Above the Law

Morning Docket: 04.14.26

* DLA Piper prevails in former associate's pregnancy discrimination case. [New York Law Journal]

* Perkins Coie and Ashurst partners approve merger. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Client AI use could drive up legal fees. [Financial Times]

* Anthropic GC predicts that AI will finally defeat the billable hour. [Corporate Counsel]

* Biglaw tax lawyer pursues Guinness record by completing marathon dressed as Captain Underpants. [Legal Cheek]

* D.C. Circuit tells government they've got some 'splaining to do about how the FTC's probe into Media Matters amounts to anything but a political attack. [Law360]

* Court tosses Trump's defamation suit against Wall Street Journal. [Reuters]

Morning Docket: 04.13.26

* White House ballroom construction resumes for now. [Reuters]

* Winston carries healthy profit growth into its merger with Taylor Wessing. [American Lawyer]

* Fourth Circuit agrees to let Big Ballz have all your Social Security information. Surely nothing can go wrong! [Courthouse News Service]

* Speaking of the Fourth Circuit, Judge Julius Richardson in a concurrence declared that emergency orders were "precedent" which is, um, not at all how that works. [One First]

* Oil companies want a litigation shield like the gun manufacturers have. [New York Times]

* Ed Blum is back with a new effort to purge Black students from schools. [Balls and Strikes]

* Trump elevates another of his personal attorneys to the appellate bench. [Law360]

* Wisconsin switches to the UBE for out-of-state admits. [ABA Journal]

Yale Chokes Back Tears To Declare There’s No Shame In Second — See Generally

Yale Fail: Yale's two-decade stranglehold on the No. 1 law school ranking ends in a rankings shakeup. Well, at least they have JD Vance -- another famous second banana!

Feel Free To Let The Screen Door Hit You On The Way Out: Pam Bondi's tenure as Attorney General ends just in time for a bar disciplinary investigation, unless Florida invents another reason to absolve Bondi of accountability for her actions.

Epstein, Who?: Meanwhile, Bondi hopes to use her firing to get out of explaining the Epstein files to Congress.

The Annual "Which Gilded Cage Is Most Prestigious" Survey: Vault again ranks the 100 most prestigious law firms in America.

Trolls Gonna Troll: Law school Federalist Society chapter invites Amy Wax to share her thoughts about the problem with women and minorities.

Diploma With A Two-Drink Minimum: Georgetown Law replaces its graduation gala with a school happy hour and many students aren't happy.

Time Is Relative, Especially On A Timesheet: Lawyer bills more hours than exist in a calendar day, professional hilarity ensues.

The More It Smiles, The More You Should Worry: Legal AI tools optimized for user satisfaction are also the ones most likely to confidently hallucinate a fake circuit court opinion.

The USFL Never Died, It Just Became Federal Policy: Trump deploys the DOJ against the NFL over grievances that predate most of his current staff, because using the justice system as a personal grudge machine apparently has no statute of limitations.

The Pentagon's Legal Battles Going About As Well As Iran: The Defense Department benchslapped over press policy.

How Appealing Weekly Roundup

The week in appellate news.

Morning Docket: 04.10.26

* Texas judge ordered a lawyer to appear in court for criticizing the judge for berating an IT worker in a viral video. The lawyer refused to show up himself, but his fellow lawyers did to push back on the improper, retaliatory order. [NY Post]

* AI hallucination penalties rise, and yet lawyers keep citing fake cases. [NPR]

* Elon Musk sues Colorado over state's AI regulations. [Reuters]

* Another court rules that copyright can't be used to restrict access to the law. [EFF]

* Gibson Dunn partner tapped as next SEC Enforcement chief. He faces a tough challenge to make the agency even more impotent than it was in 2025 when investigations hit historic lows. [Corporate Counsel]

* Court swats down Pentagon press restrictions as "mark of autocracy." [Law360]

Morning Docket: 04.09.26

* Anthropic fails to secure a stay of Pete Hegseth's "give us autonomous murder bots or else" designation. But the all-Republican panel of the D.C. Circuit ordered expedited briefing, a signal that even the administration's friendliest possible panel is struggling with the argument "this company is a supply chain risk and the remedy is... we should be able to use even more of it." [Politico]

* FBI arrests woman for leaking information about unsolved drug trafficking murders at Fort Bragg. Federal law enforcement continues to be fairly blasé about solving the actual murders though. [Guardian]

