Terraform Founder Gets 15 Years For 'Epic' $40B Crypto Scam

By Pete Brush

A Manhattan federal judge hit Terraform founder Do Kwon with a 15-year prison sentence Thursday, saying he caused "real people to lose $40 billion in real money" as he orchestrated a massive fraud that sunk the once high-flying crypto concern.

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Trump Orders Review Of Proxy Advisers' 'Substantial Power'

By Rae Ann Varona

President Donald Trump on Thursday issued an executive order that aims to scrutinize the influence that proxy adviser firms like Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. and Glass Lewis & Co. LLC have, including in relation to diversity, equity and inclusion agendas.

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House Passes Bill To Rev Up Investment, Biz Opportunities

By Lauren Berg

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed bipartisan legislation that would revamp securities law by making it easier for entrepreneurs and small businesses to access capital and by expanding investment opportunities in private markets.

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Chancery Skeptical Of B. Riley Investors' Investment Loss Suit

By Jarek Rutz

A vice chancellor in the Delaware Chancery Court on Thursday pressed the lawyer for a B. Riley Financial Inc. stockholder to justify Caremark oversight claims tied to the investment firm's failed bets on the Franchise Group Inc., repeatedly questioning whether the complaint plausibly alleged bad faith board inaction rather than business judgment disagreements.


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Mass. Lawyer Accused Of Misusing Pot Shop Investor Funds

By Julie Manganis

A Massachusetts lawyer took a 50.1% stake in a cannabis startup in exchange for what he said was a discount on fees for legal work he would perform, then botched the license application and misused investor funds, a lawsuit filed in state court alleges.

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Connell Foley Beats DQ Bid In NJ Investment Bias Case

By Jake Maher

A federal judge on Thursday threw out a renewed bid by an investment firm suing the state of New Jersey to disqualify the state's counsel at Connell Foley LLP, finding there was no previous attorney-client relationship to justify disqualification.

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House Weighs CFTC's Future As Admin Looks To Fill Positions

By Jessica Corso

The White House said Thursday that it will soon fill some of the open leadership positions at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as industry experts and former CFTC insiders told Congress that the agency will need more funding and additional personnel if it's to properly police the cryptocurrency and prediction markets.

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FSOC To Tack Toward Deregulation For Growth, Bessent Says

By Jon Hill

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that the Financial Stability Oversight Council will pivot toward a focus on promoting economic growth through deregulation, charting a new course for the panel that mirrors shifts underway at its member agencies.

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SEC Gives DTCC Nod To Offer Tokenization Service

By Aislinn Keely

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday issued a no-action letter clearing the way for The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. to launch a service tokenizing certain securities.

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Gemini To Offer Prediction Markets With CFTC License

By Aislinn Keely

Winklevoss-led crypto firm Gemini plans to soon offer prediction markets to customers now that it's won a designated contract market license from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

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Fed Terminates 3 Actions Against Credit Suisse, JPMorgan

By Sydney Price

The Federal Reserve said Thursday that it has terminated a trio of enforcement actions against Credit Suisse Group AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co., lifting consent orders that were tied to alleged illicit finance practices and trade surveillance failures.

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SEC Gets Amended $32M Win In Real Estate Fraud Suit

By Katryna Perera

A Florida federal judge on Thursday granted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's bid for an amended $32 million default judgment against three companies owned by two French half-brothers accused of misappropriating $40 million from investors in a real estate investment fraud scheme, and entered a final judgment against one of the brothers.

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SEC Must Provide Names To Compliance Chief In Fraud Suit

By Katryna Perera

An Illinois federal judge on Thursday ordered the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to comply with a chief compliance officer's request for the names of agency staffers familiar with his whistleblower claims as he defends allegations that he played a role in a purportedly fraudulent stock offering by a "sham" energy company.

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Firms Get $650K Fees For $2M Deal In Smart Lock Co. Suit

By Rose Krebs

A judge has approved $650,000 in fees for lead plaintiff's counsel as part of a $1.95 million settlement to end a Delaware federal court suit claiming a smart lock system company misrepresented key business metrics in the lead-up to its 2021 go-public merger.

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Del. Court Mulls Mootness Fee Options In Bolt Suit Settlement

By Jeff Montgomery

A Delaware vice chancellor indicated Thursday that he was leaning toward awarding 10% to 15% of the benefit secured by attorneys who battled for cancellation of $37.5 million in Bolt Financial Group stock used by company controller Ryan Breslow to secure a later defaulted-upon personal loan.

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Visa Escapes Investor Suit Over DOJ Claims

By Sydney Price

A California federal judge has released Visa from a securities fraud suit accusing it of concealing anticompetitive debit practices that are the subject of a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, saying the plaintiffs did not show that Visa's alleged omissions caused investors losses.

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Solaris Energy Top Brass Sued Over Turbine Co. Acquisition

By Katryna Perera

The top brass of Solaris Energy Infrastructure have been hit with an investor derivative suit in Texas federal court alleging they failed to disclose that a turbine leasing company Solaris acquired lacked the "track record" that it was touted to have, had only one client, and that its owner had a history of "turbine-related fraud," among other things.

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Smartsheet Investor Sues Over Blackstone, Vista Buyout

By Ben Adlin

A stockholder in a proposed class action against enterprise software maker Smartsheet Inc. accused the company and its former CEO of underselling the company's performance in the lead-up to its $8.4 billion acquisition this year by Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners, allowing the sale to move forward at an unfairly low share price.

