HIRECounsel

Dewey Plan To Give Retired Partners a Seat at the Bankruptcy Table?

By

As we mentioned earlier today, retired partners of Dewey & LeBoeuf received some potentially good news. These former partners, whose unfunded pensions were supposed to be funded out of firm profits, will have a voice in the firm’s bankruptcy proceedings. As reported by the WSJ Law Blog and Am Law Daily, the U.S. trustee’s office has appointed an official committee of former partners (in addition to the standard official committee of unsecured creditors). The four ex-partners on the committee are David Bicks, Cameron MacRae, John Kinzey, and John Campo.

What prompted the move? As legal consultant Edwin Reeser, whose analysis of the Dewey situation recently appeared in these pages, told the WSJ, “The retired partners have uniquely separate interests which warrant consideration as a special class of creditors.”

It’s nice that they have a seat at the table, but will the ex-partners end up with any money at the end of the process? That’s less clear. As Jerome Kowalski, another law firm consultant, told the Journal, “There has never been a law firm bankruptcy that resulted in any payment being made to the equity partners… They’ll have zero sway other than perhaps some moral imperatives, and moral imperatives don’t have much play in bankruptcy courts.”

The unsecured creditors might have more luck than the former partners. Who’s on the unsecured creditors’ committee?

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Dewey Plan To Give Retired Partners a Seat at the Bankruptcy Table?”

7 Comments

All Play and No Work Made Lance a Disbarred Boy

By

Lance David Lewis had one of the best jobs in the world. He was getting paid a couple grand a week, and he didn’t have to do any work for it. Too bad it wasn’t legit.

Early last month, the former Pennsylvania lawyer was finally disbarred with consent (meaning that he can’t defend the charges against him). Why?

Well, first, he was once charged with attempted murder. However, that charge was later dropped, and he pleaded guilty to some misdemeanor assault charges. Hell, who hasn’t that happen to them at least once or twice?

Oh, and he also swindled a portion of a settlement away from one of his clients. So, thus far, he’s batting 2 for 2.

What really accelerated Lewis’s downfall from the law? Lance David Lewis may very well be one of the first e-discovery contract attorneys to be disbarred for his malfeasance on a document review project — or, better put, off of a document review project.

In nine months, Lewis managed to rake in nearly $80,000 for work he never performed, contracting at a law firm via a staffing agency.  In this case, the staffing agency was HireCounsel, and the law firm was Pepper Hamilton.

So how was he able to pull this off?  The Office of Disciplinary Counsel of the Pennsylvania Bar lays this out in pretty excruciating detail….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “All Play and No Work Made Lance a Disbarred Boy”

46 Comments