Ethic Summary Article

Ethics Weekly Article Summaries

WEEK#1

Big Law's $1,000-Plus an Hour Club

Leading attorneys in the U.S. are asking as much as $1,250 an hour, significantly more than in previous years, taking advantage of big clients how are willing  to pay top dollar for law services. A few law firms had raised their fees to more than $1,000 an hour about five years ago, but after the recession hit, many of the rest of the industry's elite were hesitant, until recently, to charge more than $990 an hour.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704071304576160362028728234.html

NYC Chairman Resigns

Michael Cherkasky resigned as chairman of the New York Commission on Public Integrity and says it has too few resources to police all lobbying and executive branch ethics violations. Cherkasky was appointed by Gov. David Paterson in 2009. The agency later recommended $90,000 in civil penalties against Paterson for soliciting and accepting Yankees baseball tickets before belatedly paying for them. He says the commission should focus on more serious violations and notes legislators have little ethics oversight except federal prosecutions. Cherkasky is chief executive of the risk management firm Integrity. He says because his firm's growing global client list could create conflicts of interest he wouldn't immediately know about.

http://online.wsj.com/article/AP691855a81513443ba2908a656176ee36.html?KEYWORDS=ethics

WEEK#2

Feds Accuse P&G Director

SEC Alleges Official Passed Inside Information on Berkshire's Deal With Goldman. The U.S. accused a former director of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co. of passing inside information about the two companies to a hedge-fund titan when America went into financial crisis. In a civil administrative proceeding, the Securities and Exchange Commission said that the director, Rajat Gupta, tipped Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam about quarterly earnings during the financial crisis of 2008. The SEC said Mr....