Antitrust

Morning Docket: 12.02.13

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Madam Justice A. Lori Douglas

* What led the Senate Democrats to go nuclear? [New York Times]

* Should Justice Lori Douglas, she of the infamous porn pictures, step down from the bench? Well, she has 324,100 reasons to stay. [Toronto Star]

* And what about Justice Breyer and Justice Ginsburg — should they leave while the Democrats still control the White House and the Senate? [Washington Post via How Appealing]

* A legal challenge to gun control stumbles — on standing grounds. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* Moral of the story: if you want to threaten opposing counsel, don’t do it over voicemail — unless you want to get censured. [ABA Journal]

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara

* Dewey want more details about the lucrative contracts given to Stephen DiCarmine and Joel Sanders? Most definitely! [Am Law Daily (sub. req.)]

* An interesting peek inside the office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. The S.D.N.Y.’s boss is a big fan of the Boss. [New York Times]

* Now that the merger between US Airways and American Airlines has been approved, US Airways CEO Doug Parker offers a behind-the-scenes look at his company’s response to the government’s antitrust lawsuit. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

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The Best Of Hours, The Worst Of Hours: ATL Survey Ratings

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This coming Friday, it is the inalienable right of all Americans to sleep off their hangovers, or riot at Walmart, or do anything at all rather than work for The Man. But Biglaw is a different country. As illustrated by Elie’s decision matrix, the “choice” of whether to work on this sacred day is, for the denizens of the law firm world, fraught with other pressures and expectations. We all know that Biglaw careers demand a Faustian bargain: in return for their fat paychecks (and bonuses?), lawyers are expected to work grueling, unpredictable hours. This time of year, that reality is brought into sharp relief: the “holiday season,” with those “family obligations” and so forth, is something that occurs elsewhere.

But law firm billable expectations are not homogeneous. There are significant differences across practice areas, seniority levels, and, of course, individual firms. So how do the various practices, employment statuses, and firms stack up?

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NCAA Scores Victory In O’Bannon Suit

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College basketball tipped off on Friday, but the biggest NCAA win of the night was in another kind of court. The legal kind… not the “deck of an aircraft carrier” kind. After months of speculation, Judge Claudia Wilken handed down her ruling in the class certification motion in the Ed O’Bannon suit.

If you haven’t been following the O’Bannon case, the former UCLA star heads up a group of current and former players suing the NCAA for improperly restraining players from negotiating the use of their own likenesses on everything from calendars and jerseys to broadcasting contracts and video games.

Judge Wilken’s ruling changes the landscape of the case and sets the parties on a collision course for trial in June. It also makes the NCAA very, very happy…

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Morning Docket: 11.07.13

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Scalia’s buddy?

* “What about devil worshippers?” Justice Scalia may think Satan’s gotten “wilier,” but that doesn’t mean his supporters don’t deserve religious representation in their public meetings. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Speaker of the House John Boehner says that if the Employment Non-Discrimination Act passes, tons of lawsuits will be filed — except that hasn’t happened in states with similar laws. Oopsie… [Reuters]

* Judge Shira Scheindlin isn’t going to just sit there and allow herself to be kicked off the stop and frisk case. In a rare move, she asked the Second Circuit to reverse its ruling and reinstate her. Go girl! [Reuters]

* Quinn Emanuel is welcoming a frequent firm-hopper (from Sidley to Clifford Chance to Cleary Gottlieb) into its ranks in D.C. to join Weil defectors Mike Lyle and Eric Lyttle. Best of luck! [Am Law Daily]

* Gibson Dunn scooped up Scott Hammond, a longtime leader of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. Query just how large the dangling carrot at the end of the firm’s stick was. [Blog of Legal Times]

* Till death or criminal charges do we part: troubled lawyer Kent Easter claims he didn’t have the backbone to stand up to his wife. He blames the entire drug-planting scandal on her. [L.A. Now / Los Angeles Times]

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Morning Docket: 10.31.13

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Brains Billable hours…

* Let’s get ready to rumble! Senate Democrats are threatening to go “nuclear” on existing filibuster rules if Senate Republicans decide to band together to block Patricia Millett’s nomination to the D.C. Circuit. [New York Times]

* AMR Corp. and US Airways are reportedly trying to broker a deal with the Department of Justice that would allow the airlines’ merger to go through. And this is the room full of people who care. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* Proskauer Rose and the zombie corpse of Dewey & LeBoeuf received a Halloween treat from Judge Martin Glenn in the MF Global case. The firms will each be receiving a combined $9 million for their work. [Am Law Daily]

* Twitter is facing a $125 million fraud suit filed by two financial firms claiming that the social media giant had them organize a private sale of shares and then canceled it. #OhShiat #LawyerUp [Businessweek]

* Jill Bjorkholm Easter, the lawyer accused of planting drugs on a PTA volunteer at her son’s school, has pleaded guilty to false imprisonment. Her hubby’s trial is next week. [L.A. Now / Los Angeles Times]

* She’s got the right to remain topless: Holly Van Voast, the photographer famous for roaming the streets of New York with breasts bared, settled a lawsuit against the city for $40,000. [New York Daily News]

* “Ed,” the anonymous editor of the defunct Blawg Review site, RIP. [Trial Warrior Blog; Simple Justice]

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Morning Docket: 10.28.13

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Jodi Arias

* Hot on the heels of news about Pillsbury’s talks with Orrick, we’ve got the scoop on yet another possible law firm merger. Patton Boggs has the urge to merge, and Locke Lord seems pretty receptive. [Reuters]

