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Legal Ethics
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March 12, 2025
As Perkins Coie Fights Order, How Will Other Firms Respond?
Perkins Coie LLP, represented by Williams & Connolly LLP, is challenging President Donald Trump's executive order revoking its security clearance and launching investigations into its diversity efforts. But other firms have remained silent, raising questions about the order's potential effects on how firms handle public policy litigation, publicly support their right to defend all clients and pursue hiring initiatives.
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March 12, 2025
Widow Blames Lawyer's Death On Heat From Atty, Biz Partner
A lawyer who co-founded a successful college athletics database took his own life after both his former business partner and his personal attorney falsely accused him of stealing from the company and sought to take control of his assets as repayment, his family said in a state court complaint that seeks to sort through the "financial wreckage."
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March 12, 2025
US Trustee Seeks Sanctions Against NY Lawyer
The federal bankruptcy watchdog asked a New York judge Wednesday to sanction a lawyer who allegedly concealed her conflicts of interest while representing a debtor and a buyer in two separate Chapter 11 cases.
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March 12, 2025
Drew Eckl Can't Keep Breakaway Firm In Arbitration Over Fees
The Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday found that Burke Moore Law Group LLP — founded by former Drew Eckl & Farnham LLP partners and others — cannot be subject to arbitration over fees between Drew Eckl and those ex-firm partners since Burke Moore did not sign the agreement at issue.
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March 12, 2025
Buzbee, Ex-Client Say Roc Nation Can't Exit Conspiracy Suits
Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter's company Roc Nation "spearheaded" efforts to launch malpractice suits against the Buzbee Law Firm in retaliation for a lawsuit the firm filed accusing the rap star of rape, so it cannot exit a Texas federal suit over that effort by claiming a lack of jurisdiction, the firm said.
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March 12, 2025
Tony Buzbee Accused Of Duping Another Seaman
Texas personal injury attorney Tony Buzbee and his firm have been hit with another lawsuit from a seaman who alleges that the firm misappropriated payments he received after a 2020 ship injury.
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March 12, 2025
2nd Circ. Upholds Sanctions In Chinese Billionaire's Ch. 11
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday torpedoed an appeal from the daughter of bankrupt Chinese exile Miles Guo — also known as Ho Won Kwok — and her attorney seeking to overturn a nearly $83,400 discovery sanction, saying the contempt ruling was merited.
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March 12, 2025
McCarter & English Wins $3.77M From Ex-Client In Billing Spat
McCarter & English LLP is entitled to nearly $3.77 million from Jarrow Formulas Inc., a nutritional supplement company that refused to pay its legal bills after losing a trade secrets trial and a subsequent malpractice claim against the firm, a Connecticut federal judge has ruled.
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March 12, 2025
Atty Wants Early Win In NJ Malpractice Suit Over Land Dispute
New Jersey sisters who sued Fox Rothschild and a firm attorney over the handling of their late stepfather's estate lack standing to bring their claims, the lawyer argued in a motion for summary judgment, also telling the trial court that the plaintiffs were decades late in filing.
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March 11, 2025
Russian Can't Claim Seized $300M Superyacht, Judge Rules
A New York federal judge ruled Monday that a Russian billionaire cannot claim ownership of a seized $300 million superyacht, saying the evidence shows he is a "straw" owner of the vessel in a ruling that moved the government closer to selling it at auction.
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March 11, 2025
Medical Device Co. Seeks Fed. Circ. Redo Over Patent Trial
A medical device manufacturer is asking the full Federal Circuit to reconsider a panel decision reviving a patent infringement case against it, arguing a lower court judge was fine to allow tardy testimony from a witness who took its side.
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March 11, 2025
Perkins Coie Slams Trump's Executive Order Retaliation
Perkins Coie LLP sued the Trump administration Tuesday over an executive order targeting the firm for its diversity-focused hiring efforts and its representation of certain political figures including former Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, calling the order "an affront to the Constitution" that aims to chill future representation of certain clients.
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March 11, 2025
5th Circ. Hopes For 'Sanity' In Backing Legal Malpractice Arb.
