Department of Labor

* Great to know that lawyers show up in droves to protect dick pics. Truly fighting the important battles. [News4SA]

* Oh great, deep fakes are coming for the lawyers. [Law.com]

* Another law firm junks mandatory arbitration. [American Lawyer]

* Lying is a policy. Maybe not the best, but a policy. [Legal Cheek]

* From Frances Perkins to this jackhole. [Courthouse News Service]

* State Attorneys General have made a serious impact over the last 20 years. [Corporate Counsel]

* Judges may finally be striking back against copyright trolls. [Law360]

* Five Biglaw firms and 26 general counsel have joined together to improve diversity in the profession. Every little bit helps, but it feels like we take stories like these as excuses not to engage in the comprehensive overhaul of the law school machine needed to get real progress. [American Lawyer]

* Eugene Scalia’s been formally nominated to serve as Secretary of Labor. In true Scalia fashion, he’s going to be sad to learn that Labor isn’t just what the government forces women to have against their will. [National Law Journal]

* Shocking news: people involved in an industry that intentionally describes itself as “crypto” accused of being up to no good. [Law360]

* A quick guide to the new draft rules for CFIUS. [Corporate Counsel]

* Another look at Bill Brewer’s role in the NRA’s internal chaos. [Washington Post]

* Richmond trying to reinstate segregation which should surprise no one. [Courthouse News Service]

* A look back at 40 years of Biglaw financials. Spoiler alert: they made a lot of money. [American Lawyer]

* Greg Craig was acquitted! Good news for all the lobbyists and foreign agents out there who (wink wink) aren’t lobbyists and foreign agents. [WSJ]

* Department of Labor official resigns after anti-Semitic social media posts surface. Frankly, one would’ve expected him to stay to own the libs. [Bloomberg Law]

* CVS and Aetna get their clearance to merge because despite all Judge Leon’s rage at DOJ he’s still just a rat in a cage that happens to keep people from caring about antitrust enforcement. [Law360]

* Simple way to fix harassment in Silicon Valley. [The Atlantic]

* It’s a day that ends in “y” so Dentons just got bigger. [Dentons]

* Does Chambers have a blindspot for women? [Careerist]

* For those of you following the Alphabet/Google CLO shenanigans, the GC just married an employee this weekend, but not the employee who says he neglected their baby after he had an affair with her while married to yet another person. [CNBC]

* Jeffrey Epstein sent to the hospital and put on suicide watch. [USA Today]

* “I take your question,” the legal equivalent of “whatever, dude.” [Quartz]

* Firms hoping to connect with clients are best off selling their firm through media and the trade press rather than rankings and social media. So, it’s time to pull the trigger on that ad campaign in Above the Law you’ve been considering. [American Lawyer]

* While lazy hacks in the media talk about the “optics” of the Mueller testimony, the real discussion of optics should focus on Trump’s frantic efforts to squelch release of his tax documents. Some moves just scream you’ve got something to hide. [Law360]

* Eugene Scalia is already caught up in a conflict of interest problem, completing the traditional rite of passage for a member of this administration. [Washington Examiner]

* Revisiting Milliken v. Bradley, the case that turned Brown v. Board into an FYI. [NPR]

* Puerto Rico’s governor announces resignation. [Courthouse News Service]

* Eugene Scalia, a partner at Gibson Dunn, will be nominated as the next Labor secretary to replace Alex Acosta. If that last name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s son. [NPR]

* “I disagree with it.” President Trump now claims that he was “not happy” with a crowd chanting “send her back” in relation to Somali-born Representative Ilhan Omar, a naturalized U.S. citizen, at one of his re-election campaign rallies. This, after Trump tweeted that Omar and three other congresswomen of color should “go back” to their countries, despite being American-born citizens. [New York Times]

* According to recently unsealed court records, per the FBI, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and some of his top aides were very much involved in a series of hush-money payments made to porn actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. Trump, of course, has very publicly denied having knowledge of such payments. [USA Today]

* The House of Representatives passed a bill to gradually hike the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. Don’t get too excited, because this has little to no chance of passing in the Senate. [CNBC]

* In case you missed it, you shouldn’t really be surprised by the fact that a judge turned down bail for convicted sex offender and accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He’ll remain in jail until trial. [New York Law Journal]

* Disgraced former Case Western law school dean Lawrence Mitchell (now known as Ezra Wasserman Mitchell) was quietly let go without a contract renewal at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, where he’d been working as a visiting professor, after an investigation into his alleged misconduct. [Cleveland Scene]

* It’s been five years since FSU Law Professor Dan Markel was murdered in his own home, and we’re still waiting for his killers to be brought to justice. [Tallahassee Democrat]

* President Trump had a hell of weekend on Twitter, where he implied that Democractic Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley — all women of color — weren’t American citizens and told them to “go back” to their home countries. [CNN]

* Federal prosecutors have now accused Jeffrey Epstein of witness tampering, alleging that the sex-trafficking defendant paid out six figures to buy the silence of those who could testify against him. [New York Times]

