Alan Salpeter, a high-profile Chicago litigation partner at Mayer Brown, is moving to the Chicago office of LeBoeuf Lamb.

A trial lawyer who has represented major banks and accounting firms, Salpeter joined Mayer Brown in 1972 and served as co-head of litigation for a time. He was a significant revenue generator.

It has been a tumultuous time for Mayer. In an unusually broad house cleaning for a major law firm, Mayer in March announced it was firing or demoting 45 partners to boost profitability. Last month, an employment partner based in New York left for a competitor. Last year, the firm lost other partners in the lucrative New York market. (Click here, here and here for background.)

“We wish him well,” said Doug Kramer, a spokesman at Mayer Brown.

Cameron Stracher’s essays on the legal profession, which often appear in the Wall Street Journal, have been the subject of some of the Law Blog’s more provocative posts (click here, here and here).

Stracher has a new book, “Dinner With Dad,” the story of his year-long quest to be home for dinner five days a week. For years Stracher was was a workaholic and “Absent Dad,” working as a corporate lawyer, professor and freelance writer. He then vowed to find his way back to family life, quitting his job and working from home or an office nearby, instead of making the nearly four-hour round-trip commute daily from Westport, Conn., into NYC. Yesterday, we caught up with Stracher, who also maintains a “Dinner With Dad” blog.

Give us your legal CV.

Harvard Law School; summer associate at Sullivan & Cromwell; associate at Covington & Burling. Then I was in Iowa for four years getting an MFA at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Then back to Friedman & Kaplan in New York, then in-house at CBS for five years, then of counsel and eventually a partner at Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz; while I was doing that, I became a professor at New York Law School; and then I left Levine Sullivan; then I became special counsel for Media Professional Insurance in Kansas City. That’s when the book starts — I quit that job in the middle of the “Dinner With Dad” project.

Why have you moved around so much professionally?

I think it has to do with always reaching for that next thing. Constant dissatisfaction, constant striving.

But through all this you also managed to write a novel, “The Laws of Return,” and a book about the practice of law called “Double Billing.” How were you able to write and practice law at the same time?

Caffeine.

A lot of your writing is about how the practice of law is flawed, particularly at the big corporate firms, and how so many lawyers are unhappy. Talk about that.

I think the law attracts a lot of Type A personalities and I think in many respects the problems I describe in the book are self-created. No one said I had to take these jobs or keep moving up the ladder. I did it because I was driven to do it because that was my personality type. It’s the same reason why graduates from law school take these jobs at big law firms even though they know they’re lives are going to be miserable. They’re always reaching, as I was, for the brass ring.

But at New York Law School you help train law students for the profession. How do you reconcile that with your sometimes dim view of the profession?

That’s definitely something I’m conflicted about and I do have students ask me, “Should I take this job at Sullivan & Cromwell?” And honestly most of the time I tell them that they should because I know that as unhappy as I know they’re going to be, they need that on their resume to go somewhere where they might be happier.

Lawyers are famous for not making it home for dinner. So were you writing your book for them?

I think that law is actually more flexible than a lot of people imagine it to be. Most firms do offer some type of flex arrangement, but most lawyers are afraid to take it. And I think that goes to our Type A personalities. But I think if we are really serious about wanting to spend more time with our families, we can cut back. And we’re fortunate to work in a profession where we can still earn a pretty good living even if we’re not working full time.

Do you miss the practice of law?

I’m still doing it because I’m teaching, but I’ve taken on some of my own media clients. So for instance I represent the production company that produces “Dog, the Bounty Hunter,” and they keep me busy.

I haven’t read the book yet so I don’t know how it ends, but what’s next?

Writing more and spending more time at home. I just sold a book to Random House called “A Tale of Two Spouses.” My wife and I are going to read 6-10 novels by Dickens over the next year instead of watching television or being on the computer. It’s kind of like a book group for two.

For all those federal-judge watchers out there, yesterday’s ruling in the KPMG tax-shelter case provided connections for several of the judges involved in the case.

Here’s the deal: Earlier this year, the circuit asked Judge Kaplan to file a legal brief justifying his creation of a separate civil proceeding to resolve a legal-fee dispute involving 16 criminal defendants. Judge Kaplan filed a 47-page brief that acknowledged his move was unusual, but relied in part on a case known as Garcia v. Teitler. The federal judge in Garcia created an ancillary proceeding that resulted in requiring an attorney to return a retainer after he was forced to withdraw from the case for misconduct. The case was appealed and the Second Circuit affirmed the decision.

