According to The American Lawyer, three firms have landed key advisory roles on one of the most significant non-M&A commercial transactions in recent months: the 10-year Internet search deal announced on Wednesday between Microsoft and Yahoo that seeks to scuttle Google's market dominance.

Under the terms of the deal, Yahoo will use and promote Microsoft's new Bing search engine on its site. Yahoo will also keep 88 percent of revenue from all search ad sales for the first five years and have the right to sell ads on select Microsoft sites.

While the lack of an up-front payment by Microsoft caused shares of Yahoo to sink early Wednesday, the deal is a clear shot across the bow of Google, the dominant force in online search and advertising.

Yahoo turned to a team of lawyers from Skadden, Arps, Slate & Flom and Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton for the agreement with Microsoft.

The JD Journal reports that Florida’s Holland & Knight is cutting salaries for associates and senior counsel. The firm says the cuts average 7% across all those effected; 10% for associates.

This salary reductions are effective immediately.

Holland & Knight is reviewing its associate compensation scheme, and intends to implement changes next year.

Holland & Knight cut 70 lawyers and 173 support staff positions in February.

Holland & Knight is a law firm with more than 1,150 lawyers in 23 US offices. Foreign offices include Beijing, China, and Mexico City, Mexico, with representative offices in Caracas, Venezuela, and TelAviv, Israel.

The Business Review reports that the Attorney General’s office has filed a lawsuit against 35 law firms and two debt collectors as the latest stage in an ongoing process of legal action.

The lawsuit alleges that the firms did not properly notify people that they were defendants in a lawsuit. As a result, the complaint states, they were unable to appear in court on their own behalf, and the cases often resulted in default judgments against those identified as debtors.

According to the suit, the listed firms and debt collectors hired a process server, American Legal Process, to provide notification to defendants. However, the lawsuit alleges that the server failed to do so — a tactic known as “sewer service.” Instead of serving the defendants, the complaint claims American Legal Process (ALP) falsified documents, certifying that the people had been notified.

“ALP’s scheme undermined the foundation of this (legal) system and denied thousands of individuals their day in court,” New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said.

The lawsuit is an attempt to throw out the default judgments made when defendants failed to show up in court, and to return the money lost by those defendants, Cuomo said.

According to Courthouse News, the mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus were arrested today, along with a state assemblyman and dozens of others in an FBI investigation of political corruption. Those arrested included the commissioner of the state's Department of Community Affairs and several rabbis, according to wire reports.

The US Attorney's Office in Newark said it would elucidate things at an afternoon press conference. Among those arrested, according to The New York Times, were Joseph Doria Jr.,commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs and a former mayor of Bayonne; Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III; Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell; Assemblyman Dan Van Pelt of Forked River; and rabbis from Deal and Elberon, N.J., and Brooklyn.

The investigation involves the Deal Yeshiva, a religious school, according to the Asbury Park Press.

The Associated Press is reporting that immigration agents raiding homes for suspected illegal immigrants violated the US Constitution by entering without proper consent and may have used racial profiling, a report analyzing arrest records found.

In the report, released Wednesday by the Immigration Justice Clinic at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, said that since ICE agents use administrative warrants - instead of judicial warrants, which give law enforcement unfettered access - they must have a resident's consent to enter a home or else violate the constitutional right to protection against unreasonable searches.

On Long Island, 86 percent of arrest records from 100 raids between January 2006 and April 2008 showed no record of consent being given,the report found. In northern and central New Jersey, no record of consent being given was found for 24 percent of about 600 arrests in 2006 and 2007, it found.

In a statement, ICE said its agents uphold the country's laws. "We do so professionally, humanely and with an acute awareness regarding the impact enforcement has on the individuals we encounter," it said.

According to The Recorder, Microsoft and Linex have put their differences aside to come together against new rules against software contracts announced by The American Law Institute.

One of the most controversial parts of those rules is one stating that companies must guarantee consumers that there are no hidden flaws in their product. Some lawyers are saying this could lead to liability issues because most software is inherently flawed.

"It creates an unrealistic standard and a lot of litigation," said Mark Radcliffe, a DLA piper lawyer who's worked to oppose the rules proposed in mid-May. "Any project that has Microsoftand Linux on the same side, you know there's something wrong."

The Principles of Law of Software Contracts, as they are called, are not law, but do serve to guide judges who often cite them in decisions.