• The former Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld partner charged with trying to sell a sealed whistleblower complaint to the company under investigation has hired a prominent California white-collar attorney for his defense. (The Recorder)
• Revenue surged 20 percent for Crowell & Moring in 2016, and profits per equity partner jumped 40 percent, as the firm came up with several ways to get more money out of the same pool of attorneys, it said. (National Law Journal)
• With media giant Viacom on the cusp of a “new day,” its general counsel Michael Fricklas is leaving the company with “very mixed emotions,” Fricklas said in an email. Fricklas, 56, will stay on for an unspecified period of time as the company identifies his successor, said its CEO in a memo. (BLB)
• Weil Gotshal & Manges has closed its Dubai office, making it the latest firm to either shutter or downsize its Middle East presence. (The Lawyer)
• White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned after just 24 days, brought down by allegations that he had improper contact with Russian officials and lied to Vice President Mike Pence about it. Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates had expressed concerns that Flynn could be blackmailed by Russia. (Bloomberg)
Legal Market
• For the 15 most profitable law firms, 2016 was an improvement over the previous year, but the rest of the legal industry didn’t do so hot, according to a new report from Citi Private Bank. With limp demand growth, it was hard to offset those famous salary hikes for associates, so average growth in profits per equity partner was just decent at 4.1 percent in 2016, down from 2015’s 4.5 percent, it said. (Am Law Daily)
• After five years playing second fiddle, Jones Day displaced Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom as the No. 1 brand in the U.S. legal industry in 2016, according to a new ranking from Acritas. (Yahoo Finance)
• TransPerfect Global Inc. can be auctioned off to settle a dispute between its co-owners, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled Monday in rejecting a challenge to a judge’s decision forcing the sale of the translation-software company. (Bloomberg via BLB)
• “I’m glad it’s over”: Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, former chief executive officer of AIG, discusses his feelings about settling a fraud lawsuit filed almost a dozen years ago by then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Video. (Bloomberg)
• Litigation and other games that drugmakers play to jack up prices. (Bloomberg View)
• Tough federal rules and a series of court rulings have made student-loan debt notoriously difficult to escape, even in bankruptcy. Now, bankruptcy lawyers are filing cases to test strategies that could enable bankrupt clients to get out from under student loan debt or at least better manage their debt. (MarketWatch)
• New York City has allocated $93 million to pay for low-income tenants facing eviction to get legal help. (New York Daily News)
Travel Ban Order
• Seventeen elite universities including Harvard, Yale and Stanford have joined forces to fight President Donald Trump’s ban on travel to the U.S. by refugees and citizens of seven mostly Muslim countries. (Bloomberg) • Trump’s executive order suffered another blow Monday as judges on both coasts issued rulings that will make it even harder for the administration to rescue the beleaguered plan. (Bloomberg)
• Led by pro bono counsel Rene Kathawala, Orrick has created a cloud-based system that allows advocates to track how many people have been or would be barred from entering the United States under Trump’s order. The information could eventually be used as evidence in cases challenging the order or to help guide future policies. (BLB)
• A Q&A on Trump’s travel ban and legal fights over it. (Bloomberg via BLB)
• Opinion: Rudy Giuliani’s comments calling Trump’s immigration order a “Muslim ban” could sink it for good. The Greenberg Traurig partner and former New York mayor has been tied to the order’s fate since he bragged last month about his role in creating it. (Litigation Daily)
• Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly announced 680 arrests in a series of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids targeting undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Chicago, San Antonio, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. (Daily Beast)
• Times are good for immigration lawyers, but, with all that work pouring in, burnout is a risk. (CBSNews.com)
Happening in SCOTUS and Other Courts
• Neil Gorsuch will likely bring sophisticated engagement on IP issues, but his views on patents are mostly unknown. His skepticism about delegating judicial decision-making to executive agencies could mean he will be less willing to endorse certain U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rules. (National Law Journal)
• In a Boston Globe op-ed last week, the deans of Yale Law School and Harvard Law School wrote that Trump’s tweets attacking judges that ruled against his travel ban risk making him “an enemy of the law and the Constitution.” They added their voices to a chorus of lawyers going after Trump for his attacks on the judiciary. (National Law Journal)
• Lawyers for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl asked a judge to dismiss the charges of desertion and misconduct against him, arguing that their client can’t get a fair trial because President Trump has publicly called him a “traitor,” dozens of times. (NPR)
Laterals and Moves
• Sidley Austin has recruited Stephen Cohen, a veteran SEC attorney, as a securities and derivatives enforcement and regulatory partner in Washington, D.C. (Am Law Daily)
Technology
• Legal challenges to the Trump travel ban have lit up Twitter’s community of appellate lawyers, who have made hundreds of posts with the hashtag #appellateTwitter. (Law.com)
• Evaluating lawyers by their win-loss rates in court is an imperfect test at best. Nevertheless, a growing number of legal tech companies offer tools that enable consumers and businesses to analyze lawyers’ litigation track records as part of making more-informed hiring decisions. (Above The Law)
• Disney said it has dropped its affiliation with YouTube’s most popular star, PewDiePie after he posted a series of anti-Semitic videos and messages. The Swedish star, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, had collected 53 million subscribers on YouTube. (TechCrunch)
• A San Francisco-based startup has raised $15 million for its technology for detecting and disarming drones engaging in illegal activity. (Recode)
Compiled by Rick Mitchell and edited by Casey Sullivan.