Major Expansion Ahead at The Washington Post

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Washington Memo: 50 Years Later, War on Poverty Is a Mixed Bag

But looked at a different way, the federal government has succeeded in preventing the poverty rate from climbing far higher. There is broad consensus that the social welfare programs created since the New Deal have hugely improved living conditions for low-income Americans. At the same time, in recent decades, most of the gains from the private economy have gone to those at the top of the income ladder.

Half a century after Mr. Johnson’s now-famed State of the Union address, the debate over the government’s role in creating opportunity and ending deprivation has flared anew, with inequality as acute as it was in the Roaring Twenties and the ranks of the poor and near-poor at record highs. Programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps are keeping millions of families afloat. Republicans have sought to cut both programs, an illustration of the intense disagreement between the two political parties over the best solutions for bringing down the poverty rate as quickly as possible, or eliminating it.

For poverty to decrease, “the low-wage labor market needs to improve,” James P. Ziliak of the University of Kentucky said. “We need strong economic growth with gains widely distributed. If the private labor market won’t step up to the plate, we’re going to have to strengthen programs to help these people get by and survive.”

In Washington, President Obama has called inequality the “defining challenge of our time.” To that end, he intends to urge states to expand their Medicaid programs to poor, childless adults, and is pushing for an increase in the minimum wage and funding for early-childhood programs.

But conservatives, like Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, have looked at the poverty statistics more skeptically, contending that the government has misspent its safety-net money and needs to focus less on support and more on economic and job opportunities.

“The nation should face up to two facts: poverty rates are too high, especially among children, and spending money on government means-tested programs is at best a partial solution,” Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution wrote in an assessment of the shortfalls on the war on poverty. Washington already spends enough on antipoverty programs to lift all Americans out of poverty, he said. “To mount an effective war against poverty,” he added, “we need changes in the personal decisions of more young Americans.”

Still, a broad range of researchers interviewed by The New York Times stressed the improvement in the lives of low-income Americans since Mr. Johnson started his crusade. Infant mortality has dropped, college completion rates have soared, millions of women have entered the work force, malnutrition has all but disappeared. After all, when Mr. Johnson announced his campaign, parts of Appalachia lacked electricity and indoor plumbing.

Many economists argue that the official poverty rate grossly understates the impact of government programs. The headline poverty rate counts only cash income, not the value of in-kind benefits like food stamps. A fuller accounting suggests the poverty rate has dropped to 16 percent today, from 26 percent in the late 1960s, economists say.

But high rates of poverty — measured by both the official government yardstick and the alternatives that many economists prefer — have remained a remarkably persistent feature of American society. About four in 10 black children live in poverty; for Hispanic children, that figure is about three in 10. According to one recent study, as of mid-2011, in any given month, 1.7 million households were living on cash income of less than $2 a person a day, with the prevalence of the kind of deep poverty commonly associated with developing nations increasing since the mid-1990s.

Both economic and sociological trends help explain why so many children and adults remain poor, even putting the effects of the recession aside. More parents are raising a child alone, with more infants born out of wedlock. High incarceration rates, especially among black men, keep many families apart. About 30 percent of single mothers live in poverty.

In some cases, government programs have helped fewer families because of program changes and budget cuts, researchers said. For instance, the 1996 Clinton-era welfare overhaul drastically cut the cash assistance available to needy families, often ones headed by single mothers.

“As of 1996, we expected single mothers to go to work,” Professor Ziliak said. “But if they’re shelling out most of their weekly pay in the form of child care, they can’t make sense of doing it.”

The more important driver of the still-high poverty rate, researchers said, is the poor state of the labor market for low-wage workers and spiraling inequality. Over the last 30 years, growth has generally failed to translate into income gains for workers — even as the American labor force has become better educated and more skilled. About 40 percent of low-wage workers have attended or completed college, and 80 percent have completed high school.

Economists remain sharply divided on the reasons, with technological change, globalization, the decline of labor unions and the falling value of the minimum wage often cited as major factors. But with real incomes for a vast number of middle-class and low-wage workers in decline, safety-net programs have become more instrumental in keeping families’ heads above water.

The earned-income tax credit, for instance, has increased employment among single mothers and kept six million Americans above the poverty line in 2011. Food stamps, formally known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, kept four million Americans out of poverty in 2011.

