Chadbourne & Parke

* Baker Hostetler has a new chair. By that we mean a new leader, not new furniture. [American Lawyer]

* Now that they’ve settled, Chadbourne is a big fan of Kerrie Campbell. [New York Law Journal]

* Cox witness thinks AT&T merger would be “horribly ugly.” Well at least it’s an unbiased source. [National Law Journal]

* Ogletree Deakins slapped with punitives in malpractice trial. I’ve said it before… someone over there needs to figure out labor law. [Daily Report Online]

* Some people don’t pass the bar. [Inside Higher Ed]

* GE signed a multiyear contract with UnitedLex. A conversation with William Deckelman, general counsel of DXC Technology. [Corporate Counsel]

* Per recently filed FEC paperwork, the Republican Party’s campaign arm has severed financial ties with would-be Alabama senator Roy Moore thanks to his allegedly pervy predilections. If there’s no grass on the field, the GOP won’t play ball, but this man will probably still be elected. [The Daily Beast]

* Starting today, members of the public will be able to access briefs and relevant case documents from the Supreme Court’s website for the first time in history. This will be pretty cool for a day or two, and then people will go back SCOTUSblog, to the OG of high court documentation. [Washington Post]

* After seeing a five-year nose-dive, the number of LSAT-takers has ticked upwards ever so slightly over the course of the past two years. Law schools are probably thrilled given the dearth of quality applicants, but this is likely little comfort for the LSAC given the unexpected rise of the GRE. [Law.com]

* Late last week, a judge ruled favorably for Kerrie Campbell in a discovery dispute in her gender bias case against the now-defunct Chadbourne & Parke. Campbell will be able to review the personal email accounts of the firm’s former leaders for any documents relevant to the case. [American Lawyer]

* A 12-year-old girl who suffers from debilitating seizures and was forced to move from Texas to Colorado for treatment is suing Attorney General Jeff Sessions in an effort to legalize medical marijuana nationwide. The government has already lost its first motion to dismiss her case. [The Hill]

* According to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, it’s highly likely that we’ll have another Supreme Court vacancy this summer. Word on the street is that a justice is thinking about retiring, and all eyes are on Justice Kennedy, the high court’s swing vote. Hmm, we thought we’d already put this rumor to bed. [The Hill]

* After years of accepting incoming students with questionable academic qualifications followed by unsurprisingly dismal bar exam results, another law school will be closing soon. We all knew it would happen eventually, but it was just a matter of which one it would be. We’ll have much more on this later today. [Orange County Business Journal]

* Kerrie Campbell, the Chadbourne & Parke partner who filed a $100 million gender discrimination suit against her firm, will learn later this morning whether she’s been ousted from the Chadbourne partnership. Campbell, who is out on medical leave, says her removal from the partnership would be financially ruinous. [Am Law Daily]

* Former pharma bro Martin Shkreli and his former attorney, former Kaye Scholer partner Evan Greebel, will have separate trials this summer thanks to this ruling. After all, Greebel turned on his former client months ago, and his lawyers planned to “assert a defense that [would] be an ‘echo chamber’ for the prosecution.” [WSJ Law Blog]

* When Big Weed meets Biglaw: In honor of 4/20, the mainstream media has finally caught on and realized that marijuana law is an up-and-coming practice area. This article focuses on some of the well-known law firms that have adopted marijuana practices, like Thompson Coburn, Fox Rothschild, and Much Shelist. [Chicago Tribune]

* Tyann Sorrell, the woman who accused the former dean of UC Berkeley Law of sexually harassing her, was none too pleased with the settlement that was recently announced by the school. She says the deal, which leaves Sujit Chaudry with tenure and benefits, “insults all who suffer harassment at the hands of those with power and privilege.” [Law.com]

* “I liked being a judge, but I loved being a lawyer.” Judge Kevin Sharp of the Middle District of Tennessee has turned in his robes to become a partner at plaintiffs-side employment and civil rights firm Sanford Heisler, which will now be known as Sanford Heisler Sharp. He’s expected to play a critical role in the firm’s gender discrimination suit filed against Chadbourne & Parke. [New York Law Journal via ABA Journal]

* “I have no problem calling people out in meetings. It’s so bizarre, the excuses people give me why there are not more women in the room, never mind diversity of gender, race or religion.” PayPal’s top lawyer will quickly find a way to never have to work with your firm ever again if it seems like those who are in charge haven’t gotten the message that “a room full of white men” isn’t going to get or retain her business. [Big Law Business]

* If you’re trying to find a way to differentiate your firm from all of the rest, then why not experiment with the fine art that’s decorating your office walls? If you want your firm to be branded as home to rebellious lawyers without a cause — of action? — then some “naughty” restroom art is in order, like at Phipps Anderson Deacon. [Huffington Post]

* Uh-oh! You’ve been accepted to law school but now it looks like you’ll need to defer. This is a pretty useful guide on how to go about navigating a deferral of admission, and it even includes come fun facts, like the schools that won’t grant deferrals except for extremely extenuating circumstances. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]

Is this Supreme Court nominee a plagiarist?

