Celebrities

* Eli Manning might be getting burned by discovery. [ESPN]

* The Covington & Burling report on sexual misconduct at Choate that is rocking the world of elite boarding schools. [New York Times]

* Aaron Hernandez found not guilty of a 2012 double murder. Don’t worry, he is still serving a life sentence for a 2013 murder. [Deadspin]

* Did Donald Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, misplace $350,000? [Buzzfeed]

* If only this was what really happened behind the scenes at SCOTUS. [Huffington Post]

* DOJ gives up on HB2 litigation. [Slate]

* The civil rights of students are… probably not in good hands. [Salon]

* Grammy-winning musician John Legend will be joining the advisory board of the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice. Not to worry, because the Center’s director says the decision to add the singer to the board was actually “a substantive thing,” not “just a celebrity thing.” [Law.com]

* In response to its abysmal performance on Florida’s February 2017 administration of the bar exam (only 25 percent of those who took the exam passed), Florida Coastal School of Law will not only be changing its curriculum and teaching methods, but it’ll also be raising its admissions standards… starting this fall. What in the world took so long? [Jackson Daily Record]

* According to court records, Judge Patricia Minaldi of the Western District of Louisiana was ordered by the chief judge of the Fifth Circuit to undergo at least 90 days of substance abuse treatment because her alcoholism was so severe that one of her judicial colleagues believed she could no longer take care of herself. [Associated Press]

* Canada is taking steps to legalize recreational marijuana across the country. If this new legislation passes, possession of small amounts of pot will be legal throughout the Great White North as of July 18, 2018. This could understandably create some confusion at the border, so we may need to build another wall. Notify the president ASAP. [USA Today]

* Kevin Jones, head of the China labor and employment practice at Faegre Baker Daniels, always wanted to run a marathon and always wanted to visit North Korea, so he decided to kill two birds with one stone by running the Pyongyang Marathon. He finished the 26-mile race in 4 hours and 21 minutes. Congratulations! [WSJ Law Blog]

* President Obama commuted the sentences of an additional 330 federal prisoners held on drug convictions today. [Huffington Post]

* The Democrats who are not going to attend the inauguration. [Politico]

* More dustup over undisclosed celebrity endorsements. [The Fashion Law]

* Need a new job? Do you know how to crack the phone interview? [Law and More]

* Noam Chomsky has some thoughts on the ACA repeal. [Salon]

* This has become particularly poignant. [Slate]

* Both Lady Gaga and Katy Perry have now been dragged into the legal battle between Kesha and producer Dr. Luke that’s been ongoing since October 2014. During a recent discovery hearing, a judge ruled that Dr. Luke may show Perry a text message sent from Kesha to Gaga that had previously been sealed by the court. The contents of the mysterious message are currently unknown to the public. [Daily Mail]

* Oopsie! U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts is recusing himself from the Life Technologies v. Promega patent case that was heard on December 6. As it turns out, Roberts owns $175,000 of stock in Thermo Fisher Scientific — which owns Life Technologies — but his chambers “inadvertently failed to find this potential conflict.” Thanks to the error, only seven of the high court’s eight justices will render a decision in the case. [Reuters]

* Democratic leaders of the California Legislature have hired former AG Eric Holder, now a partner at Covington & Burling, to represent them in any legal fights against Donald Trump’s Republican White House administration. Having Holder on their side will cost a pretty penny, but “[t]he cost will be very minimal compared to the billions of dollars at stake if California doesn’t adequately make its case.” [New York Times]

* Uh-oh… The European and Middle Eastern arm of King & Wood Mallesons has stopped paying its staff members ahead of its forthcoming administration. The number of staff who have been placed on unpaid leave pending expected layoffs is around 100 at the moment. They were notified earlier this week that while they’re still technically employed by the firm, they won’t receive pay checks. Happy New Year! [Legal Week]

* “Their malfeasance has made it to where we can’t get federal loans anymore, but they still want us to pay full price and give them that same amount and pretend like they didn’t do anything wrong – like it was our fault.” Charlotte Law students aren’t too keen about taking out private loans to complete their degrees at Florida Coastal Law, and in fact, they’d like to see the school president and dean loss their jobs. [WBTV]

* Claud “Tex” McIver, the Fisher & Phillips partner who accidentally shot and killed his wife and allegedly blamed the incident on a local Black Lives Matter protest, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter (a felony) and reckless conduct (a misdemeanor). McIver will now be retiring from the firm at the end of the year, instead of in 2017 as originally planned. [Big Law Business]