Above all, the government has proved most successful in aiding the elderly through the New Deal-era Social Security program and the creation of Medicare in the 1960s. The poverty rate among older Americans fell to just 9 percent in 2012 from 35 percent in 1959.

But for working-age households, both conservatives and liberals agree that government transfer programs alone cannot eliminate poverty. The answer, the White House has said, is in trying to improve households’ earnings before tax and transfer programs take effect.

“Going forward, the biggest potential gains that could be made on poverty would be in raising market incomes,” said Jason Furman, the chairman of Mr. Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. “In the short run, that means things like the minimum wage, and in the long run, things like early education.”

If Congress approved a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from its current level of $7.25, it would reduce the poverty rate of working-age Americans by 1.7 percentage points, lifting about five million people out of poverty, according to research by Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

But in the meantime, the greatest hope for poorer Americans would be a stronger economic recovery that brought the unemployment rate down from its current level of 7 percent and drew more people into the work force. The poverty rate for full-time workers is just 3 percent. For those not working, it is 33 percent.

Times Announces Changes in Washington

The New York Times on Wednesday announced a reorganization of its Washington bureau, including the elevation of Carolyn Ryan to bureau chief and the start of two new ventures.

In a memo to the staff, Jill Abramson, the executive editor, said that Ms. Ryan, currently the top political editor, would succeed David Leonhardt, who will head up one of the new initiatives, in a role that combines data with analytical reporting.

Ms. Ryan, 48, was named to her most recent post in May after serving as metro editor since January 2011. Before that she was the metro desk’s political editor and helped oversee the coverage of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s involvement with a high-end prostitution ring; that coverage won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for breaking news reporting. She joined The Times in 2007 from The Boston Globe, where she was deputy managing editor for local news.

In her new role as bureau chief, Ms. Ryan will continue to oversee a team of reporters in New York, along with the Washington bureau.

Mr. Leonhardt, 40, will become managing editor of a new venture that Ms. Abramson said would “be at the nexus of data and news” across a range of subjects, including economics, politics, policy, education and sports. Mr. Leonhardt’s new team is expected to include “reporters, graphics editors, economists, historians and political scientists.”

Before becoming Washington bureau chief in September 2011, Mr. Leonhardt wrote the Economic Scene column for The Times and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2011. Mr. Leonhardt joined The Times in 1999 after working at BusinessWeek and The Washington Post.

The Times is also introducing an early-morning news tip sheet, a digital product about the day’s happenings in Washington that will be supervised by Carl Hulse, currently a deputy in the Washington bureau. The tip sheet is expected to resemble the New York Today report, which provides a roundup of news and events in the New York metropolitan area.

According to the memo, the Washington report will “harvest the best tweets of bureau reporters and aggregate other elements from the Washington news report.” Mr. Hulse will also continue to write for The Times as chief Washington correspondent.

Mr. Hulse, 59, was previously the chief congressional correspondent for The Times. Mr. Hulse joined The Times in 1986 after working for The Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

According to the memo, “existing and new staff” will work on both new ventures. The new positions will be effective on Dec. 15.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 20, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the column David Leonhardt wrote before becoming the Washington bureau chief. It is the Economic Scene column, not Economic Sense.

DealBook: Ex-U.S. Attorney to Join Davis Polk Law Firm in Washington

Bezos Makes First Visit to Washington Post as Owner

Jeffrey P. Bezos, the new owner of The Washington Post, kicked off a packed, two-day visit to the paper on Tuesday, his first since purchasing the newspaper for $250 million on Aug. 5. Mr. Bezos was meeting with managers on the editorial and business sides, according to people with knowledge of his schedule, at times chaperoned by Katharine Weymouth, the publisher and a member of the Graham family from whom Mr. Bezos bought the paper.

On Wednesday, he is expected to meet with reporters, hold a noon lunch with editors, tour the Post’s printing plant in Springfield, Va., and answer questions during a meeting with the newsroom staff at 3:30 p.m.

While Mr. Bezos can often be reticent with the press, he gave an interview to The Post that ran on Monday’s front page and said he was ready for The Post to start a new “golden era” under his ownership. Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com who now serves as the company’s chairman and chief executive, bought The Post as a separate investment from Amazon.

But he told The Post that he planned to bring to the newspaper some of the same approaches that had been successful for Amazon.

