Morning Docket
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* McDermott Will & Emery has a new plan to protect Michael Cohen: get Michael Avenatti’s pro hac motion denied. That seems… weak. [National Law Journal]
* Another list of possible successors to Eric Schneiderman. Still no one talking about Eliot Spitzer… that guy has experience! [Law360]
* David Lat argues that the end of blue slips is a good thing for the judiciary over the long-term. He’s totally right, and regardless of the naked cynicism involved, it’s refreshing that Senate Republicans have decided to ditch their states’ rights principles over this. [New York Times]
* Interesting election-related legal issue: can Facebook ban international advertisers from buying ad space related to the upcoming midterms? The answer seems to be yes. [Corporate Counsel]
* Have lawyers finally embraced the cloud? [Legaltech News]
* Managing clerk isn’t known as a particularly lucrative position. But a former Simpson Thacher clerk figured out how to make ends meet. Unfortunately, he’s going to have to go to jail for it. [American Lawyer]
* Lawyers for white guy accused of murdering a black student argue that his Facebook posts are too offensive to be shown to the jury. They say stuff about him hating black people and, really, what’s the probative value of that in a case where the defendant had no apparent motive other than racial animus? [Daily Beast]
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* “What did Rudy say? Oh. OK, so, you see, the thing is, Cohen was paid back, but through his monthly retainer so I didn’t know he was paying hush money to porn stars that I definitely didn’t sleep with because that might trigger an out in my prenup… are we done here?” [Twitter]
* A look at Biglaw firms still owed big bucks by bankrupt clients. [American Lawyer]
* Yale Law is so far ahead of the curve, they’ve got 1Ls suing Jeff Sessions. [Connecticut Law Tribune]
* A webcam is drawing attention to the osprey nest on the roof of Oregon’s Law School. Anything to keep attention off the blackface-wearing professor they still employ… [Around the O]
* In case you were looking for another reason to feel revulsion over the Washington NFL team, the cheerleaders allege the team asked them to be literal escorts for wealthy sponsors on a trip to Costa Rica… that they didn’t get paid for. [CNN]
* Which law firms boast the best legal tech game? [Legaltech News]
* The Second Circuit is bringing back the lawsuit over abuse of the no-fly list. The government allegedly dumped people on the no-fly list if they refused to be informants[Law360]
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* The proposed cap on federal student loans for graduate students will make life a lot rougher for law students who will have to resort to the more expensive private market for tuition bucks. On the other hand, it could devastate the bottom-tier schools who rely on the government gravy train to bilk students into buying a degree they can’t use. So it’s not all bad news. [Law.com]
* When it comes to appointing a Special Master, the government and Michael Cohen have wildly different preferences. The government would like a retired Magistrate, someone well-versed in making tough calls in discovery disputes. Cohen’s camp would prefer a former prosecutor, which you should read as “someone who currently represents criminals and has a vested interest in defining privilege broadly.” Trump’s lawyers haven’t submitted a list of preferred candidates but we can go ahead and pencil in Jeanine Pirro, Andrew Napolitano, and Judge Judy. [New York Law Journal]
* While we’re talking about Cohen, he just dropped his libel suits against Buzzfeed and Fusion GPS over the Steele dossier. So there’s definitely a pee tape. [Politico]
* Oh, and documents suggest he owes $110K in taxes. [Law360]
* Meanwhile, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has asked state lawmakers to eliminate a state law that prevents state prosecutions of individuals who have already reached the plea or a jury is sworn in a federal case. Or, more to the point, when someone in that situation is pardoned. [NY Times]
* There are hints that the jury may acquit Tex McIver of the most serious charges related to his wife’s shooting death. As a reminder, McIver shot her in the back while she rode in the front seat of their car when his gun, which he says he had loaded and ready because he was worried about Black Lives Matter, went off when the car hit a speedbump. [Daily Report Online]
* If you notice some new changes to your Facebook privacy protections, you might think that’s a response to Zuck’s recent congressional testimony. But actually, it’s just Facebook playing shell company roulette to make sure you’re not covered by GDPR. [Reuters]
