Extra! Extra! Read all about the law firms currently hiring. Yes, you heard right. Despite the economy meltdown, intellectual property work is still up and running and law firms are currently hiring lawyers.

Rising demand from clients for enforcement of patents and general counseling in the area, Merchant & Gould; Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon; and McAndrews, Held & Malloy are a few of the firms who have recently added new lawyers to their growing team.

“So far, we’ve been insulated from what other law firms are experiencing out there,” said Merchant & Gould Managing Director Randall King, referring to the financial turmoil that has caused some firms to lay off lawyers, implement hiring freezes or disband altogether. “Generally, I think IP firms are somewhat insulated.”

Needing defense against “patent trolls” and wanting to protect their patents from rivals to “ensure the revenue that flows from them,” patent litigation work is continuously picking up and has been in the past six months.

“We have not deviated from our model whatsoever in light of the economic crunch,” said John Letchinger, the chairman of Chicago-based Wildman’s intellectual property practice. “We’re not finding our clients shying away from investing in intellectual property.”

Popularity: 5% [?]

OK…so, the economy is crashing but hope is suddenly among us. A handful of law firms, for example, are enthusiastic about using this financial slump to their advantage. With California’s alternative energy generation growing and the new state toxic chemical regulation, Cali’s “green rush” means new jobs for lawyers.

“California is a great market,” said Richard Gittleman, who moved from Washington six weeks ago and orchestrated the plan to bring five lawyers with him by the end of the year to help Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld’s large utility clients get into some of the renewable energy developments.

“The need is there, and we recognized in our own large client base a reluctance to jump into the renewables swimming pool because they didn’t understand it,” he said. Akin Gump also brought on Vic Fazio, a 20-year Democratic representative who represented the Sacramento, Calif., area, to lobby in Washington on energy issues, as well as Bill Paxton, a former Republican representative who represented the Buffalo, N.Y., area.

Many more firms are going to follow in Akin Gump’s footsteps. Change is in the air as doors are opening.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The face-off is almost over and quite frankly, I am ecstatic to hear who the winner of this year’s presidential election will be. After eight years of a divided nation, I do believe that regardless of who wins, we won’t be as separated again. With America split down the middle, it has weakened us as a whole and change is definitely in the air.

That is why a record 130 million U.S. citizens or more are expected to vote! During this financial crisis, we also have the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a healthcare crisis and other obvious problems including all the foreclosures and lack of employment. Battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia polls shut down at 6 p.m EST.

Obama, 47, is predicted to be our next president but you never know for sure until the fat lady sings! It ain’t over until it’s over. The race is officially on!!!!

Popularity: 1% [?]

The financial crisis that is upon us didn’t happen overnight (even though it feels that way) and it wasn’t a fluke accident. There are forces behind the downfall and those forces are under investigation. More specifically, the FBI are searching for who is responsible and while I’m guessing large groups of folks are partially to blame, it will pan out as it usually does…a few unfortunates will take the fall for an entire company.

According to The National Law Journal’s Abbe D. Lowell, “To begin with, public officials have a tendency to overstate the criminal wrongdoing as a cause of the crisis, in part to deflect blame for their own lack of proper oversight.

“Assigning blame correctly would have Congress (and the various regulatory agencies) accepting a large share for legislating for looser credit, deregulation of financial institutions, euphoric belief that financial institutions could police themselves and a wishful attitude that housing prices would constantly rise.

“It is a lot easier to explain to angry Americans how it was only the greedy and corrupt wrongdoers on Wall Street who were to blame, but this easier excuse leads to less than a proper assessment of the problem and its solution.”

Basically, while the blame-game will go on, it may be better to also pay close attention to how this kind of downfall can be prevented in the future. Thus, turning an economic crisis into something positive for the United States by working towards a better economy.

Popularity: 7% [?]

A while back I wrote about a lawsuit, possibly with unethical motives, that was filed by Ebay against Craigslist. In the suit, Ebay claims that the people in charge of Craigslist, a popular internet classifieds site, have actively tried to reduce Ebay’s influence as a minority shareholder in the company.

WSJ’s Marketwatch had this to say about the suit:
The countersuit escalates an ongoing struggle between one of Silicon Valley’s biggest Internet players and a smaller, but strategically important partner that’s been reluctant to both embrace eBay and cash in on its own popularity.

Craigslist is one of the most popular websites in the united states, mainly due to it’s ease of use, and the fact that most of it’s features are free to use except for a minimal charge for real-estate and job postings. The company still manages to profit in the several hundred million dollar range, without the large fees and massive overhead of some of the larger job listing websites.

