The U.S. Department of Justice will consider bringing criminal and civil investigations against companies over their diversity, equity and inclusion policies, according to a new memorandum from Attorney General Pam Bondi.
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TOP NEWS

DOJ To Weigh Criminal Action Against Cos. With DEI Policies

By Sarah Jarvis

The U.S. Department of Justice will consider bringing criminal and civil investigations against companies over their diversity, equity and inclusion policies, according to a new memorandum from Attorney General Pam Bondi.

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Trump's Federal Worker Buyout Plan Put On Hold

By Brian Dowling

A Massachusetts federal judge on Thursday put on hold the Trump administration's "deferred resignation" program for federal employees, delaying the deadline for workers to accept the offer until Monday while the court weighs the legality of the move.

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FTC GOP Focusing On Merger 'Friction,' AI, 'Censorship'

By Bryan Koenig

Federal Trade Commission Republicans are beginning to signal their Trump-era policies, including a friendlier approach to mergers with fewer challenges based on "weak or factually unsupported theories," a more hands-off take on artificial intelligence, and a heavy emphasis on combating alleged online censorship of conservatives.

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Bondi Says FCPA Probes Will Focus On Cartels

By Phillip Bantz

The scope of foreign bribery enforcement will be narrowed significantly under the direction of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has said since taking office Wednesday that the Justice Department will concentrate on the "total elimination of cartels and transnational organizations."

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Meta AI Used 'Astonishing' Load Of Pirated Works, Writers Say

By Hailey Konnath

Meta Platforms allegedly downloaded tens of millions of pirated copyrighted works from peer-to-peer networks to train its Llama artificial intelligence product, and its employees repeatedly discussed this "illegal" strategy with lawyers, with one engineer writing, doing so "from a corporate laptop doesn't feel right," according to internal communications unsealed in copyright infringement litigation Wednesday.

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Will NFL Let Kendrick Call Drake A Pedophile At Super Bowl?

By Rachel Scharf

As Kendrick Lamar prepares to take the stage for this Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show, lawyers for the National Football League and Fox Sports must decide whether to censor the lyrics of his viral hit "Not Like Us" while rival rapper Drake wages a defamation war over the song's suggestion that he's a "certified pedophile."

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POLICY & REGULATION

Nippon Says US Steel Deal Aligns With Trump Goals

By Al Barbarino

Nippon Steel said Thursday that its proposed $14.9 billion acquisition of Pennsylvania-based U.S. Steel is in line with President Donald Trump's goals, as the Japanese steelmaker dropped hints of its strategy to get the new administration to approve the deal. 

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Carr Names Project 2025 Co-Author As FCC General Counsel

By Christopher Cole

A Michigan State University law professor and onetime Jones Day litigator known for his involvement in Project 2025 and criticism of Big Tech will serve as the Federal Communications Commission's top lawyer.

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ENFORCEMENT

Brink's To Pay $42M To End Feds' Money Laundering Probes

By Dorothy Atkins

A Brink's Co. subsidiary has agreed to pay a total of $42 million to resolve separate money laundering probes by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the U.S. Department of Justice, which generally accuse Brink's of transporting $800 million in potential illicit cross-border transactions.

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USPTO Suspends Atty For Mishandled China IP Applications

By Greg Lamm

A Seattle attorney faces suspension from handling cases before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after allowing a China-based intellectual property company to file new trademark applications without first reviewing the documents, including allowing the IP service provider to sign the lawyer's name to documents.

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CFPB's Frotman To Depart As General Counsel

By Jon Hill

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's top lawyer is resigning, Law360 has learned, marking the latest high-level exit from the agency following President Donald Trump's firing of its former director Rohit Chopra.

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LITIGATION

UFC Fighters Get Final Approval For $375M Settlement

By Elaine Briseño

A Nevada federal judge granted final approval Thursday to a $375 million settlement in a more than a decade-long class action in which fighters accused UFC of suppressing their wages, according to a lead attorney on the case.

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Block's Dorsey, Others Face Derivative Suit Over AML Woes

By Emilie Ruscoe

Officers and directors of Square and Cash App parent company Block Inc. face a shareholder derivative complaint over alleged anti-money laundering compliance failures weeks after the company reached an $80 million settlement of related claims with state banking regulators.

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Sony Blocked From Axing CBS Deals Amid Game Show Battle

By Hailey Konnath

A California state judge has issued a temporary restraining order blocking Sony Pictures Television from terminating its distribution agreements for popular game shows "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune" with CBS while the pair dukes it out in Los Angeles County Superior Court, according to a minute order.

