Kirkland & Ellis

* While the #metoo phenomenon receives deserved attention for uncovering decades of vile behavior, it also presents business opportunities. Stroock & Stroock has put together a group headed by ormer U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin and former New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams to conduct internal investigations for companies concerned about harassment on their watch. [New York Law Journal]

* Idiot techie fired after saying women weren’t smart enough to work in Silicon Valley files class action suit against Google with help of idiot lawyer who thinks this is a “shot across the bow” of tech companies that they need to be more serious about creating hostile work environments… or something. [The Recorder]

* The SDNY takes judicial notice that Louis Vuitton needs a sense of humor. [Law360]

* An Italian judge is accused of turning his law school into a misogynistic “cult.” Oh Italy… just like us. [Washington Post]

* Kirkland has done a little more poaching. [American Lawyer]

* Tips for aspiring GCs. [Corporate Counsel]

* The last substantive line of Macmillan’s response to Trump’s cease and desist highlights the lockdown argument against Trump’s litigious posturing — “yo, you realize discovery goes both ways, right?” [Slate]

* Both Quinn Emanuel and Kirkland & Ellis are moving into Boston. Is this going to be a trend? Is there enough extra work laying around up there for this to be a trend? [American Lawyer]

* Look forward to hearing more about machine learning in 2018! It’s good to know it won’t all be vague conversations about blockchain next year. [Legaltech News]

* Jeff Sessions opens door to debtor’s prisons, because of course he does. [New York Times]

* And… here come the lawsuits over Apple’s newly uncovered practice of slowing down old phones. There’s a lot of ill will about these types of suits, but this is a pretty good example of how out of hand things can get without the threat of litigation. [Daily Business Review]

* Texas Lawyer put together a top 10 list of the troubled lawyers and judges of 2017. [Texas Lawyer]

* Steptoe’s John Nolan Jr., who negotiated the Bay of Pigs prisoner releases, has passed. [National Law Journal]

* Fresh off his six-month stint as White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus will be returning to Am Law 200 firm Michael Best and Friedrich, where he’ll serve as president and chief strategist. He’ll lead the firm’s government affairs practice group, and he plans to help clients with their Trump problems. Best of luck, those clients might need it. [POLITICO]

* Sorry, consumers, but the Senate had to call in VP Mike Pence in the middle of the night to kill the the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule banning mandatory arbitration clauses in credit card and checking account agreements. Damn all those “frivolous lawsuits by special interest trial lawyers”! [The Two-Way / NPR]

* Author John Grisham was inspired to write his latest novel, The Rooster Bar (affiliate link), after reading an article in The Atlantic by Paul Campos about for-profit law schools and the student loan crisis. Well, at least someone is going to make some money after learning about a for-profit law school. [CBS News]

* Biglaw firms are trying to reduce the amount of their leased square footage. According to the CBRE Group, on average between the first quarter of 2016 and the second quarter of 2017, firms in 26 markets were able to shrink their office space by about 27 percent. But did their headcount shrink along with it? [Wall Street Journal]

* Major lateral hire alert: Paul Basta left Kirkland & Ellis this summer, and now he’s landed at Paul Weiss, where he’ll be working as the co-chair of the firm’s corporate restructuring practice. Alan Kornberg, the practice group’s current chair, called Basta’s arrival at the firm “sort of a dream come true in a way.” [Big Law Business]

* According to a study conducted by Professor Carlos Berdejó of Loyola Law School, prosecutors tend to give white defendants better plea deals than black defendants. We needed a study to confirm that some prosecutors discriminate based on race? [Slate]

* Trump calls for changes to the tax laws to punish the NFL. I think this is a reference to the NFL’s tax-exempt status… which they gave up in 2015. But hey, he’s upset over a picture of players kneeling from 2014, so they’re still a year behind on this stuff over in the West Wing. [Reuters]

* Living in limbo: Kirkland’s income partners are supposed to go up and out, but upon closer examination they’re going up and… wildly well-compensated purgatory. [Law.com]

* Winston & Strawn want arbitration in their gender bias suit based on a clause in the applicable partnership agreement. Get used to this, because by this time next year every job will be forcing arbitration if the Supreme Court has anything to say about it. [Am Law Daily]

* Today in unintentionally sad: two elite female attorneys fight over a song pretty clearly about date rape. [The Recorder]

* Apple GC Bruce Sewell is retiring. Very symbolic of someone at Apple to stop working just when they release a new product. [Corporate Counsel]

* What are the seven worst words from your past for your jury to hear? Because “I think we got away with it,” have to be up there. [Law360]

* An interview with former Magic Circle lawyer Tom Vaughan MacAulay about his new book Being Simon Haines (affiliate link). [Legal Cheek]

* We’ve found Justice Washington’s notes in a circuit case he heard in 1823, which is kind of fun. [Concurring Opinions]

* Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families, friends, and colleagues of the victims of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, which took place last night in Las Vegas, Nevada. [New York Times]

* “There’s only one prediction that’s entirely safe about the upcoming term. It will be momentous.” The Supreme Court’s October Term 2017 begins today, and it will be Justice Neil Gorsuch’s first full term. The docket features issues like voting rights, religion and discrimination, workers’ rights, and digital privacy, and Trump’s DOJ has radically flipped its position from that of prior administrations in many of the cases, which hasn’t happened in decades. [New York Times]

