A Tribute, A Tactic, Or An Appellate Issue?

The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three young children, has spawned a courtroom subplot with real legal stakes: prosecutor Shanan Buckingham has spent weeks in Plymouth Superior Court in a rotating collection of hair bows, widely read as a tribute to five-year-old Cora, who loved them. But even a well-meant gesture is a gamble, handing the defense a ready-made argument that the state is leaning on sympathy over substance and potentially seeding an appeal. Over in the business of law, private equity finally got the yes it's been chasing: Wood Smith Henning & Berman, a 500-plus-lawyer insurance-defense shop, reportedly signed a letter of intent to sell a stake to Charlesbank Capital Partners at a roughly $700 million valuation. Structured through a management services organization to sidestep Rule 5.4's ban on non-lawyer ownership, it would be the largest PE investment in an American law firm to date -- a toehold, not yet a takeover. And in the category of career moves we can't recommend, a prominent Pittsburgh attorney landed himself in a fraternity drug scandal. Paul Robinson, a practice-group chair at Meyer, Darragh, Buckler, Bebenek & Eck, was charged with tampering and hindering apprehension for allegedly making evidence disappear from a multistate cocaine ring that prosecutors say his son helped run out of Penn State's Delta Upsilon and Sigma Chi houses -- where, per the AG, packaging kilos doubled as a pledge task.