* ABA issues first not qualified rating for a Trump II judicial nominee. [Reuters]

* Trump asks NY Court of Appeals to throw out civil judgment against Trump Organization on the grounds that the case was prejudicial since Letitia James campaigned on being anti-fraud... or something. [Courthouse News Service]

* DOJ's leading antitrust attorneys announce departures. Todd Blanche's tough talk about combatting fraud doesn't seem to be off to a good start. [Law360]

* Lawyer accused of running a staged car accident racket for insurance settlements. I know you're thinking you've heard this one already, but this is a different lawyer accused of doing it. [NY Post]

* Ketamine dealer sentenced to 15 years in Matthew Perry's death.[AP News]

Morning Docket: 04.08.26

* In first press conference since learning that he would soon be the Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche explains that the DOJ's official stance is that Trump has a "right" to direct criminal investigations of his enemies. [Reuters]

* Pam Bondi isn't technically gone yet, but Todd Blanche already updated his title. [Daily Beast]

* DOJ Civil Rights Division launches investigation of Cassidy Hutchinson for testifying to the January 6 Committee. It's not a potential charge the Civil Rights Division would normally handle, but it's not like they're doing anything else these days. [NY Times]

* ICE currently arresting domestic violence survivors when they go to court to testify against their abusers. [The Atlantic]

* Sotomayor calls out Kavanaugh stops. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr threaten legal action against CNN for... verbatim reporting Iran's statement about the ceasefire. [Independent]

* GC survey shows last year's executive branch extortion efforts against Biglaw transformed outside counsel selection. [Corporate Counsel]

Morning Docket: 04.07.26

* As we already covered, the new US News law school rankings are out and... they're wild. [US News]

* Biglaw firms lend support to those fighting the Trump administration. [Reuters]

* DLA Piper pregnancy bias trial kicked off yesterday, with the firm telling jury that it fired associate over her work. [NY Law Journal]

* Supreme Court looks to help Bannon escape conviction. [CNN]

* More scammers impersonating law firms. [Law.com International]

* Drake appeal described as dangerous. [Billboard]

* Third Circuit bets on Kalshi. [Law360]

* Judge loses job after investigation finds lying and efforts to help landlords. [ABA Journal]

Trump Crashes Out At Supreme Court — See Generally

Born Loser: Donald Trump took the unprecedented step of sitting in as the Supreme Court heard oral argument on the challenge to the administration's executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship. He bailed long before the argument ended once even he could see his case was totally cooked.

You Can't Fix Stupid, But You Can Quote-Tweet It: Justice Jackson asked a hypothetical about stealing a wallet in Japan to -- a hypothetical to explore the various meanings of being subject to jurisdiction -- and kicked a hornets' nest of social media racists questioning her legal credentials from their mom's basement.

Check Your Cites: In its attempt to rewrite birthright citizenship, the administration cited Confederate officer and segregation advocate Alexander Porter Morse as an authority -- a reminder that not every supporting citation is a good idea.

Contempt Of Court, IT Edition: A Texas judge threw an IT worker out of his courtroom for the crime of diagnosing a non-existent audio problem. And then somehow the story kept getting crazier.

Clerk And Awe: Susman Godfrey bumped its federal clerkship signing bonus to $180,000, with $200K for multiple clerkships, joining Hueston Hennigan at the top of the market and making the rest of Biglaw's offers look like a participation trophy.

Bye Bye Bondi: Trump canned his Attorney General, describing her next move as "transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector" -- which is somehow even more brutal than the Kristi Noem treatment, where at least Trump bothered to invent a fake new government position.

Portrait Of A Lady In A Dumpster Fire: Bondi's official portrait was almost immediately spotted in the garbage at DOJ.

Will The Real Bloated Shady Please Stand Up: Trump's legal team argued in the January 6 civil case that, if you think about it, the president is basically like a rapper whose concert gets out of hand -- and Judge Mehta methodically dismantled the analogy.

How Appealing Weekly Roundup

The week in appellate news.