* The organizer of the Charlottesville “Very Fine People On Both Sides” rally popped into the UVA Law library yesterday. Vigilant students kept an eye on him. [Cavalier Daily]
* We’d also be remiss if we didn’t express our sadness over the loss of Judge Harry T. Stone. Harry Anderson’s portrayal of the free-wheeling but fair judge contributed to making Night Court one of the greatest, and most honest, courtroom television shows of all time. [CNN]
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* The Incredible Shrinking Biglaw Partnership: Who’d have thought the idea of making more money by sharing it with fewer people would be so popular? [Law360]
* Mayer Brown has a new managing partner. [American Lawyer]
* In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the president just fired 256 judges for, by and large, not having law degrees. That’s so weird, over here our judging problem are all the unfit hacks with law degrees. [Al Jazeera]
* How do you expeditiously sort through millions of pages of documents in a wide-ranging criminal investigation? That’s a question Robert Mueller’s team has, and one that legal technology can actually answer. [Legaltech News]
* Merely threatening frivolous defamation claims can be big business. Charles Harder made $93,000 off Trump’s fear of Fire and Fury. [CNBC]
* Neil Gorsuch seems to understand diversity in practice better than his colleagues. [Slate]
* Sheppard Mullin sets up a new lateral-fueled Dallas office. [Texas Lawyer]
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* A sneak peek at Am Law 200 reports. [American Lawyer]
* Two lesser charges against Tex McIver shot down. [USNWR]
* The Waffle House sextortion case ends in acquittal. Defendants celebrate at IHOP. [Daily Report Online]
* Four Thomas clerks are behind the new “HAWA” legal challenge to make Harvard All White Again. [National Law Journal]
* A quick look at Robert Khuzami, the former SEC Enforcement honcho who most likely fulfilled the SDNY USAO’s role in ordering the Cohen raid. [Courthouse News Service]
* JP Morgan decided to join the cryptocurrency revolution by declaring that customer purchases of cryptocurrencies were really “cash advances” instead of regular transactions… a move that allowed them to charge higher fees. Now cryptoheads are suing. Look, you can’t have it both ways. [Law360]
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* Good news for Holland & Knight, who successfully escaped a $34.5 million malpractice rap. [American Lawyer]
* Wisconsin passes a law requiring disclosure of litigation financers because juries should be gravely suspicious of anyone who can afford to seek legal redress from a corporation. [National Law Journal]
* Cleary Gottlieb partner loses battle over rent-stabilized penthouse. While that sentence doesn’t make him sound particularly sympathetic, he’s actually the good guy here. [New York Law Journal]
* Executives and board members should be more involved in cybersecurity efforts according to the Department of Obvious Things. [Corporate Counsel]
* Sexual assault defendant pleas down to charge of “seduc[ing] and debauch[ing] any unmarried woman.” That’s offensive on so many levels. [Detroit News]
* Workers comp can’t cover paralegal injured playing for firm softball team. [ABA Journal]
* Law firm conducting use-of-force review simultaneously representing deputy accused of shooting and killing two men while on duty. Foxes, hen houses, etc. [KOB 4]
* Did you know some law schools are now accepting the GRE? Because the Times just figured that out. [New York Times]
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* The possibility of Donald Trump turning the Russia case over to Alan Dershowitz is too delicious of a train wreck to imagine. Stop teasing me! [The Hill]
* Andrew McCabe’s GoFundMe has raised over half a million dollars. All you need is a righteous claim and a sophisticated lobbying firm behind you. [Slate]
* LeBron has decided he holds intellectual property rights over barbershops or something. [National Law Journal]
* While DLA Piper is out there swiping lawyers, they’re also earning plaudits for a tech solution designed to retain clients. [American Lawyer]
* Joon Kim returns to Cleary Gottlieb. [Wall Street Journal]
* Jury selection underway in extortion case over Waffle House CEO’s syrup. [Daily Report Online]
* The Supreme Court declared it’s ready, willing, and able to engage in linguistic gymnastics to get out of labor protections. So… we’ve got that going for us. [Law360]
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* John Dowd says the Trump legal team had a “terrific” relationship with Robert Mueller’s office. Yeah… that’s probably why you’ve been forced off the Trump legal team. [National Law Journal]
