While investors might be steering clear of some initial public offerings set to hit roiling global markets this week, the lawyers pushing the paper behind those listings are staying busy despite price pressures and a skeptical stock market.

A federal jury last week acquitted Rodil Nochez, a leader of a San Francisco chapter of the MS-13 street gang and the first member to go before a jury. Prosecutors hardly seemed to relish a trial against Nochez, who is a mere minnow in a much larger government trawl targeting the violent MS-13 gang.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced last week that workplace discrimination complaints remain at historic high levels, with the agency seeing 93,277 such complaints in fiscal year 2009 — the second-highest level in its history. The year 2008 saw the most workplace discrimination complaints, but EEOC officials do not see in the decrease any sign of relief. Instead, the agency points to the bigger picture, noting that the late 1990s, for example, didn’t average 80,000 such complaints annually.

The 7th U.S.