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The 2008 elections in the US are hard fought and important. Indeed, the President of the American Bar Association has issued a call to lawyers to get involved in 2008 elections to ensure that voting rights are honored. http://www.abanet.org/op/2008elections/%22%3Ehttp://www.abanet.org/op/2008elections/

For those who would like to get involved with voters rights issues, the following describes both nonpartisan and partisan groups focused on voters' rights.

The web pages referred to below are embedded in links, and the link addresses also are spelled out for anyone who wishes to copy and paste the information.

1) The American Bar Association has a website page specific to 2008 voting rights issues. http://www.abanet.org/2008election/
The page includes links to sign up for various different types of activities ranging from state-specific efforts to staffing a national hot line for voters with questions.

2) The National Campaign for Fair Elections is an initiative of the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and its website is here. http://nationalcampaignforfairelections.org/pages/about_us

That group and its efforts have been praised by the New York Times, among others, in editorials addressing some of the significant voting problems that marred the last two presidential elections. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/opinion/09sat1.html
The sign up page is located at: http://www.nationalcampaignforfairelections.org/page/s/volunteer

3) Vote Trust USA is a subgroup for the Verified Voting Foundation, which was founded by a Stanford law professor concerned about preserving an audit trail that enables meaningful recounts in the age of electronic voting. http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?list=type&type=52

The Vote Trust website is at a different page, and includes substantive information and links to state-specific voting rights news and some groups involved in local voters' rights projects.
http://votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=8&Itemid=113

4) The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law is not involved in poll watching per se, but does provides a wide-range of substantive information on voters right issues, and engages in some specific advocacy efforts in particular states.
http://www.brennancenter.org/

5) For partisan efforts, the Obama campaign is actively seeking lawyers and law students for election day poll watching and other voters rights efforts. The voters' rights sign up page is located at: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/vrachome

6) A ten minute search of the McCain campaign website did not reveal a subgroup aimed at enlisting poll watchers. However, the website did include a September 15, 2008 press release yesterday promoting a voters' rights initiative by the campaign. http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/PressReleases/Read.aspx?guid=90c928f6-38c7-4dc3-86c6-15149dbb8e07.
The press release directs readers to a website that lists various persons involved in the effort and presumably they can be contacted for further information.
http://www.johnmccain.com/honest/

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There is renewed interest in and attention to the changes being wrought around the globe by entrepreneurial litigation claiming. I say that for many reasons, one of which is that it was a lively topic of discussion at meetings I attended the last few days in Europe with lawyers from around the world who belong to the International Business Law Consortium, commonly known as the IBLC. (Disclaimer/caveat - my law firm belongs to the group. The group's website is http://www.iblc.com/, which is here. )The topic also is currently in the news because of some $ 800 million of attorneys' fees awarded in Enron litigation, as is further described below.

The bottom line, in my view, is that entrepreneurial claiming is clearly growing all around the world and will continue to cause many changes. An interesting summer 2008 article from SJ Berwin LLP (an EU law firm with offices in several cities) explains the latest, claimant friendly ruling on UK "uplift" fees, and notes that Allianz has announced plans to raise a fund to commercial litigation cases. Also educational is a 2002 article by Professor Herbert Kritzer on myths related to contingent fees. In fact, contingent fees are permitted in many countries outside the US (including Luxembourg), as Prof. Kritzer describes in his detailed article, which is online in full text at this link.

Global litigation plainly is being fueled by claim buying, contingent fees and other entrepreneurial activities of trial lawyers. My partner, Karen Borg, and I described some of these developments in a recent article available here. The third and fourth sections include citations to find a German entity which buys antitrust claims, and describes an Illinois law firm which is pursuing tobacco litigation in Nigeria with the Nigerian government.

How well can it pay? This week news is out on attorneys' fees awards for the lawyers who helped to obtain the over $ 7 billion of recoveries from 3 major banks. A Law.com article by Amanda Bronstad states that the awards include "$688 million in attorney fees to San Diego's Coughlin, Stoia, Geller, Rudman & Robbins, lead counsel in the case. "The Court finds that in the face of extraordinary obstacles, the skills, expertise, commitment, and tenacity of Lead Counsel in this litigation cannot be overstated," wrote U.S. District Judge Melinda Harman, for the Southern District of Houston, who, in her ruling on Monday, referred to Coughlin Stoia as "a lion" in the securities bar. "Not to be overlooked are the unparalleled results, $7.2 billion in settlement funds, which demonstrate counsel's clearly superlative litigating and negotiating skills." The award gives Coughlin Stoia, which represents the lead plaintiff, the Regents of the University of California, its requested amount, which is about 9.52% of the net recovery of the settlement, the largest ever in a single class action. The firm stated that its lawyers and co-counsel, 13 firms, had spent nearly 290,000 hours on the litigation at a blended rate of $456 per hour. Coughlin Stoia was responsible for more than 85% of the time expended."


This award is hardly unique. A prior post here reviewed some other recent large awards in contingent fee litigation.

Where will it all end? I am sure I do not know, but plainly there is much more to come in this area.

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