as well as startups and emerging companies.

In the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, Rettig represents and advises clients in matters relating to U.S. regulations, intellectual property, trade secrets and contracts, as well as offering and trading practices. Her work in this area also involves litigation, arbitration, and other forms of dispute resolution. Rettig is a frequent speaker on legal and regulatory matters relating to blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Recognized this year by Crain’s New York Business as one of the top 100 women lawyers in New York City, Rettig received her J.D. from Columbia Law School, her Master of Science from the London School of Economics, and her Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University.

Jared C. Sherman has joined Farrell Fritz in its Uniondale office as a corporate associate.

Sherman is a New York City resident. Prior to joining Farrell Fritz, he was an associate at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, both in New York, NY.

He earned his J.D., cum laude, from the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, and his B.A. from State University of New York, University at Albany. He is admitted to the New York bar.

Flexera will present a complimentary webinar discussing the role of in-house and external counsel in managing open source software in the business environment.

The event will be Thursday, April 18, 2019, at 9 a.m. PT / 11 a.m. CT / 12 noon ET.

“Having some best practice guidelines that more clearly define your role and help you guide companies through license compliance and risk management only reinforces and bolsters one of your most important responsibilities as a legal advisor,” the company says in its invitation.

Speakers will be Amy Chun, partner in Knobbe Martens, and Marty Mellican, vice president and associate general counsel of Flexera.

Register for the webinar.

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison took a hit on social media in December when a partnership promotion photo appeared to show just one woman and 11 white men.

The ABA Journal points out that the law firm later said the partnership class actually included one woman, one Latino and one LGBTQ partner, making it 25% diverse.

Now a new report released by the nonprofit group Lawyers of Color shows Paul Weiss with the highest percentage of black lawyers out of 400 law firms surveyed. The report says 8.27 percent of Paul Weiss’ lawyers are black. The average of black lawyers across the 400 firms surveyed was 3.2 percent.

Read the ABA Journal article.

Bloomberg Law is reporting that a Northern California tax attorney was sentenced April 1 to three years in federal prison for stealing $1.2 million in refunds fraudulently obtained on behalf of his NFL player client.

Hiram M. Martin was charged with falsifying returns for Antrel Rolle, a former Pro Bowl NFL safety who played for the Arizona Cardinals, New York Giants, and Chicago Bears. Martin reportedly filed tax documents in Rolle’s name without his permission, and forged his client’s signature, writes Bloomberg’s David McAfee.

Prosecutors said Martin also worked to keep the IRS from contacting Rolle and to keep Rolle from contacting the IRS when a news story ran about the athlete’s tax liabilities.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

The former general counsel for the South Florida Hospital District has sued the district and two of its board members, claiming they fired her in retaliation for trying to stop them from violating the law, reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Reporter Cindy Krischer Goodman of the Sun-Sentinel explains:

Kimarie Stratos claims the district’s board of commissioners wrongly fired her in September after eight years on the job. In her lawsuit, she alleges her termination happened in retaliation for repeatedly reporting Sunshine Act violations, as well as objections to releasing confidential medical information, wasting of public funds, and other actions by board members. By firing her, she alleges the district has violated the Florida Whistle Blowers Act.

Read the Sun-Sentinel article.