Ashley Madison

* I’ve had an interesting week. [Simple Justice]

* But at least I’m real. [Popehat]

* Next week will be an interesting week for the Electoral College. [Balkinization]

* Huma Abedin’s lawyers politely request that the FBI explain exactly how they screwed over America. [New York Daily News]

* I don’t really understand the Department of Justice “bid rigging” investigation into ad agencies. I don’t really understand why it’s important. But apparently some ad execs could go to jail behind this, so I understand that whatever is happening is pretty cool. [Business Insider]

* Ashley Madison agrees to a $1.6 million settlement with the FTC over its alleged failure to protect user data. That doesn’t seem like a lot to me. That seems like a “my wife saw my info on Ashley Madison and I had to sleep on the couch for a week” kind of penalty. Not a “my wife saw my info on Ashley Madison and now I live in my brother’s basement while the lawyers figure out how often I can still see my children” penalty. [ABA Journal]

* Prince will forever be remembered as a pioneering musician who mastered multiple genres, including rock, soul, pop, and funk, but members of the legal profession will always remember him as a ferocious defender of his music’s copyright protections. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Per a recent study that’s being referred to as the Glass Ceiling report, Wall Street Biglaw firms rarely promote women to partner. In fact, out of the 8,549 attorneys practicing at the 300 large law firms surveyed, only 3.9 percent are female partners. [Law360 (sub. req.) via ABA Journal]

* Hunton & Williams recently launched a new practice group dedicated to dealing with legal issues related to 3D printing. The innovative team will work on legal questions involving everything from intellectual property and product liability to insurance and tax. The firm now joins Reed Smith in this unique practice area. [3DPrint.com]

* Anna Alaburda’s case against Thomas Jefferson Law over its allegedly deceptive employment statistics may have ended in defeat, but there’s still one more law school lawsuit fighting its way through the courts. A case that was filed against Widener Law was appealed to the Third Circuit, and a decision is expected soon. [News Journal]

* Thanks to a ruling issued by Judge John A. Ross of the Eastern District of Missouri, the 42 lead plaintiffs in the Ashley Madison privacy hack case will not be allowed to proceed anonymously. It may be embarrassing, but as class representatives, they’ve got special roles. They must identify themselves, or proceed as mere class members. [Reuters]

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Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

* Later today, the Supreme Court will hear its “last great case of the Obama era” when arguments are presented in U.S. v. Texas, the biggest immigration case to come before the high court in a century. Given the current makeup of the Court, this case may be resolved with a 4-4 split, which would mean the president’s deportation-relief plan will be blocked in Texas. [Los Angeles Times]

* HBO’s “Confirmation,” a film about the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings, was an excellent presentation of the media mob that ravenously feasted upon a law professor’s sexual harassment allegations against America’s most silent justice. The fact that our country is in the middle of yet another highly politicized battle over a SCOTUS confirmation only made this more enjoyable to watch. [New York Times]

* Did Barnes & Thornberg help Avid Life Media defraud Ashley Madison subscribers? This is what plaintiffs allege in a consolidated lawsuit that’s been filed against the extramarital affairs website, and they’re seeking access to attorney-client privileged emails between the firm and the company to prove their case. [Big Law Business]

* A new partnership between Fresno City College, Fresno State, and San Joaquin College of Law will allow students to purchase a “one-way ticket to law school.” That ticket won’t be worth much after graduation, though, because San Joaquin Law’s most recent bar passage rate for first-time takers was a shockingly low 29 percent. [Visalia Times-Delta]

* Thanks to the popularity of hip-hopera Hamilton, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has scrapped plans to replace Alexander Hamilton’s face on the $10 bill with a woman’s. Instead, it will be Andrew Jackson whose face is replaced with a woman’s on the $20. Not to worry, Jackson fans — the new bill won’t be issued until around 2030. [CNN]

* Bill Cosby’s wife is scheduled to be deposed for the second time in a defamation suit filed by women who claim her husband called them liars after they came forward with sexual assault allegations against him. This time around, lawyers for the plaintiffs will be limited in that they’ll be prohibited from asking her “improper questions.” [ABC News]

The implications of the Panama Papers leak might seem dizzyingly complex, but their gist can be distilled into this simple graph.

