Sexual Misconduct

* Troubling confession: Lawyer fined for warning school of a priest’s history of sexual misconduct. [The Guardian]

* Pig in the mine: California’s pork law is an unexpected proxy for the legal side of the culture war. [Cal Matters]

* Gauntlet thrown: Hawaii won’t make it easy for other states to criminalize abortion. [Huff Po]

* No laughing matter: Comedians claim Atlanta airport’s search practices use racial profiling. [AP]

* The right to cancel loans? You should read up on this cease and desist. [Business Insider]

* Supreme Court looks to further cripple class actions by killing off cases that chasten corporate misconduct but can’t feasibly reimburse every individual victim. So, if you’re planning to injure a bunch of people, make sure to do it in a small and difficult to track manner! [National Law Journal]

* Brexit comes to Biglaw as Kirkland moves its European hub to Paris. [International]

* Biglaw associate suing USA Gymnastics for all the reasons USA Gymnastics is getting sued these days. [American Lawyer]

* Tribes are suing North Dakota over its naked effort to disenfranchise Native Americans. [National Law Journal]

* Shocking absolutely no one, the EEOC finds that the #MeToo movement has not resulted in a surge in false allegations. [Law.com]

* This lawsuit against Spirit Airlines uses a lot of fast food analogies but misses the most apt: flying Spirit Airlines is like willfully going to the dirtiest Sbarro you can find and being shocked. [Law360]

* The legal battle over Selendy & Gay’s billings following the departure from Quinn Emanuel pits contractual obligations against legal ethics. [New York Law Journal]

* The Senate Judiciary Committee has reached a tentative deal with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford as to when she will testify about her allegations against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. The showdown is expected to go down on Thursday, pending any last-minute changes. [New York Times]

* Judge Kavanaugh dug up calendars from the summer of 1982 to corroborate his denials of Dr. Ford’s allegations. He apparently kept detailed entries as a teen, listing events like “go to [Mark] Judge’s,” but “drunk sexual assault fun time” is nowhere to be found. So convenient! [New York Times]

* And now, a second woman has come forward to accuse Judge Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct — this time, during his drunken college years. Meet Deborah Ramirez, who says that when they were Yale freshmen, Kavanaugh shoved his penis in her face and as she pushed him away, caused her to touch it without her consent. [New Yorker]

* Professor Amy Chua claims that everything current and former Yale Law students are saying about her Kavanaugh clerkship coaching is “outrageous” and “100% false.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, those Yale Law students say Chua is lying. [HuffPost]

* “I am resigning from the firm, effective immediately.” It may seem like former federal prosecutor Michael Bromwich quit his job as senior counsel at Robbins Russell after objections were raised by partners to his joining Dr. Ford’s legal team, but they made a mutual agreement months ago about parting ways. His representation of Dr. Ford merely “accelerated” the departure. [National Law Journal]

* Will President Trump fire Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein over his reported comments about wearing a wire before the midterms and Kavanaugh’s prospective confirmation? Trump’s GOP allies want him to wait before anything else gets muddled. [CNN]

* In case you missed it, Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times has noticed a trend when it comes to Chief Justice Roberts and who he’s been aligning himself with at the Supreme Court. He may not yet be a moderate, but he seems to be shying away from “the reliably right-wing triumvirate” of Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch. [New York Times]

* “The document speaks for itself.” All three of former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates’s lawyers are withdrawing as counsel, and will only explain why in documents filed under seal. Only his Biglaw attorney who is known for his plea deals remains. Gates is under indictment in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. [POLITICO]

* According to the latest year-end report from the Wells Fargo Private Bank’s Legal Specialty Group, law firm revenue and profits were up in 2017, and demand had increased for legal services. As usual, the most profitable firms at the top of the market outperformed their smaller counterparts. [American Lawyer]

* Trump administration policies having to do with immigration, specifically the H-1B visa program for foreign workers, may force many Biglaw firms to move to their practices to the cloud sooner than they would have liked. In times of “political uncertainty” like these, Biglaw can’t rely on “offshore labor arbitrage” for IT outsourcing. [TechTarget]

* The GC of the American Red Cross has resigned following the publication of a report that he praised a former colleague who was the subject of an internal investigation and pushed out of the organization for alleged instances sexual misconduct. [Corporate Counsel]

* Disgusting: A Georgia lawyer who asked a witness to recant an eyewitness account of her son’s molestation has politely gave up his license to practice law after pleading guilty to felony witness tampering and attempting to suborn perjury. [Big Law Business]

* What’s it like to be the “tweetingest judge in America”? Justice Don Willett of the Texas Supreme Court tells us what it’s like to live a week in his life in this endearing column. From letting us know where he spends much of his time (the local Chick-fil-A) to revealing the reason he Tweets so much (to get reelected) to describing his love for his children, Justice Willett is a true gem of the judiciary. [Wall Street Journal]

* Judge Timothy Parker of the Carroll County District Court in Arkansas has resigned from his post and agreed to never serve as a judge again to avoid being charged with ethical misconduct. Judge Parker was accused of arranging for defendants’ pretrial releases in exchange for sexual favors, but says he never contested the allegations on the record because he has kids and “[didn’t] want them exposed to that kind of crap.” [AP]

* The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has threatened to file suit against the National Park Service for “stonewalling and refusing to release permits that are vitally needed by organizers in order to plan and execute peaceful, lawful free-speech activities” — that is, protests and rallies — of Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration. Only three groups out of 26 have received permits, and the inauguration is in two weeks’ time. [Reuters]

* “While it is encouraging to see small gains in most areas this year, the incredibly slow pace of change continues to be discouraging.” The most recent National Association for Law Placement report has revealed that as usual, women and minorities are just barely making progress at the nation’s largest law firms when it comes to their representation as a whole and their presence in firm partnerships. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Per Altman Weil’s latest report on law firm mergers, there were six fewer mergers in 2016 than in 2015. Although just 85 deals were announced last year compared to 91 in 2015, they were “better” than those announced in years prior, and in fact, some of the biggest names in Biglaw agreed to combine, including the Eversheds and Sutherland Asbill merger and the Arnold & Porter and Kaye Scholer merger. [Big Law Business]

* John Stamos of Full House fame was formally charged with driving under the influence earlier this week following his arrest for erratic driving this summer. He faces up to six months in jail if convicted. We have faith that his beautiful hair will survive time in the slammer. [USA Today]

* While the vast majority of the law school lawsuits containing allegations related to deceptive employment statistics have been dismissed, a few are still alive and kicking. The very first one filed — Alaburda v. Thomas Jefferson School of Law — is heading to trial in 2016. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Trick or treat? Per federal prosecutors, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert will plead guilty before Halloween as part of a deal in his ongoing sexual misconduct hush-money case, but whether he’ll serve time is a question that’s yet to be answered. [Reuters]

* Headcount at real estate firms with once-prominent foreclosure practices continues to shrink thanks to the recession’s end. To that effect, two Chicago firms have eliminated hundreds of positions for legal professionals since 2013. [Chicago Business Journal]

* Thanks to a new online system, Northwestern Law will be able to interview prospective students any time, anywhere. The school is the first in the country to offer awkward casting couch sessions as part of its admissions process. [Northwestern University News]