Untangling a "ridiculous" arbitration proceeding that produced four contradictory awards in a legal malpractice dispute, the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday affirmed three awards and most of another, adding that the parties are "free to arbitrate another day" in the hope that their disagreements will be resolved "for the sake of sanity."
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March 11, 2025
Rising Caseloads Call For 71 New Judges: Judicial Conference
The Judicial Conference of the United States on Tuesday asked Congress to create dozens of new judgeships in districts across the country in an effort to address what it calls a "worsening shortage" of judges amid mounting caseloads, months after then-President Joe Biden vetoed a bill to add 63 new permanent judgeships over partisan concerns.
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March 11, 2025
GPB Capital Execs Denied New Trial In Fraud Case
Two GPB Capital executives were denied a new trial by a Brooklyn federal judge who said a jury was reasonable in finding them guilty of running their funds like a Ponzi scheme, using investor capital to make distribution payments to give the appearance of a healthy portfolio.
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March 11, 2025
Ex-Prosecutor's Handling Of 2017 Protest Evidence Defended
A former federal prosecutor accused of withholding key evidence in the criminal cases against hundreds of people arrested at a 2017 anti-Trump demonstration in Washington, D.C., was working "under profoundly challenging conditions" at the time, her attorney told an ethics panel in the nation's capital on Tuesday.
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March 11, 2025
Alleged Fake Atty Meddled In Real Lawyer's Case, Jury Told
A Philadelphia trial lawyer told a Manhattan federal jury Tuesday that a convicted fraudster accused of posing as a lawyer asked that he file a motion for a client in a criminal case that was "vague," "frivolous" and "not good."
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March 11, 2025
Eric Adams Case Dying Slow Death In 'Sovereign' District
Experts say New York City Mayor Eric Adams' criminal corruption case appears on track to be tossed permanently — a looming development that could signal the end of the fierce independence of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
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March 11, 2025
Threats Against Judges 'Top Priority,' Fed. Judiciary Says
Protecting federal judges is a "top priority" as violent threats spike against a polarized political backdrop, making congressional funding for additional security measures more important than ever, the U.S. Judicial Conference said Tuesday.
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March 11, 2025
NJ Power Broker Fights Civil Suit After Criminal Case Victory
South Jersey power broker George Norcross and his brother moved this week to dismiss a civil racketeering suit against them arguing that the plaintiff's claims "parroted" a criminal indictment against them that was recently dismissed.
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March 11, 2025
Publix's Suit Over Ga. County's Private Attys 'Beyond Reason'
Publix can't sue a metro Atlanta county to force it to drop its private attorneys who filed an opioid suit against the supermarket chain, the Georgia Court of Appeals has said, ruling that the company "fails to show what right the county has violated by its choice of counsel."
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March 11, 2025
Ex-J&J Atty Says She Was Fired For Making Ethics Complaint
A former in-house data privacy attorney for Johnson & Johnson has sued the company for discrimination in New Jersey federal court, alleging that she was passed over for a promotion based on her Latina ethnicity and fired for reporting unethical behavior by the attorney who got the job.
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March 11, 2025
Goldstein Wants Look At Testimony On Alleged Obstruction
U.S. Supreme Court lawyer and SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein asked a Maryland federal judge to let him see grand jury material related to the government's claim that he offered to pay a potential witness cryptocurrency in his tax evasion case.
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March 11, 2025
NJ High Court Approves AG Conflicts Waiver Pilot Program
The New Jersey Supreme Court has given the go-ahead for a two-year pilot program through which the state attorney general will be allowed to waive conflicts of interest for public clients represented by the Office of the Attorney General.
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March 10, 2025
Epic, Apple Duel Over App-Store Injunction Compliance
Epic Games urged a California federal judge to find that Apple violated her order blocking the tech giant from enacting App Store rules that prevent developers from steering users to alternative payment methods while Apple argued in its own filing that it complied as it "reasonably understood" the injunction.
Expert Analysis
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In-House Counsel Pointers For Preserving Atty-Client Privilege
Several recent rulings illustrate the challenges in-house counsel can face when attempting to preserve attorney-client privilege, but a few best practices can help safeguard communications and effectively assert the privilege in an increasingly scrutinized corporate environment, says Daniel Garrie at Law & Forensics.
