Public defenders

Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 11.15.17

* Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thinks that the people of Alabama should choose Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a write-in candidate to replace alleged pederast Roy Moore on the ballot for his former seat, but the AG has no desire to return to the Senate. [NPR] * The Ninth Circuit has temporarily allowed part of Travel Ban 3.0 to proceed. While that means issuances of visas to citizens of Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen will be restricted, there's a catch. Applicants with concrete ties to the country will be exempt. [POLITICO] * Wisconsin is so desperate to get lawyers to help indigent criminal defendants in rural areas that lawmakers have introduced new legislation that calls for the state to fund law school loan payments of up to $20,000 a year in exchange for the representation of these clients in need. [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel] * Newsflash: In-house legal departments are planning to spend more on outside counsel in 2018. This is the first time this will have happened in more than a decade. Hopefully Biglaw's fee hikes don't come back to bite them. [Corporate Counsel] * After a two-month national postal survey, Australians have voted "overwhelmingly" in favor of same-sex marriage. Now it's up to the country's government to work out the details of the bill that will bring marriage equality down under. Congrats! [CNN]

By Staci Zaretsky
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 08.17.17

* Leaders and prominent partners at Biglaw firms across the country are speaking out against President Donald Trump's most recent comments concerning the deadly Charlottesville rally, where he blamed "both sides" for the violence that occurred. Has anyone among the leadership at your firm denounced Trump's remarks? We'll have more on this later. [Big Law Business] * In case you missed it, James Alex Fields, the man accused of second-degree murder in the death of Charlottesville counter-protester Heather Heyer, was supposed to be represented by an attorney from the public defender's office, but it seems there was a conflict of interest -- a relative of an employee was injured in the car crash that led to Heyer's untimely death. [Richmond Times-Dispatch] * Judge Jim Hinkle of Gwinnett County, Georgia, has been suspended thanks to his Facebook comments about the events that unfolded in Charlottesville. Hinkle compared the protesters "nut cases tearing down monuments" to ISIS, referring to them as "snowflakes" with "no concept of history." Hinkle said he didn’t "see anything controversial" about his posts. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution] * Retired Judge Robert Echols, formerly of the Middle District of Tennessee and now a partner at Bass Berry & Sims, once donated about $3,000 to the Mary Noel Kershaw Foundation, which funds firearms training for the League of the South, a hate group tied to the violent Charlottesville rally. The firm has launched an internal investigation into the matter. [Tennessean] * Austin Gillespie -- d/b/a Augustus Sol Invictus, the DePaul Law grad who opened his own Florida solo practice, closed it via this unhinged memo, and later sacrificed a goat and drank its blood -- was an organizer of the Charlottesville alt-right rally and is now running for Senate, again. [Am Law Daily]

By Staci Zaretsky
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 07.05.17

* While it's taken most justices about three to five years to get adjusted to life on the Supreme Court, it seems as if Justice Neil Gorsuch has already hit his stride over the course of just a few months. This gunner wrote one majority opinion, three dissents, three concurrences, and one statement during his first two months on the bench. [New York Times] * DLA Piper -- the first Biglaw firm to fall to a cyberattack -- has finally restored its email service after five days of going without it thanks to being the victim of the worldwide Petya ransomware attack. The firm still claims no client data was compromised by the hackers who gained access to their systems. [ABC News] * Ty Cobb of Hogan Lovells will reportedly be brought on to attend to Russia-related issues within the Office of White House Counsel. Cobb met with Trump last week, but wouldn't offer any comment on his prospective role except to say that he was on vacation. Enjoy your time off while it lasts -- working on Russia-related matters at the White House will certainly be no vacation. [Reuters] * Harvard Law School has established an endowed professorship to honor the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who graduated from the school in 1960. According to outgoing Dean Martha Minow, the professorship is "especially meaningful" because the justice "had a great love of learning." [Harvard Law Today] * Overworked and underpaid never paid? Public defenders working as independent contractors in Massachusetts aren't being paid in a remotely timely fashion. They sometimes go up to two months without receiving paychecks, and say that this has been going on for at least five years. [WWLP 22News]

By Staci Zaretsky
Morning Docket

Morning Docket: 12.29.16

* A fun new hobby for legal and political junkies to enjoy together: A Trump litigation watch list. [CNN] * Let's hear it for regulations! An EU law mandating that large trucks have an advanced emergency braking system is believed to have saved additional lives in the Berlin Christmas market attack that killed 12. [Washington Post] * Burke Ramsey, JonBenet's brother, is suing CBS -- as well as experts and consultants -- for defamation over a TV special that advanced the theory he killed his sister. [Entertainment Weekly] * There might actually be some good news on the horizon for public defender offices that have seen their budgets slashed. [ABA Journal] * A now-defunct medical laboratory is challenging the authority of the Federal Trade Commission to regulate online security. [National Law Journal]

By Kathryn Rubino