Today's Legal Pulse
Biden sues DOJ to block release of interview audio
President Biden filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the Department of Justice from publishing an audio interview, arguing the release would be improper. The action has sparked political commentary, including remarks from former President Trump.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader clear final merger hurdles
Hong Kong, Shanghai Authorities to Test Blockchain for Cargo Trade Data
Hong Kong’s Monetary Authority, Shanghai’s Data Bureau and the National Technology Innovation Center for Blockchain have signed an MoU to develop a blockchain‑based cross‑border platform for trade data, electronic bills of lading and financing. The effort will build on the HKMA’s Commercial Data Interchange (CDI) and Project CargoX under the 2024 Project Ensemble initiative. Joint research will assess how digitised cargo information can streamline trade finance and reduce manual processing. In parallel, Hong Kong is proposing tax exemptions for digital‑asset holdings to lure investment funds and family offices.
Small Businesses Are Being Regulated Like Corporates. Here’s the Problem.
UK small and medium‑sized enterprises face mounting pressure from new Employment Rights reforms and stricter UK GDPR enforcement, demanding precise contracts, leave records, and audit trails. Most lack dedicated HR teams, relying on informal processes that work for ten‑person outfits...
International Law Firms in the Gulf on High Alert After Weekend Missile Strikes
Missile strikes across the Gulf triggered security alerts for international law firms. Firms like Baker McKenzie and White & Case ordered remote work per local guidance. The incidents disrupted air travel and prompted UK travel advisories. Expansion plans in the...
Live Nation Leads Live Music's $0 Tax Club
Live Nation, along with other major live‑music firms, reported zero federal income tax for 2025 despite record revenues. The tax outcome stems from the 2025 One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which grants 100 % bonus depreciation on new venues, creating...
Build Better Client Relationships and Win a House Deposit, Shoosmiths Tells Lawyers
Shoosmiths has launched a firm‑wide challenge urging lawyers and staff to devise measurable ways to improve client relationships. The top performer will win either a £25,000 house‑deposit contribution or a brand‑new car, with the winner announced in April. Smaller quarterly...
Ropes & Gray's Director of Practice Tech: Firms Struggle With Operationalizing &Lsquo;Good Ideas at Scale'
Theresa Spartichino, director of practice technology at Ropes & Gray, highlighted that many law firms struggle to turn promising legal tech concepts into operational reality at scale. She emphasized the need for robust orchestration platforms that can coordinate end‑to‑end workflows,...
Bailey & Glasser Partner: Biggest Innovation Barrier Is &Lsquo;Speed at Which the Legal Industry Changes'
Katherine Charonko, a partner at Bailey & Glasser and recipient of the Monica Bay Women of Legal Tech Award, says the greatest obstacle to legal innovation is the rapid pace of industry change. She argues that technology solutions often lag...
Streamline AI CEO: Barriers to Legal Innovation Are Cultural, Operational
Streamline AI CEO Kathy Zhu argues that cultural resistance and operational silos are the primary obstacles to legal innovation. She highlights how entrenched mindsets and fragmented processes impede AI adoption in corporate legal departments. Zhu also predicts a shift toward...
Anastasia Boyko on Advisor Mode, Training Lawyers for the Post-Pyramid Firm
Anastasia Boyko, a Yale‑trained tax lawyer and legal futurist, argues that law firms are stuck in precedent‑driven habits while AI reshapes market rules. She urges firms to abandon copy‑cat strategies and adopt intentional, outcome‑focused planning. Boyko warns that in‑house legal...
Is Your Hiring Assessment a Lie Detector in Disguise? It Could Be a Class Action Time Bomb⏰💣
A Massachusetts federal court denied a motion to dismiss a putative class action alleging that a pre‑hire "Workstyle Assessment" functions as an unlawful lie detector. The assessment asked candidates to rate statements on planning, persistence, reliability and emotional awareness, and...
Untitled
Manish Srivastava proposes a minimal digital kernel that provides the essential shared capabilities for an unbundled state to function as a rule‑of‑law machine. The kernel focuses on legibility, reproducibility, and enforceability, allowing other applications, intermediaries, and fulfillment channels to remain...
