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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

FLEX AND FLEXIBILITY - Law firms are taking advantage of their newly reestablished leverage over talent to haul folks back to the office for more days each week. But despite adopting attendance policies that are clearly more rigid than those that have been in place for the past three-plus years, many firms are still framing their office work arrangements as "flexible." So has the word simply lost all meaning or is "flexibility" in the eye of the beholder? Analysts told Law.com's Andrew Maloney that while there's probably no bright-line definition of the word in this context, it could also be an effort by firms to appeal to the broad range of workers under their mast, capturing as many of the benefits as possible while still seizing on momentum for more office time. Because the legal profession has had some level of tolerance for remote work for ages, too, any deviation from the pre-COVID norm of five days a week can technically be described as flexible, some observers noted.

ROBO COPS - Several major law firms have expressed concern that a proposed U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule seeking to restrict robo advisers' use of artificial intelligence is overbroad, Law.com's Marianna Wharry reports. The proposed rule aims to address conflicts of interest that occur when broker-dealer and investment advisers use predictive data analytics in investor interactions and would apply when a broker-dealer or investment adviser uses or foresees the use of "covered technology." But attorneys at Morgan Lewis and Sidley Austin have both penned client alerts cautioning that the proposed rule's required policies, procedures, evaluations and reviews, if adopted, would be burdensome and costly for legal departments.

ON THE RADAR - Gurinder Singh Grewal of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius has entered an appearance for City National Bank, a subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada, in a pending civil rights lawsuit over alleged race- and national origin-based discrimination. The complaint was filed June 27 in California Northern District Court by the Law Offices of Bonner & Bonner. The court action accuses the bank of a practice of 'redlining,' or denying loans to Black and Hispanic individuals. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin, is 3:23-cv-03195, Brown v. City National Bank. Stay up on the latest state and federal litigation, as well as the latest corporate deals, with Law.com Radar.   

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