FTC

* OCI numbers are down. Who needs a job anyway? [Law360]

* Hey, M&A people! FTC is watching. [Bloomberg Law]

* Law professor makes argument against legal AI that just happens to keep him employable. [ABA Journal]

* Put your money where your team is! Sports gambling likely to be legal soon in North Carolina. [WRAL]

* You off the Zaza? Amazon supports you. [Politico]

* Regarding the nomination of Patrick Bumatay to the Ninth Circuit, “Why are Democrats fighting the judicial nomination of a qualified gay minority?” Good question! [The Federalist]

* Speaking of highly qualified minority nominees under attack, Carrie Severino argues that it’s the critics of D.C. Circuit nominee Neomi Rao, not Rao herself, who are being inflammatory. [Bench Memos / National Review]

* And KC Johnson, reviewing the collegiate writings by Rao that have generated the attacks against her, argues that Rao’s views on campus sexual assault — from 25 years ago, so who knows whether or not she still holds them — are “align[ed] both with statute and today’s mainstream opinion.” [City Journal]

* Litigation over a watchdog commission for handling complaints of prosecutorial misconduct in New York State involves a lot of legal luminaries, including Jim Walden and Jacob Gardener of Walden Macht, Jim McGuire and Daniel Sullivan of Holwell Shuster & Goldberg, and Andrew Rossman, Kathleen Sullivan, and Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel. [New York Law Journal]

* Could Nick Sandmann and the Covington boys file libel lawsuits over some of the commentary on their controversy? It could be an uphill climb, according to Eugene Volokh (a First Amendment expert, and hardly anyone’s idea of a leftist). [Reason / Volokh Conspiracy]

* But if Covington cases do get filed, they could give rise to some interesting issues of civil procedure, as Howard Wasserman notes. [PrawfsBlawg]

* Many lessons can be learned from the Fyre Festival debacle — and one of the legal ones is that FTC disclosures actually matter. [All Rights Reserved]

* If you’re a liberal or progressive appellate litigator interested in taking on the Trump Administration, check out this new job posting from the good folks at the CAC. [Constitutional Accountability Center]

* Judge Posner wasn’t kidding when he said he wanted to help pro ses. Now that he’s retired, he’s decided to “dedicate [his] post-judicial career” to the cause. He recently filed an affidavit to serve as advisory counsel to a pro se litigant before the Fourth Circuit. [Big Law Business]

* This administration is full of Biglaw attorneys: Trump’s nominee to lead the FTC is Joseph Simons, co-chairman of the antitrust group at Paul, Weiss. Prior to joining the firm, he served as the Director of the Bureau of Competition at the FTC. Congrats! [National Law Journal]

* Harvard Law’s Student Government is planning to conduct a mental health survey in an effort to assist students with mental health issues. They’re also teaming up with Parody, the school’s law revue squad, to film videos addressing mental health issues. Hmm, nothing at all could possibly go wrong here. [Harvard Crimson]

* GW Law School has implemented a bunch of diversity initiatives this year, but apparently the members of the faculty have absolutely no idea what they are or what they entail. This… doesn’t seem very helpful. [GW Hatchet]

* Johnny Depp has filed a malpractice suit against Hergott Diemer Rosenthal LaViolette Feldman Schenkman & Goodman (that’s a mouthful), claiming the firm and its lawyers had a hand in putting him in a bad place financially. [Am Law Daily]

* Martin Shkreli’s attorney is frantically trying to undo the damage his client caused on social media. Shkreli is looking to get his bail reduced because of financial hardship… and offering big rewards on social media. For his part, attorney Benjamin Brafman is arguing that the judge just shouldn’t believe Shkreli’s social media claims. I guess this is the “seriously not literally” thing we’ve heard so much about. [Law360]

* With the addition of yet another attorney, this time Elizabeth Prelogar — a former Miss Idaho actually — Robert Mueller’s investigation of Donald Trump is now officially a Biglaw firm. [National Law Journal]

