Legal Pad

New Firm Costs: Four Perspectives

[Petra Pasternak]

You still need money to launch a firm, but you don’t have to spend a fortune on it.

A recent Recorder roundtable in San Francisco brought together a group of entrepreneurial attorneys to discuss their beginnings and share tips on how to build a small firm.

Some take the no-frills approach. When Daralyn Durie and a number of her colleagues left Keker & Van Nest last February to open Durie Tangri, the group opted for not-so-glamorous temporary space.

SWAT Cop's Salacious Texts Go to U.S. Supreme Court

When word came last week that the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case of a smutty SWAT officer and his explicit text messages, the news quickly spread among government lawyers in California. Meyers Nave lawyers who worked on an amicus brief for the appeal said their phones started ringing pretty quickly.

“I heard from a lot of my colleagues in the municipal law bar,” said firm principal Joseph Quinn, who along with Nancy Thorington, an associate at the 80-lawyer firm, wrote the brief (.pdf) asking the court to review the case. “It really will have an impact on the day-to-day operations of California public entities.”

Where’s the dirty laundry? we ask, after the jump.

S.F. Associate Wins a Million Bucks in Wonky ESPN Game

The young millionaire (pretax), as seen on his ESPN profile.

Update: We put together a longer followup on Thompson's big win, which you can read over at CalLaw.com.

We predict Blake Thompson is about to become the most popular associate in San Francisco.

Thompson, who focuses on constitutional and civil rights law at Rosen, Bien & Galvan, just beat three other contestants to claim a $1 million grand prize in ESPN.com’s Streak for the Cash Pick-Off after correctly guessing the Queens Park Rangers (QPR) would win or tie with West Bromich Albion in a Football League Championship match today.

The objective of the fantasy game is to accumulate the longest winning streak by selecting the winning team or player ahead of the matchups. Today’s game ended in a 2-2 draw, according to ESPN’s online coverage of the competition, which started in April. Thompson’s final pick extended his winning streak to nine correct picks in a row, while the remaining three contestants — all of whom picked West Bromich Albion — all saw their streaks come to an end.

Thompson, who’s 31, picked 29 winners in a row in various sporting events to land himself in the finals. He previously won $10,000 and a trip to Connecticut this weekend to compete in the finals.

Rosen, Bien & Galvan partner Mike Bien said the 16-lawyer firm is excited: “We told him if he wants the weekend off, we get 50 percent,” Bien said (only half-joking, we’re sure).

Bien noted that Thompson applied his well-honed legal skills. “He did some research and was able to track things. The guy used his brains as much as his knowledge of sports.”

Thompson, a 2007 Boalt grad, could not be reached this afternoon to tell us what his plans are. But Bien has some ideas. Asked whether he expected Thompson to return to his civil rights practice, Bien said: “He’d better. He’s doing a very important brief for me that’s due in a couple of weeks.”

— Petra Pasternak

Paul Hastings to Look Under the Canopy ...

The Canopy Financial startup scandal that broke just before Thanksgiving is continuing to unfold after taking a break for some turkey and cranberry sauce.

Legal Pad has learned that Paul Hastings is doing the internal investigation at Canopy, a once-promising healthcare software company that’s accused of making up financial statements.

Ismail Ramsey: The lawyers were "duped," too, after the jump …

Oakland Attorney Stakes Out (Virtual) Space on Worker's Comp

Julius Young scours the news and analyzes political developments every week for updates on workers’ compensation law. He’s been doing it for three years, having closely watched the “upheaval” created by workers’ compensation reforms in 2004. “I saw a space where some of the other types of commentators or journals dealing with workers’ comp weren’t covering it in the way it should be covered,” says Young, a partner at Oakland’s Boxer & Gerson.

Young’s blog, Workerscompzone.com, recently won Top Blog of the Year 2009 from the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation Law Center, sharing the honor with Workers’ Comp Insider.

Young’s perspective, and more accolades, after the jump.

Arguedas Reps Valley Exec in Galleon Insider Trading Case

A big insider trading case involving highfalutin executives in the Bay Area? You knew that Chris Arguedas would be involved eventually.

