According to The American Lawyer, Baker & McKenzie reported Friday that global revenue declined 3 percent to $2.11 billion and profits per partner fell a more significant 17 percent to $992,000 in fiscal year 2009, bringing an end to a four-year period over which the firm experienced consecutive double-digit revenue growth and an 85 percent increase in profits.

While Chicago-based Baker & McKenzie, which generated 66 percent of its fees outside the United States, highlighted the role currency exchange rates played in the falling benchmarks for fiscal year 2009, management admitted the economic downturn negatively impacted the firm's financial performance.

"The financial crisis progressed into an economic recession that has been very challenging for our clients, for all law firms and for us," said John Conroy, chairman of the firm's executive committee. According to Conroy, the impact of the economic downturn has been muted by the firm's proactive efforts, beginning more than eight months ago, to engage clients and adjust to their legal needs. This has included expanding the firm's restructuring practice.

Other practice areas helped hold up the firm's bottom line. Labor and employment, intellectual property and tax remained resilient throughout the downturn, Conroy says.

The Recorder reports that Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati has reached into its core for its new chief executive.

The firm announced Tuesday that corporate rainmaker Steven Bochner would be taking over from partner John Roos, who was confirmed as US ambassador to Japan last week. The partnership voted unanimously Monday.

Observers say it's a natural pick.

"The soul of what the firm does is corporate," San Francisco recruiter Gary Davis said. "Steven happens to be one of the more beloved partners, accomplished in his own regard."

According to the firm's website, global law firm White & Case LLP advised Deutsche Bank AG, Singapore Branch as sole dealer manager in an all-cash, fixed-price tender offer and consent solicitation by SRE Group Limited, formerly known as Shanghai Real Estate Limited. SRE Group is a real estate development company specializing in property and land development and building construction. Its real estate business is concentrated in Shanghai.

SRE Group launched the tender offer and consent solicitation for its 8.625% Guaranteed Senior Notes due 2013 on June 6, 2009. As of the expiration of the tender offer and consent solicitation, approximately 79.1 percent of the holders of the notes delivered their consents, and 64.3 percent tendered their notes. SRE Group funded the tender offer and consent solicitation from the proceeds of a top-up equity placement and issuance of convertible bonds.

A Mount Pleasant woman was sentenced to one-and-a-half to five years in prison on Monday for a fatal accident in 2007.

Jennifer Madden had told police that she wasn’t the driver in a fatal accident but DNA evidence contradicted that.

Madden, 26, left the courtroom in handcuffs and said goodbye to her family and friends after just learning her sentence in the death of Steven Long o fLancaster County.

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The Chicago Tribune reports when Mars Inc. pulled the plug on its short-lived Ethel's Chocolate Lounges in the Chicago area this spring, some read it as a sign that recession-weary consumers have little appetite for reclining in plush purple chairs, eating hand-painted truffles and dipping strawberries in gooey, hot chocolate fondue.

Think again, says newfound chocolatier and small business owner Debra Jenrette.

The former owner of an office equipment firm believes there are plenty of stressed-out folks looking for a little pampering. So, after a yearlong crash course in the art of chocolate -- visiting all manner of luxury chocolate boutiques, working in a handmade -chocolate plant and tasting "more chocolates than you can imagine" -- Jenrette took the plunge. She purchased New York-based Anna Shea Chocolates & Loungefrom its Finnish namesake founder last month and is relocating its headquarters to a South Barrington shopping mall. (Shea is married to Jenrette's nephew, Tim Shea.)

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The Associated Press reports that a mother who drove the wrong way on an expressway, triggering a three-car crash that killed eight people, had been drinking vodka and smoking marijuana and had a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit, police said Tuesday.

Diane Schuler, 36, who died along with her 2-year-old daughter and three nieces in her red minivan, had more than 10 drinks of alcohol in her system and a high level of the main ingredient in marijuana, authorities said. A broken 1.75-liter bottle of Absolut vodka was found in her wrecked minivan, police said.

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