Sam Bankman-Fried

It's not just his youth that leaves SBF with a potential opportunity to turn over a new leaf.

To lose $1 billion may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose $2 billion looks like carelessness. The terms get progressively less sympathetic per each billion after that.

Discussing the risks of representing Trump, Sam Bankman-Fried's goofy courtroom sketch, and Biglaw's open letter to law schools.

Sam Bankman-Fried couldn’t fool a jury of his not-quite-peers.

* Ivanka Trump cited “undue hardship” because her testimony was scheduled during “a school week.” The appellate court… disagreed. [CNN]

* Sam Bankman-Fried is guilty. But Alex Kirshner’s burning question is… why was the defense so bad? [Slate]

* Rudy asks DC to please not disbar him. [Reuters]

* Retiring Biglaw leaders have firms thinking about succession. Presumably multiple rounds of Boar on the Floor. [Bloomberg Law News]

* George W. Bush judge declines seems disinclined to shut down NC Supreme Court’s probe of its only Black justice for saying the North Carolina court system isn’t particularly diverse, which seems like more a statement of fact than a controversial claim. [Law360]

* Survey finds that 17 percent of Biglaw attorneys feel emotionally depleted at work. An additional 83 percent have already had their capacity for human feeling permanently drained. [ABA Journal]

* BLM — the law firm, not Black Lives Matter or the Bureau of Land Management — accidentally gave videos of a kid to a pedophile. [Roll on Friday]

* Surge Pricing: Uber and Lyft to pay $328 million over wage theft probe. [Courthouse News Service]

The new Sam Bankman-Fried 'counter-sketch' speaks to the substance of the case.

* Remember Morgan Lewis partner Sheri Dillon? She’s the one who stood in front of a pile of — for all we know empty — folders and told everyone that they didn’t need to see Donald Trump’s taxes because they were fine. Well, the AG had some questions about that at trial yesterday. [Law360]

* Pillsbury ends merger talks with Stroock as two of the most star-crossed potential merger partners in Biglaw fail to get together. [American Lawyer]

* Today’s the day for Sam Bankman-Fried testimony. [Reuters]

* Bonus season is about a month away and likely to be a 2022 redux. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Attorney for Clarence Thomas denies that the justice’s RV loan was forgiven. Naturally, he refuses to provide any corroboration for this. [The Hill]

* Maryland posthumously admits Black lawyer it denied 166 years ago. [Washington Post]

* Legal tech prices are heading up. [Law.com]

Now that SBF intends to take the stand, let's remember another time he tried to answer questions about his business.

* Treat your significant other the way you’d want to be treated if they’re called to testify against you in a multi-billion dollar fraud trial. [Reuters]

* Chevron doctrine on the chopping block. Because what this country needs is every mundane detail of government in the hands of the laser-focused geniuses in the House of Representatives. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Drew Magary calls for an end to the Supreme Court’s soft dictatorship. [SF Gate]

* A thorough analysis of Ken Chesebro’s effort to overturn the 2020 election concludes that it doesn’t seem like that’s legal. [Just Security]

* In bid to keep his law license, John Eastman testifies that there’s been “200 years of dispute” over whether the vice president can unilaterally overturn elections. [Law360]

* Biglaw firms weather economic jitters by showing up in midmarket deals. [American Lawyer]

* Documentary profiles the attorneys who held Nazi groups accountable. [Daily Beast]

When Sam Bankman-Fried was initially accused of ripping off investors to the tune of billions, it was difficult to imagine any trial overshadowing his.

The well of cryptocurrency investor tolerance runs deep.

There is a lot to this story. Fortunately for the reading public, we are about to find out just how deep this rabbit hole went.

* Somehow they’ve managed to find even more undisclosed private air travel. This time taking Clarence Thomas to a Koch brothers event in a level of impropriety that a former W. Bush judge said, “takes my breath away, frankly.” [ProPublica]

* Clifford Chance opts for permanent hybrid work model while other firms choose alienation and extortion. [RollonFriday]

* Second Circuit decides Sam Bankman-Fried can wait in jail. [Law360]

* North Carolina Supreme Court justice Anita Earls spoke publicly about implicit bias in the legal system. After the judiciary commission ordered her to pre-clear future statements with them, she sued over the prior restraint and the federal judge chastised her for making the justice system look bad by talking about bias out loud. [Balls and Strikes]

