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Good morning. Coinbase is ratcheting up its clash with the SEC, asking a U.S. appeals court to force the agency to provide greater clarity over rules. Plus, new lawyer hiring ticked up in 2022; more lawsuits are piling up over the latest banking sector meltdown; and Smartmatic just won a patent suit against a rival. On today’s docket, the justices will hear their last scheduled case of the term, and the Biden DOJ will ask the 5th Circuit not to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone. It’s Wednesday? It’s Wednesday.
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Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has a bone to pick with the SEC, and it’s turning its long-running feud with the regulator into a fight that could impact the future of crypto.
At the end of March, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and the company’s chief legal officer Paul Grewal posted online that the firm had been told that SEC staff intend to recommend enforcement action, adding that Coinbase was willing to fight it in court. Now, Coinbase is pressing the SEC to create new rules for digital assets, the latest escalation of the company’s clash with the securities regulator, Hannah Lang reports. Gibson Dunn’s Eugene Scalia, former Trump-era U.S. labor secretary, is leading the battle unfolding in a federal appeals court.
The court action in the 3rd Circuit comes after Coinbase filed a petition for rulemaking with the SEC last year, in which it urged the regulator to provide clarity on the circumstances under which a digital asset is a security and create a new market structure framework that is compatible with cryptocurrencies. The SEC never responded, Grewal said.
The crypto industry believes it operates in a regulatory gray area not governed by existing U.S. securities laws and that new legislation is needed to regulate the industry. Meanwhile, SEC Chair Gary Gensler has said the crypto markets “suffer from a lack of regulatory compliance, not a lack of regulatory clarity.”
Read more: Frustrated Coinbase tries rare maneuver to compel SEC to clear up crypto murkiness
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A divided 4th Circuit panel upheld a jury’s conviction of Baltimore criminal defense lawyer Kenneth Ravenell for conspiring to launder drug money. Ravenell was indicted in 2019 for allegedly helping his drug trafficker client and his associates avoid arrest and launder money. He argued he had no knowledge of his clients’ drug organizations. (Reuters)
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New York attorney Robert Wise pleaded guilty to making nearly $4 million in payments to maintain properties in the U.S. that were beneficially owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. Wise admitted to receiving wire payments from a shell company controlled by a Vekselberg associate and then using the funds to pay taxes, insurance and other fees on the properties. (Reuters)
- Davis Wright Tremaine elected a new crop of executive committee leaders, including Camilo Echavarria as chair. Echavarria, an employment litigator, is the first Latino picked to lead the executive committee of the 600-lawyer firm. He will succeed outgoing chair Sarah Tune. (Reuters)
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That’s the percentage of last year’s new law school grads who found jobs that require bar passage within 10 months of leaving campus, up from about 76% among the class of 2021, according to new data from the American Bar Association. Nearly 85% of 2022 law grads had either full-time, long-term jobs that require passing the bar or jobs for which a J.D. is an advantage, up from 83% the previous year. The largest hiring gains came among law firms, which employed 52% of 2022 law graduates.
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The artificial intelligence arms race in large law firms has picked up significant steam since the advent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The technology also has been touted for its potential to help close gaps in access-to-justice for marginalized groups. But the trajectory of the industry generally is not geared toward the interests of underserved populations, columnist Hassan Kanu writes, noting the economic disincentives in serving those groups and the potential for the technology to entrench, or even exacerbate, existing disparities.
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“If you’re normally a Bill and you’re selected for the jury or even before, you can be John for a couple of days.“
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—U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who encouraged jurors weighing columnist E. Jean Carroll’s claims former President Donald Trump raped her to avoid revealing their names to each other. Kaplan is keeping the names of the nine jurors selected to hear the case secret from the public and the lawyers for both sides, in order to protect them from potential harassment from Trump supporters. Before juror questioning began, Kaplan ordered Trump’s and Carroll’s lawyers to tell their clients and witnesses not to make statements that could “incite violence or civil unrest.”
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The Biden administration is expected to file its opening merits brief in the 5th Circuit in the FDA appeal of Texas U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s order backing anti-abortion groups suing over regulatory approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. The U.S. Supreme Court last week blocked restrictions set by Kacsmaryk and the 5th Circuit. The justices, in a brief order, granted emergency requests by the DOJ and the pill’s manufacturer Danco Laboratories to put on hold an April 7 preliminary injunction issued by Kacsmaryk. The New Orleans-based appeals court will hear oral argument on May 17.
