 //sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591700&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=33597731&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591701&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=33597731&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591702&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=33597731&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591703&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=33597731&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591704&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=33597731&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
|
|
|
| //sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=874768&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=33597731&stpe=static” border=”0″ style=”max-height:12px;” /> |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Attorneys with disabilities are vastly underrepresented at U.S. law firms, but a new diversity push aims to change that, reports Karen Sloan.
Just 1.4% of law firm lawyers identified as having a disability, according to a 2023 report from the National Association for Law Placement. Those numbers are far below the national figure of 21% of the U.S. working population who identify as having a disability, said Diversity Lab CEO Caren Ulrich Stacy.
Her organization, which promotes diversity and inclusion within the law firms and legal departments, announced its Disability Inclusion Commitments, a pledge now signed by more than 90 law firms, including Skadden, Orrick and Mayer Brown. Signatories agree to remove physical and digital barriers affecting lawyers with disabilities, bolster their hiring of disabled individuals, and conduct annual surveys in which employees can self-identify as disabled, among other measures. The pledge is voluntary. Diversity Lab will track firms’ progress with surveys and sharing sessions, Stacy said.
Haley Moss, an attorney with autism who consults with law firms on inclusion matters, said the pledge is “a good start” but that she wants to see “more concrete steps.”
The barriers to disability inclusion in the legal profession are “systemic,” she said.
|
|
|
- Johnson & Johnson’s worldwide vice president for litigation said that the company has recently reached settlements with several law firms over their clients’ claims that its talc products caused cancer. The company has denied its talc products cause cancer. The settlements were reached “with a goal to facilitate our pursuit of a consensual prepackaged bankruptcy resolution,” VP Erik Haas said on an investor call.
- Major law firms in 2024 plan to expand their bankruptcy and litigation teams and will face challenges such as attracting lawyer talent and navigating the spread of generative artificial intelligence, according to a new report from Citigroup’s Citi Global Wealth at Work Law Firm Group and Hildebrandt Consulting. The authors predicted a stronger year for law firms in 2024 than in 2023, when revenue and profit growth have been modest.
- Midwest law firms Ulmer & Berne and Greensfelder Hemker & Gale are planning to merge, creating what they said will be a “super-regional” firm with 275 lawyers effective on Feb. 1. The combined firm, which will be called UB Greensfelder, will have more than $150 million in combined annual revenue, the firms said.
- Milbank said it will match Cravath’s higher seniority-based compensation scale for associate lawyers. Associates at Milbank will now make between $225,000 and $435,000, depending on their seniority. The salary scale Milbank first unveiled in early November had smaller raises for senior associates, topping out at $425,000.
- Elon Musk’s X Corp is seeking to dismiss a trademark-infringement lawsuit brought by a legal marketing agency over its use of the letter “X,” calling the case a “shakedown.” X Corp said its rebrand would not cause confusion with X Social Media, arguing that it has “peacefully coexisted for years with hundreds of other registered X-formative trademarks.” The marketing agency’s lawyer said it remains confident in the case.
|
That’s how many times U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has stepped in to cast the tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate, a record in the country’s history. Harris delivered the record-breaking vote in order for the Senate to confirm Loren AliKhan to become the first South Asian woman judge on the federal district court in Washington, D.C.
|
—CFTC commissioner Kristin Johnson, at an FT crypto and digital assets summit, urging crypto firms to study last month’s $4.3 billion settlement with Binance to see what sort of governance regulators look for at crypto firms. Johnson said enforcement actions against crypto firms may have peaked after the agreement, because such cases provide companies with a “template” for how they should be governed. U.S. regulators have brought several cases against crypto firms such as Binance, helping to establish “guardrails” to bring “order and structure” to the market, Johnson said at the event.
|
|
|
- A lawsuit by a group of Colorado voters trying to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the state’s ballot next year over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol heads to the state Supreme Court. The court is considering an appeal of a lower court ruling that found that then-president Trump engaged in insurrection but allowed him to remain on the ballot in the Colorado Republican primary. The lower court held that as president, Trump was not “an officer of the United States” who could be disqualified under the amendment.
