Morning Docket

* Elon Musk calls for global boycott of Latham & Watkins over firm’s work with the homeless. [San Francisco Standard]

* FTC says district court ruling on Microsoft deal “riddled with errors” marking the eight millionth time “Microsoft” and “riddled with errors” have appeared in the same sentence. [Law360]

* Speaking of the FTC, they’re also cracking down on social media influencers. Wouldn’t you know it… right before my career takes off! [Corporate Counsel]

* ABA sets up committee to explore the risks and opportunities of AI even though we’ve been discussing the risks and opportunities of AI ad nauseam for months now. [Reuters]

* Orrick sued again over hacker attack. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Reveal expected to announce acquisition of Logikcull and IPRO. [WSJ]

* Trial date for Trump’s DC case should be set today. [Reuters]

* In shocking turn, insurance company ordered to pay for thing it insured. [Bloomberg Law News]

* NY judge sanctions attorney for making off-color jokes. “Buffoonery does not belong in a courthouse,” says NY judge apparently unfamiliar with the work of several federal judges. [Law360]

* Line spacing and fonts… a deep dive into judicial opinion formatting. [National Law Journal]

* Mark Meadows may have screwed himself while trying to get out of the Georgia state courts. [Just Security]

* Local judge doesn’t understand Facebook settings… and hence gets censured. [Legal Profession Blog]

* Tackling banks is a good way to make some coin. Like, $499M worth of coin! [Law.com]

* Planning on a cheap Spirit flight? Better buy that ticket before the JetBlue merger. [Law360]

* Stop WOKE is probably just “Stop the 1st Amendment,” and this judge sees it. [Bloomberg Law]

* A school district just hired a law firm to investigate improper staff interactions with students. Much better than an “internal investigation” where everyone agrees to ignore the problem. [WGME]

* Judge clarified the fine line between working for a firm and working to the benefit of one.[Law Gazettte]

* Atlanta jail scheduled with the honor of holding a former president. Let’s see how this goes! [Reuters]

* Former Biglaw attorney grabs himself an insider trading charge. What, law firm money not cutting it anymore? [Reuters]

* New Jersey’s Supreme Court to hear if anti-discrimination law has to make an exception for 70 pound dog. [ABA Journal]

* Amazon apologizes for guilt by association automated system that affected two trademark attorneys. [Law.com]

* Casinos face an antitrust lawsuit for unwillingness to gamble on market hotel room costs. [Law.com]

* You’ll never guess what Trump judges are doing to hurt minorities! Okay, they’re ignoring the Supreme Court — we all saw this coming.  [Slate]

* AI is writing books using humans as pen names. The people aren’t too happy about it! [Bloomberg Law]

* Does telling people to not be racist on the job violate the 1st? The 11th Circuit will be hearing arguments to determine an answer soon. [Bloomberg Law]

* Norway says “No Way!” to Meta’s European data privacy violations. [Reuters]

* In a much awaited outcome to a heated case, the 2nd Circuit decided that covering up an offensive work of art doesn’t violate the Visual Artists Rights Act. [ABA Journal]

* You think Trump is going to turn himself in? Unrelated, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. [Newsweek]

* Hofstra Law’s asylum clinic is doing more than teaching students. It’s changing lives. [Newsday]

* Will be hard for Trump to take the “I’ll just pardon myself” route if he can’t even run for office a second time. [Forbes]

* Slow Work Doesn’t Excuse Slow Billing! Biglaw firms are cracking down on lazy time entry. [American Lawyer]

* Is Hawaiian Electrical Ind. Inc. basically a governmental agency? If so, they’re about to be out of a lot of money. [Yahoo!]

