Many Americans were glued to their television as President Obama delivered his first State of the Union address last Thursday.

Near the conclusion of his speech, I sat and watched as the President publicly criticized the highest judicial authority, the Supreme Court, for ruling in favor of “allowing corporations to spend without limit in our elections.”

While this statement alone was enough to rile support from some seated in the House chamber, six of nine justices in attendance remained seated; their unmoved faces reflecting their point of view. Except for Samuel Alito.

“Not true, not true,” the Associate Justice appeared to say as he visibly shook his head in opposition to Obama’s scolding.

The question I pose is, where does the disrespect come to an end across the board?

While media networks criticized Alito for his blatant acts of disagreement, no one has questioned the extent to which President Obama took to openly disagree with the Supreme Court.

In the years of the State of the Union address, legal experts do not recall encountering a president openly scolding the court since Roosevelt’s address to Congress in 1937.

Rather than sharing how he felt about their decision, President Obama should have exercised restraint for this particular occasion. The State of the Union address should be a time designated for the president to “report to Congress the current state of the Union” and to implement his own legislative ideas.

At the same time, Associate Justice Alito should refrain from making his gestures of disagreement so blatant.

I am sure that Obama is grateful that he did not have another “you lie” incident, however if the President wants respect from other high ranking politicians, he too should give respect where it is due.

Federal authorities are seizing two Rhode Island mansions and a New York City apartment from a Florida lawyer accused of masterminding a $1 billion fraud scheme.

An amended forfeiture complaint against attorney Scott Rothstein lists two adjacent multimillion-dollar homes on Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay. The complaint filed last week also lists a $6 million Manhattan apartment and a $7.2 million home in Boca Raton.

The FBI says Rothstein orchestrated a $1 billion fraud scheme involving investments in fake legal settlements.

No criminal charges have been filed, but prosecutors have moved to seize Rothstein's numerous properties, luxury cars, boats and other assets. Investors have filed lawsuits against Rothstein and others.

It's Business 101: When a practice area of your law firm suddenly becomes its sole focus, it's time to revise your business plan.

That is exactly what Ken Gross and law firm Thav, Gross, Steinway & Bennett PC have done in light of the state and national economic crisis.

Previously, a quarter of the firm's practice centered on bankruptcy and tax collection. Today, it makes up the majority of its business.

To handle the sharp increase in these areas, the Bingham Farms firm has developed a Financial Crisis Management practice, added new tools for its attorneys to use and modernized its marketing strategy to get the word out.

The result is a vibrant practice that has attracted new clients, both individuals and corporations, said co-founder Ken Gross.

For businesses, Thav Gross creates strategies that tackle delinquent taxes and problems resulting from banks withholding or not renewing lines of credit. For individuals, the firm has designed new programs to help with loan modifications, debt resolution, bankruptcy protection and tax relief.

hen Biopure Corp. decided to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July, the biotech was already working with Ropes & Gray LLP, the largest law firm in Boston.

But Biopure CEO Zaf Zafirelis decided to tap a much smaller firm, a 26-lawyer Boston-based outfit called Craig & Macauley PC with virtually no name recognition, to handle its bankruptcy proceedings.

“I was very, very impressed with the clarity with which they outlined what was going to happen,” said Zafirelis. “It’s a traumatic event for any company to file for bankruptcy. I can honestly say that working through this whole thing with (Craig & Macauley) made it a lot simpler for us.”

Like Craig and Macauley, bankruptcy boutiques across the country have been quietly booming in this economy as bankruptcies and workouts soar. Unlike large law firms which have been pummeled by the recession, forcing them to fire lawyers and entirely rethink established business practices, these smaller bankruptcy shops say the current economy is actually an opportunity to shine.

In major U.S. cities, Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings have spiked during the past 12 months as companies run out of cash and banks come to collect. In Boston, Chapter 11 filings have nearly doubled over the past year to 115 total cases in Boston during the period between January 1 and September 30, 2009, compared to 58 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings during the same period last year, according to a review of filings at the Boston office of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Boston.

Bankruptcy boutiques are in a unique position to cash in on the boom because nationally, there are literally only dozens that focus specifically on business bankruptcies, as opposed to individual bankruptcy filings. Smallfirms that have substantial bankruptcy practices include Craig & Macauley, Hanify & King PC in Boston, Warner Stevens LLP in Fort Worth, Texas and Shaw Gussis Fishman Glantz Wolfson & Towbin in Chicago. While most large law firms have bankruptcy practices, they are conflicted out of handling many

cases because they also work with large financial institutions. The sparse number of boutique bankruptcy firms can also be explained by the fact that the work is cyclical and once the boom arrives, the matters are deeply complex.

