Ares Wraps Inaugural Credit Secondaries Fund At $4B

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Private equity giant Ares Management Corp. on Tuesday announced it closed its inaugural credit secondaries fund with roughly $4 billion of investor commitments, bringing the firm's total capital raised for its credit secondaries strategy to approximately $7.1 billion.

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Voice AI Co. Valued At $1.3B After $130M Series C Round

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Speech-to-text API platform Deepgram on Tuesday announced that it reached a $1.3 billion valuation after closing its latest funding round with $130 million in tow.

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2 Firms Guide IPO Valuing Construction Rental Co. At $6.4B

By Nate Beck

Columbia, Missouri-based construction equipment rental company EquipmentShare on Tuesday said it was seeking a valuation of up to $6.4 billion in an upcoming initial public offering guided by Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and Latham & Watkins LLP.

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AI Infrastructure Firm Exascale To Go Public Via $500M Deal

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Exascale Labs Inc., an artificial intelligence computing infrastructure platform, has announced plans to go public through a $500 million merger with special purpose acquisition company D. Boral ARC Acquisition I Corp.

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Wilson Sonsini Guides Polygon Labs On $250M Crypto Deals

By Al Barbarino

Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC-advised Polygon Labs said Tuesday it has agreed to acquire crypto payments company Coinme and crypto infrastructure provider Sequence for more than $250 million, as it seeks to build a regulated stablecoin payments platform in the U.S.

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Chancery OKs $4.85M Deal To End Ed-Tech Acquisition Suit

By Jarek Rutz

The Delaware Chancery Court signed off Tuesday on a $4.85 million class settlement resolving stockholder claims over Sterling Partners' 2024 take-private acquisition of Australian education-technology company Keypath Education International Inc., finding that the deal fell within a reasonable range given the risks the investors faced in continuing to litigate their fiduciary-duty claims.

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Google Engineer Cut-And-Pasted To Evade Security, Jury Told

By Bonnie Eslinger

A Google security manager took the stand Tuesday in the criminal trial of an engineer accused of stealing artificial intelligence trade secrets, testifying that his investigation showed that Linwei Ding evaded Google's internal security systems by cutting and pasting the data in a way that stripped information identifying Google's authorship.

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NC Judge Leery Of Early Exit Bid In Produce Co. ESOP Suit

By Hayley Fowler

A North Carolina federal judge seemed disinclined Tuesday to toss a lawsuit alleging a "cabal" of lawyers, private equity firms and their founders conspired to drain a produce company's employee stock ownership plan of its value, noting it's a fact-intensive case that will likely require discovery.

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Judge Grants Final Approval To AmeriFirst's Ch. 11 Plan

By Yun Park

A Delaware bankruptcy judge on Tuesday granted final approval of mortgage servicer AmeriFirst Financial Inc.'s Chapter 11 plan and disclosure statement, overruling objections from the Office of the U.S. Trustee concerning the payment of administrative and priority claims.

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5 E-Discovery Predictions For 2026 And Beyond

2026 will likely be shaped by issues ranging from artificial intelligence regulatory turbulence to potential evidence rule changes, and e-discovery professionals will need to understand how to effectively guide the responsible and defensible adoption of emerging tools, while also ensuring effective safeguards, say attorneys at Littler.

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No Jury Yet In Goldstein Trial, But Celeb Witnesses Possible

By Jared Foretek

Day two of jury selection in Tom Goldstein's tax and mortgage fraud case wrapped without a jury being seated Tuesday, but did reveal that the government could call celebrities Tobey Maguire and Kevin Hart to the stand.

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Ex-Duane Morris Tax Partner Charged With Murdering Wife

By Hailey Konnath

A former tax partner at Duane Morris LLP's Chicago office has been charged with killing his wife a little more than a year ago, according to an announcement made Tuesday by Illinois prosecutors.

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Beasley Allen Talc Work Sends 'Bad Signal,' J&J Says

By George Woolston

Johnson & Johnson's talc unit told a New Jersey appeals panel on Tuesday that a lower court's ruling permitting Beasley Allen Law Firm attorneys to represent plaintiffs in multicounty litigation over its talc-based baby powder "sends a very bad signal" to the state bar.

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Ex-Atty, Others Charged In Staged New Orleans Crash Scheme

By Hope Patti

A disbarred attorney was hit with new charges claiming that he induced a witness to commit perjury and obstructed justice in the federal investigation of an insurance scam involving staged car crashes in the New Orleans area.

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Halligan Blasts Court's 'Inquisition' Over US Atty Status

By Ryan Boysen

Lindsey Halligan said Tuesday that she is still the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia despite a recent ruling to the contrary, dismissing a federal judge's questions about why she's still using the title as an "inquisition" and a "gross abuse of power."

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Approach The Bench: Judge Bough On Ethics

Years of experience as a plaintiff's attorney influenced U.S. District Judge Stephen Bough's disclosure rules for litigators appearing in his court.

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DLA Piper Can't Counsel Hudson Hotel In Ch. 11, Judge Says

By Alex Wittenberg

A Delaware bankruptcy judge Tuesday rejected a bid by two bankrupt entities tied to the former Hudson Hotel to retain DLA Piper LLP as special counsel in their Chapter 11 case, saying the law firm's work for the entities' lender presented a conflict of interest.

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Sen. Whitehouse Presses AG On Boasberg Complaint Results

By Courtney Bublé

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., ranking member of the courts panel on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is calling for Attorney General Pam Bondi to release the results of the disciplinary complaint she filed against Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia when the investigation wraps up.

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Jack Smith To Testify Publicly Next Week

By Courtney Bublé

Former special counsel Jack Smith is slated to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on Jan. 22 after, according to his attorney, having been "ready and willing" to do so for a while.

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4th Circ. Combines DOJ Appeals Of Comey, James Dismissals

By Jack Karp

The Fourth Circuit has granted the Trump administration's request to combine its previously separate appeals of the dismissals of prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

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