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Greenberg Traurig Named Best Corporate Law Firm in Miami
Law Firm News | 2007/08/07 16:14



For the 6th consecutive year, Greenberg Traurig has been selected as the best corporate law firm in Miami by directors serving on boards of publicly traded companies. The results were published in Corporate Board Member magazine's annual Legal Industry Research Study, sponsored by FTI Consulting.

Corporate Board Member/FTI Consulting's annual study identifies the top 20 national corporate law firms and the top five corporate law firms in 25 major metropolitan areas, based on ballots submitted by directors serving on boards of publicly traded companies listed with the NASDAQ Stock Market, New York Stock Exchange, or American Stock Exchange.

"This recognition is especially meaningful to us because it comes from clients and people directly affected by the constantly changing legal and regulatory environment," said Gary Epstein, chair of Greenberg Traurig's national corporate practice. "We work hard to establish and maintain continued confidence and respect of corporate directors, and we are proud and grateful when our efforts are rewarded like this. I believe that we share this recognition with the other Greenberg Traurig corporate lawyers in South Florida, with whom we work on a regular basis, and, in a broader sense, with the entire national corporate practice group, whose resources are always available to us."

"Doing well in our survey has become a singular badge of honor, for the very reason that it doesn't come from the law firms' peers," said William S. Rukeyser, editorial director of Corporate Board Member. "It's an accolade from their customers -- the directors, executives and general counsel who hire them, pay their bills, and thrive or suffer from their advice."

The 40 attorneys in Greenberg Traurig's Corporate and Securities Practice in Miami represent both public and privately-held clients in a wide range of industries and in transactions ranging from multi-billion dollar acquisitions to private equity transactions as well as public and private offerings of securities.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP is an international, full-service law firm with 1,700 attorneys and governmental affairs professionals in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The firm is ranked seventh on The American Lawyer's Am Law 100 listing of the largest law firms in the U.S., based on number of lawyers.



Ropes & Gray will open Tokyo law office in fall
Law Firm News | 2007/08/07 16:11









Boston's Ropes & Gray is trying to tap into the lucrative intellectual-property and private equity business in Asia by opening a law office this fall in Tokyo.

The four-attorney office, the firm's first overseas, will serve both Japanese and American clients, as well as others trying to take advantage of the booming economies in Asian countries.

Two Japanese attorneys from Ropes & Gray's New York office will be among those starting up the Toyko office, the firm said yesterday.

James DeGraw, a parter at Ropes & Gray, said he's visited Tokyo and is currently taking Japanese language courses before his own transfer there this October.

Ropes & Gray already represents Japanese clients on patent and other intellectual-property issues in the U.S. One client recently asked if it could have a closer relationship with Ropes in Japan - and the idea was born for a new office, said DeGraw.

"They're trying to protect their patents and market share for their products," said DeGraw of Japanese clients in general.

But intellectual-property law isn't the only area of interest for the giant Boston law firm.

Private-equity companies, such as Bain Capital, are increasingly doing business and making deals in Asia, DeGraw said. Bain is a major client of Ropes & Gray, he said.

Other law firms have been setting up operations in Japan. Recently, Boston's Bingham law firm opened a Tokyo office.

By this fall, Bingham's Tokyo office hopes to expand with the hiring of more than 50 Japanese lawyers, according to the company's Web site.


Law firm cancels political operative's sublease
Headline News | 2007/08/07 14:14

Republican political operative Jeff Roe will soon be looking for new digs.Lathrop & Gage, the law firm that houses his consulting firm, Axiom Strategies, is terminating his sublease.Lathrop said it was doing so because it determined that it no longer needed Roe's second-floor space.The move, coincidental or not, comes as politicos allied with Roe, including Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, heat up their attacks on "activist judges." That may not sit well with Lathrop, which boasts several former bar presidents and other legal eminences among its members.

Earlier this year, Roe told lawyers at a Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association conference that "there will be negative campaigns against judges in 2008. That is reality."

Lathrop simply said that it no longer needed the space it leased to Roe and that it had given its landlord and Roe notice of its intent to terminate the lease.

Roe last week said his lease runs until March or April and he'd been dealing directly with the building's owner, an out-of-town outfit. He said he originally signed a two-year lease.

Roe said he hopes to remain in the space by negotiating directly with the landlord but plans to remain there in any event until the sublease expires.

The space houses nine employees, according to Roe, who has his own 20- by 25-foot glassed-in corner office. He said he had two other offices in the area but declined to disclose their locations.

Blunt's sister, Amy Blunt, works in Lathrop's government relations department. Like other large and influential law firms, Lathrop boasts both heavyweight Democrats and Republicans on its roster, including Jack Craft (Republican) and Harold Fridkin (Democrat) in its Kansas City office.

KSU case is 'moot'

A constitutional challenge to the removal in 2004 of the adviser to Kansas State University's newspaper was ruled moot last week by a federal court.

Katie Lane, the former editor in chief of the Collegian, and Sarah Rice, its former managing editor, sued over the removal of Ron Johnson as the paper's adviser, supposedly because of the subpar quality of the newspaper's news coverage.

The move occurred after a controversy erupted on campus over the extent of minority news coverage in the newspaper and its failure to cover the Big XII Conference on Black Student Government held in Manhattan in 2004. Lane and Rice claimed that Johnson's removal was triggered by the controversy and chilled the exercise of their First Amendment rights.

