Arbitration

* Trump tabs Skadden partner Michael Scudder for Seventh Circuit seat. Here’s some quotes from James Comey praising Scudder, so we know the Deep State must be happy. [National Law Journal]

* Yes, it’s accurate to say that the specific job of sheriff has an “Anglo-American heritage.” And, yes, given that it’s entirely unnecessary to do so — when terms like “common law” exist — the fact that someone would use that phrasing is indicative of racial bias. In fact, if anyone drops “heritage” when talking about white people it’s probably a bad sign. [Washington Post]

* All 56 Attorneys General are asking Congress to end forced arbitration in sexual harassment cases. Florida’s Pam Bondi stepped out of her usual ethical cloud to say, “decades of private arbitration proceedings regarding sexual harassment have had the unintended consequence of protecting serial violators.” You can go ahead and delete “regarding sexual harassment” and only improve the accuracy there. [Daily Business Review]

* DLA Piper has a new senior partner, which I believe grants him the official title of “Pied Piper.” [International]

* ABA looking to make online education easier. [Inside Higher Ed]

* Jones Day continues to have the top law firm brand according to the annual Acritas survey of clients. [American Lawyer]

* One of the tourists killed in the Grand Canyon helicopter crash this weekend was a lawyer. [American Lawyer]

* “Legal aid is critical after a natural disaster,” so the Florida Bar has raised the income cap for its online legal clinic so Floridians affected by Hurricane Irma can get legal assistance, and the Florida Bar Foundation has set aside $500,000 to support legal aid organizations. How generous! [Law.com]

* Sixteen years have passed since the September 11 attacks, but we’ve yet to try or convict any of the five men who are said to have planned the day that changed America, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged “architect of 9/11.” Some lawyers wonder why this “isn’t a cause for more outrage.” [Al Jazeera]

* In case you missed it, Irell & Manella has elected Ellisen Turner as its first African-American managing partner. Among the many accolades he’s earned over the course of his illustrious legal career, Above the Law once referred to him as a “hottie.” Congratulations on all accounts! [Big Law Business]

* Lawmakers from both parties are interested in holding hearings on the massive Equifax hack, and after outcry from state attorneys general about an arbitration clause that would have prevented those affected by the data breach from suing, the credit reporting agency has changed its terms of service. [The Hill]

* In the wake of Justice Scalia’s death, Justice Kagan says the remaining justices did everything they could to avoid 4-4 split decisions: “[W]e all made a very serious effort to try to find common ground even where we thought we couldn’t. It sort of forced us to keep talking to each other.” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

* Which Biglaw firm is about to get a lot bigger? It’s Cozen O’Connor, apparently. According to CEO Michael Heller, he’d like to increase the firm’s head count to somewhere between 700 and 1,000 lawyers in the next five years. About 600 attorneys are currently working at Cozen. [Am Law Daily]

This week in the legal blogosphere….

* Everyone gets their day in arbitration really doesn’t have a great ring to it. But, Benchmark Capital’s lawsuit against former Uber head Travis Kalanick is headed there anyway. [Law and More]

* New York City Department of Education Chancellor Carmen Farina spoke at New York Law School about the partnerships and programs that create a truly comprehensive education for public school kids. Anyone interested in the state of public education should pay attention to Farina’s remarks. [Cityland]

* “I betrayed my people and will be known as a modern day Dathan, all for tax cuts, but all I got was this stupid hat” — Gary Cohn soon. [The Levin Report]

* Is the judge in Senator Menendez’s trial unfairly disenfranchising voters by preventing him for attending Senate votes? [The Hill]

* Remember William C. Bradford? Well, he says it was the hackers who made his account call Obama’s mother a whore. That sounds totally plausible! [CNN]

* Law student caught on video trying to burn money in front of a homeless man won’t be expelled. He’s a still a dick though. [Legal Cheek]

* Judge Harold Murphy took senior status at 90. A look back at a distinguished career. [Bloomberg BNA]

* Another reminder that doing good usually puts you behind the 8 ball financially. [Medium]

* The political anger against big banking in general and Wells Fargo, specifically, could hurt their forced arbitration efforts. [Cowboys On The Commons]

* Warner Brothers’s settlement over paying — and not disclosing that fact — influencers to subtly promote its video game Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. [The Fashion Law]

* The California Bar is considering a ban on client-attorney sex. [Law and More]

* Rumor has it Steve Bannon is totally fine with suppressing black voter turnout. [Huffington Post]

* Yes, the electoral college sucks, but they are still going to elect Donald Trump. [Slate]

* “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” President-elect Donald Trump can’t keep himself away from his Twitter account thanks to the recount that’s going on, and now he seems to have accidentally called into question the legitimacy of the election in its entirety. Oopsie! [New York Times]

* Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has jumped on Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s election recount bandwagon, but according to campaign general counsel Marc Elias, it’s only “to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.” Thus far, Wisconsin has already agreed to perform a recount. [CBS News]

* Just like the president-elect who’s included him on his Supreme Court shortlist, Judge Raymond M. Kethledge of the Sixth Circuit seems to be incredibly blunt. The judge expects civility between parties in briefs, but is well known for his “caustic rebuke[s]” and “eviscerat[ing] [litigants] like first-day law student[s].” [Big Law Business]

* Per recent TV ads, “Wells Fargo is making changes to make things right,” but only if those changes don’t involve public court records: Wells Fargo customers who had unauthorized accounts opened in their names have filed a class-action suit, but the bank is trying to quash their claims by forcing plaintiffs into arbitration. [CNN Money]

* “If you look at other parts of the state — Houston, Dallas, San Antonio — everybody has a law school.” But that doesn’t mean that everybody needs to have a law school. A dearth of potential applicants be damned, because lawmakers in the Texas Rio Grande Valley are going ahead with plans to establish a public law school in the area. [Valley Star]

* “Donald Ducks,” the DNC’s mascot that’s being used to taunt Donald Trump for his undisclosed tax returns, bears a striking resemblance to Disney’s Donald Duck, and people are starting to wonder: “Is Donald Ducks waddling over Disney’s intellectual property rights?” [WSJ Law Blog]

* The Third Circuit declined to re-seal excerpts of depositions in the Bill Cosby case where he admitted to giving women Quaaludes, but included in its opinion an interesting footnote calling out the district court judge’s decision to unseal the records in the first place, saying its “public moralist rational” had “no basis in our jurisprudence,” and that the term itself was “vague and undefined.” [THR, Esq. / Hollywood Reporter]

* This fall, Indiana Tech Law will welcome its largest class ever, with 55 students set to begin their legal studies next week. With only 15 students in its inaugural class, this huge jump in enrollment could possibly be due to the fact that the ABA gave the school a provisional rubber stamp (as it’s wont to do) back in March. [Indiana Lawyer]

* “There is a disconnect between what banks are doing and what consumers want,” and what they want is the ability to sue. More and more big banks — 72 percent of them, in fact — are using mandatory binding arbitration clauses in their contracts to prevent customers from filing suit. Read the find print, people. [DealBook / New York Times]

* “What if somebody gets injured on somebody else’s property? Trip on a rock or get bitten by the neighbor’s dog? There would be a whole host of responsible parties.” A New York firm already filed a class-action suit against the company behind Pokemon Go, but this lawyer thinks there’s a minefield of tort actions available to sue over. [Mlive.com]