Morning Docket

* “US appeals court calls Biden’s ‘ghost gun’ limits unlawful.” You have five guesses which appeals court and the first four don’t count. [Reuters]

* Embattled NYC Mayor Eric Adams hires WilmerHale after FBI raids top fundraiser and Adams say it as personally threatening enough to cancel a meeting with Biden to come home and deal with it. [Gothamist]

* Cyberattack on A&O-not-yet-Shearman. How many times do we have to tell you guys not to click that link? [Law360]

* Partner resigns over misconduct claims. [RollOnFriday]

* American economy desperately needs an influx of workers and there’s a 9 million application backlog on work visas. So, obviously, the country is flirting with closing the borders next election. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Torts making a comeback, baby! [Law.com]

* Prince Harry’s case against the Daily Mail continues. [Daily Beast]

* Senate set to subpoena Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow to chat about the not-so-lost art of buying influence. [Reuters]

* How non-equity partners solve one nagging problem for Biglaw. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Forbes is doing a lawyer ranking. They have such a great track record with their other rankings. [Forbes]

* Reacting to Biglaw’s open letter on campus antisemitism, law school deans “unsure, though, what the letter is asking the schools to do.” Could that be because the letter was a vapid PR stunt? [American Lawyer]

* American lawyer pulls gun and kills two environmental protesters in Panama. [Daily Beast]

* Citi ordered to pay up over pattern of discrimination against Armenians, which seems weirdly specific. [Law360]

* Michigan reportedly hiring Williams & Connolly in anticipation of Big Ten discipline. Well, that certainly sends a… signal. [Wolverines Wire]

* It’s Ivanka’s turn to take the stand. On a school day? [Reuters]

* It seemed as though there might be a majority for the idea that the Second Amendment might not have envisioned an unfettered right for violent criminals to keep guns. [Law360]

* Wachtell names new leadership. [American Lawyer]

* Lawyer taking home about another 50 percent on top of his salary with social media influencer hustle. [LegalCheek]

* NY puts off looking into proposals that could allow non-attorneys to provide some legal services to cover justice gap. [New York Law Journal]

* WeWork hoping to use bankruptcy law to storm back for the hybrid work world. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Idaho charging family with kidnapping for taking daughter out of state to get abortion care. [ABA Journal]

* Supreme Court set to hear whether or not states can bar Grand Theft Auto caricatures from having guns. As a reminder, the Fifth Circuit said “no” and then preemptively suggested any justice who ruled differently was a spineless RINO. So the judicial system is having a normal one. [CBS News]

* Charlie Adelson guilty of murdering of law professor Dan Markel. [NY Times]

* Trump’s day of testimony was exactly as bonkers as promised. [CNN]

* WeWork files for bankruptcy having flopped right before “hey we might need flexible office space” became a key business need. [Law360]

* Biglaw’s not plugged into AI yet, but AI it’s coming to Biglaw and it’s bringing more tech with it. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Supreme Court finds bacon challenge undercooked [Reuters]

* Donald Trump set to testify in New York. Be there, will be wild. [Reuters]

* Stroock files notice that it’s laying off roughly 140 people in New York. [Bloomberg Law News]

* The administration’s antitrust push hasn’t netted all the results one might’ve hoped, but Lina Khan’s tenure at the FTC may have some knock on effects as law students embrace antitrust work. [Politico]

* More firms are condemning senior associates to a holding pattern. [American Lawyer]

* Defamation filings are on the rise and it’s a real, shall we say, SLAPP in the face. [ABA Journal]

* It’s Pro Bono Week in the UK — the sort of annual recognition of good works that frightens and confuses Americans. [LegalCheek]

* NCAA faces billions in damages after feasting at the free labor trough for decades. [Law360]

* Ivanka Trump cited “undue hardship” because her testimony was scheduled during “a school week.” The appellate court… disagreed. [CNN]

* Sam Bankman-Fried is guilty. But Alex Kirshner’s burning question is… why was the defense so bad? [Slate]

* Rudy asks DC to please not disbar him. [Reuters]

* Retiring Biglaw leaders have firms thinking about succession. Presumably multiple rounds of Boar on the Floor. [Bloomberg Law News]

