The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

Paul Hastings Goes to the Bank

Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker is stocking up on bank regulatory attorneys. The firm just hired two attorneys in D.C. to bolster the bank regulatory practice — V. Gerard “Jerry” Comizio as a partner and Lawrence Kaplan as of counsel. Previously, Comizio was a partner at Thacher Proffitt & Wood, and Kaplan practiced at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough as a partner. Both are former attorneys with the Department of Treasury.

Just last year, Paul Hastings had only a couple of attorneys in the practice area but was looking to grow the group especially in the D.C. office. Now there are 15 firmwide. And the firm says it’s getting ready to add even more D.C. lawyers in order to keep up with client demand for advice on everything from the subprime meltdown to the shaky credit markets.

"[The economy] makes the demand for what we do critically important these days," says John Douglas, who practices in the firm’s D.C. and Atlanta offices and heads the bank regulatory practice. "This is the time when financial companies need good advice."

Scalia's Court

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia does not often seem like a happy man on the bench. He fusses and fumes about pet peeves (like the worthlessness of legislative history when interpreting statutes) and voices incredulity about the positions taken by colleagues as well as the hapless lawyers before him. But according to some new statistics just posted here on SCOTUSblog, Scalia should have a smile on his face. So far this term, Scalia has been in the majority in all 17 decisions the Court has issued, beating out Roberts, who dissented in a decision this week.

But there hasn't been that much division on the Court thus far anyway. Even Justice John Paul Stevens was in the majority in 13 of the 17 cases. Other stats offered by the blog also suggest a generally collegial start to the term. Forty-four percent of the decisions have been unanimous, and only three decisions have found three or more justices in dissent. As far as affinity between justices goes, Justices David Souter and Stephen Breyer are the peas in the pod thus far, voting together 100 percent of the time. At the other end of the spectrum, Justice Clarence Thomas has found himself on the same side as Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg only 59 percent of the time.

But with some of the term's hardest cases yet to be decided (like Boumediene v. Bush on legal rights for detainees and Baze v. Rees on lethal injection) and some not even argued (such as D.C. v. Heller on gun rights and Exxon v. Baker on punitive damages) the level of harmony is likely to decline from here on out until the term ends in late June.

DOJ Watchdog Scrutinizing OLC Memos

The Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal watchdog at the Justice Department, this week confirmed it is investigating the role of attorneys who authorized and oversaw the use of waterboarding by the CIA as part of a probe into all interrogation-related legal opinions.

“Among other issues, we are examining whether the legal advice contained in those memoranda was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys,” wrote H. Marshall Jarrett, OPR’s chief, in a letter dated Feb. 18.

Jarrett’s letter was addressed to Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who had written OPR requesting an investigation into the conduct of Justice Department officials who gave the CIA the green light on harsh interrogation techniques.

Jarrett, in his letter, said the OPR investigation focuses on the drafting of the now-famous August 2002 memo by the Office of Legal Counsel and “related, subsequent OLC memoranda.” The controversial 2002 memo authorized aggressive interrogations, but it was withdrawn by OLC lawyers in 2004.

“The United States has always repudiated waterboarding as a form of torture and prosecuted it as a war crime. Justice Department officials who ignored this history — even those at the highest levels — must be held accountable for their actions,” Durbin said in a news release. “A hard look at DOJ officials who approved waterboarding as a lawful interrogation technique is long overdue.”

Whitehouse, a former federal prosecutor and state attorney general in Rhode Island, said he welcomed OPR’s inquiry and questioned how the Justice Department “overlooked its own precedents to authorize waterboarding.” “This abject failure of scholarship suggests that the answer was preordained and the department was driven by politics and obedience, not law and independence,” he said in a statement.

Peter Carr, a Justice spokesman, said the OPR investigation doesn't reflect on Attorney General Michael Mukasey's view that those who relied on OLC opinions in the past should not be investigated or prosecuted criminally.

"This is not a new investigation, but rather has been ongoing for some time," Carr said. "The fact that an inquiry is being conducted into whether the department's advice was consistent with standards of professional responsibility in no way suggests that those who rely on the department's advice should be subjected to a criminal investigation."

Earlier this month, CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that three detainees had been waterboarded and that the practice was banned in 2006 in line with current law. Similarly, Mukasey told the House Judiciary Committee on Feb. 7 that the practice of simulated drowning was deemed lawful at the time that it was used — in 2002 and 2003. Mukasey also said he would not open any criminal investigation into its use.

Legal Marketers Go Green

Even legal marketers are doing the green thing. The D.C. chapter of the Legal Marketing Association has started up its own green initiative. As more and more law firms make the case for being environmentally friendly, the law firm marketers want to show a little solidarity.

“One of the main things we're going to do is help our members take steps to go green within their law firms,” said Kimberly Bell, the chapter president, in a press release. Bell is the business development manager at Nixon Peabody.

Some of those steps include using electronic rather than paper documents, holding programs at green venues (think tap water rather than Evian), and sharing “best practices” from firms that have already taken the green plunge.

