Law360 Names Firms Of The Year

By Kevin Penton

Eight law firms have earned spots as Law360's Firms of the Year, with 48 Practice Group of the Year awards among them, achieving milestones such as high-profile litigation wins at the U.S. Supreme Court and 11-figure merger deals.

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Justices Won't Hear Audi, VW Bid To Limit Calif. Jurisdiction

By Linda Chiem

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear Audi AG and Volkswagen AG's bids to limit when foreign manufacturers, whose products are sold through a U.S. distributor, are subject to specific personal jurisdiction in American state courts for product liability and personal injury claims.

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Ex-Mars Exec Deserves 'Substantial' Fraud Sentence, Feds Say

By Brian Steele

A former Mars Inc. risk executive who admitted to pulling off a $28.4 million fraud scheme should spend a "substantial" amount of time in prison, prosecutors told a Connecticut federal judge, noting that the parties agreed to a guidelines range of around seven to 11 years.

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11th Circ. Won't Sink Pro Angler's $2.3M Plane Crash Award

By Mike Curley

The Eleventh Circuit has refused to upend a $2.3 million judgment in favor of a professional fisherman that resulted from a charter plane crash, rejecting the pilot's argument that the suit was decided under the wrong international law.

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Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court

By Jarek Rutz

The Delaware Chancery Court wrapped up last week with a mix of deal litigation, governance fights and disclosure battles, including a proposed settlement over a contested medical device sale, a merits dismissal tied to a $2 billion biotech exit and dueling lawsuits over Paramount Skydance's pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery.

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Senate Dems Push Bill To Block US Funds For Venezuela Oil

By Keith Goldberg

U.S. Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that would bar the Trump administration from reimbursing oil companies for any investments they make to help fortify Venezuela's floundering oil and gas industry.

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FINRA Says Firms Ignored Red Flags About Overseas Biz

By Sarah Jarvis

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has accused a pair of broker-dealers of failing to investigate red flags related to underwriting foreign customers' transactions and of not disclosing certain compensation, while the firms separately sued the regulator in Illinois federal court for overreach they claim blocked them from underwriting engagements.

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Profs Urge Justices To Affirm Cuban Property Seizure Ruling

By Joyce Hanson

Professors with expertise in sovereign immunity law have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm a D.C. Circuit decision that a federal act letting U.S. victims of Cuban property seizures seek damages does not automatically void the immunity of state entities targeted in such cases.

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2nd Circ. Says US Not Venue For Kazakhstani Gov't Dispute

By Jack McLoone

A Second Circuit panel refused to revive a Kazakhstani businessman's suit against his business partners and the country's National Security Committee over an alleged scheme that made him take the fall for misappropriated funds used for bribes, determining the suit didn't belong in the U.S.

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King & Spalding Rehires Trade Atty From Stripe

By Jack Rodgers

King & Spalding LLP has rehired a former senior international trade associate in Washington, D.C., who has spent the past eight years in varying iterations of corporate in-house work for Stripe, a global payment company whose technology helps expand the ability of businesses to accept payment for services.

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2026 Int'l Arbitration Trends: Tariffs Drive Transformation

In 2025, the Trump administration's sweeping tariffs triggered an unprecedented wave of trade-related disputes — and this, along with evolving M&A practices, the challenges of enforcing arbitral awards against sovereign states, and the role of emerging technologies, will continue to drive international arbitration trends this year, say attorneys at Cleary.

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Why 2026 Could Be A Bright Year For US Solar

2025 was a record-setting year for utility-scale solar power deployment in the U.S., a trend that shows no signs of abating, so the question for 2026 is whether permitting, interconnection, and state and federal policies will allow the industry to grow fast enough to meet demand, say attorneys at Beveridge & Diamond.

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Key Changes In World Bank's New Compliance Updates

Recent updates to integrity guidelines for companies that bid and work on World Bank-financed projects are sufficiently extensive and unique that covered businesses must take proactive steps to map the changes against their existing compliance programs or risk severe business consequences, say attorneys at Steptoe.

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Navigating Privilege Law Patchwork In Dual-Purpose Comms

Three years after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to resolve a circuit split in In re: Grand Jury, federal courts remain split as to when attorney-client privilege applies to dual-purpose legal and business communications, and understanding the fragmented landscape is essential for managing risks, say attorneys at Covington.

