Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 08.19.25

* DLA Piper bringing everyone back to the office 4 days a week, leaving attorneys an extra day of the week to schedule all their interviews.[American Lawyer]

* White House sending its social media teams with on FBI arrests. "Yo, it's ya boy Steve, here at the qualified immunity channel..." [Reuters]

* Alina Habba is legally the U.S. Attorney of New Jersey according to Alina Habba. [Law360]

* Judge slims down Ozempic suit. [Legal Intelligencer]

* Paul Weiss and Reed Smith accused of multimillion dollar coverup. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Newsmax coughs up $67 million for lying about the 2020 election. [NPR]

* Fifth Circuit resuscitates student group's lawsuit against college over banning drag show citing First Amendment, thus overturning Kacsmaryk opinion that had been based on... vibes. [Courthouse News Service]

Morning Docket: 08.18.25

* Article highlights efforts surrendering firms have taken against Trump administration, which certainly seems like the sort of publicity those firms would hope to promote amid talent and client defections. [American Lawyer]

* Supreme Court imposing rule of guess as it tries to obscure its actions. [National Law Journal]

* Burford Capital considers moving litigation finance to new level with equity stakes in law firms. [Financial Times]

* Trump's D.C. stunt has "no exit strategy." Though as its own exit strategy from the Epstein files it's doing great. [NPR]

* Norton Rose tried its hand as a tech startup. It didn't work. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Federal judiciary begins rule debates. [Law360]

* Penn Law suspends scholarship in honor of its first Black woman graduate. [Philadelphia Tribune]

Morning Docket: 08.15.25

* Which firms are stockpiling fleeing government lawyers? [National Law Journal]

* Report suggests Russian hackers were inside PACER for years. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Trump administration targeting legal Ukrainian refugees now. [WSJ]

* AI hallucinations hit Australian murder case. [ABC]

* NFL loses bid to resolve Brian Flores discrimination case with its own kangaroo arbitration. [Law360]

* Supreme Court allows social media age check law to remain in effect. [Reuters]

* Gerry Spence dies at 96. [AP News]

Morning Docket: 08.14.25

* Diligent journalism students devote a lot of words to "some law students are losers and join FedSoc to feel good about themselves and get jobs their grades could never justify." [Harvard Crimson]

* Swapping courses? [ABA Journal]

* Milbank carries the love across the pond. [LegalCheek]

* In what shouldn't be controversial news, bad judges continue to be very bad at law. [Bloomberg Law News]

* How are we still talking about this guy? [NPR]

* $40B here, $40B there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. [Law360]

* ILTACON update from Legal Tech News's newest. [LegalTech News]

Morning Docket: 08.13.25

* Elon Musk threatens to sue Apple because OpenAI somehow performs better than his model that calls itself "MechaHitler." [CNBC]

* "Crypto" and "fraud"? How are those words possibly linked. [Law360]

* Diversity experts fired from cowardly law firms face a tough market of equally cowardly potential employers. [American Lawyer]

* SCOTUS going to bring back torturing gay children as a treat for their fans. [Bloomberg Law News]

* ABA opposes Trump's law firm crackdown proving they have more guts than some of the law firms. [Reuters]

* Ohtani might be adding historic legal troubles to his plate. [SF Gate]

Morning Docket: 08.12.25

* Taft and Morris Manning announced merger. [Law360]

* Unqualified judge's husband putting his groomsman in charge of enforcing white collar crime. In case you wanted to track what happens when the dumbest people imaginable have power. [Bloomberg Law News]

* ABA adopts resolution against assault on rule of law. [Reuters]

* Harvard lawyer greases wheels of fascism. [New York Times]

* Anthropic's IP case carries on. [The Recorder]

* Hold the phone! The Supreme Court is taking cases based on politics?!? [National Law Journal]

Morning Docket: 08.11.25

* Lawyer shifts career to OnlyFans content. [NY Post]

* Trial over Trump's use of military for domestic policing begins. [Reuters]

* Former copyright chief thinks she got fired for suggesting AI companies have to respect IP law. [Law.com]

* Justice Department going after Tish James for pointing out that Trump's businesses cooked books. [ABA Journal]

* Supreme Court sees opportunity to promote more bribery. [Bloomberg Law News]

* New allegations added to Tom Goldstein case. [Reuters]

* Judge wants everyone in the Lively-Baldoni scuffle to play nice. [Law360]

Morning Docket: 08.08.25

* Tariffs starting to drag down client earnings. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Reed Smith putting a cheerful face on massive defections to Crowell. [American Lawyer]

* An interview with Andry Hernández, the makeup artist the Trump administration kidnapped and sent to El Salvador torture prison. [Bulwark/YouTube]

* Law license reform efforts dismissed by casually branding applicants as weak. It's not just for America anymore! [LegalCheek]

* Does Greg Abbott have a case against Texas Democrats? No, of course not. [Lawfare]

* Historians will debate when the federal government went started to go off the rails, but this is a pretty compelling case for INS v. Chadha. [SSRN]

* Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyer says he loves representing the underdog. Just another one of those "underdogs" who the entire Justice Department has retooled itself around buying their silence. [Vanity Fair]

Morning Docket: 08.07.25

* DOJ seeking sanctions against lawyer for taking immigration pro bono case. [Politico]

* To Elon Musk's chagrin, appellate court once again upholds the legality of the SEC imposing gag rules on voluntary settlements. [Reuters]

