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California Pulse
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Axinn Adds 3 Former Federal Antitrust Litigators In DC And SF
Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider LLP continues adding antitrust attorneys, announcing Wednesday that three former government attorneys are joining the firm as partners — one in San Francisco and two in Washington, D.C.
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Former Calif. Judge Can't Escape Sex Assault Case
A former California Superior Court judge has lost his bid to toss five criminal counts alleging he sexually assaulted a court staffer and made false statements to investigators in an attempted cover-up.
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How Introverted Lawyers Can Build Confidence And Thrive
Despite being a third-generation lawyer, Claire E. Parsons had a recurring fear in the early part of her career that she did not belong as an attorney, at her firm, or in her practice.
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Alston & Bird Litigator Jumps To LA Boutique Rushing McCarl
Los Angeles-based business litigation boutique Rushing McCarl LLP is adding to its ranks, announcing Tuesday that it is bringing in an Alston & Bird LLP litigator as a partner.
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9th Circ. Grants Atty Fee Appeal In Eye Drop Pricing Suit
District courts cannot reduce fee awards to attorneys based on a firm's size, the Ninth Circuit ruled in a published opinion Tuesday, sending a case back to a California federal court to recalculate attorney fees awarded to a "small" firm that represented wholesalers in a Robinson-Patman Act suit against eye drop manufacturers.
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Munchkin Can't Arbitrate Ex-GC's 'War On Families' Suit
Baby products brand Munchkin Inc. lost its bid to arbitrate its former general counsel's suit alleging he was fired for complaining about the company's "war on families," after a California judge ruled a sexual harassment claim added in an amended version of his suit exempted him from mandatory arbitration.
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Judiciary Seeks Control Over Courthouse Maintenance
The federal judiciary says courthouses are in "crisis," with an $8.3 billion backlog in maintenance, and on Tuesday repeated its request to Congress for the direct authority to maintain the buildings.
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Procopio Real Estate Pros Jump To Hanson Bridgett In Calif.
Hanson Bridgett LLP is expanding its California team, bringing in a pair of Procopio Cory Hargreaves & Savitch LLP real estate attorneys as partners.
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Ex-Goodwin Silicon Valley COO Joins Sandstone As Adviser
Legal technology company Sandstone announced Tuesday that Mary O'Carroll, most recently the Silicon Valley-based chief operating officer of Goodwin Procter LLP, joined it as a product expert adviser.
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Freshfields Bicoastal M&A Tech Duo Move To Covington
Covington & Burling LLP has strengthened its mergers and acquisitions group on both coasts with the additions of two former Freshfields LLP tech M&A partners.
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Mintz Lands IP Pro From Wilson Sonsini In San Francisco
Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC. announced Tuesday that it has added a patent litigation attorney who was at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC for more than two decades to bolster its intellectual property division.
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ABA Mulls Repeal Of Embattled Law School DEI Standards
The American Bar Association's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has voted to move forward with a plan to repeal its diversity and inclusion standards for law schools, which have been suspended since last February amid the White House crackdown on DEI initiatives.
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Brie, Franco Can't Duck Claims That 'Together' Is a 'Rip-Off'
A California federal judge has refused to dismiss StudioFest's lawsuit alleging the horror film "Together," starring real-life spouses Alison Brie and Dave Franco, is a "blatant rip-off" of a screenplay the production company pitched to the couple's agents in 2020, saying the complaint plausibly alleges "substantial similarities" between the two works.
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Stanford Law School Names Executive Director Of AI Initiative
Stanford Law School announced Monday the appointment of a former artificial intelligence adviser to the California State Senate as executive director of the Stanford Law School AI Initiative, which seeks to advance interdisciplinary research, teaching and engagement with industry leaders and policymakers.
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Greenberg Glusker Adds Land Use, Corporate Attys In LA
Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP announced Monday the firm is expanding its ranks with the addition of two new partners to its Los Angeles office: a land use whiz from Jeffer Mangels & Mitchell LLP and a transactional ace from Prospera Law LLP.
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DAC Beachcroft Expands US Footprint With New Miami Office
DAC Beachcroft LLP announced Monday that it is opening an office in Miami and has added new insurance coverage teams there and in Los Angeles.
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Lathrop GPM Absorbs California Construction Boutique
Lathrop GPM LLP announced Monday that the firm is adding five attorneys from a Northern California construction boutique, marking what the firm said was a substantial expansion of its construction practice group and continued growth in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Barnes & Thornburg Head On Firm's Nonmerger Growth Motto
In an age of BigLaw megamergers, Barnes & Thornburg LLP has opted to expand strategically through steady, organic growth and lateral hiring rather than law firm combinations.
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Class Attys Allege Lead Counsel Is Hoarding $75M Sutter Fees
Schneider Wallace Cottrell Kim LLP has urged a California federal magistrate judge to enforce the $75.4 million fee award in Sutter Health's $228.5 million deal resolving a decade-long antitrust fight, arguing lead counsel Constantine Cannon LLP "unilaterally" and "arbitrarily" cut SWCK's fees by nearly $800,000 while boosting its own.
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Social Media Cases Atty In Hot Water Over Courthouse Filming
A Los Angeles judge on Friday ripped into an attorney for the plaintiff in a bellwether suit alleging Meta and Google's social media platforms harm childrens' mental health, stripping the attorney of his seat on the plaintiffs' steering committee for violating court rules by twice filming inside the courthouse.
