Legal Pad

Ropes Takes More Space, Orrick's on the Cheapside

Ropes & Gray is banking on growing in San Francisco. The firm is doubling its office space, moving from One Embarcadero to Three Embarcadero early next year.

The lease, signed last week, covers 50,000 square feet on two floors.

Ropes & Gray has 37 attorneys in the San Francisco office, which was established in 2001. Ropes & Gray’s Silicon Valley office houses 25 attorneys.

Orrick is not moving in San Francisco, but it is in other markets, in ways we thought were interesting.

In London this week, the firm is moving its office to a new part of town called “Cheapside.” Apparently, the Brits find nothing objectionable about the word.

Also, in New York next April, the firm is moving from 666 Fifth Avenue to the Black Rock building where Wachtell Lipton and CBS are headquartered. The firm is saving money with the move, with outgoing tenant UBS paying for renovations, and a $70 per square-foot-rate that’s cheaper than what it was paying on its 15-year-old lease on Fifth Avenue, according to the Wall Street Journal.

— Amanda Royal

Aussie Muckracker Seeks 'The Dirt on Jeff Bleich'

Legal Pad was wondering whether former State Bar President Jeffrey Bleich had made any headlines as the new U.S. ambassador to the Land Down Under. He’s been there a few weeks. [Corrected 11/13: We were mistaken; Bleich is not there yet. To Legal Pad’s embarrassment, Amy Merriweather, the L.A.-based practice development director at Munger, Tolles & Olson, e-mailed to tell us as much. Bleich — a partner with the firm — wasn’t confirmed until Monday, Merriweather explained, and will be officially sworn in on Nov. 20 in San Francisco. As punishment, Legal Pad will consume a full jar of that horrible-tasting Vegemite so beloved by our Aussie mates.]

So we Googled “Jeffrey Bleich + Australia.” Nothing newsy came up, but one item did catch our attention.

Posted in mid-September by someone disguising himself as “beagleone,” it was headlined: “What’s the dirt on Jeffrey Bleich?”

“I’m in Australia and I’m trying to research this lib. Van Jones style dirt would be awesome, but I’ll settle for just super-lib stuff.”

No dirt, but a defender from across the aisle … after the jump.

Craigslist: Mystery 'Top Firm' Wants to Top Support Your Top Practice!

Looks like global law firms are really starting to resent those outrageous headhunter fees. One firm that “just opened up offices in San Francisco” opted instead for an $80 craigslist ad.

For that price, they expect “junior-senior level partners with anywhere from $7000,000 - 1 million+ in business” to make their employment pitch to an anonymous craigslist email, promising “all inquiries 100% confidential.”

Unfortunately, it looks like this top firm fired all its proofreaders. Or, they really think someone with a $7 million book is cruising job ads on craigslist in their abundant spare time. We were also particularly excited to read that the offices are “in place” all over the world. What a relief.

Is this a joke? A trick? Maybe! Top speculation and whatnot, after the jump!

Entertainment Lawyers: To Infinity & Beyond?

In space, no one wants this guy, either.

Via The Wall Street Journal today:  Entertainment lawyers routinely phrase contracts to include rights "throughout the universe," as protection against unpredicted advances in technology or invasion and colonization by extraterrestrial forces.  For some reason, this strikes the WSJ as silly.

But don't let it be said that the paper didn't riff on the silliness to its utmost potential:

Lucasfilm Ltd., Star Wars creator George Lucas's entertainment company ... said the language is standard in Hollywood. "But, to be honest with you, we have had very few cases of people trying to exploit rights on other planets," says Lynne Hale, a Lucasfilm spokeswoman.

Yeah, that's what you say now, sister.  But watch the skies.  Watch the skies!

— Brian McDonough

Perkins Lawyer Trades Menlo Park for Oz

Miriam and David Chiappetta, down under. If you're not jealous of the scenery, be jealous of his hat.

If you try to ring up David Chiappetta, you won’t find the Menlo Park litigator at his old Perkins Coie office anymore.

That’s because in August, Chiappetta and his family left the country for Australia where he now works as an antitrust lawyer at Corrs Chambers Westgarth.

Chiappetta is a friendly guy who worked at Bingham McCutchen before moving to Perkins Coie where he took cases for Internet clients like Facebook. But a visit down under changed that in short order.

He just smiles and gives us a Vegemite sandwich, after the jump, um, mates.

Twitter Feeds You Democrats

Twitter loves Jerry Brown. But does Jerry Brown love Twitter?

The Associated Press reports that Twitter, which is apparently still the social media rage, is inspiring Republican rage in here in California.  Seems that when you sign up for the service — which, like Muzak in an elevator, is designed to help stamp out any brief time for actual coherent, trivia-free reflection in your waking life — it suggests a horde of quasi-famous or semi-interesting people you don't know, whose one-sentence proclamations you might want to never, ever miss.

And in California, it suggests Democratic political candidates. Only Democrats. Sayeth the AP:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is on the suggested user list and has 1.2 million followers. His likely opponent for the Democratic nomination, Attorney General Jerry Brown, also made the list and has 960,000 followers, even though he is not a declared candidate and has posted the fewest tweets of all the gubernatorial hopefuls. None of the three Republican candidates is on the list, and each has fewer than 5,000 followers.

Wait — Jerry Brown has the most verbal restraint?

