The number of Biglaw firms on Working Mother’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For climbed from two in 2018 to five this year, reports Above the Law.

Making a return appearance on the list this year are Arnold & Porter and Katten Muchin Rosenman.

Joining them on the list this year are:

• Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner
• Katten Muchin Rosenman
• Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman

Read the Above the Law article.

An Above the Law contributor takes a look at a Bureau of Labor Statistics report and finds that the estimated mean annual wage for lawyers is a respectable $144,230.

Jonathan Wolf points out that while $144,000 a year doesn’t even scratch the bottom of the Milbank/Simpson/Cravath scale, it’s still “more than enough to live a comfortable life and have a reasonable shot at paying off your student loan debt.”

He breaks down the numbers by median annual wage (lower than mean annual) and shows the range from the 10th percentile to the 75th percentile.

He also looks at judges’ wages, which tend to be lower than other attorneys’.

Read the Above the Law article.

St. Louis lawyer Chelsea Merta, who was found in contempt of court earlier this year, has been ordered to pay the Stange Law Firm more than $775,000 for copying thousands of client files a week before she resigned from the firm last year, reports the St. Louis P0st-Dispatch.

Tuesday’s order follows a July ruling that found Merta in contempt and ordered her to serve 48 hours in jail. The judge also required Merta to destroy all files in her possession or return them to the Stange Law Firm.

The order to pay $775,707 covers Stange Law Firm’s legal expenses toward months of investigating the case, a security firm’s forensic examination of Merta’s electronic devices and attorney fees, according to Post-Dispatch reporter Joel Currier.

Read the Post-Dispatch article.

Am ugly public fight inside the National Rifle Association has led to an exodus of high-level officials and warring accusations of financial impropriety. At the center of the fray is Brewer, a brash lawyer who has drawn ethics complaints and has a reputation for escalating disputes into pricey legal battles, according to a report in The Washington Post.

William Brewer III emerged as a top counselor to NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre and a victor — for now, at least — in a civil war that he helped set in motion and that is ripping apart the powerful gun lobby, write the Post‘s Carol D. Leonnig and Tom Hamburger.

They explain:

“Several NRA veterans accuse Brewer of instigating an almost Shakespearean feud to protect his bottom line and growing influence. According to internal board correspondence, his small law firm billed $24 million in fees in 13 months — leading top NRA board members to demand early this year that the organization stop paying until they could review the bills.”

Read the Post article.

For marketing a law practice with email campaigns, a well-maintained email distribution list could mean the difference between engaging or alienating your audience, writes Christina DiPinto of Muse Communications.

“Creating a strong distribution list requires a large investment of time at the front-end,” she explains. “But if you take the steps to create an organized list, it will allow you to get more creative and intentional with your email marketing. Plus, it shows your audience that you’re taking the time to send content that is meaningful to them.”

In her post, she offers some tricks of the trade, and a brief warning.

Read the article.

Above the Law is reporting that Morgan Lewis & Bockius will be offering voluntary buyout packages for all of its legal secretaries, across the country.

Senior editor Staci Zaretsky writes:

“Sources say that the firm’s separation package is extremely generous, and that those who take the deal will receive 2 weeks’ salary for each year of service, up to 52 weeks’ pay. Compared to the six-month cap we’ve seen at many Biglaw firms, longtime legal secretaries at Morgan Lewis could be walking away with a huge payday should they choose to leave.”

Read the Above the Law article.

A Fourth Circuit judge didn’t mince words Tuesday as he appeared unlikely to support allowing the government to continue to sift through thousands of emails confiscated in a raid on an unnamed Maryland law firm, reports Courthouse News Service.

Federal agents seized tens of thousands of electronic files during a raid earlier this year, and now the government and the law firm are at odds on what is privileged, writes CNS’ Brad Kutner.

On of the three judges hearing the case pushed back on the DOJ protocol that allowed the taint team to contact clients and ask for privilege waivers. Client lists are very much protected under attorney-client privilege, said U.S. Circuit Judge Robert King.

