Law site’s IPO evokes a future beyond dying firms
By Reynolds Holding
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
LegalZoom’s planned initial public offering evokes a future beyond dying law firms. It’s coincidence that the U.S. self-help legal website’s $120 million filing has landed just as New York partnership Dewey & LeBoeuf is evaporating. But the rise of the online provider of legal documents sends old-line lawyers a sharp warning.
Oracle suit gives Google a chance not to be evil
By Reynolds Holding
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
An Oracle lawsuit is giving Google a golden opportunity to regain its non-evil image. The search giant has been thumped lately on privacy, antitrust and governance grounds. But it looks almost virtuous in a patent spat with Larry Ellison’s Oracle.
Murky U.S. bribery law gets a dose of clarity
By Reynolds Holding
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
America’s murky bribery law is finally getting a dose of clarity. Morgan Stanley showed last month how to avoid legal charges for infractions by one of its executives, and an appeals court will soon define whose palm cannot be greased. That’s good news for multinationals sweating unpredictable enforcement of a confusing statute.
Judges can be tough without getting personal
By Reynolds Holding
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
U.S. judges can be plenty tough without getting personal. Few can send a chill up business spines faster than Delaware Chancellor Leo Strine. He honors a rich tradition of tart lectures from the state’s bench. But his recent scolding of sand and gravel firm Martin Marietta Materials and its spin doctors, though on target, sounded a bit catty.
M&A spin doctors take a thumping on the record
By Reynolds Holding
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Wall Street’s M&A spin doctors have taken a thumping on the record. Delaware Judge Leo Strine has called out two firms – Kekst and Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher – for blabbing confidential information in Martin Marietta Material’s hostile $5.3 billion offer for rival Vulcan. The sand-and-gravel outfit will pay the price of a court order delaying the bid. But the general reputation of deal flacks won’t emerge unscathed.
Twitter gives peace a chance in patent wars
By Reynolds Holding
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
All we are tweeting is give peace a chance. Twitter is going to allow its engineer-inventors to veto lawsuits against alleged infringers of patents they develop. That’s a model for curbing the kind of expensive legal salvos that Apple, Microsoft and others are lobbing just to slow each other down. If the rest of the technology world one day falls in line, innovation could benefit.
Law school deans could do with some Econ 101
By Reynolds Holding
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
U.S. law school deans could do with a little Econ 101. Tuition at the likes of Yale and Stanford keeps rising faster than inflation, despite a dwindling supply of aspiring lawyers. And job prospects for graduates are getting worse. For all their sophisticated skills, legal educators still haven’t mastered the law of supply and demand.
The young often weather periods of high unemployment by flocking to graduate school. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, for instance, the number of law school applicants soared some 40 percent, reaching a peak of almost 99,000 in 2004. But in the recent downturn, applications to many professional schools have been about as scarce as jobs.
If Apple, publishers plotted they didn’t need to
By Reynolds Holding
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
If Apple and a clutch of publishers plotted together, they didn’t need to. U.S. trustbusters say the iPad maker and five electronic book producers conspired to raise download prices. But the model they came up with makes sense even without collusion, giving the publishers perhaps their best chance of survival.
Obama backs healthcare defender – until he doesn’t
By Reynolds Holding
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Donald Verrilli may have had a Billy Martin moment. Despite the U.S. solicitor general’s stumbling effort defending President Barack Obama’s healthcare law before the Supreme Court this week, the White House gave him a vote of confidence. That’s what Martin, the volatile New York Yankees manager, used to get just before he was fired. Verrilli’s miss may not change the case’s outcome, but it costs him credibility – if not his job.
Breakingviews: Gupta’s quiet win is loud warning for prosecutors
By Reynolds Holding
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
(Reuters Breakingviews) A quiet win for accused insider-trader Rajat Gupta should be a loud warning for prosecutors. Granting the former Goldman Sachs director and McKinsey boss access to U.S. government notes may help him parry charges, but it also puts teeth in rules for sharing evidence. Recent cases like the corruption trial against the late Alaska Senator Ted Stevens show prosecutors too often withhold information helpful to the defense.
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