How would you react as a client if you knew that 10%-15% of the money you pay to your firm is going to someone who isn’t even working at the firm any more.

Partners at some elite firms are often entitled to between 20% to 30% of their peak pay after retirement—in many cases, for life, according to partners and law firm consultants. For the most profitable firms, that could mean payments of $400,000 to $600,000 a year per retired lawyer…

“It’s a real problem in this environment for a law firm to pay 10 or 15 cents out of every dollar of revenue to partners who have retired from the law firm,” says a senior partner at one firm with a generous pension plan…

At Gibson Dunn, partners who serve there for 20 years get a retirement benefit at age 60 that pays out 20% of their top compensation. At current profits, that could amount to $500,000 a year for eight years or life—whichever is longer…

When considering where to get your legal services, consider whether or not you want to pay a 10% finders fee to a retired millionaire.

via The Wall Street Journal – Next Pension Clash: Law Firms

In the layout published in a special 2009 edition of Sports Illustrated on Jordan, Jewel-Osco congratulated the six-time NBA champion on his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, and it included a large Jewel-Osco logo under the text.

“The page does not propose any kind of commercial transaction, as readers would be at a loss to explain what they have been invited to buy,” U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman said in an opinion posted late Wednesday on Jordan’s lawsuit against the company.

Celebrities such as Jordon meticulously guard their images, and others have successfully sued companies for appearing to employ praise as a way to slip in references to a public figure into an advertisement.

via Washington Post – Judge rules layout featuring Michael Jordan shoes, number was free speech, not ad

If you delete relevant emails, after you have been sued, that is spoliation and it will get everyone down the line, especially you as an in-house lawyer, in a lot of trouble. BUT if you have a regular corporate policy of periodically deleting emails, and you happen to delete crucial evidence the day before a suit was anticipated, then it’s not spoliation.

While general counsel will claim publicly that these policies are in place to streamline their email systems, everyone knows they are really there to delete potentially incriminating evidence in future lawsuits.

Companies know that incriminating evidence always exists in emails because emails document the conversations and decision-making that goes on in all organizations. But they need a justification other than “We don’t want to get caught.” So that’s how you get corporate doublespeak like “e-mail stabilization and modernization” programs, with its vague suggestion that there is a technical reason to delete old emails, as if a company’s entire email system might crash under the weight of old emails stored on a server.

via Tech Crunch – The Only Reason Companies Delete Emails Is To Destroy Evidence

Goodman, who founded the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Wellington, legally adopted 42-year-old Heather Laruso Hutchins, as his daughter on Oct. 13 in Miami-Dade County, according to court documents….

[T]he trust set up for Goodman’s two minor children could not be considered as part of Goodman’s financial worth if a jury awarded damages to the Wilsons. According to the adoption papers, Hutchins is immediately entitled to at least a third of the trust’s assets as his legal daughter since she is over the age of 35.

The reasoning behind his explanation as to why he did this shows a lawyer with an outrageous display of cognitive dissonance trying to zealously represent his client

Dan Bachi, Goodman’s civil attorney, said Hutchins’ adoption was done to ensure the future stability of his children and family investments.

“It has nothing to do with the lawsuit currently pending against him,” Bachi said.

Can anyone seriously say that with a straight face?

via Sun Sentinel – Polo club founder Goodman adopts his adult girlfriend

So your competitors and others with a vested interest in the status quo will continue to rely on conflicting legal systems and antique precedents to hold you back. You may not be able to avoid lawsuits, but most companies can do a much better job of anticipating them.

via CIO Insight – eBay and the Legal Problems with Online Marketplaces

The internet has created so many reasons for businesses to spend a little extra money and time to do the right thing…

One broken guitar (and a lack of empathetic customer service) resulted in over 11 million views on YouTube of the catchy jingle United Breaks Guitars. A decision by GoDaddy to support the Stop Online Privacy Act led to an online petition on Reddit (and partially instigated by Tamar) that got thousands of domain owners to transfer their domains off GoDaddy, a revenue loss of around $370,000 a year. NetFlix’s sudden and dramatic increase in prices led to massive consumer backlash, including 67,000 negative comments on their Facebook page. Need I go on? How about Verizon’s decision (and quick retraction) to add a $2 convenience fee, or Bank of America charging $5 to consumers to use debit cards.

Social media makes it easy for like-minded consumers to band together and amplify their message, it spreads rapidly, and it always feels more genuine than the talking heads from a corporate PR team. As a result, we’re seeing large corporations closely monitoring any complaints on social media, and addressing them in hours, instead of weeks or months.

via Techipedia – Attack of the Consumer! The Many Ways Consumers Can Put You Out of Business Online

This year, we saw Diddy release a really compelling dance-rap album, put the amazing Prince-esque ladybot Joelle Monae in the spotlight and publicly lament the fact that he couldn’t sign Jay Electronica, one of the most “real hip-hop” dudes out there on the cusp right now.

Ten years ago, Diddy was a punching bag for backpackin-ass dudes for whom “keeping it real” was some kind of weird religion. Now he looks like one of the more forward thinking big men in the giant tent that is “rap music in 2011″.

via Cooking Music: Best of Lil B 2010 on Rad Summer Radio

If you are going to go to law school, you better love the law so much that you’d practice it for free. If you expect to get paid for your services, take a number; it might be a long time before the legal economy gets around to serving law graduate 45,001.

-Above the Law, More Evidence That The Legal Job Market Is In Terrible Shape

The fact that the world might not need as many investment bankers and insurance brokers isn’t a problem per se. But the fact that it could need fewer lawyers is. Outside of a few elite MBA programs, not many people get a degree specifically to become the next Will Emerson. But roughly 45,000 students do graduate from law school each spring. Most of them have taken on significant debt. And despite the old saw about being able to “do anything” with a law degree, they don’t have the specific technical or quantitative skills to go into faster growing fields. While the overall unemployment rate for lawyers is a microscopic 2.1%, that doesn’t take into account the trouble recent graduates are facing to find work that will soon pay off their debt. The industry is entering a period where it will be well oversupplied with talent. Unless a whole lot of old lawyers start retiring ASAP, that situation probably won’t change.

via The Atlantic, What Do Lawyers and Bankers Have in Common? They Lost Jobs in 2011

The facts alleged in Baidu’s complaint are enough to send both giggles and shivers down the spine of any techie or information security officer. The intruder contacted Register’s tech support chatline and asked to change the e-mail address for the Baidu account. The intruder gave an incorrect answer to the Register representative’s security verification question, but the representative nonetheless e-mailed a security code to the on-file Baidu address for the intruder to repeat through the chat service. Not having access to Baidu’s e-mail, the intruder repeated back a code that Register.com claimed was similar to the correct one (that is, if you consider 96879818 a similar number to the correct code, which was 81336134!).

According to Baidu’s complaint, the representative did not compare the two numbers, but rather went ahead and processed the intruder’s request to change the e-mail address on file to antiwahabi2008@gmail.com. (Not only is this a rather odd-looking address for the third largest search engine in the world, but, as the court noted, “’gmail.com’ is the domain name of a competitor of Baidu….”). The intruder then went to the Register.com site and requested a new username and password by clicking on the “forgot password” button. The system generated an e-mail to the intruder’s address enclosing Baidu’s username and a link allowing the intruder to change the password for the account and gain access. Baidu’s operations were interrupted for five hours, and, according to the complaint, Register did not even begin to address the problem until two hours after first being contacted by Baidu.

via With Security, You Can’t Always Hide Behind Disclaimers

Season 2 of Heavy Targets begins August 1st. Until then…