The judge in the Garcia case was John Gleeson, a trial judge in the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn. Judge Peter Hall later wrote the opinion for the Second Circuit affirming Judge Gleeson’s ruling.

Here’s the kicker: Both Judge Gleeson and Judge Hall were on the appeals panel that yesterday told Judge Kaplan he couldn’t hold a similar ancillary proceeding (Judge Gleeson sat on the appellate panel “by designation.”) The third judge on the panel, Ralph Winter, wrote the opinion, and said the Garcia case was different.

“Exercise of ancillary jurisdiction over a fee dispute between a party and an attorney functioning as an officer of the court in litigation over which a court has jurisdiction is, however, a world away from the exercise of ancillary jurisdiction in a criminal proceeding to adjudicate a contract dispute between the defendants and a non-party former employer,” Judge Winter wrote.

The McGuireWoods partner who objected to a class-action settlement that his firm had negotiated is no longer employed at the firm, a spokesman said.

Yesterday, we reported that Eliot Disner had drafted a brief earlier this month arguing that his firm had negotiated too-cheap a settlement in a class-action against Bar/Bri and Kaplan. The suit claims that about 300,000 people overpaid for bar-review courses from 1997 to 2006.

Mr. Disner circulated his brief among McGuireWoods lawyers, and he sent it to plaintiffs in the case who had earlier objected to a tentative $49 million settlement struck earlier this year. Mr. Disner’s brief estimates that plaintiffs have suffered more than $400 million in damages.

McGuire, which is lead plaintiffs counsel for the case, did not file Disner’s brief with the court, but some of the plaintiffs did, on May 17.

Disner confirmed that he was fired. “The reason they articulated is the Bar/Bri case,” he said. “They have a very different view of what should be done than I do. It’s as simple as that.”

This story in yesterday’s Journal, about a law school that made its third-year curriculum more practice-oriented with the help of private-practice lawyers, got us thinking about a long-running debate.

Many lawyers have long complained that law school devotes too much attention to theory and leaves students unprepared to practice, even as the market demands that firms pay new hires high salaries from day one. In fact, 3Ls spend a lot less time than 1Ls and 2Ls on studying, reading and preparing for class, according to a 2006 “student engagement” survey of 24,000 law students at 64 schools. (Part of the reason might be that 3Ls spend more time working in a law-related job, according to the survey.)

The notion that the third year of law school is wasted gained momentum after the 1992 release of what’s known as the “MacCrate Report,” named after Robert MacCrate (pictured), senior counsel at Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the report’s many authors and the latest member of the Law Blog Bow Tie Club. (Click here for a summary of the report.) The report, published by the American Bar Association, advocates a more practice-oriented approach to legal education, including teaching students to “perform lawyering tasks” and offering more externship and clinical opportunities.

MacCrate, 85 years old, told the Law Blog there was a lot of initial resistance from the legal education establishment, including about a dozen law review articles critical of the report. Since then many schools have made progress, “and that’s extremely gratifying,” he says.

But some of MacCrate’s admirers aren’t satisfied. “We’re one of the few industrialized nations in the world that doesn’t require some supervised practice experience before you give someone the license to practice law,” says Roy Stuckey, a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and the main author of a report, published in March, titled “Best Practices for Legal Education.” (Read all 213 pages here.) “The fact that most law schools don’t ask practitioners what they should be doing with their curriculum is amazing,” he says.

Partners, talk to us: Could incoming associates be better prepared for law-firm life? Young associates: Did law school adequately prepare you for practice?

Much has been made on the blog (here and here) about Monica Goodling’s alma mater, Regent University School of Law, where according to her resume she graduated in the “top 10.5 percent of class.” Regent, a Christian-themed law school, was founded by Pat Robertson. She received her undergraduate degree from Messiah College in Grantham, Pa. After a year of law school at American University, she left for Regent. “I enjoyed being surrounded by people who had the same faith system,” Goodling said yesterday.

At yesterday’s hearing on Capitol Hill, Steve Cohen (pictured), a freshman Democratic congressman from Tennessee, made much of it too. While we’re on the subject of pedigrees, Cohen received his undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University and his law degree from the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at the University of Memphis.

