Wake Up Call: Jones Day Partner Leads Walmart Suit Against DOJ

In today’s column, bribery allegations against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton could delay filing of a multistate antitrust suit against Google; Fisher Phillips is fully restoring pay from cuts it made early in the Covid-19 pandemic; the NRA can proceed with part of its “unjust enrichment” lawsuit against Winston & Strawn, a judge ruled.

• Leading off, former U.S. Attorney Karen Hewitt, now Jones Day’s partner-in-charge for California, is leading Walmart Inc.’s suit in Texas federal court against the U.S. Department of Justice, targeting a federal opioid law. (Texas Lawyer)
• Lawyers said Walmart‘s suit against the DOJ is a long shot bid to avoid responsibility for the opioid epidemic. (BLAW)
• Fisher Phillips which in late September ended pay cuts it implemented early in the Covid pandemic, said it will, by the end of October, fully restore pay to lawyers and staff to what they could have expected before the pandemic hit. (Daily Report)
• Even as better-than-expected revenues lead some firms to eliminate Covid pay cuts and restore pay, some firms are still eliminating jobs, as the pandemic continues to cause uncertainty in the legal industry. In a new example, Hogan Lovells Friday said it is laying off nearly 4% of its business services staff in the Americas. (BLAW)
• President Trump’s personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz wrote to anti-Trump Republican group Lincoln Project threatening to sue over its Times Square billboard ads showing images of smiling Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner next to U.S. Covid death statistics in Ivanka Trump’s case and body bags in Kushner’s. (Twitter) (ABC News)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Bribery allegations against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will likely lead to a filing delay for a multistate antitrust suit targeting Google’s control of the advertising technology market, a report says. (Politico)
• Paxton’s office has “sidelined” four of the seven senior aides who made the allegations against him, firing two and putting two on leave. (Texas Tribune)
• Gibson Dunn partner Randy Mastro found the facade of his Manhattan home spray-painted with graffiti targeting his work for residents who are seeking to shut an Upper West Side hotel that houses homeless men. (NBC New York)
• The Trump and Biden campaigns will be ready to turn to Supreme Court litigators if the election prompts a legal dispute like the one that followed the Bush v. Gore election, court watchers say. (BLAW)
• Seattle-based Perkins Coie built up its diversity by striving to have everyone in the firm focused on that goal, says its chief diversity & inclusion officer, Genhi Givings Bailey. (BusinessInsider.com)
• The U.S. Senate took its second-to-final step toward putting Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court. (Bloomberg News via BLAW) The New York City Bar rated Barrett “qualified,” though it expressed reservations about some of her positions. (New York Law Journal)
• A D.C. federal judge allowed part of the National Rifle Association’s “unjust enrichment” lawsuit against Winston & Strawn to proceed. The suit grew out of the leak of a JAMS neutral’s racist email forward to several dozen people, including a Winston lawyer in a case involving the NRA. (National Law Journal)
• Retired Paul, Weiss tax and estates lawyer Mordie Rochlin, who joined the firm in 1937 as an associate, died at 107 years old of respiratory failure related to Covid-19. For several years Rochlin was known as the only man alive who had known all five Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison name partners. (New York Law Journal)
• Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. face the gravest threat yet to their business models after last week’s ruling by an appeals court that they must treat their drivers in California as employees instead of independent contractors. (BLAW)
• Barnes & Thornburg said it relocated its Raleigh, North Carolina, office to a larger and more permanent space as part of the firm’s plan to expand its presence in the so-called Research Triangle market and Carolinas region. (BTLaw.com)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• The lateral market for real estate attorneys, which has been slammed by the pandemic, saw a slight uptick last week. (American Lawyer)
• Clifford Chance named banking and finance lawyer Dauwood Malik to become its new Hong Kong managing partner on Nov. 1. That’s the same date the leader of Clifford Chance’s Asia Pacific capital markets practice, partner Connie Heng, starts as its new Asia Pacific regional practice chief. (Global Legal Post)
• Baker Donelson added restructuring and bankruptcy attorney Melissa A. Campbell in its Orlando office as of counsel. (BakerDonelson.com)
• The co-founder and chief legal officer of home exercise bike company Peloton Interactive Inc., Hisao Kushi, earned over $7.3 million during fiscal 2020. The company, which has added eight lawyers since its IPO last year, has in recent months benefited from increased demand as Covid stay-at-home orders have shuttered U.S. gyms. (BLAW)

Technology

• London-based Ashurst plans to expand the hours that its attorneys spend on so-called NewLaw projects to 10% of their billable time by 2023, according to a report. (The Lawyer)
• Law firms say project management software can help improve transparency and matter tracking, two things that many corporate clients want from them. But a new ABA report finds that not many lawyers are using the tools. (Legaltech News)
• Content Pilot LLC, a legal marketing and tech firm, launched a revised version of its knowledge management platform for law firms: CP Deals and Cases. (MartechSeries.com)