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Attys Seek $9.8M For Opendoor Investor Suit Deal

By Sydney Price

Attorneys from Labaton Keller Sucharow LLP asked an Arizona federal court for nearly $10 million for their work negotiating a $39 million settlement between real estate firm Opendoor Technologies Inc. and its investors to resolve claims the company overhyped its pricing algorithm software.

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Chancery OKs $13M Concord SPAC Deal, Delays Fee Ruling

By Jarek Rutz

Delaware Vice Chancellor Paul A. Fioravanti Jr. on Thursday approved a $13.08 million settlement resolving claims that Concord Acquisition Corp.'s insiders tried to divert a $20 million breakup fee to themselves after the SPAC's failed merger with cryptocurrency company Circle, but he deferred ruling on attorney fees until plaintiffs supply additional time records.

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Bradley Arant Adds Former Hilgers Graben Name Partner

By Lynn LaRowe

Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP has strengthened its litigation practice with a partner in Dallas who came aboard from Hilgers Graben PLLC, where he was a founder of that firm's Dallas shop.

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How New SEC Policies Shift Shareholder Proposal Landscape

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins' recent remarks provide a road map for public companies to exclude nonbinding shareholder proposals from proxy materials, which would disrupt the mechanism that has traditionally defined how shareholders and companies engage on governance matters, say attorneys at Gunderson.

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Key Crypto Class Action Trends And Rulings In 2025

As the law continued to take shape in the growing area of crypto-assets, this year saw a jump in crypto class action litigation, including noteworthy decisions on motions to compel arbitration and class certification, according to Justin Donoho at Duane Morris.

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What Law Firm Liability Risks In 2025 Signal For Year To Come

Trends and statistics reveal that law firms of all sizes and practice areas remained attractive litigation targets this year, so firms must take concrete steps to avoid professional liability risks in the year to come, say Douglas Richmond and Andrew Ricke at Lockton Companies.

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Series

Knitting Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Stretching my skills as a knitter makes me a better antitrust attorney by challenging me to recalibrate after wrong turns, not rush outcomes, and trust that I can teach myself the skills to tackle new and difficult projects — even when I don’t have a pattern to work from, says Kara Kuritz at V&E.

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Wash. Justices Retroactively Lower Bar Exam's Passing Score

By Ben Adlin

As Washington state is preparing to transition to a new bar exam, its Supreme Court has ordered a retroactive adjustment to the current exam's minimum passing score, making an estimated hundred-plus law school graduates who narrowly failed in recent years newly eligible for admission to practice law.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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Dems Demand Release Of 2nd Jack Smith Report

By Courtney Bublé

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday demanding she release the second volume of former special counsel Jack Smith's report on President Donald Trump's retention of classified documents after he left office the first time.

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Roundup

UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Laura Stewart Liberty

This past week in London has seen Shell hit with a climate change claim from 100 survivors of a typhoon in the Philippines, London Stock Exchange-listed Oxford Nanopore bring legal action against its co-founder, and the editors of Pink News sue the BBC for defamation following its investigation into alleged sexual misconduct at the news site.

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Higgs Fletcher Forms White Collar, Regs Enforcement Team

By Andrea Keckley

San Diego-based law firm Higgs Fletcher & Mack LLP has launched a white collar crime and regulatory enforcement defense practice group, citing heightened regulatory scrutiny in the financial and healthcare sectors and rising enforcement risks for licensed professionals and institutions.

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Roundup

GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

President Donald Trump issued an executive order to review the influence that proxy adviser firms have, and law firms saw a 9.8% increase in compensation expenses along with a similar increase in billable rates. ​These are among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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Watchdog Sues White House For Records On Law Firm Deals

By Emily Sawicki

A Washington-based nonprofit watchdog has sued the Trump administration, seeking records related to deals BigLaw firms struck to provide an estimated nearly $1 billion worth of pro bono legal services to further the administration's priorities, following the president's executive orders to withhold security clearances and investigate the firms.

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Ex-NJ Municipal Court Admin Says COVID Got Her Fired

By George Woolston

The former municipal court administrator for West Windsor Township, New Jersey, has alleged that the town failed to accommodate her disability when it fired her instead of giving her a short medical leave of absence after she contracted COVID-19.

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US Atty Nominee For Wyo. Was Outside Capitol On Jan. 6

By Courtney Bublé

One of President Donald Trump's U.S. attorney nominees, who was on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, and recently told senators he still thinks "there were imperfections" in the 2020 election process, has been advanced toward Senate confirmation.

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Del. US Atty Resigns Citing 'Politics,' Successor Appointed

By Rose Krebs

The acting U.S. Attorney for Delaware said Friday that she is resigning, citing "a highly politicized, flawed blue-slip tradition" for nominees and saying she "fully" supports her first assistant, who has been appointed by a federal judge to succeed her.

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Bonus Spotlight

Axinn Veltrop's Bonuses Reach Up To $240K

By Andrea Keckley

Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider LLP is giving out bonuses of up to $240,000 for its associates, according to an in-house memo seen by Law360 Pulse.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP and Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Ninth Circuit handed Epic Games Inc. a partial win by mostly affirming an injunction blocking Apple Inc. from charging developers "prohibitive" commissions on iPhone app purchases made outside its systems.

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