Clients

They gathered in the shadow of the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, Philadelphia's main Catholic church, in an amen chorus of support for nuns. "For Sister Marie Timothy, who assured me I didn't have an attitude problem and that I was a strong woman in the making," said a school nurse. "For Sister Evelyn, who put my feet on the path of demonstrating in Washington in 1972," said a baby boomer. "To Sister Mary Paul, for teaching us the mysteries of sex in middle school!"

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - Luxury appointments abound in the 7,000-square-foot, 12-year-old Victorian-style mansion overlooking Great Bay, such as a marble fireplace that once graced a Biddle estate mansion, a crystal chandelier that at the touch of a button lowers from the 30-foot foyer ceiling for cleaning, and boat slips big enough to berth a pair of yachts. A "smart house" system controls window treatments, lighting, heating, air-conditioning, and music. Slate-covered turrets, little secret gardens, and gingerbread-laden porches make the exterior look more like Cape May than Ocean City.

In the first few years of the last decade, a lot of assumptions were made about aging baby boomers, their parents, their children, and their housing needs. Boomers would begin downsizing as soon as the children flew the coop, starting at about 55. Boomers would move to communities filled with their own kind. Elderly parents would be accommodated in a casita — a part of the house — until they needed continuing care. The casita would then be converted to a crafts room.

Gary Alexander, secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Public Welfare, is determined to cut spending for programs run by the agency that has the biggest chunk of the state's budget. The reduction of Medicaid rolls by more than 80,000 children since August and plans to institute an asset test for food stamps in May have gotten widespread attention. But more subtle moves are roiling the mostly nonprofit world that serves disabled and elderly Pennsylvanians who live at home - instead of being institutionalized - with the help of attendants hired and supervised by the disabled person but paid by Medicaid under an inscrutable system of waivers.

Remember the 1993 movie "Philadelphia"? A lawyer played by Tom Hanks is fired from a Philadelphia law firm after it is revealed he has AIDS. William J. O'Brien, one of the city's premiere trial lawyers, had a similar case in 1994. He represented the law firm of Kohn Swift & Graf, which was sued in federal court by a 30-year-old lawyer who contended he was fired by the firm because he had HIV. Both the real case and the movie case wound up being settled out of court. For a lawyer renowned for his work on commercial litigation, involving such fields as product liability, insurance fraud, malpractice claims, government relations and the like, Bill was involved in a number of high-profile cases that made headlines.

REMEMBER THE old song about matchmakers making matches? Finding finds? Catching catches? If, this Valentine's Day, you find yourself single, seeking - and thinking about hiring someone to set you up - forget those lyrics. Forget about old-world matchmakers. Things have changed a lot since that guy fiddled on a roof. Today's paid-for couple-creators are no longer simple setter-uppers. They're full-service pros with the savvy of Bravo's "Millionaire Matchmaker" Patti Stanger and the cunning of VH1's "Tough Love" host Steve Ward.

THE LETTER ARRIVED ONE DAY last July, out of the blue. Cleo Priest didn't think much of it. The return address was David M. Weinfeld's. Her lawyer. Big deal, thought Cleo, opening the taped-shut envelope. Just another link in the long, confusing paper chain that had begun six years earlier, after her husband died from lung cancer and Weinfeld filed suit on her behalf against a group of asbestos companies. There had been affidavits, interrogatories - all sorts of paperwork that Cleo, being a teller at the Garden State racetrack and not a lawyer, did not really understand.

Linda Solomon was not the only person late for work yesterday morning because of snow, but she probably caught more flak than anyone else. Solomon, a social worker at the city's Adult Services Center, which places homeless people in shelters, said a client who felt he had waited too long for an interview became enraged, jumped on her desk, threatened to beat her up and then left the building - but not before throwing a brick through the...

A Voorhees car salesman was charged yesterday with bilking 80 customers with shaky credit histories and two financial institutions of as much as $1 million. Camden County Prosecutor Samuel Asbell said Gregory Smith, a 26-year-old salesman for Stephens Chevrolet Inc. in Runnemede, falsified financial documents from July to mid-September for clients wishing to buy cars, then pocketed the loans they received for down payments on new cars. At Smith's arraignment on charges of theft by deception before Camden County Superior Court Judge Donald A. Bigley, Asbell said Smith may have been involved with a network of people.

Criticizing the jury that convicted her of pandering, Heidi Fleiss said the names of clients in her "little black book" might not be kept secret much longer. A teary-eyed, emotional Fleiss spoke with reporters, signed autographs and greeted fans over the weekend at an exposition where she peddled her line of flannel underwear, one day after a seven-man, five-woman panel convicted her of three counts of pandering. Jurors deadlocked on two other pandering charges and found her not guilty on a drug charge.

