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Bar News - November 8, 2002 Notes From A Messy Desk Edited by Dan Wise What Corporate Counsel Say Guess what a survey of corporate counsel found to be the greatest concern of in-house lawyers: controlling spending on legal work by outside counsel. Not a surprise, huh? The survey, done on behalf of the American Corporate Counsel Association (ACCA), also found that despite increases in formal methods of managing outside counsels' work, in-house corporate lawyers continue to rely on personal relationships with the lawyers they contract with. Individual reputations rather than a firm's reputation takes priority in selecting new legal counsel, and many corporations prohibit the outside firm from changing the lawyers working on a matter without the corporate client's consent - a practice oft cited as the reason for termination of a relationship with a firm. Corporate Lawyers, Again A Harris Poll completed earlier this year of senior corporate lawyers asked their opinions of state liability systems - judges, juries, processes, timeliness, and treatment of torts and class actions. New Hampshire was viewed favorably, landing in 17th place in terms of desirability, followed by Maine at 18th and Vermont at 21st, according to the corporate lawyers. Delaware and Virginia were ranked 1st and 2nd, and Connecticut was 10th. Further down the scale, Rhode Island and Massachusetts ranked 35th and 36th respectively. Five southern states, Mississippi, West Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas, occupied the bottom five spots in the eyes of the corporate attorneys, according to the survey, conducted on behalf of the US Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform. (For more on that, see the editorial on page 4 by the ABA on the US Chamber's anti-tort campaign.)
No More Secret Settlements South Carolina's 10 federal district judges have unanimously voted to ban secret settlements. "Here is a rare opportunity for our court to do the right thing and take the lead nationally in a time when the Arthur Andersen/Enron/Catholic priest controversies are undermining public confidence in our institutions and causing a growing suspicion of things that are kept secret by public bodies," wrote Chief Judge Joseph F. Anderson of the US District Court for the District of South Carolina. The court proposed the ban in its rewrite of its local rules, but as of this writing had not yet formally adopted it. The court's period for public comment on its rules closed Sept. 30.
Accountants Less Trusted than Lawyers Lawyers no longer are America's least trusted professionals, according to a new poll whose results were reported in the October issue of the Oregon State Bar Bulletin. The national survey found that 32 percent of respondents consider lawyers most trustworthy among a group of professionals including investment brokers or analysts (28 percent), accountants (20 percent) and corporate executives (15 percent). Read the survey at www.widmeyer.com, click on Widmeyer Wire Newsletter.
QUOTE TO REMEMBER "...You hear people talk about how they get nervous walking in certain neighborhoods.... I've spent a fair amount of time in Houston [home of Enron headquarters]. If I were walking down the street in Houston and I saw a well-dressed white man, I would cross the street. Otherwise he might steal my pension." - Michael Tigar, civil rights attorney, author of "Fighting Injustice," quoted in Washington Lawyer magazine.
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