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Analysis

Report: Uptick in Litigation Demand Highlights Strong First Quarter for Large, Midsize Law Firms

The Thomson Reuters Institute reports that demand for litigation services was up 3.8% year-over-year in the first quarter, outpacing the 1.9% growth in demand across all practices over the same period. Litigation demand growth was most pronounced amongst Second Hundred and midsize firms.
3 minute read

Analysis

O'Melveny Team Takes Pro Bono Client From 'Life Without Parole' to Life on the Outside

Parole commissioners called the case of Gilbert Mendez "refreshing" since most of the changes he made to improve himself came before he had any real hope of ever getting out of prison.
6 minute read

Q&A

Litigation Leaders: Scott Kane of Squire Patton Boggs on Directness, the Importance of Action, and Commitment to the 'Mission'

Kane, a U.S. Army vet, was managing partner of the firm's Cincinnati office before becoming co-chair of the firm's global litigation practice last month.
6 minute read

News

Legal Speak: Aaron Sorkin This Is Not - Trump Trial with Emily Saul (Part 1)

Patrick Smith interview's ALM litigation reporter Emily Saul as she details the happenings of the first Trump criminal trial from inside the courtroom in Lower Manhattan.
2 minute read

Q&A

Litigators of the Week: Robins Kaplan Wins First Trial Against Aerosol Dust Remover Maker

Robins Kaplan's Philip Sieff and Tara Sutton won a $7.75 million verdict for the family of a woman who was killed after a vehicle driven by an individual who huffed CRC Duster struck her car head-on. Jurors awarded no punitives, but attached a note to the verdict urging the company to "spearhead an effort to address inhalant abuse."
5 minute read

Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Peter Stris of Stris & Maher got an important win this week for ERISA plaintiffs at the Second Circuit.
6 minute read

Analysis

With Momentum For Diversity Trial Advocacy Program, ACTL Plans 4th and 5th Installments

Retired Latham & Watkins litigation partner Thomas Heiden, who heads the committee spearheading the program, said the college hasn't changed its approach after last year's Supreme Court affirmative action decision.
4 minute read

Analysis

What the Decline in Jury Verdicts Means for Appellate Courts

Over the past couple of years we've written about what the relative dearth of cases proceeding to a jury verdict has meant for the trial courts and law firms. Our colleague Avalon Zoppo recently looked at what it means for appellate courts and the development of the law.
4 minute read

Expert Opinion

New Rule on MDLs Should Prompt Courts to Reevaluate Involvement in Settlement

Hollingsworth's Robert E. Johnston and Gary Feldon write that MDL judges who decide merits questions should avoid direct involvement in settlement discussions and detailed reports on the negotiations.
6 minute read

Q&A

Litigators of the Week: Kirkland Beats Videogame Copyright Claim From Lebron James' Tattoo Artist

Dale Cendali and Josh Simmons of Kirkland & Ellis convinced federal jurors in Ohio that 'NBA 2K' maker Take-Two had an implied license to use images that tattoo artist James Hayden inked onto James' shoulders.
12 minute read

Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Runners-up this week include litigators from Hecht Partners, Hausfeld and Quinn Emanuel.
6 minute read

Conversation

Discussing The Uptick in Women Arguing at SCOTUS With Akin's Aileen McGrath

McGrath got her first argument at the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this term—a term where William & Connolly's Lisa Blatt crossed the 50-argument threshold and women have handled about one-third of oral arguments.
16 minute read

Analysis

Latham's 7-Year Fight to Reshape New York City Property Taxes

The firm won a ruling from New York's high court last month finding the city's property tax system was "unfair, inequitable and has a discriminatory disparate impact on certain protected classes of New York City property owners."
6 minute read

Conversation

How Meta Finds the Right Teams for the Right Cases at the Right Prices

The second part of the Litigation Daily's conversation with Nikki Stitt Sokol, director and associate general counsel for Meta Platforms Inc., delves into what she looks for when hiring outside counsel.
7 minute read

Podcast

Legal Speak at General Counsel Conference Midwest 2024: Andy Goldberg, Laner Muchin Managing Partner