Cohen: “The mission of the law school you attended, Regent, is to bring to bear upon legal education and the legal profession the will of almighty God. What is the will of almighty God, our creator, on the legal profession?”

Goodling: “I’m not sure that I could define that question for you.”

Cohen: “Are you aware of the fact that in your graduating class, 50 to 60 percent of the students failed the bar the first time?”

Goodling: “I know it wasn’t good.”

Cohen then cited reports about the large number of Regent grads holding positions in the Bush administration.

Goodling: “I think we have a lot more people from Harvard and Yale.”

Cohen: “That’s refreshing.”

Republicans accused Cohen of educational bigotry. Randy Forbes (R-VA) noted that “Regent University students won the American Bar Association’s Negotiation Competition February 11,” beating Harvard, said Forbes.

As we said yesterday, possibly the best thing to come out of yesterday’s testimony by former DOJ staffer Monica Goodling were the updated photographs of her. The session didn’t clear much up, nor did it shed much light on the White House’s involvement in the U.S. Attorney firings. Here are stories from the NYT and WaPo; a Dana Milbank column from the WaPo; and editorials from the NYT and WaPo. Here are some highlights:

• Legal Defense Fund: At the hearing, Goodling was flanked by her lawyers from Akin Gump, John Dowd and and Jeffrey King. Yesterday we raised the question of how she was going to pay for such high-priced legal advice. She answered the question during her testimony. “I intend to establish a legal defense fund at some point.”
• “Crossed the Line”: Goodling, testifying under immunity, admitted that she had “crossed the line” in considering the political beliefs of applicants for assistant U.S. attorney jobs and other nonpartisan posts. Those actions could violate federal employment laws. “I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account,” said Goodling. “And I regret those mistakes.”
• “The Keys to the Kingdom”: Despite her former title as the DOJ’s liaison to the White House, she said she didn’t play a significant role in the dismissals and never discussed them with Karl Rove or Harriet Miers. Said Goodling: “I did not hold the keys to the kingdom as some have suggested.”
• Throwing McNulty Under the Bus: At the top of her written testimony in bold letters and underlined was the sentence “The Deputy Attorney General’s Allegations are False.” She accused Paul McNulty, the outgoing deputy AG, of misleading Congress when he testified before the Senate in February. She said McNulty knew more details about the White House involvement in the firings than he acknowledged. “I believe he was not fully candid,” she said. McNulty issued a statement yesterday sharply denying her claim. It read, in part: “Ms. Goodling’s characterization of my testimony is wrong and not supported by the extensive record of documents and testimony already provided to Congress.”

A federal judge sentenced a former Coca-Cola secretary to eight years in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets and sell them to Pepsi. (Two others pleaded guilty to a conspiracy, foiled by the feds after Pepsi warned Coca-Cola that it received a letter offering them Coke’s trade secrets.) Here are stories from the AP and the AJC.

The sentence is longer than the one recommended under the federal sentencing guidelines, which called for a sentence around five to six years. Judge Owen Forrester told Joya Williams, 42 years old, that he was departing from the guidelines because, “This is the kind of offense that cannot be tolerated in our society.”

During trial, she denied committing a crime. Yesterday, she was contrite, acknowledging her wrongdoing for the first time. “Your honor, I have expanded my consciousness through this devastating experience,” Williams said before her sentencing. “This has been a very defining moment in my life. I have become infamous when I never wanted to become famous.” She added, “I am sorry to Coke and I’m sorry to my boss and to you and to my family as well.”

Judge Forrester wasn’t moved, telling Williams, “I can’t think of another case in 25 years that there’s been so much obstruction of justice.”

Things are getting strange in the bar-review class action in Los Angeles. The federal suit, filed on behalf of about 300,000 attorneys and discussed in an earlier post, alleges that Bar/Bri, the bar-review giant, and test-prep giant Kaplan, conspired to stay out of each other’s businesses, thereby minimizing competition and inflating the costs of bar-review courses.

Earlier this year, some of the lead plaintiffs objected to the proposed settlement of $49 million in cash, calling it “chump change.” Purchasers of Bar/Bri courses from August, 1997 through July 2006 may be eligible to participate in the settlement.

The latest twist: Eliot Disner, a partner at McGuireWoods, which is the lead class counsel and is now pushing to finalize the $49 million settlement, drafted a brief arguing that the settlement should be partially rejected because it did not take into account the full extent of the alleged antitrust violations. Disner told the Law Blog that he circulated the draft brief to McGuireWoods lawyers and to some of the plaintiffs who had earlier objected to the settlement. Here’s a May 21 article from law.com about Disner’s objections.

