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LA Now reports that an LA attorney will plead no contest to a criminal count of dissuading a witness.  To help his client, who had been charged in burglaries, the lawyer filed a civil suit against a witness and offered to drop the suit if the witness would testify favorably for the accused in the criminal matter.  (h/t to Law of Criminal Defense and ABA Journal)        . . . . .       From ALM, this article describes the latest trends in the use of armies of temp lawyers in document review.  To hold down costs, the corporate clients are increasingly taking management control over selection, hiring, and finding office space for the temps.  It seems to me that eventually we're going to see in-house counsels getting called on the carpet by courts over e-discovery snafus, given that in-house counsel is taking such an active role.       . . . . .        From Point of Law and Overlawyered, trial lawyers will get a tax break regarding the deductibility of loans to clients.       . . . . .       At Business Law Prof Blog, John Fershee looks at the licensing status of a key BP lawyer and wonders how the recent case involving Gucci might apply.  (In the Gucci case, the court denied the protections of attorney client privilege where the in-house lawyer was not actively licensed anywhere.)  The BP lawyer is apparently inactive in California, but may be actively licensed in the UK.       . . . . .       From ALM, here's news of a disqualification order granted in federal court where a small firm that represented a plaintiff in an employment case.  An associate at the firm sat on the board of the defendant's school board.  The article suggests that the order was based upon an "appearance of conflict."   I wonder if the ABA approach wouldn't be to say that the associate has a material limitation conflict under 1.7(a)(2) and then impute the conflict within the firm.   

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