“We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient,” he said. “If you replace ‘customer’ with ‘reader,’ that approach, that point of view, can be successful at The Post, too.”

Mr. Bezos said he did not expect to be involved with the daily operations of The Post. Instead, he said, he will offer his “point of view” and financial support. “I’ll be there with lots of advice from a distance,” said Mr. Bezos.

Mr. Bezos is expected to close on the deal in October. The Graham family had controlled the paper for about eight decades.

Washington Push for Higher Minimum Wage for Workers Has Walmart Balking

Mayor Vincent C. Gray, who worked hard to lure Walmart, finds himself caught in the middle, and many residents sound less than grateful to lawmakers.

“Those big people in government, they don’t understand my situation,” said Fred Reaves, 45, who is unemployed and said he would gladly take a job at the current city minimum, $8.25.

“Eight-something, it’ll motivate you to start going to work,” Mr. Reaves said as he stood around the Skyland Town Center, a patch of barren asphalt and shuttered stores where Walmart planned to build. “You can start paying some bills. It will help you to come off public assistance.”

On July 10, the City Council passed a “living wage” measure that would require Walmart to pay at least $12.50 an hour, saying it was fighting to protect struggling residents in what has become a high-cost city.

Supporters of the measure say that Walmart, whose revenues in 2012 were $469 billion, can well afford to pay workers more.

“Their net income was $17 billion,” said Vincent Orange, a city councilman who voted for the ordinance. “You don’t want to share a little bit with the citizens? Come on.”

A decade ago, the city gave tax breaks to lure retailers, Mr. Orange said, but now it is booming and can negotiate from strength.

The day before the City Council passed the measure, a Walmart official warned in an op-ed article in The Washington Post that if required to pay $12.50 an hour, the company would cancel three planned stores and consider withdrawing from three projects already under construction.

The next move is up to Mayor Gray, who is weighing a veto.

Officially the mayor has taken no position, but he is widely seen as opposed to the measure. The Council has delayed formally sending it to his desk for action. The measure, called the Large Retailer Accountability Act, would require stores of at least 75,000 square feet that are owned by companies with $1 billion or more in annual revenue to pay the higher minimum wage. Because existing stores and those with unions are exempt, it is seen as squarely aimed at Walmart.

As Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has sought inroads in major cities, it has faced resistance from local merchants, who fear being undercut, and from officials who say minimum-wage jobs mire workers in poverty.

Democrats on the House of Representatives work force committee produced a report this spring contending that the government subsidizes Walmart because employees earn so little that they qualify for Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance.

Pedro Ribeiro, a spokesman for Mayor Gray, argued the opposite: minimum-wage jobs help the chronically unemployed take a first step into the work force.

“Yes, Walmart jobs are not great,” Mr. Ribeiro said. “But for some people, it will be their first employment and they’re not qualified to do anything else. We need that entry-level benchmark in the District.”

Washington is experiencing an economic revival, with population growth on a par with Sun Belt cities. But the benefits are not spread evenly. East of the Anacostia River in Ward 7, where two of the Walmart stores, including the Skyland site, are planned, unemployment is 13.9 percent. In nearby Ward 8, it is 20 percent.

Victor L. Hoskins, the deputy mayor for development, said Walmart’s threat to cancel projects if the measure took effect was no bluff. He calculated that 4,000 retail and construction jobs were at stake from three of the projects.

“The question is not $8.25 versus $12.50,” Mr. Hoskins said. “The question is $8.25 versus zero. It’s called no jobs.”

Opposite the Skyland site, on Good Hope Road, Carl Williams, 49, a barber at the Like That salon, whose dozen barbers were bustling on Thursday afternoon, had mixed feelings. He thought $12.50 was a fair starting wage. But he said he would not hesitate to encourage his two daughters to take a job at Walmart for $8.25.

“One who is 21 needs a job real bad,” he said. “She had a baby real young and didn’t finish high school.”

At a nearby Shoe City, the assistant manager acknowledged that Walmart might undercut her prices. But the giant retailer would also increase foot traffic in the neighborhood, which could benefit Shoe City, the manager, Shasherri Hindman, said.

Ms. Hindman, 25, said she started at minimum wage five years ago and worked her way up. “What’s wrong with $8.25?” she said. “I’m totally on Walmart’s side.”

