Booker to End Association With Start-Up He Founded

Mr. Booker’s association with the Internet firm, Waywire, had become an embarrassment for him even as he seems poised to capture the Senate seat in a special election next month.

Critics in both parties sharply questioned the prominent role he had played in forming the company, even while he was the full-time mayor of the state’s largest city — and one of its poorest.

Mr. Booker personally helped obtain money from influential investors — including Oprah Winfrey and Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman — and tapped the expertise of technology moguls and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

At one point, the firm became tabloid fodder when Andrew Zucker, the 15-year-old son of Jeff Zucker, president of CNN, resigned from a board that advised Waywire, a site whose goal includes making it easier to collect, curate and share videos from the Web.

In a statement, Mr. Booker’s campaign said on Friday that the mayor would be stepping down from Waywire’s board and donating his ownership interest in the company to charity. Mr. Booker, in a financial disclosure statement filed with the Senate, estimated that his interest in the company was worth $1 million to $5 million. But the company is said to be struggling.

“These steps are being taken to remove even the perception that the mayor’s attention would be diverted from his job as senator or that he would stand to personally benefit in any way from his holdings in the company,” the mayor’s campaign spokesman, Kevin Griffis, said in a statement.

Mr. Booker’s decision to sever his relationship with Waywire came on the same day that he released his tax returns for the last 15 years, showing substantial increases in income as he grew in prominence.

He earned a low of $40,797 in 1998, the year he went from being a community activist to waging a successful bid for a seat on the Municipal Council in Newark. Mr. Booker’s most lucrative year was 2011, when he reported that he received $715,981 in income and paid $221,760, or 33.6 percent, in taxes on the taxable portion of his income, according to his returns.

The income that year consisted almost entirely of his salary as mayor ($152,438), fees he earned for speeches he gave ($406,304) and payments he received from his old law firm for the sale of his stake in the firm ($150,000), according to the returns.

His income dropped significantly in 2012, when he earned $472,572 and paid $115,663, or 36.9 percent, in taxes on the taxable portion of his income. Once again, his earnings were largely from his salary as mayor, his speaking fees and payments from his law firm.

The Booker campaign, which had not released the returns for weeks despite repeated requests to do so, made them available to reporters for three hours on Friday at a conference room inside a hotel in Newark. The reporters were not permitted to make copies.

The returns answered questions that had been hanging over Mr. Booker, including the amount of money he received in payments from his former law firm, Trenk DiPasquale, for his stake after he left in 2006 to serve as mayor.

In all, he received so-called separation payments of $689,500, paid out in annual allotments from 2007 to 2012, according to the tax returns. He received the payments even as the law firm collected more than $2 million in fees from independent authorities, some of whose board members are appointed by the mayor, according to published reports.

Mr. Booker appears to be in a strong position to capture the Senate seat that became vacant with the death of Frank R. Lautenberg in June. After easily winning the Democratic nomination last month, Mr. Booker has emerged as a heavy favorite to win the October general election, in which his Republican opponent is Steven M. Lonegan, a former mayor of Bogota, N.J., and candidate for governor.

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

Bar Association Won't Rate Traffic Court Judges

While municipal government watchdog group Committee of Seventy suggested that the Philadelphia Bar Association "take responsibility for interviewing and rating all 2013 Traffic Court candidates" in the wake of nine judges being charged with crimes related to alleged ticket-fixing, the association's chancellor said the professional group does not have the jurisdiction to rate Traffic Court judges because they are not required to be lawyers.

Phila. Bar Association Launches Legal Assistance for Military Veterans

The Philadelphia Bar Association is expanding its legal assistance for active-duty military personnel and their families to all veterans who cannot afford or do not have access to the legal services they need.

Bar Association Won't Rate Traffic Court Judges

While municipal government watchdog group Committee of Seventy suggested that the Philadelphia Bar Association "take responsibility for interviewing and rating all 2013 Traffic Court candidates" in the wake of nine judges being charged with crimes related to alleged ticket-fixing, the association's chancellor said the professional group does not have the jurisdiction to rate Traffic Court judges because they are not required to be lawyers.

Phila. Bar Association Launches Legal Assistance for Military Veterans

The Philadelphia Bar Association is expanding its legal assistance for active-duty military personnel and their families to all veterans who cannot afford or do not have access to the legal services they need.

Phila. Bar Association Launches Legal Assistance for Military Veterans

The Philadelphia Bar Association is expanding its legal assistance for active-duty military personnel and their families to all veterans who cannot afford or do not have access to the legal services they need.

Bar Association Women's Section Strives to Blaze a Trail

The Cobb County, Ga., Bar Association has a long history of contributions by women attorneys, including past presidents and prominent members in private practice and on the bench, but until now, has had no women's section.

That has changed.

A group of women attorneys in Marietta has been working since 2009 to create a section for women within the state's second-largest voluntary bar. At first it was an informal committee. In August, the Cobb Bar Board of Trustees received a proposal to formally create a new section by four Marietta women lawyers: Nancy Ingram Jordan, Laura Murphree, Dawn Levine and Sarah Cipperly. The proposed mission statement said the section would be "committed to the unique needs addressed by female attorneys in their daily practice of law."

The proposal said the group would connect women members, as well as any member "interested in understanding and supporting" these unique needs to "focus on the development of women in such areas as professional and social networking, mentorship and professional and economic growth through shared wisdom and guidance." The board approved the proposal in September. The new section, called Women of the Bar, held its first event Thursday.

True to their promise to include all interested members of the bar, the group chose a man to be the first speaker: Darrell Sutton of Sutton Law Group. He talked about accomplished women of the Cobb bar. The first event, a sold-out lunch for 50 at the Chicken and the Egg restaurant, was social and organizational, but upcoming monthly events will include community service and continuing legal education.

"Now that there's a section, there's been a very enthusiastic response," said Jane Manning, president of the new section and a prosecutor for the Cobb County solicitor general's office. She noted a long list of names of prominent women in the Cobb bar, including the two most senior judges in Cobb County Superior Court, Dorothy Robinson and Mary Staley, and some of the most senior judges in Cobb County State Court, Irma Glover and Melodie Clayton.

Manning said members have expressed a need for a section. "I think women attorneys, especially in court, have unique challenges," she said.

"There is a lot of interest in this. A lot of women entering the profession are looking to connect to women who've gone before them as mentors," said Dawn Levine, a wills and estates partner with Lyle & Levine. "This is a great place for women who've already blazed a trail to show others how."

Jordan, a family law attorney with Brock, Clay, Calhoun & Rogers and a former president of the Cobb bar, met with the board on the day of the vote on the new section to promote the idea, to "make sure they knew this wasn't a conspiracy," and to offer a welcome to all members. "Male lawyers have wives and daughters who are lawyers," she said.

"Women network differently. They think differently," said Jordan. And they have different conversation starters. "We say, 'I love your shoes. That case was awful.' Men like sports. Women like shoes. That doesn't make it good or bad, it's just different."

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