McGuireWoods debated internally whether its class-counsel duties required it to file the detailed brief with the court, according to firm spokesman Will Allcott. But the firm decided that it did not have to do so, he says, because it represents “the class as a whole” and believes that the settlement is in the best interest of the class.

Still, some of the lead plaintiffs filed Disner’s draft brief on May 17.

Disner declines to answer whether this memo puts him in a difficult position at McGuireWoods. When asked whether the attorney might be punished, Allcott said, “I’ll have to see what the current state of affairs is and get back to you.”

WSJ telecom reporter Dionne Searcey filed this dispatch with the Law Blog:

To appeal his insider-trading conviction, former Qwest Communications chief Joseph Nacchio has hired a big gun: Latham & Watkins’s Maureen Mahoney (pictured, left).

Mahoney, who works out of Latham’s D.C. office, is no stranger to high-profile appeals. In 2005, she scored a victory for accounting giant Arthur Anderson when the Court overturned its criminal conviction, and successfully represented the University of Michigan Law School in its 2003 defense of its affirmative-action policy. She is a former clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and once served as United States Deputy Solicitor General. In some circles, her name has been kicked around as a possible Supreme Court nominee.

She did not return a call for comment late today.

Last month a jury in federal court in Denver convicted Nacchio of 19 counts of insider trading. On appeal, an issue will likely be the judge’s exclusion of some classified evidence Nacchio wanted to use to show that he was convinced secret lucrative government contracts were coming his way. His lawyers thought the material could help offset the government’s theory that he was profiting from insider information when he sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock. Another issue will likely involve jury instructions on the definition of materiality.

New Jersey lawyer Herb Stern was Nacchio’s lead attorney during the trial. He is still involved in the case.

Sentencing for Nacchio is set for July 27 in Denver. He could face life in prison, but could receive a lesser sentence depending on how the judge interprets the sentencing guidelines in his case. Each guilty count carries at least a $1 million fine, and he is subject to $52 million in forfeitures, the gross proceeds of the sales for which he was found guilty.

Last week we interviewed Mike Dillon, the GC of Sun, about patent trolls, open-source software and other tech-land legal topics. Yesterday, Dillon had a provocative post from his own blog on the future of law firms. His prediction: The traditional law-firm model is going the way of the Mastodon:

What is the function of the law firm? My view is that law firms serve primarily as aggregators of specialized legal expertise. The premise has been that by combining multiple legal disciplines you can provide “one stop shopping” for current and prospective clients. This structure previously made sense. If you were an individual or business with a legal problem, it wasn’t efficient nor effective to try to identify an individual attorney with the technical skills that you required. So, you would turn to a law firm and rely on them to direct you to the appropriate attorney within their firm to solve your issue. The problem is that this model relies on growth (the need to add additional attorneys) to maintain profitability rather than focusing on efficiency gains. In this respect, it is at odds with what I need as a client and GC.

But with the Internet, says Dillon, a GC “can easily send an email to my network of other in-house attorneys or within professional associations like the ACC and get referrals.” Not to mention all the information available on attorneys via the Web. The result: Dillon and his team can increasingly identify and engage specific legal talent directly.

Dillon cites as an example Sun’s use of Foster & Associates, a five-person boutique, for all its employment-litigation work. Why? “They focus only on employment law, are very good at what they do, understand our business, get excellent results and are very cost effective,” writes Dillon. “They don’t have the overhead of supporting attorneys practicing in other areas.” He adds that Sun recently chose a small number of law firms to support us as “preferred partners” because these firms “get it” and “are receptive to looking at new ways to drive down their (and our) cost structure.”

“My point is that the epoch of the current law firm model - which derives its profitability from growing scale and raising hourly rates - will soon be over,” Dillon writes. “The firms that will survive and thrive are those that recognize this change and focus on how to maintain margins by focusing on efficiency. Hopefully, more firms will embrace this change.”

Students of fourth-tier law schools, have ye hope. Law Blog colleague Amir Efrati has a story today in the Journal on the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, an “obscure” school which has, rather improbably, started landing its students at top-tier law firms.

In the last two years, a half-dozen students have been hired for summer or full-time jobs at firms like Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw; Shearman & Sterling; and Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker. Nine other top-tier firms, including Skadden Arps and Fried Frank, now include Detroit Mercy in their select on-campus interview circuit.

