* 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 what percentage of M.B.A.s achieve their goal.” [Wall Street Journal]
* Unlike what has happened in the past with certain of President-elect Donald Trump’s personal and business settlements, the Trump Foundation will not be paying for any part of the $25 million settlement in the Trump University fraud class-action case. Trump will happily take the tax deduction instead. [DealBook / New York Times]
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* According to Erica Moeser, president of the NCBE, there’s been a slight uptick in bar exam scores across the country. “The big picture item is that we have looked for scores to continue to drop, and they didn’t,” said Moeser, who now seems to have a glass-half-full perspective on the state of bar exam passage rates in America. [ABA Journal]
* In case you didn’t recall, there will be a retrial for Stephen DiCarmine and Joel Sanders, the former executive director and former chief financial officer of failed firm Dewey & LeBoeuf, and the judge on the case says it could be “as long or longer” than their first trial, which ended in a mistrial. Dewey care anymore? [New York Law Journal]
* Kirk Nurmi, the lawyer who defended Jodi Arias through two trials, has agreed to be disbarred rather than face an ethics hearing for writing a book about the case prior to the completion of his client’s appeal of her life sentence. Nurmi wrote the book for “self-enrichment,” but he’d already made $1.3 million for defending Arias. [Arizona Republic]
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Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. She’d love to hear from you, so feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.