Trump University

* Everyone in the Trump administration who is in some way related to the Russia probe has now lawyered up with outside counsel, including the attorney general. AG Jeff Sessions is being represented by Chuck Cooper, a longtime champion of conservative causes. If you recall, Cooper also prepped Sessions for his confirmation hearing. [USA Today]

* Let’s not go crazy: Earlier this week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and outside counsel Keker & Van Nest were denied certiorari on the Lenz v. Universal Music case — perhaps better known as the “dancing baby” case. Thanks to the SCOTUS decision, or lack thereof, we’ll not know “whether or not the DMCA includes meaningful protections for online fair uses” anytime soon. [Law.com]

* Judge Gonzalo Curiel will not make a Trump University settlement objector post a $146,888 bond to pursue an appeal. Sherri Simpson, a Florida bankruptcy lawyer, paid $19,000 for Trump U. seminars and mentorship, but now she wants out so she can sue the president over the alleged fraud. [POLITICO]

* Concerned Veterans for America, a political action committee that’s funded by the Koch brothers, is running an ad in support of a Penn Law Professor Stephanos Bibas’s nomination to the Third Circuit. “Generally a candidate would have to be pretty inflammatory or at risk to justify this kind of spending,” said election law attorney Adam Bonin. [Legal Intelligencer via ABA Journal]

* UNC Law’s budget has officially been cut by the state Senate, but it’s not as bad as the $4 million budget buster that was previously proposed. The law school will have to do without $500K in state appropriations if the legislature approves the move. Yes, that’s the sound of your tuition going up. [News & Observer]

* A judge has approved a $25 million settlement for claims surrounding Trump University. [NPR]

* If Neil Gorsuch becomes the next Supreme Court justice, is that proof bullying works? [Guile is Good]

* Tips for surviving work when you’re exhausted. [Corporette]

* A look at the charges against the pro-life activists who secretly recorded Planned Parenthood sessions. [Slate]

* Arkansas is racing to beat the clock… in order to execute people. [The Slot]

* You’re getting more of a TV show you probably don’t watch anyway. [Law and More]

* An appeals court ruled not to release Guantanamo Bay forced-feeding videos. [AP]

* General Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser to President Trump, has offered to testify before Congress on the campaign’s alleged Russian connections in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Remember back in September when Flynn said on Meet the Press that “when you are given immunity that means you’ve probably committed a crime”? This is absolutely wild. [Wall Street Journal; NBC News]

* The chairman of Bethune-Cookman’s criminal justice department defends the HBCU’s affiliation with Arizona Summit Law, even though it’s on probation, saying that because $12.5 million in scholarship money is at stake, “it would be irresponsible not to provide this opportunity as an option for B-CU students to obtain a legal education without incurring excessive student loan debt in the process.” [DealBook / New York Times]

* It looks like President Trump is planning to sign off on a repeal of Obama-era internet privacy rules that were promulgated by the FCC in October. As noted by Senator Chuck Schumer, this is “[t]errible for American [people], great for big [business].” Next on the agenda seems to be the decimation of net neutrality, so you might want to prepare yourselves to pay more for an internet connection that’s quicker than a snail. [Reuters]

* More than half of the 6,000 former students of Trump University have submitted claims to be part of its $25 million fraud class-action settlement. They’ll recoup 80 cents for every dollar they spent on President Trump’s real estate seminars. Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who Trump once accused of being biased due to his “Mexican heritage,” will likely approve the settlement over the objections of two former students. [Big Law Business]

* Guess which law school created a class based on Baltimore crime drama “The Wire”? It’s U. Pitt., which has a three-credit course called “Crime, Law and Society in ‘The Wire.'” This seems like it’s one of those “Law and [Insert Noun Here]” classes, where 3Ls are hoping to get another A to add to their GPAs before they graduate. This would’ve been more relevant if a Maryland law school had offered the class. [Huffington Post]

* Fresh off a five-month stint in prison for defrauding clients, Todd Malacuso, a lawyer who once represented Casey Anthony, has been arrested and accused of conspiring to smuggle almost two tons of cocaine into the United States from Central America on his own plane. He’s being held without bail as he’s been deemed a flight risk. [Daily Mail]

* “Taking a fee when you’ve got people literally still paying off their credit cards is a lot different than when it’s essentially found money for the plaintiffs.” In a wide-ranging interview, Jason Forge, a partner at Robbins Geller, explains why plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Trump University fraud case decided to forgo attorneys’ fees. [WSJ Law Blog]

* SCOTUS justices seem poised to block Texas from executing a man due to the fact that an outdated definition of intellectual disability is being used in its capital punishment regime. Justice Stephen Breyer said that the Texas standard to determine impairment “would free some, while subjecting others to the death penalty.” [USA Today]