The trial court dismissed the case, finding that the First Amendment claim failed because the decision to remove Johnson was based on the quality of the Collegian, not its content. On appeal, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the trial court's decision, ruling that because Lane and Rice have since graduated, their claims were moot.

An exception to the mootness doctrine — where there's a reasonable expectation that the same complaining parties will be subjected to the same actions again — was found inapplicable.

"Because only KSU students serve as editors of the Collegian, there is no reasonable expectation that Lane and Rice will be subjected, post-graduation, to censorship by defendants in connection with this newspaper," the court stated.




Poll: Democrats favor Clinton over Obama
Law & Politics | 2007/08/07 13:05
U.S. Democrats significantly favor New York Senator Hillary Clinton over Illinois Senator Barack Obama for the party's presidential nomination in the wake of a dispute over the handling of foreign policy, according to a poll published Tuesday.

The USA TODAY/Gallup poll, taken Friday through Sunday, found that Clinton has widened her lead over Obama. Her support was at 48 percent, up 8 percentage points from three weeks ago, while Obama's support was down two percentage points at 26 percent.

The 22-point gap between the two is nearly double the margin found in the July 12-15 poll.

Among Democrats and independents who "lean" Democratic, former North Carolina senator John Edwards is at 12 percent.

Among Republicans, the race is stable: former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani at 33 percent, former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson at 21 percent, Arizona Sen. John McCain at 16 percent and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney at 8 percent.

The Democratic race is much closer in the states where opening contests will be held and campaigning is already fierce, the USA Today newspaper reported.

In the survey, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents by overwhelming margins say Clinton would do a better job as president than Obama in handling terrorism, the Iraq war and relations with unfriendly nations.

If the nomination narrows down to two, Clinton was preferred over Obama by 59 percent to 36 percent.

Also in the poll, President George W. Bush's approval rating ticked up to 34 percent, better than his low of 29 percent in July. The approval rating for congressional Republicans was 29 percent and 37 percent for congressional Democrats -- both new lows in the eight years since the question was first asked.

The survey of 1,012 adults has an error margin of +/- 3 points for the full sample, and 5 points for the Republican and Democratic subsamples.



First BanCorp Ordered To Pay $74.25 Mln To Settle
Class Action News | 2007/08/06 16:28

First BanCorp Holding Co. announced that the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico has issued preliminary order on August 1, 2007, asking the company to pay $74.25 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed by shareholders. First BanCorp said that $61 million settlement amount has to be deposited in a settlement fund within fifteen calendar days of the issuance of the preliminary order. The remaining settlement amount of $13.25 million will be paid before December 31, 2007, the company added.

The company noted that this class action lawsuit settlement will have no impact on earnings and capital in 2007, as it has accrued $74.25 million in 2005 for the potential settlement of the class action lawsuit.



UC receives money from Enron class action lawsuit
Lawyer Blog News | 2007/08/06 15:30

As the lead plaintiff in the class action lawsuit against Enron executives, the University of California has obtained more than $7.2 billion from the executives, accountants, attorneys and financial institutions that organized the fraud. On July 27, officials announced a proposed allocation plan to distribute the money to defrauded Enron investors who submit valid claims. “This is the first step in returning funds to these investors,” said Dan Newman, spokesman for lead counsel Lerach Coughlin, the law firm representing the university and the class of Enron investors.

The proposed plan allocates money to investors who purchased Enron securities between Sept. 9, 1997 and Dec. 2, 2001. Roughly 1.5 million Enron stock and bond purchasers lost more than $40 billion during this period, Newman said.

Due to accounting fraud, Enron shareholders have lost tens of billions of dollars. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2001.

In 2002, the United States District Court chose the university as the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit due to both financial and legal factors, which included the amount of losses the plaintiff endured from Enron investments, and the plaintiff’s ability to coordinate litigation as a single investor, according to a press release from the university. As lead plaintiff, the university helps monitor and oversee the litigation of the case, Chris Patti, UC general counsel, said.

The university lost $144.9 million based on 2.2 million Enron shares purchased during the class period, according to the press release. This money was taken from employees’ pension and endowment funds, said Trey Davis, director of special projections for the UC.

“The money the UC will receive (from the allocation plan) will go back to these funds, so there will be no effect on students directly,” he said.

The university worked with outside counsel and experts to design the plan. But it has been a difficult process, Patti said, to ensure that all investors receive the money they deserve. The allocation needs to account for what type of Enron stocks and bonds investors purchased, when they purchased them and when they sold them.

“We want to make sure it’s as fair as possible, and (we are) therefore taking extra steps to ensure we do not miss anything,” Patti said.

The UC is asking for feedback on the proposed plan from an independent expert consultant and the public. Comments from the public can be submitted until Aug. 20 through a specially created Web site, Enronfraud.com.

After reviewing the public’s comments, university officials will request permission from Judge Melinda Harmon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, to ask for formal input about the plan from members of the Enron class.

Only after Judge Harmon approves the plan and any appeals are resolved will the money be distributed. It is difficult to predict when this will happen, Davis said, but it will not be before 2008.

Other plaintiffs have still not settled cases against Enron executives. A similar case has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and its result will determine if the case against the remaining defendants will continue, Newman said.

“This is an ongoing process, but investors have received a lot of support,” Newman said.

Most attorney generals, academic experts and professional groups have filed friends-of-the-court briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of investor protections, according to the university’s press release.



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