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SEC 'Exposes Lunacy' Through Its Dueling Suits, PE Firm Says

By Catherine Marfin

A South Carolina private equity fund said Thursday the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is trying to gut it through a Florida lawsuit, telling a Texas judge the commission made "out of touch statements" on how the litigation will harm its business.

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TikTok Moderators Alleging Harm Face Uphill Cert. Battle

By Bonnie Eslinger

A California federal judge suggested on Thursday there might be too many individualized issues to certify a class of thousands of current and former TikTok content moderators in a suit alleging the social media platform is responsible for mental health issues the workers developed after being exposed to graphic content.

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SEC's Dealer Suit May Criminalize Major Investors, Funds Say

By Jessica Corso

The hedge fund industry has urged the Eighth Circuit on to overturn a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission victory against a penny stock trader, arguing that the SEC's case threatens to "make a felon of every institutional investor" by declaring them unregistered securities dealers.

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PEOPLE

SEC Assistant Chief Litigation Counsel Joins Carlton Fields

By Katryna Perera

An assistant chief litigation counsel for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has left the agency to join Carlton Fields as a shareholder in the firm's securities litigation and enforcement practice in Washington, D.C., the firm announced Thursday.

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Nixon Peabody Adds Greenberg Glusker Cannabis Co-Chair

By James Mills

Nixon Peabody LLP is boosting its West Coast litigation team, bringing in a former federal prosecutor, who was most recently the founder and co-chair of the cannabis practice at Greenberg Glusker LLP, as a partner in its Los Angeles office.

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EXPERT ANALYSIS

The Post-Macquarie Securities Fraud-By-Omission Landscape

While the U.S. Supreme Court's 2024 opinion in Macquarie v. Moab distinguished inactionable "pure omissions" from actionable "half-truths," the line between the two concepts in practice is still unclear, presenting challenges for lower courts parsing statements that often fall within the gray area of "misleading by omission," say attorneys at Katten.

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How FTC Consumer Protection May Fare Under Reg Freeze

Attorneys at Crowell & Moring consider how President Donald Trump's executive order directing agencies to freeze all pending rulemaking activity may frustrate any Federal Trade Commission efforts to change or eliminate rules that made it across the finish line before the inauguration.

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Expect Scrutiny Of Banks To Persist, Even Under Trump

Although the change in administrations brings some measure of uncertainty as to the nature of bank compliance oversight, if regulators in Washington, D.C., attempt to dilute the vigilance of federal superintendence, the states are waiting in the wings to fill the void, say attorneys at Polsinelli.

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Foreign Trade Zones Can Help Cos. With Tariff Exposure

Companies navigating shifts in global trade — like the Trump administration’s newly levied tariffs on Chinese goods — should consider whether the U.S. Department of Commerce's poorly understood foreign trade zone program could help reduce their import costs, says James Grogan at FTI Consulting.

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Critical Steps For Navigating Intensified OFAC Enforcement

The largely overlooked SkyGeek settlement from the end of 2024 heralds the arrival of the Office of Foreign Assets Control's long anticipated enhanced enforcement posture and clearly demonstrates the sanctions-compliance benefits of immediately responding to blocked payments, says Jeremy Paner at Hughes Hubbard.

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AI Will Soon Transform The E-Discovery Industrial Complex

Todd Itami at Covington discusses how generative artificial intelligence will reshape the current e-discovery paradigm, replacing the blunt instrument of data handling with a laser scalpel of fully integrated enterprise solutions — after first making e-discovery processes technically and legally harder.

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LEGAL INDUSTRY

BigLaw Firms Saw Double-Digit Profit Growth In 2024

By Aebra Coe

Last year was "one of the strongest years on record" for U.S. law firm financial results, according to Citi Global Wealth at Work Law Firm Group head Gretta Rusanow, with a survey by the bank of mostly large law firms showing a 16.6% increase in profits and a 12.3% increase in revenue over 2023.

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Legal Sector Gains 900 Jobs In January Amid Data Revisions

By Xiumei Dong

The U.S. legal sector started the year with a modest boost, adding 900 jobs in January, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday following the agency's annual employment data revision that also lifted earlier job figures from the past year. 

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Dentons US Names Capital Markets Leader Managing Partner

By Anna Sanders

Dentons tapped capital markets partner and regulatory team leader John Holahan to serve as U.S. managing partner, the firm announced Friday.

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Injury Attys In Hot Water Over Possible AI-Hallucinated Cites

By Lauren Berg

Morgan & Morgan PA and the Goody Law Group on Friday withdrew pretrial motions in a personal injury lawsuit against Walmart over an allegedly defective hoverboard after a Florida federal court ordered the firms to explain why the filings contained what appears to be case law hallucinated by generative artificial intelligence.