* “We are refusing to comment on speculation around partners being in discussion with other firms.” Biglaw firms are circling King & Wood Mallesons like vultures, hoping to pick off partners as its EUME operations struggle. Goodwin Procter and Chadbourne & Parke are reportedly in talks to extend offers to KWM partners. [Big Law Business]

* According to the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican-led Congress may be able to tweak some elements of Dodd-Frank without completely dismantling or rewriting the law. After all, “federal agencies have wide latitude to undo reforms” and “there is room to change things.” [Reuters]

* Many law school deans are opposed to the ABA’s proposal to require 75 percent of graduates sitting for a bar exam to pass it within two years, but this is perhaps one of the more absurd arguments offered against the rule: “Nobody looks at what percentage of Ph.D.s end up as college professors, or […]

* Despite the fact that President-elect Trump has called for the cast of “Hamilton” to apologize to Vice President-elect Pence for delivering a message to him after the show, Pence handled it well, saying he “wasn’t offended,” and that he reminded his kids that the mixture of boos and cheers from the audience as he took his seat was “what freedom sounds like.” [PLAYBILL]

* President-elect Donald Trump may be able to get a pretty hefty tax write-off for settling the Trump University fraud case for $25 million, since according to tax lawyer Robert Wood, most business settlements are fully tax deductible. Perhaps the president-elect — or his legal team — really does know the tax code better than anyone else. [Forbes]

* Libertarian vice presidential candidate Bill Weld is settling back into private practice after the election. The former Massachusetts governor has returned to the Boston office of Mintz Levin as a partner in the firm’s government relations practice, says that being back is a “pure pleasure because you get to sit at a desk and think.” [Am Law Daily]

* In an effort to slash their legal bills, rival fantasy sports rivals DraftKings and FanDuel will be merging in the second half of 2017. As the two sites are market leaders and their union would likely create a monopoly, there will be some antitrust issues to review before the merger closes. We wonder which firms are working on the deal. [Reuters]

* Kaplan’s Concord Law School, an unaccredited, for-profit, online-only institution, is petitioning several states to allow its students to sit for the bar exam. California is the only state that allows Concord graduates to sit for its bar exam, and their passage rate for first-timers on the July 2015 administration of the exam was 25 percent. [ABA Journal]

* A primer: everything you need to know about Jeff Sessions. [The Marshall Project]

* A Texas lawmaker wants to force schools to out LGBT students to their parents. [The New Civil Rights Movement]

* Loretta Lynch still wants you to report hate crimes. [Huffington Post]

* A threesome leads to a suspension for an attorney. [Legal Profession Blog]

* A $25 million settlement is expected for the Trump University fraud case. [New York Daily News]

* A new spin on CLEs. [ABA Journal]

* Low divorce rates are bad for lawyers. [Law and More]

* Plaintiffs in the Trump University fraud class-action lawsuit are sick and tired of waiting for their claims to be heard. They want the trial to proceed as scheduled, the defendant’s presidential duties be damned, writing, “The court has been more than generous in accommodating defendants’ multiple delay requests, but after 6 1/2 years of waiting, plaintiffs cannot afford any further delays.” [Big Law Business]

* Poor Merrick Garland: After more than 243 days of waiting for a hearing as President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, he’ll return to his seat as the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, the second highest court in the land, in January 2017. The man is a true gentleman, an “example of how to act with dignity and class and character.” [CNN]

* “If president-elect Donald Trump follows through on his campaign promises, people’s rights will be in jeopardy.” Since Donald Trump’s victory in the election, the American Civil Liberties Union has raised a record amount — more than $8.2 million poured in from more than 100,000 donors in the span of less than a week. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Much to LSAC’s chagrin, the LSAT may not be the only admissions testing prerequisite in town for prospective law students anymore. Law schools seem particularly eager to allow would-be students to take the GRE, which is offered throughout the year, as opposed to the LSAT, which is only offered four times a year. [National Law Journal]

* Michael Fine, the Ohio lawyer who was disbarred for hypnotizing his female clients and sexually assaulting them, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to five counts of kidnapping with sexual motivation and one count of attempted kidnapping. Fine must register as a sex offender. We’ll have more on this later. [Reuters]

* Shortly after being urged to settle the Trump University lawsuit, lawyers for President-elect Donald Trump have filed a motion to continue the trial — now scheduled to begin just after Thanksgiving — until after his inauguration in January. If no settlement can be reached, we may get to see a sitting president on trial for fraud. [San Diego Union-Tribune]

* Before he even nominates another judge to take the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court, President-elect Donald Trump could significantly alter the high court’s trajectory this term by undoing Obama administration policies on immigration, climate change, cost-free contraceptive care, and transgender rights. [Associated Press]

