If the Supreme Court rules later this year that pharmaceutical sales representatives are exempt from overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the high court could knock out class action wage-and-hour claims pending against a half-dozen major drug companies. But Novartis and its lawyers at Cravath apparently weren't willing to gamble that the Justices would see things the drug companies' way.

Nearly 50 amicus briefs have piled up arguing for and against corporate liability for overseas human rights violations, as Quinn Emanuel's Kathleen Sullivan prepares to argue for Royal Dutch Shell in the first case of the new U.S. Supreme Court term.