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Plaintiffs Lawyers Swarm Los Angeles Post-Fires

By Brandon Lowrey

A deadly wildfire may be among the first covered by a new state fund that reimburses at-fault utility companies. This could mean billions of dollars for plaintiffs lawyers, and, if past fires are any indication, frustration and confusion for some victims.

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4th Circ. Says LeClairRyan Founder May Duck Tax Liability

By Jack Karp

Defunct law firm LeClairRyan PLLC's operating agreement did not bar founder Gary LeClair from jumping ship in time to potentially dodge massive tax bills tied to the firm's collapse, the Fourth Circuit ruled Friday.

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Goldstein's Pro Se Filing Irks Feds Amid Murky Atty Situation

By Elliot Weld

Prosecutors have asked a Maryland federal judge to strike a pro se motion from Tom Goldstein in his tax evasion case, saying the U.S. Supreme Court attorney and SCOTUSblog publisher shouldn't be allowed to personally make arguments to the court when he is represented by several experienced lawyers.

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2nd Circ. Orders In-House Counsel Docs In Grand Jury Case

By Parker Quinlan

The Second Circuit on Friday ruled that an in-house attorney for a publicly traded company under federal investigation in New York must turn over communications as part of a grand jury investigation under the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege.

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Analysis

Del.'s Quiet Ambition To Tweak Chancery, Stem Feared DExit

By Jeff Montgomery

Anxious over claims that stockholder-tilted decisions by Delaware's Court of Chancery will trigger more companies to follow Tesla, SpaceX, Meta and Dropbox to other states, Delaware policymakers are taking a hard look at the venerable business court's processes, hoping to slow a feared rush to DExit.

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DC Prosecutor Axed Jan. 6 Case Against Client, Group Says

By Lauren Berg

A legal group filed a bar complaint in Missouri Thursday against President Donald Trump's top prosecutor in Washington, D.C., saying the attorney violated rules of professional conduct when, in his new government role, he moved to dismiss charges related to the U.S. Capitol attack against his own client.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Aebra Coe and Kevin Penton

Lawyers from Latham & Watkins LLP and Proskauer Rose LLP kick off this week's Law360 Legal Lions, with a jury decision ending a $500 million antitrust lawsuit against their clients, U.S. Soccer and Major League Soccer.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

General counsel will be scrutinizing their companies' DEI policies after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the U.S. Department of Justice to probe and penalize illegal diversity policies in the private and public sectors. Outside the DOJ, legal professionals, including in-house attorneys, reported high job satisfaction in a recent survey, likely leading to lower turnover. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.​

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UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Laura Stewart Liberty

This past week in London has seen Investec Bank PLC sue two diamond tycoons, London florist Nikki Tibbles file a claim against an "imitator company," a direct descendant of the Cartier family launch a claim, and a Coronation Street actor hit footballer Joe Bunney with a defamation claim. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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Law360 Seeks Members For Its 2025 Editorial Boards

Law360 is looking for avid readers of our publications to serve as members of our 2025 editorial advisory boards.

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Promo that reads 2024 Practice Groups of the Year Promo that reads Law360 Pulse In-House Counsel Satisfaction Survey

LAW FIRMS IN TODAY'S NEWS

Addleshaw Goddard

Berger Montague

Bernstein Litowitz

Bird & Bird

Bivonas Law LLP

Boies Schiller

Brozynski & Dalton

Bryan Cave

Cafferty Clobes

Cahill Gordon

Campbell & Williams

Carlton Fields

Carpmaels & Ransford

Clark Hill

Cleary Gottlieb

Clyde & Co

Cohen Milstein

Continental PLLC

Cooley LLP

Covington & Burling

Crowell & Moring

Crowley Fleck

DLA Piper

David Boies

Dentons

DiCello Levitt

Fieldfisher

Fox Williams

Gallivan White

Gentry Locke

Gibson Dunn

Goody Law Group

Grabar Law

Greenberg Glusker

Guerra LLP

Guttman Buschner

Herbert Smith Freehills

Hicks Johnson

Hill Dickinson

Holland & Knight

Hueston Hennigan

Hughes Hubbard

Irwin Mitchell

Jassy Vick

Jones Day

Joseph Saveri Law Firm

Katten Muchin

Kemp Jones

Keoghs LLP

King Holmes Paterno & Soriano

Kirkland & Ellis

Kressin Meador

Latham & Watkins

Lauro & Singer

Lerch Early

Lewis Silkin

McCoy Leavitt

McGuireWoods

Morgan & Morgan

Morgan Lewis

Morvillo Abramowitz

Munger Tolles

Murphy Anderson PLLC

Nixon Peabody

Orrick Herrington

Paul Weiss

Penningtons Manches

Polsinelli PC

Proskauer Rose

Quinn Emanuel

RBG Legal Services Ltd.

