Prosecutors

Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 10.25.17

* Fresh off his six-month stint as White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus will be returning to Am Law 200 firm Michael Best and Friedrich, where he'll serve as president and chief strategist. He'll lead the firm's government affairs practice group, and he plans to help clients with their Trump problems. Best of luck, those clients might need it. [POLITICO] * Sorry, consumers, but the Senate had to call in VP Mike Pence in the middle of the night to kill the the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule banning mandatory arbitration clauses in credit card and checking account agreements. Damn all those "frivolous lawsuits by special interest trial lawyers"! [The Two-Way / NPR] * Author John Grisham was inspired to write his latest novel, The Rooster Bar (affiliate link), after reading an article in The Atlantic by Paul Campos about for-profit law schools and the student loan crisis. Well, at least someone is going to make some money after learning about a for-profit law school. [CBS News] * Biglaw firms are trying to reduce the amount of their leased square footage. According to the CBRE Group, on average between the first quarter of 2016 and the second quarter of 2017, firms in 26 markets were able to shrink their office space by about 27 percent. But did their headcount shrink along with it? [Wall Street Journal] * Major lateral hire alert: Paul Basta left Kirkland & Ellis this summer, and now he's landed at Paul Weiss, where he'll be working as the co-chair of the firm's corporate restructuring practice. Alan Kornberg, the practice group's current chair, called Basta's arrival at the firm "sort of a dream come true in a way." [Big Law Business] * According to a study conducted by Professor Carlos Berdejó of Loyola Law School, prosecutors tend to give white defendants better plea deals than black defendants. We needed a study to confirm that some prosecutors discriminate based on race? [Slate]

By Staci Zaretsky
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 10.24.17

* Former Dentons associate Michael Potere pleads guilty to lesser charge in extortion case where he allegedly broke into the firm's system and threatened to hand over embarrassing material to Above the Law. The lesson is: if you have compromising information about your employer don't try to extort your firm -- just hand it directly to Above the Law. [The Recorder] * A lot of people are chiming in to say that Trump's decision to interview U.S. Attorney candidates is improper because it breaks with tradition or because he currently faces a special counsel investigation. That's all true, but what should really raise red flags is in an administration riddled with open jobs and a floundering legislative agenda, the only thing a president under investigation seems to care about is picking his prosecutors. [Litigation Daily] * We all kind of suspect that SCOTUS advocacy is largely a self-reinforcing old boys' club, but here's the data. [Empirical SCOTUS] * Chadbourne's gender bias suit may be getting bigger. [Law360] * Yes, RBG's famous workout is now available in book form (affiliate link). [National Law Journal] * In-house counsel say they want more from their law firms. And yet, I'm assuming they don't want "more bills" from those firms for all this extra work. [Corporate Counsel] * AUSA suspended for affair with FBI agent. What's the ethical dilemma? We all know the FBI is shacked up with the U.S. Attorney's Office anyway. [Law.com]

By Joe Patrice