Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, the New York law firm, announced bonuses for salaried lawyers ranging from $7,500 to $30,000, based on experience, according to bloomberg.

Cravath’s announcement opens the bonus season among large New York law firms. The bonuses are less than half of what the most junior associates received last year, when bonuses were between $17,500 and $30,000.

“It’s the junior associates who really took a haircut this year,” said New York-based legal consultant Bruce MacEwen. “I think Cravath is reflecting the attitude that, frankly, junior associates aren’t worth as much. They don’t have experience. They don’t know what they are doing. It’s nothing personal.”

In the last two years, the biggest law firms in cities including New York, Chicago and Boston began paying first-year attorneys $160,000, according to a survey released July 30 by The National Association for Law Placement Inc.

Salaries for first-year attorneys peaked in 2009 and are likely to decrease “for the foreseeable future,” according to the NALP survey.

Law firms are scrambling to cut costs as demand for legal services drops and corporations pressure law firms to reduce their fees. Many of the largest U.S. law firms fired junior attorneys and staff this year, and firms such as Nixon Peabody LLP, Baker & McKenzie LLP and Chadbourne & Parke LLP cut attorney salaries.

A prominent and politically connected South Florida attorney was being investigated by his own firm for financial irregularities in an investment business that led his law partner to seek dissolution Monday.

The attorney, Scott Rothstein, and partner Stuart Rosenfeldt founded the firm Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler in 2002. Now Rosenfeldt is seeking to dissolve their partnership and have the 70-lawyer firm placed into court-supervised receivership "to minimize any further damage caused by Mr. Rothstein," according to court documents.

"A review of the firm's records undertaken this past weekend indicates that various funds unrelated to the direct practice of law cannot be accounted for, circumstances suggesting that investor money may have been misused by Mr. Rothstein who controlled all such accounts," Rosenfeldt said in the court papers.

A lawyer for some investors, Jeff Sonn, said initial estimates of the missing cash range from $100 million to $185 million.

"Nobody knows for sure," Sonn said.

At a brief hearing, Circuit Judge Jeffrey Streitfeld put off a decision on appointing a receiver by a day, in part to find out if Rothstein plans to return from an undisclosed foreign country to contest the move.

"This is an extraordinary effort that would have to be undertaken on an immediate basis," Streitfeld said. "Let's take a deep breath and see where we're going."

Neither Rothstein nor his attorney immediately returned telephone calls and e-mails seeking comment. An attorney hired by Rosenfeldt, former Miami U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey, said he has been assured that Rothstein will return to the U.S. Coffey also said he has notified federal prosecutors about possible criminal wrongdoing at the firm.

Attorneys for sniper mastermind John Allen Muhammad plan to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to stop next week's execution.

Muhammad is scheduled to die by lethal injection Nov. 10 at a Virginia prison.

Attorneys for the 48-year-old have said they planned to file the appeal Tuesday. They asked Gov. Timothy M. Kaine for clemency last month.

Muhammad is to be executed for the slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas, Va., gas station during a three-week killing spree in October 2002 that left 10 dead in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, were also suspected of fatal shootings in other states, including Louisiana and Alabama. Malvo is serving a life sentence in prison.

Leading international law firm SJ Berwin has opened an office in Shanghai.

The office is the firm’s third opening this year, its second in East Asia and its 12th office worldwide. It follows the opening of the regional office of SJ Berwin for East Asia in Hong Kong in April 2009 and the formal opening of its Dubai office last month.

SJ Berwin’s application for a license to operate a Representative Office in Shanghai was granted on 28 August 2009 at an official ceremony at the Ministry of Justice in Beijing. The new office for SJ Berwin in Shanghai, China opened in October 2009, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.

The business of the office will start by focusing on Fund Formation, Mergers and Acquisitions, Private Equity and Real Estate, reflecting the traditional key strengths of SJ Berwin.

Jonathan Blake, Senior Partner of SJ Berwin, said: “This is a further step in our strategy of international development in our core areas, and reinforces our confidence in the expansion and growth of our firm worldwide.”

Daniel Liew, Asia Managing Partner of SJ Berwin, said: “China’s impressive economic growth continues despite the global economic challenges, and client demand is high for dedicated, capable and experienced legal resources able to assist with both inbound and outbound cross-border legal work involving China.”

The Supreme Court turned away another appeal to stop the release of documents generated for sexual abuse lawsuits against priests in a Roman Catholic diocese in Connecticut.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from the Diocese of Bridgeport, which has been fighting for years to prevent the release of the documents. Last month, the justices refused to grant a delay at least while they considered the diocese's full appeal.

The order Monday was issued without comment.

The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and the Hartford Courant have asked to see the documents. The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that more than 12,000 pages from 23 lawsuits against the six priests should be unsealed.

The documents include depositions, affidavits and motions.

The records have been under seal since the diocese settled the cases in 2001.

The diocese says the First Amendment prohibits civil authorities from intruding into internal church decisions about priest assignments.

The Supreme Court on Monday left in place a judge's ruling that allowed prosecutors to charge a reputed Ku Klux Klansman with kidnapping more than 40 years after two black men were abducted and killed in rural Mississippi.

The justices rejected a plea from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on whether too much time had elapsed for the case against James Ford Seale to go forward.

The action leaves in place a lower court ruling that the statute of limitations had not expired for a federal kidnapping charge against Seale in the 1964 disappearance of two 19-year-old friends.

Seale was convicted in 2007 of abducting the men. Authorities said they were beaten, weighted down and thrown, possibly still alive, into a Mississippi River backwater.

Disagreeing with their colleagues, Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia said the high court should have agreed to hear the case because it raises an important issue that potentially affects similar prosecutions. The court did not otherwise elaborate on its order.

The request by the New Orleans-based appeals court indicated that the decision could affect roughly two dozen other investigations into Civil Rights Era crimes. But Chief Judge Edith H. Jones and five other dissenters cast doubt on that number.

In 1964, when the men disappeared, kidnapping was punishable by death under federal law. But in the 1970s, Supreme Court decisions and acts of Congress changed the maximum sentence for kidnapping to life in prison. Capital crimes have no deadline for prosecution, but lesser crimes must be prosecuted within five years.

The Supreme Court turned away another appeal to stop the release of documents generated for sexual abuse lawsuits against priests in a Roman Catholic diocese in Connecticut.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from the Diocese of Bridgeport, which has been fighting for years to prevent the release of the documents. Last month, the justices refused to grant a delay at least while they considered the diocese's full appeal.

The order Monday was issued without comment.

The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and the Hartford Courant have asked to see the documents. The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that more than 12,000 pages from 23 lawsuits against the six priests should be unsealed.

The documents include depositions, affidavits and motions.

The records have been under seal since the diocese settled the cases in 2001.

The diocese says the First Amendment prohibits civil authorities from intruding into internal church decisions about priest assignments.