• After nearly four months, the criminal fraud trial of three former Dewey & LeBoeuf executives in New York City has finally gone to the jury for deliberations. Acting Supreme Court Justice Robert Stolz rejected a request by defense lawyers seeking a mistrial following the prosecution’s summation. (American Lawyer)
• The jury of seven women and five men took less than half an hour after deliberations began to send out its first note requesting information about evidence presented during the trial in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. (New York Times)
• Carey Gabay, the New York state government lawyer who last week was shot in the head by a stray bullet from a gang shootout, died on Wednesday, according to a family friend. (New York Times)
• Lawyers have traditionally used jury consultants to test arguments and evaluate juries, but today law firms are increasingly turning to online survey companies for a much cheaper, faster option to get the same information. (Fortune)
Legal Market
• After suffering several years of volatility following the financial crisis, New York City’s real estate law industry is making a comeback, benefiting from a boom that has generated legal work from financings to land use issues to development deals. (The Real Deal)
• A federal judge in Washington Monday ruled that Mayer Brown is not entitled to legal fees stemming from its representation of lobbyists in a suit challenging the Obama administration’s ban on lobbyists serving on federal agency advisory committees. (LegalTimes)
• UK law firm Ashurst said it has a new international strategy focused on growing key areas such as finance and infrastructure. In particular, the firm plans to emphasize its Hong Kong capital markets practice, where it recently appointed equity capital markets partner Lina Lee as managing partner for the region. Another goal is to build a global platform for working on major infrastructure deals, it said. (The Lawyer)
• The National CASA Association, which trains volunteers to advocate on behalf of at-risk children, announced Monday that it had received the largest donation in its 38-year history–$1 million from the 550-lawyer Florida-based law firm Akerman, which will also provide pro bono legal services to CASA. The association said it plans to use its arrangement with Akerman as a prototype to get other law firms to help out with its cause as national legal partners. (Big Law Business)
Laterals and Moves
• O’Melveny & Myers Wednesday acquired Ropes & Gray corporate partner Scott Elliott as co-head of the firm’s life sciences practices, based in San Francisco. Elliot said the acquisition is part of the firm’s expansion in Northern California. (The Recorder)
Technology
• Reed Smith recently launched a blog for its new financial tech practice group. As corporate law departments have started more aggressively shopping for legal services, and using multiple law firms, blogs have emerged as a crucial tool for individual lawyers and practice groups to distinguish themselves from competitors and position themselves as experts within a specific area. (Big Law Business)
• Cyberinsurance can offer a second line of defense against attacks, but can sometimes create new problems. Only 10 percent of companies have cyberinsurance today, but with awareness growing of an “explosion” of cyber attacks, the market could see double-digit yearly growth to reach over $20 billion in the next decade. (LegalTech news)
• New York City’s Law Department has created an electronic discovery group aimed at helping the agency’s litigators to deal with an increasing need to preserve and produce electronic evidence. (New York Law Journal)
Legal Education
• A federal judge in Nevada threw out a lawsuit by a 74-year-old man who alleged that the Florida Coastal School of Law wrongfully refused him admission to the school on the basis of a defective examination. Judge Gloria Navarro of the U.S. District Court of the District of Nevada ruled that the plaintiff failed to prove he suffered losses over the minimum of $75,000–the threshold for the court to have jurisdiction. (National Law Journal)
Miscellaneous
• The Securities and Exchange Commission is fighting in two Manhattan courtrooms to preserve how it picks in-house hearing officers. If it loses those cases, an untold number of earlier rulings in SEC enforcement cases — and thousands in other branches of government — could be called into question. (Bloomberg News)
• UK lawyers say surging property prices and second marriages are contributing to a soaring number of will disputes in families. (Financial Times)
• Attorneys from Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein Wednesday filed a putative class action case in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington alleging that Microsoft Corp. discriminates against female employees in technical and engineering jobs. (The Recorder)
• The pervasive problem of implicit bias at law firms can taint merit-based evaluations and prevent Big Law from retaining and promoting its best lawyers, writes Eli Wald, who is Charles W. Delaney Jr. Professor of Law at University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Wald argues that Big Law firms should implement awareness and training programs to reduce the harmful impacts of implicit bias. (Big Law Business)
• London Magic Circle firms Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters are heading legal work on Anheuser-Busch (AB) InBev’s proposed merger with SABMiller, which could create a mega-beer company valued at some $232.4 billion. Freshfields partners are advising AB InBev, while Linklaters is working with SABMiller. (The Lawyer)