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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

EMPTY POOL - The market for lateral partners looks noticeably different this year, Law.com's Andrew Maloney reports. The pool of midlevel partner candidates appears to have "dried up," according to analysts at investigative intelligence firm Decipher, with law firms increasingly bringing on cheaper, less-experienced junior partners who have smaller books of business. Meanwhile, even though the percentage of "red flags," or inconsistencies in lateral partners' backgrounds, has ticked down, Decipher still noted them on more than a quarter of all partner candidates in 2022. "When the market is highly, highly competitive for quality lawyers in all of these areas, it is going to fray at the edges, and you will continue to see a prevalence of red flag issues with the market as a whole," Mike Ellenhorn, founder and CEO of Decipher, told Maloney, adding later: "That's the nature and character of the market, and it means you have to be careful."

BRING IT - A new study by litigation funder Burford Capital found that while all legal departments defend themselves against lawsuits filed by other parties, many are leaving substantial money on the table by failing to bring their own cases. As Law.com's Trudy Knockless reports, the study, which was based on responses from 300 GCs, heads of litigation and other senior in-house lawyers in the U.S. and U.K., found that just half of respondents have pursued such efforts, the study found. "Despite the recognition by about one in two GCs that the legal department can add value by pursuing recoveries, there remains a notable population who have yet to take this opportunity or who seem unsure of how to leverage it," the study said. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Burford's study also said litigation funding can help. "I speak with fellow GCs often about the role that legal finance can play in growing legal departments' business impact by becoming more of a profit center," said Mark Klein, general counsel and chief administrative officer of Burford Capital.

WHO GOT THE WORK?℠ - G. Hopkins Guy III, Ali Dhanani and Thomas B. Carter Jr. from Baker Botts have entered appearances for DISH Network, a leading satellite television provider, and DISH Technologies LLC in a pending patent lawsuit. The action was filed Aug. 29 in Texas Eastern District Court by Williams Simons & Landis on behalf of Digital Broadcasting Solutions LLC, holder of patents regarding innovations in time shifting video programs that relate to a system and method for allowing a digital video recorder to skip commercials. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, is 2:22-cv-00335, Digital Broadcasting Solutions LLC v. DISH Network LLC et al. >> Read the filing on Law.com Radar and check out the most recent edition of Law.com's Who Got the Work?℠ column to find out which law firms and lawyers are being brought in to handle key cases and close major deals for their clients.