* Are firms giving clients a good deal… or just a better deal than the inflated prices they advertise? [Corporate Counsel]

* More professors join the gender discrimination suit against Denver Law School. [Law.com]

* Norton Rose Fulbright tries to get its mind of the troubled Chadbourne merger… by executing another merger. [Legal Week]

* On that note, should Biglaw generally step back and question the wisdom of mergers? [Am Law Daily]

* What are you willing to wager that the FTC blocks the daily fantasy sports merger? [Litigation Daily]

* Hey, sometimes the Supreme Court falls for bad data. [NY Times]

* Lessons in professional responsibility: people frown upon lawyers telling people, “I think you should commit suicide.” [NY Post]

* How much of Tiffany Trump’s law school fate is based on being the daughter of the president, asks newspaper willing to blindly speculate on her test scores to undermine her credibility as a student? [Washington Post]

* Dewey know who didn’t trust the troubled firm? [Law360]

* JAMS facing trial in mediator résumé padding case. [The Recorder]

* Make Target great again. [National Law Journal]

* Covington settles its conflicts case with 3M. [Am Law Daily]

* Judge William C. Canby Jr, Judge Michelle T. Friedland, and Judge Richard R. Clifton will hear tonight’s oral argument on Trump’s travel ban. Or should we say they’re the “so-called judges” who will hear tonight’s argument. [CNN]

* Weil Gotshal announces significant gains in both revenues and profits. No associates were mangled in the making of this news. [Am Law Daily]

* Former Bio-Rad GC Sanford Wadler wins big in his whistleblower retaliation case. Bio-Rad has attempted to cast him as a jerk who yelled at his underlings, but the jury realized that just made him “a lawyer” and not a justification to terminate him. [Corporate Counsel]

* Vizio settled with the FTC over turning all of their customers into unwitting “Nielsen Families.” But you should still be worried about that toaster that’s been spying on you. [Litigation Daily]

* Dewey still even care about this case? [Law360]

* Gibson Dunn opens a Houston office because oil and gas are still big business. [Texas Lawyer]

* You may have seen the viral post about a subway car full of New Yorkers who go to work scrubbing swastika graffiti off the walls. The man who started the effort was Wilson Elser associate Gregory Locke. [Am Law Daily]

* A fun new hobby for legal and political junkies to enjoy together: A Trump litigation watch list. [CNN]

* Let’s hear it for regulations! An EU law mandating that large trucks have an advanced emergency braking system is believed to have saved additional lives in the Berlin Christmas market attack that killed 12. [Washington Post]

* Burke Ramsey, JonBenet’s brother, is suing CBS — as well as experts and consultants — for defamation over a TV special that advanced the theory he killed his sister. [Entertainment Weekly]

* There might actually be some good news on the horizon for public defender offices that have seen their budgets slashed. [ABA Journal]

* A now-defunct medical laboratory is challenging the authority of the Federal Trade Commission to regulate online security. [National Law Journal]

* I’ve had an interesting week. [Simple Justice]

* But at least I’m real. [Popehat]

* Next week will be an interesting week for the Electoral College. [Balkinization]

* Huma Abedin’s lawyers politely request that the FBI explain exactly how they screwed over America. [New York Daily News]

* I don’t really understand the Department of Justice “bid rigging” investigation into ad agencies. I don’t really understand why it’s important. But apparently some ad execs could go to jail behind this, so I understand that whatever is happening is pretty cool. [Business Insider]

* Ashley Madison agrees to a $1.6 million settlement with the FTC over its alleged failure to protect user data. That doesn’t seem like a lot to me. That seems like a “my wife saw my info on Ashley Madison and I had to sleep on the couch for a week” kind of penalty. Not a “my wife saw my info on Ashley Madison and now I live in my brother’s basement while the lawyers figure out how often I can still see my children” penalty. [ABA Journal]

* 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]