Kasowitz Benson

* Congratulations to Erwin Chemerinsky, the next dean of Berkeley Law! [How Appealing]

* Speaking of deans, this Yale dean — note, not a dean at the law school — “loves diversity, except for ‘white trash.’” [Instapundit]

* The latest entrant into the FBI director sweepstakes: former senator Joe Lieberman, now senior counsel at one of Donald Trump’s “go-to” law firms, Kasowitz Benson. [Newsweek]

* “Americans like piece of paper? I have piece of paper!” [Althouse]

* In case you were wondering, “Did Rosie O’Donnell ever study constitutional law?” [NewsBusters]

* Legal nerds, let’s get ready to rumble! Professor Gerard Magliocca asks: “Is Justice Story overrated?” [Concurring Opinions]

* Shearman & Sterling partner (and podcaster) Richard Hsu is joining the Major leagues — legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, that is. [LinkedIn]

* Randy Maniloff interviews celebrated lawyer/author Scott Turow, whose new book, Testimony (affiliate link), just came out. [Coverage Opinions]

* An argument in favor of protecting your cellphone with your thumbprint and a password. [Katz Justice]

* “If you had to choose a law partner from the characters in Better Call Saul, who would you choose?” [Guile is Good]

* If you’re a law student interested in ediscovery, check out this contest, sponsored by kCura. [kCura via PR Newswire]

The Trump administration will now have at least one "superior legal mind."

* 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]

* Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it… especially when it’s rumored that you were the inspiration for seminal 80s character Ferris Bueller and you’re now under consideration to be Preet Bharara’s replacement as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Edward McNally works for Kasowitz Benson now, but he’s reportedly a leading contender for the job. [Wall Street Journal]

* Preet Bharara, on the other hand, is now considering taking up teaching at a prestigious law school — like Columbia, Harvard, or NYU — or going into private practice at a prestigious Biglaw firm — like Gibson Dunn or WilmerHale. Who knew being fired after refusing to resign could work out so well? [Wall Street Journal]

* Sources claim that President Trump will nominate Makan Delrahim to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division. Currently employed as a deputy in the Office of White House Counsel, Delrahim previously served in the DOJ antitrust division from 2003 to 2005 as deputy assistant attorney general under President Bush. [Big Law Business]

* “The noise about lawyers is much more positive right now. Before, it was just negative noise.” Law schools may be thanking our president for something that’s being referred to as the “Trump bump.” Some speculate that applications will surge thanks to the legal profession’s prominence in the turbulent early days of his reign. [National Law Journal]

* “They say a woman’s place is in the house. I say it’s in the courthouse.” The lawyers at New York firm Meyer-Kessler & Shulevitz refer to themselves “double trouble,” claim they represent the “new feminism,” and they wear bright pink designer outfits every time they go to court. We may have more on this dynamic duo later. [New York Daily News]

Let the good times roll -- there's still bonus money to be distributed.

* Senator Mike Lee, an influential member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (and a former Supreme Court clerk himself), explains why Republicans won’t confirm Judge Merrick Garland to SCOTUS in the lame-duck session. [Washington Post via How Appealing]

* Jaroslawa Zelinsky Johnson, former managing partner of Chadbourne & Parke’s defunct Kiev office, wants in on Kerrie Campbell’s sex discrimination suit against the firm. [American Lawyer]

* In other news about alleged gender bias in Biglaw, it looks like partner Traci Ribeiro’s lawsuit against Sedgwick is bound for arbitration. [Law.com]

* The latest bad news for Theranos: a hedge fund is suing the company for securities fraud, and it’s represented by a pair of high-powered Gibson Dunn partners, former federal prosecutors Reed Brodsky and Winston Chan. [Corporate Counsel]

* Kasowitz Benson’s recent legal work on behalf of Donald Trump is just the latest example of the firm representing litigious tycoons. [New York Law Journal]

* As some firms exit China, others enter the market; Hogan Lovells just announced a strategic alliance with Fujian Fidelity Law Firm in Shanghai. [Big Law Business]

* In my ancestral homeland of the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte poses a threat to the rule of law, but remains very popular with the people. [New York Times]

Truth, remember, is an absolute defense.

Trump may be opening up a bottomless can of legal worms.

Which Biglaw firm might file suit on his behalf?

