Securities and Exchange Commission

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 09.25.15

    * Why are so many law grads failing the bar exam? Law profs, a law dean, and a Biglaw recruiting specialist all have answers to this question… and only some of them come close to being satisfactory. [Room for Debate / New York Times]

    * Jurors in the Dewey & LeBoeuf trial have deliberated for five days thus far, and seem to be no closer to coming to a verdict than when they first started. They’re quibbling over thesaurus entries for the word “fake” (i.e., “fake income”). [Am Law Daily]

    * Thanks to the OnRamp Fellowship, more women lawyers are making a reentry into the legal profession through Biglaw firms than ever before. Participating firms now include Skadden Arps and MoFo, amongst others. Congrats! [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

    * Law school enrollment may be stagnant across the country, but at Colorado Law, it’s booming. The size of the school’s incoming class is 22 percent larger than last year’s was. What can we say other than students were sTOKEd to get in. [Boulder Daily Camera]

    * If you’re ever fired from your job, charged with insider trading, and the SEC wants access to your work phone, take heart in the fact that your personal passcode is just that — personal. The SEC can’t treat it as a business record thanks to this ruling. [WSJ Law Blog]

    * Richard Cudahy Sr., longtime Seventh Circuit judge, RIP. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

  • Non-Sequiturs

    Non-Sequiturs: 09.18.15

    * Daily lawyer tips is just killing it. The latest is on the perils of actually becoming a senior associate. [Daily Lawyer Tips]

    * Lawyers can’t be getting dumber if no one (hyperbole alert) is passing the bar exam. [Bloomberg BNA]

    * A kickstarter our readers are sure to love: a new board game that combines Would You Rather?, Poker, and Rock, Paper, Scissors with arguing. What’s not to love? [Kickstarter]

    * Pile-on-the-SEC-week (the securities kind, not the football kind) continues. This time, Judge Berman is taking a crack. [Dealbreaker]

    * The civil justice system is riddled with inequities, especially if you happen to be a plaintiff. [Mighty]

    * Is a new pro-worker law in the works? [Lawyers, Guns & Money]

    * The NFL field that is the subject of lawsuits is getting changed… not that they’re admitting any wrongdoing, natch. [Deadspin]

    * The Ninth Circuit? Not a fan of Sheriff Joe. [AZ Central]

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 09.16.15

    * Justices Kennedy and Breyer seemed to be champing at the bit for a prolonged solitary confinement case last Term, and now they may have the opportunity to weigh in on one. Let’s see if the Supreme Court decides to let Justice Kennedy swing his vote around. [New York Times]

    * We all know that Mark Cuban isn’t that big of a fan of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but now he’s trying to inject himself into the debate over the agency’s use of in-house administrative law judges by way of filing a brief in support. [WSJ Law Blog]

    * Winston & Strawn elected Jeffrey Kessler to serve as its co-chair. He’s got experience running firms with others — he once served as a member of Dewey’s four-partner Office of the Chairman before the firm completely imploded. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

    * IU Maurer Law is teaming up with Chapman and Cutler, an Am Law 200 firm, to create a two-year rotational program in finance and law. There’s just one catch: this is only for recent college graduates, not law school graduates. Oops! [Indiana Daily Student]

    * Lucrative niche alert: They’re calling this the green rush, but we don’t need to remind attorneys that green is also the color of money. By 2020, the market for legal recreational marijuana is going to be booming, with billions of dollars in business. [Fortune]

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 09.01.15

    * ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams is suing his neighbors over his lawyerly lair — and one of the defendants is a Biglaw partner at a top firm. Expect more on this later. [New York Post]

    * Speaking of Biglaw, a familiar tale of financial performance: gross revenue at Am Law 100 firms grew by 4 percent in the first half of 2015, but driven by rate increases rather than demand growth. [American Lawyer]

    * If you want the Supreme Court to hear your case, try to steer your cert petition clear of the “long conference,” known as the place “where petitions go to die.” [New York Times]

    * Speaking of SCOTUS, the Court won’t come to the rescue of the Kentucky county clerk who refuses to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — time to issue those licenses or quit, Kim Davis. [How Appealing]

    * But the justices did come to the (temporary) rescue of former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, allowing him to remain free until SCOTUS acts on his petition for certiorari. [SCOTUSblog via How Appealing]

    * Are criticisms of the S.E.C.’s administrative-law procedures correct? Here’s a study from Professor David Zaring. [New York Times]

    * The Show-Me State leads when it comes to showing defendants to their deaths: Missouri has displaced Texas as the “epicenter of the American death penalty.” [The Marshall Project]

    * Speaking of capital punishment, I predicted that these particular Ninth Circuit judges wouldn’t be too sympathetic to this challenge to the death penalty — and based on yesterday’s oral argument, it seems I was right. [How Appealing]

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 08.20.15

    * You’ve heard about what it’s like to be a Supreme Court clerk, but we bet you’ve never heard about what it’s like to be a Supreme Court intern. It’s apparently the “opportunity of a lifetime” to do errands and prepare lunch and meals for Justice Sonia Sotomayor. [Supreme Court Brief]

    * If you’re trying to file an effective brief with the Supreme Court, it’s best to write in “relatively short sentences, with a non-confrontational tone.” In other words, you really shouldn’t be trying to emulate Justice Scalia’s “jiggery-pokery” flair. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

    * Wachtell Lipton may interested in going “big brother” on its associates, but when it comes to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the firm wants to steer clear of such voyeurism by doing away with clients’ quarterly reports. [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

