In response to unprecedented amounts of lawyers “running cases”, the Mississippi Bar issued a press release today concerning solicitation of cases by lawyers. Here is the statement.

The term “running a case” refers to a lawyer obtaining a case by solicitation. Advertising is not considered running a case. Paying an investigator to direct potential plaintiffs to a certain lawyer is considered running a case.

Key points in the Bar’s statement address the practice of law in Mississippi by out-of-state lawyers and improper case solicitation by lawyers.

In other oil spill litigation news, there are reports that the federal court system has already been asked to combine all the oil spill cases in a multi-district litigation proceeding. A federal MDL proceeding is a foregone conclusion. The only interesting questions are where the MDL will be located and who will be the presiding judge.

In addition, New Orleans lawyer Dan Becnel emerged from a meeting yesterday among plaintiff lawyers and predicted that the litigation will be over soon:

We’re not going to have a long march to trial,” Becnel said yesterday in an interview before the meeting. “This could all be over in 90 days.”

I find that prediction extremely optimistic even though the Oil Pollution Act imposes strict liability on BP. People said the same thing about the length of the Civil War and World War I, and look how those predictions turned out.