A survey of the nation’s top 250 law firms shows they collectively shed 5,259 lawyers in the past year, a drop of 4 percent.

The drop is the largest since the National Law Journal started collecting the information in 1978. The survey has recorded only two other declines—a drop of less than 1 percent in 1993, and a 1 percent drop in 1992, according to a National Law Journal story on the results.

The number of associates at the large firms dropped by 8.7 percent, while the number of partners increased by slightly less than 1 percent, the story says. The number of lawyers in the “other” category, including of counsel and staff lawyers, dropped by 8.9 percent.

The numbers indicate a law firm strategy of saving partners, according to law firm consultant Ward Bower of Altman Weil. “The cuts made were done primarily to preserve workloads for partners," he told the National Law Journal. "It suggests that work done by partners is work that associates could do.”

The law firm with the largest percentage reduction in lawyers was Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. It lost 168 lawyers, a decline of 26.4 percent, according to the article. The firm that lost the most lawyers in raw numbers was Latham & Watkins. It shrunk by 444 lawyers, a decline of 19.1 percent.

The largest law firm, according to the survey, is Baker & McKenzie, with 3,949 lawyers.

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review the case of a Montgomery County man condemned for shooting a woman and dumping her body in a lake so he could steal her red convertible.

Michael James “Romeo” Perry was convicted of the slaying of 50-year-old Sandra Stotler during a burglary of her home near Lake Conroe eight years ago.

The 27-year-old Perry also was a suspect but never was charged in the slayings of Stotler’s 16-year-old son, Adam, and an 18-year-old friend, Jeremy Richardson.

Perry was driving Adam Stotler’s SUV when he was arrested following a police shootout and says a confession he made to police is untrue.

He does not have an execution date.

The Supreme Court is considering whether sentencing a juvenile to life in prison with no chance of parole is cruel and unusual punishment, particularly if the crime is less serious than homicide.

The cases being heard Monday involve two Florida convicts. Joe Sullivan was sent away for life for raping an elderly woman when he was 13. Terrance Graham was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17.

Graham, now 22, and Sullivan, now 33, are in Florida prisons, which hold more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for crimes other than homicide.

Lawyers for Graham and Sullivan argue that it is a bad idea to render a final judgment about people so young.

Chinese state media says an initial group of nine Uighurs have been executed for taking part in July's deadly ethnic rioting in the country's far west.

The China News Service reported Monday that the nine were put to death recently but gave no specific date or other details.

The executions followed a review of the verdicts by the Supreme People's Court as required by law, it said.

The nine were convicted of committing murder and other crimes during the riots that left nearly 200 people dead in China's worst ethnic violence in decades.

Hundreds were rounded up in the wake of the unrest in Xinjiang province. The news service said another 20 people were indicted Monday on charges related to the deaths of 18 people and other crimes.

Should a casino be held responsible for a compulsive gambler who lost $135,000 in a single night?

It's now up to the Indiana Supreme Court.

Jenny Kephart says Ceasars Indiana enticed her to gamble with free meals, rooms and money on credit.

The casino says Kephart should have taken advantage of programs that lets compulsive gamblers ban themselves from casinos.

The State Appeals Court ruled in favor of the casino when it heard the case. The Supreme Court hearings get underway this week.

The law firm of Burlingame attorney Joe Cotchett filed suit today against JPMorgan Chase, in connection with a busted, $150 million Bay Area Ponzi scheme.

As stated in a press release sent out by the firm, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, the scheme, was operated out of Napa, by William A. Wise, Jacqueline Hoegel and her daughter, Kristi, operating through an entity known as Millennium Bank.

Last March, the SEC filed action against the bank and the principals, and froze their assets, including a Napa home purchased by the Hoegels with the money from duped investors.

According to the lawsuit, the Napa branch office of Washington Mutual, since taken over by JPMorgan Chase, "not only assisted in depositing millions from innocent investors and helping wire millions to offshore banking havens, it also "provided to Millennium a remote banking platform that it could use to transfer and launder money faster and with less oversight, all in violation of the law."

A separate, revised class action suit filed by the firm on behalf of Madoff victims, names JPMorgan, along with the Bank of New York Mellon, as "custodians of key Madoff bank accounts, sold Madoff structured notes, administered Madoff feeder funds, and helped ship Madoff money between New York and London."

The U.S. Supreme Court is taking a close look at a question individual investors have long asked about their mutual funds, but the courts have largely ignored: Why am I getting charged twice as much as big institutional clients?

Sure enough, the money-management services that different classes of fund clients get aren't the same. Institutions like pension funds and foundations may not need toll-free customer hotlines. They don't require as many of the prospectuses and other fund reports that individuals often throw away, even though they're printed and mailed at great expense. Individuals move relatively paltry sums in and out of a fund, piling up higher transaction costs than big clients.

Still, the investments a fund makes are often the same for both groups, and the returns similar — though individuals' higher fees take a bigger bite from their results, regardless of whether markets are up or down.

So it can be galling for an individual to pay an expense ratio of, say, 1 percent of cash invested as an annual fee, versus 0.5 percent for an institutional client enjoying what is in effect a bulk rate.

Courts have been reluctant to consider such disparities, and have rarely sided with investors. Instead, the comparisons that courts have allowed focus on whether a fund's fees are so far out of line from what similar competing funds charge as to be unreasonable.