RWK Goodman

Reed Smith

Reynolds Porter

Rigrodsky Law

Ropes & Gray

Sheppard Mullin

Sidley Austin

Simmons & Simmons

Skadden Arps

Steven Williams Law

Stevens & Bolton

Susman Godfrey

Tavenner & Beran PLC

Theodora Oringher

Tostrud Law Group

Troutman

Umberg & Zipser

Ventura Hersey

Walker Morris LLP

Warner Angle

Weil Gotshal

Willenken LLP

WilmerHale

Withersworldwide

Womble Bond

COMPANIES IN TODAY'S NEWS

Acadia Pharmaceuticals

AccuWeather Inc.

Amazon.com Inc.

American Airlines Group Inc.

American Bar Association

American Federation of Government Employees

American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations

American Federation of State County & Municipal Employees

Amgen Inc.

Argo Group International Holdings Ltd.

Atos SE

Atrium Staffing Services Ltd.

Ballard Partners Inc.

Barclays PLC

Bibby Financial Services Ltd.

Block Inc.

Blue Cross Blue Shield Association

Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.

ByteDance Ltd.

CBS Corp.

California Earthquake Authority

Canon Inc.

Cartier SA

Cash App

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc.

Conference of State Bank Supervisors

Credit Suisse Group AG

Dell Technologies Inc.

Democracy Forward Foundation

E-House (China) Holdings Ltd.

Exxon Mobil Corp.

FTI Consulting Inc.

Fordham University

Fox Corp.

George Washington University

Globant SA

Google LLC

Hatch Henderson Fivel LLC

Horizon Therapeutics PLC

Howden Broking Group Ltd.

IDEX Corp.

Instagram Inc.

Investec PLC

Jetson Electric Bikes LLC

LexisNexis Legal & Professional

LinkedIn Corp.

London Stock Exchange Group PLC

Longford Capital Management LP

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

MGA Entertainment Inc.

Macquarie Group Ltd.

Macquarie Infrastructure Corp.

Major League Soccer LLC

Major Lindsey & Africa LLC

Managed Funds Association

McKinsey & Co. Inc.

Mediterranean Shipping Co. SA

Meta Platforms Inc.

Michigan State University

Moelis & Co.

MoneyGram International Inc.

NFL Enterprises LLC

NICE Ltd.

NICE inContact

National Association of Government Employees

Netflix Inc.

Neurocrine Biosciences Inc.

New York Law School

PG&E Corp.

Palantir Technologies Inc.

Pershing Square Capital Management LP

Public Citizen Inc.

Purdue Pharma LP

RELX PLC

Robert Half Inc.

Rutter's Holdings Inc.

Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.

Southern California Edison Co.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

State Bar of California

Station Casinos LLC

TUI AG

Tempur Sealy International Inc.

Tesla Inc.

The Florida Bar

The PNC Financial Services Group Inc.

TikTok Inc.

Toyota Motor Corp.

TripAdvisor Inc.

Twitter Inc.

Ultimate Fighting Championship Ltd.

United Policyholders

United Steelworkers

UnitedLex Corp.

Universal Music Group NV

University of Virginia

Walmart Inc.

Wells Fargo & Co.

YouTube Inc.

GOVERNMENT AGENCIES IN TODAY'S NEWS

Australian Securities and Investments Commission

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States

Congressional Research Service

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Executive Office of the President

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Federal Communications Commission

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Federal Trade Commission

Financial Conduct Authority

Financial Crimes Enforcement Network

Foreign-Trade Zones Board

Information Commissioner's Office

Internal Revenue Service

National Labor Relations Board

National Telecommunications and Information Administration

New York Attorney General's Office

Office of Foreign Assets Control

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Office of the Federal Register

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

U.S. Army

U.S. Attorney's Office

U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland

U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California

U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

U.S. Department of Commerce

U.S. Department of Justice

U.S. Department of Labor

U.S. Department of the Treasury

U.S. District Court for the Central District of California

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland

U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington

U.S. Office of Personnel Management

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

U.S. Supreme Court

UK High Court

United States District Court for the District of Nevada

United States District Court for the District of Wyoming