Sports Betting

  • Morning Docket: 03.19.18
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 03.19.18

    * “This is crazy.” Donald Trump reportedly had members of his White House senior staff sign nondisclosure agreements that are supposed to last beyond his presidency. This raised some brows, but dissenters concluded that the contracts weren’t likely to be enforceable, so they signed on the dotted line. Yes, crazy. [Washington Post]

    * With quotes from “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” President Trump’s personal lawyer, John Dowd, said — first on behalf of the president as his counsel, and later, on behalf of only himself (oopsie?) — that it’s time for the Mueller probe to end. [Daily Beast]

    * And following a tweet storm about Mueller this weekend, it certainly seems like President Trump is gearing up to fire the special counsel. Congressional Republicans are less than pleased with the president’s behavior, and have issued a few stern warnings, urging Trump not to cross the “massive red [Mueller] line,” because “that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency.” [New York Times]

    * Are you ready for legal sports betting? Your bookie might not be, but America’s four major U.S. sports leagues are preparing for anything and everything that could happen as a result of the Supreme Court’s forthcoming ruling. [Washington Post]

    * “What’re you in for?” “A law degree.” According to a report from the ACLU, debts “from medical bills to car payments to student loans” are being criminalized, and courts across the country are issuing arrest warrants. [Idaho Statesman]

    * Christopher Tripp Zanetis, NYFD fire marshal, U.S. Air Force captain, Debevoise associate, RIP. We’ll have more on his passing later today. [American Lawyer]

  • Morning Docket: 11.27.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 11.27.17

    * According to recently released tax records, a mystery donor gave more than $28 million to the Wellspring Committee to keep Justice Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat in Republican hands and help get Neil Gorsuch confirmed. How awesome would it be if that mystery donor were the president himself? [Law Newz]

    * The DOJ says Trump can appoint the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Federal Vacancies Act, but the Dodd-Frank Act says the deputy director will head the agency in the absence of a permanent director. Now we have two dueling CFPB directors, AND there’s a lawsuit. Yay! [The Hill; CNN]

    * FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel is so against Chairman Ajit Pai’s “lousy plan” to do away with net neutrality that she wrote an op-ed to plead for help: “I’m on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality.” She encourages us to “make a ruckus” about this — and we really, really should. [Los Angeles Times]

    * The layoffs are coming! The layoffs are coming! Along with Sedgwick’s announcement that the faltering firm intends to close its doors in early 2018 comes the news that it will shutter its back office operations center. Up to 75 people are expected to lose their jobs. It’ll be a not-so happy New Year. [American Lawyer]

    * Start placing your bets: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in New Jersey’s sports betting case next week, and is expected to issue a ruling in June. What’s the over/under on the high court overturning the federal ban on sports betting? Come on, SCOTUS, make Atlantic City great again! [NJ.com]

    * Representative John Conyers Jr. will be stepping down from his platoon as the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee during an investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed his former aides. Even though a settlement was made in 2015, Conyers continues to deny the allegations. [New York Times]

    * The InfiLaw System has been lowering the bar for minority law students for years and years and dooming them to hundreds of thousands of dollars of nondischargeable loan debt, and the man who started it all seems relatively disappointed with what’s happened and the awful outcomes students have seen. [Wall Street Journal]

    * “I think when it’s all said and done, what you’re gonna see is there was nothing racial that motivated this.” The lawyer representing the white University of Hartford student who smeared period blood all over her black roommate’s things to get her to move out doesn’t think his client should be charged with a hate crime. [Hartford Courant]

  • Morning Docket: 10.17.16
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 10.17.16

    * Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump may have vowed to “open up our libel laws” if wins the election, but it turns out that despite his many threats to do so, he hasn’t actually sued a newspaper for libel in more than three decades. The last time he sued a newspaper for libel was in 1984, and his suit was ultimately dismissed. [Reuters]

    * “If Billy had been passive or responded ‘Shut the f— up’ to Trump, Billy would have been out of a job the next day.” Billy Bush, formerly of Access Hollywood, has hired Orrick partner Marshall Grossman as he tries to negotiate his exit deal from NBC and further defend himself in light of his role in the now infamous Donald Trump “grab them by the p*ssy” tape. [Hollywood Reporter]

    * New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wants to bring sports gambling to his state. He’s asked Ted Olson to take the fight to the Supreme Court, where he’ll argue that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act is an unconstitutional assault on state sovereignty. What’s your over/under bet on this split decision? [WSJ Law Blog]

    * Where do the members of Wall Street’s secret society of in-house lawyers for the world’s most powerful banks meet for their yearly gathering? Reportedly organized by Shearman & Sterling partner Robert Mundheim, the 2016 soirée was held at the Trianon Palace Versailles, a place opulent enough to discuss banking woes. [Big Law Business]

    * A federal judge has temporarily enjoined the Houston College of Law (formerly known as South Texas College of Law) from using its new name because it’s confusingly similar to the University of Houston Law Center’s name, and has created a “substantial threat of irreparable injury” to the school. We’ll have more on this later. [Houston Chronicle]

  • Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 12.12.14

    * Waiting for bar exam results can be super stressful, and now there’s a scientific study to prove it. The psychologists who conducted the study chose would-be lawyers as subjects since there’s a long waiting period for exam results. Protip: they should’ve chosen the waiting period between graduation and finding a job. [National Law Journal]

    * You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why: SantaCon hired a lawyer to come to town. All those protesting the annual event will get a lump of coal in their stockings from hundreds of drunk Santas. [NJ.com]

    * “We’re quite pessimistic. The operational, legal and political challenges here are immense.” If — or perhaps more likely, when — SCOTUS abolishes Obamacare’s federal tax credits, the law will spin into a “dreaded death spiral.” [Talking Points Memo]

    * Per the latest Citi Private Bank report, the legal market seems to be stabilizing. Yay! Litigators might cry, though, because transactional law is on the rise, and litigation is on the decline (and may be through 2016 and beyond). Oh no, boo! [Am Law Daily]

    * Call your bookie, because Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA (who just so happens to be a former litigation associate from Cravath), would like everyone to know that he thinks sports betting should legalized. [DealBook / New York Times]

  • Barack Obama, Blogging, Election Law, Gambling / Gaming, Law Schools, New Jersey, Non-Sequiturs, Pro Se Litigants, Rankings, SCOTUS, Sports, Supreme Court, Technology

    Non-Sequiturs: 04.01.13

    * It’s amazing that sports betting is not legal in New Jersey. What possible moral wackadoodle says that it’s okay to have something like the Jersey Shore (the place, not just the TV show), but you can’t take Michigan to out-shoot the Syracuse zone and then break Louisville’s legs. [Legal Blitz] * Cloud tools for lawyers. Or as partners understand them: “Newfangled virtual file cabinets.” [Smart File Blog] * Pro se prisoner wins! He probably wouldn’t have had he consulted a lawyer. [Simple Justice] * Actually, congratulations to Christopher J. Paolella, who argued before the Court on behalf of Kim Millbrook — and scored a 9-0 victory. [Reich & Paolella] * Apparently “we gotta fix that” is Obama-speak for “Let’s form a commission to study how Republicans are disenfranchising voters instead of actually stopping them.” [NPR via Election Law Blog] * Goodbye and good luck to Bruce Carton of Legal Blog Watch. [Legal Blog Watch] * I thought this was a law already on the books in Mississippi. [The Onion] * Instead of Angie’s List ranking law schools, I’d like to see U.S. News ranking plumbers. Undoubtedly, they’d use size of exposed butt crack as a key factor. [TaxProf Blog]
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