Morning Docket: 04.02.26

* DOJ has dropped some 23,000 criminal cases -- including terrorism and drug cases -- to focus on deporting law-abiding roofers instead. [ABA Journal]

* In an all-around bad day for the government, Justice Barrett's question might have done the most damage. [Slate]

* But even if Trump only gets one vote on this case, that dissent is just the seed from which the next wave of assaults will grow. [Balls and Strikes]

* Mahmoud Khalil wants Emil Bove recused from his appeal given Bove's role in telling prosecutors to say "f**k you" to judges who wouldn't go along with illegal deportations like the one attempted on Khalil. [Law360]

* Luigi's state trial delayed until the fall. [Reuters]

* Solicitor General wants some Supreme Court argument time in the Roundup case. If he does as well as he did in the birthright citizenship case, Monsanto may have to go bankrupt. [Law.com]

* After taking airport to court, sexual harassment firm has its ad displayed. [AP News]

Morning Docket: 04.01.26

* Trump claims he's attending today's birthright citizenship arguments. At his New York criminal conviction, he took over closing arguments from his lawyers, believing he could do a better job. Let's see if we get the sequel! [Politico]

* Taylor Swift sued by showgirl over Life of a Showgirl. [ABA Journal]

* The Supreme Court agreed with a gay conversion therapy outfit that laws banning merely talking about conversion violate the First Amendment right to give quack medical advice. [Slate]

* Boies Schiller looks to get paid for massive Google victory. [Reuters]

* Republican federal judge blocks construction on White House ballroom, noting that the president does not, in fact, own the White House. [Law360]

* Law firm leaders seeking out lawyer hires with AI experience. Finally there's a market for, "spending the last two years telling your grandparents that Donald Trump didn't really ride a lion in that TikTok." [Legaltech News]

Morning Docket: 03.31.26

* Over half of all federal judges report using AI as part of their workflow. [Reuters]

* Kirkland snags several Latham lawyers in Houston. [American Lawyer]

* New wrinkle in Charlie Kirk case as defense argues ATF couldn't match bullet to alleged shooter's gun. [Politico]

* Judge invokes Kafka in Defense Department press credential dust up. [Law360]

* Meta counsel says AI has changed the outsourcing game. Notice how she didn't say "the Metaverse" has changed anything. [Legalech News]

* Baldoni lawyers handed a little benchslap in Lively case. [Bloomberg Law News]

Morning Docket: 03.30.26

* 'Don't blame your associate' for messing up AI. Sure, but then why even have associates? [ABA Journal]

* The DOJ seeks superseding indictments in all the cases invalidated by pretending Alina Habba was the US Attorney. [New Jersey Law Jounral]

* Meanwhile, House Judiciary Committee votes to block judges from replacing illegal appointees like Habba. Note that they didn't fix the illegality, just the ability to do anything to fix it. [Roll Call]

* Department of Defense's block on Anthropic suspended for now. [Reuters]

* BofA agrees to deal to get them off Epstein's Island. [Law360]

* Dutch order Grok to stop being nonconsensual porn generator as if Grok does anything else. [Law.com International]

Birthdays Come And Go, But Billable Hours Are Forever — See Generally

Biglaw Partner Drops Future Therapy Fodder: Asked how she juggles being a working mom, a newly minted partner offered a refreshingly horrifying answer: sometimes you miss your own kid's birthday party.

The AI Pipeline Crisis Nobody Wants To Talk About: AI won't replace lawyers, but it might create a critical shortage of good ones.

Major Regional Firm Calling It Quits: Atlanta's Taylor Duma is shutting down after 21 years, given "the influx of firms into the Atlanta market."

One Law Firm Commits To Doing Something About Broken Recruiting Model: Susman Godfrey is done trying to fight over recruits who haven't even finished their first set of exams.

Former Attorney Generals... They're Just Like Us!: Bill Barr spotted in a 3-hour TSA line at Houston's IAH, courtesy of the president he sacrificed his reputation for.

Trump Says His Own Supreme Court Appointees "Sicken" Him: Girl, same.

My Cousin Vinny Somehow Managed To Get More Realistic Through The Studio Revision Process: In a fun exercise, Litera used the draft screenplays from My Cousin Vinny to show off its document comparison tool and AI assistant.

Jay Clayton's SDNY Throws ICE Under The Nearest Available Bus: Clayton's office informed the court that they've been accidentally lying to judges for months and it's all ICE's fault.

ATL March Madness Bracket Enters The Elite Eight: Voting continues through Monday to decide the Trump lawyer most deserving of their eventual disbarment.