Personal Injury Law

Legal News/Blogosphere Week in Review

I like to blog on Monday but given my figurative post-Mother's Day weekend hangover, I decided to review the original stories/opinions of others as opposed to venturing to offer my own:

The Baltimore Sun had an interesting article on allegations of bizarre misconduct by a Nevada judge in a bizarre story with a lot of interesting six degrees of separation subplots.

That Baltimore Sun also reports that former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork settling his lawsuit against the Yale Club after his slip and fall. The New York Personal Injury Lawyer Blog has a complete post on the settlement and the exciting news that Judge Bork?s lawyer, who failed miserably in his efforts as Bork?s personal injury lawyer, has been selected as a member of John McCain?s steering committee for judicial selections.

The Washington Post has a good article on legal outsourcing in India, discussing both the exponential growth and some of the challenges in training lawyers in India.

The Maryland Lawyer Blog has a post on nominees for vacancies on the Maryland Court of Appeals and the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.

The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog has a post on how to fire an associate.

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial on tort reform in Mississippi where it attributes EVERY SINGLE GOOD THING that has happened in Mississippi to tort reform. Apparently, tort reform was the magic elixir to all that ails Mississippi. Who knew? If a stranger now helps a child get their cat down from a tree in Mississippi, tort reform is the root cause for the kindness. (Attention authors of Freakanomics: please expose this nonsense immediately.)

Above the Law has two goodbye emails from associates leaving their law firms. One Reed Smith associate gives an email/speech quoting JFK that has the pomp and circumstance of George Washington's "Goodbye to a Nation" speech or King Edward VIII's abdication speech. It would have been really moving except it was a junior associate leaving a mega firm, in which case it was just plain silly. On a more somber note, a Paul Hastings associate accuses her firm of terminating her because they wanted to get rid of her after her miscarriage, fearing she would get pregnant again. MyShingle also provides some commentary of this claim which is getting a lot of play in the blogosphere. Everyone is judging Paul Hastings guilty until proven innocent - probably including me. Even if these allegations are not well-founded, will this knock this firm from its high perch on the big firm food chain? If you were in-house counsel for a Fortune 500 company, would you start eagerly thowing new business Paul Hastings way?

The Illinois Trial Practice Weblog offers six tips for improving your direct examinations.

Finally, President Bush has nominated Judge Glen E. Conrad to one of the vacancies on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Shockingly, Judge Conrad, a U.S. District Court Judge in Virginia, is described as one of the most conservative judges in the country. Apparently, Alan Dershowitz was not available.

Full post as published by Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog on May 12, 2008 (boomark / email).