* Meow! Kitty’s got claws! Lawyers for Grumpy Cat have filed an infringement lawsuit against Grenade Beverage for violating an IP licensing agreement. Grumpy Cat has requested a trial by a jury of her purrs peers. [Fox News]

* Always a bridesmaid, never a bride? Dickstein Shapiro, a Biglaw firm whose headcount was down by 23.2 percent at last count, wanted to have a merger partner by December 15. That date has come and gone, but to our knowledge, the firm still hasn’t found a match. What happens now? [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

* Fox Rothschild has been in growth mode for quite some time, and it most recently decided to gobble up Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly, an 82-lawyer Minneapolis firm. The merger will be complete in January 2016. Happy New Year! [Philadelphia Inquirer]

* “[W]orking in this courthouse is like being in the wild west. You just never know what is going to happen.” Last week, Oklahoma County DA David Prater brought down a fleeing defendant before he could escape the courthouse. [KWTV via ABA Journal]

* If you’re one of the plaintiffs who filed suit pseudonymously against Ashley Madison after its massive data breach earlier this year and you expect your privacy to be maintained by the courts, then you may have another thing coming. [WSJ Law Blog]

Don't ruin the Ashley Madison hack by firing people.

* It looks like the other slutty shoe has officially dropped. Two law firms have filed a $578 million class-action lawsuit against adultery dating site Ashley Madison for breaching their clients’ privacy rights. Impact Team must be thrilled. [TIME]

* Gov. Chris Christie says that if he’s elected president, he won’t nominate anyone with a Harvard Law or Yale Law degree to SCOTUS. Non-Ivy law schools better start priming and primping their most successful grads on the off chance Christie gets the nod. [CBS News]

* Case Western Law decided that two heads are better than one, because Jessica Berg and Michael Scharf were just permanently appointed to serve as co-deans. We can’t think of any other law school with a dynamic duo of deans like this. [Crain’s Cleveland Business]

* In Biglaw, romantic wranglings can follow you beyond the grave: Thomas Hale Boggs Jr.’s estate is doing battle with a woman who claims she had a relationship with the former head of Patton Boggs — and now she wants some of his property. [National Law Journal]

* He may be “used to playing on a different court,” but Michael Jordan really took it to the hole on this case. Defunct grocery store Dominick’s Finer Foods must now pay the sports star $8.9 million for using his name in a steak ad without his permission. [NBC News]

Life is short. Get a divorce.

Desperate times call for desperate abuses of intellectual property laws.

* Out of Germany comes news of a real tragedy — spoiled beer. [Legal Juice]

* Justice Sonia Sotomayor got a pretty bad-ass tribute in the form of a graffiti mural, unveiled in the Bronx. [Colorlines]

* A look at how voter suppression efforts have morphed with the times. [Washington Post]

* Don’t feel bad about your Josh Duggar/Ashley Madison schadenfreude. [Lawyers, Guns & Money]

* Want to waste some time? Take this fun quiz matching quotes to the lawyers that said them. [Suited Gladiators]

* A lesson in how not to deal with a government investigation, courtesy of the American Red Cross. [Cady Bar The Door]

* George Washington would be embarrassed to hear today’s candidates’ take on torture. And so would the rest of the founding fathers, ya know, if they were zombies. [Lowering the Bar]

* We’re about to announce the finalists for our Summer Associate Event Contest — so if you have a nomination, send it to us ASAP! [Above the Law]

This breaking news is brought to you by the phrase, “Babe, I need to tell you something, and I hope you won’t be mad.”

* Let’s hit some lingering holiday stories that came in after we went off the air on Tuesday. Think of it as your Christmas hangover. First up, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, reimagined as a lesson on pregnancy discrimination. [Bolek Besser Glesius] * On a related note, here’s a nice chart comparing the original poem with the legalese version created by Dezert-Rose. [TaxProf Blog] * Well, that’s one thing you can do with law reporters in the age of Westlaw and Lexis. [Legal Cheek] * Isn’t it really nice of prosecutors when they actually try to fulfill their constitutional obligations? [Katz Justice] * A life lesson for these thieves: there’s no such thing as a Christmas tree that doesn’t shed. [Legal Juice] * The lawyers supposedly told NFL players they would not be taking any of the concussion settlement money. There’s a lesson to be had here about how you shouldn’t trust lawyers. [Overlawyered] * Professor Nancy Leong went on Ashley Madison with a “white” profile and an “Asian” profile. The Asian profile got more hits. Is this interesting? Sure. Is this the sort of academic work worth charging law students $180K to support? Not so much. [Lawyers, Guns & Money]

Can you sue inanimate objects utilized in an affair -- like the online infidelity service, Ashley Madison?

Of course Ashley Madison is lying to you, you sad, gullible man.

* Tipsters, I’ve seen the Milbank / Harvard Law news. I just don’t have a strong opinion about it. Good, bad, indifferent? You tell me. [Harvard Law School; National Law Journal via Truth on the Market] * Is Ashley Madison (the dating site for adulterers) a scam? [Forbes] * Ah, the real reason Hosni Mubarak […]