Rees Morrison’s Morsels #84 – additions to earlier posts

Offers of judgment under FRCP 68. Warning: I stopped practicing law years ago, so take the following comment as a lay understanding. If a party offers to pay an amount to the other side in settlement, and the other side refuses, then if the eventual award comes in at less than the amount offered, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68 no attorneys’ fees are available to the other side. I am sure there are many complexities to offers of judgment, but they sound like a potent tool for inside lawyers (See my post of July 21, 2006: parallel settlement and litigation counsel.).

Reactions to my views on large firms and their discontents. My article on why very large law firms have unremarked downsides has garnered a bit of attention. Carolyn Elefant on Legal Blog Watch notes the article approvingly. JD Hull, in his blog What About Paris, says that I “nailed” the points. Click here for a PDF of the article.Download 08-10-16 Rees Morrison big law firm downsides NYLJ

Russian Corporate Counsel Association. The Martindale-Hubble website announces that the Russian Corporate Counsel Association has more than 300 in-house counsel members, from 93 different companies – both domestic and international. Membership is restricted: “While the association is happy to work alongside lawyers who belong to legal, consulting or accountancy firms, such individuals are not permitted to become members of the RCCA” (See my post of Aug. 13, 2008: 10 other national organizations for inside counsel.).

Productivity on this blog. Forty-six months ago I started posting to this blog. As of November 20th, I had put up 3,700 posts, of which I have written all but about 12. The average pace has been 80.4 posts every month, including the partial months of February 2005 and November 2008. The median has been 85 posts per month, with a high of 124 in May 2007 and a low of 17 in June 2005. The standard deviation of posts for my complete months, since you are really eager to know, is 26.3 (See my post of Nov. 16, 2008: analysis of header words.).