    * This judge didn’t play “just the tip” when it came to piercing his corporate veil: Paul Hansmeier of copyright-troll firm Prenda Law must pay sanctions to the tune of $64,000 after he drained cash from another one of his firms and then dissolved it. [Ars Technica]

    * Texas Tech Law is introducing a “brain-training” seminar for its first-year law students that will “maximize their brains’ performance.” One wonders if they took such a course before law school if they’d be enrolled in the same place. [Lubbock Avalanche-Journal]

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 08.10.15

    * Hot on the heels of the news that the majority of students enrolled in California’s “failure factories” unaccredited law schools drop out before graduation, legislators are pushing for the state bar to do something about it before even more prospective students are conned. [Los Angeles Times]

    * Robots will be coming for your jobs more quickly now thanks to the largest law firm in the world. Dentons invested an untold sum in Ross, an app that will inevitably replace first-year lawyers by utilizing super computer Watson’s artificial intelligence to perform legal research. [Globe and Mail]

    * Slowly but surely, the legal industry is making a comeback in terms of headcount. Sure, the entire profession is only employing 3,500 more people now than it was at this time last year (sorry about that, law school grads), but it’s still an improvement. [Am Law Daily]

    * Just because it doesn’t look like the Securities and Exchange Commission has been doing anything doesn’t mean that lawyers at the agency have been twiddling their thumbs. They’ve got some major things in the works, they swear. [DealBook / New York Times]

    * “I wonder how it feels to save the life of a mass murderer? Good job.” In a shocking verdict, convicted Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes was sentenced to life in prison. All it took was one holdout juror to take the death penalty off the table. [Reuters]

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  • Non-Sequiturs

    Non-Sequiturs: 06.04.15

    * New developments in everyone’s favorite soap opera of a case: Faruqi & Faruqi LLP is cross-appealing the $140,000 judgment in favor of former associate Alexandra Marchuk. [Law360]

    * Whoa. There’s one SEC Commissioner actually doing her job! So retro. Stay strong, Commissioner Stein. [Guile Is Good]

    * Congress is working on a bill to prevent companies from foisting non-compete clauses on employees making less than $31,200/year. But, but, then someone else might learn the important trade secret of the Colonel’s 11 secret herbs and spices! [Lawyers, Guns & Money]

    * Senior and junior lawyers speak a different language. This article comes to us from the U.K., but the sentiment is universal, even if the phrase “bugger off” isn’t. [Legal Cheek]

    * Prosecutor called Asian Americans “greedy foreigners.” That goes over about as well as you’d expect. [Angry Asian Man]

    * David spoke with the Legal Talk Network about “the importance of friendship and family and the psyche of young lawyers who often compromise personal relationships for career ambitions.” If you guessed they were discussing Supreme Ambitions (affiliate link), then you’re right. [Legal Talk Network]

    * Where are LL.M.s valuable? [LLM-Guide]

    * Lawyer sues EFF for calling his patent stupid. We here at Above the Law would like to reiterate that this patent is brilliant and probably the most Earth-shattering invention since the light bulb. [Corporate Counsel]

    * Maybe legalizing drugs doesn’t solve all the violence. [Seattle Times]

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 06.03.15

    * C. Michael Kamps, the man who filed a pro se suit against Baylor Law with claims that he was denied admission because his GPA predated grade inflation, recently lost his bid to get SCOTUS to review his case. It’s too bad — he seems like a total gunner. [ABA Journal]

    * If you thought that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the biggest celebutante justice on the Supreme Court, then you’d be dead wrong. According to Professor Rick Hasen’s research, it’s Sonia Sotomayor who’s stealing the spotlight at the high court. [WSJ Law Blog]

    * Senator Elizabeth Warren, the queen of taking Wall Street to task, now has her sights set on SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White. In a 13-page letter, the politician called the former Debevoise partner’s tenure “extremely disappointing.” [DealBook / New York Times]

    * Ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s arraignment was rescheduled from this Thursday to next Tuesday. No reason was given for the change, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that there’s still “no attorney of record” on the case. [National Law Journal]

    * Many doctors are hoping that tort reform will save them from litigating their malpractice cases, but there’s an easy alternative. In order to be sued less often, doctors should try to talk more to their patients. What a novel concept. [The Upshot / New York Times]

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 03.31.15

    * Reunited and it feels so good… to have more tuition money in our pockets: following more than 40 years apart, Rutgers-Camden Law and Rutgers-Newark Law may merge to create the Rutgers School of Law, one of the largest law schools in the country. [NJ.com]

    * In case you missed it, the courtroom erupted into chaos in the final moments of the Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins trial because a juror “made a mistake” and decided to change his vote mid-verdict. Come on, give the guy a break — he’s almost 90. [WSJ Law Blog]

    * Lawmakers are awfully interested in the way that the SEC is doing its job, and they’re drafting new laws in the hope of helping the agency out. We’ll let you know how helpful this was in a few years if those bills are ever passed. [DealBook / New York Times]

    * After an incredibly unsuccessful defense of its ban on same-sex marriage, Wisconsin is going to have to shell out more than $1 million in legal fees to the ACLU — the largest single payout yet by a state in the history of cases of this kind. [National Law Journal]

    * If you’re looking to transfer to another law school after your first year in the trenches, here are three things that you absolutely, positively must do to ensure your chances of being accepted elsewhere. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News & World Report]

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