Legal Pad

Bingham Lawyer Discusses His Erin Andrews Strategy

Extinguishing an exploding nude-video scandal for a celebrity client is not something many lawyers get hired for very often.

Los Angeles attorney Marshall Grossman made headlines this week as the lawyer representing Erin Andrews, the ESPN reporter who was secretly videotaped through the peepholes in her hotel rooms. An insurance salesman was arrested last week in the case and charged with interstate stalking.

Grossman, who came to Bingham McCutchen in 2007 through the Alschuler Grossman merger, has had a few more stabs at representing celebrities than most, but even he said nothing prepares a lawyer for the tightrope maneuvers required to keep a client’s reputation in place. We chatted with him earlier this week to find out how you handle a case like this.

Stress and strategy, after the jump.

Bingham Merges With McKee, Creating $900M-Plus Firm

It's been some time since a merger of two Am Law 100 firms. And it will be awhile longer still, but today we've come close.

Our sibling publication the Am Law Daily reports that Boston-based Bingham McCutchen, No. 32 on the Am Law 100, has acquired New York's McKee Nelson, which ranks No. 152 on the Am Law 200. Combining the two firms' 2008 revenues would yield $927 million, or the 22nd largest firm in the country -- though where they'll rank next year is anyone's guess given the disruption in the legal industry this year.

McKee Nelson, which did a sizable amount of structured finance work, has been hit especially hard. Revenue fell 16 percent last year to $160 million, and profits per equity partner dropped 15 percent to $1 million. In addition, layoffs and departures whittled the firm from 180 lawyers in 2007 down to 120.

"It's really rare to find a firm that is this size that has three market-leading practices," said Bingham chairman Jay Zimmerman, referring to McKee's expertise in tax, financial institution litigation, and capital markets-structured finance. Structured finance might be moribund now, but Zimmerman sees it as an area worth investing in. "It will be part of our longterm strategy for serving the financial institution industry."

— Scott Graham

We Spill the Beans on Bingham's All-Nighter Secret

We called a bunch of lawyers to talk about a $250 million deal, and they kept talking about how Bingham’s high-octane coffee helped them through the all-nighters. So we’re like, “Coffee?”

It’s apparently all about the machine, so we called Keurig Inc., maker of the top-of-the-line Keurig B3000 coffee maker, and learned that law firms are their best customers. Especially big offices with multiple floors.

Dave Manly, Keurig’s VP of marketing, told us the company counts more than 20,000 law firms across the United States as customers. “It keeps people from going out to Starbucks and other coffee shops,” he said. “It keeps them productive in the office.”

In Boston, where Manly is based, Ropes & Gray has more than 40 machines.

Keep reading after the jump. It’s good to the last quote.

Bingham, Beveridge Overbilled in Crap Suit

Two law firms who successfully represented the city of Los Angeles got their fees trimmed last week by a judge who used basic math and words like “shockingly excessive" to make his point.

The aptly named federal Judge Gary Feess knocked $200,000 from the $660,000 Bingham McCutchen was seeking and cut out $700,000 from the $1.3 million Beveridge & Diamond was seeking, according to an order filed Wednesday.

The two firms won L.A.’s suit against Kern County over, literally, some crap. Kern had enacted laws against using "biosolid" byproducts of wastewater treatment in farming, a law that mostly affected a farm owned by the city of Los Angeles. Upon winning,  L.A. passed its legal bill onto Kern County, which then complained it was excessive. Enter Judge Feess.