• Latham & Watkins has started a breast milk-shipping program to help the firm’s working mothers when they have to travel, in what Latham calls a first for a law firm. (Law.com)
• U.K. firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer said it has banned “Dear Sirs” salutations from its communications and legal documents, replacing it with “gender neutral” phrases across its global network. (The Lawyer)
• A Swedish appeals court Friday upheld the arrest warrant on rape charges for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been living in Ecuador’s London embassy since 2012 and also faces a U.S. criminal investigation into Wikileaks. (Reuters)
• Top law firms implementing high salaries for first-year associates risk losing business to lower-tier firms who can afford to charge lower rates, said Michael Ray, chief legal officer of Western Digital Corporation. (Big Law Business)
• A litigation services and software company said it has built the first U.S. “integrated pop-up electronic courtroom“ for paperless trials in Miami, and said a similar electronic courtroom will open in New York this month. (Legaltech News)
Legal Market
• Morgan, Lewis & Bockius has settled a suit with a former partner who left amidst allegations that he shared confidential information with the plaintiff in an intellectual property case against the firm’s client, Apple Computers. (Legal Intelligencer)
• McDermott Will & Emery elected the Miami corporate lawyer Ira J. Coleman as chairman of the firm, to take over from current co-chairmen Jeffrey E. Stone and Peter J. Sacripanti, effective, Jan. 1. (Big Law Business)
• The lawyer who filed a class-action that Chadbourne & Parke of gender discrimination penned an open letter to 14 female Chadbourne partners who claim he failed to ever contact them. (Big Law Business)
• BlackRock Inc., the world’s biggest money manager, is joining a growing list of investors lining up to sue Volkswagen AG over repercussions linked to VW’s admission to cheating emissions tests for as many as 11 million diesel cars. (Bloomberg)
• Deutsche Bank AG said the U.S. Justice Department is seeking $14 billion from it to settle civil claims related to the sale of residential mortgage-backed securities, it “has no intent” to pay anywhere near that amount. (Bloomberg)
• Legal departments worry most about contract disputes, labor and employment claims and regulatory investigations, according to Norton Rose Fulbright’s recent survey of in-house lawyers at 606 companies around the world. (Law.com)
• Harry First, a professor at NYU School of Law, and Jennifer Rie, a senior litigation analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, discuss the antitrust implications of the $66 billion Bayer-Monsanto deal. (Bloomberg Radio/Big Law Business)
• Chrysler is facing two new U.S. lawsuits by drivers injured when their vehicles rolled over them, in a defect linked to the death of “Star Trek” actor Anton Yelchin. A dozen drivers have filed economic damage class-actions. (National Law Journal)
• Whistleblowers who only report corporate misconduct internally or to a federal agency other than the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission should still qualify for broad anti-retaliation protections, a lawyer for the SEC told a federal appeals court in a case involving an ex-Morgan Stanley broker. (National Law Journal)
• Attorneys from Weil, Gotshal & Manges and two other firms are advising in the Chapter 11 case of Texas-based golf retailer Golfsmith International Holdings Inc., filed in Wilmington, Delaware. (American Lawyer)
• At least three plaintiffs law firms are considering shareholder litigation against Fox News parent company 21st Century Fox alleging investor harm stemming from the Roger Ailes sexual harassment scandal. (Bloomberg)
• Former Miami Dolphins Coach James Turner’s appeal to reinstate his libel and defamation suit against Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and partner Theodore Wells; plus Jones Day’s suit against a commercial contractor over “aesthetics” of wood panels installed in its office; and 15 other cases from the BLB Docket Scanner. (Big Law Business)
SCOTUS and Other Court Rulings
• New York’s highest court on Thursday issued a one-sentence rejection of Facebook Inc.’s bid to revive its two-year-old attorney deceit claims against three law firms that once represented Paul Ceglia, the now-fugitive who claimed an 84 percent ownership stake in the social media giant. (New York Law Journal)
• Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she wouldn’t be bound by President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court if she takes office in January with the seat still unfilled. (Bloomberg/Big Law Business)
• The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday voted to approve President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Florence Pan to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Pan, a Chinese-American, would be the first Asian Pacific-American woman to serve on court, if the full Senate confirms her. (National Law Journal)
• In a divided vote, the committee also greenlighted the nomination of U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but her nomination stands little chance of getting a full Senate vote any time soon. (The Recorder)
• Donald Trump’s lawyer failed to persuade a federal judge to postpone a Nov. 28 trial in which the Republican presidential nominee is to face former students in his real-estate seminars who claim they were cheated. (Bloomberg)
• A federal judge in Washington, D.C. ruled Thursday that one negligence claim filed by families of victims killed in a 2013 mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard can go forward, but she denied others. The case is against government contractors who employed the shooter. (National Law Journal)
Laterals and Moves
• New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office has picked Shearman & Sterling antitrust global co-head Beau Buffier as its new antitrust bureau chief. (New York Law Journal)
• U.K. firm Ashurst faced mounting exits in Singapore, as its current managing partner followed his predecessor, who had left for PwC, out the door. (The Lawyer)
Technology
• In a discovery fight ahead of a Friday hearing, Pacific Investment Management Co. is alleging that its co-founder Bill Gross leaked confidential pay information and may have destroyed documents in violation of court rules. (Bloomberg)
• The U.K.’s spy agency is working on plans for a national system to block malicious websites through a filtering technique that has been prone to errors. (Forbes)
• Now that Samsung Electronics Co. has officially recalled 1 million Galaxy Note 7 smartphones sold in the U.S., due to fire-prone batteries, the company can focus on the tough job of restoring public trust. (Bloomberg)
• With Oliver Stone’s new sympathetic movie about Edward Snowden coming out, a new congressional report charges that former NSA contractor caused “tremendous damage to national security” by revealing “secrets that protect American troops overseas and secrets that provide vital defenses against terrorists and nation-states.” (Bloomberg)
• Virtual reality is transforming the sports industry. (TechCrunch)
• Rival document proofreading and review companies, Microsystems and XRef Software Solutions, said they are merging to better serve a fast-growing market. (Legaltech News)
• A new report by the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general concludes that a Seattle-based FBI agent didn’t violate existing agency policy when he claimed in a 2007 email to be an Associated Press reporter, as part of an investigation of bomb threats. (WSJ Law Blog)
Legal Education
• Ex-U.C. Berkeley Law School Dean Sujit Choudhry filed a federal lawsuit Thursday that accuses the university’s governing board of making him “a pariah” and discriminating based on his race, in the wake of a scandal in which his assistant accused him of inappropriate hugging and kissing. (Big Law Business)
Compiled by Rick Mitchell and edited by Gabe Friedman.