"One commissioner, Harvey J. Goldschmid, questioned the staff about the consequences of the proposed exemption. It would only be available for the largest firms, he was reassuringly told — those with assets greater than $5 billion.

“We’ve said these are the big guys,” Mr. Goldschmid said, provoking nervous laughter, “but that means if anything goes wrong, it’s going to be an awfully big mess.”

Mr. Goldschmid, an authority on securities law from Columbia, was a behind-the-scenes adviser in 2002 to Senator Paul S. Sarbanes when he rewrote the nation’s corporate laws after a wave of accounting scandals. “Do we feel secure if there are these drops in capital we really will have investor protection?” Mr. Goldschmid asked. A senior staff member said the commission would hire the best minds, including people with strong quantitative skills to parse the banks’ balance sheets. "

Article: NY Times
Discussion:

Added link to article on SEC rule change mentioned in class

-- DevinMcDougall - 26 Jan 2010

"Much has been said about the high rate of home foreclosures, but the most interesting question may be this: Why is the mortgage default rate so low? After all, millions of American homeowners are “underwater,” meaning that they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. In Nevada, nearly two-thirds of homeowners are in this category. Yet most of them are dutifully continuing to pay their mortgages, despite substantial financial incentives for walking away from them."

Article: NY Times
Discussion:

Added link to another article (in today's NY Times) about underwater mortgages.

-- CourtneySmith - 24 Jan 2010

"In a practical sense, it was Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s that set the credit standards that determined which loans Wall Street could repackage and, ultimately, which borrowers would qualify. Effectively, they did the job that was expected of banks and government regulators. And today, they are a central culprit in the mortgage bust, in which the total loss has been projected at $250 billion and possibly much more."

Article: NY Times
Discussion: BondRatingAgencies

-- GloverWright - 21 Jan 2010

Firm’s ‘Ever Argue With a Woman?’ Ad Provokes Debate on Stereotypes

"Do men and women argue differently? And does that make a difference in the way they work as lawyers? That’s the suggestion of an ad by a women-owned Buffalo, N.Y., law firm that is attracting notice. Its headline: “Ever Argue With a Woman?”"

Article: Ever Argue With A Woman?
Discussion: EverArgueWithAWoman

-- TheodoreSmith - 8 June 2008

"This departure memo, sent by an associate leaving the San Francisco office of Paul Hastings, is extraordinary. It also confirms the rumors -- which have swirled about for quite some time, but without confirmation until now -- of associate layoffs at PH."

Article: Above The Law
Discussion: LayoffsAtLawFirms

-- IanSullivan - 7 May 2008

"The problem was the killer was their client. So, legally, they had to keep his secret even though an innocent man was about to be tried for murder."

Article: CBS News; Chicago Tribune

Discussion: AttorneyClientPrivilegeDilemma

Added link to attorney privilege dilemma article and discussion. Changed the organization of the page slightly.

-- TheodoreSmith - 18 Mar 2008

Can Their Wish Be the Market’s Command? (Bear Raids and Ben Stein)

"... the lessons of legal realism have always been uppermost in my mind... Stated reasons are often not the real reasons....Because I usually write about finance, I have come to believe in the theory of what I would call “financial realism,”"

Article: New York Times
Discussion: BearRaids

Added link to "Bear Raids" article and discussion

-- TheodoreSmith - 08 Feb 2008

'Justice' Japanese style

".... Forced signed confessions, still considered the "king of evidence" by Japanese courts, are often the result...."

Article: Japan Times
Discussion: TortureAndWholeProof

Added Japanese justice article

-- TheodoreSmith - 30 Jan 2008

Article: NY Times

Article: NY Times

"Add attorney to the growing list of white-collar jobs being shipped overseas. How far will it go?"

Article: money.cnn.com
Discussion: DeathofGiantFirms2

Training Law Students for Real-Life Careers

"When you haven’t changed your curriculum in 150 years, at some point you look around"

Article: NY Times
Discussion: DeathofGiantFirms

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Discussion: WhereThisIsDiscussed(in the wiki)</p>
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shortened displayed urls, added blank formatting example, and linked in articles referenced in DeathofGiantFirms

-- IanSullivan - 29 Jan 2008

"In the last two decades, as working schedules became flexible, and even accounting firms, of all places, embraced the mantra of work-life balance (at least on paper), there was one unbending, tradition-bound profession: the law...."

"For years, outsourcing has been a dirty word inside the world of white-shoe law firms...."

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/business/27law.html
Discussion: DeathofGiantFirms2

Added outsourcing article

-- TheodoreSmith - 26 Jan 2008

Please add articles to the main section, and use the comments to note what you changed.

Who’s Cuddly Now? Law Firms

"In the last two decades, as working schedules became flexible, and even accounting firms, of all places, embraced the mantra of work-life balance (at least on paper), there was one unbending, tradition-bound profession: the law....."

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/fashion/24WORK.html
Discussion: BalancingWork

Created the page, added "who's cuddly now" article.

-- TheodoreSmith - 26 Jan 2008

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