Willie Ford, 39, a carpenter, scoffed at the notion that Walmart could not afford to pay $12.50. “Come on, they’re going to make beaucoup money from this area,” he said. At the same time, he acknowledged that many people in the neighborhood would gladly take a job at $8.25. “Like a newborn baby, you’ve got to crawl before you walk,” he said.

Washington Push for Higher Minimum Wage for Workers Has Walmart Balking

Mayor Vincent C. Gray, who worked hard to lure Walmart, finds himself caught in the middle, and many residents sound less than grateful to lawmakers.

“Those big people in government, they don’t understand my situation,” said Fred Reaves, 45, who is unemployed and said he would gladly take a job at the current city minimum, $8.25.

“Eight-something, it’ll motivate you to start going to work,” Mr. Reaves said as he stood around the Skyland Town Center, a patch of barren asphalt and shuttered stores where Walmart planned to build. “You can start paying some bills. It will help you to come off public assistance.”

On July 10, the City Council passed a “living wage” measure that would require Walmart to pay at least $12.50 an hour, saying it was fighting to protect struggling residents in what has become a high-cost city.

Supporters of the measure say that Walmart, whose revenues in 2012 were $469 billion, can well afford to pay workers more.

“Their net income was $17 billion,” said Vincent Orange, a city councilman who voted for the ordinance. “You don’t want to share a little bit with the citizens? Come on.”

A decade ago, the city gave tax breaks to lure retailers, Mr. Orange said, but now it is booming and can negotiate from strength.

The day before the City Council passed the measure, a Walmart official warned in an op-ed article in The Washington Post that if required to pay $12.50 an hour, the company would cancel three planned stores and consider withdrawing from three projects already under construction.

The next move is up to Mayor Gray, who is weighing a veto.

Officially the mayor has taken no position, but he is widely seen as opposed to the measure. The Council has delayed formally sending it to his desk for action. The measure, called the Large Retailer Accountability Act, would require stores of at least 75,000 square feet that are owned by companies with $1 billion or more in annual revenue to pay the higher minimum wage. Because existing stores and those with unions are exempt, it is seen as squarely aimed at Walmart.

As Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has sought inroads in major cities, it has faced resistance from local merchants, who fear being undercut, and from officials who say minimum-wage jobs mire workers in poverty.

Democrats on the House of Representatives work force committee produced a report this spring contending that the government subsidizes Walmart because employees earn so little that they qualify for Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance.

Pedro Ribeiro, a spokesman for Mayor Gray, argued the opposite: minimum-wage jobs help the chronically unemployed take a first step into the work force.

“Yes, Walmart jobs are not great,” Mr. Ribeiro said. “But for some people, it will be their first employment and they’re not qualified to do anything else. We need that entry-level benchmark in the District.”

Washington is experiencing an economic revival, with population growth on a par with Sun Belt cities. But the benefits are not spread evenly. East of the Anacostia River in Ward 7, where two of the Walmart stores, including the Skyland site, are planned, unemployment is 13.9 percent. In nearby Ward 8, it is 20 percent.

Victor L. Hoskins, the deputy mayor for development, said Walmart’s threat to cancel projects if the measure took effect was no bluff. He calculated that 4,000 retail and construction jobs were at stake from three of the projects.

“The question is not $8.25 versus $12.50,” Mr. Hoskins said. “The question is $8.25 versus zero. It’s called no jobs.”

Opposite the Skyland site, on Good Hope Road, Carl Williams, 49, a barber at the Like That salon, whose dozen barbers were bustling on Thursday afternoon, had mixed feelings. He thought $12.50 was a fair starting wage. But he said he would not hesitate to encourage his two daughters to take a job at Walmart for $8.25.

“One who is 21 needs a job real bad,” he said. “She had a baby real young and didn’t finish high school.”

At a nearby Shoe City, the assistant manager acknowledged that Walmart might undercut her prices. But the giant retailer would also increase foot traffic in the neighborhood, which could benefit Shoe City, the manager, Shasherri Hindman, said.

Ms. Hindman, 25, said she started at minimum wage five years ago and worked her way up. “What’s wrong with $8.25?” she said. “I’m totally on Walmart’s side.”