* Depressed about how awful the Supreme Court is right now? Maybe it’s not the worst. I mean it’s still bad, but there’s room for hope. [Vox]

* AI is not an artist. Judge reject copyright for AI generated artwork. [Law360]

* Biden administration wants to be able to block you. The Solicitor General will argue to the Supreme Court that government officials that blocker social media users on their own personal accounts do not violate the First Amendment. [Law.com]

* So, this is how Hunter Biden’s plea deal fell apart. [Politico]

* Asa Hutchinson understands the 14th Amendment, thinks Donald Trump is likely disqualified from running for president. [The Hill]

* White House Counsel Stuart Delery is leaving the job next month. Where will the revolving door land? Probably Gibson Dunn. [Law360]

* State judge blocks Texas law that barred Houston — and only Houston — from running its local elections after the city started electing Black women. [AP]

* NY Times mulls suing OpenAI to prevent GPT from learning how to compose whataboutism takes that put David Brooks out of a job. [NPR]

* We knew Thomson Reuters planned to buy Casetext for $650 million. It’s now official. [Legaltech News]

* Yes, you can lose your job for posting about committing vehicular manslaughter against Black people. [Reuters]

* Supreme Court could improve its legitimacy by hewing closer to rigorous policy analysis. They can’t even do rigorous historical analysis, how are they supposed to do rigorous policy analysis? [Milken Institute Review]

* Before getting indicted for joining criminal coup-spiracy, Ken Chesebro was a Larry Tribe research assistant. [ABA Journal]

* EEOC considers renewing race and gender pay reports. Raising concerns about litigation from anti-affirmative action forces who are so sure that discrimination doesn’t exist that they don’t want anyone checking their work. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Fired attorney calls cops on partner. [Roll on Friday]

* Fifth Circuit judges anoint themselves pharmaceutical scientists to determine that the FDA probably didn’t understand mifepristone when its scientists exercised their statutory and regulatory authority. So now judges are historians, neurologists, and drug scientists. Yale and Harvard JDs really prepare you to be jackasses of all trades! [Reuters]

* Speaking of judges acting as neurologists, the Federal Circuit backtracked to avoid that charge and cited Judge Pauline Newman’s reticence to hand over medical records of a cardiac event as the key justification to ban her from the court. Which fails their own twisted rationale since a risk of heart attack has no bearing on a judge’s faculties. But in any event, they’re cardiologists now, too. [Law360]

* It took a matter of hours for Trump supporters to publicly circulate the names and addresses of Georgia grand jurors. [NBC]

* By nixing student loan forgiveness, the Supreme Court likely also jacked the market by robbing it of 401(k) investment. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Law firms are generally uninterested in a fully remote workforce — which is understandable in some practice areas. But somehow this is going to get conflated with hybrid work models and some dumb firm is going to think it has cover to fully end working from home — to the delight of the firms looking to poach. [American Lawyer]

* Fox News needs a new CLO after the last one presided over the company accumulating upwards of a billion in liability. Who would want this job? [Corporate Counsel]

* Freshfields managing partner races in FIA bronze level events in his spare time. [LegalCheek]

* Judge Edith Jones writes a letter to the Wall Street Journal blasting the Federal Circuit’s actions to sideline Judge Pauline Newman. [Wall Street Journal]

* Blind Side subject Michael Oher has filed to end the conservatorship of the couple he lived with. Oher alleges that he believed he was being adopted when in reality he handed over substantial financial rights and no one checked for almost two decades. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Black lawyer says he was handcuffed while a judge ordered him to produce documents or settle the case. [ABA Journal]

* Lawsuit claims that state law illegally favors Iowa wineries. In other news, Iowa has wineries. [DMR]

* Class action suits filed against Hawaiian utility companies over fires. [Law.com]

* ABA considering rule requiring law schools to adopt written free speech policies. No way this just turns into a cudgel for powerful interests to squelch protest under the moniker of “free speech.” Yep, no way at all! [Reuters]

* Former FBI agent admits taking cash from sanctioned Russian oligarchs. [Law360]

* Keep track of who’s who in the latest indictment. [Politico]

* Meanwhile, Abbe Lowell and Winston & Strawn have stepped up their collective role in the Hunter Biden case, arguing that the original plea agreement included binding government promises that didn’t evaporate just because the judge rejected the deal. [Law360]