* George W. Bush judge declines seems disinclined to shut down NC Supreme Court’s probe of its only Black justice for saying the North Carolina court system isn’t particularly diverse, which seems like more a statement of fact than a controversial claim. [Law360]

* Survey finds that 17 percent of Biglaw attorneys feel emotionally depleted at work. An additional 83 percent have already had their capacity for human feeling permanently drained. [ABA Journal]

* BLM — the law firm, not Black Lives Matter or the Bureau of Land Management — accidentally gave videos of a kid to a pedophile. [Roll on Friday]

* Surge Pricing: Uber and Lyft to pay $328 million over wage theft probe. [Courthouse News Service]

* If you thought the bar exam was bad, in the UK they just made applicants wait 6 hours for the SQE and then sent them home because of IT issues. [LegalCheek]

* Donald Trump Jr. testifies that he was clueless as to how the company kept track of money, and if there’s anyone who comes across as plausibly clueless, it’s Jr. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Trump Sr. is already putting together his second-term legal team. [The New Republic]

* After the U.S. Judicial Conference reversed the Second Circuit, which had glibly looked the other way in an ethics case involving judges hiring a clerk with a public record of racist remarks, the Second Circuit ruled that the matter is closed because they refuse to take orders from the national judicial conference. [Reuters]

* Single-tier partnerships getting battered by market conditions. [American Lawyer]

* Former Goldman banker gets 3 years. [Law360]

* D.C. attempts to get free legal services to evicted tenants. [Washington Post]

* Could it be that associates actually want to work as hard as ever, they just don’t have any patience for bad management? No… it’s the children who are wrong. [Law.com]

* On that note, lateral partner moves increasingly driven by quest for more associate support. [American Lawyer]

* Ohio clerk tries to hide public records to maintain control. It’s not going well for her. [Courthouse News Service]

* New bar exam already has buy-in from a handful of states. [Reuters]

* Lawyers eyeing more stock drop suits because why admit you misjudged the market when you can sue a company? [Bloomberg Law News]

* After getting into the weeds, jury awards $332M in Roundup case. [Law360]

* Judges can’t bust into people’s homes without warrants… who do they think they are? Cops? [ABA Journal]

* Biglaw and finance shouldering the commercial real estate load as they fight to return to the office load while every other industry embraces the 21st century. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Cross-examination teaches SBF that you can’t cover the lows by borrowing from other people’s good testimony. [Law360]

* Firms plan to pursue rate hikes over the next year while client spin warns of the recession that’s still never materialized. [American Lawyer]

* London more popular than New York for commercial disputes. [LegalCheek]

* Artists lose opening bid to hold AI legally liable for training on existing art work. [Courthouse News Service]

* Just in time for Halloween, the government seeks to protect JetBlue from taking in an evil Spirit. [Reuters]

* Florida lawyers looking to put Anthony Fauci on trial because… Florida. [Newsweek]

* State AG’s explain how Facebook algorithms are just like tobacco and opioids. Except, you know, instead of killing you it recommends you a new toaster oven. [Law.com]

* Adelson defense team argues that dental hygienists decided to murder Dan Markel herself and extort Adelson family on the theory that law enforcement would blame them once they caught her and determined that she was close to the family… or something. [ABA Journal]

* Not with a bang but with a whimper: After failing to find a merger partner, Stroock may wither away with over 30 partners making individual lateral moves to Hogan Lovells. [Law360]

* Trump gag order back in place. Notably it does not extend to Judge Chutkan so he’s been on a rant about her “Trump Derangement Syndrome” since late last night. [Reuters]

* Joe Biden issues broad AI regulation order through executive order since every other avenue of government is broken. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Allen & Overy sells legal tech subsidiary aosphere to private equity. [Financial Times]

* We’re sad to report the passing of legal journalist and former Above the Law columnist Monica Bay who covered everything from the rock scene to legal technology over the course of her lengthy career. [LawNext]

* Remember Morgan Lewis partner Sheri Dillon? She’s the one who stood in front of a pile of — for all we know empty — folders and told everyone that they didn’t need to see Donald Trump’s taxes because they were fine. Well, the AG had some questions about that at trial yesterday. [Law360]

