Katten picked up four litigatorsfrom Hunton & Williams…

Andrew Cuomo and Bank of America continued their public squabble…

Sonnenschein undergoes another round of layoffs….

Merger talks are over between Ice Miller and Greenbaum Doll…

And the Department of Labor is hiring 250 investigators…

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Younger will become President-elect of the NYSBA in June 2009, and will begin serving as President in June 2010.

He will be the third Patterson Belknap partner to become President of the NYSBA. He follows one of the firm’s founders, Chauncey Belknap, and its former partner, US District Court Judge Robert P. Patterson, Jr., both of whom previously served in this role.

Younger is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the NYSBA. He is a past chair of the NYSBA’s Commercial and Federal Litigation Section, having previously served as Chair of its Securities Litigation Committee and of its ADR Committee.

He served as Transition Director for New York State Attorney General, Andrew M. Cuomo. He is Counsel to the New York State Commission on Judicial Nomination, which nominates New York’s Court of Appeals Judges, and is a member of the First Department Judicial Screening Committee. In addition, he serves on the Advisory Committee to the Commercial Division of the New York State Supreme Court.

Younger received his BA degree cum laude from Harvard University and his law degree magna cum laude from Albany Law School where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Albany Law Review.

Patterson Belknap, with 200 lawyers, is one of only four firms to be ranked in the Top 10 of The American Lawyer’s “A-List” of elite firms every year since the list’s inception.

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Suck on that, Lars Ulrich!

Instead, the RIAA plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has worked out preliminary agreements with major ISPs, under which it will notify the provider when it finds a provider’s customers making music available online for others to take.

The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.

The ISP will either forward the notice to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.

The RIAA said it has agreements in principle with some ISPs, but declined to say which ones. But ISPs, which are increasingly cutting content deals of their own with entertainment companies, may have more incentive to work with the music labels now than in previous years.

The new approach dispenses with one of the most contentious parts of the lawsuit strategy, which involved filing lawsuits requiring ISPs to disclose the identities of file sharers. Under the new strategy, the RIAA would forward its emails to the ISPs without demanding to know the customers’ identity.

Over the summer, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo began brokering an agreement between the recording industry and the ISPs that would address both sides’ piracy concerns. “We wanted to end the litigation,” said Steven Cohen, Cuomo’s chief of staff. “It’s not helpful.”

Music sales continue to fall. In 2003, the industry sold 656 million albums. In 2007, the number fell to 500 million CDs and digital albums, plus 844 million paid individual song downloads — hardly enough to make up the decline in album sales.

Via WSJ Tech via GamePolitics.

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Rosenthal piled up millions of dollars in fees with the approval of his former law school pal, disgraced ex-Surrogate Court Judge Michael Feinberg.

On December 4th, the state Appellate Division disbarred Feinberg, and suspended Rosenthal from practicing law for two years.

From 1992 to 2002, Judge Feinberg awarded Rosenthal nearly $9 million in fees. He regularly awarded his buddy 8% of the estates’ assets, while lawyers in other boroughs typically received 6% or less.

Instead of filing the required affidavits, Rosenthal submitted fee requests on Post-it notes.

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