* Speaking of people related to Alex Acosta’s resignation as labor chief, Patrick Pizzella, formerly of K&L Gates legacy firm Preston Gates Ellis, an associate of Jack Abramoff who notably wasn’t charged and convicted of corruption, has been named as acting labor secretary. [Big Law Business]

* The D.C. Circuit didn’t really seem all that receptive to Trump’s attempts to block Congress from subpoenaing records from one of his accounting firms. Picture Judge Patricia Millett asking this with a raised brow: “When it comes to a president’s conflict of interest, there’s nothing Congress can do … to protect the people of the United States?” [Washington Post]

* How did Justice Clarence Thomas go from being a “Black Panther type” in law school to being the Supreme Court’s “conservative beacon”? [NPR]

* According to Citi Private Bank, law firm leaders are feeling a little less confident about the second half of the year, but no one is expecting a recession just yet. In fact, they seem downright “optimistic” about the rest of 2019. Yay! [American Lawyer]

* Game of Thrones bar prep? How does the Rule Against Perpetuities consider reanimated corpses? [Law.com]

* Labor Department flags Biglaw for diversity failings. That’s not the announcement most expected to hear from this administration, but we’ll take it. [American Lawyer]

* Julian Assange got kicked out of the Ecuadorian embassy and is now in custody. It seems as though Robert Mueller might have wanted to keep his investigation open a couple more weeks. [Huffington Post]

* Speaking of the Mueller investigation, Greg Craig expects to be indicted. [CBS News]

* GCs want law firms to be their partners — not so much their friends. [Law360]

* Texas mulls death penalty for women who get abortions. [Vox]

* Amal Clooney adds a new title with UK government appointment. [Legal Cheek]

* We might be seeing Trump’s tax returns soon… because New York has its own income tax system and doesn’t answer to him. States’ rights conservatives are surely rejoicing. [New York Law Journal]

* Gordon Caplan looking at 8-14 months if the judge follows the Guidelines, with prosecutors recommending the lower end. [American Lawyer]

* Allison Mack’s crazy sex cult charges end in a guilty plea. [Huffington Post]

* Good career advice everyone can take from Kirstjen Nielsen’s unceremonious firing. [The Careerist]

* Judge questions the rubber stamp deal CVS and Aetna got from the DOJ. [Law360]

* Will the next set of Roundup ads have one of those pharma commercial voiceovers listing disclaimers? [Courthouse News Service]

* Sadly, the idea that Department of Labor officials were simultaneously representing companies in labor disputes can barely elicit a yawn these days. [Bloomberg Law]

* One of Roy Moore’s former law school classmates says he isn’t surprised that the former judge was accused of having a “sexual encounter” with an underage girl. He warns Alabama to “beware of false prophets,” because he’s seen “Bible-thumping, God-fearing hypocrites” all his life — and Moore is one of them. [Washington Examiner]

* Much to President Trump’s the DOJ’s chagrin, AT&T has no plans to sell CNN in order to push through its deal with Time Warner. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Earlier this week, the Supreme Court released its first opinion of the October 2017 Term, less than a month after hearing oral arguments in the case. Justice “Rapid Ruth” Ginsburg wrote the Court’s unanimous opinion in record time. [Associated Press]

* Who is Kate O’Scannlain? You’re not the only one who has no idea, but she’s the Trump administration’s pick for solicitor of labor. You may be familiar with her dad, though. He’s a senior judge on the Ninth Circuit. [Big Law Business]

* According to a new report by the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance, although 2017 was a record year, women are still lagging behind men when it comes to making partner in law firms. This is apparently news to some people? [American Lawyer]

* A juror who was dismissed from Senator Bob Menendez’s bribery trial says she thinks this is going to end in a hung jury. She says if she would’ve stuck around, “he would have been ‘not guilty’ on every charge.” [New York Post]

* R. Kelly’s lawyer responds to allegations that a bunch of women are trapped in the proverbial closet. [Entertainment Tonight]

* The big news of the night was the slow, painful, uncovered death of the GOP tax cut. McConnell now says he’ll push for a clean repeal of Obamacare and leave the “replace” part for later, which would theoretically take it out of the reconciliation process. And that means 60 votes or some drastic changes. This is either a bluff or a lot of people are about to learn more than they ever wanted to know about parliamentary rules. [ABC News]

* Need judicial approval to tour the country? Sing it with me now… “Jed Gon’ Give It To Ya.”[Law360]

* Justice Kagan with an amusing anecdote about being vetted by the Obama administration. [National Law Journal]

* Plaintiffs’ attorneys in the Trump University case say efforts to undo the settlement over notice concerns, “effectively ask this court to declare Rule 23 unconstitutional.” Dude, I hate to break this to you, but that’s what the Supreme Court’s been saying for at least 10 years.