* Becoming beloved by GCs isn’t difficult. Just give them 100 percent of your time for 50 percent of the cost. And if you can’t handle that, here are some other tips. [Law360]
* Mayer Brown boasts mother and son partner duo. [American Lawyer]
* BDO has a new report entitled Inside E-Discovery & Beyond: Reimagining Digital Risk. I think the problem is too many lawyers haven’t begun imagining digital risk, let alone reimagining it. [BDO]
* Facebook would really, really like you to know that you have privacy settings available to you. [The Recorder]
* Senior DOJ attorney bolting for LGBT rights organization. That’s a lateral move I didn’t expect. [The Hill]
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* The President apparently got around? Former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal has filed suit against American Media, Inc., owner of The National Enquirer, to get out of an agreement that’s preventing her from discussing her alleged affair with Donald Trump, which reportedly occurred around the same time as the Stormy Daniels affair. [CBS News]
* What’s going on at Latham & Watkins in the wake its former chairman Lathaming himself over inappropriate conduct involving “communications of a sexual nature”? According to a source at the firm, “[e]veryone is shocked” and no one has any idea who will replace Bill Voge as chair. [American Lawyer]
* “This is not what the impeachment power is for….” Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers are moving to impeach the Democratic state Supreme Court justices who ruled the state’s congressional map was unconstitutionally gerrymandered. [Huffington Post]
* Dechert has settled an age and sex discrimination case filed by female staff members. There are no details of the settlement available, but if you recall, the firm countered the ex-staffers’ claims by saying that technological advances had made their jobs redundant. [Legal Intelligencer]
* On Monday, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed the most restrictive abortion bill in the country, banning abortion after 15 weeks of gestation. Less than 24 hours later, Judge Carlton Reeves granted a temporary restraining order in favor of the state’s lone abortion clinic. [Associated Press]
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* Winston & Strawn revenue up 19 percent last year after securing a hefty contingency fee in the pink slime matter. Despite their victory, we suspect these lawyers are using their windfall on grass-fed free-range beef. [American Lawyer]
* In the continuing war on class actions as a lingering nuisance to our corporate overlords, the Supreme Court may be taking aim at cy pres settlements to “protect the class” by making class actions harder to pull together. [National Law Journal]
* The photographer from the horrendous decision ruling that embedded Tweets are copyright violations is fighting an effort by defendants to get an interlocutory appeal to clear up this travesty as quickly as possible. You know, to save the Internet. [Law360]
* In an article that manages to avoid any reference to Ready Player One, Rhys Dipshan considers the IP challenges facing widespread adoption of VR and AR products. As an example, the article considers what would happen if someone put that famous picture of Albert Einstein into the game. Perhaps the better question is why isn’t that in the public domain and can VR be the technology that finally reverses the broken IP regime Sonny Bono dropped on us? [Legaltech News]
* Can California’s sanctuary laws survive federal assault? Professor Noah Feldman says they should. [Bloomberg]
* Professor Tobias Barrington Wolff considers the sideshow of a career his Penn Law colleague Amy Wax has decided to pursue. [Faculty Lounge]
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* This weekend, Sheppard Mullin — and Lankler Siffert & Wohl for that matter — will be pulling for Abacus: Small Enough To Jail, the stellar documentary about the only bank prosecuted for the housing crisis that starred the lawyers who represented Abacus and its family owners. [New York Law Journal]
* In the first year of its merger, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer earned 1 percent over its legacy firm totals. Firm chairman Richard Alexander describes the firm as “generally… pleased.” But not pleased enough to keep Kaye Scholer on its branding. [National Law Journal]
* Robert Schulman is hoping the Second Circuit can get him out of his drunken insider trading conviction. [Law360]
* Texas Wesleyan is looking for a new baseball coach after firing the last one for rejecting a Colorado recruit and telling the kid the school wouldn’t recruit from states with legal weed. [VICE News]
