• Cravath, Swaine & Moore has picked its first-ever female presiding partner, electing Faiza J. Saeed, who is co-leader of its mergers practice. When Saeed takes over from fellow corporate partner C. Allen Parker Jan. 1, she will become one of only a small handful of women to lead a major U.S. law firm. (New York Times DealBook)
• Directors at litigation funders Burford Capital and Navigant have reportedly quit to launch a rival fund in London. (The Lawyer)
• Three U.S. senators have written to the Federal Trade Commission asking the agency to investigate the impact of Airbnb Inc. and other home-rental websites on housing markets, in an attempt to elevate local regulatory battles to the federal level. (Bloomberg Technology)
• After a U.S. appeals court Wednesday refused to hear New England quarterback Tom Brady’s four-game suspension for using under-inflated footballs in a 2015 playoff game, former Manhattan federal judge and arbitrator Shira Scheindlin told BLB that the U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to intervene. (Big Law Business/Bloomberg BNA)
• The European Union’s antitrust regulator is expected to file new formal anti-trust charges against Alphabet Inc.’s Google Thursday. (Nasdaq/Dow Jones Business)
Legal Market
• A Chicago judge sentenced Michael Coscia, the first person convicted of disrupting U.S. financial markets by “spoofing,” to three years in prison, in a strong warning to the electronic trading industry. (Financial Times)
• After months of criticism that its in-house court unfairly tilts justice against defendants, the Securities and Exchange Commission is making changes that could make the playing field more level. (Big Law Business/Bloomberg News)
• Seller-financed home sales are “toxic transactions,” with contracts that are predatory and built to fail, according to a report by the National Consumer Law Center. (New York Times DealBook)
• The Defend Trade Secrets Act opens up a range of new considerations for California plaintiffs and their lawyers in trade-secret cases, according to a litigation partner and associate at a San Francisco firm Keker & Van Nest. (The Recorder)
• Former Fox anchor Gretchen Carlson’s contract with the company includes an arbitration clause with “gag-order language” that could keep secret all facts and evidence related to her sexual harassment allegations against Roger Ailes, her former boss. (New York Times DealBook)
Brexit
• After the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union, a crucial question facing U.K.-based financial firms is what of kind of post-Brexit “passport” these firms will have, writes a London-based partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman. (Big Law Business)
• Firms in the U.K. financial industry, which employs over 2 million people, are looking for legal solutions to problems created by Brexit. (Bloomberg News)
• If the U.K. government wants to maintain the country’s participation in Europol, the EU police agency that operates the 28-member bloc’s databases on criminals and terrorists, it must sign on to a new EU law before May 2017. (Wall Street Journal)
SCOTUS and other courts
• Ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court’s term that concluded in June, many attorneys on the plaintiffs bar worried that the court was poised to effectively wipe out class actions. But that did not happen and now some attorneys are saying the risk of such drastic Supreme Court action has passed. (Big Law Business/Bloomberg BNA)
• A federal appeals court Wednesday upended General Motors Co.’s plan to avoid hundreds of lawsuits over a deadly ignition switch defect found in millions of cars. In a major setback for GM, the court found that the company’s 2009 bankruptcy sale to a new corporate entity didn’t trump personal-injury suits over accidents that happened before the transaction or claims by people whose vehicles lost value as a result of the flaw. (Big Law Business/Bloomberg News)
• Presumed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent criticism of him shows her “mind is shot” and she should resign. (WSJ Law Blog)
Laterals and Moves
• French banking group Société Générale has begun a process to recruit a new Western European general counsel, as its current GC Mark Nimmo plans to retire. (The Lawyer)
• A look at where Big Law firms are succeeding and failing in bringing more women lawyers into their ranks. (Law.com)
• Lewis Kaden left Davis Polk & Wardwell to join Citigroup Inc. in 2005 after 21 years as a partner at the firm. Now, he has returned at age 74 as senior counsel, and said he hopes to be “helpful” as a mentor and adviser. (American Lawyer)
• U.K. firm Ashurst has lost finance partner Diane Roberts, who is leaving to join Reed Smith, as the firm continues to see lawyers leave for U.S. rivals based in London. The firm recently announced a review of its lock-step and equity partner remuneration structure. (The Lawyer)
• Jackson Lewis has picked up a top lobbying group from Wilson Elser in New York, including 24 attorneys and 15 other staff. (Big Law Business)
• Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz counsel Maura Grossman, credited as a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence techniques for legal work, has left the firm to open her own electronic discovery law and consulting practice in New York and work as a research professor at a Canadian university. (American Lawyer)
Technology
• Sentencing judges can consider algorithms that assign risk scores to convicted defendants based on the likelihood they will commit future crimes, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. (WSJ Law Blog)
• Google’s YouTube is involved in a spat with labels Universal, Sony, and Warner, while artists and their managers want legal reforms to stop the site from relying on so-called Safe Harbor provisions. A new report sheds light on YouTube economics. (Bloomberg Gadfly)
• Uber Technologies Inc. will suspend its ride-hailing services in Hungary starting July 24 after a government decision to pass a bill that allows authorities to block access to the mobile application and to fine media that promote it. (Bloomberg Technology)
• Google Inc. has reportedly withdrawn a lawsuit in which it sought to keep Mississippi’s attorney general from investigating the company’s third-party content practices. (Law.com)
• As privacy concerns mount about the hit mobile game app Pokémon Go, a U.S. senator has written to the game’s creator asking for details on what the company does with personal information that the app collects from users’ phones. (Legaltech News)
• The Tor Project, a nonprofit digital privacy group, Wednesday picked a new board of directors as part of a restructuring spurred by allegations of sexual misconduct by a prominent employee. (New York Times)
• LinkedIn’s updated Recruiter tool includes an uncomfortably accurate function that allows finding “lookalikes” for people with certain skill sets and backgrounds, says a writer. (Financial Times)
• Viral videos of police shooting victims have had a big impact on Social Media opinion but have tended to have less impact on juries. (Law.com)
Miscellaneous
• New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said a U.S. Congressman from Texas is risking a constitutional conflict by threatening to subpoena records related to New York and Massachusetts climate change investigations. (National Law Journal)
• Former Internal Revenue Commission chief Mortimer Caplin, who after starting in law over 70 years ago eventually founded Caplin & Drysdale, turned 100 years old Monday. (National Law Journal)
• A former political consultant to Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit alleging that trump is trying to shut him up by means of a $10 million arbitration claim. (Wall Street Journal)
Compiled by Rick Mitchell and edited by Gabe Friedman.