The New York City marathon happens this Sunday. We know many lawyers who will be running it, and we wish them luck.

The marathon did not impose a minimum age until 1981 (16, raised to 18 in 1988). Pegged to the upcoming marathon, the New York Times had a fascinating article earlier this week about child marathoners, focusing on Wesley Paul, Scott Black (pictured), and Howie Breinan:

The adventures of Paul, Black and Breinan offer a glimpse into a forgotten aspect of the running boom of the late 1970s. Preternaturally self-disciplined, they were among about 75 children (ages 8 to 13) who tackled the early years of the New York City Marathon in a time of novelty and naïveté….

With no conclusive study, physicians still debate risks to children who compete in marathons, like muscular-skeletal injuries, stunted growth, burnout, parental pressures and the ability to handle heat stress.

Another risk: going on to become a securities lawyer. Two out of the three child marathoners profiled by the Times now practice in that field.

Scott Black is a senior trial lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission in New York (after several years at Wachtell Lipton, where he worked with Lat on a number of cases). Wesley Paul is a partner at Michelman & Robinson, where he practices corporate and securities law.

We touched base with Black and Paul to ask about possible connections between their running and legal careers. Read more, after the jump.

* SCOTUS will look at the separation of church and state when they decide whether “a cross to honor fallen soldiers can stand in a national preserve in California.” [The Los Angeles Times]

* Lawyers say Madoff must have had help with his Ponzi scheme. [Bloomberg]

* Attorney General Eric Holder visited Guantanamo yesterday to see what is needed to close the prison. [The Associated Press]

* Meanwhile, a Pentagon official who inspected Guantanamo at Obama’s request is under fire from human rights activists for filing a report (which declares Gitmo humane) that is little more than good public relations for the administration. [The New York Times]

* What do you do when your boss gets indicted for securities fraud? You get another job. A team of seven bankruptcy lawyers left Dreier LLP for Epstein Becker Green. [EBG]

* A federal judge encouraged the Obama administration to decide whether to keep pursuing a case against 11 Vietnam War Veterans accused of trying to overthrow Laos’s communist government. [The Associated Press]

* Judge says: UBS must respond to the U.S. lawsuit seeking disclosure of 52,000 names of people who allegedly used Swiss accounts for tax evasion. [Bloomberg]

Not that anybody asked them, but Wachtell has decided to weigh in on the financial crisis. According to Am Law Daily, Wachtell wants short-selling to stop:

So say several memorandums penned during the past week by executive committee cochair and banking transactions rainmaker Edward Herlihy, 14-year SEC veteran and firm of counsel Theodore Levine, and associate Carmen Woo.

“In today’s markets, short sales continue to be at record levels, there are false rumors in the marketplace about the demise of financial firms, bear raids and abusive short selling are taking place, and there is significant disruption in the fair and orderly functioning of the securities markets,” said Herlihy and Levine in their first memo on September 16. “The markets are in crisis.”

Generally, we like our political power brokers to be elected or at least appointed by somebody who was elected. However, with everybody else in government waiting for Mr. Paulson to come and save America, maybe it is not a bad thing to have professional lawyers suggesting a strong course of action.

We don’t know if the SEC was listening. But we do know that Wachtell told them to ban short-selling on September 16th, and the SEC banned short-selling on September 19th. Post hoc ergo propter hoc …

Wachtell’s next gambit after the jump.

An interesting article in today’s New York Times — by Lynnley Browning, author of the earlier Biglaw perks piece — focuses on the subprime mortgage mess and current investigations into the adequacy of disclosures to investors.

Investigators are focused on Wall Street, but lawyers involved in the securitization process may also face scrutiny. Government investigation is the last thing these struggling law firms need, as they try to retool in the face of a grim outlook for structured finance and real estate work.

The article focuses on McKee Nelson:

McKee Nelson burst onto the scene in 1999 and quickly grabbed lucrative Wall Street work from long-established rivals. William F. Nelson, one of its co-founders, said the firm, which is known for its sophisticated tax work, did not employ any special legal maneuvers to outflank its competitors. “There’s no secret, magic elixir that we sprinkled,” Mr. Nelson said.

In any case, the mortgage turmoil is now hitting the highly regarded McKee Nelson hard. The firm recently pared its structured finance department to 80 lawyers from about 115 through buyouts, sabbaticals and transfers to other departments. More cuts are unlikely, a spokeswoman said.

So that’s good news. And the firm is trying to take lemons and make the proverbial lemonade:

[A]fter profiting from the mortgage boom, McKee Nelson is now positioning itself to profit from the bust by riding the coming wave of lawsuits. In January, the firm flew its partners and their spouses to Charleston, S.C., aboard four Delta commuter jets, to map out its strategy.

“We’re heavily committed to doing more litigation,” Mr. Nelson said. The firm hopes to represent investment banks, hedge funds and other financial companies, as well as their executives, in a variety of litigation, he said.

And maybe law firms, too, as lawsuits and investigations proliferate? See, e.g., Cadwalader, facing a $70 million lawsuit arising out of a securitization deal gone bad.

Small Law Firm’s Big Role in Bundling Mortgages [New York Times]

* Does the Supreme Court’s Stoneridge decision give the “getaway drivers” of securities fraud a free pass? [OverHedged]

* Apparently Green Bay fans really like the Packers. [SI.com]

* Miss Loyola 2L? Meet Kirsten Wolf. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Did Barack Obama receive an illegal endorsement? [TaxProf Blog]

* Speaking of Obama, his minister had this to say about Bill Clinton: “He did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky.” Can someone please remove the cigar from the national vajayjay? [Baltimore Sun]

* Gov. Romney wins Michigan. [CNN]

* Sen. Clinton faces challenge from “uncommitted.” [CNN]

* NV Supreme Court overturns decision allowing Rep. Kucinich to debate. [MSNBC]

* Criminal prosecutions of Blackwater security guards would not be easy. [New York Times]

* Did CIA lawyers and officials implicitly sign off on the destruction of interrogation tapes? [Washington Post]

* Austrian court rules animal rights group can’t have custody of chimp; appeal will be to the European Court of Human Rights. [AP]

* DOJ to investigate Tejada? [New York Times]

* Collected news coverage about yesterday’s Stoneridge decision. [How Appealing (linkwrap)]

Earlier this hour, the Supreme Court handed down its eagerly anticipated ruling in the Stoneridge case. See collected links below, to posts by Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog and Ashby Jones at the WSJ Law Blog. The opinion itself is available here (PDF).

Lyle Denniston writes:

The Supreme Court, in one of the most important securities law rulings in years, decided Tuesday that fraud claims are not allowed against third parties that did not directly mislead investors but were business partnes with those who did. The 5-3 ruling came in Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta (06-43).

Investors, the Court said, may only sue those who issued statements or otherwise took direct action that the investors had relied upon in buying or selling stock — whether that involved public statements, omissions of key facts, manipulative trading, or conduct that was itself deceptive. One impact of the decision is likely to be the scuttling of a massive $40 billion lawsuit against financial institutions growing out of the Enron scandal.

This news will be welcomed by many in the business community. But is it bad news for business litigators? Defending dubious securities fraud lawsuits may not be very sexy. But over the years, doing battle with the Milberg Weisses of the world has kept many a large law firm busy — and profitable.

With transactional work drying up, is the Supreme Court’s business-law revolution, cutting down on litigation against corporate America, coming at a bad time for Biglaw as a business?

Court limits securities fraud lawsuits [SCOTUSblog]
Stoneridge is in! Supremes Rein in Investor Suits [WSJ Law Blog]