Racism
-
* Supreme Court steps in to block opioid settlement that would’ve immunized the Sacklers. Looks like someone needs to start buying some luxury vacations for Clarence! [CNN]
* FEC looking into campaign deepfakes. Not to offer Donald Trump free advice, but he might want to embrace AI and argue that all those election calls were just malicious AI phonies. [Bloomberg Law News]
* Law firm closing up shop after nearly a century in business. [Law.com]
* Ed Blum is taking his effort to stamp out diversity from the classroom to the boardroom, going after a venture capital firm that invests in Black-owned businesses. [Reuters]
* University of California drawing back from Lewis Brisbois over the email scandal. Though those guys aren’t there anymore so this is more of a “how did you let this happen?” penalty. [Law360]
* Caltech and Apple have settled lawsuit over Wifi. With that kind of money, maybe they can join the Big Ten too. [9to5Mac]
* Is an LLM worth putting off a Biglaw job? [LegalCheek]
-
* While Sam Alito rewrote laws to help oil and gas exploit more land, his wife was… making land deals with oil and gas companies. But I guess that’s okay because his wife’s money isn’t “adjacent” to him because the couple is not physically “continuously connected.” [The Intercept]
* Law professor who feels persecuted because law schools hire other professors to teach classes about racism is going after a law school for having a “students of color” outreach program. By the end of the week, he’s probably going to have the Supreme Court’s backing on that one. [NY Post]
* So many of the problems facing Ron DeSantis could be solved by taking 10 minutes to read the Constitution. [CBS News]
* California’s ban on using public funds to travel to states with pro-bigotry laws on the books has hurt Black academics who can’t travel to conferences in those states. Which was the obvious outcome. Unless California plans to put resources behind bidding on and hosting all of these national conferences, the policy is always going to turn out this way. [Los Angeles Times]
* The FTC plans to file a sweeping antitrust suit against Amazon in a few weeks. It took a lot longer to deliver than a Prime package, but it’s worth the wait. [Bloomberg Law News]
* UK law firms worried that ChatGPT might be writing job applications. Oh no! How will firms survive once AI learns to write “I think my greatest weakness is that I care too much about the work.” [Law.com International]
* “Privacy Suit Says AI Could ‘Decide To Eliminate The Species.'” Or worse: cover letters. [Law360]
-
-
* ChatGPT “passes” law school exam. Which is not really how law school works, but cool. Congrats on your below market salary, debt-laden hellscape Johnny 5! [CBS]
* Lawyer threats avert robot legal apocalypse. I’m still pretty sure this is a stupid temper tantrum from lawyers who think they’re special snowflakes, but here we are. [NPR]
* Madison Square Garden’s lawyer ban may violate bias laws. Reality continues to lag about 4 weeks behind what I say. Are people not watching my podcast appearances when they come out live? Because we could speed all this up. [NBC]
* Paperwork is just not Elon Musk’s “style.” That’s cool and all, but you still need to do it before publicly announcing that you have done the paperwork. [Law360]
* Axiom opens law firm in Arizona thanks to regulatory changes. [ABA Journal]
* Craziest. Story. Ever. [Courthouse News Service]
-
* The Biden administration’s defense of its student loan relief programs arrived. It mostly revolves around the plaintiffs’ lack of standing, which has the benefit of being completely correct and the drawback of a majority of justices who don’t care. [Reuters]
* After yesterday’s southeastern merger news, now Maynard and Nexsen are merging to build a 550-attorney firm. [Daily Report Online]
* Coinbase will have to pay $100M in real people money for anti-money laundering compliance failures. [Law360]
* S&C takes overall deal value crown for 2022, shedding a bit of light on those Kirkland cutbacks we’ve been hearing about [American Lawyer]
* Preparing for a cyber threat is one thing. Getting lawyers to actually comply with your policies is another. [Legaltech News]
* Another story about facial recognition software, race, and mistaken identity. This time a man claims he was falsely arrested because of the software. [Gizmodo]
* In other news, I was on the most recent episode of WGN’s Legal Face-Off discussing a wide range of legal issues from bonuses to the Supreme Court. [WGN]
-
Rachel Dolezal’s Copyright Follies: Sues CBS For Copyright Infringement In Case That Won’t End Well
Is it fair to say that this lawsuit is pretending to be something it’s not?
-
The Antiracism Clearinghouse Project: Combatting Systemic Racism within Law Schools
A project spearheaded by five law school deans aims to create a space to engage institutions in the fight for justice and equality.
-
ExamSoft Tells Senators That Facial Recognition Problems Are Everyone’s Fault But Theirs
Sure one-third of California’s applicants were flagged for cheating, but…
-
There are better ways to get at this.
-
Online Bar Exams Rely On Facial Recognition Tech And Guess What? It’s Still Racist!
It seems like someone in a position of authority might want to look into this.
-
-
* 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]
-
* 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]
-
* 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]
-
-
* IBM says Watson’s about to take away your job, which is an announcement IBM makes roughly every three months because they’re taunting us. [Corporate Counsel]
* Betty Shelby acquitted in the killing of a black motorist because apparently it’s always reasonable to believe a random black guy is going to pull a gun. [NBC News]
* Former client seeks $1.4 million back that it spent trying to disqualify BakerHostetler. [Law360]
* Latham’s Alice Fisher has pulled out of the FBI Director sweepstakes. All eyes are on Joe Lieberman right now, but folks G. Gordon Liddy is just sitting there raring to go. [National Law Journal]
* And apparently Sheriff Clarke (who I’m sure was Trump’s personal pick) is taking a Homeland Security job so he can focus on harassing the poor and disadvantaged without having to bother all those nice bankers. [New York Times]
* Judge Charles Breyer took a break from writing the best benchslaps of all time to issue a groundbreaking video game ruling citing Star Wars and Love Actually — two movies that should never, ever be mentioned in the same sentence. [Hollywood Reporter]
* Stupid fan lawsuit against Warriors center ZaZa Pachulia moves on. [KENS5]
* More horrific allegations from Ken Starr’s world-class leadership at Baylor. [Huffington Post]