Commentaries
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The SEC’s animal house
Mary Schapiro wants her lawyers and investigators at the Securities and Exchange Commission to go back to school. Specifically, she wants them to enroll in something she calls “fraud college.”
From what I gather, the SEC’s “fraud college” will be an intensive training program to help the agency’s employees better detect fraud. It’s not the worst idea. But as Bess Levin at Dealbreaker points out it does sound a bit silly.
Question: Will Schapiro put any investigators who flunk out of “fraud college” on double secret probation?
No real estate revival for corporate lawyers
The big corporate law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft isn’t expecting a rebound in the real estate market anytime soon, so it’s asking nearly three-dozen lawyers to take the next year off.
The New York law firm confirmed, in an email statement, that it has asked “34 lawyers to accept a one year, unrestricted sabbatical,” during which the attorneys will receive “one-third of their current compenstaion and medical benefits.”
Allen Stanford lost at sea?
The R. Allen Stanford legal defense story keeps getting stranger and stranger.
While the securities world waits for the inevitable indictment of the Texas financier, he keeps going through lawyers with the same speed the alleged Ponzi mastermind was said to date women. Last week Stanford replaced his civil litigation defense team with a group of lawyers from the little-known Washington, D.C.-based law firm The Gulf Law Group.
The Gulf firm bills itself as a “full-service firm,” but it mainly appears to be a law firm specializing in admiralty and maritime law. On the firm’s homepage there are photographs of a lighthouse, a cargo ship and offshore drilling platform.
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The Wall
