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A lack of early support and systemic barriers continue to block underrepresented students from entering the legal profession, attorneys and legal educators warned at a Friday panel, calling for expanded investment in pipeline programs despite recent legal challenges to diversity initiatives.
Many current state bar character and fitness tests fail to identify bad actors, and at the same time, certain aspects of the queries can hurt efforts to increase diversity in the profession, according to panelists at the American Bar Association's 2025 Virtual Equity Summit on Friday.
The U.S. legal industry added 1,100 jobs in May, holding steady in the midst of economic uncertainty, according to preliminary data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The University of Virginia School of Law Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and attorney Edward Gilbert lead this week's edition of ¼«ËÙÈü³µ Legal Lions, after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Sixth Circuit's ruling that plaintiffs claiming anti-heterosexual workplace discrimination need to provide extra "background circumstances" evidence.
Pierson Ferdinand LLP has added a partner from Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP with expertise handling trade secrets litigation to bolster its intellectual property department.
At an American Bar Association summit session on inclusive workplace practices on Thursday, one panelist noted that one of the ABA's recent recommendations is to engage in guided conversations throughout law firms and across the legal profession. But what exactly is a guided conversation?
The legal industry began June with another action-packed week as BigLaw firms expanded their presence and offerings. Test your legal news savvy here with ¼«ËÙÈü³µ Pulse’s weekly quiz.
A former Morris Manning & Martin LLP real estate partner is the latest attorney this year to join Clark Hill PLC and help grow an Atlanta office that opened nearly a year ago, the firm announced Wednesday.
A Florida lawyer sentenced to 75 months in prison over a COVID-19 loan fraud scheme has asked the Eleventh Circuit to rehear her sentencing en banc, arguing the appellate court should reexamine the district court's so-called Keane statement allegedly disregarding sentencing guidelines.
As nonequity partnership tiers expand across U.S. law firms, experts warn that the model, while effective for retaining talent and controlling costs, demands disciplined management oversight to avoid becoming a liability.
An insurance company that sued a law firm for malpractice in Georgia federal court after paying more than $6.4 million following a worker injury jury verdict against a construction company it insured, said Thursday that it had settled with the firm in connection with its representation of the company.
Domestic lawyer headcount growth among the 400 largest law firms in the U.S. picked up speed in 2024, rising 3.1% on average and outpacing growth the previous year, but experts say the winds that bolstered that expansion may have shifted as a result of macroeconomic uncertainty.
Many of the largest law firms in the U.S. had a strong year in 2024. And as demand for their services ticked upward they invested in bench strength, boosting the number of lawyers available to assist clients, our latest ranking of the largest U.S. law firms shows.
Following a string of departures from the firm now known as Taylor Duma LLP — most notably a former name partner and a onetime managing partner — founding partner and Chairman Marc A. Taylor said the midsize law firm has a plan to grow in a more efficient and agile manner.
Lawyers for a pair of former Atlanta strip club workers called on a federal judge Wednesday to reject an "extremely untimely" bid to disqualify them by the clubs' owners, arguing the owners don't bother to substantiate their claims that the plaintiffs can't be represented by the same counsel because one was the other's supervisor.
Even as lawyers have returned to the office in larger numbers than in the years during and immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic, hybrid in-person and remote work remains the norm at law firms today, which have turned their focus to creating flexible, collaborative spaces that "link presence to purpose," according to the results of a survey released this week.
Georgia's Judicial Qualifications Commission urged a hearing panel to reject a Fulton County judge's request to quash her ethics charges due to what she characterized as "improper failures to disclose information and recuse" by two JQC members.
A Georgia federal magistrate rejected a sanctions bid from two former plastics plant workers who claimed that a company executive tried to bribe their attorney to drop their discrimination claims, writing that their motion was "long on allegations but short on proof."
The Southeast Georgia Health System Inc. has installed its interim president and chief executive officer — who was most recently its chief legal officer — as president and CEO.
Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP has selected a construction partner to helm the firm's Atlanta office after its previous leader helped triple the attorney roster in the two years since the firm arrived in the city, where it recently moved to a renovated space.
A rebound in client work sent the nation’s largest law firms into growth mode last year, driving a wave of hiring, mergers and strategic moves that reshaped the top tier of the ¼«ËÙÈü³µ 400. Here's a preview of the 100 firms with the largest U.S. attorney headcounts.
