IN BRIEF

Madoff mess spreads to accounting firms

A Minnesota accounting firm has been hit by lawsuits alleging that it failed to detect problems in two separate Ponzi schemes — the purported $50 billion investment scam by New York financier Bernard Madoff and the $3.5 billion alleged “electronics” scheme by Thomas Petters.

The suits against McGladrey & Pullen, a national 100-office auditing firm based in Bloomington, Minn., and similar suits stemming from the Madoff scandal against accounting firms KPMG, Ernst & Young and BDO Seidman, point up the likely spread of litigation as financial victims attempt to recover massive losses.

McGladrey’s attorney, Steven M. Farina of Williams & Connolly in Washington, declined to comment.

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Legal service sector cuts 1,300 jobs in January

The legal service sector continued to slash payrolls in January with a loss of 1,300 jobs throughout the industry, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics released on Feb. 6.

The job losses in the legal sector were just a fraction of the 598,000 jobs shed throughout the United States last month as the national unemployment rate rose to 7.6%. Since the current recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost 3.6 million jobs. The legal sector alone has shed 14,500 during that period, Bureau of Labor Statistics reports show.