Federal Judges

Basketball

Morning Docket: 05.02.14

* The Senate confirmed nine judges this week, the highest one-week total since the current session of Congress began. They even managed to confirm a "controversial" nominee. Congrats! [Legal Times] * If you need a reason for your merger-product firm's poor financial performance, don't use the verein structure as a scapegoat. Maybe your firms weren't profitable to begin. Burnnnnn. [The Economist] * Skadden lawyers await the day they're called upon to provide the NBA's defense against a potential suit filed by Don Sterling. They'll be ready, because Skadden's the best brand in the world, yay! [Am Law Daily] * Mayer Brown is pulling out of the "comfort women" case, a decision one of its clients says is "totally crazy." We suppose the firm was getting tired of being dragged through the mud. [Los Angeles Daily News] * A suspect is being held by police in the fatal hit-and-run of Judge Dean Pregerson's son. He's been charged with vehicular manslaughter, and is expected to be arraigned on Monday. [Los Angeles Times] * Fifty-five schools are being investigated for alleged violations of federal law in the mishandling of sexual assault and harassment cases. One professional school is on the list. Sup Harvard Law? [Huffington Post]

By Staci Zaretsky
Attorney Misconduct

Morning Docket: 04.30.14

* For the third year in a row, Skadden has topped the list of the Biglaw firms GCs love to pay, the firms with the best brands. Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins rounded out the top three. Congratulations! [PRWeb] * A federal judge struck down Wisconsin’s voter identification law yesterday, noting that it “only tenuously serve[d] the state’s interest in preventing voter fraud.” Ouch. Sorry about that, Scott Walker. [Bloomberg] * Hot on the heels of the release of the second annual ATL Law School Rankings, we’ve got a list of the law schools where graduates reportedly have the least amount of debt. We’ll have more on this news later today. [The Short List / U.S. News & World Report] * It was kind of like the night of the living dead in Oklahoma last night, where an execution was botched so badly the defendant attempted to rise up off the table. That must have been horrific. [New York Times] * Here’s an eligible bachelor alert: After being suspended from practice for six months for filming “upskirt” videos of women in public, this in-house lawyer has been reinstated. [Legal Intelligencer (reg. req.)] * Poor Justice Lori Douglas. Not only are her kinky S&M pictures floating around somewhere online, but the man who took them — her husband, Jack King — just died. RIP, good sir. [CTV Winnipeg News] * NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, a former Cravath lawyer, fouled L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling out of the league, but people are questioning whether his punishment was legal. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

By Staci Zaretsky
4th Circuit

Morning Docket: 04.02.14

* Sonia Sotomayor has been dubbed as the “people’s justice” in a law professor’s article recently published in the Yale Law Journal Online. If only RBG had appeared on Sesame Street, the title could’ve been hers. Sigh. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)] * It’s a “procedural game-changer”: Virginia’s class action lawsuit against same-sex marriage has been stayed pending the outcome of the Fourth Circuit’s decision in the case that struck down the state’s ban on gay marriage. [Legal Times] * “They’re certainly going to be very careful about biting the hand that feeds them.” Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, the firm behind the “Bridgegate” report that cleared Gov. Christie of wrongdoing, received $3.1M from New Jersey last year. [New Jersey Star-Ledger] * Now that approximately 60 percent of compliance officers are women, in-house insiders are starting to wonder if the position is being reduced to “women’s work” — and not in a good way. [Corporate Counsel] * Everyone involved in this case is dead, but it’s been hanging in the courts for more than a decade. Soon we’ll find out if Anna Nicole Smith’s ex-stepson will be sanctioned in the grave. [National Law Journal]

By Staci Zaretsky
6th Circuit

Morning Docket: 03.24.14

* Justice Antonin Scalia isn’t quite ready to publicly weigh in on whether computer data is considered a protected “effect” under the Fourth Amendment. “[T]hat may well come up [before the Supreme Court],” he says. Thanks NSA. [Business Insider] * “[I]t doesn’t take many bad apples in a barrel to cause a stink.” No matter how hard Biglaw firms try to keep their confidential information locked down, someone’s going trade on it. It looks like STB is learning that the hard way. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)] * The day after Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage was struck down by Judge Bernard Friedman, couples who rushed to marry were met with some serious Sixth Circuit sadness. Way to stay and spoil all of the celebrations, judges. [New York Times] * “We’re not the Cleveland Browns,” says one of Case Western Law’s interim co-deans. With that kind of a glowing endorsement, we don’t see how this law school could possibly fail. [Crain's Cleveland Business] * Rutgers Law-Newark has a new low-bono fellowship program “believed to be the first of its kind in the nation.” Some other law schools might have a bone to pick about that statement. [New Jersey Star-Ledger]

By Staci Zaretsky