Free Republic

Forty-four of the nation’s largest law firms were hit with a discrimination complaint on Monday alleging that they use an outside staffing agency to hire interns based on race, putting Big Law on track for another clash with the Trump administration. The complaint, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, targets Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO), a nonprofit that places minority students at elite firms the summer before their first year of law school. The paid internship often leads to a return offer the following summers, giving recipients an extraordinary leg up on their white peers. Americans for Opportunity, the...

President Donald Trump announced deals Friday with five law firms that will allow them to avoid the prospect of punishing executive orders and require them to together provide hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of free legal services for causes his administration says it supports.The resolutions reflect the Republican president's continued success in bending prominent law firms to his will as they seek to cut deals with his administration to avoid being targeted by White House sanctions like the ones confronting others in the legal community.The White House said that the firms of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Allen Overy Shearman...

MEMORANDUM FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL THE SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY SUBJECT: Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court Lawyers and law firms that engage in actions that violate the laws of the United States or rules governing attorney conduct must be efficiently and effectively held accountable. Accountability is especially important when misconduct by lawyers and law firms threatens our national security, homeland security, public safety, or election integrity. Recent examples of grossly unethical misconduct are far too common. For instance, in 2016, Marc Elias, founder and chair of Elias Law Group LLP, was deeply involved in the...

Former President Barack Obama didn’t listen to Pentagon officials when they told him Taliban mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa was too dangerous to release. Instead, he freed the group that came to be known as the ‘Gitmo five’ — Khairkhwa alongside four of his buddies — from the Guantanamo Bay prison in 2014 in exchange for a U.S. soldier who deserted his post. Obama all but guaranteed that Khairkhwa and the four other men would be sent to Qatar, where their movements would be restricted and where they could do no harm. As it turns out, the Taliban isn’t as trustworthy as...

Why has Gov. Tom Wolf’s Office of General Counsel paid nearly $400,000 of taxpayer money to several private law firms? It’s a simple question, and there may be a simple and reasonable answer. But the administration’s failure to answer it raises questions about what causes and activities the governor has used state resources to pursue, and why he didn’t use the state’s attorneys to do it. Secrecy always raises suspicions, even if they are entirely unwarranted. In terms of legal bills for complex institutional litigation, $367,500 spread across six firms is a pittance. The Office of General Counsel employs hundreds...

Under the old rules Democrats got to take dirty money and Republicans who brought it up were laughed at. That was then this is now. Here are just a few of Hillary Clinton’s donors that show how arrogant she is and how dirty they are. Clinton took $36,800 from Weitz &Luxenberg the corporate partner to convicted felon and former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Silver is on his way to a 120 year federal prison sentence for taking kickbacks from Weitz & Luxenberg’s asbestos scam. The money was obviously funneled to Clinton through Weitz & Luxenberg. This is...

Liberal groups already enjoy a tremendous structural advantage over conservative groups in terms of foundation support, bricks and mortars institutions and a steady pipeline of youngsters eager to shape mankind to their own image. There’s another often overlooked advantage enjoyed by the left: big law firms donating thousands and thousands of hours to help leftist causes far outside of the American mainstream. There is no counterpart donation of time and money for conservative causes. Big Law’s ideological “lawfare” completes the architecture for attacks on election integrity laws, springing free Al-Qaeda terrorists and even suing conservative new media pioneers like Andrew...

One of Britain’s biggest companies could face legal action over the $700 billion collapse of Lehman Brothers, a scathing report revealed today. Accountancy giant Ernst & Young failed to challenge the book-keeping 'gimmicks' the American investment bank was using to stay afloat, according to report author Anton Velukas. He concludes that the British firm been 'negligent' and that Lehman could pursue claims against the firm for 'professional malpractice'. It is also revealed that one of the UK's leading law firms gave Lehman the green light to use the accountancy gimmick - known as 'Repo 105' - in the first place....

The nation's mortgage crisis is one of the best things that ever happened to law firms. Many of them are lawyering up as the flood of foreclosures rises to record levels. "Attorneys who work in this specialized area of legal representation are very busy, as one might expect," said Alberta E. Hultman, executive director of the U.S. Foreclosure Network, a Tustin, Calif., association of foreclosure lawyers and trustee companies. RDManley Inc., a Palos Heights, Ill., consulting company that helps lawyers set up law practices, said one of its firms started handling foreclosure cases in May 2006. Its business is thriving...

It started out as a who's who of Twin Cities law firms joining forces to lure minority attorneys to Minnesota. But the Twin Cities Diversity in Practice group set off a tempest when it excluded a firm that handled a pair of landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases challenging affirmative action. The group's leaders said letting the Minneapolis law firm of Maslon, Edelman, Borman & Brand join the effort would hamper its mission: to make the bar more racially diverse. "Would this law firm participating in our effort help or hinder us to do what we are trying to do?" said...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A top class-action law firm and two of its partners pleaded not guilty to charges of secretly paying more than $11 million in kickbacks to get people to take part in shareholder lawsuits. At the second of two hearings Monday, Prosecutor Douglas Axel said there is a "significant possibility" of a future superseding indictment being filed, which may add additional claims and parties. Also pleading not guilty Monday in federal court were Seymour M. Lazar, who is accused of acting as a paid plaintiff in some of the firm's cases, and Paul T. Selzer, who is...

What mood is your law firm? A study of the country's 200 most profitable firms found that more than half of them -- 116, to be exact -- have blue logos, websites, business cards, and other advertising materials. Why blue? Maybe because it's what's known in the marketing business as a ''low arousal" color, one that elicits a sense of calm and relaxation. Blue also projects an aura of royalty and authority. Red, in contrast, is an adrenaline-pumping, ''high arousal" color that exudes excitement, action, and aggression, says Tom Simons, founder of Partners + Simons, the Boston ad agency that...

Jan. 28, 2004--Earlier today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-profit legal watchdog group, sent a letter to President Bush asking that he call upon the White House Counsel to investigate Vice President Cheney's confirmation of leaked classified information in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News on January 9, 2004. Federal law prohibits leaking classified information. Confirming information that has already been leaked is also prohibited. In his Jan. 9th interview, Mr. Cheney referred his interviewer to a story that appeared in The Weekly Standard's November 24, 2003 issue. The story, written by Stephen F. Hayes, discussed...

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) --  About 60 law firms -- four of them in California -- that worked to get the state $25.4 billion as part of a nationwide tobacco settlement will split $1.25 billion in fees, a national arbitration panel said Monday.</p>