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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear its final scheduled argument of the term, a lawsuit from a 94-year-old grandmother who lost her home and its surplus equity to Minnesota tax authorities. Christina Martin of Pacific Legal Foundation will argue for Geraldine Tyler. Hennepin County, Minnesota, seized her home as payment for $15,000 in property taxes, and later sold it for $40,000. Martin will face Hogan Lovells appellate vet Neal Katyal, representing Hennepin County. Minnesota provided Tyler “ample opportunity” to pay her taxes or sell the property, Katyal and county attorney Rebecca Holschuh told the justices.
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Harvard University professor Charles Lieber will be sentenced after his conviction on charges that he lied about his ties to a China-run recruitment program in a case stemming from a crackdown on alleged Chinese influence within U.S. research. In 2021, a Boston federal jury found Lieber, a nanoscientist and former chairman of Harvard’s chemistry department, guilty of making false statements to authorities, filing false tax returns and failing to report a Chinese bank account. Prosecutors have recommended a 90-day prison sentence for Lieber’s “chronic lies.” Lieber’s attorneys at Mukasey Frenchman want U.S. District Judge Rya Zobel to impose a non-custodial sentence.
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Missouri state court Judge Kristine Kerr will hear arguments as Lambda Legal, the ACLU and Bryan Cave seek a temporary restraining order to block implementation of a state rule limiting gender-affirming healthcare. The emergency regulation, which is slated to take effect on Thursday, was promulgated by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey earlier this month. It calls gender-affirming healthcare “experimental” and unsupported by scientific research and sets stringent new requirements on both adults and minors seeking it.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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First Republic Bank and its auditor KPMG have been sued by shareholders who accuse the beleaguered U.S. regional bank of concealing how rising interest rates threatened its business model by prompting an exodus of deposits. The shareholders, represented by Bernstein Litowitz and Kessler Topaz, filed their suit about three hours after First Republic disclosed it had lost $102 billion, or 58%, of its deposits in the first quarter, excluding a temporary $30 billion deposit infusion from the nation’s biggest banks. (Reuters)
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Ed Sheeran appeared in Manhattan federal court as a copyright trial began in a case that alleges the British pop star ripped off the classic Marvin Gaye tune “Let’s Get it On” with his hit song “Thinking Out Loud.” “This case is simply about giving credit where credit is due,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Ben Crump said, while Sheeran’s attorney Ilene Farkas argued that “no one owns basic musical building blocks.” (Reuters)
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NetJets, the luxury plane unit of billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, has been sued by its 3,000-member pilots union for allegedly interfering with its communications with aircraft owners and customers about contract negotiations. The lawsuit filed in the federal court in Columbus, Ohio, where NetJets is based, seeks an injunction protecting pilots from discipline for referring people to the union website or expressing support for the union. (Reuters)
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Prince William settled a phone-hacking claim against Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper arm in 2020 for a “very large sum,” lawyers for the heir’s brother Prince Harry said in court documents. The document, which is part of Harry’s own litigation against the newspapers, quoted from Harry’s witness statement that the deal was struck to “avoid the situation where a member of the royal family would have to sit in the witness box and recount the specific details of the private and highly sensitive voicemails that had been intercepted.” (Reuters)
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Sullivan & Cromwell hired Dalia Blass as a D.C.-based partner focused on investment management, regulatory compliance and enforcement. Blass previously was global head of external affairs at BlackRock and earlier served as director of the SEC’s division of Investment Management. (Reuters)
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Morgan Lewis added D.C.-based investment management partner Christine Ayako Schleppegrell, who previously was head of the SEC’s private funds branch, and toxic torts trial lawyer Peter Moir in Dallas. Moir arrives from Forman Watkins & Krutz.
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Proskauer hired Mary Wilks in London as a mergers and acquisitions partner. Wilks previously was at Freshfields. (Proskauer)
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Pryor Cashman brought on corporate group partner Matthew Ogurick in New York from K&L Gates. (Pryor Cashman)
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Bradley Arant added A.J. Bahou and Blake Bernard as Nashville-based intellectual property partners. Bahou previously was at Holland & Knight, and Bernard arrives at the firm from Waller Lansden.
- Hogan Lovells added Mauricio Llamas as a partner in Mexico City focused on global regulatory and intellectual property, media and technology. Llamas was previously at Jones Day. (Hogan Lovells)
- DLA Piper added Joseph Stefano as a finance partner in the firm’s New York office. He was previously at Allen & Overy. (DLA Piper)
- Venable hired Matthew Murphy as a New York-based white-collar and investigations partner. Murphy was previously at O’Melveny. (Venable)
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Employers’ increasing use of worker monitoring technology and AI-directed decision-making raises concerns and questions about privacy, discrimination and the evolving nature of work, write Wendi Lazar and Cody Yorke of Outten & Golden. U.S. legislation hasn’t kept pace with new developments.
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