Allen Stanford

* Billable hours in Biglaw are down 1.5 percent, and 15 percent of U.S. firms are planning to reduce their partnership ranks in early 2013. Thanks to Wells Fargo for bringing us the news of all this holiday cheer! [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Hostess may be winding down its business and liquidating its assets, but Biglaw will always be there to clean up the crumbs. Jones Day, Venable, and Stinson Morrison Hecker obviously think money tastes better than Twinkies. [Am Law Daily]

* How’s that “don’t be evil” thing working out for you? Google’s $22.5M proposed privacy settlement with the FTC over tracking cookies planted on Safari browsers was accepted by a federal judge. [Bloomberg]

* Greenberg Traurig and Hunton & Williams face a $7.2B suit from Allen Stanford’s receiver over a former attorney of both firms’ alleged involvement in the ex-knight’s Ponzi scheme. [Houston Business Journal]

* Perhaps the third time will be the charm: ex-Mayer Brown partner Joseph Collins was convicted, again, for helping Refco steal more than $2B from investors by concealing the company’s fraud. [New York Law Journal]

* H. Warren Knight, founder of alternative dispute resolution company JAMS, RIP. [National Law Journal]

* Joe Amendola has filed a motion to dismiss the child sex abuse charges against his client, Jerry Sandusky. And if he actually thinks that’s going to happen, then he definitely needs to call 1-800-REALITY. [Associated Press]

* @AllenStanford’s motion for a #newtrial has been denied. The Ponzi schemer’s “conviction by journo tweet” argument has failed. Major props to Judge David Hittner for issuing a ruling in less than 140 characters. [Bloomberg]

* Everyone’s obsessed with the U.S. News law school rankings, but here’s a ranking that people should actually be paying attention to: the law schools that lead to the most debt. [The Short List / U.S. News and World Report]

* This defunct firm’s homeless Halloween party just won’t be as fun this year. Steven J. Baum P.C. has to fork over $4M to settle a probe over its alleged foreclosure abuses. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* St. John’s Law is planning to launch two new LL.M. programs, neither of which is in tax. This is newsworthy because people will apply anyway, and then bitch about the “value” of their degree. [National Law Journal]

* John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, RIP. [NAACP LDF]

* Here’s a reason why Proskauer Rose and Chadbourne & Parke might skip out on spring bonuses this year: millions of dollars worth of blowback from Allen Stanford’s Ponzi scheme. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* And speaking of spring bonuses, a lot of people noticed that Sullivan & Cromwell seems to have misled associates. “Just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t.” Yeah, right. [Am Law Daily]

* Next up in the war on women: a senator from Idaho thinks that women are such strumpets that they might be lying their way into abortions by claiming rape. Because that’s not incredibly insensitive. [Washington Post]

* Apparently George Zimmerman, the man accused of fatally shooting a boy armed with a pack of Skittles, wanted to become a police officer. Looks like it’s time to kiss that dream goodbye. [Los Angeles Times]

* Give me your lunch money, kid! Teachers aren’t supposed to be bullying students, but that’s what one Baltimore mother is alleging in a $200K lawsuit against the city’s school board. [New York Daily News]

* In the Barry Bonds trial, an expert on steroids described how the government injected a bunch of baboons with the drug Bonds is accused of using. I, for one, welcome our new baboon overlords. [ESPN] * Some Amish in Kentucky are fighting a regulation that requires reflective safety triangles on their buggies. Say they’d […]

* Rahm’s back. And now you’re all in big BIG trouble. [Chicago Tribune] * It was a resounding victory for Rahm Emanuel, but two justices didn’t think the majority needed to benchslap so hard. [Chicago Sun-Times] * No more jokes about Allen Stanford. Still, that picture reminds me of a Geto Boys album cover. [TPMMuckraker] […]

* Breast implants linked to cancer, looking awesome. [Associated Press] * A Russian man is accused of posing as an immigration lawyer and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from fellow countrymen. Police say they knew he was lying when he began doing bizarre, and ridiculously obvious, things with Oreos. [Sun-Sentinel] * You know how […]