* Woman sees charges dropped after hiring Brad Bondi. Is this necessarily related? No. But this is exactly why he couldn't credibly serve as head of the DC Bar at the same time his sister runs the DOJ. [ABC News]

* Following up on the lawyers who responded swiftly to Biglaw surrender deals. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Oklahoma tribe uses FOIA request to uncover effort by senator to redefine Cherokee status to strip group of its rights. [Law360]

* Small firms yet again taking up the slack abandoned by Biglaw. [National Law Journal]

* Trump's rewiring of the federal justice system to tamp down its independence could have long-term ramifications. [ABA Journal]

Morning Docket: 08.06.25

* Trump administration officials meeting with VP to develop "unified" strategy for dealing with Epstein evidence. [CNN]

* House committee subpoenas the Epstein files, but throw in Clinton subpoenas too just to make sure the focus isn't entirely on the inevitable Trump redactions. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Sheldon Whitehouse accuses D.C. Circuit judges of stalling contempt proceedings to corruptly aid Emil Bove's nomination just because they are in fact stalled contempt proceedings to corruptly aid Emil Bove's nomination. [Reuters]

* Federal judge who issued TRO with fake facts in it has declined to offer any explanation -- *cough* ChatGPT *cough* [ABA Journal]

* Airport officials told a lawyer to "soften" the language in her sexual harassment practice ad. Which sounds a lot like the mentality behind sexual harassment. [Syracuse.com]

* Speaking of AI, Harvey announces $100M ARR -- which is kind of an ephemeral statistic, but startups love it so here we are. [Artificial Lawyer]

Morning Docket: 08.05.25

* Sotomayor expresses support for court reform in overlooked audio. [Fix the Court]

* DOJ opening investigations into Obama officials over claims that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, which means those Epstein files must be REALLY bad for Donald Trump. [Reuters]

* Arnold & Porter continues raid on K&L Gates. [National Law Journal]

* ABA considers shrinking its board. [Law360]

* "Fighting for ‘Truth’ Is Lucrative Business for Small Law Firms" is one way of saying "Small firms become Donald Trump's go-to for frivolous defamation claims that his more established firms won't touch." [Bloomberg Law News]

* Sheppard Mullin providing elder care benefits. [ABA Journal]

Morning Docket: 08.04.25

* Supreme Court prepares to strike down the rest of the Voting Rights Act. [Reuters]

* Welcome McDermott Will & Schulte [American Lawyer]

* Law professors block Trump sanctions on International Criminal Court staff. [Bloomberg Law News]

* In the UK, a cyberattack on Legal Aid has made a mess of the whole sector of legal services for the most vulnerable. See, over here we just needed cowardice! [The Guardian]

* Jeff Clark now front of the line for the disbarment train. [MSNBC]

* Epstein lawyer embedded deep in MAGA legal world. [The Atlantic]

* Ninth Circuit puts brakes on ICE sweeps. [Law360]

Morning Docket: 08.01.25

* Kavanaugh tells judges that the Supreme Court can't explain shadow docket opinions because it might suggest to lower courts that the Court has made a decision about the legal merits. This is a week after the Court explicitly told lower court judges to use shadow docket opinions to guess at future legal changes. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Judges discuss the threats they're receiving. [National Law Journal]

* As Trump issues new, random tariffs, Federal Circuit questions whether he even has that authority. [Law360]

* Paralegal tells judge, "I'm giving you one more chance" and it doesn't go over well. [Roll on Friday]

* LA fires benefit concert hires Latham & Watkins to review its finances after Trump accused them -- without any basis -- of wasting the money. [Hollywood Reporter]

* Ryan Powers writes about his Biglaw firing, praising Harvard values... which is a little awkward as Harvard begins process of caving to Trump. [Harvard Crimson]

* Meanwhile Brown cut its own deal with Trump. [PrawfsBlawg]

Morning Docket: 07.31.25

* Biglaw backs away from pro bono causes to avoid Trump ire. [Reuters]

* Florida bashes ABA as "woke" for persisting in its belief in this whole "constitutionality" thing. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Music's top lawyers profiled. [Variety]

* NSA's GC fired. Cool. That seems like the sort of organization that doesn't need legal oversight! [Politico]

* Alec Baldwin's malicious prosecution case dismissed. [Reuters]

* NFTs can be trademarked. [Law360]

* Emil Bove got more notoriety, but don't sleep on the rest of Trump's appellate nominees as lawless thugs too. [National Law Journal]

* Liberal group opens law firm to deal with Trump. [Axios]

Morning Docket: 07.30.25

* After another whistleblower emerged Republicans quickly confirmed Emil Bove before having to listen to the audio tapes that might prove he lied under oath. These are not serious people. [NBC News]

* As a reminder, the only reason Bove has this lifetime appointment is moderate Democrats swallowing an Islamophobic smear campaign. [Balls and Strikes]

* Lawyer pleads guilty to forging federal district judge's signature. [CBS News]

* With the passing of Ozzy Osbourne, a look back at his lawyer and the bat that lost its head. [Boston Globe]

* Government crypto report likely to strip whatever checks on abuse and fraud might've otherwise existed. [Reuters]

* Embattled Los Angeles federal prosecutor remains in job after judges decline to have the same Habba fight. [Bloomberg Law News]

* EPA ditches regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions and manages to be unintentionally hilarious about it. [Law360]

* Judges seek heightened security following right-wing threats. But, the important thing is to remember that the only important threat is criticizing lax judge selection rules. [ABA Journal]