WSJ:
In its own suit, Craigslist counters that eBay has “engaged in conduct designed to harm Craigslist, its users, and consumers.” That conduct includes “unfair competition” and attempts to “treat Craigslist as if it were one of eBay’s subsidiaries,” according to the suit.

This is a very revealing look into the corporate culture of Ebay, and Cragislist. It appears Craigslist feels threatened by Ebay, and is growing tired of their attempts to strong-arm them out of the market for online classifieds.

Personally I think that Ebay should just let craigslist go. As a Google exec said recently, (paraphrased) “we do well when the internet is healthy.” Ebay has nothing to gain by squashing Craigslist.

When I’m trying to sell something on the internet, I’ll usually try craigslist since it’s easy and free but doesn’t have any mechanism for bidding so I’ll usually have to high-ball the price and then negotiate, and even then it’s sometimes difficult to sell things because people have no obligation to complete the transaction and will often flake out.

So basically this results in a situation where I will use Craigslist to sell inexpensive things, or things in high demand, and Ebay for things I want a good price on that are likely to get bidded up and might be difficult to find a serious buyer for.

WSJ:
The company alleges that after eBay bought a Dutch classified listings site in 2005, eBay executive Garrett Price said, “We just purchased the largest classifieds site in the Netherlands for $290 million, what do you think we would pay for the largest classifieds site in the United States?”

But then I guess ebay sees things differently, since they have huge bank accounts ready to drop the hammer on companies which they think can benefit their brand.

The one problem here though, is that if one day I logged onto Craigslist and it had a huge Ebay logo at the top and had all of the bulky features of Ebay I’d probably delete the bookmark and never go back there again as would many of the people like me who use it solely for it’s simplicity and ease of use.

Popularity: 6% [?]

The American Lawyer’s list of the second hundred of top law firms, a supplemental list to the Amlaw 100 list, has shown a widening gap in recent years. With the release of the 2008 Amlaw list, the gap was remained and grown. This isn’t to say there hasn’t been any solid growth, with a 10% increase in gross revenue, 5.3 percent per lawyer, and 3 percent per partner.

While percentage growth increases  among firms remain solid, the real gap shows in the actual profit numbers. The Amlaw 100 Firms profit per partner averages at $1.21 million, which is almost double that of the $624 million average earned per partner in the 200 list.

The total profit for the second hundred of firms was actually higher than that of the first, but the revenue generated per lawyer came out to be around half that of the first hundred mainly due to the fact that they employ twice as many lawyers. The profit for equity partners also was half that of the top hundred.

It’s easy to say there’s a gap between the top law firms, but there’s still the fact that they are the top. With so much competition in the Law Industry it’s still an amazing achievement to have made it even on to the top 200 list, or even the top 500.

Popularity: 4% [?]

The 2008 Amlaw 100 List is an annual list, which has been compiled for over a decade. Many analysis consider it to be a valuable resource for analyzing the law industry as a whole, as it provides information on business trends and can relate the impacts of decisions made by firms over the years which they have been analyzed. While it is possible to go out and research specific firms, the Amlaw 100 list has all of this information easily accessible in one place.

Some of the major trends this year have been very positive, with revenue rising to above 60 billion for the top 100 firms. Additionally, two firms this year broke the 2 billion dollar profit barrier at the same time. Overall it is widely held that this last year was one of the best on record for the law industry, with profits per partner and revenue per lawyer rising significantly.

There are an endless amount of analysis to be made based on this information, a lot of which has already been made by American Lawyer Magazine in print and on their website.  A lot of insights can be drawn based on what firms did, as far as mergers, expansions, and ventures into new areas of practice. Many professionals rely on this information to make the best informed decision on what they should do to further their careers, or the success of their firms.

The raw content of the Amlaw 100 is available at www.law.com, for a fee. But you can view their analysis articles for free (registration required) at the same site.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Law Firms are notorious for constantly seeking out mergers, acquisitions, and various other expansion and contractions. 2008 was like many years, where the effects of mergers of previous years had a direct effect on the profitability of firms. One would expect that a merger would result in busier associates, and more profit coming in, but that is not always the case.

Take for example the Thelen, Martin, Johnson & Bridges + Reid & Priest merger of July 1998. Both fairly reputable firms, having experience in profitable ventures decide to team up. From the outset one would likely expect immediate or at least quick success. The current Co-Chair Stephen O’Neal said about the project that “It was definitely a seminal event for our careers and the history of the firm.” Considering the fact that the firms were on opposite sides of the US, it was a definite benchmark as far as mergers go.