Peter Roberts a partner with the bankruptcy law firm Shaw Gussis Fishman Glantz Wolfson & Towbin LLC in Chicago, says his firm began to see an uptick in work about six months ago for the types of companies the firm works with, which tends to be smaller to middle market businesses. In Chicago, Chapter 11 filings have more than doubled to 241 during the first three quarters of 2009, compared to 96 during the same period last year, according to U.S. Bankruptcy Court filings.

Nobody can say this America's Cup is boring.

What used to be an insulated sport for fabulously wealthy men named Lipton and Vanderbilt has morphed into something out of a James Bond movie or a Tom Clancy novel, all wrapped up in two of the fastest, most-extreme boats ever to cut through — or in this case, literally fly above — the sea spray.

When two-time defending champion Alinghi of landlocked Switzerland picked little-known Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates, to host its nautical grudge match beginning Feb. 8 against an American crew led by Silicon Valley maverick Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp., it did more than make people click on Google Maps.

The stodgy sport suddenly sailed into a maelstrom involving: bickering billionaires Ellison and biotech mogul Ernesto Bertarelli of Alinghi, who once were pals but are now bitter rivals; Ras al-Khaimah's proximity and suspected ties to Iran; a concerned congressman; and a lawyer who couldn't win for Al Gore but beat Microsoft.

Court filings that had argued arcane rules spanning the 158-year history of the America's Cup now raise fears of terrorists in speedboats attacking a 90-by-90-foot trimaran named USA as it sails some 80 miles off Iran's coastline.

If things had gone according to plan, Lindsay Murphy would be a big-city tax lawyer by now. Instead, the recent law school graduate found herself doing legal aid, listening to complaints about raw sewage bubbling up into the bathtubs of a Mississippi Delta housing project.

Murphy is among hundreds of newly minted lawyers who've been forced by the recession to take a detour on their way to the nation's top firms, spending up to a year helping out nonprofits for as little as a third of the salary they'd expected.

From San Francisco to New York, high-powered firms are postponing the start dates of new hires they recruited before the economic meltdown. Many are paying the "deferred associates" stipends to spend a year doing public interest work until the business slowdown ends.

For cash-strapped nonprofits and government law offices, the free help is an unexpected silver lining. And the young lawyers and the firms that pay them say they are benefiting from valuable training and hands-on experience.

Murphy, 25, started her public interest fellowship at the University of Mississippi's Civil Legal Clinic in August. She has helped poor clients with housing and tax problems and traveled this month to the poverty-ridden Delta with other attorneys and law students to investigate one low-income neighborhood's sewer problems.

"This is what this profession is for — it's for helping people," said Murphy, who focused on corporate tax early in law school at Ole Miss. "I had lost sight of that."

Nobody has an exact count of how many law firm associates have been deployed to public interest law offices, but experts say it's likely in the high hundreds.

The list of firms paying such stipends include some of the biggest legal names.

Murphy, for example, is one of 59 public interest fellows from Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, whose Dallas office she plans to join next year. Ropes & Gray is paying 51 incoming associates to do public interest work. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe has 45 participants. All are international firms with large offices around the country.

The economic downturn has meant less work for law firms, fewer experienced attorneys leaving jobs and thousands of lawyers laid off. From August 2008 to August 2009, total law office employment fell by nearly 26,000 jobs, a mere 2 percent but striking for an industry accustomed to constant growth.

A Connecticut judge has rejected a prosecutor's request to close a hearing in the case of a newsman accused of trying to blackmail David Letterman.

Norwalk Superior Court Judge Bruce Hudok ruled Thursday that arguments over whether search warrants should remain under wraps will be handled in open court.

Prosecutor Suzanne Vieux (VEW) is asking Hudok to keep closed the search warrants for the home and car of CBS News producer Robert J. "Joe" Halderman.

Halderman has pleaded not guilty to trying to extort $2 million from the late-night TV host in return for keeping some of the comedian's sexual affairs quiet.

Vieux's motion says releasing the search warrants could subject witnesses to media scrutiny and hurt the prosecution. The judge says he will review certain sensitive information himself.