Board Accountability in Financial Crime Governance
Regulators are redefining board accountability for financial‑crime governance, demanding that directors move beyond passive review to actively interrogate AML, CTF and PF risk assessments. The risk assessment has shifted from a compliance checklist to a core governance instrument that demonstrates...
Daily Mail – All Social Media Users Required to Verify Their Age if the Government Takes Strongest Measures to Ban...
The UK government is considering its most stringent option to ban under‑16s from social media, which would require every user to undergo age verification. Proposed methods include mandatory ID checks, biometric scans, or AI‑based behavioural profiling. Privacy watchdog Big Brother...
First Issue of Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly for 2026
Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly released its first 2026 issue, featuring a collection of scholarly articles on private international law. The issue includes analyses of ship arrest across jurisdictions, enforcement of judgments against wealth structures, and the treatment of...
Europe and UK Chart New Course for Digital Asset Regulation
Luxembourg's CSSF released Version 7 of its digital‑asset FAQ, aligning fund rules with the EU MiCAR framework. UCITS can now gain indirect exposure to crypto assets up to 10% of NAV, while direct exposure remains barred; AIFs may invest directly, with...
How AI Is Rewriting Compliance Governance
AI has moved from back‑office analytics to active participation in financial institutions' daily communications, creating a new class of "aiComms" that fall under regulatory scrutiny. Theta Lake’s latest report shows 99% of firms plan to broaden AI use on unified...
How Governance, Data and Control Failures Are Driving 2025 Penalties
Global enforcement actions plunged 72% in 2025, with total fines shrinking to $5.488 bn, down from $17 bn in the United States alone the prior year. The United States still led with $3.22 bn in penalties, while Europe and Asia‑Pacific saw markedly lower...
Digital Product Passports Are Coming, and 2026 Is When the Real Work Begins
Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are moving from concept to regulatory requirement, with the EU mandating them for textiles by 2029. The 2026 window is critical for brands to build the digital infrastructure needed to capture, validate, and share product‑level data....
Chamelio + UpLevel Ops Offer ‘Forward Deployed’ Model
Chamelio, an AI‑native legal intelligence platform, has teamed up with UpLevel Ops to launch a forward‑deployed service that embeds consulting experts directly within corporate legal departments. The partnership combines Chamelio’s contract‑lifecycle intelligence layer with UpLevel Ops’ workflow redesign, stakeholder alignment,...
FXEM (Empire Markets) Adds UAE CMA Category 5 License
Empire Markets' retail brand FXEM has obtained a UAE Capital Market Authority Category 5 licence, moving from its offshore Mauritius domicile to a regulated presence in the United Arab Emirates. The licence, coveted by many MENA‑focused brokers, enables FXEM to offer...
August’s New Live Assist Lets Lawyers Be Active Listeners – and Active Fact Checkers
August unveiled Live Assist, an AI‑driven tool that operates in real time during depositions, client calls, and witness preparations. The platform listens to spoken dialogue, cross‑references statements against the case record, and surfaces contradictions or missing citations instantly. Lawyers can...
Updated OTC Derivatives Compliance Calendar
ISDA has published an updated global compliance calendar for OTC derivatives, outlining key regulatory deadlines worldwide. The update also includes a Market Practice Note detailing the rebasing methodology for several European inflation indices. Additionally, ISDA provides guidance for EU counterparties...
Chilean National Extradited to U.S. Over Stolen Credit Card Data Trafficking Scheme
A Chilean national, Alex Rodrigo Valenzuela Monje, was extradited to the United States and arraigned in Salt Lake City for operating a Telegram‑based carding marketplace that sold over 26,000 stolen credit‑card records between 2021 and 2023. The indictment alleges he...
The Dead Law Theory: The Perils of Simulated Interpretation
Zachary Catanzaro argues that judges consulting ChatGPT for statutory meaning face a fundamental flaw, not merely a reliability issue. Large language models predict token sequences without true semantic comprehension, making computational legal interpretation a category error. He links this flaw to...