* Pillsbury ends merger talks with Stroock as two of the most star-crossed potential merger partners in Biglaw fail to get together. [American Lawyer]

* Today’s the day for Sam Bankman-Fried testimony. [Reuters]

* Bonus season is about a month away and likely to be a 2022 redux. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Attorney for Clarence Thomas denies that the justice’s RV loan was forgiven. Naturally, he refuses to provide any corroboration for this. [The Hill]

* Maryland posthumously admits Black lawyer it denied 166 years ago. [Washington Post]

* Legal tech prices are heading up. [Law.com]

* Are firms going to start outsourcing associate training? An interesting concept! What if we had “schools” where prospective lawyers could learn the “law” before getting to the firm. We could call them “law schools.” Meh… it’ll never work. [American Lawyer]

* Comprehensive breakdown of the average workday start and finish times at each UK firm. [LegalCheek]

* In light of SBF’s decision to take the stand, here are some past instances of high-profile white-collar defendants testifying on their own behalf. Much like crypto, you never know how it’ll turn out but probably not great. [Reuters]

* Judge Pauline Newman files brief taking her Federal Circuit colleagues to task for their extra-constitutional efforts to remove her from the bench. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Eleventh Circuit nixes Home Depot’s effort to derail the Blue Cross settlement. [Law360]

* Apple has joined the right-to-repair effort. [Quartz]

* Mark Meadows has immunity? Well, well, well. [ABC]

* Meta targeted for hooking kids through algorithms say state attorneys general seeking to increase their reelection profiles with a lawsuit designed to game the Google algorithm . [Law360]

* New bipartisan push for Supreme Court term limits. Because Harlan Crow should have to buy vacations for other people too. [Reuters]

* Florida asks Supreme Court to reinstate its anti-drag show law and somehow Clarence Thomas will decide that the ban comports with the original understanding of a bunch of guys who wore stockings and wigs. [CNN]

* Forget government and academia, former Supreme Court clerks are making bank in litigation finance. [Law.com]

* NLRB set to consider whether college athletes are properly university employees roughly 50 years after the fact. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Former Connecticut senate attorney heads to prison. [CT Insider]

* There are “thousands of trained therapy dogs found in courthouses across the country” to help jurors and attorneys deal with stress. On the one hand, awwwwww. On the other hand, we’re officially too soft as a nation. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Quinn Emanuel and Latham both earn benchslappings unsealed. [Law360]

* Tim Scott warns that Democrats want to legalize abortion up to the 52nd week. Ah, the classic “fourth trimester abortion.” [Huffington Post]

* Speaking of abortion, Ohio’s GOP Attorney General put out his “non-partisan” assessment of the upcoming reproductive rights ballot measure and wouldn’t you know it, returning to the status quo of the prior half century results in fire and brimstone. [Ohio Capital Journal]

* Folks want digital payments for mass torts, which is so logical I’m sure it will be fought tooth and nail by the courts. [Law.com]

* The diploma mill model hasn’t worked out. [Reuters]

* Speaking Portuguese is good for your legal career. [LegalCheek]

* After all the hemming and hawing and stealth layoffs and delayed starts… most law firms are on track to meet 2023 budgets. [American Lawyer]

* Tech industry lawyer reportedly coordinated letter to Congress asking them not to pass AI regulations. On the one hand, AI probably needs some regulation. On the other hand, maybe it’s best if the tweebs who can’t elect a Speaker aren’t writing those laws. [Politico]

* Meanwhile, the spread of AI sends a bunch of lawyers back to school. [Legaltech News]

* Chevron set to buy Hess for $53 billion. Putting aside concerns over consolidation in the energy market, are they still going to keep making the trucks?!? [Bloomberg Law News]

* Janice Rogers Brown testifies on behalf of John Eastman that he’s “dedicated his life to the preservation of constitutional order,” reminding us that the “serious” conservative legal movement was never serious at all. [Law360]

* Defense team complaining that prosecutors are trying to paint Sam Bankman-Fried as a cartoonish villain. I mean… are they trying to do that. [Reuters]

* Non-lawyer Stephen Miller continues his bid to be the go-to ambulance chaser of “were your feelings hurt by wokeness?” by suing NYU Law Review for discriminating against white men. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Cleary facilities manager who sent fake invoices to the tune of around a million bucks heads to jail. [Roll on Friday]