* The New York Times has obtained Donald Trump’s tax records from 1995, revealing a nearly $916 million loss that would have enabled him to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period. Marc Kasowitz, name partner of Kasowitz Benson, represents Trump, and has threatened the paper with “prompt initiation of appropriate legal action” for its publication of his client’s tax records. [New York Times]

* George Mason University will host a grand opening ceremony this week for the twice renamed Antonin Scalia School of Law Antonin Scalia Law School — a ceremony that five SCOTUS justices will reportedly attend — and some students and faculty are planning to protest the Koch brothers’ funding of scholarships by wearing red tape over their mouths to symbolize their voices being taken from them. [Big Law Business]

* Katherine Magbanua, the woman who is suspected of connecting Florida State University law professor Dan Markel’s alleged killers, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, with the family of Markel’s ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, has been arrested on murder charges. According to police, she has “received numerous benefits from the Adelsons since Markel’s murder.” We’ll have more on this later today. [Tallahassee Democrat]

* According to Judge Beth Bloom of the Southern District of Florida, Orlando-based firm Butler & Hosch violated the WARN Act when it closed suddenly in May 2015 and conducted mass layoffs of more than 700 employees without giving them 60 days of advance notice. The firm, which is bankruptcy, could be on the hook for millions of dollars in damages. We may have more on this later today. [Orlando Sentinel]

* Following the embarrassment that was former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner’s light sentence in the sexual assault of an unconscious woman at his school, California Gov. Jerry Brown has broadened the state’s legal definition of rape to include penetration with a foreign object, mandate prison time if the victim was unconscious at the time of the assault, and forbid judges from granting probation or parole in such cases. [Reuters]

* “Frankly, USD has been a bit behind in that, in part, up until 2014, we had no problem with the bar exam. When you’re hitting in the high 80s or 90s, you don’t worry about much.” Unofficial results from the South Dakota bar exam are out, and after years of declines in passage rates for graduates of South Dakota Law, administrators are ready to take action now that only about 50 percent of graduates passed the test. [Argus Leader]

* “I was empty and then this woman walked into my life. I didn’t think it would happen again and it did. She is it.” LGBT rights pioneer Edie Windsor, the plaintiff whose Supreme Court case rendered DOMA unconstitutional in 2013 and laid the groundwork for the high court to declare that marriage equality was a fundamental right just two years later, remarried in New York last week. Our very best wishes! [New York Times]

Things are going very well at Kasowitz Benson, thank you very much, and the firm's success was reflected in strong bonuses.

Will partner departures be followed by associate layoffs at the firm?

* Sorry, Berners, but you’ll have to start the revolution somewhere else: Students at Georgetown Law have been barred from campaigning for Bernie Sanders on campus because administrators say it would threaten the law school’s tax-exempt status. [Hit & Run / Reason]

* A group from Kasowitz Benson’s lucrative insurance recovery practice, including its leader, Robin Cohen, is leaving for McKool Smith, but name partner Marc Kasowitz doesn’t seem to mind one bit. He says it’ll help the firm out in the long run. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

* Obama is expected to nominate Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California, she of the Apple v. Samsung patent feud, to the Ninth Circuit. It’s too bad the likelihood of her getting through the Senate right now is “close to zero.” [San Jose Mercury News]

* Hole singer Courtney Love’s “Twibel” (Twitter plus libel) victory against her ex-lawyer in the first case to ever go to trial over a defamatory tweet was recently upheld by a California appellate court. Retweet and Like. [THR, ESQ. / Hollywood Reporter]

* Mmm, cheese-product sticks! Fast-food conglomerate McDonald’s is facing a class-action suit over its sometimes cheeseless mozzarella sticks, with allegations that they’re not made with “100 percent real cheese” and “real mozzarella” as advertised. [Eater]

Some of these drops in headcount are stunning -- we're talking more than 20 percent.

* “I don’t know what you heard about me, but a bitch can’t get a dollar out of me.” Truer lyrics have never been rapped. 50 Cent’s legal team will face off in bankruptcy court against lawyers for a woman owed $5 million thanks to a sex-tape scandal. [Business Insider]

* You may be happy that income-based loan repayment exists and is saving you from defaulting on your law school debts, but in a few decades, you’re probably going to get F’d in the A by a ticking tax time bomb. [Student Loan Ranger / U.S. News]

* If you missed it, James Eagan Holmes, the shooter in the Dark Knight movie theater massacre in Colorado, was convicted for killing 12 people and wounding 70 others. Next up is the sentencing phase of his trial, and the death penalty is on the table. [Denver Post]

* The head honchos at Goldman Sachs are sad their second-quarter profits were reduced by ~half thanks to protracted litigation stemming from the financial crisis. The bank had to put away $1.45B for “mortgage-related litigation.” [DealBook / New York Times]

* The stars at night may be big and bright deep in the heart of Texas, but Berg & Androphy, led by attorney David Berg, is trying its hand at big city life in New York. It got the hang of things, y’all: B&A has already poached two Kasowitz partners. [Lawdragon]

There's a firm out there that announces raises for rising associate classes effective January 1, but doesn't actually pay them their new salary until July.

A judge is allowing Facebook's lawsuit against DLA Piper and Milberg to move forward.

How many attorneys were let go this time?

This firm apparently decided to willfully ignore market trends and stick with the Simpson Thacher scale that was effectively done away with months ago.

Why is the social-media giant suing the Biglaw behemoth?