Read the Courthouse News Service article.

Bloomberg Law reports that a North Dakota lawyer can’t pursue his First Amendment claims against the state bar association over compulsory membership and annual dues.

Bloomberg’s Jennifer Bennett explains: “Arnold Fleck sued after learning the State Bar Association of North Dakota was using some of his dues to oppose a state ballot measure he supported. He accused the state bar of violating his right to affirmatively consent before it spent his dues on non-germane political or ideological activities. Fleck also argued that requiring attorneys to belong to SBAND in order to practice law infringes on his ‘right to freedom of association and to avoid subsidizing speech with which he disagrees,’ Judge James B. Loken’s opinion said.”

The case was back in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit after the U.S. Supreme Court granted Fleck’s petition, summarily vacated the Eight Circuit’s decision, and remanded the suit for reconsideration.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

While law firms can and have gone bust for a multitude of reasons, the looming economic downturn will have law firms of all sizes reflecting on their future, predicts Bloomberg Law’s Meghan Tribe.

She quotes Jeffrey Lowe, head of Major, Lindsey & Africa’s law firm practice: “The lesson to take away is no matter how old you are, no matter how revered you are or how long you’ve been around, you can’t count on being around five years from now, 10 years from now, or certainly 20 years from now if you don’t adapt.”

Law firms should be “battening down the hatches” now and looking at the profitability of different practices to get a head start on dealing with issues ahead of an economic slide, Lowe advises.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

After experiencing dramatic declines in gross revenue and profitability and an exodus of lawyers in recent years, the Virginia-based legal giant LeClairRyan has filed for bankruptcy, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

The firm filed the petition Tuesday morning in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond, writes Gregory J. Gilligan of the Times-Dispatch.

At its peak, the 30-year-old firm had 25 offices nationwide and almost 400 lawyers.

The firm listed between $10 million and $50 million in estimated assets and liabilities, bankruptcy court documents show.

Read the  Times-Dispatch article.

The judgment in the Oklahoma opioid litigation, if upheld, could yield a huge return on investment for the private lawyers hired by Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Mike Hunter, reports Legal Newsline.

“Under their 2017 contract with the state, those lawyers — Whitten Burrage, Nix Patterson and Glenn Coffee & Associates — get 25% of any award up to $100 million with that percentage falling to 15% of anything over $500 million,” writes Legal Newsline’s Daniel Fisher.

And more big bucks could be in the pipeline: “They stand to earn $90 million in fees from this verdict, on top of $59 million of the $260 million Purdue Pharma settlement and another $21 million from an $85 million Teva settlement in June.”

Read the Legal Newsline article.

Onit and SimpleLegal have jointly published a white paper on the benefits of disruption in the legal department.

“Driving Disruption in the Law Department” is available on Onit’s website for downloading at no charge.

“The growth of legal operations has been undeniable,” Onit says on its website. “We’re starting to see communities of strategic, business-minded individuals come together to drive disruption and influence operational change within the legal department.”

The joint white paper covers:

• Why legal department disruption is a “good” thing
• How process, technology, and data play a role in disruption
• The rise of industry organizations including CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) and ACC (Association of Corporate Counsel)
• 7 predictions for the future of legal operations by Onit CEO and founder Eric M. Elfman and SimpleLegal CEO and co-founder Nathan Wenzel
• How the legal community and technology vendors can work together to drive change and innovation

Download the white paper.

Law firm Dentons Europe LLP won Delaware court approval to have a former client’s $92 million arbitration award seized so that it can be paid for its legal services, reports Bloomberg Law.

The firm sued its former client, Customs and Tax Consultancy LLC (CTC), after CTC allegedly failed to pay for legal fees accrued in its arbitration victory against the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The court sided with Dentons’ effort to get paid for its legal fees by having the court authorize arbitration award broker ClaimTrading Ltd. to seize the award and market it on behalf of CTC, explains Bloomberg’s Leslie A. Pappas.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Two powerful Wall Street investment bankers could be on the hook for millions of dollars in back taxes and penalties after one of the world’s most prestigious law firms allegedly botched their pay packages, according to a report in the New York Post.