Arguedas turns out to be representing Ali Hariri, an executive at Atheros Communications who has been implicated in the sprawling insider trading case surrounding the Galleon Group hedge fund.

The SEC is accusing Hariri of passing inside tips about Atheros to San Jose hedge funds Spherix Capital and Far & Lee, which traded on the information. More specifically, it’s alleged that Hariri told Ali Far, a hedge fund manager who also has a JD from Santa Clara University, about an earnings pre-announcement and earnings announcement at Atheros. Arguedas declined to comment beyond confirming that she is representing Hariri, who was a vice president at Atheros.

The Galleon insider trading case, which has netted a grip of hedge fund managers and tech executives, has been a boon to the local white collar bar. And everyone who hasn’t already scored some work in the case is trying.

— Zusha Elinson

eHarmony Loses Early Round With Can't-Please-Everyone Defense

As far as we know, no LegalPadders have tried out Compatible Partners — online dating company eHarmony’s separate but equal same-sex concession to the New Jersey Attorney General in a discrimination suit there. But we're still curious to know what a Los Angeles jury will say about the company’s service for straight couples.

San Francisco plaintiffs attorneys in the discrimination class action against eHarmony are headed for a February jury trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court. A judge there ruled against defense motions for summary judgment last week.

“You can’t build discrimination into the definition of your service and then claim that you’re not discriminating,” said San Francisco solo Jeremy Pasternak, co-lead plaintiffs attorney with Joshua Konecky of Schneider Wallace Cottrell Brayton Konecky.

Or can you?  After the jump ...

A Small Firm the Big Firms Can Turn To

Funny how contacts and conflicts can conspire to get work in a lawyer’s hands.

Two Morgan Miller Blair partners recently represented Greenbox Technology Inc., a San Bruno energy management software maker for homeowners, in its sale to Silver Spring Networks, a Redwood City green-tech startup. The stock-swap transaction, whose financials were kept under wraps, closed Oct. 2.

Fenwick & West had been outside counsel for the two companies, and obviously couldn’t represent both in the transaction. So Greenbox CFO, Betsey Nelson, dialed partners Steven Harmon and George Cabot — lawyers who, it turns out, had previous ties with her.

How to be the small firm that the big firm calls, after the jump.

S.F. Lawyer Gets Help Prepping for U.S. Supremes

Preparing to argue in front of the U.S. Supreme Court for the first time is taking up most — but not all — of Schneider Wallace Cottrell Brayton Konecky partner Todd Schneider’s time these days.

“The bottom line is, the preparation is the same for any appellate arguments,” Schneider said. “You sit down and read and read and refine arguments until you’re so comfortable with the subject matter that you can have a real academic discussion with the court.”

Schneider is arguing Nov. 10 in a wage and hour case, The Hertz Corporation v. Melinda Friend, et al, that tackles diversity jurisdiction — the question of whether the class of Californians in the case can sue under California law in California court even though Hertz is incorporated in a different state and argues that California isn’t its principal place of business.

An upshot to preparing for the Supreme Court is all of the help that academics send, Schneider said. Stanford, UC-Irvine and American University have all offered to do moot courts.

One of the biggest challenges, Schneider said, is to “marshal what is a very large and complicated record in the case and the case law of every circuit — trying to reconcile all that into an argument that best approximates congressional intent.”

“One certainly feels the gravity of the argument,” he said.

— Kate Moser

Jobhunters: Forget Biglaw, Find a Thriving Boutique

BETWEEN JOBS An occasional look at where the jobs are in a crisis economy.

For law graduates and laid-off lawyers who are fretting over who will hire them, a measure of hope lies in smaller firms like the Royse Law Firm.

Roger Royse opened his five-attorney firm in 2006. Since then, he’s added two lawyers and opened an office in Los Angeles. The Palo Alto business lawyer may not be growing exponentially, but he does keep an open mind. He says he doesn’t shun the green or the unemployed in interviews, and hopes to hire for next year. Legal Pad caught up with Royse this afternoon to see how the statewide expansion has been going.

It’s going after this jump …