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Willkie Accused Of Aiding $735M Fraud In Buyout Deal

By Katryna Perera

Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP on Tuesday was accused of aiding a $735 million fraud carried out by an investment manager to secure financing for a 2023 take-private transaction involving Franchise Group Inc., which was then used to pay off the manager's personal debts.

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Goldstein Poker Pals Got Money From Firm, Witness Says

By Jared Foretek

A former office manager at Thomas Goldstein's law firm Tuesday told the jury in his tax fraud trial in Maryland federal court that hundreds of thousands of dollars in wire transfers sent to the U.S. Supreme Court lawyer's poker counterparts were classified as business transactions in documents used by the firm's tax accountants.

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McDonald Hopkins Forms Practice Group For Law Firm MSOs

By Emma Cueto

Midwestern firm McDonald Hopkins LLC announced Tuesday that it has launched a practice group focused on handling deals between law firms and prospective private equity investors, which the firm said is a natural extension of its work on litigation funding deals and private equity investment in other professional services.

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Ex-DOJ Attys Describe Fallout From Trump Takeover

By Stewart Bishop

Former federal prosecutors who resigned or were fired from the U.S. Department of Justice over the last year spoke Tuesday of their dismay over political interference at the department by the Trump administration, but largely expressed confidence that the DOJ could recover in time.

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Shooting Of Indiana Judge, Wife Prompts Call For Vigilance

By Lynn LaRowe

The shooting of an Indiana Superior Court judge and his wife over the weekend has prompted the chief of the state's highest court to urge all jurists in the Hoosier State to "remain vigilant in your security."

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Ex-Girardi Keese Atty To Take Plea Deal In Chicago Case

By Rae Ann Varona

Former Girardi Keese attorney Keith Griffin will take a plea deal in a case accusing him of helping Tom Girardi violate court orders and covering up the theft of client funds, according to a minute entry entered Friday in Illinois federal court.

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Lindsey Halligan Out As US Atty As Judge Criticizes 'Charade'

By Courtney Bublé

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday that Lindsey Halligan's 120-day term as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia is over, the same day a Virginia federal judge criticized "this charade of Ms. Halligan masquerading" in a role in which she was not lawfully serving.

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Justice Jackson Slams Fee Waiver Ban For Indigent Prisoners

By Brandon Lowrey

The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday rejected three pro se indigent prisoners' bids to file petitions to the court without fees and permanently barred them from seeking fee waivers from the high court, decisions that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called "foolish" in a passionate dissent.

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Supreme Court Rules Mandatory Restitution Is Punitive

By Phillip Bantz

The U.S. Supreme Court held in a unanimous opinion Tuesday that restitution is a criminal punishment subject to the Constitution's ban on increasing punishment retroactively.

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Feature

John Roberts Welcomes John Roberts To Supreme Court

By Jeff Overley

U.S. Supreme Court advocates have tips galore for staying calm at a debut argument, including diligent preparation, mindful breathing and treating the event as a conversation. But a Proskauer Rose LLP attorney benefited Tuesday from a distinctive development: the chief justice's introductory jest about the two of them not being related.

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Justices Ax 6th Circ. Abortion Order Amid Loper Bright Outcry

By Jeff Overley

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday erased a Sixth Circuit decision allowing abortion-related conditions on family planning grants, a victory for Tennessee officials who accused the circuit of flouting the high court's landmark rejection of judicial deference to regulators.

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NJ Justices Sharply Limit Attorney Liability To Nonclients

By Carla Baranauckas

The New Jersey Supreme Court adopted a formal framework on Tuesday for determining when attorneys owe a duty of care to nonclients, affirming that estate lawyers generally cannot be sued for malpractice by disappointed heirs without clear proof the lawyer was engaged to benefit them directly.

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AI Firm Countersues Legal Publisher For Breach Of Contract

By Adam Lidgett

Artificial intelligence startup Alexi Technologies has accused Fastcase Inc. and its owner of weaponizing the legal system after the legal research firm filed a lawsuit in November claiming the AI company breached a former business relationship.

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Justices Set Time Limit To Ax Judgments, Ending 11-1 Split

By Jeff Overley

Almost every circuit court has wrongly allowed litigants to vacate invalid judgments regardless of how long ago the judgments became final, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, endorsing one circuit's outlier interpretation of a decades-old procedural rule.

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Brief

Supreme Court Security Gets $30M Boost In DHS Bill

By Courtney Bublé

The consolidated U.S. Department of Homeland Security funding bill for fiscal year 2026 released early Tuesday morning includes $30 million for the security of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

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