Texas
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‘I’m Not A Cat’: The Best Zoom Court Mishap Yet
Learn how to change your Zoom filters, right meow.
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* Hail Mary pass interference? President Donald Trump reportedly asked then-acting AG Matthew Whitaker if U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman (S.D.N.Y.) — a “perceived loyalist” — could be put in charge of the Michael Cohen probe even though he’d already recused himself. [New York Times]
* Chief Justice John Roberts once again sided with the Supreme Court’s liberals in refusing to agree with a Texas court’s decision to execute a death row inmate with intellectual disabilities, writing that the lower court’s review of the case “did not pass muster under this court’s analysis last time,” and “[i]t still doesn’t.” Justice Samuel Alito dissented, and was obviously joined by the high court’s conservatives. [Washington Post]
* Emoji are popping up more and more in court cases, and courts still don’t know what to do with them — which is a shame, because “[j]udges need to be aware of the importance of the emojis to the overall communication when we run into … odd evidentiary issues.” [The Verge]
* This Fox Rothschild partner is facing sanctions over missed deadlines in several cases for his client, porn producer Strike 3 Holdings. He’s repped the “copyright troll” in about 2,500 infringement cases since 2017. [American Lawyer]
* If you’re interested in investing in the future of law, alternative legal services provider Axiom will be going public and has applied for an IPO. The number of shares up for grabs and their price range is still undecided. [ALM International]
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Inside Look At The ACC Annual Meeting (Video)
Elie and I walk the floor of the conference and talk about legal tech, Austin, and not having water.
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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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Biglaw, Contract Attorneys, Legal Ethics
Best (And Not So Best) Practices For Billing Clients For Contract Attorney Work
In some jurisdictions, it’s illegal for law firms to treat contract attorneys as a profit center.
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* Settlements have been reached between Berkeley Law, the school’s former dean, and the dean’s former assistant. If you recall, then dean Sujit Chaudry was accused of sexually harassing his assistant, and as part of the settlement, he’ll have to pay $100K in fees and charitable donations, but will be considered to be on “sabbatical” until May 2018, keeping all of his benefits. Hmm, do we think this is fair? [Mercury News]
* “We have not livestreamed before, but that’s not to say that won’t happen in this case.” The Fourth Circuit is considering livestreaming oral arguments for travel ban 2.0, much like what the Ninth Circuit did with oral arguments for Trump’s first travel ban. Maybe you’ll be able to do some “professional development” billing… [National Law Journal]
* “Arkansas does not intend to torture plaintiffs to death.” Judge Kristine G. Baker (E.D. Ark.) has halted a whirlwind series of eight executions — the state’s first executions scheduled since 2005 — citing a “threat of irreparable harm” if the drug midazolam is used as part of the lethal injection drug protocol and somehow fails. [New York Times]
* More and more out-of-state Biglaw firms are flocking to Houston, Texas, to open their own offices, which has inspired many lawyers to leave their current firms for greener pastures — in terms of both money and opportunities. But is there enough legal work to go around with all of the new competition? Only time will tell. [Houston Chronicle]
* Ten Harvard Law student affinity groups are gunning for Professor David B. Wilkins to become the next dean of the school after Martha Minow steps down at the end of the year. They’ve written a letter to the university president, imploring him to take their advice and select their dean candidate for the position. Check it out. [Harvard Crimson]
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* Remember when Trump recaptured the news cycle from the string of blunders and Russian scandals that rocked his first month? That seems like just yesterday…. [Washington Post]
* What happens to lawyers after they
publicly demean themselvesappear on The Bachelor? [The Ringer]* After a massive scandal, Wells Fargo is slashing executive pay in the name of accountability. Well, by “slashing,” they mean “the people who failed to pick up the fraud will still make millions,” but it’s the tokenistic thought that counts. [Corporate Counsel]
* JP Morgan replaced 360,000 hours of annual legal work with a robot that does the work in seconds. That sounds impressive, but when you control for Biglaw hour padding the software really replaced about 20 minutes of work. [Bloomberg Markets]
* Yahoo’s GC resigned over their cybersecurity kerfuffle. Most Americans greet the news by wondering, “wait, Yahoo is still around?” [NY Times]
* Salary increases may be nice, but it just intensifies senior skepticism over what young associates really bring to the table. [Law360]
* Gibson Dunn building its Houston office on with Latham laterals. [Texas Lawyer]
* Even with revenue down, Bryan Cave manages to get PPP up. [Am Law Daily]
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* GCs just keep getting raises. Some reports suggest compensation is up almost 7 percent this year. But don’t worry — they’ll still bitch and moan about Biglaw associates getting a small cost of living bump. [Corporate Counsel]
* If you haven’t been paying attention, William & Mary Law School has been on FIRE lately. No, literally, the school is on fire. Call 911. [WAVY 10]
* Seventh Circuit may soon rule en banc to ban sexual orientation bias. You know, until Congress and the President impeach the entire Seventh Circuit to bring it back. Wow that was an absurd sentence and yet it’s entirely plausible right now. [Law360]
* Kelley Drye enters the Texas market. [The Am Law Daily]
* Heroic big banks are demolishing patent trolls while everyone else continues to suffer, which sounds about right. [Law.com]
* China’s got a new cybersecurity law and it’s not good news for foreign businesses. [Fortune]
* But don’t worry, the U.S. is now just as intrusive with new rules taking effect today that allow judges to order broader government hacking for investigative fishing expeditions. So… yay! [Ars Technica]
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Cyberlaw, Google / Search Engines, Law Professors, Technology
Are Lawyers Officially No Longer Technophobic?
The first month of 2012 was a crazy one for internet law. The Stop Online Piracy Act gloriously crashed and burned, Apple is getting sued in China for naming rights to the iPad, and in America someone is suing to show that porn doesn’t deserve copyright protection. In the wake of all the hot debate […]