Nov. 18, 2021
Good morning. A study tracking law grads’ employment singled out one law school as sending the greatest percentage of recent alumni to the ten highest-grossing law firms — can you guess which school? Plus, a top Boies Schiller partner leaves the firm, and the email that could get a pair of lawyers for survivors of sex abuse removed from the Boy Scouts bankruptcy. The week might be winding down, but the news isn’t.
REUTERS/Andrew Kelly A new study that tracked law graduates’ employment using LinkedIn data showed the University of Chicago Law School has the greatest percentage of recent alumni working at the 10 highest-grossing U.S. law firms, Karen Sloan reports.
Chicago Law was followed by the University of Virginia School of Law and Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Chicago had 249 alumni at the 10 firms, representing nearly 11% of recent alumni. Nearly a third of them ended up at Chicago-founded Kirkland & Ellis.
Georgetown University Law Center and Harvard Law School had the largest alumni cohorts at those firms, 477 and 465 respectively. But they did not rank in the top 10 because of their substantially bigger class sizes.
REUTERS/Andrew Kelly Natasha Harrison, one of Boies Schiller’s managing partners who was once thought to be the likely next leader for David Boies’ namesake law firm, is moving on.
Harrison, who stepped back from her role as deputy chair of the litigation firm earlier this fall, will be launching a boutique firm of her own, sources told Reuters. She is based in London.
Industry buzz
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque That’s how many humanitarian parole applications U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has received from Afghans trying to come to the United States after the Aug. 31 American troop withdrawal. Legal aid groups say humanitarian parole is the fastest way to get Afghans in danger from the Taliban out of the country, but it’s not the usual use of the pathway — leaving immigration officials scrambling to catch up. Read more about the situation.
Columnist spotlight: SCOTUS suddenly very interested in California's Private Attorney General Act It may be time for lawyers who represent employees in Private Attorney General Act cases in California to start worrying about the U.S. Supreme Court. Alison Frankel’s latest column reports on a recent wave of petitions asking the justices to overturn state and federal precedent holding that employers can’t compel employees to arbitrate PAGA claims, in which workers stand in the shoes of the state to police employment law violations. In the past, the Supreme Court has shown no interest in PAGA – but Frankel says there are some pretty strong signs that’s no longer true. Check out other recent pieces from all our columnists: Alison Frankel, Jenna Greene and Hassan Kanu.
Reporter's Notebook: How the plaintiffs’ bar is shaping legislation Reuters’ Diana Novak Jones on what she’s watching as she covers the plaintiffs’ bar
I’ve spent the last few months tracking how plaintiffs’ lawyers are shaping legislation that impacts their cases.
One story I covered involved plaintiffs’ firm Edelson PC, best known right now for going after plaintiffs’ attorney Tom Girardi over allegations Girardi misappropriated settlement funds from family members of victims of the Lion Air crash. After the Lion Air case, Edelson PC’s in-house government affairs team approached an Illinois state legislator about a bill that would give clients more tools to ensure their attorneys have given them their fair share of a settlement or judgment. That bill, HB 4128, is currently in committee in Illinois’ legislature. I also wrote about a new law in Colorado that provides protections to the medical lien industry. The industry typically teams up with personal injury attorneys, who connect clients with lien companies if they need help paying for medical care from their injury. The medical lien business then gets paid from case settlement funds. But courts began questioning the size of the medical bills coming out of medical lien companies. The new law keeps information about the medical lien company out of evidence. And I’ve got my eye on a new law that will go into effect in January in California, allowing family members of someone who died to pursue more damages in a lawsuit over their injury. It includes a provision that requires attorneys working on these cases to report their damages awards to the state legislature, which will tally up the amounts in four years, when the bill sunsets. But I don’t want to wait that long to see how the law impacts damages in the Golden State.
"This points to the truth that law enforcement over history has often failed to live up to its responsibilities. These men did not get the justice that they deserved."
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In the courts
Industry moves
Lawyer speak: Customs seizures of drug paraphernalia: legal or not? Cannabis industry businesses face an array of regulatory hurdles, as the drug, legal to some degree in many states, remains outlawed at the federal level. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection continues to seize imports of products used for marijuana consumption, write Mark Ludwikowski and Kevin Williams of Clark Hill. Learn more about why an exemption in the statute raises questions about the legality of the seizures.
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