* CFPB going after data brokers selling people’s personal data. Yet again, the government agency making the most direct, tangible impact for people is the one that still worries that every election might be its last. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Justice Department urges Supreme Court to deal with unconstitutional social media laws out of Texas and Florida. [Reuters]

* Has “flexibility” lost all meaning when it comes to law firm office scheduling? No. Just because some law firms try to engage in flexibility newspeak, doesn’t actually change its meaning. [American Lawyer]

* AI may not be ready to replace lawyers, but the California Innocence Project is leveraging the tool to assist in pursuit of justice. [ABA Journal]

* London Kirkland team headed to Paul Weiss resigned on a Sunday in a power move. [LegalCheek]

* It took a couple of days, but Donald Trump has blown off Judge Chutkan’s warning that further public attacks on the proceedings would result in accelerating the existing January trial schedule. At the rate he’s going, expect the trial next week! [Politico]

* Meanwhile, in Georgia, prosecutors apparently have messages directly tying Trump’s legal team to voting system breach. [CNN]

* Florida Bar proposes allowing law school grads to engage in limited practice before passing the bar exam. One of many emergency measures required to make sure Donald Trump and his fellow indictees can secure local counsel. [Jax Daily Record]

* Law.com lists lawyers on social media it considers attorney-influencers. [Law.com]

* UPS reached an agreement with its workers, but it had strikebreaking plans all worked out. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Judge charged with murdering wife. [Law360]

* Sam Bankman-Fried off to Brooklyn MDC after judge finds witness tampering efforts in violation of bail, bringing renewed publicity to the facility’s abhorrent conditions. [Reuters]

* Supreme Court steps in to block opioid settlement that would’ve immunized the Sacklers. Looks like someone needs to start buying some luxury vacations for Clarence! [CNN]

* FEC looking into campaign deepfakes. Not to offer Donald Trump free advice, but he might want to embrace AI and argue that all those election calls were just malicious AI phonies. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Law firm closing up shop after nearly a century in business. [Law.com]

* Ed Blum is taking his effort to stamp out diversity from the classroom to the boardroom, going after a venture capital firm that invests in Black-owned businesses. [Reuters]

* University of California drawing back from Lewis Brisbois over the email scandal. Though those guys aren’t there anymore so this is more of a “how did you let this happen?” penalty. [Law360]

* Caltech and Apple have settled lawsuit over Wifi. With that kind of money, maybe they can join the Big Ten too. [9to5Mac]

* Is an LLM worth putting off a Biglaw job? [LegalCheek]

* Another day, another several hundred grand worth of unethical and undisclosed gifts for Clarence Thomas. [ProPublica]

* ABA encouraging law firms to redouble efforts to expand diversity… before the Supreme Court makes it illegal. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Lawsuit alleges private attorney took on upwards of 600 indigent client criminal cases, collecting huge sums from the city, and then not doing any work. That’s not totally true… the lawsuit alleges that the lawyer was quite diligent about filing motions for fees. [ABA Journal]

* Treasury announcing regulations to curb money laundering through real estate. Maybe Manhattan will be affordable again in 15 years! [Reuters]

* A Wisconsin police department refuses to divulge the name of officers who shoot people citing victim’s rights laws and arguing that if they shot someone they must have felt threatened and therefore are the real victims. [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]

* Don’t use AI to write your firm’s web content reports the department of obvious things. [Search Engine Journal]

* Ninth Circuit says text spam is not covered by the TCPA. Great! Just in time for generative AI to remove almost every entry barrier to mass text spamming. [Law360]

* Can you avoid discovery by saying, “the dog ate my homework”? Asking for a Rudy Giuliani. [Guardian]

* Anti-porn legislation is “Making the Online Porn Industry Retreat.” Impressed with the restraint it took not to say “pull out.” [Politico]

* Ohio voters reject effort to game the rules. [Courthouse News Service]

* Shareholders approved fewer ESG proposals this year because they’re fickle cowards. [Corporate Counsel]

* Starbucks can’t fire people just for being pro-union. [Law360]

