SF Recorder BUILD THEM CLINICS, AND THEY WILL COME: THE RACE TO OFFER PRACTICAL TRAINING IS ON 2/15/2007
Lisa Cisneros didn't want to drop $100,000 for a fancy J.D. only to arrive at her first job unprepared. She realized from talks with practicing attorneys and potential employers that while class work encouraged analytical thinking, it didn't offer the hands-on experience that would allow her to enter the job market ready to practice. 'Practicing attorneys would tell us that they graduated from law school and didn't know what they were doing,' said Cisneros, a Boalt Hall School of Law student. 'Investigating, drafting briefs, doing legal research -- none of those experiences jump out of a case book or out of a professor's lecture.' She said Boalt's clinical education program was critical in her decision to attend. Now in her third year, Cisneros is involved in the school's death penalty clinic, primarily interviewing witnesses and plowing through court records. Cisneros belongs to the new crop of savvy students who know that they want more from their legal education -- and Bay Area law deans are responding to the call. Stanford Law School, under the stewardship of Dean Larry Kramer, announced late last year his intent to dedicate serious resources to revitalize its clinical program. Hastings College of the Law has been seeing slow and steady growth with the addition of several new clinics in the last year. more
Los Angeles Times Commentary: Secrecy's dangerous side effects by Richard Zitrin 2/8/2007
RICHARD ZITRIN practices law in San Francisco and teaches at UC Hastings College of the Law. He is also the founder of the Center for Applied Legal Ethics at the University of San Francisco. February 8, 2007 DRUG GIANT Eli Lilly & Co. recently settled 18,000 lawsuits brought by people claiming they were injured by the side effects of its biggest-selling drug, Zyprexa, which is used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. But the $500 million in settlements says less about the dangers of the drug than the dangers of secrecy. About 18 months earlier, Lilly had settled 8,000 other Zyprexa cases for $700 million. But those settlements required the plaintiffs to return all sensitive documents obtained through the legal discovery process to Lilly — a requirement that kept the strongest smoking-gun evidence out of public view. The plaintiffs also had to agree "not to communicate, publish or cause to be published, in any public or business forum or context, any statement, whether written or oral, concerning the specific events, facts or circumstances giving rise to [their] claims." more
SF Recorder Nvidia Faces Age Discrimination Suit From Former GC 2/8/2007
Stephen Pettigrew built Nvidia Corp.'s legal department from a one-man-show -- himself -- into a full-fledged public-company team. But when he got too old, executives demoted and fired him. That's what Pettigrew, who was 64 when he left Nvidia, alleges in an age discrimination lawsuit filed last month against the Santa Clara, Calif., graphics-chip company. Pettigrew also accuses the company of retaliating because he voiced his concern that one of the company's top executives may have committed sexual harassment and gender discrimination. "Steve Pettigrew is an outstanding attorney who served this company loyally and very skillfully, and he didn't deserve this," said his attorney, Allen Ruby of San Jose's Ruby & Schofield. ...Pettigrew has undergraduate and graduate degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University and received his J.D. from Hastings College of the Law. Before joining Nvidia, he had a long career as a business and litigation attorney and worked for several large firms, according to his complaint. more
New York TimesA Tribe Dreams of a Casino, and of a Less Spartan Life 2/7/2007
It is unlikely but not impossible that a tiny band of American Indians could open a huge casino complex 10 miles north of the George Washington Bridge. It is unlikely but not impossible that a tribal chairman whose house has no running water and who owns a broken-down Alfa Romeo could, from a home office decorated with pictures of fine yachts, come to oversee a gambling empire. Then, he said, tribal elders could move out of grinding poverty and into an assisted-living facility that he envisions the tribe could build with its revenue. And it is unlikely but not impossible to find a seemingly endless, empty stretch of marshland in New Jersey, the snow geese overhead making a feathery one-note symphony. These elements come together here, in the southwestern corner of the state, where James Brent Thomas Sr., the chief of the Unalachtigo band of the Nanticoke Lenni Lenape Nation, often comes to watch the sun set across the Delaware River. ...''So if they become federally recognized and if it looks as if they have a solid land claim, a good lawyer might well advise the state to settle,'' Nell Jessup Newton, dean of the University of California's Hastings College of Law, wrote in an e-mail message. more
SF Recorder SAN FRANCISCO NEUTRAL LEFT GOVERNMENT FOR 'INDEPENDENCE' 2/6/2007
Fred Butler was disheartened in 1981. After 14 years as a public housing administrator in Newark, N.J., he had taken a job overseeing the White Plains, N.Y., projects -- an island of poverty in the middle of swanky Westchester County. 'For the first time, I dealt with the issue of containment,' he said. 'People expected things to happen in public housing, and thought it was OK as long as it stayed there.' Frustrated that local police were hesitant to clean up the projects, Butler, at age 40, quit after a year and decided to move to San Francisco to begin a second career. 'I had a lot of friends who were plumbers and electricians,' said Butler, who already had a bachelor's degree in urban development and a master's in public administration when he lived on the East Coast. 'No one could tell them where to work. They worked for themselves, and it was a declaration of independence.' That was important for Butler, whose 15 years as a public employee came after four years as an Air Force cryptographer (including a couple of weeks on a Key West beach in the run-up to the Cuban missile crisis). With independence in mind, he applied to law school and ended up at Hastings College of the Law. more
Fresno Bee U.S. Senate confirms Fresno judge 2/2/2007
The Senate unanimously confirmed U.S. Magistrate Judge Lawrence J. O'Neill on Thursday as the San Joaquin Valley's newest federal jurist. Acting quickly just before noon local time, the Senate approved O'Neill 97-0. The confirmation settles O'Neill into a lifetime seat on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. He will move up one floor at Fresno's federal courthouse and immediately be handed a workload of more than 1,000 cases. "I am humbled by the unanimous vote of the United States Senate, and am immensely grateful to them for their recognition of our need for judicial help in our busy Eastern District of California," O'Neill said in a written statement. ...An Oakland native, O'Neill graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, where he was class president. more
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