Motion Picture Academy Seeks to Expand Membership

LOS ANGELES — Reversing a policy that has more closely restricted membership in the last decade, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Friday invited an unusually large group of film professionals — 276 in total, including the actors Milla Jovovich and Joseph Gordon-Levitt — to join its ranks.

The invitation list represents a sharp increase from last year, when 176 new members were invited. That number was roughly calculated to maintain the size of the group, which annually awards the Oscars, and was generally consistent with the practice since 2004, when the Academy moved to tighten its rolls by focusing heavily on credentials, including any recent Oscar nomination, in deciding whether to extend an invitation.

This year, however, the Academy — which has been concerned about a lack of diversity within its ranks, and is searching for new connections to emerging aspects of cinema — dropped a system by which each of its branches was held to a quota.

It particularly encouraged the expansion of its documentary branch, which had been one of its smallest. That branch has only 173 members, but this year it invited 42 documentarians to join, compared with just 11 last year. Among those invited were Marcel Ophuls, whose work includes “The Sorrow and the Pity,” and both Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, who directed “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.”

Other actors on a list of 22 invitees — actually fewer than the 25 invited last year — include Michael Peña, Lucy Liu, Jennifer Lopez, Charles Grodin and Jason Bateman. Among the 15 directors invited to join, an increase from last year’s 11, were Paul Feig, Benh Zeitlin and Steve McQueen.

Kevin Tsujihara, recently named chief executive of Warner Bros., was perhaps the best-known of the 17 executives invited to join. In a twist, Neil Meron, who was a producer of this year’s Oscar telecast and whose film credits include “Hairspray” and “The Bucket List,” was invited to join as a member at large rather than as a producer.

Jason Blum, whose credits include “The Purge” and “Paranormal Activity,” was among nine producers invited to join, a decline from the 12 who were invited to join last year.

The short films and features animation branch sharply increased its invitations, to 19 from 11. Among those invited this year was Matt Groening, whose feature film credits include “The Simpsons Movie.”

State Supreme Court to Expand Public Access to Court Finances

Journalists and interested Pennsylvanians will soon have easier access to more financial information for the state?s trio of appellate courts and their administrative offices, the state Supreme Court ordered Thursday.

DealBook: Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Plans to Expand Its Focus

Wall Street’s self-regulator is planning to exercise some new muscle.

Richard G. Ketchum, the head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, said in an interview on Tuesday that he would ramp up scrutiny of high-speed trading and a batch of complex products. Finra, Mr. Ketchum said, would take aim at so-called leveraged loans and collateralized loan obligations, along with the potential conflicts that brokerage firms face in pitching their own investments over rivals’ products.

“We’re going to be very focused on conflicts of interest,” said Mr. Ketchum, the chairman and chief executive of Finra. In a statement, Firna added that it would “pursue potential cross-market abuses and refine its surveillance patterns based on new threat scenarios and regulatory intelligence.”

The expanded focus comes as Finra announced on Tuesday that it filed more than 1,500 enforcement actions against financial firms and brokers in 2012, an all-time record for the regulator. Finra, which barred nearly 300 people from the industry, levied more than $100 million in penalties.

“It’s nice to see an upward trajectory,” Mr. Ketchum said.

A private, nonprofit organization, Finra monitors 600,000-plus stockbrokers. The group’s enforcement arm has struggled to shake the perception that brokers and their firms, which pay for Finra’s operations through fees and dispatch representatives to sit on the board, have muzzled the watchdog.

But Finra, Mr. Ketchum noted, is now tracking bigger game. He highlighted the range of cases filed last year, a collection of actions against some of the biggest names on Wall Street. Firna last year sanctioned Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and UBS, among others, for improper sales tactics. Goldman Sachs paid an $11 million fine for failing to keep an eye on its research analysts.

The agency’s enforcement unit, run by J. Bradley Bennett, also waded into the minutiae of Wall Street products, filing cases involving structured investments and leveraged exchange-traded funds. Finra said on Tuesday that the unit could strike a more aggressive tone in 2013, investigating other products and the high-speed trading industry.

“What I like about the cases we brought is the focus on complex products,” Mr. Ketchum said.

State Supreme Court to Expand Public Access to Court Finances

Journalists and interested Pennsylvanians will soon have easier access to more financial information for the state?s trio of appellate courts and their administrative offices, the state Supreme Court ordered Thursday.

State Supreme Court to Expand Public Access to Court Finances

Journalists and interested Pennsylvanians will soon have easier access to more financial information for the state?s trio of appellate courts and their administrative offices, the state Supreme Court ordered Thursday.

LeClairRyan Is Latest Law Firm to Expand in Los Angeles

LeClairRyan has brought aboard five intellectual property and litigation lawyers to its Los Angeles office, joining a number of law firms that have established or expanded practices in the area.

Joining as shareholders are James Potepan and Thomas O'Leary. Joining as partners are Courtney Curtis, James Hildebrand and Brian Vanderhoof. All were previously at Ropers Majeski Kohn Bentley.

In July, Cooley opened an office with four partners, and, earlier this month, Thompson & Knight launched an L.A. practice. Other firms that have added attorneys in Los Angeles include Pepper Hamilton; Winston & Strawn; and Foley & Mansfield. Last year, Dallas litigation firm McKool Smith debuted an L.A. office.

"It's generally a function of out-of-state firms having clients here," said Jill Levin, an attorney recruiter at Los Angeles-based Levin & Associates.

Some of the law firm expansion is due to the development of Silicon Beach, an area of Santa Monica that is sprouting high-tech startups in part because the office rental rates are cheaper than in Silicon Valley to the north. Google Inc., Hulu LLC and Demand Media Inc. have offices in the Santa Monica area.

A convergence of the technology and entertainment industries is driving the growth, according to law firm consultant Peter Zeughauser. As more consumers move away from personal computers to mobile devices, tech companies need content, he said.

"L.A. is to content as Wall Street is to money -- the center of the Universe," Zeughauser said.

The attorneys joining LeClairRyan focus on copyright, trademark, trade secrets, rights of publicity, licensing and unfair competition. Clients come from a range of industries that includes consumer products, publishing, entertainment, education and technology, according to the firm.

"With the addition of Jim, Tom and their team of highly experienced attorneys, we are able to provide our clients with even more exceptional intellectual property and litigation capabilities in the Los Angeles marketplace," LeClairRyan Chief Executive David Frienberg said in a news release.

Richmond, Va.-based LeClairRyan has about 50 attorneys, patent agents and technical specialists who handle intellectual property matters. The firm, with 21 offices, has about 340 lawyers.