Keep your finger on the legal world's pulse

Stuart Bedford, KPMG’s global head of legal services, predicts that U.S. corporations will increasingly turn to accounting’s Big Four for legal work because these firms' adoption of technology means they are better-placed to handle matters such as huge data sets and multiple contracts. Bedford believes the Big Four can harmonize thousands of legal contracts as part of post-merger integration or help re-orient supply chains in an uncertain tariff environment under the Trump administration. “With the quality of the technology, you can point at those sorts of problems to do large-scale data extraction from unstructured documents,” he said. “Increasingly it means it will move to the Big Four or law company environment.” The Arizona Supreme Court last month decided to delay its decision regarding KPMG Law U.S., a subsidiary of the Big Four accounting firm, which is seeking to operate as a law firm in Arizona. Despite a unanimous recommendation from a high court committee to approve the application, the justices expressed a desire for further review and information gathering. 

 

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Clifford Chance has hired White & Case partner Karalyn Mildorf, who works on national security and trade compliance issues related to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS). The agency vets foreign investments for national security risks. Investigations into foreign investments in the U.S. have spiked since President Donald Trump’s first administration, and the agency has become an increasingly important part of law firms’ cross-border mergers and acquisitions offerings. The hire “strengthens our global offering in M&A matters at a time when foreign trade and investments in the U.S. will come under increasing scrutiny,” Clifford Chance said in a statement.

 

Bloomberg Law

The Global Legal Post reports that Macfarlanes and Linklaters were among six law firms assisting Ferrari Group in launching its €785m initial public offering on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange last week. Macfarlane’s team was led by corporate M&A partner Richard Burrows, with assistance from associates Sanjana Singh and Patrick Bennett, among others. The Linklaters team was led by global head of U.S. capital markets Pam Shores and capital markets partner Alexander Harmse, alongside managing associate Xu Wang and US associate Cassandra Dula.

 

The Global Legal Post

Addleshaw Goddard has announced the opening of its new office in Poland, following the acquisition of Linklaters' 80-lawyer Warsaw team. This strategic move, described by managing partner Andrew Johnston as a “milestone” in the firm's international expansion, aims to enhance AG's service capabilities across Poland, Central and Eastern Europe, and Turkey. The new office, which will be led by Linklaters' Warsaw managing partners Janusz Dzianachowski and Marcin Schulz, marks AG's 20th global location and continues its growth trajectory, having opened seven offices in Continental Europe since 2019.

 

The Global Legal Post

LawFuel

Entrepreneur Charlie Javice is scheduled to stand trial this week over criminal charges she fraudulently induced JPMorgan to buy her company. Javice, 31, is to stand trial on four counts of fraud relating to the $175m sale of Frank, a student financial aid application assistance company she founded when only 24. The case against Javice has been compared to that of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Javice’s legal team has accused JPMorgan of exerting enormous power over prosecutors in its investigation.

 

Financial Times

The Guardian

Phoebe Medeiros, a business development manager at Reed Smith, has filed a lawsuit against the firm in California, claiming it owes her at least $50,000 in unpaid overtime and related costs. Medeiros alleges that the law firm misclassified her as a manager to evade overtime payments.

 

Bloomberg Law

The Securities and Exchange Commission's civil lawsuit against Binance has been halted by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson for 60 days. The decision follows a joint request from both the SEC and Binance. A new SEC task force, led by Republican Commissioner Hester Peirce, is expected to "impact and facilitate the potential resolution of this case." The SEC's lawsuit, filed in June 2023, accuses Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, of inflating trading volumes and misleading investors. The ongoing regulatory landscape is further complicated by President Donald Trump's nomination of Paul Atkins, a crypto-friendly lawyer, to chair the SEC, potentially signalling a shift in the regulatory approach towards cryptocurrencies.

 

Reuters

Uber has filed a lawsuit against DoorDash, accusing its biggest food-delivery rival of anticompetitive practices that jack up costs for restaurants and consumers. In the suit, Uber accuses DoorDash of coercing restaurants to exclusively work with DoorDash for parts of their delivery business. Uber said it filed the suit after hearing from restaurants that felt bullied. Uber added: “DoorDash’s coercive tactics reduce restaurant-customer and consumer choice, resulting in higher prices, lower-quality service, and decreased innovation." In response, DoorDash said the case had no merit and Uber's claims were unfounded and "based on their inability to offer merchants, consumers, or couriers a quality alternative.”

 

The Wall Street Journal

Sony Music Entertainment and Ultra Records LLC have filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging underpayment of songwriter royalties, labelling it a retaliatory action linked to a separate trademark dispute. The lawsuit from Ultra International Music Publishing LLC and Ultra Music Publishing Europe AG is described as an “ill-conceived effort” to “retaliate against defendants” for a separate lawsuit Ultra Records filed against Ultra International, according to Sony's motion to dismiss filed Monday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

 

Bloomberg Law

London-headquartered law firm Linklaters has been testing artificial intelligence (AI) in law exams, aiming to evaluate its capabilities against specialist legal questions. The firm developed the “LinksAI English law benchmark” to assess AI's progress, revealing significant improvements over two years. In 2023, AI systems like GPT-2 and Bard scored poorly, but OpenAI's o1 and Google's Gemini 2.0 have since achieved scores of 6.4 and 6.0, respectively. Despite these advancements, Linklaters cautions that AI still requires human oversight, observing that the systems “are still not always right and lack nuance.” The firm anticipates that AI could reshape legal recruitment, allowing human lawyers to focus on more complex tasks while AI handles routine work.

 

LawFuel

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has introduced new policies that significantly enhance the authority of corporate boards, potentially undermining investor-led reform initiatives. Mark Uyeda, the acting chair of the SEC, has facilitated measures that allow boards to block shareholder resolutions, impose stricter filing requirements on passive funds, and limit investor communications. Ann Lipton, a business law professor at Tulane University, said: "It's a relatively dramatic reallocation of power away from large shareholders back to corporate management." The changes align with the Trump administration's broader agenda, including a skepticism towards environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations.

 

U.S. News

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is seeking access to a heavily guarded IRS system that includes detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the country, according to three people familiar with the activities, sparking alarm within the tax agency. DOGE software engineer Gavin Kliger is set to work at the IRS for 120 days, though the tax agency and the White House can renew his deployment for the same duration. His primary goal at the IRS is to provide engineering assistance and IT modernization consulting. “Waste, fraud and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said. “It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.” Fields added: “DOGE will continue to shine a light on the fraud they uncover as the American people deserve to know what their government has been spending their hard-earned tax dollars on.”

 

ABC News

NBC News

New York Times

Washington Post