Want to get this daily news briefing by email? Here's the sign-up.

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

POWER GRAB - At last, law firms can finally take a breath, regroup and stop pretending to care about things like employee wellbeing and job satisfaction. While the past few years have seen attorneys demand high pay and increased flexibility in exchange for little more than historic production and profits, the tables are finally turning and firm leaders are getting what they've craved so desperately these past few years: the upper hand on their attorneys and staff. For all the talk of "progress" and "evolution" (not to mention "wellness" and "empathy") in the legal industry over the past few years, the conversation has now turned to "leverage." It seems that some law firm leaders were simply been biding their time until they could reassert their dominance. And, as we explore in the latest Law.com Trendspotter column, therein lies the key to Big Law's eternal struggle: for all the recent hand-wringing about professional development and culture, this industry's retention methods have always relied less on job satisfaction and wellbeing than on fear and uncertainty. What do you think? Has Big Law learned any lasting lessons about talent retention or is it about to use its regained leverage to squash what it views as an uprising by lawyers who have had it too good for too long? Let me know at [email protected].

LAND OF CONFUSION - There are less than 200 ABA-accredited law schools in the U.S., but apparently not enough law school names to go around. As Law.com's Christine Charnosky reports, the result is a number of law schools who share very similar monikers, which can lead to mix-ups, misidentifications, misattributions—and sometimes even litigation. The most recent example of name sameness involves two Pennsylvania law schools: one at Duquesne University and one at Drexel University, both of which are now named after prominent plaintiffs lawyer Tom Kline, who donated $50 million to each institution. Following the news in September that Duquesne's law school would be renamed the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University., Daniel M. Filler, law dean at Drexel (which became the Thomas R. Kline School of Law in 2014) seemed to anticipate their would be questions. "Tom has made clear his steadfast commitment to the future of this law school," Filler wrote to students last week. "I know he looks forward to continuing the many advancements that Drexel's Kline School of Law has made over the last several years, and I'm happy to report we are in significant conversations with Tom right now about bolstering his already generous support of our law school."

WHO GOT THE WORK?℠ -John E. Flaherty and Cynthia S. Betz of McCarter & English have entered appearances for Royal Western Computer Inc., Jong S. Lim and Tomorrow Pos Inc. in a pending trade secret and copyright infringement lawsuit. The complaint, filed July 28 in New Jersey District Court by Schenck, Price, Smith & King on behalf of United Merchant Services and Bluu Inc., accuses the defendants of misappropriating customer lists and other confidential information in order to sell third-party products without the plaintiffs' knowledge. The defendants are also targeted for allegedly marketing competing Rainbow POS software while blocking the plaintiffs from replacing it with United Merchant's Royal Touch software. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Katharine S. Hayden, is 2:22-cv-04791, United Merchant Services, Inc et al v. Royal Western Computer, Inc et al. >> Read the filing on Law.com Radar and check out the most recent edition of Law.com's Who Got the Work?℠ column to find out which law firms and lawyers are being brought in to handle key cases and close major deals for their clients.