* “We keep being told that the administration was so surprised. Then you read what the government released. How can you possibly have been surprised?” Students at Charlotte Law are incredibly angry that the school was dropped from the federal loan program, and many feel like they were duped by the administration. Some students have even contacted local law firms to discuss filing suit against the school. [Charlotte Observer]

* “Your father is ruining the country. Why is she on our flight? She should be flying private.” The unruly passenger who allegedly accosted future first daughter Ivanka Trump on a JetBlue flight to Florida yesterday is — you guessed it — a lawyer. Daniel J. Goldstein, a graduate of UCLA Law, once worked as a labor relations specialist at the U.S. Mint before moving to Brooklyn. His current place of work is unknown. [Forward]

* According to the results of an investigation by a law firm hired by the University of Oregon, law professor Nancy Shurtz committed “discriminatory harassment” by wearing a blackface costume on Halloween, in violation of the school’s anti-discrimination policies. The report does not indicate if Professor Shurtz was punished, but she is no longer on paid leave and is not scheduled to teach this spring. [The Oregonian]

* Michelle K. Lee, the outgoing director of the Patent and Trademark Office, says the “interactions that we have been having [with the president-elect’s transition team] are very positive,” and that although Donald Trump’s relationship with the denizens of Silicon Valley has at times been rocky, she thinks “any administration would have a strong and robust intellectual property system as a priority.” [WSJ Law Blog]

* Alec Baldwin will be playing controversial Brooklyn prosecutor Michael Vecchione in a new TV series in development that was adapted from the lawyer’s 2015 book, Crooked Brooklyn (affiliate link). Not to worry, because we’re sure that the actor will still be able to find the time during his shooting schedule to impersonate and infuriate President-elect Trump with his portrayals on Saturday Night Live. [Page Six / New York Post]

* “As a federal prosecutor for 19 years… I know better.” Leslie Caldwell, who oversees the Justice Department’s criminal division, sent a letter of apology to federal prosecutors across the country for remarks made at a Federalist Society event where she intimated that many of them don’t understand rules for white-collar criminal cases. [WSJ Law Blog]

* It seems that D.C.-based Crowell & Moring and New York-based Herrick Feinstein are hoping to bump into each other under the mistletoe this year, because they’re reportedly in close merger talks. A combination would create a firm with about 570 lawyers and $478 million in gross revenue. We’ll have more on this later. [Am Law Daily; Real Deal]

* Biglaw behemoth Dentons is politely bowing out of the competition when it comes to a takeover of the European and Middle Eastern arm of King & Wood Mallesons. With Dentons out of the picture, it’s unlikely that a single firm will rescue the entirety of the branch, but numerous firms are interested in picking apart bits and pieces. [Legal Week]

* Calling their behavior “uncivil,” Judge Steven O’Neill was forced to scold lawyers on both sides during a dramatic shouting match that erupted at Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial after the defense team insisted that the comedian’s accusers ought to be named in public documents, saying they’re “witnesses in a trial, not children.” [USA Today]

* Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Victoria Brennan, who was accused of using a metal pipe to smash a man’s windshield this summer (but was never formally charged), is going to step down from her position on the bench. Her last day will be December 31, and per her resignation letter, she is “looking forward to the future.” [Miami Herald]

* Brad Pitt filed a motion to seal the details of his custody arrangement with Angelia Jolie to protect his children’s privacy, but a judge has rejected the actor’s request. A lawyer for Jolie had this to say: “His … request is a thinly veiled attempt to shield himself, rather than the minor children, from public view.” Ouch. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

* CHECK YOU EMAILS OFTEN, PARTNERS! Several Biglaw firms — including Cravath and Weil Gotshal — were hit by data breaches over the course of last year, and it’s now been confirmed that those data breaches were carried out by Chinese operatives who were successful in stealing about seven gigabytes of data by hacking their way into partners’ email accounts. [Fortune]

* Each December, Jeffrey Toobin creates a “semi-accurate, semi-serious” list of his predictions for the top legal stories for the coming year. Perhaps most notably, Toobin predicts President Donald Trump will appoint Judge Diane Sykes of the Seventh Circuit to the Supreme Court as the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s replacement. [New Yorker]

* Which is more prestigious, a judicial clerkship or a first-of-its-kind Capitol Hill clerkship? Earlier this week, four senators introduced a bill to create a dozen yearlong Congressional clerkships for recent law school graduates. The bill would allow law school graduates to “spend a formative year in the legislative branch.” [National Law Journal]

* Per the most recent Corporate Equity Index survey released by the Human Rights Campaign, more Biglaw firms are doing well when it comes to protecting their lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees. One hundred and twelve firms earned perfect scores for their inclusive policies in the survey, up from 95 last year. [Am Law Daily]