Vibe Coding Lawyers and the New Economics of Legal Tech
The legal‑tech sector is witnessing a surge of senior lawyers building bespoke internal software, a phenomenon dubbed “vibe coding.” This internal‑build wave is compressing the addressable market for external SaaS providers and driving a sharp re‑pricing of legal‑tech valuations from...
Legaltech Suppliers Ramp up Partnerships with AI Developers
Anthropic announced new partnerships with legal‑tech providers Intapp and LexisNexis to embed its Claude chatbot directly into their platforms. The Claude legal plug‑in can automate contract reviews, regulatory compliance checks, and multi‑document formatting, promising speed gains likened to moving from...
Brazilian Ruling Recognises US Name Change
Brazil's Superior Court of Justice (STJ) Corte Especial ruled it could not recognize a U.S. naturalisation but did recognize a foreign judgment changing a Brazilian national’s surname to "Matthew Windsor." The decision relied on the domicile principle in the LINDB...
Four Practical, Data-Backed Steps for Preventing Nuclear Verdicts®
The article presents a data‑driven framework called “The Apex” that outlines four practical steps—personalize the defendant, accept responsibility, give a number, and argue pain and suffering—to curb runaway jury awards known as nuclear verdicts. Analysis of 100 real verdicts shows...
Vietnam Announces National Cybersecurity Firewall Plan Under New Digital Governance Law
Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security announced a national cybersecurity firewall plan, codified in the new Cybersecurity Law that takes effect on July 1, 2026. The law’s Article 10 explicitly directs authorities to study a national firewall, marking the first statutory...
24-594 - Loveless V. Grady County Sheriff's Department Et Al
On February 28, 2026, Judge Jodi W. Dishman entered an order dismissing Loveless’s lawsuit against the Grady County Sheriff’s Department, the District Attorney’s Office, and individual defendants Sifers and Hicks. All claims against the agencies and officials were dismissed with...
JPMorgan, Barclays, Fifth Third Sued by Investors for Missing ‘Giant Red Flags’ at Tricolor
Investors holding more than $230 million of Tricolor asset‑backed securities have sued JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Fifth Third, alleging the banks ignored audit warnings and helped market fraudulent auto‑loan debt. The complaint claims the banks financed, securitized and misrepresented Tricolor’s loan receivables...
Cleary Gottlieb Discusses Delaware Chancery’s Refusal to Dismiss Aiding, Abetting in De-SPAC Transaction
The Delaware Court of Chancery refused to dismiss a claim that Jefferies, the financial advisor to Forum III, aided and abetted fiduciary breaches in a de‑SPAC merger. The court applied the Dole factors, inferring that Jefferies knowingly participated by preparing...
How America’s Power Regions Chose Their Futures and How That Has Played Out
In 1996 FERC issued Order 888 and later Order 2000, prompting a split between regions that adopted organized wholesale markets and those that retained vertically integrated structures. Regions such as PJM, ISO‑NE, NYISO, MISO and CAISO built RTOs/ISOs, delivering billions in annual...
Employee Forced to Express in Storeroom Wins $200k in Compensation, Penalties
The Federal Circuit Court awarded a former UAE consulate employee more than $203,000 after finding the Melbourne office forced her to express breastmilk in a storeroom and treated her poorly. The court upheld her claims of discrimination, adverse action, and...
Left Ignoring Data Privacy as AI Surveillance Bills Loom
Yes but effectively NO ONE on the left is talking about data privacy & the House is abt to go into markup on a package of 19 “child safety” bills that would enact unprecedented levels of mass AI surveillance/fully remove...
AI Training Fair Use: Defining Our Era's Legal Frontier
whether or not fair use applies to training AI is the fundamental legal question of our age. mark my words.
Lawyer Uses Claude Skills, Legal World Loses It
Lawyer Zack Shapiro showcased how he leverages Anthropic’s Claude “Skills” to automate contract review and formatting tasks at his boutique firm. By creating custom instruction files that embed his decade‑long analytical framework, Claude can edit Word documents at the XML...
