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Over at Susan Cartier Liebel’s Build a Solo Practice she puts out a couple of statistics I hadn’t seen before:

Solos comprise more than 50% of all private practice attorneys in the country. In some states, like New York, they are as high as 81%.

With such a huge predominance of BigLaw in the news, I never realized that I was actually in the majority, not the minority.

But the stats lead to different questions, starting with this: What, exactly, is the definition of a solo?

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February foreclosure activity was down 4 percent from the previous month but still up 57 percent from February 2007, according to the latest RealtyTrac U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. So does the monthly decrease mean we’ve hit a ceiling of sorts and pretty much everyone who is going to go into foreclosure in this cycle has already gone into foreclosure? …(read more)

Time to dust off those Ouija boards and take out the tea leaves. The way things are going nowadays you too have about as much a chance of correctly predicting whether the nation and the state of California are either headed towards, or are already in, a recession as any of the professionals who do it for a living. It’s a 50-50 crapshoot no matter which way you lean on the issue.
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Well, in case you either weren’t in the business at that time, or were hoping to erase the nightmare permanently, welcome to the early 1990s redeaux…almost! We’re getting there. FAST!!!…(read more)

Charges have been brought by the US Attorneys office for the Southern District of New York against four people involved in a prostitution ring. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s name has surfaced as one of the customers as “Client #9″.

Fox News and CBS televison both report that Spitzer, famous for his law and order approach as New York Attorney General that he rode to the Capitol, will quit. Another report has called him Client #9 in a high priced prostitution ring.

According to a March 7 story in the New York Times regarding the ring:

The ring, known as the Emperor’s Club V.I.P., had 50 prostitutes available for appointments in New York, Washington, Miami, London and Paris, according to a complaint unsealed on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The appointments, made by telephone or through an online booking service, cost $1,000 to $5,500 an hour and could be paid for with cash, credit card, wire transfers or money orders, the complaint said.

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Breaking story from the New York Times:

Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring
By DANNY HAKIM
Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning. He is set to make an announcement at about 2:15 this afternoon.

New York’s doctors, led by the state Medical Society, rallied last week for tort “reform,” blaming lawsuits for the increase in insurance premiums. According to a medical society press release, 1,500 physicians traveled to Albany last Tuesday to protest on the steps of the State Capitol. The issue they brought to the legislators was high medical malpractice premiums, which I reported last July jumped 14% (see: Why New York Medical Malpractice Insurance Jumped 14%).

As you can see from that link (You did read that link, didn’t you? I hope so because it’s important), the jump was related to artificially low rates set by the New York Insurance Department for years combined with the state swiping almost $700M from the rainy day fund.

But when the doctors rallied in Albany, it was injured patients that were their targets. In a surreal moment, Dr. Robert Goldberg, the head of the Medical Society, offered up in a press release this humdinger of Doublespeak:
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David Giacalone reviews An Almost Life by Kevin Mednick, a novel by an upstate plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer. A snippet of the review:

If you enjoy novels about (realistic) lawyers and lawyering, or you’re looking to be entertained by characters you care about, while learning a bit about the human predicament and the workings of an important (and often misunderstood) social institution, you should read An Almost Life;

David Fischer at Antitrust Review puts up Blawg Review #149;

Six days in jail for an overdue book might not be the best use of taxpayer money (Quizlaw);

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Foreclosures are rising. Home prices are falling. Sales are down. What does all this mean? Here are some “megatrends” that may develop in the months ahead. For investors and homebuyers, these and other rapidly developing “megatrends” could signal opportunities.

Vultures Circling
Wall Street wizards profited handsomely from the subprime market they helped create; Wall Street gurus will profit from cleaning up the mess they spawned. Nationwide, wealthy investors are pooling their cash and circling in orbits once unheard of.

“When Jorge M. Perez, chairman and CEO of the Related Group, the nation’s leading high-rise luxury condo developer, becomes the biggest ‘vulture’ fund buyer in the downturn, what does that tell you?” questioned Jack McCabe, a real estate consultant in Deerfield Beach, Fla.

Searching for Stimulus II?
In a presidential year, Uncle Sam and politicians nationwide are rushing to unveil new and bolder schemes to unravel the foreclosure crisis. As federal, state and local government weighs in of the rising foreclosure mess, look for new plans to halt the foreclosure train wreck. Bankruptcy reform. Rate-freezes. Loan modification. Stimulus plans. Fraud legislation. So far, these efforts have yielded little results. But will the political considerations transcend economic considerations? The market will correct the problems, not the government. The solution lies in the hands of real estate investors and homebuyers.

For the second time in less than a month, the real estate bubble has burst on a rich and famous homeowner’s palatial estate. Following closely on the heels of another trophy property recently sold on the auction block, Michael Jackson′s Neverland Ranch is set to possibly suffer a similar fate….(read more)