Profit at the 100 highest-grossing U.K. law firms fell 30 percent on average during the past year as deal work declined with the recession, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP survey.

Profits per partner at the top 10 U.K. firms averaged 872,000 pounds ($1.44 million), a 21 percent decrease, according to PwC. Partners at the second tier of law firms, ranked 11 to 25, brought in around 444,000 pounds and saw “the greatest average fall in U.K. income,” the accounting firm said.

“This year has seen the greatest turmoil in the law firm sector since our survey began in 1991,” Alistair Rose, a PwC partner, said in a statement. The effect of the economic crisis “has been even greater than we anticipated across the sector.”

Large law firms in the U.S. and U.K. have been forced to cut costs by firing lawyers, reducing pay and deferring the hiring of first-year attorneys as they weather a decline in legal work.

Allen & Overy LLP, the fourth-highest-grossing U.K. law firm, said revenue fell 7 percent to 511 million pounds for the first six months of the financial year that began May 1. Revenue at Simmons & Simmons LLP, also based in London, fell 16 percent to 120.3 million in the half-year period, spokesman Ibrahim Kamara said.

A spokesman for Linklaters LLP, the highest-grossing U.K. law firm, said half-year revenue results weren’t yet available.

An anti-abortion activist says he's the one who killed a Kansas abortion provider — and did it because it was necessary to save lives. But one of his attorneys says there's no such thing as a "necessity defense" in state law, and that is not the strategy the defense team plans to present at his trial.

Scott Roeder told The Associated Press in a telephone call from jail on Monday that he plans to argue at his trial that he was justified in shooting Dr. George Tiller to protect unborn children.

"We have explored that possibility," public defender Steve Osburn said a day after his client's confession. "That does not seem to be the approach that is viable, nor is it the approach we intend to use."

Roeder, 51, of Kansas City, Mo., is charged with one count of first-degree murder in Tiller's death and two counts of aggravated assault for allegedly threatening two ushers who tried to stop him during the May 31 melee in the foyer of the doctor's Wichita church. Roeder has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in January.

Attorney General Bill Mims will join a powerful law and lobbying firm after his 11-month stint in office ends in January.

Mims will become a partner in the Hunton & Williams firm in its administrative law and government relations practice after Ken Cuccinelli is sworn in as attorney general on Jan. 16.

The General Assembly appointed Mims in February to serve the remainder Bob McDonnell's term. McDonnell resigned as attorney general last winter to run his successful Republican campaign for governor.

The 52-year-old Mims is a former state senator from Loudoun County. He served as chief deputy attorney general under McDonnell.

Reed Smith, one of Pittsburgh's largest law firms, said Tuesday it will reduce its hourly billing rates 20 percent in January, as well as cut salaries of newly hired lawyers.

The moves are a response to client concerns about "driving down the cost of legal services," said global managing partner Gregory Jordan.

First-year associate salaries in Reed Smith's 15 U.S. offices will shrink to a range between $130,000 in New York, Chicago and other major markets to $110,000 in Pittsburgh.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday backed the judge who ruled against the NFL and let quarterback Michael Vick keep more than $16 million in roster bonuses from the Atlanta Falcons.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday affirmed Judge David Doty's order saying Vick had already earned the bonuses before his dogfighting conviction, so the money wasn't subject to forfeiture.

Vick served 18 months in prison and is now with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Doty has long handled matters arising from the NFL's collective bargaining agreement. After Doty ruled in the Vick bonus case, the NFL accused him of bias and sought to end his oversight of its contract with the players union.

The appeals court said the contract should remain under Doty's oversight.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello did not say whether the league planned a further appeal, but he said the 8th Circuit upheld Doty's ruling on Vick's bonuses in large part because it found the contract's forfeiture language ambiguous.

"That is something that we will seek to change at the bargaining table to ensure that bonus payments are paid to players who comply with their contracts and perform on the field," Aiello said.

Vick, a former Atlanta Falcons star, was released from federal custody July 20 after serving 18 months of a 23-month sentence for running a dogfighting ring in Surry County, Va. The Eagles signed Vick to a $1.6 million contract for 2009, with a team option for the second year at $5.2 million, but he has not played much.

Scott Rothstein, the Florida lawyer whose firm asked U.S. prosecutors to investigate the alleged disappearance of $500 million in investor funds, was accused in a government filing of conducting a “Ponzi” scheme.

Acting U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sloman in Miami is seeking the civil forfeiture of eight properties linked to the lawyer.

“There is probable cause to believe that the above- described defendant properties were acquired in connection with a ‘Ponzi’ scheme, conducted by attorney Scott Rothstein” and others, according to Sloman’s filing yesterday in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The law firm, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler PA, asked U.S. prosecutors to investigate the possible misappropriation of funds, the firm’s attorney, Kendall Coffey, said in a Nov. 3 interview.

Rothstein, the Fort Lauderdale-based firm’s co-founder, is believed to have taken the funds from a side business that dealt in legal-case settlements, Coffey said then.

Investors were allegedly being enticed to invest in pay-out plans for settlements that didn’t actually exist, prosecutors said. The payments were scheduled over as many as 12 months.

“The entire investment scheme was a fraud,” Sloman’s office said in the court document. Some of the investor proceeds were used to acquire the properties now sought by the U.S., all of which are located in Florida.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission picked an outside lawyer to head its division responsible for overseeing brokerages, credit rating agencies and stock markets, the SEC said on Tuesday.

Robert Cook, 44, is currently a partner at law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, where he has been working since 1992.

Cook is expected to start in early 2010 as director of the SEC's division of trading and markets, where he will tackle controversial agency proposals such as one to curb short selling and reinstate an updated version of the 'uptick rule.'

His division will most likely be in charge of supervising a large section of the $450 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market.

Bills to regulate the private swaps industry are winding through the House of Representatives and on Tuesday, a draft Senate bill was made public that would clamp down on the financial instruments. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission would also gain authority over the opaque market blamed in part for exacerbating the financial crisis.

Cook has extensive experience working on swaps transactions, new financial products and structures as well as securities trading, the SEC said in a statement.