DC Pulse


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    Legal Deserts: Millions Across America Struggle To Access Lawyers

    Tens of millions of Americans live in towns and counties across the nation with limited or no access to legal services. By one estimate, at least a third of the nation's counties qualify as a "legal desert," having only one or no attorney per 1,000 residents. Roughly 24 million Americans reside in these counties.

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    Ashurst Perkins Coie Adds Veteran DOJ Antitrust Leader

    A 22-year veteran of the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division who most recently served as assistant chief of the Technology and Digital Platforms section has joined Ashurst Perkins Coie.

  • Washington Sen. Murray Vows To Block Trump US Atty Pick

    President Donald Trump's nominee to be U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington is under fire from one of the home state senators who vowed to use every avenue possible to block him.

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    Nixon Peabody Hires Ex-SEC Commissioner Stein In DC

    Nixon Peabody LLP has hired former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner Kara Stein, who for the past four years has worked as a board member with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the firm announced Tuesday.

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    What Happens When The Only Lawyer In Town Retires?

    Many rural attorneys, often the only lawyer in town, work until they die or simply close their practices when they retire. But small to mid-sized firms looking to expand into rural markets could help to make succession planning a real possibility for these solo practitioners.

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    4th Circ. Appears Split On Reviving Comey, James Indictments

    Partisan splits were apparent Tuesday on the Fourth Circuit panel hearing the Trump administration's challenge to a federal district judge's dismissal of the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, with two of the three judges appearing to agree an improper appointment doomed the cases.

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    First-Gen Students Pressured By Earlier BigLaw Recruiting

    Students who are the first in their families to attend law school have been thrown a new challenge at the beginning of their legal journeys, as BigLaw accelerates their recruitment timelines.

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    The 2026 Summer Associate Experience: AI Led The Way

    Summer associate programs give law students an up-close look at changes unfolding in the legal industry, and a new Law360 Pulse survey found artificial intelligence use and pay have reached new heights.

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    What Summer Associates Learned From Working At Firms

    From learning how to come back from mistakes to cross-team collaboration, this year's summer associates came away with lessons that will help them succeed in their future careers. Here's what they want law students to know as they begin their own journeys.

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    Simpson Thacher Hires McGuireWoods, Ex-DOJ Antitrust Atty

    Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP has hired a former McGuireWoods LLP partner who previously spent over 10 years with the U.S. Department of Justice working on antitrust matters involving price fixing and bid rigging.

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    Trump Taps Ex-DOL Official To Serve As EEOC Top Cop

    The White House nominated a former Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP attorney who previously led the U.S. Department of Labor's contractor compliance arm to serve as the general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

  • Supreme Court Blocks USPS Mail Ballot Rules For Midterms

    The U.S. Postal Service cannot enforce new mail-in ballot regulations ahead of this year's midterm elections, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday, agreeing with an earlier First Circuit order that maintained a prohibition on the purported election integrity measures taking effect.

  • Quinn Emanuel Ends Ex-Binance CEO Suit Over $1.5M Bill

    Quinn Emanuel has quietly dropped its lawsuit against former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, in which it asked a court in Washington, D.C., to enforce an arbitral award of nearly $1.5 million in unpaid attorney fees and other costs.

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    Sanford Heisler Hires Ex-DOJ Litigator As Partner In DC

    Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight LLP announced Monday that it has added an attorney with a decade of experience in the Employment Litigation Section of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division as a partner in its Washington, D.C., office.

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    Former DOJ Antitrust Leader Rejoins Winston Taylor

    The former deputy director of litigation for the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division, who was lead counsel for antitrust trials involving Live Nation-Ticketmaster and Google, has returned to Winston Taylor, the firm said Monday.

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    One County, One Lawyer: Legal Deserts Take A Human Toll

    Divorce is often hard, but it is harder still when there’s just one lawyer in town. The story of one divorcing couple in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula illustrates the financial costs and emotional pain of living in a legal desert, and it helps explain why lawyer shortages are spreading throughout rural America. This story introduces Law360 Pulse’s special series on legal deserts.

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    Morgan & Morgan Plans $1B In AI Spending, Unveils Platform

    Personal injury firm Morgan & Morgan formally announced Monday that it has been running a proprietary artificial intelligence platform over the past few years while also committing to spend at least $1 billion on AI and technology improvements over the next decade.

  • Former Trump Assistant To Co-Lead Covington Policy Practice

    Covington & Burling LLP said Monday the firm has hired a former assistant to President Donald Trump, who served in the president's first administration as director of the Domestic Policy Council and most recently owned a federal consulting business in Washington, D.C.

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    McGuireWoods Consulting Adds New Energy Group Co-Head

    McGuireWoods Consulting LLC, the lobbying subsidiary of law firm McGuireWoods LLP, has hired a longtime energy industry government affairs leader who most recently worked as co-leader of Arnold & Porter LLP's energy and infrastructure industry group, the firm announced Monday.

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    ABA Cyber Task Force Co-Chair Eyes AI Education Boost

    With the legal industry presenting a more and more enticing target for cyberattacks, it's becoming increasingly important for practitioners to know how to best protect clients' data and most effectively use emerging artificial intelligence tools — a task that the American Bar Association's Cybersecurity Legal Task Force is well positioned to assist with, its incoming co-chair recently told Law360.

  • Trial Errors 'Crippled Goldstein's Defense,' 4th Circ. Hears

    Appellate luminary Tom Goldstein unveiled a sweeping and forceful critique aimed at erasing his felony fraud convictions, telling the Fourth Circuit that prosecutors were hell-bent on convicting him "no matter the facts or law," disregarded a star witness' "incompetence" and benefited from a trial judge's "inexplicable" rulings.