Last week, Legal Speak spoke live on location at the General Counsel Conference Midwest 2024 in Chicago with professionals across the legal industry about key insights and practical solutions that today's general counsel need to manage and better leverage C-Suite relationships, successfully overcome a litigation crisis, do more with fewer resources, and more.
1 minute read

Conversation

Meta's Nikki Stitt Sokol on Learning 'Litigation Is Always About a Story'

Sokol, who has been managing litigation in-house at the company since shortly after the Facebook IPO, says it's important to learn about the people behind a business and what they're trying to accomplish.
8 minute read

Podcast

Legal Speak at General Counsel Conference Midwest 2024: Louwee Guevarra, VP and CTO at Kloves

Kloves VP and CTO Louwee Guevarra discusses the nuances involved in getting various vendor platforms, many of which utilize their own LLM and generative AI engines, to play nice with each other.
1 minute read

Podcast

Legal Speak at General Counsel Conference Midwest 2024: John Meyer, General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer at Zeem Solutions

Zeem Solutions GC and Chief Privacy Officer John Meyer discusses the importance of data privacy and how difficult it has become to protect as the number of external vendors many companies, and law firms, utilize grows exponentially.
1 minute read

Q&A

Litigator of the Week: Landing a $525M Patent Verdict Against Amazon Web Services

Courtland Reichman and his team Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg convinced a Chicago federal jury that AWS infringed three computer storage and data management patents held by Kove IO, a company founded by two University of Chicago Ph.D. graduates and co-inventors.
8 minute read

Quick Takes

Another Stellar Group of Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Runners-up this week include litigators from Kirkland, Jones Day, Morgan Lewis and Paul Weiss.
6 minute read

Profile

Logging 5,500 Miles to Handle 3 Arguments in 11 Days, Capped With a Quake

After Wiggin and Dana partner Jonathan Freiman argued in the Second Circuit late last month and the California Supreme Court on April 3, he flew back East for a repeat argument in the Second Circuit just after the April 5 earthquake that shook the court.
6 minute read

Best Practices

10 Things to Keep in Mind When Picking a Jury

Richard Gabriel, president of Southern California trial consulting firm Decision Analysis Litigation Strategies, says modern jurors are coming to cases more set in their opinions, but certain best practices still apply.
7 minute read

Profile

After Munger Litigation Partner's AI-Focused Fellowship, a Call for More 'Tech Bono'

After serving as a fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology during her sabbatical from Munger, Tolles & Olson, Miriam Kim is calling on firms to expand their pro bono efforts beyond lawyer hours to include providing technical assistance to legal aid organizations.
5 minute read

Big Law Better, Explained

In this week's Legal Speak episode, McDermott Will & Emery Chair Ira Coleman explains "Big Law Better," his idea on where the legal sector is moving and what elements of previous iterations the industry should be looking to maintain and which it should perhaps relegate to times gone by.
2 minute read

Litigation Leaders: Debbie Ellingboe of Faegre Drinker on the Challenge of Merging 2 Departments During a Pandemic

Ellingboe, who led the business litigation group at Faegre Baker Daniels before its 2020 merger with Drinker Biddle & Reath, said the virtual environment provided an opportunity for attorneys to meet and connect, and likely led to more cross-office work.
11 minute read

Q&A

Litigators of the Week: Hitting Walmart With a $100M Verdict in Its Own Backyard

Brendon DeMay and Priyanka Timblo of Holwell Shuster & Goldberg represented a company that claimed Walmart backed out of a deal struck during the pandemic to get into the business-to-business market for disposable nitrile gloves when demand for PPE cooled.
8 minute read

Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Runners-up this week include litigators from Quinn Emanuel, Latham and Paul Hastings.
6 minute read

Q&A

Litigators of the (Past) Week: Google Agrees to Delete User Data in 'Incognito' Browsing Privacy Settlement

Google agreed to delete billions of user records and block third parties from tracking "Incognito" mode browsing as part of a deal to resolve litigation brought by David Boies, Mark Mao and James Lee of Boies Schiller Flexner.
6 minute read

