Revised Travel Ban

Ed. note: We will not be publishing on Monday, February 19, in observance of President’s Day.

* Congratulations to my friend and former co-clerk, John Demers, on his long-overdue confirmation as head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. [Reuters]

* Which lawyers and justices take the lead on the most important Supreme Court cases? Adam Feldman has the answers, as always. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* Professor Ilya Somin breaks down the recent Fourth Circuit ruling on Trump’s Travel Ban 3.0. [Volokh Conspiracy / Reason]

* A leading legal technology company, Kira Systems, is looking for a few good law librarians (to apply for its new job as a Machine Learning Knowledge Analyst). [Dewey B Strategic]

* Lawyer and activist Glenn Magpantay, executive director of the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA), explains what’s at stake with the Dream Act. [Advocate]

* Stroock’s Joel Cohen draws lessons for lawyers from the buzz-generating new movie, The Post. [New York Law Journal]

* What role can expert witnesses play in #MeToo litigation? Lawyer Kat Hatziavramidis shares some insights. [Forensis Group]

* The Mrs. Palsgraf of the United Kingdom — a famous torts plaintiff named May Donoghue, who sued a beverage manufacturer after she discovered a decomposing snail in a bottle of ginger beer — is getting a statue erected in her honor. [Legal Cheek]

* Not as bad as sexually assaulting a student intern, but another Biglaw partner stands accused of making degrading, sexually charged comments to a junior attorney. [RollOnFriday]

* In advance of its Global Legal Hackathon (February 23-25), the Global Legal Blockchain Consortium welcomes a new member: Fasken, a leading Canadian law firm. [Artificial Lawyer]

* The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to toss the travel ban case on mootness grounds — and to scrub the lower-court rulings against it from the books. [How Appealing]

* Meanwhile, the District of Columbia won’t take the fight over its concealed-carry law to SCOTUS, fearing that the Court might just make the situation worse if called to rule on gun rights. [Washington Post]

* At age 86, Marty Lipton of Wachtell Lipton is still in the mix, issuing influential client memos on important issues of corporate law. [Big Law Business]

* Does the emperor have no clothes robes? Zoran (Zoki) Tasic, a former Seventh Circuit staff attorney, calls out Judge Richard Posner over alleged errors in the judge’s new book (affiliate link) about the treatment of pro se litigants. [How Appealing]

* Support staff at Hogan Lovells seem to love the firm’s buyout offers; the firm’s voluntary-retirement program attracted even more interest than expected. (Expect more on this later.) [Law.com]

* What does the future hold for the Obama administration’s proposed changes to overtime rules? Senators seek guidance from Cheryl Stanton, the former Alito clerk and Ogletree Deakins partner who enjoyed smooth sailing at her recent confirmation hearings to serve as head of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. [Bloomberg BNA]

* In other news about the fate of Obama-era regulations, it looks like the Trump administration will be rolling back the federal requirement for employers to include birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, expanding exemptions for religious objectors. [New York Times]

* The Ninth Circuit, President Donald Trump’s judicial archnemesis, affirms Judge Derrick Watson’s (modified) preliminary injunction against the “grandma ban.” [How Appealing]

* Donald Trump Jr. opens up to the Senate Judiciary Committee about that infamous June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer. [New York Times]

* Consolidation continues in the legal-services world: Counsel On Call acquires e-discovery company DSicovery LLC (DSi). [ABA Journal]

* The Trump administration sides with the anti-gay-marriage baker in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case that will be decided this coming Term by SCOTUS. [How Appealing]

* ICYMI: Deborah Farone — Cravath’s chief marketing director for the past 14 years, and the “gold standard” in legal marketing — is leaving Cravath to start her own consulting firm and to write a book on law firm marketing (to be published next year by the Practising Law Institute). [Law.com]

* Cooley raids Wilson Sonsini for talent for the second time in three months, this time hiring emerging growth specialists Jon Avina, Calise Cheng, and Rachel Proffitt. [Big Law Business]

