Justice Juan Merchan, the judge in Donald Trump‘s criminal trial, fined him $1,000 and held him in contempt of court for a 10th time on Monday for violating a gag order and warned that further violations could land the former president in jail. Merchan said the nine $1,000 fines he had imposed so far did not seem to be deterring the wealthy business mogul from violating the order, which bars him from speaking publicly about jurors and witnesses.Read more.
Imprisonment would be an unprecedented step in the historic trial, which stems from a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 election. After Merchan’s ruling, jurors heard testimony from a former Trump employee that could bolster prosecutors’ case that Trump falsified business recordsto cover up the hush money payment.
Law firms are off to a strong start in 2024 after a lackluster 2023 that saw weak client demand and declining collections on billed work, Karen Sloan reports. Demand for legal services was up 1.9% in the first quarter of the year over the first three months of 2023, according to Thomson Reuters Institute’s Law Firm Financial Index, which tracks key financial metrics across 186 large and midsize law firms. Billing rates continued to rise with a 6.6% increase in the first quarter compared with a year ago. Find out what drove that growth.
