2016-08-01

• Khizr Khan, a Muslim American immigrant, whose son, U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, tragically lost his life to a suicide bomber in 2004, made a speech to the Democratic National Convention about his loss that dominated the news this weekend and resulted in a verbal spar with Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump. Lawyers at Hogan Lovells say they recall when the soldier lost his life because the elder Khan was a colleague at the firm, working as manager of litigation technology. (Law.com)

• Los Angeles-based Irell & Manella surged 17 pages to top AM-Law’s A-List law firm rankings for 2016, ahead of another L.A. firm, Munger, Tolles & Olson in second, and New York’s Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in third. (American Lawyer)

• The reported retirement of Wells Fargo’s general counsel James Strother after turning 65 this year illustrates that mandatory age-based retirement policies can hit GCs, too. (Corporate Counsel)

• This week lawyers in the trial of two former allies of N.J. Gov. Chris Christie will begin jury selection in the Bridgegate lane-closing scandal. (New York Times)

• Entry-level salaries for law school graduates differ vastly from state to state, with jobs that command Big Law-level pay concentrated in just a few states. The median salary is $63,000, according to research from the National Association for Law Placement. (Big Law Business)

Legal Market

•  Two signs that Brexit hasn’t changed everything in the UK: Latham & Watkins has hired away Slaughter and May’s London corporate partner as it continues an aggressive hiring spurt and Addleshaw Goddards said its per partner profits soared 39 percent last year. (The Lawyer)

• The Israeli market for contract lawyer services such as Lawyers On Demand is largely untapped. (The Lawyer)

• Kenyon & Kenyon, as recently as 2014 one of the biggest U.S. intellectual property firms with some 150 attorneys, has pared down to about 55 attorneys and continues merger talks with several firms. (New York Law Journal)

• Lawyers in the battle over Sumner M. Redstone’s $40 billion Viacom media empire face a busy October, with three cases in three courts in three states scheduled. (New York Times DealBook)

• Lawyers for class-action litigation are seeking to bolster their case to link player concussions suffered in the NHL to chronic traumatic encephalopathy by petitioning to add the estate of “Rock,” a deceased NHL player known for frequent on-ice fights,  (Big Law Business/Bloomberg BNA)

• Global law firm King & Wood Mallesons has announced that it will rake in $18.4 million from its partners through a capital call. (Big Law Business)

• Attorneys from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Sullivan & Cromwell, and Wilson Sonsini are advising in Oracle Corporation’s deal to buy cloud computing company NetSuite for $9.3 billion. (Big Law Business)

• Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was sued by a former executive who claims the bank failed to pay at least $350,000 in legal fees he racked up while defending himself in a government investigation into stolen Federal Reserve documents that wound up in his e-mail in-box. (Big Law Business/Bloomberg Media)

• Diverse attorneys should take the initiative to seek out mentors and sponsors as they build professional relationships that are “crucial” to their careers, writes a labor and employment attorney at Little Mendelson. (Big Law Business)

• Why are older women “stampeding” out of big law firms? (The Recorder)

• Uber Technologies Inc. will sell its China business to Didi Chuxing, the dominant ride-hailing service in the country, to create a combined business worth some $35 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. (Bloomberg Technology)

• The Federal Trade Commission Friday reversed an in-house judge’s decision that had been seen as a signifigant setback in the agency’s efforts to go after some companies’ allegedly weak protections for digital consumer data. (WSJ Law Blog)

SCOTUS and other courts

• The new biography “Suspected Independence” calls Thomas McKean, who servered 22 years as Pennsylvania Chief Justice in the early days of the United States, a “defender of the Constitution” and “the first U.S. power broker.” (Wall Street Journal)

• A coalition of industry groups petitioned the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to hear their challenge to federal net neutrality rules. (National Law Journal)

Laterals and Moves

• Allen & Overy Friday announced it had acquired five partners for its New York office from three different top law firms: Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy, White & Case, and Proskauer Rose. (Big Law Business)

Technology

• U.S. Legal Support filed a complaint in New York Supreme Court alleging that Troutman Sanders partners failed to pay $420,000 for court reporting and e-Discovery services; and other news from the big law docket scanner. (Big Law Business)

• Tesla Motors told investigators from the Senate Commerce Committee that a brake system failure caused a fatal crash of one of its self-driven cars in Florida, not the car’s auto-pilot technology. (New York Times DealBook)

• A consortium of Chinese investors said it will pay $4.4 billion to acquire the social and mobile games unit of Caesars Interactive Entertainment. (New York Times DealBook)

• Since 2014, President Barack Obama’s administration has punished three of the four states considered the top cyber threats to U.S. computer networks: China, Iran and North Korea. But Russia is an exception. (BloombergView)

• GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the U.K.’s biggest drugmaker, is forming a joint venture with Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s life-sciences business to research and develop bioelectronic medicines. (Bloomberg Technology)

Legal Education

• A California judge dismissed some claims against University of California officials in the sexual harassment lawsuit brought by the executive assistant of former Berkeley School of Law dean Sujit Choudhry. (The Recorder)

Miscellaneous

• The CEO of one the biggest U.S. for-profit hospital chains faces a lawsuit by an employee and the Justice Department alleging that he pushes doctors to unnecessarily hospitalize patients at Medicare’s expense. (Wall Street Journal)

•  The great-granddad of a promising 22-year-old infielder called up by the Houston Astros this week was a general counsel for the Washington Senators. Stanley Bregman got an injunction lifted by a U.S. judge, clearing the way for the team to relocate to become the Rangers in 1972. (Law.com)

Compiled by Rick Mitchell and edited by Gabe Friedman.

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