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FBT Gibbons Adds Trusts & Estates Litigator In SoCal
Recently formed firm FBT Gibbons LLP is expanding its West Coast team, bringing in a trusts and estates litigator who previously ran his own firm as a partner in its Newport Beach, California, office.
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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week
Wigdor LLP and Elefterakis Elefterakis & Panek lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after a New York federal judge denied the NFL's bid to force a class of National Football League coaches into arbitration.
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'Scare Tactics Work' But Hope Persists For Legal Industry DEI
The suspension of Diversity Lab's Mansfield Certification program is the latest indication that political threats against BigLaw are working, as the Trump administration targets DEI programs, observers say. Still, some supporters of legal industry diversity initiatives predict law firms will continue to pursue inclusive hiring practices — even if they don't talk about it publicly.
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Investors Push Apple For Report On China 'Entanglements'
An investor group is asking Apple Inc. to do an audit on the risks and costs associated with the company's involvement with China, which it calls an "existential risk" to the value of Apple's stock.
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What's Costing Legal Marketing Officers Sleep
Finding the best ways to implement artificial intelligence and maximizing employees' business development are some of the things keeping legal industry professionals up at night, according to a new report by public relations firm Greentarget.
Expert Analysis
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Series
My Nonpracticing Law Job: Librarian
Lisa A. Goodman at Texas A&M University shares how she went from a BigLaw associate who liked to hang out in the firm's law library to director of a law library herself in just over a decade, and provides considerations for anyone interested in pursuing a law librarian career.
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Legal Briefs Can Benefit From Cleaned Up Case Citations
Federal courts have recently been changing the way they quote decisions to omit insignificant details and string cites, and lawyers should consider adopting this practice to enhance the readability of their briefs — as long as accuracy stays top of mind, says Diana Simon at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law.
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5 Best Practices For Firms Designing DEI Programs
Nikki Lewis Simon, chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer at Greenberg Traurig, discusses best practices — and some pitfalls to avoid — for law firms looking to build programs aimed at driving inclusion in the workplace.
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Former Minn. Chief Justice Instructs On Writing Better Briefs
Former Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Lorie Gildea, now at Greenberg Traurig, offers strategies on writing more effective appellate briefs from her time on the bench.
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Ask A Mentor: How Do I Juggle Billables And Other Activities?
While involvement in internal firm initiatives can be rewarding both personally and professionally, associates' billable time requirements don’t leave much room for other work, meaning they must develop strategies to ensure they’re meeting all of their commitments while remaining balanced, says Melanie Webber at Fisher Phillips.
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Making Legal Cents: How To Adapt As Clients Tighten Budgets
Amid a dip in corporate legal spending and client pushback on bills, Shireen Hilal at Maior Consultants highlights specific in-house counsel frustrations and explains how firms can provide customized legal advice with costs that are supported by undeniable value.
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Spartan Arbitration Tactics Against Well-Funded Opponents
Like the ancient Spartans who held off a numerically superior Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae, trial attorneys and clients faced with arbitration against an opponent with a bigger war chest can take a strategic approach to create a pass to victory, say Kostas Katsiris and Benjamin Argyle at Venable.
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General Counsel And Legal Ops Must Work Together
It is critical for general counsel to ensure that a legal operations leader is viewed not only as a peer, but as a strategic leader for the organization, and there are several actionable ways general counsel can not only become more involved, but help champion legal operations teams and set them up for success, says Mary O'Carroll at Ironclad.
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How Generative AI's Growing Memory Affects Lawyers
A new ChatGPT feature that can remember user information across different conversations has broad implications for attorneys, whose most pressing questions for the AI tool are usually based on specific, and large, datasets, says legal tech adviser Eric Wall.
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A Model For Optimal Legal Tech Investment Strategy
Legal organizations struggling to work out the right technology investment strategy may benefit from using a matrix for legal department efficiency that is based on an understanding of where workloads belong, according to the basic functions and priorities of a corporate legal team, says Sylvain Magdinier at Integreon.
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Series
My Nonpracticing Law Job: Recruiter
Self-proclaimed "Lawyer Doula" Danielle Thompson at Major Lindsey shares how she went from Columbia Law School graduate and BigLaw employment associate to a career in legal recruiting — and discovered a passion for advocacy along the way.
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Series
Ask A Mentor: How Do I Balance Social Activism With My Job?
Corporate attorneys pursuing social justice causes outside of work should consider eight guidelines for finding equilibrium between their beliefs and their professional duties and reputation, say Diedrick Graham, Debra Friedman and Simeon Brier at Cozen O'Connor.
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Personality Tests And Machine Learning Applications In Law
Mateusz Kulesza at McDonnell Boehnen looks at potential applications of personality testing based on machine learning techniques for law firms, and the implications this shift could have for lawyers, firms and judges, including how it could make the work of judges and other legal decision-makers much more difficult.
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AI Is Reshaping Lawyering: What To Expect In 2024
The future of lawyering is not about the wholesale replacement of attorneys by artificial intelligence, but as AI handles more of the routine legal work, the role of lawyers will evolve to be more strategic, requiring the development of competencies beyond traditional legal skills, says Colin Levy at Malbek.
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Embrace Active Voice In Legal Writing — In Most Cases
Legal writers should strive to craft sentences in the active voice to promote brevity and avoid ambiguities that can spark litigation, but writing in the passive voice is sometimes appropriate — when it's a moral choice and not a grammatical failure, says Diana Simon at the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law.