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The popularity of the practice group — an entity within a firm comprised of those who practice a specific area of law or serve a specific industry — is well grounded, in that it opens a number of advantages to managing a practice and better serving clients. But so complex and management sensitive are practice groups that they open, as well, the easy propensity to misuse the practice group concept in a classic case of poor management canceling the value of a good concept.

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It seems that information flows unabated onto the desktop or into the PDA 24/7. For many years, information was contained by fee-based access to aggregators, like LexisNexis and Westlaw, or obtained through the services of a third party. In the last few years, the governmental units and private data creators have begun to distribute information directly through the Internet. Much property information now comes from freely available, or reasonably priced, sources on the Internet. And it is available 24/7.

Features

A couple of years ago, Bill Payne of Dorsey & Whitney LLP invited me to come to Minneapolis on two weekends in mid-winter. Not for a retreat or winter sports, but to meet with partners in their office on Saturdays. Payne was then the head of the M&A Group and he explained: 'We do a lot of mid-market deals, many with similar dynamics, documents and time pressures. Yet, each deal seems to be run like we were starting from scratch. We reinvent the wheel. We do wonderful individual work, sometimes under crisis conditions, but we don't seem to pull together as a team.' He wanted more teamwork, more project planning, and more learning from each deal. I jumped at the chance to facilitate the partners' discussions. Any firm that values matter management to this degree must be serious.

On April 12, 2006, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ('Commonwealth') enacted legislation requiring most state residents to carry health insurance either through their employers or individually. The goal of the legislation is to 'provide access to affordable, quality, accountable healthcare' to everyone in the state, while reducing the percentage of uninsured residents to as close to 0% as possible. The reform law maintains employer-sponsored health insurance as the primary source of coverage for Commonwealth residents. While beneficial to employees, employers are faced with new obligations and the financial burdens of providing health benefits to employees. Employers that fail to provide health insurance to their employees may be subject to a surcharge of $295 annually per employee plus additional penalties.

Recent rulings of interest to you and your practice.

In a short and succinct amended final judgment in the Massachusetts case of <i>Cote-Whitacre v. Dept. of Public Health</i>, Civ Action No. 04-2656-G (Superior Court, Suffolk Cty.), Justice Thomas E. Connolly clarified for New York same-sex couples married in Massachusetts that those whose nuptials took place before July 6, 2006 are still married in the eyes of the State of Massachusetts.

A Manhattan appeals panel has reversed a trial court's grant of divorce, holding that the wife's allegations did not satisfy New York's 'cruel and inhuman treatment' standard, notwithstanding her claim that her husband 'physically force[d] himself on [her] sexually.'

An associate recruitment and retention crisis is looming for which there are no easy solutions. Law schools continue to graduate roughly 40,000 students a year, as they have over the last 20 years. The AmLaw 200 law firms have been steadily hiring an average of 4%+ more associates each year, resulting last year in a typical incoming associate class of 50. That means that AmLaw 200 firms now hire about 10,000 new associates a year, or about 50% of the graduates from the top 100 (hardly the Ivy League elite) of the nation's 200 law schools.