Arthur Cutillo, a former Ropes & Gray patent lawyer who in January pled guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud, today was sentenced to serve 30 months in prison. He was one of two Ropes & Gray lawyers involved in the insider trading scandal, and he admitted to taking cash in exchange for nonpublic information about merger activity involving 3Com Corp. and Axcan Pharma Inc., Reuters reports. Cutillo, 34, passed the information from his firm to Jason Goldfarb, a college friend, in exchange for $32,000, the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) reports. Goldfarb, also a lawyer, allegedly shared the information with…

“Scambloggers,” a term used to describe people whose writing focuses on the allegedly misleading way that law schools market themselves to potential law students, plays an important part in the profession’s evolution, according to a recent article in the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology. Lucille Jewel, an associate professor at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, writes that scambloggers, who she characterizes in her article as a populist online community calling for reform" raise legitimate questions about the system, and they’ve reached a broad audience, thanks to the Internet. "Most law schools continue to spin this story of, 'Come…

Federal prisoners serving crack cocaine-related sentences will be eligible for early release as a result of a U.S. Sentencing Commission decision today, the Associated Press reports. Last year, Congress passed a law that significantly lowered recommended sentences for people convicted of crack cocaine crimes to fix disparity between sentences for crack and powder cocaine. The new law didn’t apply to sentences for people already in prison, but today the six-member Sentencing Commission voted that it should. Approximately 12,000 federal prisoners will be affected, the AP reports. The crimes range from possession to trafficking.

Joseph Stiglitz, an economist and Nobel Memorial Prize winner, is suing his former lawyer for $1 million for professional negligence, on the basis that had she been quicker filing his divorce papers, his now ex-wife wouldn’t have received part of the prize’s $300,000 award, or share future earnings based on it. Jury selection for the Washington, D.C., federal case was set to begin today, Bloomberg reports. Stiglitz received the prize in 2001 for work showing that markets are inefficient when all parties in a transaction don’t have equal access to critical information. He claims that when he hired Rita M.…

A man who mistakenly believed he was HIV positive for five years because of a mistaken diagnosis may sue for negligent infliction of emotional distress, an appeals court has ruled. The en banc District of Columbia Court of Appeals allowed the suit against the plaintiff’s doctor and health clinic, according to the Legal Profession Blog and The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times. The opinion could also apply to lawyers, creating an obligation to avoid negligent infliction of emotional distress, according to the Legal Profession Blog. Terry Hedgepeth filed the suit against the Whitman Walker Clinic for the alleged misdiagnosis…

A lawyer takes a phone call from a woman eager to tell him why she wants a divorce. Politeness outweighs any concern about a possible conflict. As the woman starts to tell him about an affair, he realizes to whom he is talking. Although she has a different last name, she is married to his client. Her [...]

Lawyers increasingly complain about gamesmanship that threatens to sabotage the practice of mediation, but no one seems to be willing just yet to abandon the popular alternative to trial in civil cases. Despite finger pointing about mediation abuse between the plaintiff and defense bars, retired Judge John J. McGrath Jr. said he’s had only a [...]

A defendant who wants to pick and choose certain questions to answer with a lawyer present must make it clear to a reasonable officer which questions he’ll answer and which he’ll defer; here, a drug suspect did not clearly invoke his right to counsel and the Court of Appeals upholds admission of defendant’s statement that [...]

There was scant good news when Economic Modeling Specialists released its analysis of job openings and bar passage numbers this week. The consulting company concluded that nearly every state has an oversupply of lawyers. The exceptions, it said, were Nebraska, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C. Now the company is taking a second look at the numbers, the Washington Post reports. EMS notes that Washington, D.C., allows lawyers to practice there if they passed the bar in another state, and Wisconsin admits graduates of law schools in the state to the bar without requiring an exam. As a result, Economic Modeling Specialists…

The former White House counsel disbarred for his role in the Watergate cover-up says President Nixon might never have been forced from office if different lawyer ethics rules had been in effect. John Dean now teaches a legal ethics course about reporting changes implemented by many states. The new rules, adopted after Watergate and refined after Enron, require lawyers to report wrongdoing within an organization, up to the highest levels, and, if nothing is done, they may "report out" to an outside authority. Writing for Bloomberg View, Dean says he wishes the rules were in place after the burglary of…