Many have long suspected that the legal profession, and so-called "Big Law" in particular, has a liberal lean. A new study looking at Supreme Court amicus briefs supports this suspicion with some of the strongest empirical evidence yet. The study found that firms overwhelmingly choose liberal clients instead of conservative clients when working on pro bono cases before SCOTUS. Legal journalist and Bloomberg Law columnist David Lat says this finding isn't surprising, but what's interesting is thi...
Feb 13, 2024•15 min
Elon Musk was unhappy, to put it mildly, with the ruling last week from a Delaware court that invalidated a $55.8 billion pay package he received from Tesla, his electric car company. Shortly afterward, he threatened to move Tesla's incorporation out of Delaware to a less shareholder-friendly state. But, as we discuss in this episode of our news podcast, On The Merits, doing so will likely just land Musk back in the same Delaware court that's the target of his current ire. Bloomberg Law reporter...
Feb 08, 2024•17 min
November's general election is still nine months away, but the preliminary battles between Republicans and Democrats that will shape this year's Congressional races are about to begin. States will begin to hold congressional primaries starting in early March. And special elections will continue to play out throughout the year, including next week's contest to replace disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-NY). Bloomberg Government's Greg Giroux joins us on this episode of our podcast, On The Mer...
Feb 06, 2024•19 min
The legal industry used to have a stigma against attorneys representing legal malpractice clients who are suing other attorneys. But that stigma, if it still exists, has definitely faded. Data from legal malpractice insurers shows that the dollar amount of these suits has ballooned in recent years. That includes one of the most high profile suits: Elon Musk's claim against the mega-firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz disputing $90 million in fees for work on his Twitter purchase. On this epi...
Jan 30, 2024•13 min
The Republican National Committee's release of an AI-generated ad last year turned a lot of heads among professional campaigners, and it led some of them to say this new tech has no place in political races. But is this stance sensible, or is it another instance of "AI panic" sweeping the culture? Jessica Furst Johnson, an election law attorney with the firm Holtzman Vogel who's worked in Republican politics for years, thinks it's closer to the latter. Johnson joins our podcast, On The Merits, t...
Jan 25, 2024•18 min
John Lewis, the late Congressman and civil rights hero, authored a law in 2007 that tasked the Justice Department with reopening and reinvestigating racially-motivated killings from the Civil Rights era. More than 15 years later, the Justice Department has failed to bring charges in nearly all of the cold cases it has reopened. On our weekly podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Law reporter Ronnie Greene talks about why the DOJ has had such little success prosecuting these cases. Moreover, he says,...
Jan 23, 2024•15 min
Rudy Giuliani and Alex Jones are two high profile examples of instances where losing a defamation case at trial leads a defendant directly into bankruptcy. Christopher Hampson, a law professor at the University of Florida, calls this the "defamation-to-bankruptcy pipeline." However, election-denying former mayors and conspiracy-peddling shock jocks aren't the only ones who might find themselves sucked in. Hampson says damages in defamation cases are becoming increasingly enormous because of the ...
Jan 16, 2024•16 min
Within the legal industry and beyond, many companies are reining in the flexible work policies they implemented during the pandemic. Though this may be beneficial for these companies, Bloomberg Law survey data shows that it's not what many attorneys want—especially female and minority attorneys. More than 90% of female attorneys who responded to Bloomberg Law's latest Workload and Hours Survey said they want to be able to work remotely at least part of the week, compared with just three quarters...
Jan 11, 2024•12 min
Bankruptcy is not something a company wants to go through once, let alone twice. And yet, 2023 saw an uptick in so-called "Chapter 22s"—companies that filed for Chapter 11 a second time. Some repeat filings were due to worse than anticipated business conditions, while two others were due to a court judgment that remained in place after the first bankruptcy. Some bankruptcy attorneys say that, regardless of the reason, if a company files a second time, something had to have gone wrong with the fi...
Jan 10, 2024•13 min
The January 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill was a traumatic event for everyone there, from staffers to dining hall servers, to elected officials themselves. But the ramifications from that day are still reverberating through the halls of Congress and impacting how the body operates. New research shows that Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election have since had significantly fewer Democratic co-sponsors for their bills, even for minor, non-controversial legislation. On this...