Quick Takes

Litigator of the (Past) Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

The runners-up for the cycle that closed on April 3.
7 minute read

Q&A

How Overseeing Legal Operations Has Affected How Steve Mahieu of Kraft Heinz Looks at Litigation

"Having visibility to hourly rates, spend by matter, and other financial metrics across the department has given me a greater appreciation for the need to focus our resources on the most impactful matters to the company."
6 minute read

Podcast

As 'Social Inflation' Helps Fuel 'Nuclear' Verdicts, Insurers Address 'Legal System Abuse'

In this week's Legal Speak episode, James Whittle with the American Property Casualty Insurance Association dives into the impact of what the organization has dubbed "legal system abuse" as social inflation—the belief that large corporations are "bad actors with deep pockets"—helps fuel "nuclear" verdicts.
1 minute read

Q&A

Litigators of the Week: Kaplan Hecker Knocks Out Suit Aiming to 'Punish' Non-Profit Critical of Musk's X Corp.

"X Corp. has brought this case in order to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp.—and perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism," wrote Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer.
6 minute read

Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Runners-up this week include litigators from King & Spalding, Kirkland, Hogan Lovells and Weil Gotshal.
6 minute read

Analysis

'Trying to Make Some Order Out of All This Chaos': Thoughts on the MDL Process from 3 Federal Judges

"We love trying to get to the end of what seems like an intractable problem and the MDL is the perfect mechanism for that problem-solving talent to come out in members of the federal bench," said U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell, chair of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.
6 minute read

Best Practices

Even When Witnesses Don't Tell You They're Panicking, They're Panicking

Allison Rocker of Baker McKenzie says that's especially true in "document-heavy" cases with tons of exhibits.
4 minute read

Conversation

4 Out of Sidley's 5 Global IP Litigation Leaders Are Women. Here's How That's Shaped the Practice

Ching-Lee Fukuda and Aimee Fagan, who both joined Sidley's IP litigation team as laterals, discuss what brought them to the firm and their approach to leading the practice.
10 minute read

Q&A

Litigation Leaders: DWT's Jaime Drozd on Practicing as an Extension of Clients' Business

"Core to this mindset is understanding how a given piece of litigation fits within our clients' objectives and molding our litigation strategy accordingly," said Drozd, who co-chairs the litigation practice group at Davis Wright Tremaine.
8 minute read

Q&A

Litigators of the Week: Plaintiffs Reach a $418M Market-Shifting Settlement With Realtor Group

The National Association of Realtors agreed to changes that could trim the commissions paid to agents as part of the deal reached with co-lead counsel at Ketchmark and McCreight, Boulware Law, Williams Dirks Dameron, Hagens Berman, Cohen Milstein, and Susman Godfrey.
7 minute read

Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Runners-up this week include litigators from Quinn Emanuel, Keller Postman, Latham, MoFo and Steptoe.
6 minute read

Best Practices

How Kirkland & Ellis Litigators Became a National Brand in Oil and Gas

Kirkland & Ellis partners and recent Litigator of the Week runners-up Dan Donovan, Ragan Naresh and Anna Rotman discuss the value of learning clients' business goals and partnering with other firms across the country.
6 minute read

Webcast

Future-Proofing the Legal Team in the New AI World

Join this webcast on the transformative potential of GenAI for contract management.
3 minute read

Best Practices

Avoiding Potential Social Media Pitfalls of Modern Trial Practice

Southern California defense lawyer Deb Tropp and Philadelphia plaintiffs lawyer Jim Beasley Jr. think jurors can't help themselves when it comes to internet-snooping on trial counsel.
4 minute read

Analysis

Another Look at How AI Is Shaping Litigation Finance

Eva Shang, the CEO and co-founder of litigation funder Legalist, describes how generative AI helps shape its outreach to lawyers.
6 minute read

Best Practices

What the Judges Had to Say at the Class Action Law Forum

A handful of the juiciest nuggets jurists let fly during the three-day conference at the University of San Diego School of Law last week.
7 minute read

