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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

DISCLOSURE – Abitrators must disclose their ownership interest in ADR organizations with parties that come before them, the Ninth Circuit has ruled. Alaina Lancaster reports that the appeals court reversed and remanded a district court ruling confirming a final award from arbitration service JAMS in a dispute between energy drink company Monster Energy Co. and City Beverages LLC, DBA Olympic Eagle Distributing. The distributor successfully argued that the parties' JAMS arbitrator should have revealed his ownership interest in the ADR service, given Monster was a "leading client" participating in nearly one filing a month in recent years.

RUDY'S MEN – Two associates of Rudy Giuliani are expected to appear this morning in Manhattan federal court for the first time since they were indicted earlier this month on campaign-finance charges. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman are scheduled to be arraigned in the case, which accuses the pair of conspiring to funnel foreign money to candidates for state and federal office in order to buy political influence in the United States. Two other defendants, David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin, pleaded not guilty last week in connection with the alleged scheme.

M&A PLAY – King & Spalding is making a play to boost its M&A capabilities with the addition of four corporate partners who have left Morrison & Foerster's soon-to-be closed Northern Virginia office, Dan Packel reports. The firms says that bringing aboard Larry Yanowitch, Charles Katz, Tom Knox and Jeremy Schropp, who will join its D.C. office, will expand its M&A offerings, particularly in deals involving venture capital, private equity and aerospace, defense and government services.

SHERIFF JOE – Lawyers for former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio are set to ask a Ninth Circuit panel to vacate the ruling of a federal judge who refused to wipe the controversial politician's criminal record after he was pardoned by President Trump. Arpaio's lawyers are expected to face off with Christopher Caldwell of Boies Schiller Flexner who was appointed as a special prosecutor by the appellate court last year after DOJ lawyers stated on appeal that the judge below should have vacated Arpaio's record post-pardon.

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EDITOR'S PICKS

JD Not Necessary for Legal Ops Leaders, Experts Say

4 E-Discovery (Adjacent) Cases Judges Are Watching This Year

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WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

NEW DIRECTION – In a rare move for a Japanese law firm, Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu, one of that country's largest, has formed an alliance with a legal technology company. John Kang reports that the law firm has teamed up with MNTSQ Ltd., an 11-month-old Tokyo-based legal tech startup and an affiliate of Tokyo-listed machine learning technology company PKSHA Technology. Nagashima Ohno will invest about $7 million in MNTSQ over the next several years, and MNTSQ will help the firm conduct due diligence using its natural language processing technology.

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WHAT YOU SAID

"Given the financial condition of the publishing industry over the past 10 or 15 years, there's probably a lot of work that's not being done because there is no budget for it."

—  Tom Leatherbury, partner at Vinson & Elkins, who will lead the new First Amendment clinic at SMU Dedman School of Law, one of several such programs launched recently at law schools nationwide.

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