* SCOTUS nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch has been accused of plagiarizing borrowing language and sentence style from other authors and incorporating it into a book and a law journal article without proper citation. On the bright side, at least one of the authors whose language he copied doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. [POLITICO]

* As it turns out, Chadbourne & Parke isn’t too keen on having a partner who filed a $100 million gender discrimination suit against the firm still working there. A spokesperson for Chadbourne says that the partners will convene to vote Kerrie Campbell out of the partnership. We’ll likely have more on this later today. [Am Law Daily]

* According to Citi Private Bank’s Law Firm Group, the leaders of some of America’s largest law firms had the wrong idea about how 2016 would turn out. Legal demand went down, not up as hoped for; realization rates did not improve, as expected; and revenue at many firms dropped, instead of increasing. Ouch. [Big Law Business]

* Professor Verna Williams will serve as the special assistant to the provost (i.e., interim dean) of the University of Cincinnati College of Law while Dean Jennifer Bard is on administrative leave. Williams was one of the UC professors who opposed Bard’s leadership, once referring to the situation as “untenable.” [Cincinnati Enquirer]

* Speaking of Dean Bard, she has obtained legal representation and claims that her removal from her position was improper. Per her attorney, “[t]he interim provost placed Dean Bard on administrative leave without the slightest factual basis for doing so,” and the law faculty were unwilling to put students’ needs ahead of their own. [Law.com]

* Are you ready to be tracked online, everyone? Senate Republicans voted yesterday to overturn internet privacy protections for individuals that were created by the Federal Communications Commission in October. “These were the strongest online privacy rules to date, and this vote is a huge step backwards in consumer protection writ large.” [DealBook / New York Times]

* Being forced to resign from your position isn’t so bad when you can land a sweet gig as a law professor. Barbara McQuade and Preet Bharara aren’t the only U.S. Attorneys who found new homes at law schools in the wake of their recent ouster by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Paul Fishman, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, is now a visiting fellow at Seton Hall University School of Law. Congrats! [Law.com]

* Mary Yelenick, the third Chadbourne & Parke partner to join the $100 million gender bias class-action suit filed against the firm, claims she was pressured to disavow the allegations in a letter signed by fourteen of the firm’s then-sixteen female partners. “At least two of the partners who signed the letter subsequently expressed to me that they hesitated, but felt great pressure to sign the letter,” she says. [Big Law Business]

* Gawker may be approaching a “potential settlement” with Peter Thiel relative to the tech billionaire’s vendetta against the website. The feud led to Thiel’s funding of several lawsuits against Gawker, including the one filed by wrestler Hulk Hogan which eventually bankrupted the site. Any deal between the parties would likely protect Gawker founder Nick Denton from any future Thiel-funded lawsuits. [New York Post]

* Illinois may be getting ready to puff, puff, pass some legislation that will legalize recreational marijuana. Senate Bill 316 and House Bill 2353 will allow adults to possess up to 28 grams of marijuana and regulate its sale, tax, cultivation, and use. The state already allows patients with certain ailments to use medical marijuana and decriminalized possession of up to 10 grams of marijuana last year. [Newsweek]

* Uh-oh! What’s going on at Kirkland & Ellis? Sources say that the firm recently changed its framework for allocating equity partner profits, making deep cuts to some partners’ shares. Litigation partners were reportedly hit so hard by these changes that multiple sources called the situation a “bloodbath.” We’ll have more on this later. [Am Law Daily]

* Talk about a money shot: Attorneys Paul Hansmeier and John Steele, formerly of Prenda Law, have been charged in a “massive extortion scheme” after allegedly uploading porn videos they produced themselves to file-sharing websites so they could then sue those who downloaded the films for copyright violations. [NBC News]

* Kerrie Campbell, the Chadbourne & Parke partner who sued her firm for $100 million over allegations of gender discrimination, has asked a court to dismiss C & P’s counterclaim, referring to the claims therein as “in terrorem tactic” to silence other women at the firm and elsewhere who have similar bias claims. [Big Law Business]

* Here’s a question that far too many law school deans were faced with this fall: “What’s the best way to share a school’s bad bar exam results?” Some chose to be blunt and others chose to be empathetic, but at the end of the day, the news is devastating to recent graduates, so there’s only so much one can really do to soften the blow. [ABA Journal]

* Charleston church gunman Dylann Roof was convicted on federal hate crime charges and is now awaiting the punishment phase of his trial. In case you didn’t know, he’s also waiting to stand trial on state murder charges, which means he’s the first person in the modern era to face the possibility of federal and state death penalty sentences. [Reuters]