Taylor Duma LLP's former managing partner has left with four attorneys to start her own law firm and grow an existing alternative dispute resolution company, the second leader in recent months to depart the Atlanta-based law firm, which recently changed its name from Taylor English Duma LLP.
The Georgia state court of appeals on Monday agreed to consider whether a law firm's lawsuit against its former client over legal fees should move forward in the trial court that ordered the case to arbitration, with both sides accusing the other of "gamesmanship."
Legal department hires over the past month included high-profile appointments at Adobe, Takeda Pharmaceutical and Duke Energy. Here, ¼«ËÙÈü³µ Pulse looks at some of the top in-house announcements from May.
While many in the legal industry may be apprehensive about generative artificial intelligence, leaders at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP are working to get the firm's attorneys excited about the technology and willing to experiment with it in their work.
With many legal professionals starting to explore practical uses of generative artificial intelligence in areas such as research, discovery and legal document development, the fundamental principle of human oversight cannot be underscored enough for it to be successful, say Ty Dedmon at Bradley Arant and Paige Hunt at Lighthouse.
The legal profession is among the most hesitant to adopt ChatGPT because of its proclivity to provide false information as if it were true, but in a wide variety of situations, lawyers can still be aided by information that is only in the right ballpark, says Robert Plotkin at Blueshift IP.
Series
Ask A Mentor: How Can I Use Social Media Responsibly?Leah Kelman at Herrick Feinstein discusses the importance of reasoned judgment and thoughtful process when it comes to newly admitted attorneys' social media use.
Attorneys should take a cue from U.S. Supreme Court justices and boil their arguments down to three points in their legal briefs and oral advocacy, as the number three is significant in the way we process information, says Diana Simon at University of Arizona.
In order to achieve a robust client data protection posture, law firms should focus on adopting a risk-based approach to security, which can be done by assessing gaps, using that data to gain leadership buy-in for the needed changes, and adopting a dynamic and layered approach, says John Smith at Conversant Group.
Laranda Walker at Susman Godfrey, who was raising two small children and working her way to partner when she suddenly lost her husband, shares what fighting to keep her career on track taught her about accepting help, balancing work and family, and discovering new reserves of inner strength.
Series
Ask A Mentor: How Can I Turn Deferral To My Advantage?Diana Leiden at Winston & Strawn discusses how first-year associates whose law firm start dates have been deferred can use the downtime to hone their skills, help their communities, and focus on returning to BigLaw with valuable contacts and out-of-the-box insights.
Female attorneys and others who pause their careers for a few years will find that gaps in work history are increasingly acceptable among legal employers, meaning with some networking, retraining and a few other strategies, lawyers can successfully reenter the workforce, says Jill Backer at Ave Maria School of Law.
ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools pose significant risks to the integrity of legal work, but the key for law firms is not to ban these tools, but to implement them responsibly and with appropriate safeguards, say Natalie Pierce and Stephanie Goutos at Gunderson Dettmer.
Opinion
We Must Continue DEI Efforts Despite High Court HeadwindsThough the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down affirmative action in higher education, law firms and their clients must keep up the legal industry’s recent momentum advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the profession in order to help achieve a just and prosperous society for all, says Angela Winfield at the Law School Admission Council.
Law firms that fail to consider their attorneys' online habits away from work are not using their best efforts to protect client information and are simplifying the job of plaintiffs attorneys in the case of a breach, say Mark Hurley and Carmine Cicalese at Digital Privacy and Protection.
Though effective writing is foundational to law, no state requires attorneys to take continuing legal education in this skill — something that must change if today's attorneys are to have the communication abilities they need to fulfill their professional and ethical duties to their clients, colleagues and courts, says Diana Simon at the University of Arizona.
In the most stressful times for attorneys, when several transactions for different partners and clients peak at the same time and the phone won’t stop buzzing, incremental lifestyle changes can truly make a difference, says Lindsey Hughes at Haynes Boone.
Series
Ask A Mentor: How Can I Support Gen Z Attorneys?Meredith Beuchaw at Lowenstein Sandler discusses how senior attorneys can assist the newest generation of attorneys by championing their pursuit of a healthy work-life balance and providing the hands-on mentorship opportunities they missed out on during the pandemic.
A recent data leak at Proskauer via a cloud data storage platform demonstrates key reasons why law firms must pay attention to data safeguarding, including the increasing frequency of cloud-based data breaches and the consequences of breaking client confidentiality, says Robert Kraczek at One Identity.