* Having toppled admissions, right-wingers take aim at scholarships that might possibly help non-white people go to school. [Reuters]

* Judge upholds the right of private investors to put their money toward companies that match their environmental and social goals. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Profiling the folks chronicling the opaque Google antitrust case. [Wired]

* Sam Bankman-Fried denied pre-trial release after arguing that his alleged witness tampering, not unlike the value of cryptocurrency, wasn’t what it looked like on paper. [Reuters]

* After opening door a crack to allow some transparency in proceedings during the pandemic, the federal courts look to curtail live audio access. [Law360]

* Lawyer informs Texas Senate that Ken Paxton approved every bit of investigation at heart of impeachment. [Texas Tribune]

* Trial to begin to decide constitutionality of “America’s most extreme gun control law.” The law just requires gun owners to get a permit and bans magazines over 10 rounds. Again, this is what passes for the “most extreme” law in the country. [Fox News]

* Gibson Dunn alters diversity scholarship criteria as activists ramp up threats to sue law firms for pursuing initiatives to make the profession less white. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Meanwhile, two law schools are back in compliance with ABA accreditors after improving faculty diversity and likely putting them out of compliance with these litigious activists (Another law school is back in compliance after improving its finances… which is less controversial). [Law.com]

* Governor asks to change state’s public records law to keep her travel under wraps. [ABC]

* Clarence Thomas brings on Elliot Berke to represent him in his ethical quagmire, marking the first sign Thomas is starting to take his scandals seriously. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Mitch McConnell froze again. Cornell Law professor Michael Dorf examines the constitutional gaps for dealing with the issue. [Dorf on Law]

* DOJ moves to stop upcoming Titanic expedition because… obviously. [CNN]

* Lawyer tried to sub in a fake client during an arraignment. Gotta admit, that’s a new one! [ABA Journal]

* Judge in Sam Bankman-Fried case wants all postponement requests filed immediately because he’s tired of vague claims about what might happen in the future based on nothing, which if you think about it is how this case got here in the first place. [Fortune]

* Not a great week for the Proud Boys. [Reuters]

That's Sam Bankman-Fried's planned strategy.

* It took a couple of days, but Donald Trump has blown off Judge Chutkan’s warning that further public attacks on the proceedings would result in accelerating the existing January trial schedule. At the rate he’s going, expect the trial next week! [Politico]

* Meanwhile, in Georgia, prosecutors apparently have messages directly tying Trump’s legal team to voting system breach. [CNN]

* Florida Bar proposes allowing law school grads to engage in limited practice before passing the bar exam. One of many emergency measures required to make sure Donald Trump and his fellow indictees can secure local counsel. [Jax Daily Record]

* Law.com lists lawyers on social media it considers attorney-influencers. [Law.com]

* UPS reached an agreement with its workers, but it had strikebreaking plans all worked out. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Judge charged with murdering wife. [Law360]

* Sam Bankman-Fried off to Brooklyn MDC after judge finds witness tampering efforts in violation of bail, bringing renewed publicity to the facility’s abhorrent conditions. [Reuters]

* Plaintiff seeks sanctions against Rudy Giuliani in breach of contract lawsuit. This seems like… not the most pressing of the former NYC mayor’s legal woes. [New York Law Journal]

* Norton Rose Fulbright partner Vincent Dunn is working on the road from Australia. That’s because his daughter, Crystal Dunn, is playing for the U.S. Women’s National Team in the World Cup. [National Law Journal]

* 96-year-old Judge Pauline Newman wrote a pointed dissent amid questions of her competency. [Law360]

* Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe weighs in on the case against FTX crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried, on behalf of the defendant. [Reuters]

* Georgia district attorneys are suing over a new law giving the state the power to remove the elected officials over discretionary decisions. [Bloomberg Law]

They say it's the only way to stop the attempted witness tampering.

* Samuel Alito is back in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal asserting the Supreme Court cannot be held accountable to anyone. [Wall Street Journal]

* As you might imagine, plenty of folks disagree with Alito’s interpretation of his own power. [Politico]

* Prosecutors say FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried keeps on trying to intimidate witnesses in the criminal case against him. They’ve asked the judge to revoke bail. [Law360]

* The Women’s World Cup features some excellent soccer from lots of different countries. Thanks Title IX. [Slate]

* Can you use AI on your law school application? Arizona State says sure. [Reuters]