* Disney is locked in an IP litigation over the technology they use to map actors’ expressions onto CGI characters in movies like in Avengers: Age of Ultron, where they made a merciless robot fixated on world domination appear to have a soul. Sorry, did I say Avengers? I meant “a Bob Iger presentation at a Disney shareholder meeting.” [Law.com]

* Because all other problems in the country are settled, Congress is looking into overturning Washington D.C.’s assisted suicide law. [USA Today]

* Charlie Hustle is suing Trump lawyer John Dowd formerly of Akin Gump for defamation. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

* Google successfully staves off Labor Department request for compensation information in ongoing discrimination probe. God, Assistant can’t give you any useful information. [Corporate Counsel]

* Is there a constitutional right to follow President Donald Trump on Twitter? Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute apparently thinks so, and lawyers from the free-speech center have demanded that Trump’s unblock critics from his @realDonaldTrump account. Good luck! [WSJ Law Blog]

* Following an investigation conducted by Perkins Coie, Uber fired more than 20 employees thanks to complaints of sexual harassment, bullying, and discrimination. Perkins Coie’s probe is separate from that of former Attorney General Eric Holder, who is now employed at Covington & Burling. [ABC News]

* Per sources inside the Trump administration, the president is expected to nominate Cheryl Stanton, a former Ogletree Deakins partner, to head the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Stanton shares a former boss with Labor Secretary Alex Acosta: Justice Samuel Alito. [Big Law Business]

* Michelle Lee, the director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, has resigned. During her time at the USPTO, Lee was known for her efforts to crack down on patent trolls, which ultimately led to a decrease in their vexatious litigation. The Trump administration has not yet put forth a nominee. [Reuters]

* The American Bar Association has granted provisional accreditation to the University of North Texas Dallas College of Law. Last summer, the ABA refused to grant even provisional accreditation to the school because there was concern about future graduates’ ability to pass the bar exam. Congrats… [ABA Journal]

* It’s a party, and all of Donald Trump’s friends are invited! The president’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has been dragged into the probe of Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election. House and Senate investigators asked him to provide testimony, but he politely declined because “the request was poorly phrased, overly broad and not capable of being answered.” [ABC News]

* “It’s nice knowing this will definitely be a beacon for other trans kids and other members of the community to look to as a source for hope.” A three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit has affirmed a lower court ruling, stating that Title IX protects transgender students’ rights to use the bathrooms of their choice. This is the first time that an appellate court has issued a ruling of this kind. [Reuters]

* “No one knows how many qualified individuals never even advance their names.” Biglaw attorneys would usually jump at the chance to leave private practice and take a gig working for the Labor Department, but under this presidential administration, there seems to be a bit of hesitancy due to their unwillingness to “incur a lifelong Trump association.” [Bloomberg BNA]

* More and more Biglaw firms have decided to reevaluate the way they evaluate their attorneys. Following Allen & Overy’s decision to eliminate performance reviews, Berwin Leighton Paisner, Fieldfisher, Withers, and RPC will each be changing the way they conduct their appraisal policies, and Linklaters will drop financial targets and partner reviews. We may have more on this. [Law.com]

* “Death to the enemies of America! You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism. Die.” Jeremy Christian, the Portland man accused of killing two men in a racially motivated attack on a train, didn’t enter a plea at his arraignment. Instead, he made incendiary outbursts, inviting spectators to shout back at him, calling him a “murderer.” His next hearing is on June 7. [Courthouse News Service]

* Almost 2,000 lawyers have signed on to a complaint filed by the Lawyers for Good Government with the Alabama State Bar Disciplinary Committee which alleges that Attorney General Jeff Sessions violated the state’s rules of professional conduct when he falsely testified under oath during his confirmation hearing that he “did not have communications with the Russians,” and thus should be disbarred. [Alabama Political Reporter]

* A superior legal defense from a superior legal mind? A former contestant on The Apprentice who accused President Donald Trump of groping her in 2007 is now suing him for defamation. Trump’s lawyer, Marc Kasowitz of Kasowitz Benson, claims that the president is immune from private litigation thanks to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. Perhaps he ought to take another look at Clinton v. Jones. [USA Today]

* Sources say that Seyfarth Shaw partner Alexander Passantino is under consideration to run the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor. He served as deputy Wage and Hour Division administrator from 2006 to 2008, and if offered the job, he’ll be in charge of overseeing some pretty major policy issues, like rolling back the Obama-era expansion of overtime pay to millions of American workers. [Big Law Business]

* General counsel from 185 companies signed on to a letter delivered to Congress, beseeching lawmakers to continue to support the Legal Services Corp. which could go without necessary funds under President Trump’s budget plan. They’ve requested that $450M be allocated to the organization in order to create a “level playing field for the many lower and moderate-income families who cannot afford a lawyer.” [WSJ Law Blog]

* Angelo Binno, a blind prospective law student who alleged that the LSAT’s logic games test is discriminatory, was denied Supreme Court certiorari earlier this week. Not to worry, because his lawyer says that the fight will go on: “I’m not going to stop until he gets into law school because I know he will be a great lawyer even though he cannot diagram that on a test. This battle is far from over.” [National Law Journal]