The Legal Intelligencer Blog

Deadline for Family Courthouse Bids Passes; DGS Won't Disclose Number of Bidders

By Amaris Elliott-Engel
Of the Legal Staff
 
With the deadlines for construction bids on the Philadelphia family courthouse passing, the state Department of General Services on Wednesday declined to disclose the number of bidders for construction contracts for general contractor, HVAC, plumbing and electrical construction work on the courthouse site at 15th and Arch streets.

DGS spokesman Troy Thompson said that he could not disclose the number of bids because the process of awarding the contracts is ongoing.

The bid deadline was Monday and the deadline for information about each bidder's subcontractors was 5 p.m. today. DGS is aiming to award the contracts by Jan. 7.

Time has been viewed as of the essence by the courthouse's planners because Governor-elect Tom Corbett is not bound by Gov. Edward G. Rendell's decision to release $200 million in state capital funds for the courthouse until construction contracts are in place.

Cozen O’Connor Adds Former Energy Sector GC

By Gina Passarella
Of the Legal Staff

Cozen O’Connor has added to its Denver office a former general counsel and Am Law 100 partner with ties to the energy sector. David Zerhusen will be resident in both the firm’s Denver and Washington, D.C., offices where he will bring both a litigation and corporate background.

He formerly served as executive vice president for administration and as senior vice president and deputy general counsel for El Paso Corporation, one of North America’s largest natural gas pipeline companies.
More recently, Zerhusen was general counsel for the privately held Texas-based energy company Fulcrum Power. Zerhusen joined Cozen O’Connor from a sabbatical during which he taught business law courses on cross-border transactions at national universities in Latvia, Mongolia and Albania, and also consulted extensively with energy companies and others on business law and litigation matters. Zerhusen previously headed the European legal operations for Tenneco Inc in London, and was a litigation partner with Jenner & Block in Washington.

“I have been fortunate during my legal career to work with many top business executives and with some of the finest in-house and outside lawyers in the world,” Zerhusen said in a statement. “Possibly the most important thing I learned from my experiences with them is the value of legal advice that is on point, practical and timely -- and if you are lucky enough, that also is cost-effective. I immediately was attracted to Cozen O’Connor's emphasis on practical lawyering.”

Jeffrey Weil, head of Cozen O’Connor’s commercial litigation practice, said in a statement that Zerhusen has important experience in London, both with Tenneco and while heading the international arbitration program for El Paso, Weil said.

“Dave's experience in both the corporate and law firm worlds, and his participation on the national and international stage of law, will be of great value to Cozen O'Connor clients,” Weil said.

How to Be Productive During the Holiday Season - Part II

By Neen James
Special to the Legal

This is the second part of a three-part series on making the most of the holidays.

In my previous post, I went over how to get started in making 2011 your best year yet by reviewing your personal marketing plan, conducting focus groups and doing a six-month review of your performance. Once you have completed this review, create a series of tasks, actions or projects to implement some of your strategies to help you really achieve all your targets for the next six months.

Clean up. You have heard of a spring clean, well this is a winter clean. This clean out could include:

• Clearing, deleting or filing those read e-mails in your inbox.
• Unsubscribing from all those newsletters that you don’t read.
• Allocating one hour to get your paper filing up to date (if you have more than one hour’s worth, do 15 minutes per week until it is all complete).
• Throwing out unwanted, unread journals that you have been "meaning" to read, but haven’t and won’t.
• Reviewing your "tasks" on your to-do list or in your Outlook file and removing those tasks that simply won’t be completed.
• Entering details into your contact management system of the business card pile that is gathering dust on your desk.
• Spending 15 minutes cleaning the top of your desk, removing unnecessary stationery, putting away files, cleaning the dust off your family photo, throwing away empty water bottles and wiping down your computer keyboard and screen. A clean and clear desk will help you be more productive any time of year!

