J. Barrington Vaught, the Water Works' local counsel in the suit, said the Georgia Environmental Protection Division and Gov. Sonny Perdue's office asked the Water Works in a June 22 telephone conference to change certain passages in the lawsuit.

Water Works is being represented by Atlanta law firm Alston & Bird. Vaught is a partner with Columbus-based Hatcher, Stubbs, Land, Hollis and Rothschild, which is representing Water Works locally.

Specifically, he said state officials were concerned about passages that can be construed as "anti-Atlanta" that allege the Corps is reserving water in Lake Lanier for municipalities near the lake, which the suit contends was not authorized by the congressional act that created the lake.

The state of Georgia is already a plaintiff in two water allocation lawsuits that have been merged with two other actions filed by Alabama and Florida. Water Works President Billy Turner and his lawyers have said those lawsuits do not focus on Columbus' particular water interests.

"The whole object of this is to try to draft a complaint that will work in harmony with the claims the state of Georgia has against the Corps of Engineers, rather than us appearing to be adverse to the interests of the state of Georgia and in particular the Atlanta area," he said.

Vaught said Water Works will change the wording of the lawsuit to try to satisfy the state.

"But at the same time we've got to continue to make certain allegations in the complaint to preserve the city's right to proceed with the lawsuit," he said.

Water Works was expected to return to Columbus Council last week asking for a resolution making the city a party in the lawsuit, which delayed the request until the the council's July 10 meeting due to the state's request, Vaught said. Columbus Council canceled its meeting for this week.

Water Works officials went before the 10-member council on June 19 requesting the resolution, but councilors asked for another week to review the lawsuit. Councilors also requested Water Works to contact Columbus' congressional delegation about the potential litigation.

Although Columbus's supply of drinking water isn't in peril, Turner has said dips in the flow could jeopardize Columbus' ability to discharge treated waste water in compliance with its state permit.

If the flow doesn't consistently meet a minimum amount required by the Water Works' waste water permit, it could cost the utility $10 million-$50 million to upgrade its treatment equipment -- an expense Turner said would raise customers' water bills.

Vaught said Thursday that although Water Works is still committed to filing the lawsuit, it is awaiting a letter from either the EPD or the governor's office detailing the state's position on Columbus' demand for a guarantee that it will get the water it needs.

"At the present time we have no assurances from anyone in the government of the state of Georgia that our concerns and needs are being taken care of," Vaught said.

Each year, the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University and the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona turn out 300-plus fledgling counselors.

Recruiters said that law firms will need to change recruiting tactics to snag them, though.

"This generation expects more personal support, and they expect high levels of responsibility and concurrent responsibility," Dewey said.

Katherine Swenson, a summer associate at Greenberg Traurig, an international firm cited by National Law Journal, suggested that savvy firms spend more time introducing themselves to students.

"You actually have some time in first year that could be used to learn more about different firms, and first year is when you don't really have many chances to meet them," Swenson said.

Ilone DeRemer, assistant dean at ASU's College of Law, said that "firms need to remember the greatest amount of marketing done to law students is through word-of-mouth on campus."

Liepold noted that many firms are updating tactics to reach more students. Most changes center on electronic marketing. Some firms have developed streaming videos about their work and culture, while others offer podcasts about current legal topics.

"Summer programs have become much more substantive," Liepold said. "They're offering more seminars, more writing assistance, and, overall, a more realistic work experience."

Carol Allen, chief recruitment officer for Greenberg Traurig, said that these things are to attract a new breed of law student.

"What they bring to the table is amazing. They have a vast diversity of experience, and they live really interesting and vibrant lives," she said.

"They're (also) not necessarily convinced they will spend all their lives in a law firm."

Today's recruits have the ability to find an unprecedented amount of information about prospective employers, Dewey said, and many firms are posting blogs and other material on the Internet.

Some firms are active on social-networking sites or sponsor events at select law schools.

"It's really the same techniques professional athletic teams use in recruiting," Dewey said.

Ten years ago, Greenberg Traurig began to be more selective about its recruiting, according to Allen. Part of the strategy was to send senior staff, "people who really understand the culture of our firm," to campus-recruiting events.

They also target summer associates, where new hires are typically found, at an earlier stage by instituting a "coast to coast" event that draws up to 500 law students to 20 of the firm's regional offices across the country.

Greenberg Traurig's Phoenix office draws 30 to 50 students for the event, Managing Partner Karl Freeburg said.

