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.

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.

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.

More and more law firms are responding to peer competition by offering generous paid parental leave for their lawyers who become new parents, reports Above the Law.

Staci Zaretsky, a senior editor at Above the Law, writes about the reportedly industry-leading paid leave announced by Benesch.

“The firm’s plan had always been gender neutral, but today it announced its adoption of a reportedly industry-leading 20 weeks of fully paid leave for new parents, up from 12 weeks of paid leave, plus the ability to take an additional six weeks of leave without pay,” she writes, adding that there may be a handful of firms may offer a few more weeks of fully paid, gender-neutral parental leave.

Read the Above the Law article.

Above the Law reviews the financial problems plaguing the National Rifle Association, as ProPublica reports on the legal bills charged by the organization’s outside counsel, Bill Brewer.

Internal NRA documents posted anonymou8sly online indicated that Brewer’s firm charged the organization more than $97,000 per day. The law firm defended Brewer’s work and called his legal fees standard.

According to ProPublica’s report:

Brewer has been a central behind-the-scenes force in the internal struggle that broke out between the NRA’s top executive Wayne LaPierre and ousted president Oliver North. LaPierre has entrusted the future of his organization to Brewer, and in a statement this week said the organization has “full confidence in Bill Brewer and his law firm.”

Read the Above the Law and ProPublica articles.

The key to becoming one of those lawyers who seemingly turn up in every media report involving a legal issue is knowing how to deliver what the media wants, which is making complicated legal issues understandable for the masses, advises Bruce Vincent of Muse Communications.

“Not unlike presenting a case to a jury, the goal of any legal commentator is to prove to the audience that they know what they’re talking about,” he explains.

In a post on the Muse website, Vincent discusses some examples of how an attorney can build successful media relationships and promote their role as an expert source to best benefit their practice. Getting in front of reporters and demonstrating an ability to effectively break down complex legal issues are the first steps on the road to being one of the lawyers that media always seem to call on.

Read the article.

The Biglaw firm of LeClairRyan, already in the news after issuing WARN Act notices to staff warning about possible mass layoffs, has lost founding partner Gary LeClair, according to Above the Law.

The report says LeClair will be taking two other partners with him to Williams Mullen as of August 5.

“For over a year now the firm has seen a flood of partners and senior attorneys exit,” writes Above the Law senior editor Kathryn Rubino. “Almost 10 percent of LeClair’s headcount departed in 2018, and the trend has continued in 2019. Indeed, just earlier this week a 15-attorney group from LeClairRyan — the aviation group led by Mark Dombroff — departed.”

Read the Above the Law article.

A longtime lawyer with Gay Chacker & Mittin of Philadelphia has been charged with diverting clients from the plaintiff personal injury firm for a decade to outside attorneys in exchange for a cut of their fees, reports Philadelphia Business Journal.

Neil I. Mittin, 64, was a name partner with the firm for 38 years. The firm name is called Gay & Chacker.

Prosecutors, who charged him with mail fraud, said Mittin engaged in a 10-year-long scheme to steal cases from his longtime firm by referring them to outside attorneys. Prosecutors said the impacted clients did not know he was referring the cases, nor did they ask for referrals, writes the Journal‘s Jeff Blumenthal.

Read the Business Journal article.

Results of a survey by Working Mother show some advance for women in the number of equity partners and in the number of women who rank among their firms’ most highly compensated partners.

Some of the key initiatives the survey examined include paid parental leave, the use of reduced schedules, parent-resource groups, and mentoring and sponsorship of female lawyers.

Working Mother collaborated with the ABA Journal as a knowledge partner in recruiting firms and publicizing results.

Read the Working Mother article.

Amy Boardman Hunt of Muse Communications offers some advice on how lawyers can stay out of trouble with the State Bar of Texas while maximizing their LinkedIn presence.

The State Bar’s Advertising Review Committee monitors lawyers’ compliance with rules regarding advertising.

Hunt discusses some of the best practices for having a compliant LinkedIn profile, for example: Don’t overstate your role in any results, don’t compare yourself with other lawyers, stick to the facts in your profile, take care when listing practice areas, and review endorsements and recommendations.

Read the article.

The 2018 death by suicide of Sidley Austin partner Gabe MacConaill has drawn attention again after Financial Times featured his death in an article about mental health issues in the workplace. In that same article, his widow, Joanna Litt, voices her anger at the firm for the events that led up to her husband’s death and for the firm’s lack of a robust response since MacConaill died.

Above the Law tells the story of how MacConaill’s death has become part of a larger conversation.

“The two managing partners of the bankruptcy division did not call me, email me, send me a letter,” she says. “I still haven’t heard from either partner. I also didn’t hear from the slightly senior partner who Gabe was working [on the bankruptcy case] with. None of them.”

Read the article.

Above the Law reports that Baker McKenzie has eliminated 46 staff positions — all in the London office in professional and business roles — and another 33 jobs are still at risk as part of a firm-wide assessment.

The firm’s review covers 97 positions.

“Eighteen employees in those positions resigned, and 46 have been eliminated so far (15 were identified as redundant, while there remain 31 cut altogether),” writes Above the Law senior editor Kathryn Rubino.

Read the Above the Law article.

The relationship between Microsoft Corp. and Integreon Inc. has grown dramatically since the software giant took a chance on the nascent alternative legal service industry a decade ago, but there’s disagreement about whether such a model will take off widely enough to truly disrupt law firms, reports Bloomberg Law.

“What started in 2009 as a seven-member group of Integreon lawyers and paralegals in North Dakota handling small, English-language procurement contracts for Microsoft has expanded to a team of more than 80 based in offices across the continents who review 20,000 contracts a year in 15 languages,” writes Bloomberg’s Roy Strom.

It’s still an open question whether enough corporate clients will push the envelope far enough to dramatically alter law firms’ business outlook, adds Strom.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Google announced a “site diversity change,” creating a window of opportunity for smaller law firms that have struggled to claim space on the first page of search engine results, according to Bruce Vincent of Muse Communications.

“This is not particularly good news for many law firms that have dominated the first page of results for certain topics,” he writes. “However, it presents a welcome scenario for smaller firm websites that contain solid information but never seem to be able to climb above the second or third page of search results.”

He explains that firms will need to provide quality information and good search engine optimization to be able to take advantage of Google’s change.

Read the article.

Failed law firm Sedgwick asked a California bankruptcy judge to approve a nearly $1.6 million claw-back settlement with 45 former partners who received equity payouts as the San Francisco-based firm slowly failed throughout 2017, reports Bloomberg Law.

The firm also said there may be viable breach of fiduciary duty claims against other ex-partners who are not part of the proposed settlement, according to Bloomberg’s Roy Strom.

“The partial compromise comes more than eight months after Sedgwick filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and a year-and-a-half after the 85-year-old firm ceased operations. The firm said confirmation of the deal could lead to the end of its bankruptcy case,” Strom writes.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.