Tag: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

* According to recently released tax records, a mystery donor gave more than $28 million to the Wellspring Committee to keep Justice Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat in Republican hands and help get Neil Gorsuch confirmed. How awesome would it be if that mystery donor were the president himself? [Law Newz]

* The DOJ says Trump can appoint the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Federal Vacancies Act, but the Dodd-Frank Act says the deputy director will head the agency in the absence of a permanent director. Now we have two dueling CFPB directors, AND there’s a lawsuit. Yay! [The Hill; CNN]

* FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel is so against Chairman Ajit Pai’s “lousy plan” to do away with net neutrality that she wrote an op-ed to plead for help: “I’m on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality.” She encourages us to “make a ruckus” about this — and we really, really should. [Los Angeles Times]

* The layoffs are coming! The layoffs are coming! Along with Sedgwick’s announcement that the faltering firm intends to close its doors in early 2018 comes the news that it will shutter its back office operations center. Up to 75 people are expected to lose their jobs. It’ll be a not-so happy New Year. [American Lawyer]

* Start placing your bets: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in New Jersey’s sports betting case next week, and is expected to issue a ruling in June. What’s the over/under on the high court overturning the federal ban on sports betting? Come on, SCOTUS, make Atlantic City great again! [NJ.com]

* Representative John Conyers Jr. will be stepping down from his platoon as the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee during an investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed his former aides. Even though a settlement was made in 2015, Conyers continues to deny the allegations. [New York Times]

* The InfiLaw System has been lowering the bar for minority law students for years and years and dooming them to hundreds of thousands of dollars of nondischargeable loan debt, and the man who started it all seems relatively disappointed with what’s happened and the awful outcomes students have seen. [Wall Street Journal]

* “I think when it’s all said and done, what you’re gonna see is there was nothing racial that motivated this.” The lawyer representing the white University of Hartford student who smeared period blood all over her black roommate’s things to get her to move out doesn’t think his client should be charged with a hate crime. [Hartford Courant]

* Fresh off his six-month stint as White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus will be returning to Am Law 200 firm Michael Best and Friedrich, where he’ll serve as president and chief strategist. He’ll lead the firm’s government affairs practice group, and he plans to help clients with their Trump problems. Best of luck, those clients might need it. [POLITICO]

* Sorry, consumers, but the Senate had to call in VP Mike Pence in the middle of the night to kill the the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule banning mandatory arbitration clauses in credit card and checking account agreements. Damn all those “frivolous lawsuits by special interest trial lawyers”! [The Two-Way / NPR]

* Author John Grisham was inspired to write his latest novel, The Rooster Bar (affiliate link), after reading an article in The Atlantic by Paul Campos about for-profit law schools and the student loan crisis. Well, at least someone is going to make some money after learning about a for-profit law school. [CBS News]

* Biglaw firms are trying to reduce the amount of their leased square footage. According to the CBRE Group, on average between the first quarter of 2016 and the second quarter of 2017, firms in 26 markets were able to shrink their office space by about 27 percent. But did their headcount shrink along with it? [Wall Street Journal]

* Major lateral hire alert: Paul Basta left Kirkland & Ellis this summer, and now he’s landed at Paul Weiss, where he’ll be working as the co-chair of the firm’s corporate restructuring practice. Alan Kornberg, the practice group’s current chair, called Basta’s arrival at the firm “sort of a dream come true in a way.” [Big Law Business]

* According to a study conducted by Professor Carlos Berdejó of Loyola Law School, prosecutors tend to give white defendants better plea deals than black defendants. We needed a study to confirm that some prosecutors discriminate based on race? [Slate]