Legal Pad was wondering whether former State Bar President Jeffrey Bleich had made any headlines as the new U.S. ambassador to the Land Down Under. He’s been there a few weeks.

So we Googled “Jeffrey Bleich + Australia.” Nothing newsy came up, but one item did catch our attention.

Posted in mid-September by someone disguising himself as “beagleone,” it was headlined: “What’s the dirt on Jeffrey Bleich?”

“I’m in Australia and I’m trying to research this lib. Van Jones style dirt would be awesome, but I’ll settle for just super-lib stuff.”

No dirt, but a defender from across the aisle … after the jump.

Among the responses was one from Shelly Sloan, the guy who preceded Bleich as State Bar president.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Sloan — a registered Republican, a Reagan appointee when he was on the L.A. bench and a moderate conservative who’s been known to clash with a few folks — told “beagleone.”

“Jeff and I voted almost identically on every issue we discussed for three years,” he wrote. “We occasionally disagreed as to how to word a position, but the differences were nuanced only and not policy differences.”

“Jeff Bleich is a wonderful human being,” Sloan said, “and Australia is lucky to have him.”

“If you are looking for dirt,” he concluded, “look somewhere else. You won’t find it on him.”

That’s Shelly. Loyal to friends!

But as a big George W. Bush fan, he did not have such kind words for Barack Obama. Check out this link.

— Mike McKee

EBay settled a copyright lawsuit against Skype today and, oh my god, it turns out it was just filed as leverage in deal negotiations. What has the legal profession come, to when lawsuits are no longer filed for the love of the law and actual grievances?

Here’s what happened: eBay was in the midst of selling Skype to some private investors, including Andreeson Horowitz and Silver Lake Partners, because the online auction company actually never figured why in the world it bought the Internet telephone service. Then, the guys who came up with Skype in the first place -- and have since formed a company called Joltid — sued everyone involved in the deal, claiming that Skype didn’t have a license for some of the essential technology and IP. An injunction was threatened. And then today, the folks from Joltid agreed to drop the suit, and in exchange were allowed to buy a 14 percent stake in Skype. As one of the lead investors, Marc Andreeson, told The Wall Street Journal: "There is fighting, and then there is negotiation … We believe it is as a plus to have founders involved. They now have a complete alignment of interest." That about sums it up.

A bunch of local lawyers were involved with the “lawsuit.” Lawrence Hadley of L.A.’s Hennigan Bennett & Dorman represented the jilted at Joltid. Irell & Manella represented Skype. Weil Gotshal’s Matt Powers represented eBay. WilmerHale’s Mark Selwyn from Palo Alto represented investor Silver Lake Partners. Diana Marie Torres of Kirkland & Ellis in L.A. represented Marc Andreeson’s venture fund, Andreeson Horowitz. And O’Melveny & Myers S.F. IP lawyer Darin Snyder had the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, another investor.

— Zusha Elinson

Justice Joyce Kennard: Oops, I'm a lawyer.

Justice Joyce Kennard gave a life lesson. Ming Chin campaigned for retention. And UC-Berkeley School of Law Dean Christopher Edley Jr. essentially called Chief Justice Ronald George a judicial Methuselah.

All these fun and games took place Tuesday when the California Supreme Court showed up in Berzerkely to hold oral arguments there for the first time ever.

It was the ninth year that the court held an outreach session for students and, as usual, students lined up to ask stiff, pre-approved questions.

Lawyer zingers! Old-guy zingers! Vote early and often! After the jump ...

Kennard, a self-made woman who’s suffered many hardships in her years (including time as a child in a Japanese-run prison camp), told the students she went to law school not to be a lawyer but to go into public administration.

But upon graduation, Kennard said, there was no work in her chosen profession. “I was desperate for a job,” she told the kids. “Any job, even as a lawyer.”

“Things obviously didn’t go as planned,” she deadpanned to chuckles.

Chin, who along with George and Justice Carlos Moreno, faces a retention election next year, was asked whether he felt Supreme Court justices should have life tenure, as do federal judges.

“The short answer is ‘Yes,’” Chin said emphatically. “But we live in the real world.”

He then took the opportunity to rally some votes for himself and his companions during the 2010 elections.

“When you see the names Chin, George and Moreno,” he said, “please vote yes.” More laughs ensued.

Edley offered George one of the oddest welcomes of all time. He lauded the chief, who’s been on some court bench or another for 37 years, for his longevity.

