New York Times
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Politics, White-Collar Crime
Maybe Ty Cobb Just Doesn't Get This Whole 'Client Confidentiality' Thing
Trump's top lawyers regale restaurant patrons with claims of hidden documents. -
Free Speech, Justice
A Sigh Of Relief As The Sarah Palin Lawsuit Gets Tossed
OMG, something NORMAL happened. - Sponsored
Early Adopters Of Legal AI Gaining Competitive Edge In Marketplace
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Non-Sequiturs
Non-Sequiturs: 07.26.17
* President Trump’s personal legal team: “It’s utter chaos. Sometimes it can be like no one knows who is in charge.” [Washington Post]
* Adam Feldman predicts that the travel ban is going down before SCOTUS. [Empirical SCOTUS]
* The Trump tweets on banning transgender individuals from the military aren’t the only bad news for the LGBTQ community today. [Washington Blade]
* A nice win for the First Amendment and public access to court records. [Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post]
* Ira Stoll wonders (with good reason): why did the New York Times account of this high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit name the law firm, but not the plaintiff? [Smarter Times]
* Clerkships guru Debra M. Strauss, who has written for our pages on the topic, is out with a second edition of Behind the Bench: The Guide to Judicial Clerkships (affiliate link).
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Defamation, Justice
Palin Lawsuit Shows How The Right Has Aced Defamation Class And Opinion Writing
The Times is getting slammed because it insists on fighting the last war. -
Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 06.28.17
* The First Amendment takes another knock: Sarah Palin is suing the New York Times for defamation. [New York Times]
* Prosecutors are taking on the blue wall of silence, charging three police officers in the allegedly coverup in the Laquan McDonald shooting. [Chicago Tribune]
* Nikki Haley may have violated the Hatch Act with an itchy Twitter finger. [NPR]
* Breaking down Donald Trump’s claims about the attorneys working with Mueller on the Russia probe. [Washington Post]
* The Trump administration’s media blackout could have implications for the Supreme Court. [The Hill]
* What were the sharpest dissents this Term? [Law360]
* Alabama was ordered to improve prison conditions for mentally ill inmates. [Jezebel]
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Money, Technology, United Kingdom / Great Britain
This Week In Legal Tech: A Big Investment, A Virtual Lawyer, A Price-Quoting Chatbot, And A Notable Pivot
Which legal startup just closed on a $12 million funding round? -
Biglaw, Politics
The Best Apps To Track Trump’s Legal Changes
A Biglaw firm, a T-14 law school and more get in on the action. -
American Bar Association / ABA, Donald Trump, Free Speech
New York Times 'Absolutely Incorrect' As To Why ABA Never Published Donald Trump 'Libel Bully' Article
The ABA has a bone to pick with the New York Times. - Sponsored
How Generative AI Will Improve Legal Service Delivery
Learn how emerging tools will likely change and enhance the work of lawyers for years to come in this new report. -
Free Speech
This Is What Happens When A Lawyer's Letter Goes Viral
You never know when your letter can make it big. -
Donald Trump, Justice, Politics
New York Times To Donald Trump: Come At Me, Bro
Truth, remember, is an absolute defense. -
Biglaw, Donald Trump
Donald Trump's Biglaw Firm Threatens To Sue New York Times Over Publication Of Sexual Assault Allegations
Trump may be opening up a bottomless can of legal worms. -
Free Speech, Politics
Understanding Donald Trump's Legal Options Against The New York Times
What are the Donald's options? -
Biglaw, Donald Trump
Donald Trump Chooses Biglaw Firm To Fight New York Times Over Publication Of Tax Documents
Which Biglaw firm might file suit on his behalf?
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Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 10.03.16
* 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 LawAntonin 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]
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Law Schools
Caveat Venditor: Empty Threats From Notorious For-Profit Law Schools
InfiLaw threatens a documentary filmmaker, but truth is the ultimate defense. -
Politics
How Trump's Escapades With Women Are Helping Rebrand The GOP
Donald Trump is making the GOP brand sexy. -
Admin, Announcements
A Farewell To Comments
Love them or hate them, Above the Law comments are going away. -
Biglaw, Sports
New York Times Stands Up To Biglaw Firm, NFL
Consider this an early salvo in the battle over NFL concussions. -
Morning Docket
Morning Docket: 03.30.16
* An odd order? Perhaps in an attempt to avoid yet another 4-4 split in a controversial case, SCOTUS justices have ordered parties on both sides of the contraceptive coverage battle in Zubik to file briefs describing how such coverage could be provided without religious groups having to put forth much effort to formally object. [Associated Press]
* “It’s mind bogglingly obvious, but often gets lost in the mix. Apart from checking there aren’t any conflicts, clients are rarely put at the heart of these mergers.” Go figure, but according to a new report by professional services consultancy Gulland Padfield, law firm mergers usually don’t benefit clients in any way, shape, or form. [Am Law Daily]
* It seems that Russian cybercriminal “Oleras” has hired hackers to break into the computer systems of 48 Biglaw firms so he can collect confidential client data and then trade on the stolen insider information. Thus far, he’s been unsuccessful. Has your law firm been targeted? If you’d like to know, check the list here. [Crain’s Chicago Business]
* The NFL is so pissed that the New York Times recently published a story linking the league to the tobacco industry that it not only wrote a two-part rebuttal that was more than 3000 words long, but it also sicced Paul Weiss attorneys on the paper of record in search of a retraction, claiming that the story was defamatory in nature. [Yahoo! Sports]
* “I will not go down. I want Bill Cosby in court.” A Los Angeles judge has ruled that model Janice Dickinson’s defamation case against Bill Cosby can move forward so that a jury can decide whether her allegations of rape are truthful, and further, whether a “liar” comment made by the comedian’s ex-lawyer, Marty Singer, was defamatory. [Telegram]
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Benchslaps, SCOTUS, Supreme Court
Judge Posner Tackles Justice Scalia's Obsession With Gay Marriage
Judge Posner is known for his willingness to take swings at those above him in the judicial hierarchy.