Last spring, Tim Hardesty wasn't having any luck looking for a legal job as he completed his third year at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. But an innovative law school "test drive" program put him at Barnett McNair Hall, after the Dallas estate-planning firm agreed to accept $3,500 to let Hardesty work there for a month and see if he was a good fit. The hope was that the tryout, which basically amounted to a one-month job interview, would persuade the firm to hire Hardesty as an associate—and it did, reports the National Law Journal. Although some critics…

Pay freezes, staff layoffs and reduced billing rates, as well as other signs of economic stress, are becoming commonplace in law practice, respondents to the latest Florida Bar survey say. And many are now mulling career changes ranging from a shift to another practice area or launching their own firm to leaving the law altogether. Slightly more than half of respondents to the 2010 Economics and Law Office Management Survey say their business and/or profits are down, compared to two years earlier and a little over 41 percent say they haven't given lawyers pay raises, reports the Florida Bar News.…

Depending on which side of the dispute you're on, lawyers who sue creditors under statutes such as the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act are either knights fighting for often-violated consumer rights or opportunists pursuing profitable technical violations on behalf of deadbeats. But there's one thing that's clear to all concerned in Colorado, which has a rapidly escalating docket of such cases: Attorney David Michael Larson brings a lot of them. Since 2007, he has brought two-thirds of the total 1,403 FDCPA suits filed, reports the Denver Post. "The debt-buying industry is so broken and so bad, it enables some…

For a second time, a Superior Court jury in Washington, D.C., has ruled that a former partner of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal was undercompensated for his origination work concerning a case over the bombing of a Pan Am flight above Lockerbie, Scotland. And this time Douglas Rosenthal (no relation to the firm's name partner) got around $500,000 more, reports the Blog of Legal Times. His lawyer says Rosenthal expects to receive about $2.1 million. Although liability has previously been affirmed by the D.C. Court of Appeals, the appellate panel gave Rosenthal the option of another trial on damages, which he…

Justice Antonin Scalia argued in dissent today that the Supreme Court has left its confrontation clause jurisprudence “in a shambles” by creating an expansive exception that allows admission of pretrial statements by victims of violent crimes. Scalia is known for a series of opinions on the rights of defendants to confront witnesses at trial that are based on his originalist view of the Constitution. Today, Scalia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented in Michigan v. Bryant, a decision allowing admission of statements by a dying man who told Detroit police that a man named “Rick” had shot him. Ginsburg wrote…

Court officials in South Florida fear that proposed budget cuts could overburden a system already reeling from a loss in income. The governor’s budget proposal calls for a $40 million cut in the budget for court administration, resulting in possibly 600 layoffs, including positions for staff attorneys and judicial assistants, the Miami Herald reports. Judicial assistants keeping their jobs would have double the workload. Already the courts are straining to cope with a $72.3 million shortfall because of a big drop in foreclosure filing fees. Court officials fear big case delays and an exodus of employees forced to shoulder more…

An initiative funded by a $400,000 Justice Department grant is intended to make a trip to criminal court more pleasant, partly by teaching judges and court personnel how to be more polite. The Center for Court Innovation plans to get the pilot project under way this fall in a medium-size city, the New York Times reports at its City Room blog. The center’s director, Greg Berman, says the project will train judges and other court personnel how to communicate better. “We don’t want going to court to feel like this Kafkaesque experience,” Berman told the Times. “Little things like making…