“Houston Immigration Firm Sues Legal Assistant For $1M After Move to Competitor Firm” —

• “A small immigration firm based in Houston has sued a legal assistant, alleging she violated a noncompete when she jumped to a competitor, by taking with her knowledge of the firm’s proprietary procedures for handling immigration cases.”
• “Law Offices of Manuel Solis seeks more than $1 million in damages from Lizzett Aguilar Navarrete in the breach of noncompetition suit it filed last week in state district court in Houston.”
• “Manuel Solis’ firm alleges in the petition that its success in the competitive business of representing individuals in immigration work is due to confidential and proprietary procedures for managing cases, such as ‘procedures, internal forms and checklists for screening clients, and procedures for the oversight and tracking of each client’s case,’ Those procedures, the firm alleges, allow it to operate more efficiently, reduce client costs and ‘constitute an important competitive advantage’ over other immigration firms.”

“Ex-Pierce Bainbridge Atty Wants Firm DQ’d In Defamation Suit” —

• “Attorney Don Lewis told the Southern District of New York on Thursday that because he previously sought counsel from Wigdor attorney David Gottlieb and shared ‘privileged and confidential information’ that is “substantial[ly]” related to the case later filed by Selina Kyle, the court should bar the firm from representing her.”
• “Lewis contends that because Wigdor is a relatively small firm, legal precedent holds that it would be insufficient to attempt to screen the attorneys working on Kyle’s case from the lawyer Lewis spoke with, according to a memorandum in support of the disqualification bid.”
• “Kyle contends in her August complaint that Lewis sexually assaulted her shortly after she began working at Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht LLP in June 2018 as a legal assistant.”
• “Lewis has vehemently denied the allegations and claims the assault was fabricated to prevent him from blowing the whistle on sketchy financial dealings at Pierce Bainbridge. He and his former firm have engaged in various litigation battles since his departure.”

And Brian Faughnan reminds us that: “Truth is stranger than fiction.” —

• “Christopher Brady used to be a Florida lawyer. He got disbarred for some Hollywood (California not Florida) style breaking and entering to steal a computer server from his former law firm.”
• “I got pulled into writing about his story originally because the ABA Journal online ran a headline about how he got disbarred over punctuation which was, at best, partially correct. (He created a new law firm that had the same name as the firm that had terminated him but that added periods to the abbreviation part of the law firm name, so that his former employer was Barak Law Group, PA but his new firm was Barak Law Group, P.A.)”
• “So, why am I rehashing this guy’s story? Well, because the ABA Journal got me with a headline again, but this time it appears the headline was 100% accurate: ‘Disbarred lawyer is convicted even though twin took responsibility for the crime.'”
• “The criminal case that captured the ABA Journal’s attention this week involves a crime that has much more of a ‘Better Call Saul’ flavor rather than the ‘Breaking Bad’ style of the truck-door-computer server heist. The criminal act was the faking of a court order impacting child custody for the benefit of the lawyer’s twin brother.”