Wake Up Call: Energy Law Firm to Close Doors

• A 60-attorney Houston-based energy law firm, Burleson LLP, plans to shut all five of its offices by the end of the year, due to a slump in revenues caused by decreasing oil prices, its managing partner said. (Law360)

• A week after a Hogan Lovells associate was killed in the Paris terrorist attacks, Pierre Boivin, an energy and mining partner at Canadian law firm McCarthy Tétrault was among hostages who survived Friday’s hotel attack in Bamako, Mali, a firm spokesperson said. (The American Lawyer)

• University of Virginia School of Law said it has appointed legal historian Risa Goluboff as the first woman to hold the position of dean of the school. She will replace Paul Mahoney, who is returning to the school’s faculty next summer. (National Law Journal)

• LexisNexis, a legal research company, announced Monday that it acquired Lex Machina, a litigation analytics platform, for an undisclosed amount. The deal gives Lex Machina access to LexisNexis’s body of court documents and other legal content ,but it will retain its management structure, name and independence, representatives for the two companies said. (Big Law Business)

Legal Market

• Growth is not always better: a Harvard Business School professor argues that some law firms should be paying more attention to increasing profitability instead of focusing on grabbing market share. (The American Lawyer)

• Federal trial judges don’t have much leeway in sentencing if prosecutors engage mandatory-minimum penalties, but some persuasive judges have managed to win reduced sentences for convicts. (Wall Street Journal)

• After a firm-wide strategic review, Bryan Cave plans to focus on becoming “best in class” in the practice areas of financial services, agribusiness and real estate trust groups, boosting its role as a thought leader and improving diversity and inclusion, the firm said. (The Lawyer)

• Anyone considering representing themselves in court should be able to consult a lawyer for free at least once, according to a recent UK opinion poll. (Legal Futures)

• Tax-inversion pioneer Skadden, Arps, Slate Meagher & Flom advised in the $160 billion merger announced Monday by drug companies Pfizer and Allergan, in which Allergan, the smaller company, was technically the buyer in order to locate the combined entity headquarters in Allergan’s home, Dublin, a low-tax jurisdiction. A look at Skadden and the other five law firms advising on the deal. (Big Law Business)

Technology

• The world’s first“artificially intelligent attorney” is in an expanded pilot phase involving more than 20 big law firms and closer to commercial release than some people realize, says a writer. (Legal Futures)

• A recent report by Trend Micro forecasting IT security risks for 2016 urges companies to prepare for inevitable security breaches and among other things, cites major vulnerabilities on mobile platforms Android and Apple IOS. (LegalTech news)

• Two Florida-based men have filed a class-action lawsuit against some 50 entities with alleged links to daily fantasy sports, including industry leaders DraftKings and FanDuel, but also the NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS and PayPal. (Bleacher Report)

Legal Education

• An unemployed graduate of Florida Coastal School of Law, who has failed the Florida bar exam three times, is seeking the U.S. Supreme Court’s help in getting his nearly $300,000 in law school debt discharged in bankruptcy, with advise from Ropes & Gray LLP in Boston. (Big Law Business/Bloomberg News)

•University of Notre Dame Law School professor G. Robert Blakey, known for his work on federal anti-racketeering laws and investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy Jr. and Martin Luther King Jr.--was recently sanctioned by the DC Bar for advising a former student and then-in-house lawyer at General Electric, to reveal confidential client documents that she thought showed fraud at the company. (National Law Journal)

• Bar exam passage rates for July 2015 fell in California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, likely indicating that student qualifications are deteriorating as applications to schools decline. (National Law Journal)

Miscellaneous

• Bill Simmons, the columnist and podcaster behind the Grantland website, shut down by ESPN last month, signed a dealwith HBO four months ago for a television series. Now it turns out that, in a deal brokered by Michael Sherman of Reed Smith , Eric Weinberger, an NFL Network alum, will head a full-blown media group for Simmons. (The Hollywood Reporter/Reed Smith)

• A private equity fund advisor in the San Francisco Bay Area has agreed to pay a $225,000 settlement to the Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve charges that it failed to disclose conflicts of interest to investors. (The Recorder)

• Lawyers for the family of a Muslim teenager arrested in Texas after the homemade clock he brought to school was mistaken for a bomb are demanding $15 million in damages and an apology from the city of Irving and its schools. (New York Times)

• A Maryland judge has ordered a new trial in a murder case that resulted in a conviction, citing the public defender’s “untenable” load of 88 cases. (Washington Post)