Willie Ford, 39, a carpenter, scoffed at the notion that Walmart could not afford to pay $12.50. “Come on, they’re going to make beaucoup money from this area,” he said. At the same time, he acknowledged that many people in the neighborhood would gladly take a job at $8.25. “Like a newborn baby, you’ve got to crawl before you walk,” he said.

I.M.F. Urges Washington to Repeal ‘Ill-Designed’ Spending Cuts

In its annual check of the health of the U.S. economy, the IMF forecast economic growth would be a sluggish 1.9 percent this year. The IMF estimates growth would be as much as 1.75 percentage points higher if not for a rush to cut the government's budget deficit.

The IMF cut its outlook for economic growth in 2014 to 2.7 percent, below its 3 percent forecast published in April. The Fund said in April it still assumed the deep government spending cuts would be repealed, but it had now dropped that assumption.

Washington slashed the federal budget in March, adding to the drag on the economy created by tax increases enacted in January.

The IMF said the United States should reverse the spending cuts and instead adopt a plan to slow the growth in spending on government-funded health care and pensions, known as "entitlements." The Fund would also like the United States to collect more in taxes.

"The deficit reduction in 2013 has been excessively rapid and ill-designed," the IMF said. "These cuts should be replaced with a back-loaded mix of entitlement savings and new revenues."

The IMF warned cuts to education, science and infrastructure spending could reduce potential growth.

While the Fund said total debt across all levels of government would likely decline after 2015, public finances are nevertheless on an unsustainable path due to an aging population and higher spending on health care.

"Now our advice is not just to slow down (budget cuts)," IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said at a news conference. "Our advice is also to hurry up: hurry up with putting in place a medium-term road map to restore long-run fiscal sustainability."

She said effects of higher spending on health care and other programs build up over time, so it was important to act quickly to address them.

KEEP EASING FOR NOW

The Fund recommended that the U.S. Federal Reserve keep up its massive asset purchases at least through the end of the year to support the U.S. recovery, but should also prepare for a pull-back in the future.

The Fed is currently buying $85 billion per month of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities in an effort to lower borrowing costs and spur employment growth. Lagarde said the IMF has assumed that the Fed would begin trimming bond purchases next year.

Speculation over when the Fed might start to pare back its bond buying has roiled financial markets recently. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke stoked market speculation last month when he said a decision to pare the Fed's current pace of asset purchases might happen at one of the Fed's "next few meetings" if the economy looked set to maintain momentum.

Recent outflows from bond funds and the rise in volatility offer a worrying glimpse of how markets are likely to behave as the Fed works to scale back its enormous monetary stimulus.

The IMF said unwinding the easy-money policies would likely present challenges, and it was key for the Fed to communicate effectively with markets.

It also said the long period of low interest rates could have unintended consequences in the future, sowing the seeds of future financial vulnerabilities.

(Additional reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Andre Grenon)

Tech Giants, Learning the Ways of Washington, Brace for More Scrutiny

In 2012, among other victories, the industry staved off calls for federal consumer privacy legislation and successfully pushed for a revamp of an obscure law that had placed strict privacy protections on Americans’ video rental records. It also helped achieve a stalemate on a proposed global effort to let Web users limit behavioral tracking online, using Do Not Track browser settings.

But this year is likely to put that issue in the spotlight again, and bring intense negotiations between industry and consumer rights groups over whether and how to allow consumers to limit tracking.

Congress is likely to revisit online security legislation — meant to safeguard critical infrastructure from attack — that failed last year. And a looming question for Web giants will be who takes the reins of the Federal Trade Commission, the industry’s main regulator, this year. David C. Vladeck, the director of the commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, has resigned, and there have been suggestions that the chairman of the commission itself, Jon Leibowitz, will step down.

The agency is investigating Google over possible antitrust violations and will subject Facebook to audits of its privacy policy for the next 20 years. Its next steps could serve as a bellwether of how aggressively the commission will take on Web companies in the second Obama administration.

“Now that the election is over, Silicon Valley companies each are thinking through their strategy for the second Obama administration,” said Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University and a former White House privacy official. “The F.T.C. will have a new Democratic chairman. A priority for tech companies will be to discern the new chair’s own priorities.”

In early 2012, an unusual burst of lobbying by tech companies helped defeat antipiracy bills, which had been backed by the entertainment industry. Silicon Valley giants like Facebook and Google feared that the bills would force them to police the Internet.