Q&A

Litigator of the Week: Akin's Pratik Shah Helps the Chamber Block the NLRB's 'Joint Employer' Rule

Representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, Shah secured a summary judgment decision striking down the rule that could have held companies liable as the employer of workers provided by staffing agencies or hired by franchisees.
5 minute read

Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Visa and Mastercard can't escape the latest round of swipe fee antitrust litigation on summary judgment.
7 minute read

Analysis

How Judges Weigh Lead Counsel Decisions in Class Actions and MDLs

"I talk a lot to my new colleagues because it is kind of an animal many of them are not acquainted with. And it's like, 'What do we do?'" said Chief Judge Richard Seeborg of the Northern District of California.
6 minute read

Commentary

Of Predictive Analytics and Robots: A First-Year Federal Judge's Thoughts on AI

U.S. District Judge Wesley Hsu says that judges' information online should be fair game for those putting together predictive analytics. Then again, as someone who previously spent more than a decade prosecuting cybercrime, he has a tiny digital fingerprint.
4 minute read

Q&A

In-House Lawyers See Class Action Costs Continue to Rise, and a Labor & Employment Surge on the Horizon

D. Matthew Allen, the chair of the national class actions practice at Carlton Fields, and co-director of the firm's annual survey of senior in-house lawyers at large companies, expands on the latest findings.
7 minute read

Latest
Trending

Who Got The Work

Michael G. Bongiorno, Andrew Scott Dulberg and Elizabeth E. Driscoll from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr have stepped in to represent Symbotic Inc., an A.I.-enabled technology platform that focuses on increasing supply chain efficiency, and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The case, filed Oct. 2 in Massachusetts District Court by the Brown Law Firm on behalf of Stephen Austen, accuses certain officers and directors of misleading investors in regard to Symbotic's potential for margin growth by failing to disclose that the company was not equipped to timely deploy its systems or manage expenses through project delays. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, is 1:24-cv-12522, Austen v. Cohen et al.

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Who Got The Work

Edmund Polubinski and Marie Killmond of Davis Polk & Wardwell have entered appearances for data platform software development company MongoDB and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The action, filed Oct. 7 in New York Southern District Court by the Brown Law Firm, accuses the company's directors and/or officers of falsely expressing confidence in the company’s restructuring of its sales incentive plan and downplaying the severity of decreases in its upfront commitments. The case is 1:24-cv-07594, Roy v. Ittycheria et al.

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Who Got The Work

Amy O. Bruchs and Kurt F. Ellison of Michael Best & Friedrich have entered appearances for Epic Systems Corp. in a pending employment discrimination lawsuit. The suit was filed Sept. 7 in Wisconsin Western District Court by Levine Eisberner LLC and Siri & Glimstad on behalf of a project manager who claims that he was wrongfully terminated after applying for a religious exemption to the defendant's COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The case, assigned to U.S. Magistrate Judge Anita Marie Boor, is 3:24-cv-00630, Secker, Nathan v. Epic Systems Corporation.

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Who Got The Work

David X. Sullivan, Thomas J. Finn and Gregory A. Hall from McCarter & English have entered appearances for Sunrun Installation Services in a pending civil rights lawsuit. The complaint was filed Sept. 4 in Connecticut District Court by attorney Robert M. Berke on behalf of former employee George Edward Steins, who was arrested and charged with employing an unregistered home improvement salesperson. The complaint alleges that had Sunrun informed the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection that the plaintiff's employment had ended in 2017 and that he no longer held Sunrun's home improvement contractor license, he would not have been hit with charges, which were dismissed in May 2024. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer, is 3:24-cv-01423, Steins v. Sunrun, Inc. et al.

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Who Got The Work

Greenberg Traurig shareholder Joshua L. Raskin has entered an appearance for boohoo.com UK Ltd. in a pending patent infringement lawsuit. The suit, filed Sept. 3 in Texas Eastern District Court by Rozier Hardt McDonough on behalf of Alto Dynamics, asserts five patents related to an online shopping platform. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, is 2:24-cv-00719, Alto Dynamics, LLC v. boohoo.com UK Limited.

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