New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo predicted Thursday that 'hundreds and hundreds' of attorneys will ultimately be implicated in his office's investigation of government entities improperly enrolling non-employees in public pension funds. While his investigators have only exposed the "tip of the iceberg" so far, Cuomo said the problem is not limited to a few school districts that were initially exposed for having put attorneys doing work for the districts on the public pension rolls. More

Responding to a former associate's complaint that the firm ignored her allegation that she had been drugged at a firm holiday party, Bingham McCutchen said there is no merit to Michelle Moor's claims that a firm lawyer and an HR manager mishandled charges she raised with them relating to alleged instances of drugging of firm employees, and rape. The firm expressed disappointment in Moor's resignation from the firm. Claiming in her complaint that she was concerned for her safety, Moor resigned in February. More

The Securities and Exchange Commission came down hard on Marvell Technology Group on Thursday for stock option backdating and for being unusually slow to cooperate and reluctant to clean up the problem. Marvell agreed to pay a $10 million fine to settle charges that the company regularly backdated options. Also, Weili Dai, co-founder and chief operating officer, agreed to pay $500,000 to settle charges that she picked the dates in hindsight and signed faked meeting minutes to cover her tracks. More

Failures to preserve and produce electronically stored information often occur when error-prone, manual e-discovery processes are used. A deeper understanding of how to evaluate EDD technology is needed to keep costs down, reduce risk and adhere to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. More

Ross Nadel, the former criminal chief of the San Francisco U.S. Attorney's Office who founded and led the highly regarded Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property unit before joining Cooley Godward Kronish, has gone to Adobe Systems to be senior legal counsel of worldwide anti-piracy. He said he liked Cooley, but the gig at Adobe, with its distinct mix of enforcement and cybercrime, was too appealing. Most big software companies have at least some in-house lawyers working to track down software pirates. More

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison has elected Brad S. Karp as its next chairman. Karp, the co-chair of Paul Weiss' litigation department and a member of the firm's management committee, will take the top leadership spot in January. Karp, 48, who began his career at Paul Weiss as a summer associate in 1983, said Thursday he saw his main task ahead as maintaining Paul Weiss' culture at a time when the profession in general has become more obsessed with the bottom line. More

The former steel and coal mining center of Wheeling, W.Va., was on its last legs in 2000. Then Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe opened a back-office hub, initially with 73 jobs. Orrick's Global Operations Center has triggered a quiet renaissance in Wheeling as the anchor of a downtown revitalization that has created more than 1,200 jobs. Orrick is happy, too. Chairman Ralph Baxter Jr., a West Virginia native, says the GOC allowed the firm to shave $26.5 million in overhead costs in its first five years. More

Major oil companies' multimillion-dollar payment to 153 public water systems to cleanse wells of a potentially carcinogenic gasoline additive could grow if more tainted wells are discovered over the next 30 years. Companies including ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP PLC's BP America, Royal Dutch Shell PLC's Shell Oil, Valero Energy and Marathon Oil agreed to pay $422 million to settle lawsuits claiming wells were contaminated by MTBE, a chemical that was once a key gasoline ingredient. More

Cities dealing with scores of abandoned, foreclosed homes have started suing banks and mortgage companies to recoup their costs, while other cities are hauling lenders before code enforcement boards and county courts to force them to maintain abandoned properties. The innovative legal tactics are designed to recoup the city's lost property taxes as well as the cost of fire departments, police, code enforcement or even demolition -- any city services needed to clean up or deal with the foreclosed properties. More

About 12 seconds was all it took for two bailiffs to gun down a man who shot at them in a St. Petersburg, Fla., courthouse lobby, and authorities said the swift response helped prevent anyone else from being seriously hurt. Glen Lee Powell was carrying a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun, 79 rounds of ammunition, an extra gun magazine, a lengthy fighting knife and a gas mask. The courthouse reopened Thursday morning. More

Details of a sex scandal involving a top South Korean official and a professor who lied about having a Yale degree will be used by the Ivy League school to defend itself against a suit. Dongguk University says that the American university wrongly confirmed that Shin Jeong-ah earned a degree and that Yale's actions tarnished its reputation, sparked a criminal probe, cost employees their jobs and led to a decline in grants and student applications. The Asian university seeks at least $50 million in damages. More

A municipal judge admonished by the New Jersey Supreme Court for arraigning his client's adversary is now facing a civil rights suit over the incident. The seven-count complaint against James Newman raises federal and state civil rights claims and common law claims for malicious prosecution, infliction of emotional distress and fraudulent concealment. The ethics complaint seeks compensatory and punitive damages. More

The Bar Council of India is set to visit the U.K. later this month, as the longstanding talks about opening up the country's legal market to foreign law firms continue. The news comes as it emerges that a crucial court case, scheduled to take place at the end of last month, has been pushed back until the summer. The case, now due to be heard in July, was initially brought against Ashurst, White & Case and Chadbourne & Parke in 1995, when the firms set up liaison offices in India. More

A close-knit coalition of Minneapolis bridge collapse victims -- some in wheelchairs and others still wearing casts -- looked on Thursday as Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed a $38 million package to compensate them for their injuries and losses. The ceremony capped their nine-month fight for state help recovering from the Aug. 1 failure of the Interstate 35W bridge, which hurt 145 people and killed 13. More