An ongoing snapshot of the national and world ecomony. Designed for the busy professional who requires more than soundbites and taglines, but does not have time to read it all.
The economic downturn is hitting the legal world hard. American Lawyer is calling it “the fire this time” and warning that big firms may be hurtling toward “a paradigm-shifting, blood-in-the-suites” future. The Law Shucks blog has a “layoff tracker,” and it is grim reading. Top firms are rapidly thinning their ranks, and several — including Heller Ehrman, a venerable 500-plus-lawyer firm founded in 1890 — have closed."
Image via WikipediaChange is coming to White & Case, and the name of that change is middle management. Under a new structure put in place this week, firm power will shift away from 35 individual offices and be dispersed among 14 regional groups. There also will be a renewed focus on 16 different global practices. The moves come in the wake of a four-month review of White & Case's strategy and structure by McKinsey.
'The day of the brick and mortar approach to building a global law firm is over,' says chairman Hugh Verrier, who spoke about the reorganization for the first time on Tuesday in an exclusive interview with The Am Law Daily.
For a quarter century, since it took its first steps on a path to becoming a global law firm, White & Case's far-flung offices have operated as individual fiefdoms, with little directive from above on how to grow business, choose clients, or cut costs. But with 2,500 lawyers spread around the world and growing competition from other, more-focused global powers, White & Case's leaders felt a review of the business was in order, Verrier says.
JPMorgan had more than $17 billion of Lehman's cash and securities three days before the investment bank filed the biggest bankruptcy in history on Sept. 15, the creditors committee said in a filing Oct. 2 in bankruptcy court in Manhattan. Denying Lehman access to the assets on Sept. 12, the bank ``froze'' Lehman's account, the creditors claimed.
JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank by deposits, financed Lehman's brokerage operations with daily advances, while money market funds and other short-term lenders provided overnight loans, according to bankruptcy court documents. When JPMorgan shut Lehman off from funds, Lehman ``suffered an immediate liquidity crisis that could have been averted by any number of events, none of which transpired,'' according to the filing.
The creditors asked the judge in charge of the case to let them interview a witness and request relevant documents from JPMorgan and to pursue possible legal claims. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James M. Peck is scheduled to hold a hearing Oct. 16 on that request, the creditors said.
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