* Teacher refusing to use student’s personal pronouns to test SCOTUS standard. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Southwest will appeal court’s order that it take training classes from a designated hate group. Too bad that appeal is going to the Fifth Circuit. [Reuters]

* Biggest law firm no more… Dentons splitting from Dacheng as China institutes new cybersecurity regulations. [Financial Times]

* The folks behind the Supreme Court case striking down affirmative action in higher education are now launching suits against diversity in the private sector. [WSJ]

* John Eastman wants his disbarment proceedings halted so he can concentrate on being an (as yet) unindicted co-conspirator. [The Hill]

* The Federal Circuit wants to sideline Judge Pauline Newman for not submitting to a mental health examination… or more accurately their mental health examination. Because she has been examined by a neurologist who blasted the circuit’s recommendation. First federal judges explain history to historians, now they’re explaining neurology to neurologists. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Trump judge orders Southwest Airlines attorneys to attend “religious freedom” training from designated hate group. [Law360]

* Stroock and Stroock and Leavin’. More partners jump ship as the firm votes to end its pension obligations. [American Lawyer]

* Attorneys in Wells Fargo case ask for $180 million. Or double what Wachtell wanted for the Twitter deal that got everyone in a tizzy. [Reuters]

* Elon claims that X will pay legal fees of users who lost their jobs over deplorable stuff they Tweeted. Bold promise from a guy who won’t even pay his own legal fees. [Fortune]

* Law firm demand is up as the market continues to fret about the recession that never materialized. [Reuters]

* Federal Circuit panel calls for Judge Pauline Newman to be suspended for a year for not submitting to a mental health examination to prove or disprove the mental health allegations that the Federal Circuit seeks to suspend her over. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Convicted war criminal seeks bar admission. In case you were worried about how character & fitness might eye your speeding tickets. [The Intercept]

* Ken Paxton’s lawyers recognize the broad gag order prohibiting them from discussing the case with the media beyond reciting information in public records… so they’re just going on the radio and reading selective, inflammatory passages from their filings. [KABB]

* Attorney David Oscar Markus snagged around 45 minutes with Trump attorney John Lauro. [For the Defense]

* Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree has passed away. [Politico]

* Elena Kagan has entered the chat: Justice Kagan sounds off in response to Samuel Alito’s self-serving thoughts on the ability to check the Supreme Court’s power. [Politico]

* Thanks to the ban on cameras in federal court, all we get is a sketch of Donald Trump’s not-guilty plea. [Huffington Post]

* The legal battle to end Wisconsin’s egregious gerrymander heats up. [Vox]

* The defamation case between Fox News and Smartmatic is getting spicy. [Law.com]

* A look at Donald Trump’s latest defense attorney. [Law360]

* Plaintiff seeks sanctions against Rudy Giuliani in breach of contract lawsuit. This seems like… not the most pressing of the former NYC mayor’s legal woes. [New York Law Journal]

* Norton Rose Fulbright partner Vincent Dunn is working on the road from Australia. That’s because his daughter, Crystal Dunn, is playing for the U.S. Women’s National Team in the World Cup. [National Law Journal]

* 96-year-old Judge Pauline Newman wrote a pointed dissent amid questions of her competency. [Law360]

* Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe weighs in on the case against FTX crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried, on behalf of the defendant. [Reuters]

* Georgia district attorneys are suing over a new law giving the state the power to remove the elected officials over discretionary decisions. [Bloomberg Law]

* Six of Donald Trump’s co-conspirators go unnamed in the federal indictment against him for crimes related to the January 6th coup attempt. Five of them are attorneys. Let’s speculate on who they all are. [Washington Post]

* Former Attorney General/current Paul, Weiss attorney Loretta Lynch to investigate allegations of hazing on the Northwestern football team. [Law360]

* A look at the judge assigned to the Donald Trump January 6th case. [Huffington Post]

* The family of Henrietta Lacks settles lawsuit over her stolen cells. [Law & Crime]

* If you can even believe it, America’s gun laws could get even more lax. [Vox]