Good morning. Legal educators are experiencing an unprecedented moment, as changes are underway for admissions testing, as schools retreat from an influential rankings report, and as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to end race-conscious admissions. Plus: Baker McKenzie is first to announce year-end associate bonuses; the 11th Circuit will take up DOJ’s Mar-a-Lago appeal today; former Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen speaks with Reuters about media-friendly clients; and the justices have agreed to hear a dog fight over trademarks. We’ll try to keep the puns on a leash. Thanks for reading!
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More than half of the country’s top-ranked law schools — including those at Yale, Harvard and Stanford universities — have said over the span of just days that they are ending their participation in U.S. News & World Report’s influential rankings. As Karen Sloan reports, the movement was just one of several changes that are set to reshape law school admissions in the coming years. Legal educators are calling the moment unprecedented.
The American Bar Association is moving ahead with a plan to stop requiring law schools to use the LSAT or other standardized test when admitting students. The testing requirement will remain until 2025, assuming the ABA’s House of Delegates signs off on the change in February. The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to strike down race-conscious admissions policies. A ruling is expected by the end of next June.
“This is the biggest jolt I’ve had in the 40 years I’ve been at this,” Georgetown University Law admissions dean Andrew Cornblatt said of the combined changes. Georgetown Law, ranked No. 14, joined the U.S. News boycott on Friday. U.S. News will continue to rank schools that choose not to provide it with their internal data.
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Access 2 x CLE webinars, the Thomson Reuters Legal Department Operations (LDO) Index report 2022, and 3 x Legal Leaders podcast episodes. |
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A New York state judge said he will deny Jones Day's bid for sanctions against a pharmaceutical company that it has been locked in litigation with for nearly three years. Jones Day in 2019 sued former client Serenity Pharmaceuticals, alleging it failed to pay more than $5 million in legal fees. Serenity has countersued, accusing the law firm of breaching its contract and of overbilling. (Reuters)
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Lawyers at O’Melveny are seeking “very, very substantial” legal fees for their work representing American Airlines over a decade in an antitrust case against flight-booking company Sabre. American won a $1 verdict at trial in May, and Sabre’s lawyers plan to argue that American is not entitled to any fees. A Manhattan federal judge said she will first decide whether fees are available before weighing a demand for a specific amount. (Reuters)
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The U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee will hold a hearing on Dec. 1 to examine the collapse of FTX, one of the world's biggest crypto exchanges. CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam is the first witness named for the hearing, which was titled "Why Congress Needs to Act: Lessons Learned from the FTX Collapse." (Reuters)
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That’s the amount associates end-of-year bonuses will reach at Baker McKenzie, becoming the first major law firm to go public with annual bonuses in a leaner year for the legal industry. The global firm will hand out bonuses based on seniority, with a range starting at $20,000 for the class of 2021 up to $115,000 for its most senior associates. Large law firms have rushed to increase associate bonuses and salaries in recent years to attract and retain lawyers as demand for legal services surged, particularly in corporate deal work. At some large firms, base salaries for associates range from $215,000 to $415,000.
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American CryptoFed DAO, which says its mission is to create a blockchain-based monetary system “with zero inflation, zero deflation and zero transaction costs,” is a rarity among crypto collectives: It actually sought out regulation, not only registering as a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, under Wyoming law but also seeking approval from the SEC for the tokens it planned to offer to prospective members. The DAO’s reward? On Friday, the SEC announced its second administrative proceeding against American CryptoFed, accusing the DAO of filing a misleading registration form for a proposed public offering of its tokens. Alison Frankel looks at the new SEC case, which highlights the challenge of applying old securities laws to DAOs.
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“The toy replaces ‘Jack Daniel’s’ with ‘Bad Spaniels,’ along with the image of a spaniel. It replaces ‘Old No. 7 Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey’ with ‘Old No. 2 on your Tennessee Carpet.’” |
—Lisa Blatt of Williams & Connolly, writing in a petition for client Jack Daniel’s in a trademark case that the U.S. Supreme Court just said it will take up. The justices agreed to hear the liquor giant’s bid to stop a company that sells dog toys from using designs that parody its trademarked Old No. 7 Black Label Tennessee Whiskey bottle. The 9th Circuit in 2020 overturned a ruling in favor of Jack Daniel's, finding the dog toy was a creative work with a "humorous message" entitled to First Amendment protections. There will be be many dogs in this fight.