Hold a team development activity. If you manage a team of people in the firm, allocate some time to meet for lunch at cosy restaurant with a warm fireplace and delicious food or bring food to share for lunch and conduct a meeting in your conference room. Spend time listening to your team, their challenges and achievements. Plan your next six months and how you will achieve the targets for the whole team.

Cancel unnecessary meetings.  If you have regular weekly or monthly project or staff meetings that don’t need to occur during the holidays, cancel them. Most people appreciate being given more time and spending less time in meetings.

Book a "tele-coffee" with your clients. What is a "tele-coffee"? It is where you both make a coffee and meet by teleconference. It is a more productive way of meeting (and avoids time wasted in travel), especially if you are trying to avoid inclement weather or holiday traffic. Just like a normal meeting, you set an agenda, take minutes if required and agree on the outcomes.

Watch the blog for the next post in this series, which includes more tasks to get you started on the right foot in 2011!

Neen James, MBA CSP, is the President/CEO of Neen James Communications, LLC. An international productivity expert and native born Aussie, Neen delivers engaging keynotes that have educated, and entertained audiences with real-world strategies that apply in all roles, whether at work or in life. Neen also provides one-on-one consulting and mentoring to women on a variety of business issues and topics. To find out more about Neen, visit her at www.neenjames.com/bio.

Does the Burden of Proof Apply Only to Plaintiffs?

By Melissa M. Gomez
Special to the Legal

I recently wrote a column about whether or not jurors understand the burden of proof. The punch line: I believe, from a conceptual standpoint, they do. That said, there is one thing jurors tend to do that does not comport with the law in civil cases: understand who exactly holds the burden.

Several cases in which I have conducted either mock trials or post trial interviews involved defendants who produced experts to provide alternative theories regarding why an injury, fire or accident had occurred. Viola! These defendants gave themselves a burden to prove those alternative theories, and jurors held them to it.

Am I saying that presenting alternative liability theories is a bad idea for defendants? Absolutely not. In several of those cases, the alternative theories were winning arguments. What I am saying is that when those alternative defenses fall through, jurors tend to be more critical of the defense. For example, in one case, the defense’s alternative causation expert admitted that he could not say with certainty that his theory was the cause of the damage. Jurors later attributed the defense’s failure to prove the alternative theory as the driving force for a verdict decision in favor of the plaintiff.

As a defendant, if you are going to present an alternative theory, it is critical to be confident enough in that theory and the evidence that supports it to place a burden of proof on your case. You have just turned the case from “The plaintiff can’t prove” to “The defense can prove.” These are two very different strategies, and you must choose wisely between them.

Have I ever advised defense clients to go down a path that puts such a burden on their case? Sure I have, and I am sure I will again. When the alternative causation theory is clear and grounded in reliable evidence, I say go for it. It gives jurors more satisfaction to base a decision on something they can point to confidently. They feel better when they can say, “This caused the damage.”

On the other hand, there are cases in which the attack should simply be the plaintiff's inability to prove its case, thus highlighting the legal burden for what it really is. When this is the strategy, alternative theories can be presented, but more in the context of arguing that multiple things could have caused the damage, but there is no way to know what did cause the damage. Therefore, the plaintiff cannot prove.

While not as ideal for a defendant as having a strong alternative causation theory, sometimes this tactic works more effectively than setting yourself up to talk out of both sides of your mouth. Namely, it is not a good strategy to argue that the plaintiff is setting forth a theory it can’t prove by setting forth a theory you can’t prove either.

Melissa M. Gomez is a jury consultant and owner of MMG Jury Consulting. She holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her experience includes work on hundreds of jury trials in Philadelphia and across the country, with a focus on the psychology of juror learning, behavior and decision-making. She can be reached at melissa@mmgjury.com or 215-292-7956.

New Tax Law Calls for Extensive Work in Estate Planning

By Robert H. Louis
Special to the Legal

Nearly every news source has carried reports on the tax bill just passed by Congress. It makes fundamental changes in the laws applicable to planning to minimize federal taxation at death. And it does so in a bill that has those changes expiring in two years.