* Now we have sovereign cryptocurrency which kind of defeats the whole point, but whatever. [Bitcoinist]
* Your daily reminder that white supremacists are bad people. [ABA Journal]
* Speaking of white supremacists, FSU Law students have started to notice that their main academic building is a tribute to a segregationist and that maybe that’s a bad thing. [Tallahassee Democrat]
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* The Supreme Court heard argument in Janus yesterday and, well, labor rights were fun while they lasted! [National Law Journal]
* Marvin Washington’s pot decriminalization suit dismissed, continuing the Jets losing streak. [Law360]
* The explosion of Emoji keyboards presents a problem for eDiscovery. So bust out those Rick & Morty stickers if you want to keep your insider trading habits from prying eyes. [Legaltech News]
* How does a receiver deal with Bitcoin? How can currency with no “home” be seized? A Jones Day partner is figuring that out. [The Recorder]
* Supreme Court debates whether or not Amex can prevent merchants from offering incentives to keep people from using their Amex card. So if it gets more difficult to use your corporate card, blame the justices. [Courthouse News Service]
* The head of legal relationship management for Barclays discusses the bank’s model for dealing with outside counsel. [Big Law Business]
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* In case you missed it, Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times has noticed a trend when it comes to Chief Justice Roberts and who he’s been aligning himself with at the Supreme Court. He may not yet be a moderate, but he seems to be shying away from “the reliably right-wing triumvirate” of Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch. [New York Times]
* “The document speaks for itself.” All three of former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates’s lawyers are withdrawing as counsel, and will only explain why in documents filed under seal. Only his Biglaw attorney who is known for his plea deals remains. Gates is under indictment in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. [POLITICO]
* According to the latest year-end report from the Wells Fargo Private Bank’s Legal Specialty Group, law firm revenue and profits were up in 2017, and demand had increased for legal services. As usual, the most profitable firms at the top of the market outperformed their smaller counterparts. [American Lawyer]
* Trump administration policies having to do with immigration, specifically the H-1B visa program for foreign workers, may force many Biglaw firms to move to their practices to the cloud sooner than they would have liked. In times of “political uncertainty” like these, Biglaw can’t rely on “offshore labor arbitrage” for IT outsourcing. [TechTarget]
* The GC of the American Red Cross has resigned following the publication of a report that he praised a former colleague who was the subject of an internal investigation and pushed out of the organization for alleged instances sexual misconduct. [Corporate Counsel]
* Disgusting: A Georgia lawyer who asked a witness to recant an eyewitness account of her son’s molestation has politely gave up his license to practice law after pleading guilty to felony witness tampering and attempting to suborn perjury. [Big Law Business]
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* According to his friends, President Trump is reportedly planning to ask Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prosecute special counsel Robert Mueller and his team. Considering he’s done nothing wrong, it’s anyone’s guess as to what Mueller could possibly be prosecuted for, but that’s neither here nor there. [CNBC]
* For the first time in more than 80 years, the Senate has confirmed a circuit court judge with a missing blue slip. Yesterday, Judge David Stras of the Minnesota Supreme Court was confirmed to the Eighth Circuit, with a 56-42 vote that threw decades-old tradition to the wind. [The Hill]
* “It’s really important that lawyers in large firms know that they can sign up….” In the short time since the initiative was announced, more than 500 lawyers have signed up to take on cases for the Time’s Up legal defense fund, and they’ll be able to provide free consultations to victims of workplace sexual harassment. [Big Law Business]
* The robots are coming: Former payroll managers from Dechert claim in a federal age and gender bias suit that they were laid off because they were the oldest women employees in the department. The firm says that’s not the case, since it was cloud-based technology, not discrimination, that took their jobs. [Legal Intelligencer]