Efrati traces the firm’s rising fortunes largely to some masterful marketing by Detroit Mercy dean and Law Blog Moustache Society member, Mark C. Gordon. A first-time dean and Harvard Law grad, Gordon got his school on the radar of the top-tier firms by enlisting a stable of big-time private-practice lawyers to join an advisory board that’s now some 60 members strong. His pitch: Help Detroit Mercy improve its third-year curriculum by creating a required set of courses that simulate real-life practice. When the partners arrived in Detroit for curriculum meetings, Gordon made sure they met the school’s top students during private interviews, some of which led to jobs.

“It’s one thing to come out of Harvard, Yale, Stanford and be going to some of these firms, and it’s another to come out of a school that doesn’t have that pedigree,” says Allan B. Moore, a partner at Covington & Burling who recently joined the Detroit Mercy board. “Mark is taking the ivory tower out of it.”

Law Blog readers from third or fourth-tier schools, any similar success stories you’d like to share?

Two juicy bits of news today in the KPMG tax-shelter case.

The first: the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled the district judge in the case erred in exercising jurisdiction over former KPMG employees’ efforts to recoup attorneys fees from KPMG. The appellate court dismissed the employees’ claims. Here’s the opinion, written by Judge Ralph Winter (pictured, left).

The second: Federal prosecutors said that they won’t prosecute Sidley Austin criminally in connection with the KPMG tax-shelter matter. Illegal tax shelters had been allegedly promoted by one of the law firm’s former tax partners. Here’s the story from WSJ.com.

In a Law Blog post from January, we unpacked the issues involved in today’s Second Circuit Ruling.

Last June, Manhattan federal district judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that that federal prosecutors violated the constitutional rights of 16 former KPMG partners indicted for tax fraud by pressuring the firm to cut off their legal fees. Following that ruling, Judge Kaplan created a separate civil proceeding to determine whether the accounting firm should pay the defendants’ legal fees. KPMG challenged Judge Kaplan’s ability to create that proceeding.

Today, the Second Circuit sided with KPMG. “The jurisdictional issues are complex,” wrote Judge Winter, “but . . . the proceeding challenged on this appeal — a state law contract action against a non-party within a federal criminal proceeding — is well outside the subject matter jurisdiction conferred by Congress on the federal courts.”

In regard to the Sidley issue: The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan said it believes the criminal prosecution of former Sidley Austin tax partner Raymond J. Ruble individually “sufficiently vindicates the interests of law enforcement and the public.” Prosecutors claim that Ruble carried out a major part of the alleged fraud while a partner at Brown & Wood, a firm that merged with Sidley in May 2001. Here’s a press release from the government and a statement from Sidley Austin.

In getting its walking papers, Sidley fared far better than Jenkens & Gilchrist, the former Dallas-based law firm that closed its doors at the end of March due to fallout from its tax-shelter practice. In 2005, Jenkens agreed to pay about $81 million to settle a class action brought by former clients, who accused the firm of peddling fraudulent tax shelters. On March 28, federal prosecutors agreed not to prosecute Jenkens, but that decision came after the firm had already concluded it would have to disband.

Ruble has been charged criminally along with 17 others, including the group of 16 former KPMG employees, in connection with a scheme that allegedly allowed wealthy individuals to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. Five people, including former KPMG tax partner David Rivkin, have pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the matter.

With the recent wave of BigLaw associate salary increases largely behind us, it’s time to check in with some of the firms’ biggest clients: in-house corporate counsel.

According to an April survey by legal consulting group Altman Weil, GCs aren’t too keen about the changes.

General counsel reportedly believe that with more pressure on associates to bill hours to justify the new wages, firms are passing on the new costs to them in the form of higher billing rates. In retaliation, five out of 38 law departments surveyed said the recent increases led them to restrict outside law firms’ use of first- and second-year associates on their legal work. The majority said they currently go on a case-by-case basis.

“I think there’s something wrong with a system where first-year associates make more money than many of the judges we have out there,” says Jim Hatcher, general counsel of Cox Communications, in Atlanta, who is in the case-by-case camp. Hatcher told the Law Blog only a small portion of Cox’s outside legal work is handled by big firms—between five and 10—that took part in the recent salary increases. He says rising billing rates in recent years have led Cox to use firms with lower fees “and we’ve been happy with the result.” He adds, “This may just exacerbate the situation.”

