Massachusetts

* The lawyer for an indicted Giuliani associate is seeking to step down because of his client’s inability to pay his fees. [The Hill]

* Speaking of Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor is facing backlash for falsely claiming on Facebook that he is a “former attorney general of the United States” even though he never held the high post at the Justice Department. [Daily Beast]

* An attorney who was formerly accused of assisting a jailhouse drug smuggling ring has been accused of a hit and run as well. The attorney may be a criminal lawyer… [WTAE Pittsburgh]

* A disgraced Massachusetts lawyer has been sentenced to two years in prison for tax fraud. [Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly]

* Harvey Weinstein may face criminal charges in Los Angeles as well as his pending criminal charges in New York. [LA Times]

* A lawyer caught up in the college admissions scandal has had his law license suspended. Maybe he also helped his kid get into law school… [New York Post]

* The former top lawyer for a firm co-founded by Peter Thiel is suing her ex-employer for wrongful termination. [Los Angeles Times]

* The San Francisco District Attorney race may be decided by only a few thousand votes. Never doubt that every vote counts. [San Francisco Chronicle]

* A lawyer who claimed he missed a hearing due to his grandfather’s death must supply proof to the court. This reminds me of an episode of Seinfeld… [ABA Journal]

* President Trump has paid $2M to settle a lawsuit filed by the New York Attorney General regarding the Trump Foundation. [CNN]

It is impossible to deny that speech can cause harm, but direct regulation of harmful physical actions is preferable to indirect regulation of harmful conduct by censoring or criminalizing speech.

This is a problem that must be fixed.

If we acknowledge that drug addiction is a brain problem and not a criminal act, is it fair to incarcerate people who relapse?

* “We never once saw him take a shortcut, treat a case as unimportant, or search for an easy answer.” According to 34 of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s former clerks, the man is apparently not just a judge, but also a saint, and they wanted the Senate Judiciary Committee to know all of the details. [National Law Journal]

* Nice guys get confirmed fast? More on Judge Kavanaugh’s sainthood. The man coaches not one, but two girls’ basketball teams, he’s a superb “carpool dad,” and he takes a family friend’s daughter whose father died to the school’s annual father-daughter dance each and every year. He’s just so nice! [Washington Post]

* Damn, it’s not just Arizona Summit’s graduates who can’t practice law in Arizona. Three lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis — including Paul Clement, Viet Dinh, and Christopher Bartolomucci — were booted from the school’s case against the ABA for failing to comply with out-of-state attorney admission procedures. [Law360]

* Acording to the Boston Larger Law Firm Managing Partner Group, “much work needs to be done” when it comes to attorneys who have experienced inappropriate sexual behavior at work. Per a recent study, 60 percent of respondents had either received messages of a personal or sexual nature, been touched inappropriately, or witnessed a coworker being touched inappropriately. [Boston Business Journal]

* Lawyerly Lairs: Convicted Murderer Edition. The 80-acre ranch of Claud “Tex” McIver, the former Fisher Phillips partner who shot his wife in the back, is now on the auction block, and there’s a dispute over who will receive the proceeds. [Daily Report]

Our continuing conversation with the federal judge and New York Times bestselling novelist.

The numbers on law firm partner diversity are laughable, pathetic, and entirely predictable.

An interview with a very rare individual: a federal judge and New York Times bestselling novelist.

* Michael Phelps did not “race” a shark. I did not really expect Michael Phelps to race a shark, because I know that any shark “winning” such a contest would stop racing and start… eating. And yet, I tuned in kind of hoping that they found some way to put Michael Phelps and a shark in the water at the same time. What I’m saying is: I want the Discovery Channel sued for false advertising. I want to see Discovery outrun some class-action sharks, for my amusement. [Rolling Stone]

* Disrupt the Supreme Court, go to jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. [Washington Post]

* A court rules that a 20-day registration cutoff before the election violates the Massachusetts constitution. Given the Puritan roots of the Massachusetts constitution, I wouldn’t be surprised if it only allowed for same-day registration “by ordeal,” though. If you can grab that super-heated stone and walk 20 paces, you can vote as many times as you want. [Election Law Blog]

* The AALS is moving its 2018 conference from Austin to Chicago to protest Texas’s immigration and bathroom bills. Seems like a good move, but a little unfair to Austin. When the Northeast secedes and joins Canada, we should still let people from Austin come visit. [TaxProf Blog]

* Charges against a police officer who could not be convicted of killing a black person have been dropped. Because it is not illegal for cops to indiscriminately kill black people. [The Root]

* Technically, it’s illegal in New York City to park your ice cream truck and still play the ice cream jingle. Of course, someone who complains about the ice cream man in any situation where he is (a) selling ice cream and (b) not molesting children is the scientific definition of a terrible person. The fact that the person complaining is a white lady living in Harlem is just the cherry on top of the soft serving of poop. [Gothamist]

* Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the D.C. Circuit is soon expected to publicly announce her retirement, and once she takes senior status, President Trump will have the ability to appoint another conservative judge to one of the nation’s most powerful courts — one that often serves as a training ground for future Supreme Court justices. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* Shortly after his father became the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump Jr. reportedly met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who had Kremlin ties, after he was allegedly promised damaging information about then Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. For his part, Trump’s eldest son has denied any Russian collusion having to do with the 2016 presidential election. [New York Times]

