Quick show of hands: how many of you have ever paid $130,000 in hush money out of your own pocket to help a client? And didn't actually mention it to them? Or ask to get paid back?

Oh Michael Cohen, Michael Cohen, Michael Cohen. We're not stupid, you know.

Cohen may see himself as Trump's consigliere (“I will always protect Mr. Trump”), but no part of his statement to The New York Times seems plausible when compared to the way lawyers, at least in my experience, actually behave.Quick show of hands: how many of you have ever paid $130,000 in hush money out of your own pocket to help a client? And didn't actually mention it to them? Or ask to get paid back?

Client service is one thing, but this?

Instead, it looks like an attempt to shut down a complaint to the Federal Election Commission that the payment should have been reported as an in-kind campaign contribution.

Last month, watchdog group Common Cause asked the feds to investigate the payment, charging that “the funds were paid for the purpose of influencing the 2016 presidential election.”

Cohen told The New York Times that the payment was “a private transaction…Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”

Moreover, Cohen asserts that Stormy Daniels' claim that she had an affair with Trump is false–yet he paid her anyway.

“Just because something isn't true doesn't mean that it can't cause you harm or damage,” he told CNN.

But during the campaign, Trump faced far worse allegations of dubious merit, including that he raped a child and watched Russian prostitutes urinate on a bed. If a random porn star came forward with a made-up claim that she slept with him, so what?

But if the claim was true, on the other hand, that might be worth $130,000 to keep it quiet.

The irony, of course, is that the story has more momentum now than ever. As The Washington Post noted on Wednesday, “If Trump and others had hoped the story might die down, the admission by attorney Michael Cohen … assured that the drama would continue to play out for weeks to come.”

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Massive Immigrant Class Against Private Prison Can Proceed

Immigration rights advocates scored an important win in a suit against a private prison that houses detained immigrants in Colorado.

Immigrants who have been held in The Geo Group Inc.'s Aurora detention facility sued the prison, claiming they are forced to work without pay cleaning the facility, and are paid only $1 a day for other work like serving food or doing laundry—a violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act barring forced labor and Colorado's unjust enrichment law.

If the detainees (who are being held on civil, nor criminal violations) wouldn't work, they said they would lose privileges or be placed in solitary confinement.

In February of 2017, U.S. District Senior Judge John Kane in Colorado certified two separate classes that could include 62,000 members: all detainees housed at the Aurora Facility in the past ten years, and all detainees who participated in the voluntary $1-a-day work program in the past three years.

Represented by Norton Rose Fulbright partner Mark Emery, GEO petitioned the Tenth Circuit for an interlocutory appeal, arguing that class certification was inappropriate, and that the determinations should be made on an individual basis.

The appellate panel didn't buy it.

“GEO acknowledges that each class member received notice of the Sanitation Policy's terms upon admission to the Aurora Facility,” wrote Judge Scott Matheson for the unanimous panel. “Under these circumstances, the Sanitation Policy provides the 'glue' that holds together the class members' reasons for performing housing unit cleaning duties assigned by GEO.”

Matheson added that “even after three months of discovery regarding class certification issues, GEO did not present any individualized rebuttal evidence to the district court that would cause individual causation questions to predominate at trial.”

Outten & Golden partner David Lopez, who served as general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 2010 to 2016, argued for the detainees. They were also represented by Nashville solo practitioner R. Andrew Free; Alexander Hood, David Seligman and Andrew Schmidt, of Towards Justice; Brandt Milstein of the Milstein Law Office; Andrew H. Turner of The Kelman Beuscher Firm, and Hans Meyer of Meyer Law Office.

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Shout-Out: Wiley Rein Inks a Win for Montblanc

A team from Wiley Rein led by partner David Weslow scored a win for luxury pen and watch maker Montblanc in a trademark and copyright infringement case in U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Montblanc sued Miroslav Ilnitskiy for selling knock-off Montblanc goods using the domain name “Montblancusa.com,” with the site “configured to replicate plaintiff's genuine Montblanc.com website.” From there, he allegedly went on use domain names including “Montblancpensoutletcheapsale.com” and “Montblancpensoutletcheap.com.”

Ilnitskiy did not enter a response to the lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema hit him with a $32 million default judgment—an impressive sum, even if it's only on paper.

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Abortion Showdown at the Seventh Circuit

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit will hear oral argument today in a case that tests the constitutionality of abortion restrictions adopted in Indiana in 2016. The key question: can a state specify the reasons why a woman can terminate a pregnancy?

The state lost the first round of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky et al. v. Commissioner, Indiana State Department of Health, et al.

On appeal, the state takes an interesting tack that could split liberal sympathy between two near-and-dear causes: supporting the right to choose versus opposing discrimination.

Indiana's law “leaves intact the right to decide whether to bear a child, but simply restricts the ability to choose which child to have on the basis of fetal characteristics such as race, sex, and disability,” wrote Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher in the state's appellate brief.

“[I]f left unhindered, new technology would allow women to screen their pregnancies one-by-one to choose the child with the most 'desirable' fetal characteristics,” he continued. “Such discrimination, even before birth, not only harms the fetus, but also lessens the ability of those with characteristics considered less 'desirable,' such as a diagnosis of Down syndrome, to enter into and participate fully in society.

Planned Parenthood, represented by Kenneth Falk, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, responded in court papers that the state's theory “flies in the face of a wealth of Supreme Court precedent and has no support in case law.”

“[U]nder the State's theory the right to obtain an abortion is reserved only for women who decide, before their pregnancy, that they will obtain an abortion, no matter what,” he wrote. “It is oxymoronic to accept, as the State does, that this right to privacy exists, but to postulate also that the State can eviscerate this right. The point is that the Supreme Court has recognized that there is a 'private realm' 'which the state cannot enter:' that includes 'the decision whether to bear or beget a child.'”

My colleague Ben Hancock talks with Microsoft's head of litigation David Howard on the company's decision to fight the government.

You too can help decipher nearly 50,000 pages of the justices' handwritten conference notes.

Sidley's Tom Green accompanied Gates when re-entering the courtroom for the nonpublic part of the hearing with his current lawyers, Shanlon Wu, Walter Mack and Annemarie McAvoy.

“Throughout the assault, defendant went on about his power in the industry in which Ms. Vachata works and how he has the capability to 'make or break' her career.”

But U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York also challenged the Drug Enforcement Administration's position that marijuana has no acceptable medical use.

If I throw a party and suggest you look for parking a block away because there's usually space there, can you sue me if you get hit by a car walking over after you park?

Former senior partner Jack Sawyer spent the day weathering intense questioning about his dealings with an ex-manager accused of looting a family company.