Waitlisted

* Senior White House adviser Brian Deese has assembled a crack team to help President Obama choose a Supreme Court nominee who will be able to win confirmation before an angry Senate to replace Justice Scalia. Let’s see which way the 2009 Yale Law School graduate steers this important project. [Reuters]

* Australian law firm Slater & Gordon is feeling the pain of being the world’s first publicly traded law firm after a $958.3 million first-half loss. The firm, which is now being referred to as a “corporate catastrophe,” hopes to lay out a restructuring plan in the next few months amid the likelihood of multiple shareholder suits. [Herald Sun]

* Texas State District Judge Julie Kocurek returned to court this week after a shooter opened fire on her in November 2015 in what police are now calling an assassination attempt. She lost a finger during the shooting, but says she feels “very lucky that is all [she] lost.” Welcome back to the bench, Your Honor! [Austin American-Statesman]

* Sorry, FBI, but a judge has ruled that Apple doesn’t have to help the security service unlock an alleged New York drug dealer’s iPhone. This isn’t binding precedent for the tech company’s San Bernardino case, but you can bet your ass its legal team will try to convince the judge handling the order at issue that it should be considered. [NBC News]

* If you’ve been waitlisted at the lowest-ranked law school you applied to this admissions cycle, it doesn’t mean you’ll be rejected from every other school you applied to this admissions cycle — it just means you may have to work a little bit harder on all of your letters of continued interest. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News & World Report]

* Law firms aren’t the only businesses that go through break-ups; the communications firms that represent these elite firms apparently have rocky relationships, too. Spencer Baretz and Cari Brunelle of Hellerman Baretz Communications have split to found their own firm, and they took the entire HBC team with them when they left. [Business Wire]

* Carmen Electra filed a federal suit against a strip joint, alleging that the gentleman’s club defamed her by using a scantily clad picture of her without her prior consent, thereby insinuating that she removes her clothing for money there or otherwise endorses its sexy services. [New York Daily News]

* Happy anniversary to our favorite SCOTUS monk: If Justice Thomas sticks to his usual routine when the Supreme Court returns from its winter break, he’ll have officially gone a decade without asking a question from the bench. [New York Times]

* Aloha! Just one week after receiving a $25 million donation and changing the name of the school, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law is losing its dean to Hawaii Pacific University, where he’ll serve as president. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

* DLA Piper recently acquired Peltonen LMR, a Helsinki firm, bringing its grand total of Nordic offices to three. Unlike in the past, we hope that this time DLA Piper knows what country its new office is located in. Pssst… it’s Finland. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg]

* If you’ve been waitlisted by the law school of your choice, we hope that you’re a particularly patient person, because you may be waiting to find out your academic fate until April, or worse yet, July. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News & World Report]