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    Anti-Trans Care Push Continues Despite Big Proxy Losses

    While conservative investor groups filed at least six shareholder proposals focused on transgender care coverage for minors during the 2025-2026 proxy season, all have been overwhelmingly defeated — with the most recent coming this week at Nike Inc.

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    Midterm Wins Could Help Dems Probe Trump's BigLaw Deals

    If the Democrats take back one or both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, a big item on their oversight agenda will be to step up ongoing investigations of the deals that nine major law firms cut with the Trump administration last year.

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    Greenberg Traurig, Eckert Seamans Hit By Data Breaches

    Greenberg Traurig LLP and Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott LLC have publicly revealed that they've been hit by data breaches, adding to the dozens of cybersecurity incidents U.S. law firms have suffered this year.

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    Honigman Hires Miles & Stockbridge Gov't Contracts Atty

    Honigman LLP has hired a former Miles & Stockbridge PC principal who spent about 3.5 years there working to advise government contractors on various federal procurement matters, the firm recently announced.

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Expert Analysis

  • 5 Life Lessons From Making Partner As A Solo Parent Author Photo

    Laranda Walker at Susman Godfrey, who was raising two small children and working her way to partner when she suddenly lost her husband, shares what fighting to keep her career on track taught her about accepting help, balancing work and family, and discovering new reserves of inner strength.

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    Ask A Mentor: How Can I Turn Deferral To My Advantage? Author Photo

    Diana Leiden at Winston & Strawn discusses how first-year associates whose law firm start dates have been deferred can use the downtime to hone their skills, help their communities, and focus on returning to BigLaw with valuable contacts and out-of-the-box insights.

  • Resume Gaps Are No Longer Kryptonite To Your Legal Career Author Photo

    Female attorneys and others who pause their careers for a few years will find that gaps in work history are increasingly acceptable among legal employers, meaning with some networking, retraining and a few other strategies, lawyers can successfully reenter the workforce, says Jill Backer at Ave Maria School of Law.

  • Law Firm Guardrails For Responsible Generative AI Use Author Photo

    ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools pose significant risks to the integrity of legal work, but the key for law firms is not to ban these tools, but to implement them responsibly and with appropriate safeguards, say Natalie Pierce and Stephanie Goutos at Gunderson Dettmer.

  • Opinion

    We Must Continue DEI Efforts Despite High Court Headwinds Author Photo

    Though the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down affirmative action in higher education, law firms and their clients must keep up the legal industry’s recent momentum advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the profession in order to help achieve a just and prosperous society for all, says Angela Winfield at the Law School Admission Council.

  • Law Firms Cannot Ignore Attorneys' Personal Cybersecurity Author Photo

    Law firms that fail to consider their attorneys' online habits away from work are not using their best efforts to protect client information and are simplifying the job of plaintiffs attorneys in the case of a breach, say Mark Hurley and Carmine Cicalese at Digital Privacy and Protection.

  • Why Writing CLE Should Be Mandatory For Lawyers Author Photo

    Though effective writing is foundational to law, no state requires attorneys to take continuing legal education in this skill — something that must change if today's attorneys are to have the communication abilities they need to fulfill their professional and ethical duties to their clients, colleagues and courts, says Diana Simon at the University of Arizona.

  • How To Find Your Inner Calm When Client Obligations Pile Up Author Photo

    In the most stressful times for attorneys, when several transactions for different partners and clients peak at the same time and the phone won’t stop buzzing, incremental lifestyle changes can truly make a difference, says Lindsey Hughes at Haynes Boone.

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    Ask A Mentor: How Can I Support Gen Z Attorneys? Author Photo

    Meredith Beuchaw at Lowenstein Sandler discusses how senior attorneys can assist the newest generation of attorneys by championing their pursuit of a healthy work-life balance and providing the hands-on mentorship opportunities they missed out on during the pandemic.

  • Law Firm Cybersecurity Should Not Get Lost In The Cloud Author Photo

    A recent data leak at Proskauer via a cloud data storage platform demonstrates key reasons why law firms must pay attention to data safeguarding, including the increasing frequency of cloud-based data breaches and the consequences of breaking client confidentiality, says Robert Kraczek at One Identity.

  • Advice For Summer Associates Uneasy About Offer Prospects Author Photo

    There are a few communication tips that law students in summer associate programs should consider to put themselves in the best possible position to receive an offer, and firms can also take steps to support those to whom they are unable to make an offer, says Amy Mattock at Georgetown University Law Center.

  • How Law Firms Can Cautiously Wield AI To Streamline Tasks Author Photo

    Many attorneys are going to use artificial intelligence tools whether law firms like it or not, so firms should educate them on AI's benefits, limits and practical uses, such as drafting legal documents, to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving legal market, say Thomas Schultz and Eden Bernstein at Kellogg Hansen.

  • Keys To Managing The Stresses Of Law School Author Photo

    Dealing with the pressures associated with law school can prove difficult for many future lawyers, but there are steps students can take to manage stress — and schools can help too, say Ryan Zajic and Dr. Janani Krishnaswami at UWorld.

  • Can Mandatory CLE Mitigate Implicit Bias's Negative Impacts? Author Photo

    Amid ongoing disagreements on whether states should mandate implicit bias training as part of attorneys' continuing legal education requirements, Stephanie Wilson at Reed Smith looks at how unconscious attitudes or stereotypes adversely affect legal practice, and whether mandatory training programs can help.

  • Ditch The Frills And Start Writing Legal Letters In Plain English Author Photo

    To become more effective advocates, lawyers need to rethink the ridiculous, convoluted language they use in correspondence and write letters in a clear, concise and direct manner, says legal writing instructor Stuart Teicher.

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