"It really sets us apart and gets us in front of the students sooner (than other firms)," he said. "Then, when I get to campus in the fall, I may meet students who attended."

At Snell & Wilmer in Phoenix, Bob Henry co-chairs the office's hiring committee. His firm took heed of students' comments and instituted a Reality Program. It pairs summer associates with senior firm members who "give them an overall perspective of what it's really like, especially the quality-of-life concerns."

Henry said the firm also contacts the best candidates as early as possible.

Swenson, a second-year law student at ASU, is spending this summer at Greenberg Traurig.

"I think most students look for a firm with the right practice area and a firm you can fit into," she said.

She attended last year's summer event and was impressed with a video presentation that emphasized the firm's "ideals, values and the combination of attorneys in the firm."

Henry said reinventing recruiting is a never-ending process.

"Firms that don't change their recruiting techniques every couple of years just won't do as well," he said.

Henry also had suggestions for young lawyers sizing up potential employers.

"Walk around the offices," he said. "Check to see if people work with their doors open. Are they smiling when they walk around the office? Do they stop and say hello to people? By and large, you'll get a snapshot of how an office interacts, and that's an important thing to consider."

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan granted a motion by Sibir, now known as S7, to dismiss the complaint under a doctrine used when the choice of court is inconvenient, according to the ruling dated Thursday.

"In addition to the translation costs, plaintiffs, witnesses and counsel will have to travel to the United States, approximately 6,000 miles from Sibir's headquarters and the scene of the accident," Cote wrote.

But Cote conditioned the dismissal on Sibir's conceding liability if the plaintiffs sued it in Russia within six months and paying any damages determined by courts there. Sibir has already agreed to those terms, according to the ruling.

The lawsuit also named Airbus Leasing II, an affiliate of Airbus. Airbus Leasing owned the aircraft and leased it to Sibir. The judge ordered the entire case to be closed.

Airbus Leasing's lawyer, Thad Dameris, declined to comment. The lawyers for the plaintiffs could not be reached immediately.

Thursday is probably the Court's last session until October. The school rulings in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle leave public school systems with a limited arsenal to maintain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent that was joined by the court's other three liberals.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion in which he said race may be a component of school district plans designed to achieve diversity.

He agreed with Roberts that the plans in Louisville and Seattle went too far. He said, however, that to the extent that Roberts' opinion could be interpreted as foreclosing the use of race in any circumstance, "I disagree with that reasoning."

The two school systems in Thursday's decisions employ slightly different methods of taking students' race into account when determining which school they would attend.

In the case involving the mentally ill killer in Texas, the court ruled 5-4 in the case of Scott Louis Panetti, who shot his in-laws to death 15 years ago in front of his wife and young daughter.

The convicted murderer says that he suffers from a severe documented illness that is the source of gross delusions. "This argument, we hold, should have been considered," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion.

Panetti's lawyers wanted the court to determine that people who cannot understand the connection between their crime and punishment because of mental illness may not be executed.

The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution bars "the execution of a person who is so lacking in rational understanding that he cannot comprehend that he is being put to death because of the crime he was convicted of committing," they said in court papers.

In a third case, the Court abandoned a 96-year-old ban on manufacturers and retailers setting price floors for products. In a 5-4 decision, the court said that agreements on minimum prices are legal if they promote competition.

The ruling means that accusations of minimum pricing pacts will be evaluated case by case. The Supreme Court declared in 1911 that minimum pricing agreements violate federal antitrust law.

Court personnel said it had been 60 years since justices had rejected an appeal petition and then reversed themselves and voted to hear the claim.

The switch may reflect frustration among the court's more liberal and centrist members over the Bush administration's handling of the Guantanamo issue, according to civil liberties lawyers who have been battling with the government.

Three years ago, the court ruled that the hundreds of prisoners at the U.S. military facility in southern Cuba were entitled to a hearing before a neutral judge to challenge the government's basis for holding them. In a rebuke to the high court, President Bush and the then-Republican-controlled Congress enacted a law to strip these "unlawful enemy combatants" of their right to be heard in the federal courts.

Friday's order may signal that a majority of the justices are prepared to rule that the Constitution's habeas corpus guarantee gives the Guantanamo detainees the right to go to court and contest the government's reason for holding them.