High associate attrition at big firms is often cited as the main reason for the latest salary increases. But that’s not necessarily the sole factor behind the increase in billing rates, says Firoz Dattu, managing director of the General Counsel Roundtable, a research organization for corporate law departments. Citing a recent study by the group, Dattu says general counsel spent 33% more on outside legal spending as a percentage of revenue in 2005 than they did in 2001, while cutting in-house attorneys by nearly 10% as a percentage of revenue during the same period.

Law Blog Question of the Day: BigLaw first and second-year associates, have any of you been barred from working on matters?

Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight boxing champion, was famous for controlling his opponents in the ring. But he apparently didn’t have as firm a grasp over his finances, and he’s suing his daughter to try and discover what went wrong.

Frazier has filed a complaint in Pennsylvania state court against Jackie Frazier-Lyde, who served as Frazier’s attorney and business adviser from 1989 to 2004, according to the legal papers. The suit demands that Frazier-Lyde turn over all business and legal records related to her representation of Frazier and provide an accounting of all matters she handled for him. Frazier maintains she ignored a prior demand and in so doing breached an ethical duty to him.

William Charles Dixon, the lawyer representing Frazier-Lyde, called the suit a “fishing expedition.” He adds: “These documents never left the possession of Joe Frazier’s gym, which is where she had her law office. That’s the beginning, middle and end of the story.” Frazier-Lyde is currently running for a seat on the Philadelphia Municipal Court.

Representing Frazier is Michael Kelly (pictured), the managing partner of McCarter & English’s Wilmington office and lifelong boxer who has handled several matters for Smokin’ Joe over the years. (His twin brother, John Kelly, is an orthopedic surgeon in Philadelphia and Frazier’s personal doctor.) Kelly, whose father was a Golden Gloves champion, competed as an amateur. In the 1980s, he once sparred with Frazier at Joe Frazier’s Gym in Philadelphia.

“It was a very humbling experience,” said Kelly. “He hit me with a left hook that came from New Jersey.”

“This is an old and sad story about the athlete – particularly the African-American athlete – being exploited by his handlers,” added Kelly, who says the suit is just the start of an effort to untangle Frazier’s business dealings. “Joe always says, ‘I had one job and that was to knock out my opponent. I did my job, and I expected people around me to do their job.’”

Kelly, the latest inductee to the Law Blog Moustache Society, says they’re going to pursue the litigation aggressively. Referencing the famous defensive boxing style employed by Frazier’s archrival Muhammad Ali, he said: “This won’t be any rope-a-dope.”

A WSJ editorial applauds the Supreme Court’s decision in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, which overruled the Second Circuit’s decision and dismissed an private antitrust class-action brought against the Baby Bells. The ruling raises the bar on civil antitrust cases.

The editorial pointed us toward a playful exchange in the opinion between Justice Souter, who wrote for the majority (”believe it or not,” says the WSJ edit board); and Justice Stevens, who penned the dissent. Justice Stevens quoted Adam Smith’s famous line about pinmakers in the “Wealth of Nations,” (though he added “I am not so cynical as to accept that sentiment at face value”):

Many years ago a truly great economist perceptively observed that “[p]eople of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

To that, Justice Souter offered this footnote in response: “If Adam Smith is peering down today, he may be surprised to learn that his tongue-in-cheek remark would be authority to force his famous pinmaker to devote financial and human capital to hire lawyers, prepare for depositions, and otherwise fend off allegations of conspiracy; all this just because he belonged to the same trade guild as one of his competitors when their pins carried the same price tag.”

The Washington Post has what we here in the business call a “curtain raiser” on today’s scheduled House testimony from Monica Goodling, the former Gonzales aide at the center of the U.S. Attorney Mess. Her lawyer, John Dowd at Akin Gump, initially kept her from testifying, saying she would take the Fifth, but she will now be granted immunity. (For Law Blog background, click here and here.)

Goodling, a 1999 graduate of Regent Law with six months of prosecutorial experience, “was among a small coterie of young aides to Gonzales who were remarkable for their inexperience and autonomy in deciding the fates of seasoned Justice Department lawyers,” writes the Post, citing DOJ officials. Perhaps the best thing about today’s appearance on Capitol Hill: Updated photos of Goodling, so we don’t have to use the one at left, taken at a law school reunion.

