Wake Up Call: Yale Law’s Diversity Drops Post-Affirmative Action

Welcome to Bloomberg Law’s Wake Up Call, a daily rundown of the top news for lawyers, law firms, and in-house counsel.

• The Yale Law School class of 2027, the first class admitted post-affirmative action, saw its share of students of color decrease by 7% from the previous year’s class. The class of 2027 is composed of approximately 50% students of color, the lowest since 2022 and coming after an eight-year trend of increasing racial diversity. (Yale Daily News)
• Matthew Taylor Morris, a Virginia lawyer, has been temporarily suspended for his role in a conspiracy to distribute large amounts of marijuana. Morris pleaded guilty to allowing co-conspirators to store 1,000 pounds of marijuana and cash at his Virginia Beach law firm, the Top Tier Law Group. (ABA Journal)
• Of the 26 states who reported their July bar results last week,18 posted higher overall pass rates than in July of last year, with 10 states seeing improvements of at least five percentage points. Florida, the largest state of the group, saw its pass rate increase from 61% to 65%. (Reuters)

Laterals, Moves, In-House

• Brian Kelly joined Greenberg Traurig as a shareholder in its labor and employment practice in San Francisco. He joins from WeWork.
• Sonia Campbell joined Covington & Burling as a partner in its global insurance recovery practice in London.
• Peter Bosman joined Baker Donelson as a financial services transactions shareholder in Raleigh, N.C.
• Sidharth “Sid” Kapoor joined Pierson Ferdinand as a partner in its intellectual property practice in Palo Alto, Calif.