Two New Jersey trial judges have been reprimanded for making derogatory comments touching on the alienage, ethnicity, race and honesty of physical ailments of litigants and lawyers appearing before them. Among a litany of incidents laid out in court papers, James Citta compared a criminal defendant to O.J. Simpson and ridiculed another for being an immigrant, and James Convery asked a Hispanic lawyer if she was an illegal alien.

Failure to make a prima facie case that an anonymous e-mail was defamatory is grounds to quash a subpoena seeking the writer’s identity, a New Jersey appellate court says.

Religious schools don’t have a free pass to ignore a key federal employment law based on a “ministerial exception.” At least not in the 6th Circuit, according to a ruling Tuesday in a case of first impression. Kindergarten teacher Cheryl Perich says she was unlawfully fired by Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran School in Redford, Mich., after she suddenly became ill — she was later diagnosed with narcolepsy — and went on disability leave.

Lehman Brothers and its lawyers at Weil, Gotshal & Manges sent a clear message this week to the judge hearing Lehman’s bankruptcy case: Make public the full report about Lehman’s demise. In a motion filed Monday by Weil’s Harvey Miller, Lehman says it has cooperated fully with the special examiner investigating the bank’s failure and has turned over more than 20 million pages of e-mail.

Just a decade ago, China’s rise as an economic superpower still seemed uncertain. Back then, the China practice of major international firms was still mainly the province of the Old China Hands — lawyers who perhaps had a deeper affinity for Chinese language and culture than the practice of law — who focused on representing foreign companies opening factories and shops in China.