Newsline - 10/09/09

• Outside Counsel Spending Projected to Drop By 4.7%, But Regulatory Hiring Is On the Rise. A new study projects a 4.3 percent slide in corporate spending on outside counsel next year. Outside counsel spending dropped from an average of $20.8 million in 2008 to $18.5 million this year and is projected to dip to $17.7 million in 2010, according to a study by BTI Consulting Group. Wile that's not good news for lawyers looking to go in-house, there is a glimmer of hope. Regulatory hiring has been on the rise. The National Law Journal
  

• Deferred Associates Seek Interim Jobs, Some Taking Waitressing Jobs. Next time your order that chicken salad, the person waiting on you may not be starving actor, but rather a starving law graduate. Law firms have been asking new hires to defer their employment start dates, an unprecedented step for many firms that had weathered previous economic downturns without wide-scale postponements. To cope, some would-be attorneys are seeking pro-bono fellowships, while others are taking jobs ranging from temporary work for their alma maters to waitressing or bartending. And law school career-service officials are advising students to take whatever work they can find to pay their bills. What about law school reducing their admission rates as well? Apparently, that's not an option they are putting on the table. The Wall Street Journal.

• New Kids On The Block: Quiznos Hires New GC Pat Meyeres, and VMWare Hires Dawn Smith as new GC. Denver-based The Quiznos Master LLC, known for its toasted sandwiches, has named Pat Meyers as its new legal chief. Meyers was the company's general counsel for ten years, and left two years ago to become chief legal officer of Consumer Capital Partners, one of the private company's largest investors. Dawn Smith who made partner two years ago at Morrison & Foerster will now serve as general counsel at one of Silicon Valley's biggest new companies, VMWare Inc. Smith, 45, has no in-house experience, which is unusual for this type of hire. We wish them both lots of luck in their new endeavor. The Recorder and Corporate Counsel
  
  
• Recruiter Got Zip in 12-Lawyer Leap, Now Seeks $100M in Federal Suit. Just when you thought it was safe to recruit and collect your fees again, there goes another fee dispute. And this time, the numbers are big. C.B. Legal Search has sued Los Angeles-based Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith for $100 million in actual and punitive damages, contending that the 700-attorney law firm squeezed it out of a 12-attorney placement deal it helped orchestrate. In March, C.B. Legal Search introduced partner Edward Ruberry of Bollinger Ruberry & Garvey to "senior-level employees" at Lewis Brisbois and he revealed the identities of insurance lawyers at his Chicago firm who would be interested in moving to Lewis Brisbois, alleges the suit, which is now in federal court in the Southern District of Texas.After the initial meeting, C.B. Legal Search asked Lewis Brisbois to sign a confidentiality agreement, the suit says, and the firm's then-chief financial officer e-mailed the recruiting firm that each party would do so. But, the suit states, no such agreement was ever signed. Courts have not been kind to legal recruiters in the past (See our previous posts: Good Faith Went Up In Smoke In Lost Recruiting Fees and The Wheel Turns On Another Recruiter Fee Dispute). Perhaps C.B. Legal Search will be luckier than its predecessors. The National Law Journal.

• BofA Shareholder Urges Board to Unmuzzle Former GC - The Saga Continues. If this was Summer, this would make for an interesting beach read, full of twists and turns and mystery. The BofA saga seems to continue to unravel, to the delight of many news agencies. Everyone wants to know what happened in the BofA and Merrill Lynch merger: If only Mayopoulos culd speak and shed some light? large shareholder at Bank of America Corp. That's exactly what a large shareholder is urging its board of directors to do: allow ex-general counsel Tim Mayopoulos to testify about the bank's merger with Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. The shareholder also is asking the board to hire outside counsel to conduct an internal probe into the deal. Stay tuned for more. Corporate Counsel.