For many years after the merger was put into action, the new firm faced some fairly harsh criticism for its lack of expansion into new areas. This is typical of many mergers between law firms, where it takes time for the different cultures to congeal into a more efficient mechanism. However, things still don’t seem to be going that well for Thelen. In 2006 they merged again, with New York’s Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner, in an effort to capitalize on practice beyond their previous scope. In addition to this, they expanded internationally, expecting to find growth in other markets. However, it appears more restructuring is in order since this spring they had a fairly large layoff of 100 associates.

While it’s true that more often than not, properly executed mergers do result in higher profits, it’s not always the case and sometimes the market will shoot down even the best of intentions. The number of firms which benefited from mergers this year is fairly staggering, and overall growth of the AmLaw’s top 100 firm’s profits is something you can take to the bank.

Popularity: 5% [?]

According to the financial numbers from American Lawyer’s top 100 list, 2007 was one of the best years on record for law firms in the United States. Both the benchmarks for revenue per lawyer, and profit per partner increased substantially.

Going back to 2003, the average increase for revenue per lawyer has been $205,000. Prior to 2003, it took firms ten times as long to improve that much. This is even more evident in the profit per partner benchmark, which has jumped by $438,000 since 2003 to an average of $1.3 million.

The recent increases are largely due to a rapidly growing demand for high-end legal services and constant annual rate hikes. Also a relative lack of new equity partners being named, since 2001 has helped to inflate these numbers only increasing by 2.6 percent on average, or about five new partners.

Total revenues for 2007 hit $64.5 billion, increasing by 13.6 percent from 2006. With both Skaden, Arps, and Latham & Watkins topping $2 billion revenue. The total number of lawyers in the top 100 grew by 6.8 percent totaling 77,816 lawyers. New York maintains it’s dominance of the industry, with an average revenue per lawyer of $1.1 million, while the average for firms not in New York was around $780,000.

There is some speculation that the industry may be facing a downturn in the near future, with indicators pointing to weakness. For the first time since the recession in 2001, the growth of head count has surpassed the growth in RPL noticeably.

You can view the  list in it’s entirety on AmericanLawyer.com, we’ll be discussing it more here as well in the coming days/weeks.

Popularity: 3% [?]

RealDealDocs.com offers various online legal documents from agreements to contracts for your download and printing convenience. This release from RealDealDocs.com offers up the Mortgage Loan Purchase Agreement between Banc of America Mortgage Securities and Bank of America, National Association.

New York, New York – RealDealDocs.com is the place to go for sample legal documents online. They have just released and made available at no charge to you, the mortgage loan purchase agreement between Bank of America Mortgage Securities, a Delaware corporation and Bank of America, National Association.

A purchase agreement is a legal document used for the purchase and sale in which a seller agrees to sell and a buyer agrees to buy within specific terms and conditions. Thus the Bank of America Mortgage Securities and Bank of America, National Association mortgage loan purchase agreement is the legal agreement for Bank of America, National Association to purchase the mortgage loans held by Bank of America Mortgage Securities.

Last year, the mortgage industry took a hard hit and crumbled – leaving many homeowners unable to pay their mortgages, experiencing foreclosure, or watching their home and property values drop to record lows. The mortgage industry issue has become a central topic in the Presidential campaigns and a daily story in the local and national news media. In the wake of the sub-prime loan debacle, many mortgage banks have colossal lay-offs, downsizing and closures. The Bank of America mortgage loan purchase agreement is evidence of the severity of this economical situation.

The Bank of America mortgage loan purchase agreement stipulates the ground rules and expectations for both Bank of America Mortgage Securities and Bank of America, National Association. Some of the specific terms and conditions include purchase price, BPP mortgage loans, and recharacterization. The Bank of America mortgage loan purchase agreement is just one of hundreds of purchase agreements available at RealDealDocs.com and one of millions of sample legal documents they offer.

Documents, agreements and clauses available at RealDealDocs.com are drafted by many of the top law firms working both for Fortune 500 companies as well as those representing small capital companies. Since the RealDealDocs.com legal documents are written by these top law firms in the country, the available contracts and agreements provide a relevant work product and important competitive intelligence about how the top law firms are negotiating and drafting agreements for their clients.

More than 40 of the top 250 law firms from the National Law Journal use RealDealDocs.com products on a regular basis to lower the amount of time needed to draft a legal agreement. Plus, members at RealDealDocs.com can edit, save and download these documents in a printer-friendly format for their own use.

To view the Bank of America Mortgage Loan Purchase Agreement click here

To view other Mortgage Loan Purchase Agreements click here

Popularity: 3% [?]