On a cold January day, in a tower high above Chicago's downtown Loop, nearly two dozen partners on a national law firm's executive committee gathered to talk about opening a new office.

The attorneys had spent months studying the new city, clients there and firms that served them, managing partner Thomas Fitzgerald recalled.

Finally, it was official: Winston & Strawn, the Chicago powerhouse with 11 offices and more than 900 attorneys worldwide, was headed to Charlotte.

The executive committee announced the decision a few days before the 19-lawyer office opened Jan. 14 in the Bank of America Corporate Center uptown, saying the move would better serve the firm's clients, particularly Charlotte's big banks, Fitzgerald said.

The scenario is playing out more often than ever, with a string of national firms expanding into Charlotte for its banks and businesses and the promise of closer, better relationships with them.

The surge means Charlotte has the power to attract top legal minds. But it also has a downside: Some worry that the influx is smothering local firms and raising questions about how long the city's big corporate clients, faced with a slowing economy, can feed the rush.

Local firms are responding to the changing legal landscape by boosting big salaries even higher, and the city's legal community is abuzz with talk of possible mergers.

In the last year or so, at least five national firms have opened offices in Charlotte.

Now, 15 of the nation's 100 largest law firms, by number of employees, have offices here, compared with three in 1990.

"I'm not aware of any other city that is currently experiencing this much attention," said James Bryant, managing partner at New York firm Dewey & LeBoeuf's Charlotte office, which opened last year. "Charlotte, as a financial center, is gaining respect."

Charlotte has been on the national radar since the mid-1980s, when Winston-Salem's Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice and Petree Stockton, which would become Kilpatrick Stockton, opened here.

As Bank of America and Wachovia helped turn the city into the country's second-largest financial center, and businesses such as Duke Energy leaped onto the national scene, others followed.

A Wachovia spokeswoman declined to comment for this story, and Bank of America officials did not return phone calls.

The latest law firms to enter the market are national players with top-notch attorneys who advise clients on areas such as corporate finance and real estate.

While the attention has helped Charlotte recruit top associates, the national firms are also putting pressure on local law firms, luring away their business and employees.

In some cases, national firms have merged with local or regional firms -- which can help the larger firms establish a local presence and the smaller firms stay afloat.

The latest rumors of a merger involve Charlotte firm Helms Mulliss Wicker and Richmond, Va., firm McGuireWoods, which came to Charlotte in 1998. Neither firm immediately returned calls late Tuesday.

"I think, in five years, there probably won't be more than one or two significant local firms left," said Tom Cottingham, managing partner of Richmond firm Hunton & Williams' Charlotte office. "The best work and the best lawyers are moving to the national firms."

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday added his voice to regional condemnation of Colombia's military strike on rebels inside Ecuador, and called on the two countries to resolve the problem peacefully.

"We coincide in the rejection of any action that constitutes a violation of territorial sovereignty," Calderon said after a meeting with Salvadoran President Tony Saca in which the two leaders discussed the crisis.

Colombia bombed neighboring Ecuador's territory on Saturday to kill a senior leftist FARC guerrilla, leading Ecuador's ally Venezuela to warn that war could break out in the region. Both Ecuador and Venezuela have mobilized troops.

Mexico's criticism of Colombia came after Brazil condemned the bomb attack on Monday and called on Bogota to offer an explicit apology.

Nicaragua has also condemned Colombia's killing of the rebel commander, and former Cuban President Fidel Castro called the incident a "monstrous crime."

Calderon said Mexico would try to help Colombia and Ecuador resolve the crisis.

"We will spare no effort so that the Colombian and Ecuadorean governments normalize relations as soon as possible through dialogue and diplomatic channels," Calderon said.

Calderon may meet with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at a regional summit being held in the Dominican Republic on Thursday and Friday, Mexican state news agency Notimex reported.

Dominican government sources have said both Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa might attend the summit.

They call him "psychologically abusive." He insists their "venomous attacks" and "reckless hyperbole" are motivated by greed and personal vendettas.

They say they were appalled by his "fiscal and executive mismanagement" and "reckless and wasteful spending." He dismisses their accusations as "baseless and defamatory."

It's the kind of overheated language that often has aggrieved parties hiring lawyers. But in this case, lawyers themselves are making the angry allegations. And their dispute is detailed in a tell-all lawsuit that lays bare an ugly business divorce, the kind usually settled behind closed doors.

The case, which goes to arbitration this month, involves the acrimonious breakup of the founders of Donovan Hatem, a 50-lawyer Boston law firm. Nine former partners have sued the firm and founder David J. Hatem, whom they describe as jealous, tyrannical, and dictatorial, claiming they are owed a collective $2 million in unpaid compensation.

The lawyers, who left the firm last summer to open a new Boston firm, LeClairRyan, accuse Hatem of manipulating the firm's finances to prevent them from be ing fairly paid. They also allege he wrote off bills for favored clients, spent lavishly on marketing to promote mainly himself, and wasted money on first-class travel that he billed to the firm rather than to his clients.