* Jeffrey Toobin wonders, “How badly is Neil Gorsuch annoying the other Supreme Court justices?” Based on the junior justice’s behavior thus far — from his seemingly politicized appearances to his domination of oral arguments to his dissenting jab at Justice Kennedy — the answer could very well be PRETTY BADLY. [New Yorker]

* You may have grown up, but you’re still a Toys “R” Us kid at heart, so you’ll want to know how much these Biglaw firms are charging Geoffrey the Giraffe for their representation in the toy store’s bankruptcy. Partners and of counsel are billing up to $1,745 per hour, and associates are billing up to $1,015 per hour. [Am Law Daily]

* Biglaw salary wars are heating up across the pond, with Clifford Chance having recently decided to boost pay for newly qualified associates to £87,300 (~$116,933.99) a year in total compensation. Other firms like Freshfields and Linklaters have also instituted salary hikes, while Slaughter & May has frozen associate pay. [Law.com]

* “This, all of this, allows me to prove my story is useful.” Reginald Dwayne Betts, the Yale Law School graduate whose dreams of being able to practice law after passing the bar exam were deferred thanks to a decades-old felony carjacking conviction, was finally admitted to the Connecticut bar. Congratulations! [Hartford Courant]

* Well, well, well… it seems that another law school has succumbed to the allure of the GRE. Which T14 law school has decided to accept the GRE for admissions purposes? We’ll have more on the law school that hopes to reel in those sweet, sweet STEM majors later today. [Law.com]

* Make Twitter great again? Lawyers from the White House and the Department of Defense had reportedly warned President Trump about the ramifications of the transgender military ban for days before he announced the policy via Twitter without warning because he was tired of being “slow-walked.” [POLITICO]

* Rep. Maxine Waters is reclaiming her time to call Alan Dershowitz a racist. The congresswoman is upset the Harvard Law professor claimed that a D.C. grand jury will be “unfavorable” to the Trump administration in the Russia case because of its liberal leanings and “ethnic and racial composition.” [Free Beacon]

* According to Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, the Justice Department will federally prosecute anyone and everyone who so much as thinks about leaking classified information — but not members of the press, because they’re “after leakers, not journalists.” Perhaps he ought to relay this information to his boss. [CNN]

* Kirkland & Ellis is looking for law students to join its army of summer associates in 2018. The magic number of summers is somewhere around 245, but they “could go over.” Do you have what it takes to be one of the few many, the proud prestigious? Be all you can be at K&E. [Big Law Business]

* Crap, it looks like the legal profession lost a ton of jobs in July. We’re talking four figures worth of jobs — 4,300 jobs, to be exact. All in, the profession has only seen an increase of 600 jobs since January, and is still down by about 50,000 jobs since pre-recession highs in May 2007. [Am Law Daily]

* The Seventh Circuit will rehear “Making a Murderer” star Brendan Dassey’s case en banc, following a 2-1 decision that Dassey’s confession to murder was coerced and that his conviction should be overturned. Perhaps the full court won’t be as sympathetic to Dassey’s situation… [Washington Post]

* Remember when Judge Nicholas Garaufis (E.D.N.Y.) flipped out at Kirkland & Ellis for not sending a partner to cover a status hearing? It seems K&E and its client Facebook’s groveling won over the judge: cases dismissed. [ABA Journal]

* A big settlement in the Takata air bags litigation — and presumably big legal fees for some of the firms involved. [National Law Journal]

* Congratulations to Judge Amul Thapar (E.D. Ky.) on clearing the Senate Judiciary Committee; he should hopefully be on the Sixth Circuit soon. [Washington Times]

* Congratulations to Rachel Brand on her confirmation as associate attorney general — although it’s unfortunate that more Democrats didn’t cross the aisle to support her. [Law360]

* And be careful what you wish for, Democrats: now that we have Robert Mueller as special counsel, congressional inquiries into Trump/Russia-related matters could stall. [Washington Post]

* Speaking of Russia probes, should President Donald Trump hire outside counsel to represent him? да, да. [New York Times]

* A closer look at prominent lawyer John K. Bush, nominated by President Trump to the Sixth Circuit. [Vetting Room via How Appealing]

* Does size matter? Yes — at least in this murder case where the defendant is invoking a “big penis” defense. [New York Post]

* Who says you can never go home again? Neil Eggleston, White House Counsel under President Obama, return to Kirkland & Ellis. [Law.com]

* The Biglaw scandal that just keeps giving and giving and giving… The Dewey retrial nears its end. [New York Law Journal]

* North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein has opened up an investigation into the troubled Charlotte School of Law. We’ll have more on this story later today. [Politico]

* The Republican controlled North Carolina General Assembly is trying to mess with Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s ability to appoint judges to their state courts. But Judge J. Douglas McCullough — a Republican — has at least one trick up his sleeve to thwart the plan. [Slate]

* The NRA is ramping up its legal strategy in California as they anticipate the future political direction of the courts there. [LA Times]

* The excuse “the Russians did it” just doesn’t fly in the world of tax law… not even if you are Sotheby’s. [New York Times]