At the end of the year, Silicon Valley also got its way when the Obama administration stood up against a proposed global treaty that would have given government authorities greater control over the Web.

The key to the industry’s successes in 2012 was simple: it expanded its footprint in Washington just as Washington began to pay closer attention to how technology companies affect consumers. “Privacy and security became top-tier important policy issues in Washington in 2012,” said David A. Hoffman, director of security policy and global privacy officer at Intel.

“Industry has realized it is important to be engaged,” he continued, “to make sure government stakeholders are fully informed and educated about the role that new technology plays and to make sure any action taken doesn’t unnecessarily burden the innovation economy while still protecting individual trust in new technology.”

At the end of 2012, tech companies were on track to have spent record amounts on lobbying for the year. In the first three quarters, they spent close to $100 million, which meant that they were likely to surpass the $127 million they spent on lobbying in 2011, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based nonpartisan group that tracks corporate spending. Even the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz hired a lobbyist in Washington: Adrian Fenty, a former mayor of the city.

Technology executives and investors also made generous contributions in the 2012 presidential race, luring both President Obama and Mitt Romney to Northern California for fund-raisers and nudging them to speak out on issues like immigration overhaul and lower tax rates.

In a blog post in November, the center said Silicon Valley’s lobbying expenditures have ballooned in recent years, even as spending by other industries has fallen.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 2, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the federal agency headed by Jon Leibowitz. He is chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, not of its Bureau of Consumer Protection.

Linklaters Opens Washington, D.C., Office

By Matthew Huisman All Articles 

The National Law Journal

November 29, 2012

The presence of British Magic Circle firms in Washington has grown now that London-based Linklaters has announced the opening of a D.C. office. This marks the second time the firm has expanded into the Washington market.

Linklaters' U.S. co-managing partner Jeff Norton said in an interview that the Washington office was a natural extension of the firm's New York office and is aligned with the firm's vision of forming "one office, one market."

"Given the increase in the regulatory environment, we felt it was important to have people on the ground in D.C.," Norton said. The new office will focus on government, litigation, regulatory, tax and antitrust matters, among others.

The firm previously operated a Washington office from 1992 to 2002. According to a media report at the time, a firm spokeswoman said the branch was closed because, "There was no economic justification to keep the office open."

Norton said that the firm re-tooled its U.S. strategy about seven or eight years ago with the goal that New York and Washington offices would operate as a single unit rather than as separate outposts. "We've always wanted to be in D.C., but we weren't ready," he said.

Currently the D.C. office has six attorneys, but Norton said the firm is looking to grow based on the needs of its clients. Among the residents in the new office are competition partner Jeffrey Schmidt and tax partner Joseph Pari. Norton and U.S. co-managing partner Conrado Tenaglia serve as leaders of both offices. The new digs are located at 601 13th Street, in the heart of the Metro Center neighborhood.

Linklaters is the fourth Magic Circle firm to plant its flag in the nation's capital. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Clifford Chance and Allen & Overy opened D.C. offices in 1998, 2000 and 2011, respectively. Slaughter and May is the only Magic Circle firm without a Washington presence.

"It really is a natural progression," Norton said. "The U.S. practice is at a point where we need a D.C. office."

This article first appeared on The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.

Business Briefing | Media: Washington Post Company Posts Third-Quarter Profit

The Washington Post Company reported a third-quarter profit on Friday, reversing a loss from the same period a year earlier and setting off a 5 percent gain in its share price. The company reported net income of $93.8 million, or $12.64 a share, in the period. A year ago, the Post Company, best known for the Washington Post newspaper, booked a loss of $6.2 million, or 82 cents a share. The third quarter of 2011 included one-time charges of $3.5 million, or 44 cents a share, related to severance and restructuring at Kaplan, an education unit that provides more than half of its revenue. Excluding those items, the company would have earned $4.95 a share in that quarter. The Post”s latest quarter included a one-time charge of $7.6 million, or $1.02 a share, in early retirement, severance and restructuring costs at its newspaper publishing division and at Kaplan. Still, there were fewer charges than last year.Revenue in the most recent quarter was $1.01 billion, about the same as a year earlier. Stock in the company, which is based in Washington, rose $17.05, or 5 percent, to $356.50 a share.