* A California appellate court has breathed new life into a proposed class action that accuses Tinder of charging older users more money to use the enhanced version of the app. The judge who wrote the opinion reversed the lower court using slang very familiar to dating app aficionados. We’ll have more on this later. [The Recorder]
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* Grumpy cat should be a little less grumpy after winning $710,000 in a licensing case. [Courthouse News Service]
* Remember that judge who gave a Stanford swimmer 6 months for a rape conviction? Yeah, he’s poised to get kicked off the bench. [NY Daily News]
* Can you get a DUI in an autonomous vehicle? A lot of people aren’t familiar with State of Oregon v. The Autobots. [Versus Texas]
* Ty Cobb is a lot less eager to meet with Mueller under oath than his client. [New York]
* Apparently “AI” is now a verb. That’s… awful. [Legal Week]
* Your summer associate lunch plans have taken a hit — Le Bernardin sued over everything from shortchanging employees to sexual harassment. [Le Bernadin]
* Your work email is probably in the Dark Web. It’s also probably on your firm website, but that doesn’t sound as menacing. [National Law Journal]
* New York will only do business with ISPs that adhere to net neutrality in a move that many states are expected to copy. I’m sure the states rights-loving politicians who worked tirelessly to kill neutrality will hail this as a triumph of federalism. [New York Law Journal]
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* The effort to hijack “religious freedom” to legalize discrimination continues to be plagued by members of Satanic Temples invoking the same law to secure personal freedoms that governments routinely curtail. [Huffington Post]
* Cy Vance is barring donations to his campaign from lawyers with business before his office, resolving a conflict that was obvious to everyone but him. [ABC News]
* Mary Jo White admits Debevoise made a mistake in naming confidential witnesses in its report that functionally exonerated the University of Rochester in a massive sexual harassment investigation. Well, when they’re described as “confidential” witnesses this would seem to be a mistake. [American Lawyer]
* Prosecutors want to retry Senator Menendez and have a list of demands for the new trial like, “not letting defense attorneys talk.” [New Jersey Law Journal]
* HLS students open a startup bringing AI into document categorization following in the proud tradition of Harvard undergrads who dropped out to become tech moguls. [Legaltech News]
* Discrimination suit against Winston & Strawn hinges on what it means to be a “partner.” In other words, can firms placate attorneys with empty titles without accepting the consequences? [Litigation Daily]
* Pennsylvania’s gerrymandered map gets the benchslap. [NPR]
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* Happy Shutdown!!! In case you’re wondering, the looming crisis won’t close the federal courts… for a few weeks. [National Law Journal]
* Sixth Circuit rules that cops can bust into your home and search for any reason at all. Who’d have thought putting an internet troll on an appellate court was a bad idea? [Slate]
* Coming off turning over their op-ed page to the lowest common denominator, the New York Times pens a thinkpiece that could easily have been titled, “Did you ever see Person of Interest? That was awesome.” [New York Times]
* Apparently judges stealing cocaine from evidence lockers is frowned upon. [Legal Intelligencer]
* DLA Piper forced to do some rearranging in Saudi Arabia. [American Lawyer]
* Frank Darabont is suing Walking Dead again. Just when you thought these suits were dead, they come back to life. [Law360]
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* Both Quinn Emanuel and Kirkland & Ellis are moving into Boston. Is this going to be a trend? Is there enough extra work laying around up there for this to be a trend? [American Lawyer]
* Look forward to hearing more about machine learning in 2018! It’s good to know it won’t all be vague conversations about blockchain next year. [Legaltech News]
* Jeff Sessions opens door to debtor’s prisons, because of course he does. [New York Times]
* And… here come the lawsuits over Apple’s newly uncovered practice of slowing down old phones. There’s a lot of ill will about these types of suits, but this is a pretty good example of how out of hand things can get without the threat of litigation. [Daily Business Review]
* Texas Lawyer put together a top 10 list of the troubled lawyers and judges of 2017. [Texas Lawyer]
* Steptoe’s John Nolan Jr., who negotiated the Bay of Pigs prisoner releases, has passed. [National Law Journal]