A new firm, Royer Cooper Cohen Braunfeld L.L.C., announced that it would officially begin representing clients June 1 and would be based in Conshohocken. The firm will be led by founders John E. Royer Jr., Neil A. Cooper, Barry L. Cohen, and Roger Braunfeld. The name partners focus on transactional law, business and corporate law, intellectual property, emerging growth companies and other matters. The firm will start with a total complement of nine lawyers. — Chris Mondics

The Pennsylvania Attorney General announced criminal charges Tuesday against four Philadelphia-area men for allegedly scamming 218 elderly clients out of $700,000 in premiums for home-care and health services that were rarely delivered. At a news conference in Norristown, Linda Kelly identified the four as Bruce Howard Cherry, 52, and Robert P. Lerner, 56, both of Philadelphia; Ross M. Rabelow, 52, of Southampton, Bucks County; and Thomas J. Muldoon, 57, of Broomall, Delaware County.

IVAN RODRIGUEZ is guilty of stealing a motorcycle at gunpoint and Donta Craddock is guilty of the same robbery and of involuntary manslaughter or vehicular homicide, but neither murdered four people killed by the speeding getaway Pontiac Trans Am minutes after the June 2009 robbery, the two defendants' attorneys told a Philadelphia jury during opening statements Wednesday. Craddock, 21, who was behind the wheel and paralyzed from the waist down during the fiery crash, sped away not because he was fleeing the robbery but because he thought that a pursuing police officer was going to arrest him on a warrant for not returning to a juvenile-detention center after Easter break, defense attorney Michael Farrell said.

Remember the 1993 movie "Philadelphia"? A lawyer played by Tom Hanks is fired from a Philadelphia law firm after it is revealed he has AIDS. William J. O'Brien, one of the city's premiere trial lawyers, had a similar case in 1994. He represented the law firm of Kohn Swift & Graf, which was sued in federal court by a 30-year-old lawyer who contended he was fired by the firm because he had HIV. Both the real case and the movie case wound up being settled out of court. For a lawyer renowned for his work on commercial litigation, involving such fields as product liability, insurance fraud, malpractice claims, government relations and the like, Bill was involved in a number of high-profile cases that made headlines.

It wasn't long after Morgen Cheshire was named a partner at Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis L.L.P. that she realized she would soon face a wrenching decision. Making partner at a big firm is a dream for many young lawyers, and finally she was there. In that role, Cheshire wanted more than anything to represent the rich tapestry of foundations, institutes, and other nonprofits that call Philadelphia home — she had been working hard to develop that client base. The ties to Schnader, moreover, were strong: The firm had warmly embraced her, nurturing her professionally over the seven years it had taken to make partner.

SEATTLE - The U.S. soldier charged in the shooting deaths of 17 Afghan villagers last month will not participate in an Army review aimed at determining his mental state, his attorney said Friday. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was expected to face what's called a "sanity board" examination by Army doctors seeking to establish whether he's competent to stand trial and what his mental state was at the time of the March 11 pre-dawn massacre in two southern Afghanistan villages. But his civilian lawyer, John Henry Browne, said Friday he instructed Bales to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent because the Army will not allow Bales to have an attorney at the sanity board review and will not allow the examination to be recorded.

Donald J. Goldberg, 81 of Rittenhouse Square, a trial lawyer in Philadelphia for 58 years, died of complications from cancer Saturday, April 7, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1991, Mr. Goldberg had been special counsel in the litigation department of Ballard Spahr and was a member of the firm's white-collar investigations group. He previously had a solo practice in Center City for 30 years. "Partners and associates in the firm treasured any opportunity to learn from Don," Ballard Spahr chairman Mark Stewart said.

When the law firm of Offit Kurman began toying with the idea of expansion seven years ago, it comprised only a handful of lawyers in a small office in suburban Baltimore. The nation was well on its way to recovering from the recession of 2001-02, and the firm hatched an expansion plan that would take it south through the bustling, high-income suburbs north of Washington and on into northern Virginia. Then, it set its sights on Philadelphia. That was a counterintuitive strategy.

Microsoft has joined with some of its big technology clients to fill showrooms in Malvern and 26 other business centers around the globe with fancy, elegant gadgets and applications designed to make offices obsolete. Think. for example, of iPads as big as your wall or as accessible as your home TV screen, where colleagues, clients, and customers can share notes, data, and links, and design and promote projects, in real time. A Canadian company, Smart Technologies, has developed generations of these interactive whiteboards over the last 20 years.

Scandal is the intriguing new drama from Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes. It's built around one of the strongest (in every sense) female characters to hit prime time in recent memory. Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) is a former Oval Office insider who has formed a thriving, teeming crisis-management firm in Washington, D.C. With her frighteningly fast-talking staff (Henry Ian Cusick of Lost, Columbus Short, Darby Stanchfield, Katie Lowes, and Guillermo Diaz), she represents clients - a Russian diplomat, a Georgetown madame, a decorated military hero - caught in compromising positions.