This Week’s Legal Highlights: Goldstein, Cannon, Netflix, Susman
In the latest Judicial Notice, my weekly legal news roundup: - Tom Goldstein goes all in - Judge Cannon returns to the table - Netflix folds its hand - Susman Godfrey scoops the pot LINK: https://t.co/KKByFMKqoE https://t.co/H6bQgqSmQs
Kirkland & Ellis on the Art of Continuation Vehicle Negotiation
Kirkland & Ellis partners observe that GP‑led continuation vehicles have become increasingly standardized within the secondary market. Yet negotiations still reveal tension as secondary buyers apply M&A‑style rigor while sellers favor more flexible terms. The firm highlights the growing importance...
Federal Judge Calls Out AG for Dangerous Rhetoric
Let the work speak for itself. 60 Minutes was strong tonight. Pelley had a fast turn on Iran. But watch 2nd segment, at least this 110s where a federal Judge speaks truth to power calling out AG and DepAG for...
Anthropic: Biggest
Anyone going to tell him they all did this? “What's ironic, is that there has been no bigger thief of American's public identity information en masse or creators' works than by Anthropic (search for the lawsuits).”
“Trump’s Unilateral Attack on Iran Paves Way for Broader Dispute Over War Powers; Critics Say the President Is Violating the...
President Trump launched a unilateral missile strike against Iran, bypassing any congressional authorization. Legal scholars and constitutional experts argue the move violates the War Powers Clause, sparking a heated debate over executive authority. Democrats, joined by two Republican lawmakers, are...
SB 684-1123 Bypasses SB 9 Owner-Occupancy Limits
Yet more SB 684-1123 projects starting entitlement in Sacramento. In this case, it's being uses to do the exact sort of thing intended by SB 9. Why did it work? Doesn't have the SB 9 owner-occupancy poison pill. https://t.co/mXfsiuKvEJ
Webcast: Facing Claims in the FWC
The Fair Work Commission is seeing a surge in claim filings, putting pressure on HR teams to master increasingly complex dispute processes. HR Daily Premium’s webcast offers a step‑by‑step guide for handling claims from the initial strategic response through to...
Human‑less Companies Inevitable; Regulation Will Always Lag Behind
Zero human companies aren't science fiction They're inevitable We already have: • Autonomous trading bots making millions • AI writing and deploying smart contracts • Agents managing DeFi protocols The infrastructure exists The capability exists The capital exists What's missing is the regulatory framework But regulation always lags innovation By the...
Indonesia: Regulation, Support Platforms Strengthen Child Online Safety
Indonesia is rolling out a two‑pronged strategy to protect minors online, beginning with the enforcement of Government Regulation No. 17 (PP Tunas) in March 2026. The law obliges digital platforms to implement age verification, content filtering and other safety controls. Complementing the regulation,...
TikTok Publishes Latest EU Usage, Enforcement Data
TikTok’s latest EU transparency report shows its monthly active audience in Europe rose to 178 million, an 8‑million jump and a 31% increase since October 2023. The platform removed about 112 million pieces of content between July and December 2025, with automated systems handling...
Transcript and Summary of Webinar on Challenges Facing the OECD Antibribery Convention
Former chairs of the OECD Working Group on Bribery warned that the Convention’s effectiveness is eroding due to the United States’ retreat from vigorous FCPA enforcement, weak EU anti‑corruption directives, and political interference in high‑profile Italian cases. They urged other...
Judge Rules Against Binance in Arbitration Bid for Crypto Token Lawsuits
U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter denied Binance’s bid to compel arbitration for class‑action lawsuits alleging unregistered token sales. The ruling holds that Binance failed to adequately notify users of the 2019 arbitration clause and that the class‑action waiver is ambiguous,...
Crypto Investment Cons Now Run Like Call Centers and the DOJ $580M Haul Shows Where the Money Pools
The Department of Justice’s new crypto‑fraud strike force seized over $580 million in assets within three months, exposing an industrial‑scale fraud ecosystem that operates like a call‑center. These scams use mass texting, scripted trust‑building, fake trading platforms, and layered laundering to...