Twitter's political monkeyplay is all fun and games, until that Glenn Beck guy gets ahold of it, fakes some righteous indignation and fear ("I am terrified about where this will go next," he'll say. "They're gonna force us to read the Huffington Post's RSS feed, and then They'll euthanize our grandmothers!"), and turns millions of paleo-Americans into frothing anti-Twitter crusaders, hell-bent on the destruction of the near-ubiquitous networking site and ... um ...

Never mind.  Carry on with your cheap, flagrant (and terrifying!) partisanship, Twitter.  Go, you!

— Brian McDonough

LAPD's Creative Fight Against Legal Pot Clubs

Esquire's online political columnist, John Richardson, turns his sharp eye this week to California's medical marijuana misadventures — specifically on the efforts hijinx of the LAPD to resist the state's medicinal pot law and the Obama administration's federal directive to respect such laws. Our own Dan Levine recently chronicled the Ninth Circuit's slapdown to the cops after they raided a pot club, failed to make a case out of it, but still refused to return hundreds of thousands of dollars seized in the pointless invasion.  (Hm. You bust into someone's place of business, you take all their money, and you refuse to give it back.  Maybe some lawyer in the audience can help me remember the legal term for that ...)

The LAPD's current tactic, even as the City Council prepares to ram through draconian zoning regulations, is to insist that a "nonprofit" organization (as permitted under the state's medicinal pot statute) can't sell anything.  The pot clubs can give away their marijuana, but they can't take money for it.  Jerry Brown's office is on the record saying that this novel misunderstanding of "nonprofit" won't stand, but it's good enough for the LAPD's purposes of intimidation and disruption.  

Richardson's link-tastic overview of the situation is here.

— Brian McDonough

To Do in S.F.: Touching Tales of Post-Katrina Pet Rescues

If you’re looking for a heartwarming film to kick off your weekend — particularly one that features the work of a local attorney — look no further than "Mine," playing at 7 at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.

Telling the tales of the people who rescued pets after Hurricane Katrina, the movie includes one storyline about an interstate custody dispute over a lovable Lab-Akita mutt named JJ, whose owner had to leave him behind when he fled the hurricane with family members. Steve Dye of the Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis San Francisco office was instrumental in that story’s happy outcome.

The film has won admirers, taking the Audience Award at this year’s SXSW festival.

— Kate Moser

Sheriff's Craigslist Smut Suit Snuffed

Law-and-order Midwestern sheriff Tom Dart thinks the Internet is to blame for prostitution,* so he sued Craigslist to halt its flesh-peddling “erotic services” ads. But as we so sagely predicted, the earnest peace officer’s lawsuit had a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving the scrutiny of any self-respecting judge who knows that Web sites aren’t liable for what their users post online. And indeed, Illinois Judge John Grady was the warm hell to Dart’s snowball of a lawsuit, as he dismissed the case on summary judgment Tuesday. Judge Grady said that Sheriff Dart really can't hold Craigslist responsible for the ads, comparing it to a case decided by the Seventh Circuit, Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Inc. v. Craigslist Inc., which found Craigslist wasn't liable for housing ads that discriminated against minorities:

Sheriff Dart’s lengthy complaint relies heavily on a few conclusory allegations to support the contention that Craigslist induces users to post ads for illegal services. Even at this stage of the case we are not required to accept those allegations at face value, and they are not meaningfully different from the allegations that our Court of Appeals rejected just last year. The complaint’s remaining allegations plainly treat Craigslist as the publisher or speaker of information created by its users. Like the plaintiff in Chicago Lawyers, Sheriff Dart may continue to use Craigslist’s website to identify and pursue individuals who post allegedly unlawful content.

Although the good sheriff lost the legal battle, he did get Craigslist to scale back its rampant sale of sex just a little. Next project: End old age by suing the AARP.

— Zusha Elinson

* Does that mean Al Gore invented hookers?

Will Running Out of Money Shutter Execution Chambers?

Here's an interesting juxtaposition of hot-button issues: the economic crisis, the desire to cut "Big Government," and the Old Testament approach to the high crime of murder. (Well, the oldest OT approach shows the Big Guy opting to remove the killer from society while specifically forbidding capital punishment, but whatever. Permanent ostracizing is for pedophiles.) Mother Jones magazine throws out a new article that begins with this spin:

A new study from the Death Penalty Information Center, "Smart on Crime," reports that halting executions could save millions of dollars. This is no small consideration for cash-strapped state governments — especially if the large sums they spend aren't delivering greater public safety.

(Namechecked in the report/article: California, poster child of fiscal failure. We're Number One!)

MoJo's idea (ably distilled to a single stat-infused paragraph by Slate) is that with the public in a wet-nappy state of stark economic terror, the majority of Americans who favor the death penalty (or the majority of politicians too scared of the Ruthless Right to oppose it, depending on how you roll) may reconsider and discover adequate retribution in cheaper options, such as life in prison without health care.

Good luck with that, hippy.  It strikes us as unlikely that, for those who favor executions, the abstract concept of balancing the public checkbook is ever going to outweigh the visceral, lizard-brain appeal of eye-for-an-eye justice. But then, we wouldn't have thought "Two & a Half Men" would still be holding down a prime-time slot seven years in, so it's clear that we don't have our pulse on the finger of the American public.

— Brian McDonough