In legal filings, Hatem has lashed back, arguing that his former partners are trying to humiliate and destroy a firm with which they now compete. He accuses one of them of billing Donovan Hatem for New England Patriots season tickets that went to clients of their new firm, and says the incompetent legal work of two others resulted in a pending malpractice allegation that could cost Donovan Hatem $50,000.

"This is all very much about Mr. Hatem not wanting to pay his partners," said Warren D. Hutchison, a plaintiff in the lawsuit who had worked with Hatem for nearly 20 years. "He really considers nobody of any value other than himself, and he was incapable of recognizing the worth in his former partners."

Hatem's lawyer, Michael E. Mone, did not return a call. But in legal documents, Mone asserts the plaintiffs sued "to embarrass and harm their former partners, particularly Mr. Hatem," and calls their case "an outrageous and salacious effort to leverage a quick payment of money to which they are not entitled."

A call to Hatem was returned by Andrew M. Paven of O'Neill and Associates, a Boston public relations firm. In a statement provided by Paven, the firm described the suit as "baseless and defamatory."

Donovan Hatem was established in 2001 by John A. Donovan Jr., who died of cancer in 2005, and Hatem, who specializes in representing architects, engineers, construction firms, and the companies that insure them. Both men left the Boston firm Burns & Levinson to launch their practice, taking 38 other Burns & Levinson lawyers - a third of the firm - with them.

The United States accused Canada of misinterpreting the agreement to give its exporters an unfair advantage.

The ruling marked a victory for the Western Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta when the panel found against the U.S. claim that the provinces owed millions of dollars in export taxes aimed at limiting export surges.

Under the deal, Canadian lumber exporters can either pay export charges of up to 15 percent based on their selling price to the United States, or cap the charge at 5 percent along with an export quota that restrains volume.

British Columbia has traditionally produced about half of all the softwood that Canada exports to the United States.

However, the court found that Quebec and Ontario in Canada's east, which are also big producers and use the quota option to limit their exports, had sent too much lumber south.

"Under the panel decision, producers in the east of Canada will be penalized for over-shipping their allowable quota," said Zoltan van Heyningen, executive director of the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, the U.S. industry group that has been driving the complaints.

Canada claimed at least partial victory and said the ruling was a healthy step for the bilateral 2006 agreement, which was designed to avert more years of long, expensive lumber lawsuits.

"While Canada believes that it has fully complied with the agreement, we respect the tribunal's ruling ... Today's decision provides clarity with respect to the implementation of the SLA (Softwood Lumber Agreement) in the future," said Canadian Trade Minister David Emerson.

The United States had argued that the starting point for calculating export charges and volumes should be the first quarter of 2007, while Canada argued it should be July 2007. The court sided with the United States on that issue.

The two countries have one month to propose possible remedies for the overshipping issue, which might entail docking future exports, Van Heyningen said.

The U.S. coalition said it disagreed with the findings on the western provinces, which it said "let Canada off the hook regarding past collections of 'surge mechanism' export taxes," which they estimated at up to about $85 million.

The Bush administration has filed a separate complaint at the court, alleging that certain Canadian provinces were improperly propping up their lumber industries.

Warning that mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures are likely to rise, with more declines in house prices, Bernanke called for active measures from both the public and private sectors to stabilize housing markets.

"This situation calls for a vigorous response," Bernanke said in a speech to the Independent Community Bankers of America, referring to government and private-sector initiatives to slow the rate of home loan failures.

"Measures to reduce preventable foreclosures could help not only stressed borrowers but also their communities and, indeed, the broader economy," he said.

U.S. government bond prices shed early losses and turned higher, while stocks extended their declines and the downtrodden dollar touched another all-time low against a basket of currencies.

Market bets of a Fed rate cut at its March 18 meeting ticked down slightly to roughly a 66 percent chance of a cut in benchmark interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point from the current 3 percent.

Bernanke's comments come as the central bank grapples with the twin dilemmas of a slowing economy and rising inflation. U.S. economic growth slowed to a sluggish 0.6 percent at the end of 2007 and hiring declined in January. But inflation rose 4.1 percent in 2007, the largest 12-month rise since 1990.

Current housing difficulties differ from past housing market slumps because of the large number of homeowners who owe more on their loans than their homes are worth, Bernanke said. 

Stanislav Shmulevich, 24, pleaded guilty as part of a deal in which he must complete 300 hours of community service. The business student was initially charged with two counts of criminal mischief as a hate crime, a felony punishable by up to four years in prison.

"There was no hate crime here," said defense lawyer Glenn Morak. "He accepts responsibility, and he is repentant."

Detective Faisal Khan said Shmulevich told him "he committed the acts out of anger toward a group of Muslim students with whom he had a recent disagreement."

Shmulevich, the lawyer said, is no longer at Pace, which has about 14,000 students in New York City and suburban Westchester County.