In-house counsel play an important role in growing and shaping the development of pro bono legal services in our communities. In addition to providing direct legal services, leaders from corporate legal departments encourage their own colleagues to get involved and support collaboration with outside counsel.
Should law firms require their attorneys and staff to return to in-person work? Is a hybrid schedule feasible? Firm leaders in Indiana are grappling with these questions.
Angella “Angie” Castille has recently become the board chair of Lex Mundi, a network of more than 150 independent law firms serving companies around the globe.
Former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted Tuesday of murder and manslaughter for pinning George Floyd to the pavement with his knee on the Black man’s neck in a case that touched off worldwide protests, violence and a furious reexamination of racism and policing in the U.S.
After the fanfare of the 2021 NCAA March Madness Tournament, the Indianapolis-based college athletics organization is heading back to the court — this time, an actual courtroom in the Circle City — in a contract dispute over a radio broadcast contract canceled during the pandemic.
A final surprise for 2020 emerged from December’s marathon omnibus spending and COVID-19 relief negotiations. Congress included a trio of notable and hotly debated intellectual property measures in its multi-trillion-dollar spending and relief package which could fundamentally alter the manner in which intellectual property owners protect and enforce their rights.
The Indiana Bar Foundation, with the support of several major law firms, has launched a diversity initiative designed to remove financial barriers that can prevent high school students from participating in mock trial programs.
The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered how commercial real estate will be developed, built and used. Prudent real estate owners, developers, property managers and builders (and the lawyers who represent them) need to recognize this changed environment and proceed accordingly.
In a world where everything you need to know about a person is in the palm of your hand, some Indiana citizens have a hard time leaving their past mistakes behind. In order to address this, many lawyers dedicate their pro bono efforts to assisting with expungement clinics, which help eligible prior offenders seal certain arrest and conviction records.
A little more than four years ago, Hoosier Janet McCabe ended her service as assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. Since then, the most significant aspects of the Obama-era climate change regulations, namely the Clean Power Plan, have been unwound. Biden’s selection of McCabe signals a doubling down on regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
After a career practicing in large Indianapolis law firms, intellectual property attorney Amie Peele has broken the “unspoken rule” that partners must retire from big law and instead decided to start her own firm.
As a new year starts, Monica Fennell, longtime pro bono advocate and past executive director of the former Indiana Pro Bono Commission, is stepping into a new role as pro bono director for Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, where she will coordinate the volunteer legal work of the more than 600 attorneys in the firm’s 11 offices.
One of the perplexing areas of Indiana divorce law is “income.” At first blush, that vexation seems out of place. Upon closer inspection, the confusion is understandable. Why? The reason is that there frequently are disputes as to whether payments are income or property in divorce cases.
Monica Fennell, a longtime leader in pro bono efforts in Indiana, has jumped to Taft Stettinius & Hollister, where she is now in charge of building a volunteer lawyer program across the law firm’s 11 offices.
COVID may have seemed like the only thing that happened in 2020, but for Indiana’s legal community, the past year brought watershed developments that will be with us for years to come, many of which were touched directly by the pandemic. Here are the Top 10 non-coronavirus Indiana legal news stories as determined by consensus of the Indiana Lawyer editorial staff.
A Nevada company already facing a federal lawsuit in Indiana for efforts to defraud the state into buying respiratory masks the company didn’t have access to is now facing a state-court complaint brought by the Indiana attorney general.
The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made many visits to Indiana during her tenure on the Supreme Court. She had friendships with the law professors and deans at the law schools in the Hoosier State, and she influenced law students, lawyers and judges across the state. “Imagine a young law student faced with the challenge by a Supreme Court Justice,” recalled a former IU Maruer law student who is now a federal judge.
Former Indiana University Director of Athletics Fred Glass plans to resume his law career in October, joining the Indianapolis office of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP as a partner.
Whether you’re interested in adding pro bono to your practice for next year’s reporting requirements or are simply interested in increasing the number of hours you spend on reportable pro bono legal services, there are several ways you can get involved.
Although the pandemic has thrown ice water on the red-hot law firm merger market, combinations are still happening and Indiana, a state often absent from the list of merger activity, recorded two separate combinations just as the COVID-19 crisis was taking hold.