Jan 02, 2024•20 min
Data obtained and analyzed by Bloomberg Law show that federal judges and their families are facing an increasing number of violent threats. But the federal agency charged with keeping judges safe doesn't have the tools it needs to face this growing problem. The US Marshals Service has an outdated system for collecting and tracking threats against judges, according to former Marshals Service employees. This makes it harder than it should be to prevent attacks. Lydia Wheeler and Gary Harki, a repo...
Dec 12, 2023•18 min
In the legal profession, admitting one's own cognitive or mental weakness is a huge taboo. That made it all the more remarkable when Richard Bernstein, a sitting Michigan Supreme Court Justice, announced earlier this year that he was temporarily stepping down to seek treatment for depression. Bernstein was already an extraordinary jurist. He was born fully blind, but overcame his disability to not only graduate from law school but go on to be elected a judge. But stepping away from the bench and...
Dec 05, 2023•16 min
The story of baseball's Black Sox scandal, when a group of ballplayers conspired with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series, has been the subject of countless books and articles—not to mention at least two Hollywood movies. But what's now largely forgotten is a subsequent civil trial when one of those ballplayers, the famed "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, dragged his former team to court. However, that trial is forgotten no more with the recent publication of the unabridged court transcripts, once bel...
Nov 28, 2023•17 min
Every new person who moves to Texas—and there are a lot of them—increases demand in the state for water. But Texas' supply of water isn't just failing to keep up with demand, it's actually going down. Climate change-driven droughts are lasting longer, and that's especially painful in Central Texas where both the Austin and San Antonio metro areas are growing at astonishing rates. Earlier this month, Texas voters approved a new $1 billion water infrastructure fund—but even this may only forestall...
Nov 21, 2023•14 min
For farmers in the South, feral hogs are a constant threat to their crops and, thus, their livelihoods. But with the expiration of a federal pilot program to eradicate them, the feral hog invasion has become another skirmish in the broad fiscal battles dominating Washington. One problem: there's not an agreement on what role the federal government should play in solving the invasive hog problem. And that disagreement could have serious impacts as Congress gears up to debate several major agricul...
Nov 14, 2023•17 min
Former crypto titan Sam Bankman-Fried had a bad day on Nov. 2, as he was found guilty on all seven charges of fraud and conspiracy. But, according to Bloomberg Law reporters Matthew Bultman and Daphne Zhang, he can probably expect more bad days to come. Bankman-Fried will face sentencing early next year, where, Bultman reports, former federal prosecutors predict he could receive at least 20 years in prison. Another issue he could face is an inability to pay his attorneys. Zhang reports that Bank...
Nov 07, 2023•17 min
Finding clients is one of the biggest challenges facing mass tort lawyers. But that task has gotten even more challenging for lawyers working on Camp Lejeune, which could end up being one of the largest-ever mass tort cases. Many of these attorneys have been paying firms for the names of people who've been exposed to toxic water at the military base and may be entitled to a government payout. However, in some cases the attorneys later discover that the names and details in the leads are totally ...
Oct 31, 2023•16 min
Nearly three years after the decennial process of redistricting started, ongoing litigation means state or federal political maps are still uncertain in more than a dozen states. While knock down, drag out fights over redistricting are common, that's a lot of maps to still be up in the air this late in the decade. On this special episode of On The Merits, our weekly news podcast, we examine why redrawing these maps has become such a litigious affair and what that means for lawmakers, candidates,...
Oct 24, 2023•19 min
If autoworkers and automakers can't reach a deal, the current strike paralyzing the automotive industry could go on for months, according to Bloomberg Law reporter Ian Kullgren. The big three US automakers are signaling that they're unwilling to make many more—or, perhaps, any more—concessions to the United Autoworkers Union, led by its new firebrand president, Shawn Fain. But Fain shows no signs that he's ready to accept what the three are offering. On this episode of our weekly podcast, On The...
Oct 17, 2023•17 min
A major clash on Capitol Hill ended in an anticlimax, as lawmakers moved at the very last minute to delay a federal funding deadline by several weeks. But it's unclear whether anyone "won" here: Democrats were unable to secure additional aid for Ukraine, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is now in danger of losing his speakership, and the right wing of the Republican party achieved almost none of its goals. On this episode of our weekly podcast, On The Merits, we speak to Bloomberg Government's Jac...
