Morning Docket: 07.20.23

* Corporate Counsel names the finalists for its best legal department awards. Come see if FTX made the list! [Corporate Counsel] * Taylor Swift hires Venable attorney as general counsel. [Minute Mirror] * Tom Cotton doesn't actually legislate, but he does write letters like an elderly shut-in complaining to the local paper about the weather. His latest attempt at making a pen pal involved writing 51 law firms to warn them that he thinks hiring diverse attorneys violates the Supreme Court's college admissions opinion. [Law360] * Senate panel poised to pass Supreme Court ethics package that will die on the vine after this. [Reuters] * Government unveils new merger guidelines to replace the old guidelines that encouraged bigger and bigger mergers. When people say the government keeps losing antitrust cases, a big part of that is the pre-existing pro-merger guidelines that the government just made up decades ago. [New York Times] * A profile of retired Judge David Tatel as he heads to Hogan Lovells to work on pro bono matters. [Bloomberg Law News] * The other day we featured a story about a lawyer leaving the job to cycle through the Americas so it's only fair to balance that with a two-time Olympic cyclist who became a lawyer representing injured cyclists. [ABA Journal] * While others talk layoffs, Paul Weiss announced it's still looking at first-year applicants. And when it comes to job security, Paul Weiss has a strong reputation. [Intuitive Career Coaching]