Category: Bankruptcy Lawyers

Baker Tilly is seeking to partner with a law firm in the US as a global accounting firm aiming to expand the range of services it can offer clients.

“The legal network for Baker Tilly will be in the US in the near future,” the firm’s chief executive officer, Alan Whitman, said in an interview.

The move would boost competition for US law firms, who are already seeing non-lawyer-owned legal operations gaining footholds in states such as Arizona and Utah that are testing new service-delivery models.

Baker Tilly International a year ago announced an alliance with UK law practice Freeths. The move made Freeths the first stand-alone law firm in Europe to become an independent member of the accountancy’s network.

The accounting firm touted the Freeths move as advancing an expansion into commercial law. The 600-plus attorneys at the law firm advise businesses in areas including mergers and acquisitions, insolvency

The envelope please: the award for American law’s worst moment of 2022 goes to the United States Supreme Court for its decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

because law’s infamous rulings generally do not fly below the radarit is hardly a surprise to name Dobbswhich has already been subject to the most criticism. But surprising or not, it is still important to name the damage it did to countless millions of people and to the Court itself.

while Dobbs is my choice as law’s worst moment of the year, there were others that I seriously considered for this dubious recognition.

They include two Supreme Court decisions, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen and West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency.

Surprisingly even the Heritage Foundation recognized that Justice Clarence Thomas’s decision in the New York gun case (that the text of

Too many graduates of Vermont Law and Graduate School are failing the bar exam, the American Bar Association said this week.

under ABA rules, 75% of law school graduates who attempt the bar exam must pass it within two years in order for their alma mater to maintain its accreditation.

But the newly renamed Vermont Law and Graduate School’s most recent two-year bar passage rate was just shy of 68%.

Of the school’s 114 law students who graduated in 2019, only 77 had passed the bar by 2021, according to data submitted to the ABA.

On Tuesday, ABA officials posted notice that Vermont Law School was one of three schools that were out of compliance with bar passage requirements.

The

RALEIGH — The Campbell University School of Law will no longer participate in the US News and World Report’s Best Law Schools ranking.

Dean J. Rich Leonard announced the decision to faculty, staff and students on Monday in an email. Leonard’s statement cited concerns with both the ranking’s purpose and methodologies, among others.

The statement follows: “The Campbell Law School faculty has decided not to participate this year in the US News and World Report’s Best Law Schools rankings. We are not opposed to objective rankings, but the reputational aspect of the US News rankings has always undervalued strong regional law schools. Additionally, the rankings do not sufficiently consider the most critical factors for prospective students, such as bar passage and employment outcomes. We believe objective evaluations that value factors like these better serve prospective students.

“As an example of the difference between objective and subjective rankings, in 2015

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Dive Briefs:

• The Campbell University School of Law announced this week it will not participate in US News & World Report’s Best Law Schools rankings, joining many other institutions spurning the list over equity-related concerns.
• Unlike law schools that initially rejected the rankings, which included those at Yale and Harvard universities, Campbell’s school fell toward the bottom of US News’ index.
• Experts have said mid- and low-tier law schools have more to lose by joining the rankings revolt, as the higher-placed schools have well-known reputations and will likely suffer little fallout from their decisions.

Dive Insights:

Ivy League institutions Yale and Harvard shook the higher education world in mid-November when they said they would no longer submit data to US News for its influential rankings.

While colleges often tout their high placement

MIAMI (AP) — The US is poised to ban the lucrative trade in shark fins, a move conservationists hope will help protect millions of sharks that are butchered every year to satisfy demand in China and other parts of Asia.

The practice of shark finning, whereby sharks are caught for their fins and their carcasses then dumped back into the ocean, has been banned in US waters for decades. But the US remains a major hub for the brisk trade where the fins of as many as 73 million sharks are cut off around the world each year.

The House and Senate passed identical versions of the proposed ban as part of a broader defense spending bill that President Joe Biden is expected to sign into law. Once he does, it will be illegal for Americans to buy, sell, transport or even possess foreign-caught fins — something ocean conservation activists

A cherished, century-old Acoma shield was stolen from the pueblo in the 1970s. Decades later, it showed up in a French auction catalog.

Congress last week sent a bill to President Joe Biden’s desk that aims to crack down on the export of Native American patrimony, defined as objects with lasting historical or cultural significance.

The law — known as the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony, or STOP, Act — makes it a crime punishable by fines and a year and a day in jail for those who export items like the Acoma shield. The penalty is 10 years for a second offense. The law allows some exceptions, like in cases where a tribe has relinquished possession of an item.

It also empowers US Customs and Border Patrol to size such things and return them to their rightful owners. And it offers support to a coalition of tribes across the

UC Davis’ Kevin R. Johnson, dean and Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law, School of Law, and professor, Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, issued the following letter today (Nov. 28).

Dear UC Davis School of Law Community,

Beginning today (Nov. 28), UC Davis School of Law will no longer provide data to US News & World Report for use in compiling its law school rankings. This decision has been made after receiving guidance from the law faculty, campus leadership, students, alumni and others.

Major flaws with the US News rankings are well-documented. Although law schools have worked in good faith with the magazine on improvements, US News has failed to significantly change the rankings methodology. The survey techniques, accuracy and fairness of the rankings remain problematic, which results in misleading rankings of law schools. Even small changes in one variable can lead to a dramatic shake-up of