- A 9th Circuit panel will take up the FTC’s bid for an order against Microsoft’s now-closed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The agency, which has said the deal violates U.S. antitrust law, lost its effort for a preliminary injunction. U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s order allowed Microsoft to move ahead with the deal, and the FTC has said the ruling incorrectly held the agency to a legal standard that was too high.
- The 4th Circuit will consider whether to uphold a West Virginia judge’s ruling that found a federal ban on possessing a gun with its serial number removed is unconstitutional. The ruling, in a criminal case against a West Virginia defendant named Randy Price, was the first ruling applying a new standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court last year in a case that dramatically expanded gun rights.
|
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
|
- A group of Catholic nuns filed a derivative lawsuit against the board of Smith & Wesson to try to force the gunmaker to abandon the manufacture, marketing and sales of assault-style rifles that have been used in U.S. mass shootings. The nuns, who are Smith & Wesson shareholders, allege that the company’s directors and senior management exposed the company to significant liability by intentionally violating federal, state and local laws and failing to respond to lawsuits over mass shootings.
- The U.S. judge overseeing thousands of lawsuits over toxic “forever chemicals” warned that any drinking water utility that opts out of proposed settlements with 3M, DuPont de Nemours and others may have to wait a decade to resolve their individual cases. U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel in Charleston, South Carolina, issued the warning as water utilities are reviewing two proposed settlements worth a combined nearly $11.5 billion that would help pay to clean up water polluted with PFAS.
- A group of Pittsburgh area home sellers sued local affiliates of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and Anywhere Real Estate subsidiaries Sotheby’s and Coldwell Banker for allegedly conspiring to artificially inflate home-sale commissions. Company representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
- A group of 11 Republican-led states and energy industry groups, including fossil fuel industry group the American Petroleum Institute, challenged a rule by the EPA that bolsters state and tribal veto power over pipelines and other major infrastructure projects that might pollute rivers and streams.
- Swedish pension fund provider Alecta said it will lead a class action against First Republic Bank, with the aim of recovering as much as possible of the capital that investors lost when the U.S. bank collapsed this year. Alecta lost $1.92 billion from share holdings in First Republic, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
|
|
|
- Greenberg Traurig hired Lorie Skjerven Gildea, the former chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who resigned in October after 17 years on the bench. (Reuters)
- Orrick said it hired Lewis Hower, the ex-head of startup banking at Silicon Valley Bank before its collapse earlier this year, as a managing director of its technology company and fund relationships. (Reuters)
- Winston & Strawn brought back Jennifer Morgan as a partner in its transactions department and tax practice in Los Angeles. She rejoins the firm from Hogan Lovells. (Winston & Strawn)
- Mintz hired healthcare partner Rachel Alexander in D.C. from Wiley Rein. (Mintz)
- K&L Gates brought on D.C.-based Varu Chilakamarri and Michael Culhane Harper from the DOJ. Chilakamarri joins the firm’s environment, land, and natural resources practice, and Harper expands its white-collar defense and investigations group. (K&L Gates)
- Allan Medina, another DOJ official, joined Goodwin’s healthcare and white-collar defense and government investigations practices as a partner in D.C. (Goodwin)
- McCarter & English added Jeffrey Mann as an IP partner in New York. He most recently was at Stroock. (McCarter & English)
- Also from Stroock, real estate partners Lorie Soares Lazarus and Peter David Ballance have joined Sheppard Mullin. Lazarus is in Silicon Valley and Ballance is in Century City. (Sheppard Mullin)
- Barnes & Thornburg hired Thomas Hutchinson as a partner in its healthcare and corporate departments in Indianapolis. He arrives from Krieg DeVault. (Barnes & Thornburg)
|
|
|
|