* Former FTX GC testifies that Sam Bankman-Fried asked him to conjure up possible legal justifications for a bunch of transactions. Normally in-house counsel aren’t asked to play Mad Libs with finances, but welcome to the world of crypto! [Reuters]

* Supreme Court mulling Missouri’s gun law which “reads like it was drafted by a member of the John Birch Society after a night of heavy drinking.” [Vox]

* Some clients are pushing firms to get on the AI bandwagon. [American Lawyer]

* Net neutrality is coming back, baby. [Law360]

* Kirkland unveils new tech tool for funds attorneys. [Legaltech News]

* Baseball players join bid to overrule MLB’s antitrust exemption because it’s always incredibly stupid and should’ve never existed. [Bloomberg Law News]

* NY court worker arrested after approaching Donald Trump at his NY trial, saying they wanted to help him. And as we all know, the greatest crime of all is a helpful court worker. [Law360]

* Wait… that bankruptcy judge was approving $750 fee requests for his girlfriend? [Financial Times]

* Davis Polk firings putting pressure on more firms to fire students over “grey areas” statements. [American Lawyer]

* Mississippi’s access to justice problem hasn’t gotten any better since the last time we talked about it. [ProPublica]

* Not that much doubt remained, but there is now a confession in the Natalee Holloway murder. [Courthouse News Service]

* In rare move, the Fifth Circuit issued an entirely reasonable ruling, upholding NASDAQ’s board diversity rule after Ed Blum’s Bigot Brigade challenged its constitutionality. [Reuters]

* Oh look! The independent state legislature theory is somehow back. [Democracy Docket]

* SBF attorneys pursue theory that “cooperating witnesses… changed their tune only in hindsight.” Yeah, that’s how “cooperating witnesses” work. If they weren’t on board at some point they have considerably less valuable testimony. [Law360]

* Sixth Circuit heard the SLAPPy appeal of the Kathy Griffin case. The majority of the panel appeared appropriately skeptical based on “the law,” but Judge Amul Thapar expressed sympathy for the plaintiff’s case based on “the Judge’s desire to be on Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist.” [Courthouse News Service]

* Alex Murdaugh free to seek new trial in boon for a true crime genre starved for content. [Reuters]

* Law school ranking haphazardly melds a bunch of other rankings into a ranking mullet: USNWR up front, wild party in back. [Law.com]

* The NYU Law student that made headlines for characterizing the Hamas attacks as “necessary” is pushing back against the school’s intimation that it will probe the statements. [New York Law Journal]

* Report surveys nearly 900 chief legal officers about cybersecurity and data privacy. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Supreme Court nixes lower court rulings that had struck down Biden ghost gun regulations. Surely there’s something in the Federalist Papers that can be twisted into a right to untraceable guns… Thomas is slipping.[CNN]

* High-profile lawyer accused of using ChatGPT as a fake lawyer. [Daily Beast]

* Meanwhile the real fake lawyer in Kenya thanks his supporters. [BBC]

* SBF lawyers demanding more adderall. [Forbes]

* Viet Dinh blames trial judge for Fox News having to pay over 700M in defamation damages on his watch. Sure buddy. [CNN]

* Berkeley Law professor goes on rant asking firms not to hire his “antisemitic students.” Not for remarks suggesting sympathy for Hamas, but for generically pro-Palestinian rights stances in the past. [NY Post]

* Courts set to unravel Zulu line of succession fight, which sounds way cooler than anything over here. [San Diego Union-Tribune]

* Federal judge resigns after caught living with one of the lawyers in matters in front of him. [Reuters]

* But no ethics scandal is complete without Alito or Thomas following up with “hold my beer,” so Alito just issued a temporary extension on a facially unconstitutional ruling to help his cronies. [CourthouseNewsService]

* Could obviously racist thing be racist? A mainstream media review. [ALM.com]

* Jones Day discrimination suit reaches critical stage. As a reminder, this goes all the way back to this dispute. [WSJ]

* Might SCOTUSBlog survive? [Law360]

* Looking to Singapore as a go to market as China continues to impose roadblocks. [FT]