David Stras

Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 01.31.18

* 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]

By Staci Zaretsky
American Bar Association / ABA

Law School Accreditation: What Is To Be Done?

Critics of the current legal-education model, including my colleague Elie Mystal, have accused the American Bar Association of failing to uphold sufficiently stringent accreditation standards. ABA-accredited law schools proliferate, even though thousands of law school graduates find themselves unemployed or underemployed. The ABA was recently chided by the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and […]

By David Lat
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 07.14.10

* A possible upside to jury duty: getting to watch porn in court? [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times] * Things just got hard in the Big Easy for six New Orleans police officers, who are now accused by the feds of shooting unarmed citizens and/or conspiring to cover it up. [New Orleans Times […]

By David Lat