The VLW Blog

On average, a female equity partner in a law firm earns $87,000 a year less than a male equity partner, according to figures released today by the National Association of Women Lawyers. NAWL says its 3rd annual survey is the only national study of American Lawyer’s AmLaw 200, a survey of the nation’s 200 largest [...]

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Did you get a nastygram from the Virginia State Bar in the mail last week? One that told you that you didn’t have enough CLE hours? You’re not alone. I was one of the unlucky ones. But I was left pondering the VSB’s math. According to the math I learned, 2 + 3 + 4.5 [...]

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The Virginia Supreme Court’s remand of a grandparent custody case has raised questions about who gets to award attorney’s fees, according to four judges of the Court of Appeals. In its Sept. 12 opinion in Lynchburg Division of Social Services v. Cook, the high court ordered the Court of Appeals to send the custody case [...]

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A topic today at the Virginia Committee on District Courts – ultimately carried over for further study – was whether to allow offenders who make an unauthorized turn at a crossover on a controlled access highway to pay a fine without going to court. Juvenile and general district judges commented on the seriousness of the [...]

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A lawyer who stole nearly $4 million by “settling” personal injury cases without the knowledge of his injured clients was sentenced today to 11 years in jail.  Stephen T. Conrad, 40, of Woodbridge, also was ordered by U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton to serve three years supervised release and to pay restitution to his [...]

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A Christiansburg lawyer who admitted forging legal documents and passing them off as genuine may avoid a lengthy prison sentence. According to The Roanoke Times, a special prosecutor agreed to recommend no more than two years imprisonment in exchange for today’s seven guilty pleas from former attorney Gerard Marks. Marks admitted to forging judges’ signatures [...]

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Attorneys who want to keep their names off of the soon-to-be-online list of lawyers in Virginia now can exercise their “opt-out” option at the Web site of the Virginia State Bar. To keep your name off the online list, log in to the Member Login site in the upper right corner.  Go to Virginia Lawyer [...]

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Word comes from the ABA Journal that times are so tight for the New York City-based firm of White & Case that the annual holiday party budget has been cut to just $250,000.  And, unlike last year, the revelers will have to get by without fireworks. To keep matters in perspective, this is an international [...]

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Attention has focused recently on the once-obscure Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Justice Department.  According to the Washington Post, the operation generates advice that “guides some of the government’s most sensitive and controversial policies.” Unfortunately, the good stuff is not released to the public, including memos on such hot button topics as interrogation [...]

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Travis Stacey Whitehead was in the right rear passenger seat when a narcotics detection dog alerted on the driver’s door of a car in Suffolk in April 2006. Police searched the car and the other four occupants of the vehicle before they searched Whitehead and found heroin residue and paraphernalia in his pocket. Whitehead contended [...]

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