The Post‘s Kevin Dugan writes: “The two bankers — Michael Kramer and Derron Slonecker — face an IRS crackdown on $10.4 million in compensation after their bank’s law firm, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, screwed up a deadline for routine paperwork, according to sources and a report Weil commissioned on the matter.”

The report says the law firm may have failed to disclose the alleged mistake to their client, investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners, in a timely fashion, according to Dugan.

Read the  NY Post article.

Above the Law reports it was tipped off by insiders at Biglaw firm Quinn Emanuel about a policy at the firm that has left some associates hoodwinked over losing some of their vacation time.

“According to our tipsters, in previous years the firm has allowed associates that attend the [firm’s annual hike] to bill the time to a non-billable client number,” explains Above the Law senior editor Kathryn Rubino. “When associates attempted to repeat the practice this year however, they were told that time should, instead, be charged to their vacation time.”

She adds that the firm defended the policy because it subsidizes the travel costs associated with the trip, which took place in Interlaken, Switzerland this year.

Read the Above the Law article.

Vice News recently reported on the technological revolution overtaking the world in transportation, distribution, food service, health – and legal.

The HBO VICE News special features LawGeex in its report on “The Future of Work.”

In a repeat of the AI vs. Lawyer competition — this time officiated by HBO’s Vice News — the LawGeex AI came out ahead again.

On its website, LawGeex displays a short clip showing how LawGeex performed better in both speed and accuracy.

Read more about the competition.

Having a robust LinkedIn profile is critical to anybody who wants to improve their online presence, but  a LinkedIn profile is fairly static, however, only changing when there’s a new job or award, etc.

Amy Boardman Hunt of Muse Communications points out that publishing an article – quarterly, monthly, or even weekly – is a solid way to keep your profile updated and maintain your presence on LinkedIn.

After explaining the difference between a LinkedIn article and a post, Hunt gives some pointers on how to write an article.

The post covers how to select subjects for articles, how long they should be, writing headlines, avoiding jargon or legalese, formatting, sharing the content beyond LinkedIn, and then checking on LindedIn analytics.

Read the article.

Kraemer Manes & Associates has settled a lawsuit claiming that a client got bad legal advice after she was tricked into hiring the Pennsylvania law firm because of fake online reviews, reports the  ABA Journal.

The Journal‘s Debra Cassens Weiss explains:

“The lawsuit claimed that Kraemer Manes had ‘orchestrated a scheme of soliciting positive online reviews’ from people who had never used the law firm’s services. Nonlawyer employees were encouraged to solicit friends and family to write the reviews and given time off for each positive review they secured, the suit alleged.”

Read the ABA Journal article.

The American Bar Association’s first annual profile of the legal profession shows that lawyers’ income grew slower than inflation from 2017 to 2018.

The average lawyer’s salary rose 1.6 percent, which is a little lower than the 2.1 percent rate of inflation for the same period, reports Bloomberg Law in a summary of the ABA profile.

The report found that the average lawyer earned $144,230 last year, making less than dentists, who earned $180,590 on average, but more than physicists, who made $125,280, according to the Bloomberg summary by Melissa Heelan Stanzione.

The study also revealed the pervasiveness of stress, anxiety, and substance abuse in the profession. “Recent studies show that lawyers struggle with these problems at levels substantially higher than the general population and other highly educated professionals,” the ABA report said.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Reuters’ Alison Frankel tells the story of the split between the partners of a personal injury juggernaut and how their feud turned into an unusual and creative use of a derivative suit.

Cellino & Barnes used ubiquitous advertising on television, radio and billboards in New York to generate more than $10 million in profits each year since 2015 for its only two shareholders, Ross Cellino and Stephen Barnes.

Their split and the subsequent fight have resulted in a derivative suit that has provoked apparently novel questions about the intersection of shareholder derivative litigation and the dissolution of a privately-held corporation, Frankel writes.

Read the Reuters article.