When that two-year extension comes up for renewal, we will know who will be the president for the following four years and who will control Congress. But right now, all we know is that there are extensive opportunities for planning for our clients that can save them significant amount of taxes; and there is a need to review almost all existing documents to see how they work under the new law. There are few areas of legal practice in which the basic laws used in the practice change so often and in such a broad and sweeping way.  And in this case, the change that came was hoped for, but it was surprising that it occurred so quickly and with so little opposition.

For the next two years, federal estate tax will be imposed at a flat 35 percent rate. There will be an exemption for the first $5 million of assets, indexed for inflation for the first time. This exemption will be available to married individuals in a way that is very different from prior law.

In essence, a married couple will have a $10 million exemption. The estate tax exemption will be “portable.” That means that if one spouse dies with, for example, $2 million, the surviving spouse will have his or her own exemption plus the unused $3 million from the first spouse. This change alone will necessitate review of all wills for married couples. And we have already had suggestions, perhaps only partly in jest, that aggressive tax planning might involve wealthy couples getting divorced and then each of them marrying someone with few assets and in poor health. I would say that it’s wholly in jest, but in due course we will read of someone doing just that.

Here is another very important change in the law. There will be an increase in the lifetime gift tax exemption from $1 million per person to $5 million per person.  This expands greatly the ability of wealthy people to make gifts during their lifetimes.

Other changes include an extension of the ability to do a charitable IRA rollover, a direct transfer of IRA assets to a charity. This is a provision limited in terms of who can make use of it, but it can be useful in the right circumstances. For those who died in 2010, the year of no estate tax, there will be a choice between paying estate tax or having no step-up in the basis of assets. There are also changes in the generation skipping tax that make such transfers easier to accomplish. A proposal to limit the effectiveness of grantor retained annuity trusts, by requiring a minimum 10-year term, did not make it into the final bill.

The combination of these changes means that lawyers who work in the estate planning field will have busy schedules over the next two years. In addition, as one commentator has already noted, this law moves us closer to the concept of the federal estate tax as a voluntary tax, imposed on those who don’t plan to avoid it.

Robert H. Louis is a partner and co-chairman of the personal wealth, estates and trusts department at Saul Ewing. His practice includes estate, tax and retirement planning for individuals and closely held businesses. He is a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel and a graduate of the Wharton School and the Harvard Law School. Louis can be reached at rlouis@saul.com and 215-972-7155.

Judicial Hellhole, or Much Ado About Nothing?

By Jaime Bochet
Of the Legal Staff

According to The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times, a website affiliated with the Legal:  “Philadelphia is ranked No. 1 in annual survey of ‘judicial hellholes’ that’s set to be released on Tuesday. The survey is conducted by the American Tort Reform Association, a business-backed group in Washington that supports changes to the tort system. Lawyers for plaintiffs have regularly criticized how the report is put together and the companies behind it.

“This is the first time that Philadelphia has topped the list, which is in its ninth year. … The association’s criticism of Philadelphia focuses on what’s known as the Complex Litigation Center, which handles mass torts such as recent claims against drug-makers Bayer and Wyeth. The report describes the center as 'decidedly tilted against many lawsuit defendants.'"

The survey cites “Scheduling unfairness, encouragement of ‘litigation tourism,’ consolidation of dissimilar claims, and failure to use court reporters ... among the disturbing examples,” according to a copy of the report obtained by The National Law Journal, a Legal affiliate based in New York.

We’re curious as to what you think: Do you, as Philadelphia practitioners, agree with the survey’s assessment? Why do you agree or disagree? Send me an e-mail or comment below.

How to Be Productive During the Holiday Season

By Neen James
Special to the Legal

This is the first part of a three-part series on making the most of the holidays.

The crazy holiday season … why does it make our hearts beat faster knowing we have so much more "to do" and so little time to achieve it all? Why is it we both love and hate this time of year? We place high expectations on ourselves and others during the holiday season; however, there are ways to be more productive during this holiday season.

