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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

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TACTICS - Pepper Hamilton faces possible sanctions over its failure to turn over records stemming from a 2015 investigation into sexual assault at Baylor University. Angela Morris reports that U.S. District Judge Robert Pittman, presiding over a Title IX lawsuit, said that the law firm, which investigated issues in a 2016 report that found administrators responded inadequately to female students' allegations that Baylor football players sexually assaulted them, keeps making the case longer, more burdensome and expensive by filing objections to his order to turn over the documents. A hearing is set for June 17.

PEACHY - Shook Hardy & Bacon has opened an Atlanta office with three product liability defense partners from Alston & Bird. Meredith Hobbs reports that Colin Kelly, who's heading the office, Josh Becker and Anna Sumner Pieschel are jumping to the Am Law 200 litigation-focused firm, which has about 500 lawyers. With $348.1 million in revenue and $918,000 in average profits per equity partner last year, the firm, founded in Kansas City, Mo., now has 14 offices.

SUBPOENA SPAT: Lawyers for President Trump late Monday asked the D.C. Circuit to invalidate a U.S. House committee subpoena seeking financial records from Trump's long-time accounting firm Mazars USA. Trump's attorneys—including William Consovoy of the Washington boutique Consovoy McCarthy—contend the subpoena, upheld in May by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, is not related to any “legitimate” legislative task of Congress. Meanwhile, lawyers for the House have announced they are appealing a judge's decision last week denying a preliminary injunction over funding for Trump's border-wall. That case will unfold in the D.C. Circuit simultaneously with the subpoena fight.


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EDITOR'S PICKS

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Big Law Supreme Court Veterans Land 5 New Cases for Next Term

Barnes Sues Cellino over Trademark Rights


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WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

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HOLA - Publicly held U.K.-based law firm DWF has formed an exclusive association with a 40-partner Spanish law firm Rousaud Costas Duranconsists. Krishnan Nair reports that the law firm, which has offices in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, focuses on corporate law, tax, insurance, financial services, real estate and energy. DWF has stepped up its acquisition efforts since it went public in March. Last month, it bolted on the Warsaw office of K&L Gates.


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WHAT YOU SAID

“Did anyone call me and say, 'Hugh can we talk to you about the law school? Can we talk to you about your personality? We think you're an asshole.' No. Nothing. I had not a word.”

—  HUGH F. CULVERHOUSE JR., A FLORIDA LAWYER, WHOSE GIFT OF $21.5 MILLION TO THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA SCHOOL OF LAW WAS RETURNED AFTER UNIVERSITY OFFICIALS SAID AN  EXTENDED DISAGREEMENT WITH CULVERHOUSE PROMPTED THE RETURN. CULVERHOUSE MAINTAINS IT WAS HIS OPPOSITION TO THE STATE'S ABORTION RIGHTS THAT LED TO THE RETURN OF THE DONATION.

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