Legal Research

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Subscription required for online access:JUDGE HIT WITH ETHICS CHARGES OVER CLOSE POLITICAL TIES TO CASE WITNESS
"Atlantic County Superior Court Judge Steven Perskie has been charged with violating ethics canons by failing to disclose his close political relationship with a witness in a legal malpractice case and exhibiting a lack of candor when asked about it during his tenure hearing last year. The witness, Frank Siracusa, had contributed to Perskie's 1975 Assembly campaign and 1977 Senate campaign and had been treasurer of the latter, but Perskie told the parties in the case only that he and Siracusa had worked together in Perskie's 'endeavors in public office,' says the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct in a formal complaint. The judge also did not tell counsel that he and Siracusa worked closely together in the effort to bring legalized gambling to Atlantic City in the 1970s. The ACJC says Perskie's failure to promptly step down from the case and gaps in his testimony during his tenure hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee brought the bench into disrepute."

SEC ATTACKED FOR 'COLOSSAL FAILURE' OVER MADOFF
"Inexperience. Incompetence. Laziness. All were cited as reasons behind the Securities and Exchange Commission's failure to detect Bernard Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme at a packed hearing Thursday before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. SEC inspector general H. David Kotz, who on Aug. 31 released a 477-page report detailing the agency's shortcomings, appeared before the committee to summarize his findings. He was joined by Robert Khuzami, head of the SEC's Enforcement Division, and John Walsh, acting director of the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, as well as fraud examiner Harry Markopolos, who in 1999 first attempted to alert the agency to Madoff's scheme. Kotz noted the SEC received six substantive complaints about Madoff between 1992 and 2008, but never conducted a thorough investigation. Kotz also described a culture of deference to the Wall Street star."

JUDGE WANTS TO MAKE FEDERAL SENTENCES EASIER TO CALCULATE
"A federal appeals court judge urged the U.S. Sentencing Commission on Wednesday to loosen the federal sentencing guidelines so that judges waste less time in precisely determining ranges that may not matter anyway. In testimony before the commission in Chicago, Frank Easterbrook, chief judge of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said the commission's "most important current task" is revamping the structure of the guidelines in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions that made the guidelines merely advisory. Now that judges can sentence outside the ranges set by the guideline tables, he said, they shouldn't be spending so much time calculating those ranges in the first place. Easterbrook said the ranges should be made longer and should overlap with each other more."

REALITY'S KNOCKING AS LAW SCHOOLS PROVIDE MORE PRACTICAL TRAINING
The floundering economy is increasing incentives for law schools to revamp their curricula to prepare students for the realities of the legal profession. More schools are modifying coursework and adding practical classes to help students develop the skills past graduates have had the luxury of learning on the job, such as teamwork, leadership, professional judgment and the ability to view issues from the clients' perspective. A 2007 report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, titled 'Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law,' is credited with pushing some law schools to rethink their curricula. The report concluded that law schools don't do a good enough job of helping students develop professional competence and identity and it called for a more integrated curriculum that marries the traditional analytical course offerings with practical training."

MORE REGULATORY ACTIONS AGAINST BANKS IN SECOND QUARTER
"Regulatory actions against faltering banks spiked by 49 percent in the second quarter of 2009 compared with the first quarter, according to MortgageDaily.com. The online publication, which tracks litigation and regulatory action in the mortgage and banking industries, tallied 263 regulatory actions in the second quarter compared with 177 in the first quarter. For its survey, MortgageDaily.com counted actions issued by several agencies that monitor banks, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.; the Federal Reserve system; the National Credit Union Administration; the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which supervises federal banks; and the Office of Thrift Supervision, which monitors thrift institutions like savings and loan associations. The second-quarter regulatory moves ranged from 64 formal agreements between banks and agencies requiring additional capital conservation or operations changes to 60 civil monetary penalties."

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