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A federal district judge ruled today that there was no intentional misconduct on the Clinton administration's part in its acqusition of hundreds of FBI background files on former White House staffers and dismissed the last two "Filegate" cases. Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the plaintiffs failed to prove that the files obtained were a part of a White House conspiracy, the Blog of Legal Times reported. The case was spearheaded by Larry Klayman and his conservative Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group Judicial Watch back in 1996. Politico notes that Klayman was…

Dewey & LeBoeuf announced today in a firmwide memo that 30 administrative staff members in its Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C., offices have been laid off. The memo, obtained by Above the Law and confirmed as correct by Dewey & LeBoeuf to the ABA Journal said that "these changes are made necessary by an overall reduction in lawyer headcount." After a 10 percent reduction in the firm's equity partner ranks, Dewey's profits per equity partner increased 3.4 percent and revenue per lawyer increased 6.7 percent as gross revenue fell by 11.3 percent in 2009. In March 2009,…

Last month, an attorney for the Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff's Office told a federal judge that the office hadn't kept thousands of e-mails that could have been turned over to plaintiffs who had filed a civil suit against the office alleging racial profiling. The judge sanctioned the Sheriff's Office. But last week, county officials announced that those e-mails had actually been archived in response to an order by a county attorney in an unrelated lawsuit involving the county treasurer, the Arizona Republic reported. County attorney Julie Pace told the Republic that not only were some of the e-mails relevant to…

Milwaukee County's district attorney said at a briefing Monday that under a project that has his staff looking for race bias while screening cases, he has fewer defendants going to prison without an impact on public safety. The briefing discussed the Vera Institute's Prosecution and Racial Justice Program. Prosecutors in Milwaukee County, San Diego County and Mecklenburg County, N.C., are participating in the ongoing program, which was launched in 2005. An analysis of cases in Milwaukee showed that junior prosecutors were filing drug paraphernalia charges against 73 percent of nonwhites versus 59 percent of whites, the Crime Report said. But…

Georgetown law professor David Cole is siding with other legal academics who have decided to ban laptops from their classrooms. Cole banned laptops beginning in 2006, calling them an “attractive nuisance.” He explained why in a recent interview with the Washington Post. "This is like putting on every student's desk, when you walk into class, five different magazines, several television shows, some shopping opportunities and a phone, and saying, 'Look, if your mind wanders, feel free to pick any of these up and go with it.’ ” Classroom laptops can also be used to quickly spread rumors, as illustrated, albeit…

Greenberg Traurig quickly fired a partner criminally charged with theft on Friday for allegedly billing $1 million for work never performed. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. An ethics expert interviewed by the Chicago Tribune, Georgetown University law professor Michael Frisch, said Greenberg Traurig was acting responsibly to protect the firm and clients of the accused lawyer, Mark McCombs. Prosecutors claim McCombs overbilled the suburban village of Calumet Park by charging more than $1 million since 2003 for work that wasn’t done, all in an effort to gain prestige. McCombs did not directly pocket the fees. When lawyers get…

A former name partner at Halleland Lewis Nilan & Johnson says he left the Minnesota law firm partly because of a dispute over alternative fees. Keith Halleland, a co-founder of 50-lawyer Halleland Lewis, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune he advocated alternatives to billable hours, partly spurring his decision to form a new health-care law firm with two other Halleland partners. Halleland also said he left because more than half his clients are from outside Minnesota, and he wants a firm with a national scope. Matthew Damon, president of the firm now known as Nilan Johnson Lewis, said he was surprised…

The Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board didn’t investigate four complaints made against a judge later accused in a scheme to accept kickbacks in exchange for sending juveniles to a private facility. The board’s chief counsel, Joseph Massa, said the board did not conduct even a preliminary investigation in the complaints against former Judge Michael Conahan, the Legal Intelligencer reports. Conahan is facing racketeering charges along with the county’s former president judge, Mark Ciavarella Jr., in the kickbacks case. Massa made the admissions in response to questions from the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice. Massa’s revelations appear to contradict prior statements made…

Lindsay Lohan claims in a $100 million lawsuit that the boyfriend-stealing, milkaholic baby featured in an E-Trade ad is modeled after her. The ad debuted during the Super Bowl, the New York Post reports. It portrays a baby boy apologizing to his girlfriend via an online video chat for failing to call her the night before. The baby girlfriend replies, “And that milkaholic Lindsay wasn't over?" The girlfriend’s suspicions prove true, as another baby girl at the boy’s home sticks her head in the frame and says, “Milk-a-what?” Lohan's lawyer, Stephanie Ovadia, told the Post that her client is so…

Hustler Magazine’s request for crime scene photos of a slain Georgia college student has spurred an Atlanta lawmaker to introduce legislation that exempts such pictures from the state’s open records law. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation plans to reject a request for photos of the decapitated body of Meredith Emerson, according to the Associated Press and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In a statement, Hustler said it was “exploring all legal options” to go forward with its story. State Rep. Jill Chambers introduced the bill to keep crime scene photos private on Monday, although it would not apply to the Hustler request,…

