Leadership vacuum
1/7/13
By Eileen Daspin
Women might make up about 20 percent of partners in law
firms, according to the National Association for Law Placement,
but when it comes to leadership positions, as members of a chief
governing body or compensation committee or as head of a
practice or office, the figures are less robust, reports The American Lawyer. In a survey of 93 of the AmLaw 100, most law
firms had only one or two women on their chief governing
committees. There were exceptions: Fulbright & Jaworski, with
three women out of sixon its executive committee; Reed Smith,
with six women out of 16; and Shook, Hardy & Bacon, with four
women out of 11. Eight firms -- Bryan Cave; Cahill Gordon &
Reindel; Chadbourne & Parke; Davis Polk & Wardwell; Lewis
Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith; Morgan, Lewis & Bockius; Proskauer
Rose; and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz -- had at least one
chief governing committee with no women partners, according to
AmLaw.
Stolen moments
1/7/13
By Dan Brillman
Could a Supreme Court decision have had an indirect effect
on a rise in California property crimes, such as burglary,
larceny and car theft? In 2011's Brown v. Plata, the justices
ruled 5-4 that overcrowding in California prisons constituted
cruel and unusual punishment and told the state to cut its
population by 30,000 people. The law has reduced state prison
overcrowding by 10 percent, but it may have also prompted less
rigorous incarceration policies in the state and the presence of
more criminals on the streets, according to The Wall Street Journal (hat tip: ABA Journal).
For the fourth quarter of 2011 (the first period after the
changes were implemented) property crime rose 4.5 percent, the
first increase since 2004, according to the Journal. At the same
time, the paper points out that in the first three quarters of
2011, property crime fell by 2.4 percent.
In Santa Rosa, a town 40 miles north of San Quentin State
Prison, property crime increased 5 percent in 2012, while
violent crime fell 7 percent. Some officials told the paper that
the connection between the law and a rise in crime is still
tenuous and that it would be premature to draw such a link until
further data becomes available.
The 2011 high court decision was contentious, with Justice
Antonin Scalia calling it "perhaps the most radical injunction
issued by a court in our nation's history." Scalia issued a rare
spoken dissent in the case. In his two dissenting opinions,
Justice Samuel Alito said that the majority was "gambling with
the safety of the people of California" and that he feared the
decision "will lead to a grim roster of victims in a few
years, we will see."
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