Wake Up Call: U.S. Attorney Liu Out as Trump Pick for Justice Dept. No. 3

• U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jessie Liu, withdrew as President Donald Trump’s pick to be the Justice Department’s No. 3 attorney, because her membership 12 years ago in the National Association of Women Lawyers is raising Republican hackles, according to reports. Liu, a former litigation partner at Morrison Foerster and Jenner & Block, would have been in charge of DOJ civil litigation, but won’t get the job because Republican senators were concerned about her membership in the group, especially its support for abortion rights and opposition to the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. (WaPo)

• Wells Fargo & Co. CEO Tim Sloan stepped down effective immediately amid mounting pressure over the lender’s scandals, and will be replaced on an interim basis by the bank’s general counsel, C. Allen Parker. Parker was previously presiding partner at Wall Street elite firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. (BN via BLAW)

• Fashion retailer J. Crew has hired restructuring lawyers from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the firm which has managed Sears Holdings Corporation’s bankruptcy and which J. Crew used for help with previous debt problems, according to a report. (CNBC)

• The London legal world is abuzz at news that top U.S. law firms Kirkland & Ellis, Davis Polk & Wardwell, Skadden, and others have been supplanted atop the U.K.'s mergers & acquisitions rankings, by elite U.K. firms Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Slaughter and May, Herbert Smith Freehills, and others. (American Lawyer)

• Trump’s planned pick to fill the long vacant job of GC at the Federal Labor Relations Authority, the agency that protects federal government workers’ union rights, is Catherine Bird, a Department of Health and Human Services lawyer. Bird, who oversees negotiations with the department’s employee union, is among a group of officials accused of violating HHS employees’ labor rights. (BLAW)

• New York is suing Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family, accusing them of systematic fraud in the opioid crisis. (BN)

• Baker Botts hired former top Justice Department environmental lawyer Jeffrey Wood as a partner in Texas. (Texas Lawyer)

• Robert Mueller’s still-secret report with evidence and findings from his Russia investigation spans more than 300 pages, a Justice Department spokeswoman said. (BN via BLAW)

• The biggest U.S. law firms still do better than corporate America at supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer employees, but fewer firms got perfect scores in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2019 Corporate Equality Index. (American Lawyer)

Lawyers, Law Firms, Deals

• Gibson Dunn’s corporate chair in London, Charlie Geffen, plans to step down and leave the firm’s partnership this summer, according to a report. (The Lawyer)

• The Hollywood Reporter recently surveyed what it called Hollywood’s 100 best lawyers for 2019. (Hollywood Reporter)

• Med tech company Stryker hired Johnson & Johnson’s vice president for litigation Rob Fletcher as vice president and chief legal officer, effective April 22. (Corporate Counsel)

• A black lawyer with Maryland Legal Aid, Rashad James, says in a complaint that he was detained in a county court by a deputy sheriff who did not believe he was a lawyer. (NYT)

Laterals, Moves, Promotions

• DLA Piper said banking and capital markets lawyer Conor Houlihan joined the firm’s newly opened Dublin office as head of the finance practice in Ireland, arriving from Irish firm Dillon Eustace, where he had been a partner since 2006. (DLAPiper.com)

• Bressler, Amery & Ross, P.C. said insurance litigator Cassandra Spring joined the firm’s Miami office as an associate in its insurance group. (Bressler.com)

Legal Actions, Bankruptcies, Decisions

• Big Four accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has to face an age bias class action, a San Francisco federal judge ruled. (The Recorder)

• Philadelphia-based Pepper Hamilton must turn over records related to its investigation for Baylor University about how the school inadequately responded to sexual assault allegations by students, a Texas federal judge ordered. (Texas Lawyer)

• The New York Supreme Court Appellate Division, First Department, yesterday reversed an approximately $1.8 million asbestos-related verdict against Caterpillar, Inc., advised by Holwell Shuster & Goldberg, finding the plaintiff failed to prove his cancer was caused by exposure to Caterpillar fork lifts. (Corazza v Amchem Prods., Inc., N.Y. App. Div., No. 190028/14, 03/28/19) (Justia.com)

• A female sports reporter has hired a famous lawyer after a Bulgarian heavyweight boxing champion used force to kiss her on the lips while she was on the air. (New York Post)

Technology

• E-signature company DocuSign said it is investing $15 million into legal tech company Seal Software, which makes an artificial intelligence-based contract analytics and discovery tool. That means Seal Software has raised about $58 million, according to reports. (Legaltech News) (Artificial Lawyer)

Legal Education

• Fordham University School of Law said Pamela Chen, federal District Court Judge in the Eastern District of New York, will serve as the graduation speaker at the school’s 112th diploma ceremony May 20. Nominated by President Barack Obama, Chen is the first openly gay Asian-American federal judge and the second Chinese American female federal district court judge, Fordham said. (Fordham.edu)