“All I ever wanted to do was serve this president, this administration, this department,” Goodling tearfully told a DOJ official shortly before she quit, according to a transcript of his interview released by the House committee last night and reported by the WaPo.

Law Blog Question of the Day: Who pays Goodling’s legal bills? Akin Gump’s Dowd is one of D.C. top white-collar defense lawyers whose rate, we’d venture to guess, is too rich for young Monica’s blood. Assuming he has some flexibility, does he cut his fees? Does he take the case pro bono for the opportunity to work on a fascinating case with lots of free publicity? Through an Akin Gump spokeswoman, Dowd declined to comment. Beltway lawyers: How does this work?

Law Blog Flashback, 1982: As an 11-year old little leaguer, the Law Blog takes an aggressive lead off first base. The pitcher attempts a pickoff. The Law Blog awkwardly slides headfirst back toward the bag. The Law Blog not only gets picked off, but also hyperextends an elbow in the process.

That excruciatingly painful memory — which, by the way, forced us to learn how to slide properly — was brought to mind while reading this New York Post story. A Staten Island mom who has sued a little league coach for not teaching her son how to slide properly. The lawsuit, filed in New York State court earlier this month, accuses the coach and the little league of never teaching her son “skills needed to avoid and/or minimize the risks of injury,” specifically how to run bases and slide.

Three years ago, 12-year-old Martin Gonzales tried to stretch a single into a double and allegedly suffered “serious bodily injury” that required multiple surgeries and caused “permanent scarring and disability.”

Said the coach, Leigh Bernstein: “I’ve been coaching for over 20 years, and have instructed players in the various skills required to play baseball, including sliding. Unfortunately, injuries happen. That’s part of the game.”

What’s with all of these wacky New York City baseball-related lawsuits? This one makes three in the month of May (click here and here for the others).

Here’s an item from our friends at the Health Blog:

As one physician blogger put it, “hell has frozen over”: the North Carolina Medical Society and the N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers have both agreed to support a bill that would cap monetary damages at $1 million in some medical malpractice cases.

The bill, modeled after a law recently passed in Washington state, applies to cases where a doctor or hospital is being sued for negligence, and lays out a pathway for plaintiffs and defendants who want to resolve their case through binding arbitration rather than in court, the AP reports. The parties would be able to select their own arbitrator or have one appointed by the court. Monetary damages would be capped at $1 million, and appeals would be limited.

The bill still has to be passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor to become law. And it wouldn’t apply to cases where the parties don’t agree to arbitration. Still, it’s pleasantly weird to hear trial lawyers and doctors singing more or less the same tune. “This is just a small baby step,” a medical society lobbyist told the AP. “But it is a small baby step in the right direction.”

What do the following Web sites have in common?

(a) www.milbergweissjustice.com
(b) www.freetocompete.com
(c) www.lawzq.com
(d) www.suedbyscotts.com

Answer: All were launched in an attempt to fight courtroom battles.

(A) Within minutes of an indictment being handed down, Milberg unveiled this Web site, where it defends itself against criminal charges. (B) After losing a patent-infringement lawsuit against Verizon, Vonage made this Web site the centerpiece of its PR offensive arguing its case. (C) Texas billionaire Andy Beal was so upset with a decision that went against him in the New York Court of Appeals that he set up this Web site, which includes a 5,000-word rant about the ruling.

The WSJ has a story today about (D). In March a small fertilizer company named TerraCycle learned it was being sued by industry giant Scotts Miracle-Gro. In the suit, Scotts accuses TerraCycle of false advertising and claims that TerraCycle’s packaging infringes on its trade dress. The lawsuit (click here) could wipe the $1.5 million-revenue company out. So in addition to retaining legal counsel, it’s trying to draw attention to its lawsuit with a blog, eliciting public support, boosting sales and raising legal funds.

So whether you’re a criminal defendant (e.g., Milberg Weiss, Martha Stewart, Kenneth Lay) or a corporate defendant in a commercial dispute (e.g., Vonage, TerraCycle, Andy Beal), bringing your cause to the people through the World Wide Web seems to be all the rage. Lawyers, what should we make of this trend?

“Are publicly traded law firms in our future?” the Law Blog asked back in March.

