Sheryl Davis is accused of steering millions of dollars to Collective Impact, a San Francisco-based nonprofit she previously ran as executive director, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday by the San Francisco District Attorney's Office.
The legal profession rewards endurance, precision and control. It also quietly normalizes stress, isolation and overextension. For patent practitioners and other IP lawyers, the pressures are uniquely acute: compressed prosecution deadlines, high-stakes litigation exposure, often unrealistic client-driven budget constraints, regulatory whiplash at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and increasingly complex technologies layered with global filing and prosecution strategy.
I'm incredibly proud of the firm and what we've accomplished in the last year. We had certainly, the year before, a historic year financially, and this year was also historic in being one of our best financial years in history.
Criminal accountability is a non-starter between sovereign immunity and the inevitable blanket pardons Trump will issue. The Department has declared "war" on judges invoking contempt powers. And Justice already gutted its internal disciplinary resources. All that's left to deter the rampant ethical violations committed by government lawyers is for local bar licensing authorities to impose discipline.
Judges have repeatedly ruled that federal law allows the president to make only one interim appointment (lasting 120 days) as U.S. Attorney in any given federal district, after which the position may only be filled by a Senate-confirmed nominee or a judicially installed placeholder. That basic of statutory interpretation has led to the disqualification of New Jersey "U.S. Attorney" Alina Habba, Eastern District of Virginia's Lindsey Halligan (no matter what her signature line currently says), Sigal Chattah in Nevada, and Bill Essayli in Southern California.
Lindsey Halligan has finally done the one thing the Department of Justice steadfastly refused to do for months: acknowledge reality. Following an extended farce of legally illiterate cosplay as the "United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia," Halligan had to hang up her wings and tutu as Judge David Novak declared that playtime was over. In an 18-page benchslapping, Judge Novak formally barred Halligan from
Since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, the frequency of court submissions riddled with AI-hallucinated gibberish has increased exponentially. Now, more than three years later, it seems that not a week goes by without a headline about yet another case in which a lawyer has submitted briefs to the court full of AI-hallucinated gibberish.
As a finite supply of business exists in the legal industry, practitioners need to compete against each other. Clients consider many attributes when selecting counsel, including abilities, costs, and the capability to handle a given representation. When a lawyer suffers a health issue, it can create difficulties in maintaining client connection, since clients might believe that they should select other counsel without the same health challenges.
Lawyers and clients often develop years-long relationships during which clients and lawyers cultivate connections that often transcend the traditional attorney-client framework. During this relationship, clients may ask for favors in the form of favorable billing terms or other advantages that the lawyer is uniquely able to provide. Although it is acceptable to perform such favors for clients, lawyers should not do so under the assumption that it will result in additional work.
A mass tort lawyer fired by a Philadelphia law firm has been suspended from practicing law for three years after misleading clients about their cases, according to a story by Legal Newsline. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court imposed the punishment Friday against lawyer Brian McCormick Jr., who represented clients who had sued over the weedkiller Roundup and the antipsychotic drug Risperdal, according to Legal Newsline. The suspension goes into effect Feb. 22.
From law firms to in-house legal teams, the rules of value are being rewritten. The question is: Who's ready to lead the change? In the first episode of 2026 for the UpLevel View podcast, Stephanie Corey and Ken Callander sit down with Rita Gunther McGrath, Columbia Business School professor and Wall Street Journal columnist, to talk about how AI is forcing professional services to price outcomes instead of hours.