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Former President Donald Trump's one-time lawyer Michael Cohen and other attorneys give their take on how to deal with clients such as FTX's former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who speak publicly about their legal challenges. Watch the video.
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U.S. and Bahamian units of bankrupt crypto trading platform FTX will square off before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey in Delaware to determine which court should lead the group's insolvency proceedings — Delaware, New York or the Bahamas. In the first court hearing since FTX's U.S. unit filed for Chapter 11 protections, the company and its lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell will argue that all U.S. bankruptcy proceedings should be heard in Delaware, while the Bahamian entity wants a New York court to aid liquidation efforts in the Bahamas.
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A three-judge 11th Circuit panel in Atlanta will hear arguments in the U.S. Justice Department's challenge to a judge's appointment of an independent arbiter to vet records seized by the FBI from Donald Trump's Florida estate. Prosecutors have argued that the special master’s review is hindering their investigation. The FBI seized more than 10,000 records during a court-approved Aug. 8 search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property. Trump has denied violating laws that restrict access to sensitive U.S. documents. The appeals court has not revealed the identities of the three judges who will hear DOJ’s expedited appeal.
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Donald Trump's real estate company will continue its defense in its criminal trial on charges including tax fraud after the prosecution rested its case. The first witness called by the defense was Donald Bender, an accountant with the firm Mazars who handled the Trump Organization’s taxes. The company's lawyers told jurors in opening statements that Allen Weisselberg, the company's former chief financial officer who pleaded guilty to charges including grand larceny and tax fraud in August, acted on his own and that Bender should have spotted the CFO's actions.
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Ninth Circuit Judges Andrew Kleinfeld, Kim McLane Wardlaw and Ronald Gould will hear arguments from Alliance Defending Freedom in a dispute over transgender college athletes in Idaho. ADF, representing Idaho female collegiate athletes defending the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, want the appeals court to dismiss an ACLU challenge to a state law that would bar transgender women and girls from playing on girls’ or women’s school sports teams. A federal judge in 2020 blocked the law. The ACLU and lawyers from Cooley, including Kathleen Hartnett, represent challengers to the law.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear California nursing home operator Glenhaven Healthcare's bid to avoid a lawsuit filed in state court over the COVID-19 death of a resident, turning away the company's effort to move the case into federal court to gain immunity from such litigation. A team from Orrick represented Glenhaven. (Reuters)
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Simon & Schuster owner Paramount Global will let its $2.2 billion sale to Penguin Random House collapse, opening the door for a new suitor to try to clinch a deal. Now-Circuit Judge Florence Pan in Washington, D.C., blocked the acquisition on antitrust grounds. German media group Bertelsmann SE & Co, which owns Penguin, was unable to convince Paramount Global to help pursue an appeal and extend the deal contract. (Reuters)
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Chief U.S. District Judge Stephanie Rose in Des Moines rejected a bid by the conservative legal group Pacific Legal Foundation to block Iowa from enforcing a state law requiring an equal number of men and women from each of its congressional districts to serve on a commission that vets applicants to the state's highest courts. (Reuters)
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A proposed class of YouTube TV subscribers sued The Walt Disney Co in California federal court, alleging the media giant’s business agreements with competitors have artificially pushed up how much consumers pay across the market for live television streamed over the internet. (Reuters)
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Four partners left Paul Weiss to open up a new firm focused on patent litigation work. The team is setting up shop in New York and Washington, D.C., under the name Groombridge, Wu, Baughman & Stone. (Reuters)
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Milbank said partner Viren Mascarenhas joined the firm’s New York office as a partner in the litigation and arbitration group. He was previously at King & Spalding. (Milbank)
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Morgan Lewis added labor-management relations partner Michael Mortensen in the firm’s Dallas office. He arrives from Jackson Lewis. (Morgan Lewis)
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Fox Rothschild brought on tax and wealth planning partner Rochelle Haller in the firm’s Seattle office. She was previously at Foster Garvey. (Fox Rothschild)
>> More moves to share? Please drop us a note at LegalCareerTracker@thomsonreuters.com. |
Sharon Urias of Greenspoon Marder digs into the legal issues at play for protecting intellectual property in the fashion, cannabis and high-tech industries. Urias writes that companies, regardless of industry, should use brand names that are non-generic, non-descriptive trademarks easily recognizable by their consumers. Read more on various industry considerations.
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