“I think he was appointed by the king of Spain,” Edley quipped. “He’s been on a bench longer than most people in this room have been alive.”

Is that praise?

— Mike McKee

A budget-saving move at Marin County Superior Court could also be an antidote to perniciously long courthouse security lines.

The court started this week trying out staggered start times for its courtrooms — some morning calendars start at 8:30 a.m. now, some at 9 and some at 9:30.

“We’ve been strategizing in this very difficult, perilous budget year on how we can try to use all of our budget resources more efficiently,” said Kim Turner, the court’s executive officer.

The idea is to be more strategic about covering assignments, rather than having bailiffs, court reporters and interpreters in all courtrooms starting at the same time. The court hopes in this way that it can use fewer resources to cover the same departments.

“This is going to be a bit of a change” for the legal community, Turner said, but she hasn’t heard any grumbling so far: “Usually the grumbling is the first thing you hear, so we’ll take this as a victory.”

The change doesn’t affect the afternoon calendar, which still starts at 1:30, so attorneys can still count on the post-lunch rush to make them late.

— Kate Moser

Paul McNamara, in the Los Angeles office of O’Melveny & Myers, secured a $768,000 judgment last week for an Indonesian domestic worker who was enslaved by a banker and his wife in their LaCanada home.

The verdict is one of the first civil judgments under the California Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which passed in 2005, according to McNamara and Kevin Kish, an attorney at Bet Tzedek, a public interest law firm that worked on the case with O’Melveny.

McNamara, who usually works on class actions and insurance defense, said he wasn't aware of the scale of human trafficking here before taking this case, which the firm handled pro bono.

“This really is not an isolated incident,” he said. “It’s widespread in Los Angeles and California.”

Bank executives as tight-fisted human traffickers, after the jump.

Andrew Tjia and his wife, Sycamore Choi, pleaded guilty in 2008 to human trafficking and false imprisonment. Choi is serving one year of house arrest. Tjia is on court-supervised probation, but has managed to secure a job with Merrill Lynch in Singapore, according to a deposition. Tjia was the founder and president of American Premier Bank, a small commercial lender in Arcadia in Southern California.

“In the end, much of this case came down to the pure issue of who do you believe,” McNamara said. “There wasn’t much external evidence.”

The undisputed facts in the case were that Tjia’s father brought Suminarti Sayuti Yusuf to Los Angeles in early 2006 and wrote down a false address on her immigration form, according to McNamara.

Yusuf said Tjia and Choi confiscated her passport, didn’t pay her, required her to work 16-hour days, seven days a week, and never permitted her to leave the house. They told Yusuf to lie and say she was a family member if law enforcement ever visited the Tjia residence.

The defense claimed that Yusuf came to the United States voluntarily, was a guest in the Tjia residence, and fabricated the enslavement story to obtain a permanent visa.

Working with McNamara on the case were O’Melveny counsel Bob Nicksin, associates Timothy Caballero, Jennifer Cheng, and paralegal Angelina Stone.

Thousands of people are trafficked and enslaved in the U.S. each year, according to the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking.

Mitch Kamin, executive director of Bet Tzedek, said trafficking often involves people taking advantage of others from their own countries.

“It ranges from one-off instances to deliberate criminal activity focused on trafficking for purposes of forced labor and sexual enslavement,” Kamin said.

— Amanda Royal
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Barnes & Noble’s e-book reader, cutely named the Nook, is now the target of a lawsuit (.pdf) alleging trade-secret theft, filed by a small Fremont company called Spring Design Inc. Interestingly, Spring Design has hired Fenwick & West’s Lynn Pasahow, the very same lawyer who does most of the IP work for Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble’s primary competitor. Seems like Amazon would be pleased with a lawsuit that kindles a little trouble for the newly unveiled Nook, right?

Legal Pad caught up with Fenwick partner David Hadden, who’s working with Pasahow on the case, and he said that Amazon had absolutely nothing to do with the lawsuit. It’s not funding it; Spring Source is paying for its own lawyers — and not on contingency fee. It’s just coincidence, he said. Pasahow and Hadden have battled Barnes & Noble when they sued the book company with Amazon.com’s questionable one-click patent.

Hadden said that Spring Design shared its plans for an e-book reader with Barnes & Noble. It was surprised when the Nook came out with all the same features, including the famous interactive dual screen design that has given the Nook an edge on Amazon’s much-hyped e-book gizmo, Hadden said.

— Zusha Elinson