Deferred associates polled by the New York City Bar were generally satisfied with their training with public interest groups, but they weren’t as enthusiastic about their relationship with fellow lawyers employed by the groups. The lawyers gave low satisfaction ratings to their public interest colleagues and to their integration in the office, according to the report (PDF). The bar’s online survey generated 47 responses. Lynn Kelly, executive director of the city bar, told the New York Law Journal she's pleased the deferred associates said their work had been rewarding, but she’s troubled by findings suggesting a culture gap. "There was…

Did an e-mail tell lawyers at Fowler White Burnett that they shouldn’t open and read an online article about a suit filed against the firm, spurring the opposite result? An unidentified lawyer in Fowler White’s Miami office told the Business Review about the e-mail—but a lawyer for the law firm denies any directive not to read the article, the Daily Business Review reports. The story detailing a “juicy lawsuit” against Fowler White and Lilly Ann Sanchez, head of the firm’s white-collar division, had the second-highest number of readers at its website last month, according to the Daily Business Review. The…

A Minnesota jury deliberated only a few hours on Monday before acquitting a Minneapolis lawyer accused of raping a would-be client in a cocaine-fueled attack. The accused lawyer, Al Garcia, did not take the stand. His lawyer argued the woman who made the claim had consented to the sex, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. The accuser, who wasn’t identified, had testified that she expected to sign a retainer agreement when she went to Garcia’s office one evening in 2008. Instead, she said Garcia used cocaine and forced her into sex acts, saying no one could hear her. Garcia is currently…

Sixty-one percent of American voters polled support televised Supreme Court proceedings, and half say they would watch arguments at least sometimes. The Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll found that liberals were more likely to support the idea than conservatives, with 71 percent of liberals and 55 percent of conservatives saying televised proceedings would be good for democracy. Sixty-six percent of Democrats support the courtroom cameras, compared to 53 percent of Republicans. The poll results were covered by NewJerseyNewsroom.com and the National Law Journal. The poll also found that 56 percent of the respondents support an 18-year maximum term for Supreme…

Researchers studying oral dissents by Supreme Court justices have tallied the numbers (they are on the upswing) and divined the meaning (it indicates polarity). Oral dissents are being dissected by three sets of researchers, the New York Times reports. Among their findings: The average number of dissents per term is increasing slightly, from three during the Burger and Rehnquist courts, to 3.75 in the first four years in which Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. presided. This term, there has been only one oral dissent so far, when Justice John Paul Stevens dissented in the campaign finance ruling, Citizens United…

The West Virginia Senate Judiciary Committee has endorsed a bill that would publicly finance elections of state supreme court justices. Last week, the state House of Delegates approved pilot program propsed by Gov. Joe Manchin that would finance the two contested seats in the 2012 supreme court race. Candidates would get $200,000 each for primaries and $350,000 for the general election—all being contingent on whether fundraising thresholds are met, BusinessWeek reports. Senate Judiciary Chairman Jeff Kessler announced his committee's endorsement of the plan at the same time the Justice at Stake Campaign announced the results of a survey (PDF) that…

One of the most talked about moments of Sunday night's Oscars was the acceptance speech for the winners of the Documentary Short category. Cameras followed Music by Prudence producer-director Roger Ross Williams to the stage and he started his speech, but was cut off when co-producer Elinor Burkett zipped into the frame and started talking. (The media has compared the commotion to rapper Kanye West's interruption of Taylor Swift's MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech.) Burkett told Salon in an interview that she and Williams "had a bad difference over the direction of the film that resulted in a lawsuit…

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a federal law bars a lawsuit that claims a vaccine caused a child’s seizures and developmental delays. The parents of Hannah Bruesewitz claim the girl was injured as a result of a design defect in the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine made by Wyeth, according to stories in Reuters, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.). and SCOTUSblog. The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the suit was barred by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which set up a no-fault compensation program for vaccine injury claims. The…

A federal judge from the Northern District of Illinois has allowed a suit filed by two former U.S. workers for an Iraq-owned security firm against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to proceed. Two of the men's three counts were dismissed, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog reported. But Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel are allowed to proceed with their case alleging that they were unconstitutionally tortured under procedures approved by Rumsfeld. Vance and Ertel, who worked for Shield Group Security, said they saw agents of their employer making payments to "certain Iraqi sheiks" and dealing in armaments, the opinion (PDF…

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the First Amendment protects demands for personal information from government contract workers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The case asks whether the Constitution protects a “right of informational privacy,” SCOTUSblog reports. “The Supreme Court mentioned such a right in a 1977 decision, and has seldom mentioned it since,” the blog says. The case could affect how the federal government investigates the background of its employees, the Associated Press reports. The NASA workers challenging background checks say the government sought information about subjects ranging from their finances to their sex lives. Solicitor…