#legal-industry-profiteering

#legal-industry-profiteering

California has a certain kind of easy-going vibe that'll make you appreciate that business casual lifestyle. Depending on where your office is located, you may even be able to see the beach from your window.

Prosecutor James Brown KC stated that Wazabanga and Belfon did not intend to kill Aladejana but wanted to confront him about a grievance related to a failed business arrangement.

The U.S. Department of Justice reached a settlement in the lawsuit filed last April by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union and the American Library Association, agreeing to leave IMLS intact and allowing it to continue its work supporting libraries and museums across the country.

"I'm in favor of not having any rules against insider trading. I would like all the information out there as soon as it's available. Because look, as a society, we are better off knowing as soon as possible anything that is knowable."

According to Bloomberg Law's Workload & Hours Survey, a third of nonequity partners also say they're undervalued in their roles and more than half say they were burnt out in 2025.

James Heaps, 70, pleaded guilty to 13 felonies, including multiple counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious person, and must register as a sex offender for life.

Keith Redenbach, the principal of Redenbach Legal, billed the Broken Hill city council $10 million after representing them in a dispute, including 34.5 hours in one day.

Lucie Allen will become a co-CEO of Barbri, a leading bar exam prep company, and will share leadership duties with Steve Fredette, the current CEO and chairman.

This may be the last year that law firms can expect billing rate increases to drive financial stability, according to a new survey of more than 800 senior finance and legal professionals in large firms across North America, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Technology company BigHand's 2026 finance report suggests that firms can no longer rely on traditional measures of profitability, as clients are demanding more efficiency and predictability amid the increased adoption of artificial intelligence across the legal profession, according to Law.com.

Leaving Wachtell wasn't an easy decision - it's one of the great law firms in the world, and I learned an enormous amount there. But it wasn't about leaving something behind; it was about being intentional about what came next.

The legal profession rewards endurance, precision and control. It also quietly normalizes stress, isolation and overextension. For patent practitioners and other IP lawyers, the pressures are uniquely acute: compressed prosecution deadlines, high-stakes litigation exposure, often unrealistic client-driven budget constraints, regulatory whiplash at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and increasingly complex technologies layered with global filing and prosecution strategy.

For the first time in three years, more law firms are planning to expand their office footprint, rather than contract, according to a new report from commercial real estate brokerage CBRE.

I'm incredibly proud of the firm and what we've accomplished in the last year. We had certainly, the year before, a historic year financially, and this year was also historic in being one of our best financial years in history.

Market forces such as rising attorney salaries, persistent inflation, and unrelenting demand in premium practices are giving firms the confidence to push hourly rates beyond historical norms.

Leading legal departments are shifting from reactive negotiation to proactive pricing design, setting guardrails before rates are proposed rather than responding after the fact. This approach enables departments to establish parameters and expectations upfront, fundamentally changing the negotiation dynamic and improving outcomes.

From law firms to in-house legal teams, the rules of value are being rewritten. The question is: Who's ready to lead the change? In the first episode of 2026 for the UpLevel View podcast, Stephanie Corey and Ken Callander sit down with Rita Gunther McGrath, Columbia Business School professor and Wall Street Journal columnist, to talk about how AI is forcing professional services to price outcomes instead of hours.