The holiday season is not the time to slow down your business development activities or stop networking because we still have budgets, goals and targets to achieve. How do you handle the "unproductive" attitude that holiday season brings? How can you juggle vacation schedules? Historically, the holiday season may have been a time for you to take it easy, do the minimum amount of activity while you focus on what you will achieve for next year -- not this year! Decide to make this your most productive holiday season ever, here are some strategies that will help you do that and continually grow your business and set up a productive 2011.

Make 2011 your best year yet. Book a two-hour appointment with yourself to begin planning for next year to include potential new clients, cases and support staff development activities. Determine what you need to achieve to make 2011 your best year yet. This business plan should not be collecting dust in your bottom desk drawer - it is a living document to be used as a guide for you and your team.

Review your marketing plan. Invest the time and resources in creating a customised plan for your book of business. If you are a one person attorney firm, ask colleagues and people you trust to brainstorm ideas with you. If you have a large firm, ask clients, staff and colleagues what marketing activities will be effective for your business.  If you created a marketing plan for this year, review your progress to date and determine what strategies will be effective again for 2011. 

Conduct focus groups. Invite a select number of key clients to your office and ask them about your firm, their expectations and experiences, and how you can better serve them. Collate the results and seek your team’s input on how to action them.

Conduct a six-month business review. Spend two hours reviewing your firm’s achievements for the past six months. Ask yourself the following 11 questions:
1. How would I rate the past six months’ performance (1-10 with 10 being the highest)?
2. Did I achieve my financial targets/billable hours each month?
3. If not, why not?
4. If not, what do I need to do differently in the next six months to meet my annual plan?
5.  If I did meet these targets (congratulations to you), were they big enough?
6. Have I conducted staff reviews with my team? If not, why not? And when?
7. If so, have I rewarded my team adequately?
8. Do I need to invest more in my team or personal development?
9. Is my marketing plan on track? If not, why not?
10. If not, what activities do I need to conduct to implement more marketing strategies?
11. Have I done sufficient business development to grow my book of business or my connections? If not, why not?

Watch the blog for the next post in this series, about implementing strategies to accomplish your goals.

Neen James, MBA CSP, is the President/CEO of Neen James Communications, LLC. An international productivity expert and native born Aussie, Neen delivers engaging keynotes that have educated, and entertained audiences with real-world strategies that apply in all roles, whether at work or in life. Neen also provides one-on-one consulting and mentoring to women on a variety of business issues and topics. To find out more about Neen, visit her at www.neenjames.com/bio.

Women Lawyers Attribute Success to Ambition

By Gina F. Rubel
Special to the Legal

I had the pleasure of attending a Philadelphia Bar Association Women in the Profession meeting where a panel of some of the most admired women lawyers in Philadelphia discussed the topic of women advancing in law firms. There was a reccurring theme of “ambition” and how it plays into moving up and success within a law firm.

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines “ambition” as "an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power or desire to achieve a particular end." So once you have the “desire,” it is important to understand what that desire is for. If it is to move up and be successful with your law firm, here are some of the things that these women leaders advised.

Seek a Mentor
Roberta D. Pichini, a partner with Feldman Shepherd Wohlgelernter Tanner Weinstock & Dodig, encouraged women lawyers to take time to sit and think about what their long- and short-term goals are. 

“Think it through and clarify your intentions,” she said. “Ask the questions: Who can mentor me? And what’s the reality of me reaching my goals?” She encourages all women of all ages to seek a professional mentor in your firm (not a personal mentor). Pichini also advises that you should become a valuable asset to your law firm by “helping to increase the size of the pie” (bring in business).  Pichini said women need to carry themselves with confidence and be ambitious.

Develop Professional Networks
Stephanie Resnick, a partner with Fox Rothschild, spoke about making partnerships and building business. She recommends getting involved in the community. First and foremost it is important for self-enrichment to do what you like to do and give back. 