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Applying ABA Atty Role Guidance To White Collar Matters
The American Bar Association’s recently published guidance, clarifying the duties outside counsel owes to both organizational clients and those organizations' constituents, provides best practices that attorneys representing companies in white collar and other investigative matters should heed, say attorneys at MoFo.
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Series
Collecting Rare Books Makes Me A Better Lawyer
My collection of rare books includes several written or owned by prominent lawyers from early U.S. history, and immersing myself in their stories helps me feel a deeper connection to my legal practice and its purpose, says Douglas Brown at Manatt Health.
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Opinion
Judge Should Not Have Been Reprimanded For Alito Essay
Senior U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor's New York Times essay critiquing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for potential ethical violations absolutely cannot be construed as conduct prejudicial to the administration of the business of the courts, says Ashley London at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University.
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Lights, Camera, Ethics? TV Lawyers Tend To Set Bad Example
Though fictional movies and television shows portraying lawyers are fun to watch, Hollywood’s inaccurate depictions of legal ethics can desensitize attorneys to ethics violations and lead real-life clients to believe that good lawyers take a scorched-earth approach, says Nancy Rapoport at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
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Perspectives
Accountant-Owned Law Firms Could Blur Ethical Lines
KPMG’s recent application to open a legal practice in Arizona represents the first overture by an accounting firm to take advantage of the state’s relaxed law firm ownership rules, but enforcing and supervising the practice of law by nonattorneys could prove particularly challenging, says Seth Laver at Goldberg Segalla.
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AI Will Soon Transform The E-Discovery Industrial Complex
Todd Itami at Covington discusses how generative artificial intelligence will reshape the current e-discovery paradigm, replacing the blunt instrument of data handling with a laser scalpel of fully integrated enterprise solutions — after first making e-discovery processes technically and legally harder.
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When Innovation Overwhelms The Rule Of Law
In an era where technology is rapidly evolving and artificial intelligence is seemingly everywhere, it’s worth asking if the law — both substantive precedent and procedural rules — can keep up with the light speed of innovation, says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.
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Imagine The Possibilities Of Openly Autistic Lawyering
Andi Mazingo at Lumen Law, who was diagnosed with autism about midway through her career, discusses how the legal profession can create inclusive workplaces that empower openly autistic lawyers and enhance innovation, and how neurodivergent attorneys can navigate the challenges and opportunities that come with disclosing one’s diagnosis.
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Disciplinary Rule Updates Every Texas Lawyer Needs To Know
Sweeping amendments to the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct that recently went into effect provide essential clarity and modernity to rules governing conflicts of interest, client confidentiality and duties to prospective clients, says Robert Tobey at Johnston Tobey.
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Series
Documentary Filmmaking Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Becoming a documentary filmmaker has allowed me to merge my legal expertise with my passion for storytelling, and has helped me to hone negotiation, critical thinking and problem-solving skills that are important to both endeavors, says Robert Darwell at Sheppard Mullin.
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Litigation Funding Disclosure Debate: Strategy Considerations
In the ongoing debate over whether courts should require disclosure of litigation funding, funders and plaintiffs tend to argue against such mandates, but voluntarily disclosing limited details about a funding arrangement can actually confer certain benefits to plaintiffs in some scenarios, say Andrew Stulce and Marc Cavan at Longford Capital.
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Opinion
Firing Of Jack Smith's Team Is A Threat To Rule Of Law
The acting attorney general’s justifications for firing prosecutors who worked on the criminal cases against President Donald Trump rest on a mischaracterization of legal norms, and this likely illegal move augurs poorly for the rule of law, say Bruce Green at Fordham University and Rebecca Roiphe at New York Law School.
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Series
Adventure Photography Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Photographing nature everywhere from Siberia to Cuba and Iceland to Rwanda provides me with a constant reminder to refresh, refocus and rethink the legal issues that my clients face, says Richard Birmingham at Davis Wright.
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5 Ways To Create Effective Mock Assignments For Associates
In order to effectively develop associates’ critical thinking skills, firms should design mock assignments that contain a few key ingredients, from messy fact patterns to actionable feedback, says Abdi Shayesteh at AltaClaro.