King & Spalding's 2007

Today, King & Spalding announced a 5.6 percent growth in gross revenue, topping off at more than $615 million. Profits per partner, which hit 1.39 million last year, increased 6.5 percent as well.

The Atlanta-based firm expanded rapidly in 2007 and now has more than 800 lawyers. Starting in January, the firm opened offices in Dubai, Charlotte, N.C., Riyadh, and Frankfurt. The firm’s D.C. growth, however, was a little slower. According to the 2007 LT 150 survey, the firm added 5 lawyers in the District.

(Fun fact about King & Spalding: the firm’s chairman, Robert Hays Jr., is the brother of Alston & Bird’s managing partner, Richard Hays.)

MoFo's Sublease Woes

Not long after Morrison & Foerster committed more than $60 million to a 15-year lease on a new office at 1700 K St. N.W. in 2004, the firm learned that one of the tenants in its original office at 2000 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. was vacating. Sources close to the matter told Legal Times in December that two partners talked the rest of the partnership into expanding into the newly vacated space in the firm’s Pennsylvania Ave. digs, while trying to sublease the K St. space.

And so to this day, Morrison remains on Pennsylvania Ave., while its K St. lease causes headaches. Morrison subleased some of the space to Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and some to Monument Realty. Monument is now suing the firm, as well as the owner of the building, 1700 K Street Associates LLC, in D.C. Superior Court for breach of contract. The complaint, filed Jan. 24, alleges that, acting as the defendants’ “agent,” the building’s manager, Charles E. Smith Commercial Realty Company, approved Monument’s use of subcontractor Can-Am Contractors. But the complaint says that the approval was eventually rescinded only after Can-Am began doing carpentry work in the building, causing Monument to incur upwards of $200,000 in damages. Philip Harvey, of Alexandria, Va. firm Fiske & Harvey, is representing Monument in the suit.

Alan Cope Johnston, managing partner of Morrison’s D.C. office, declined to comment on the matter, except to say the firm is only named in the complaint “because we’re in the chain of privity between the building and the subtenant.” Venable partner Brian Schwalb is representing Morrison, but has yet to answer the complaint.

Community Service Pays

There are many ways to shirk mandatory community service, most of them illegal — and in the case below, extraordinarily so.

A former supervisor in the D.C. Department of Public Works was sentenced to 13 months in prison yesterday for accepting multiple bribes from criminal offenders who were willing to buy their way out of required community service, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.

Eric Shannon, 41, took bribes, ranging from $50 to $400, on at least six occasions, and in return, he post-dated letters on work stationary falsely stating that the offenders had cleaned alleys and street signs, bagged leaves, cut grass, and scrubbed graffiti.

Shannon oversaw weekend community service assignments in a joint program sponsored by Public Works and the D.C. Attorney General’s Office. The work, while hardly glamorous, is preferable to the alternative — in many cases, incarceration — and once it’s completed, the offender’s case is dismissed.

The Morning Wrap

On the Board: Breaux-Lott scored its first clients, a mix that includes The United Space Alliance, a Houston-based firm seeking NASA Appropriations, and AT&T, which has sought the pair’s help on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Net Neutrality.

Testify: The military's former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo tells The Wall Street Journal he will testify in support of Osama bin Laden's former driver, who says his trial is politically rigged.

Pay Day: A federal judge Thursday approved $50 million in fees to lawyers and financial advisers for four months of work on the Delphi bankruptcy, as the auto parts supplier struggles to emerge from court protection.

Handful: Countrywide Financial Corp. and BoA's in-house counsel are facing a tough slog in the subprime fallout.

No Time to Delay: Lawyers for detainees who are appealing their combat status told the Supreme Court Wednesday that it would be “unconscionable” to grant the Bush administration’s request for further delay in producing the records necessary for the appeals to move forward.

Another Duke Lacrosse Suit

Another lawsuit has emerged out of the Duke lacrosse case. Today, 38 more lacrosse players and their families filed suit against Duke University, its medical center, the City of Durham, and other city officials.

This latest piece of litigation brings the tally to three lawsuits filed on behalf of the players, three of whom were wrongly accused of raping and sexually assaulting a stripper during a 2006 spring break party.

The 38 players, who are represented by Charles Cooper of the D.C. firm Cooper & Kirk, are suing for emotional distress and other injuries in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. Check out this Legal Times piece for more information on the previous suits.

Foley's New Partners

We’re almost a solid two months into 2008, but the new partner announcements are still trickling in. Today, Foley & Lardner announces seven new partners in its Washington office. They are:

Nathan Beaver, public affairs and FDA.
Rouget Henschel, chemical & pharmaceutical, international business, and nanotechnology.
Amy Kroll, securities litigation, enforcement & regulation, and transactional & securities.
Erika Morabito, business reorganizations.
Leon Radomsky, nanotechnology, chemical & pharmaceutical, electronics, emerging technologies, and energy.
Lena Robins, health care and life sciences.
J. Steven Rutt, nanotechnology and chemical & pharmaceutical.