* Many New York law schools saw their bar exam passage rates soar thanks to the state’s first-time administration of the Uniform Bar Exam this past summer, but some law schools didn’t fare quite as well and saw their passage rates decline. Which law schools did well and which ones didn’t? We’ll have more on this later. [New York Law Journal]

* IMDb.com has filed suit against California over a new law set to take effect in January that will allow actors to conceal their ages in their biographies on the television and film site. The state believes this will prohibit age-based discrimination in Hollywood, but the website claims that the law infringes upon its First Amendment rights. [WSJ Law Blog]

* “It is unfortunate that the DOJ continues to fight for an interpretation of BMI’s consent decree that is at odds with hundreds of thousands of songwriters and composers (and) the country’s two largest performing rights organizations,” but it seems the DOJ hopes the Second Circuit will force BMI to change the way it collects royalties. [Reuters]

* “You never say no, but I’d rather help him find someone else who can do it. I’m very happy not being in the government.” Word on the street is that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is being considered for attorney general in the Trump administration, but the Greenberg Traurig partner doesn’t exactly seem interested. Hmm, perhaps Governor Chris Christie will be AG after all? [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

* Judge Gonzalo Curiel is now urging litigants on both sides of the Trump University case to settle, noting that “[i]t would be wise for the plaintiffs, for the defendants, to look closely at trying to resolve this case given all else that’s involved.” The judge who President-elect Trump once accused of being biased due to his Mexican heritage is now trying to save Trump from being on trial for fraud early in his presidency. [Reuters]

* The hits just keep on coming for King & Wood Mallesons. The firm’s Australian and Chinese partnerships will likely be bailing out its troubled European and Middle Eastern offices, but Stuart Fuller, its managing global partner, has decided to step down by the year’s end, which has prompted an immediate search for a successor. Fuller will remain a partner with the firm, and will return to full-time practice in 2017. [Am Law Daily]

* Jones Day has teamed up with the American Bar Association to start VetLex, a program that will connect veterans with pro-bono and low-bono lawyers across the country. VetLex will be the first nationwide network dedicated to legal service referrals for veterans. The program will “revolutionize the way we deliver pro bono resources to veterans.” A hearty congratulations to Jones Day and the ABA! [Big Law Business]

* Former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock of Illinois has been indicted for defrauding the government out of about $100,000 after allegedly submitting false invoices for the costs of redecorating his office with a “Downton Abbey” motif and various personal expenses. Schock’s attorney says the government is “criminalizing a handful of administrative mistakes” made by his client — six figures worth of alleged mistakes. [Chicago Tribune]

* Before Donald Trump sets foot into the Oval Office, he’ll have to step into a federal courthouse to litigate claims made by former students who claim they were defrauded by Trump University. How in the world will they find an impartial jury? “This is a jury consultant’s nightmare to pick in a case like this. It will be taught in jury consulting school.” [Reuters]

* Yesterday, in a silent act of protest against Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore her “dissent jabot” during oral arguments at the Supreme Court. This summer, she famously remarked that she “[couldn’t] imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president.” [The Hill]

* In his first 100 days in office, Donald Trump says he’ll appoint a conservative judge to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and his legacy may be the undoing of Supreme Court precedent, like overruling Roe v. Wade, ending affirmative action, striking down campaign finance laws, and invalidating gun restrictions. [Los Angeles Times]

* How will Donald Trump’s presidency change the DOJ and the SEC? There will likely be changes at the top of both organizations. It’s speculated that Rudy Giuliani may be selected to replace Loretta Lynch as AG, but Trump has given no indication as to who he’ll choose to replace Mary Jo White as commissioner. [DealBook / New York Times]

* If you’d like to know what it takes to become a law firm partner, these 338 lawyers who made partner within the last four years have some helpful hints for you. It seems to be a mixture of “hours, hours, hours” and being a man — two-thirds of those who were surveyed were men who had worked at their firms for five to 10 years. [Am Law Daily]

* Sixth Circuit decides farmers don’t need the Internet. It’s your move now, FarmersOnly.com lobbyists! [NY Times]

* The latest in the “Houston” law school showdown. [Houston Chronicle]

* In Trump U. litigation news, there’s a battle over who gets to be called an “expert” in a case about whether unqualified people pretended to be experts. [Courthouse News Service]

* Remember Kim Dotcom? He wants to livestream his legal battle, which seems a lot less interesting than what he used to put up. [USNWR]

* HSBC paying $13M in suits alleging improperly recorded debt-collection calls. [Law360]

* Robot lawyering spreads: The parking ticket battling algorithm moves to Seattle. [WTSP]

* “How do you cross-examine a computer?” I dunno, Ctrl-Alt-Delete? [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