Oct 03, 2023•14 min
Death penalty cases are often adjudicated for years, if not decades, before they reach the Supreme Court. But once they do, the justices must make life-or-death decisions in a relatively quick amount of time. Death penalty cases at the Supreme Court often come through the court's emergency, or "shadow" docket. In recent years, the court's conservatives have handed down rulings that closed off several avenues for capital defendants to get a rehearing of their case, or to even to challenge their m...
Sep 26, 2023•18 min
After his victory over race conscious college admissions policies this summer, anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum wasted no time moving to his next target. Last month, groups led by Blum filed suit against two of the country's largest law firms, arguing the recent high court opinion means their diversity fellowships are now illegal. The suits are already paying off: Within days of filing, two firms changed their criteria for granting fellowships designed to recruit associates from more...
Sep 19, 2023•16 min
The pharmaceutical industry is making some bold constitutional arguments in its attempts to overturn a new law allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with drug makers on prices. The industry says the law, part of the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act, violates the Fifth, Eighth, and even First Amendment rights of companies like Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca, among others. On this episode of our weekly podcast, On The Merits, Celine Castronuovo and David Schultz look...
Sep 12, 2023•18 min
More than a quarter of the nation's federal district courts have never had even one Black judge. That's the takeaway from a new investigation by Bloomberg Law's Tiana Headley and Andrew Satter. In some instances, this reflects the small Black populations within these courts' respective jurisdictions. But that's not the case in places like the Southern District of Georgia, where the region's large Black population has never been tapped for a federal judgeship. On this episode of our weekly news p...
Sep 05, 2023•19 min
The presidential campaign of Ron DeSantis is floundering, if the polls are to be believed. But there's one area where the Republican Governor of Florida is crushing his rivals: donations from big law attorneys. Bloomberg Law reporter Justin Wise combed through the latest campaign finance figures and found that lawyers, especially those at elite firms, are lining up behind DeSantis. The reason? Wise says its because these attorneys don't want Donald Trump to win and think DeSantis has the best sh...
Aug 15, 2023•16 min
The website Shein is known for selling ultra-cheap clothes that could be classified as "designer knockoffs." But faced with a knockoff of itself, the Singapore-based online retailer is calling in the lawyers. Shein says its Chinese rival, Temu, is not just copying it but is violating its copyrights. Temu, for its part, is suing Shein for violating American antitrust laws and monopolizing the niche market for "ultra fast fashion." Bloomberg Law reporter Katie Arcieri joins us on our weekly podcas...
Aug 09, 2023•14 min
The number of accounts trying to sell you stuff on social media keeps growing. According to one report, the influencer economy doubled in just the last four years. But many influencers now find themselves vulnerable to potentially crippling legal risks and they are seeking, albeit grudgingly, to insure those risks. Bloomberg Law's Daphne Zhang found that while the insurance industry is starting to offer products to these social media mavens, the price points aren't aligning with the influencer w...
Aug 01, 2023•17 min
Walmart Inc., The Boeing Co., and Fox Corporation all have watched their boards of directors hauled to court by their own shareholders after headline-grabbing scandals. Such cases of shareholders suing their boards have garnered more attention in recent years. Some say that's indicative of a rise in mismanagement. But others who follow the country's premiere corporate law court point to one man: a judge who is less inclined than his predecessors to dismiss the lawsuits out of hand. On this episo...
Jul 25, 2023•18 min
It's been almost four months since the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit launched an investigation into the fitness for service of one of its own judges, the 96-year-old Pauline Newman. Newman's colleagues believe she is physically and mentally unfit to sit on the bench and that she is refusing to cooperate in their investigation. For her part, Newman denies the accusations and has shown no sign that she's ready to retire from the post she's held for nearly 40 years. On this episode ...
Jul 18, 2023•17 min
A government report from 1993 said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, would likely have to respond to one to two federally declared disasters per year. In just the first half of 2023, there have been around three dozen disasters. Climate change and the increase in extreme weather is putting immense strain on FEMA. And the agency has been pulled into additional crises, like helping ease the burden at the border and administering Covid testing and vaccine sites. It's not clear ...
Jul 12, 2023•19 min