* Three people who were optimistic about law school graduated with three very different results. One has a job, one is unemployed, and one failed the bar. Sadly, this seems pretty standard. [National Law Journal]

* Lat’s going to be on vacation this week (lucky him), but while he’s gone you can check out his review of a new novel set in a law firm, The Partner Track (affiliate link) by Helen Wan. Enjoy! [Wall Street Journal]

* A judge denied the NCAA’s motion to dismiss Ed O’Bannon’s antitrust lawsuit, noting everyone could “suck her dicta” concerning the Supreme Court’s notion that players cannot be compensated. [ESPN]

* Jodi Arias wants to fire Kirk Nurmi, her lead attorney, claiming in a 12-page handwritten motion that he has an “utter poverty of people skills.” Her words hurt as much as her stab wounds. :( [Arizona Republic]

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Morning Docket: 10.25.13

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Jodi Arias

* Trouble in paradise, so soon? The proposed merger between Dentons and McKenna Long & Aldridge has been delayed. McKenna has postponed its partnership vote, and Dentons says no partnership vote was ever planned. [Daily Report]

* Wherein a firm fails to Latham an ex-employee’s baby mama drama: a legal secretary who was allegedly told her pregnancy complications “were not [the director of HR's] problem” will see her case against L&W move forward. [Blog of Legal Times]

* You know that relations have grown bitter between opposing counsel when attorneys from one firm refer to lawyers from the other as “Monday Morning Quarterbacks.” The legal fee dispute in the BARBRI antitrust case rages on at the Ninth Circuit. [National Law Journal]

* Paging ProudCooleyGrad: Kurzon Strauss, the firm that sued Cooley Law over its allegedly deceptive job stats, is trying to get records unsealed in the school’s defamation case that’s now on appeal. [MLive.com]

* Convicted murderer and jailhouse hottie Jodi Arias is accepting donations for her appeals fund. It could be worth your while — if you donate enough, maybe she’ll consider turning you into her next victim. [HLN TV]

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Morning Docket: 09.13.13

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* Congrats to @FenwickWest on landing the big Twitter IPO! #yaylegalfees [American Lawyer]

* The Deal Professor, Steven Davidoff, surveys the legal landscape around the Twitter filing, focusing on the #JOBSAct. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Jamie McCourt, a former family law attorney, strikes out in trying to set aside her divorce settlement with Frank McCourt, former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. She’s stuck with $131 million and several luxury homes. #richpeopleproblems [National Law Journal (sub. req.)]

* An inquest reveals that a Hogan Lovells partner who took his own life had warned a colleague that he was going to kill himself the day before his death. [Daily Mail via ABA Journal]

* Good news for the news business: the Senate Judiciary Committee approves a federal media-shield bill. [Washington Wire / Wall Street Journal]

* Nathan Myhrvold, the CEO of a patent holding company, warns that anti-patent-troll sentiment could have unforeseen consequences. [Corporate Counsel]

* Praise in the WSJ for Unprecedented: The Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare (affiliate link), the new book by Professor Josh Blackman (who recently wrote a guest post for us on Supreme Court beauty contests). [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* Congrats to George Mason Law on its two high-profile hires: D.C. Circuit Judge Douglas Ginsburg and Covington antitrust partner Damien Geradin. [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]

* If you’re in New York this weekend, go see Arguendo. Or buy tickets for the 7 p.m. performance on September 22, when I’ll be doing a talkback with artistic director John Collins after the show. Enter the discount code “ABOVE” for $35 tickets (a special rate for ATL readers). [Public Theater]

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Laws Make Strange Bedfellows

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I was on a fast-moving segment on HuffPost Live this afternoon called “Legalese It,” where host Mike Sacks runs through a bunch of overlooked legal items from the past week. Since I was on vacation for half of the week, I learned a lot! For instance, did you know that Michigan had an anti-begging statute on the books from the 1920s that was just struck down so they can put a big “Spare Some Change” sign in Detroit?

Okay, that’s not why it was struck down, but still. Also it seems that North Carolina is trying to restrict voting to five white guys chosen at random by Reince Priebus and Obama is now in favor of legislative prayer, as if nobody told him he can’t run for a third term.

Looks like I missed a lot, but that didn’t stop me from talking about it on the web. Specifically, I got to talk about how Eric Holder and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott are now friends when it comes to stopping USAIR and American Airlines from combining to own all the railroads on the Monopoly board…

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Morning Docket: 08.14.13

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Does your law school ROI look like this?

* Victoria Espinel, chief IP counsel to the White House (better known as the “copyright czar”), has stepped down. A tech or trade company will snap her up in 3… 2… [Corporate Counsel]

* Child custody train wreck alert: Baby Veronica of SCOTUS fame was in the news after her father was arrested for refusing to return his child to her adoptive parents. [ABC News]

* Rather than watching people pump gas, BP is watching people pump out lawsuits against the company at a rather alarming rate as a result of its 2010 oil spill. [Businessweek]

* Cynthia Brim, the Illinois judge who was reelected despite the fact that she was legally insane, finally had a complaint filed against her by the state’s judicial board for being just a little bit too kooky for court. [Chicago Tribune]

* Your degree might not be worth a million dollars, but if you went to one of these schools, you probably got a good bank for your buck. We’ll have more on this later. [The Short List / U.S. News & World Report]

* The fight over attorneys’ fees in the antitrust lawsuits filed against BARBRI continues rage on, and class members still haven’t received a penny — which is all they’d really get, anyway. [National Law Journal]

* Congratulations to Newark Mayor and Yale Law alumnus Cory Booker! Last night, he handily won the New Jersey Democratic primary election for the late U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg’s seat. [CBS News]

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