* Legal research startup Casetext — led by CEO Jake Heller, COO Laura Safdie, and VP Pablo Arredondo — continues on its upward trajectory. [ABA Journal]

* President Donald Trump rejects reports that he’s considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller, while offering a less-than-ringing endorsement of his relationship with Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “It is what it is.” [New York Times]

* Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, whose house was the subject of a predawn raid by the FBI, parts ways with WilmerHale and goes back to his former lawyers at Miller & Chevalier. [National Law Journal]

* Meanwhile, the Trump administration files its opening brief in the Supreme Court in the travel ban litigation. [How Appealing]

* Georgetown Law launches a new con-law center, the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, led by star SCOTUS litigator Neal Katyal, former National Security Council official Joshua Geltzer, and former Justice Department official Mary McCord. [ABA Journal]

* Some Democratic senators claim that the White House isn’t consulting them enough about judicial nominations. [Politico]

* The hype may exceed the reality on alternative-fee arrangements — but not at pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline, which takes an aggressive and innovative approach to AFAs. [Am Law Daily]

* Settling the “pink slime” litigation cost Disney/ABC how much? [How Appealing]

* Also not cheap: the costs of bad-faith discovery spoliation. [Big Law Business]

* President Trump’s personal legal team: “It’s utter chaos. Sometimes it can be like no one knows who is in charge.” [Washington Post]

* Adam Feldman predicts that the travel ban is going down before SCOTUS. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* The Trump tweets on banning transgender individuals from the military aren’t the only bad news for the LGBTQ community today. [Washington Blade]

* A nice win for the First Amendment and public access to court records. [Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post]

* Ira Stoll wonders (with good reason): why did the New York Times account of this high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit name the law firm, but not the plaintiff? [Smarter Times]

* Clerkships guru Debra M. Strauss, who has written for our pages on the topic, is out with a second edition of Behind the Bench: The Guide to Judicial Clerkships (affiliate link).

* The Supreme Court’s latest ruling in the travel ban litigation: good news for grandparents, bad news for certain refugees. [How Appealing]

* And in the travel ban battle, the parties aren’t pulling their punches. [Democracy in America / The Economist]

* Nor does Joshua Matz: “The Supreme Court is now a co-owner and co-author of the travel ban.” [Take Care]

* Justice Goodwin Liu and a team of Yale Law School researchers have issued an important new report about Asian Americans in the legal profession today. [The Portrait Project]

* A defense of that controversial David Brooks column about salami. [Volokh Conspiracy / Washington Post]

* And a defense of due process when it comes to allegations of sexual assault on college campuses. [The Federalist via Instapundit]

* In other higher-education news, here’s the tweet that got Nick Lutz suspended from the University of Central Florida. [Althouse]

* How do millennials view the legal industry? Drew Rossow and Elan Fields discuss. [Legal Tookit / Legal Talk Network]

* Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams pleads guilty to accepting a bribe, ending his ongoing federal corruption trial and his tenure as DA — and sending him straight to jail, since Judge Paul Diamond denied bail. [ABA Journal]

* The Trump administration moves forward on implementing the travel ban (and has reversed its earlier determination that being engaged to marry an American doesn’t count as “a bona fide” connection to this country). [New York Times]

* Colorado baker Jack Phillips, petitioner in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case that the Supreme Court will hear next Term, explains his refusal to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. [How Appealing]

* DLA Piper, hit by a major ransomware attack earlier this week, endures its third consecutive day without email. [Law360]

* And DLA isn’t the only Biglaw firm with big weaknesses in cybersecurity, as Ian Lopez reports. [Law.com]

* Lawyer turned television host Greta Van Susteren has been let go by MSNBC (after just six months). [Vanity Fair]

* The tragic case of Charlie Gard comes to an end: the European Court of Human Rights declines to review prior court rulings refusing to let the terminally ill 10-month-old boy travel to the U.S. for experimental treatment. [Washington Post]

* Drs. John Eastman and Sohan Dasgupta break down the Trinity Lutheran case. [Claremont Institute]