* When it comes to the AT&T / Time Warner merger, “[t]he business community is watching intensely to see what an antitrust D.O.J. will look like in the Trump administration and how much of the rhetoric from the campaign trickles down into policy.” Meanwhile, Makan Delrahim, President Trump’s nominee for antitrust chief, hasn’t had his Senate hearing yet. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Marc Kasowitz has moved to dismiss a sexual harassment suit filed against the president by former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos, claiming that thanks to the SCOTUS ruling in Bill Clinton’s sexual harassment case, presidents cannot be sued in state court for personal conduct while in office. If this flies, will it give rise to more federal filings against the president? [The Hill]

* “These are dedicated people doing very difficult work and not paying them is like not paying teachers, cops, social workers, or firefighters. The public should be outraged.” Court-appointed lawyers in Massachusetts who represent the indigent are struggling financially thanks to the state’s budget woes. Some of these attorneys are owed thousands of dollars. [Boston Globe]

* While it’s taken most justices about three to five years to get adjusted to life on the Supreme Court, it seems as if Justice Neil Gorsuch has already hit his stride over the course of just a few months. This gunner wrote one majority opinion, three dissents, three concurrences, and one statement during his first two months on the bench. [New York Times]

* DLA Piper — the first Biglaw firm to fall to a cyberattack — has finally restored its email service after five days of going without it thanks to being the victim of the worldwide Petya ransomware attack. The firm still claims no client data was compromised by the hackers who gained access to their systems. [ABC News]

* Ty Cobb of Hogan Lovells will reportedly be brought on to attend to Russia-related issues within the Office of White House Counsel. Cobb met with Trump last week, but wouldn’t offer any comment on his prospective role except to say that he was on vacation. Enjoy your time off while it lasts — working on Russia-related matters at the White House will certainly be no vacation. [Reuters]

* Harvard Law School has established an endowed professorship to honor the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who graduated from the school in 1960. According to outgoing Dean Martha Minow, the professorship is “especially meaningful” because the justice “had a great love of learning.” [Harvard Law Today]

* Overworked and underpaid never paid? Public defenders working as independent contractors in Massachusetts aren’t being paid in a remotely timely fashion. They sometimes go up to two months without receiving paychecks, and say that this has been going on for at least five years. [WWLP 22News]

* Tennessee wants to go all in with the ballot selfie ban. [The Tennessean]

* What the hell does the 21st Century Cures Act do? [MedCity News]

* Shoe’s on the other foot now, apocryphal Nigerian billionaire. [New York Daily News]

* Just after Christmas seems like the perfect time to ask the Supreme Court to figure out sales tax rules for out-of-state deliveries. [SCOTUSblog]

* We’ll have recreational marijuana… when we get around to it. [ABC News]

* Poe’s Law > Godwin’s Law. [Slate]

This is incredibly troubling.

It's time to briefly visit each marijuana ballot initiative, especially since legalization or medical marijuana reform in one state can greatly impact other marijuana-friendly states and even federal marijuana policy.

"Passachusetts" no more?

* Who recently made partner at Kirkland & Ellis, Covington & Burling, Goodwin Procter, and Curtis Mallet-Prevost? Here’s a nice round-up that highlights the names of the 112 associates who were promoted at these four firms. Don’t be too shocked by that high number; the vast majority of partner promotions were made at Kirkland, where 81 attorneys were welcomed into the ranks of the firm’s non-equity partnership. [Big Law Business]

* In what’s hailed as a victory for gay rights, Massachusetts expanded the legal definition of the word “parent” to be read “in a gender-neutral manner, to apply where a child is ‘born to [two people], is received into their joint home, and is held out by both as their own child.'” The state’s high court also allowed parentage laws to be construed to apply to members of same-sex couples without biological ties to the children. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Today, SCOTUS will hear arguments in a case challenging “judge-made law,” that is, what is and isn’t considered insider trading. If you trade on information received from a third party who received it from an insider, is that insider trading? Even Mark Cuban wants to know, writing in an amicus brief that “no one should be prosecuted for conduct that Congress is either unwilling or unable to define.” [DealBook / New York Times]

* The Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down a law that forced abortion providers to save fetal tissue samples from patients younger than 14 years old, on top of other broad restrictions. The court unanimously ruled that the law violated the state constitution’s “one subject” rule. In a separate concurrence, four judges would’ve struck down the law as an unconstitutional burden on a woman’s right to have an abortion. [Reuters]

* Much like America, the Supreme Court seems to have a problem with race this Term. The high court will be hearing three divisive cases having to do with racial slurs, racial rhetoric, and racial epithets, and the Court may very well be divided along ideological lines, resulting in 4-4 deadlocks thanks to the seat left vacant by the late Justice Antonin Scalia and the Senate’s refusal to give Judge Merrick Garland a hearing. [CNN]

The eminent constitutional scholar has a lovely, albeit eccentrically decorated, home.