"The Supreme Court, along with the rest of the nation, should be sick and tired of what it's seeing in Guantanamo," said Matthew MacLean, an attorney for four Kuwaiti detainees at the prison. "It's anybody's guess what changed the Supreme Court's mind, but I hope the justices are seeing the discomfort that so many people in this country and abroad have with Guantanamo."

White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe reacted to the justices' announcement by saying: "We did not think that court review at this time was necessary, but we are confident in our legal position."

The prison may be closed before the court acts. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said he would like to move the detainees to another location, and congressional Democrats have threatened to cut off funding for the current facility.

Despite years of legal skirmishing, little progress has been made in establishing a system for deciding who is a dangerous foreign fighter who should be held prisoner.

Although former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld once described the Guantanamo prisoners as the "worst of the worst," many of them have been released.

Since terrorism suspects were first brought to Guantanamo five years ago, the Bush administration has argued that foreign fighters who are not part of a regular army have no rights in American law and also are not prisoners of war entitled to rights under the Geneva Convention.

However, in response to the high court's 2004 ruling, the Pentagon did agree to review the status of each prisoner held at Guantanamo.

During a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, three military officers examine the evidence. The detainee does not have a lawyer.

Last week, an Army lawyer who has participated in several such hearings questioned their fairness. Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham filed a sworn statement in one appeal before the Supreme Court that said officers were pressured to rule in favor of keeping the detainees in prison as "enemy combatants."

"I certainly think the Abraham declaration proves what everyone has long surmised, that the CSRT process is just a kangaroo court that doesn't provide any meaningful review," said David Cynamon, the lead attorney in one of the cases the high court will consider, Al Odah vs. Bush. "It seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back."

Cynamon's client, a Kuwaiti named Fawzi Al Odah, has been held for six years with no charges filed against him.

The case has been consolidated with another involving six Algerian men who lived in Bosnia in the 1990s. They were arrested by Bosnian police in 2001 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, but the following year the Supreme Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina ordered them released for lack of evidence.

They were immediately taken into custody by the U.S. military, shackled, put under hoods and shipped to Guantanamo, where they have been held since.

The lead plaintiff, Lakhdar Boumediene, was kept in a cold cell and deprived of sleep for 13 consecutive days, according to a report by the Center for Constitutional Rights, an advocacy group representing a number of the detainees.

In April, three of the court's liberal justices — Stephen G. Breyer, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — voted to hear the pair of Guantanamo cases. Justices John Paul Stevens and Anthony M. Kennedy said they were willing to wait while the detainees and their lawyers went through an appeal process created by Congress, but the justices agreed that the issues involved were important.

The lawyers for Boumediene and Al Odah petitioned the justices to reconsider, because their clients faced many months of appeals that would almost certainly fail.

Friday's order did not say who voted to take up the case, but the lawyers involved assumed that Stevens and Kennedy had supplied the fourth and fifth votes.

Michael Moore is convincing: Our health care system is 'Sicko'

"I always thought the health insurance companies were there to help us," claims Michael Moore early in "Sicko," his portrait of America's failing health care industry and the politics that keep it in place. It sounds a little disingenuous coming from the filmmaking activist whose skepticism of government and big business is well documented in such films as "Roger and Me" and "Fahrenheit 9/11."

But then Moore's films are less "objective" documentaries than aggressive, ironic, often mocking calls to action punctuated by his folksy narration, alternately laced with sarcasm and pleading for understanding.

For "Sicko," Moore steps away from the spotlight to allow dozens of people -- all supposedly covered by health insurance -- to tell their own stories of being abandoned in the face of catastrophe, and then contrasts them with the citizens served by the Canadian, British and French systems of nationalized health care.

He idealizes systems fraught with their own problems to be sure, but even so he makes his point simply and convincingly: health care should not be a luxury but a right for American citizens, just like primary education, police services and fire department protection.

Moore eases up from the political sideshow theatrics that make his previous films so entertaining and maddening. At least until his controversial finale, a grandstanding gesture that takes a small group of ailing 9/11 rescue volunteers to Cuba for treatment that the U.S. won't provide.

The line between documentary and political theater is blurred, to say the least, and his tactics are calculated, but Moore is a crafty showman. He makes his point boldly and still gets medical attention for these American heroes refused coverage stateside.

With less lampooning and satirical asides, "Sicko" may be less "entertaining" than Moore's previous films, but it's also more affecting and effective. Put into context by Moore, government-financed medicine is less a revolutionary concept than a modest proposal.