* Singer Kesha has dropped her lawsuit in California against producer Dr. Luke, but will continue her appeal in New York. She says she dropped the suit because she’s “focused on getting back to work,” but Dr. Luke’s lawyer says it’s because she has “no chance of winning.” Ouch, that’s got to sting. [People]

* Get off my lawn, you damn kids! A New Jersey personal injury attorney has filed a class-action lawsuit against Niantic, the company behind Pokemon Go, for the “unlawful and wrongful” invasion of his property. It seems that in the rush to catch ’em all, people have been gathering outside of his home, knocking on his door, and asking to enter his backyard. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Following up on his tentative oral ruling, Juge Gonzalo P. Curiel has ruled that a Trump University fraud case filed against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump may proceed to trial, but he refused to release Trump’s videotaped deposition. We suppose that the transcript will have to be good enough. [New York Times]

* “These are things that don’t just affect one job; it keeps women’s wages down over their entire lifetime.” Thanks to a new law geared toward closing the gender wage gap, in Massachusetts, it is now illegal for employers to ask about applicants’ salary history before offering them jobs. This goes into effect in 2018. [DealBook / New York Times]

* “We are confidently looking to the future.” Following a series of “regrettable departures” and a capital call that successfully raised about $18.4 million from the firm’s existing partners, it looks like the “modernization” and restructuring of the King & Wood Mallesons partnership is finally going to be drawing to a close. [Big Law Business]

* Jenner & Block has teamed up with the University of Chicago Law School to create a Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic, with the goal of “educat[ing] and train[ing] the next generation of extraordinary appellate advocates and continu[ing] the tradition of helping clients hanks their most important litigation problems.” Congratulations! [ABA Journal]

* If Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump wins the election, he may be the first president-elect to be standing trial for fraud prior to taking the oath of office. Judge Gonzalo Curiel has tentatively refused to dismiss one of the two pending Trump University cases, saying plaintiffs had met requirements for the case to move forward for a jury to decide whether Trump “participated in a scheme to defraud” students. [San Diego Union-Tribune]

* After being served with a class-action suit alleging she rigged the Democratic primaries and the release of emails in the latest Guccifer hack showing her favoritism for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is resigning as the Democratic National Committee’s chair after this week’s convention. [CNN; Observer]

* Five senators, including Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), and Cory Booker (D-NJ), have introduced the Student Loan Tax Relief Act, which would exempt forgiven loans from being taxed as income. Law school grads on IBR, ICR, or PAYE should pray this bill is passed. [Forbes]

* In an announcement made before markets opened, Verizon said it would be purchasing Yahoo for $4.83B. It’s rumored that Faiza Saeed, Cravath’s incoming presiding partner — who was appointed to a committee to explore Yahoo’s sale — was the driving force behind the deal, which is expected to close in early 2017. [Reuters; Big Law Business]

* Law firms are apparently in a “weak spot” when it comes to the detection of money laundering operations. That may be how Shearman & Sterling got mixed up with an alleged Malaysian plot to siphon funds from its trust account to purchase luxury items in a scheme that’s turned into an attempted $1B DOJ asset forfeiture. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Let’s just cut to the chase. You want to know what salary news you may have missed since you last checked in with us. Here’s the roster of movement news — good, bad, and indifferent — from yesterday: Cleary, Simpson, Holwell, Covington, Debevoise, Quinn Emanuel, Winston, SullCrom, Kirkland, Skadden, Freshfields, Cooley, Davis Polk. If you’re ever worried that you’ve missed any of our coverage, check out our omnibus 2016 salary page where we collect all these stories. [Above the Law / 2016 Salary Increase]

* Speaking of a firm that hasn’t announced salary changes yet — seamless transition! — Dentons is having to field some tough offshore tax scandal questions. That said, since they employ 4 out of 5 lawyers in the world things like this were inevitable. [Am Law Daily]

* Former Patriots TE Aaron Hernandez hires Casey Anthony’s lawyer, Jose Baez, and Thabo Sefolosha’s lawyer, Alex Spiro. No word on Hernandez and Baez’s fee arrangement. [Fox61]

* The Justice Department offers 6 tips for presenting your client’s merger to federal agencies. Being a top campaign bundler inadvertently left off the list. [National Law Journal]

* “Trump’s Terrifying Relationship With the Law.” It’s the bimbo he just can’t leave. [Rolling Stone]

* Dumb political reporting tries to make something out of an O’Melveny lawyer attending some Hillary events while working on the Trump University case. [Politico]

* If you need to get your white slippers of albino African endangered rhino back home, don’t book tickets on Delta. [Courthouse News Service]

* In New York, there’s new ethical guidance on advertising after changing firm names to reflect new partners. [Law360]