Resnick said, “Be active in the legal and business communities. Participate outside your law firm in bar associations or chambers of commerce.  These groups foster networking which leads to business. In addition, look at expanding relationships with existing clients. Determine where your relationships are, it’s about relationship building. Recognize the connections between people.” She went on to advise women to “be visible within your law firm -- volunteer for more. Show a willingness to assist in any way. Demonstrate that you are capable in all situations.” And also, “Be ambitious.”

Follow a Path
JoAnne A. Epps, president of Temple University Beasley School of Law, also provided important advice for women lawyers. One of the first things she said was, “Keep your resume as if you are an academic.  List your speaking engagements and published articles in the Curriculum Vitae (C.V.) format. This is an important tool to have up to date and a way to keep your accomplishments together in one place.”

She said your professional resume is a great map to your career -- a path that you should map out and follow. She said, “Figure out what you want, articulate it and position yourself early. Set your sights high, think about being the foreign ambassador not just an ‘international attorney.’” According to Epps, “It’s all about ambition.”

Make a Difference
Lynn Marks, the executive director of Pennsylvania for Modern Courts, talked about making a difference. She said, “Think about how to make a change -- always look to make something better. Figure out how to use your law degree on how to make a difference. Consider pro bono work.  Find what you are passionate about and follow your dreams. Never give up regardless of what you do and always keep your eye on both short and long term goals.” Lynn concurred that making a difference requires the ambition to do so.  She also said, “Be ambitious, assertive and confident and you will succeed.”

Gina F. Rubel is the owner of Furia Rubel Communications Inc., a public relations and marketing agency with a niche in legal communications. She maintains a blog at www.ThePRLawyer.com, is a regular contributor to The Legal Intelligencer’s blog and blogs for The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gina-furia-rubel). You can find her on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/ginafuriarubel or follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ginarubel.  For more information, go to www.FuriaRubel.com.

Blank Rome Communications Officer to Leave Next Year

By Gina Passarella
Of the Legal Staff

Topper Ray, Blank Rome’s chief communications officer and a principal in its government relations subsidiary, is leaving the firm by the end of the year for an outside agency.

Starting Jan. 3, 2011, Ray will serve as president of the communications arm of Bravo Group, a government relations and communications agency based out of Harrisburg.

Ray will serve the Philadelphia region and work to grow the communications component in Philadelphia and throughout the mid-Atlantic region. Though started in Harrisburg by CEO Chris Bravacos, Bravo Group now has about 30 staff members across offices in Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Ray said he is looking forward to working with Bravo Group affiliate Omega Group, a brand research company, to offer clients “a very distinct value proposition.”

His departure from Blank Rome isn’t a complete severing of ties. The law firm will continue on as a client of Bravo Group, Ray said, adding that his leaving is purely because of the good opportunity presented at his new company.

Ray joined Blank Rome in 2003 as a founding principal of Blank Rome Government Relations and director of communications and public relations for the law firm. Prior to that, he served as a senior vice president at Tierney Communications, where he concentrated on professional services marketing. Blank Rome had been one of his clients while at Tierney.

Before joining Tierney in 1993, Ray served as a press aide to then President George H.W. Bush in the Office of Presidential Advance, and as a presidential campaign lead press advance representative for the Republican National Committee.

Law Increases Monetary Venue of Magisterial District Judges

By Amaris Elliott-Engel
Of the Legal Staff

Gov. Edward G. Rendell signed into law Nov. 23 an increase of venue over monetary disputes for magisterial district judges. Now, magisterial district judges can hear disputes of up to $12,000. The pre-existing law was $8,000 for magesterial disctrict courts and $10,000 for Philadelphia Municipal Court.

State Rep. Thomas Caltagirone, D-Berks, and the primary sponsor of the law, said that the change brings the rest of the state in line with Philadelphia Municipal Court's venue.

The change in venue also could potentially relieve some of the burden on common  pleas  courts, Caltagirone said.

The law also reduced the number of common pleas judges in the 15th Judicial District, or Chester County.