The answer: Yes. Australian plaintiffs’ firm Slater & Gordon went public yesterday, listing its shares on the Australian Stock Exchange and making it, according to Legal Times, the world’s first publicly traded law firm. Its shares rose 40% on the first day of trading. Here is Slater & Gordon’s prospectus; a story from the Sydney Morning Herald; and blog entries from Ideoblog and the Securities Litigation Watch.

The IPO follows new Australian legislation allowing law firms to raise public funds and allowing non-lawyers to invest. The UK is considering a similar bill.

Here in the USA, going public is against the rules. ABA Model Rule 5.4 prohibits firms from selling equity shares in law firms to non-lawyers. (Specifically, it says that a lawyer shall not share legal fees with a non-lawyer.) The problem legal ethics types wrestle with: As a public company, a law firm would have a potential conflict between its duty of loyalty to its clients and its duty of loyalty to its shareholders.

Slater & Gordon flags this concern in the “risk factors” section of the prospectus:

Lawyers have a primary duty to the courts and a secondary duty to their clients. These duties are paramount given the nature of the Company’s business as an Incorporated Legal Practice. There could be circumstances in which the lawyers of Slater & Gordon are required to act in accordance with these duties and contrary to other corporate responsibilities and against the interests of Shareholders or the short-term profitability of the Company.

Considering the prospect of publicly traded U.S. law firms, an Ideoblog reader asked: “I still want to know why lawyers should want to be public when all of their clients are going private?”

President Bush repeated his support for Gonzales yesterday, and took a swipe at congressional Democrats. “I stand by Al Gonzales, and I would hope that people would be more sober in how they address these important issues,” Bush said, according to the WaPo. “And they ought to get the job done of passing legislation, as opposed to figuring out how to be actors on the political theater stage.”

For the Law Blog’s money, this morning’s most interesting story on on the U.S. Attorney Mess is a WaPo profile on David Iglesias (pictured), the ousted U.S. Attorney from New Mexico and supposed inspiration for Tom Cruise’s character in “A Few Good Men.” The Post notes that Iglesias has “managed to transform himself from fired public servant into a fairly noisy poster boy for good government.” He’s made the rounds on the talk-show circuit, appearing on Bill Maher, Chris Matthews, Larry King, Katie Couric, Tim Russert and Chris Wallace, among others.

He’s not afraid to admit that he’s enjoyed the limelight. “I’ve loved it,” he says. “It’s a good fit. It feels really natural. I’ll tell you what, from an exposure point of view it’s been incredible. Had I stayed a U.S. Attorney and not gotten forced to resign, no one would know who I was outside of New Mexico. In a perverse way this has already put me on the national map. My own test is: If it’s a show I’ve heard of, I’ll probably do it.”

Other sacked U.S. Attorneys don’t see it that way. John McKay, the former U.S. Attorney in Seattle, was asked whether he enjoyed the spotlight: “No, not at all. I think it was a bad thing. I wasn’t looking for attention, and it was pretty miserable, quite frankly. Others have said, ‘Oh boy, it’s good you got all this attention.’ I’m never going to feel that way.”

Striking another blow to the plaintiffs’ bar, the Supreme Court toughened the standards to get into court on civil antitrust litigation claims. In a 7-2 opinion, the justices ruled that an allegation that two or more companies are acting in parallel isn’t enough for an antitrust lawsuit to proceed; plaintiffs must include some allegation indicating that the companies were actively working together. Here are stories from the WSJ and FT.

On the winning side, representing the Bells: Michael Kellogg (pictured) of D.C.’s Kellogg Huber; on the losing team, representing the plaintiffs: J. Douglas Richards, formerly of Milberg Weiss now at the Pomerantz law firm.

In Twombly, a group of consumers sued the Regional Bells alleging they conspired to jack up prices. The district court dismissed the case for lack of a sufficient pleading. But the Second Circuit reversed, ruling that the plaintiffs’ complaint was sufficient. When that happened, a host of industry groups — airlines, credit cards, oil — asked the court to take the case, fearing vexatious civil antitrust suits.

Law Blog colleague Jess Bravin writes that while the ruling doesn’t radically upend the rules for antitrust actions, it does mark the latest in a sequence of cases where the court has tightened the scope of the Sherman Act.

Writing for the majority, Justice Souter noted the high bar of antitrust litigation, writing that “the problem of discovery abuse” could cost innocent defendants huge sums. In dissent, Justice Stevens said the majority was driven not by settled law but a “transparent policy concern” to protect antitrust defendants from litigation costs.