ABA's law school free speech proposal advances, O'Hagan Meyer's growth, judge says Trump's appeal in E. Jean Carroll case is 'frivolous,' and more ??
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The American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted to send the new freedom of expression rule, which would require all law schools to have written free speech policies that protect the exchange of ideas and prohibit disruptive activities, for public notice and comment.
Council member Daniel Thies said that the proposal was born out of concerns over legislative efforts to restrict the teaching of subjects such as critical race theory and worries that controversial speakers may not be able to express their opinions on campus.
"Both of these trends reflect an urgent threat to the training of lawyers," he said.
If adopted, the proposal would be the first law school accreditation standard to address free speech for the entire law school community, though the standards have long covered academic freedom for faculty.
Read more on the proposal:
Just five weeks after it was founded in May, Daugherty Lordan was rocked by the?disclosure?of dozens of racist, sexist, homophobic, and antisemitic emails written by its since-departed founders, John Barber and Jeffrey Ranen.
The firm?changed its name?to Daugherty Lordan, but lawyers began leaving in droves. As of last week, more than half of its attorneys had already joined rival firms, according to a Reuters analysis.
The quick disintegration of the three-month-old law firm became a boon for Chicago-founded O'Hagan Meyer, which supercharged its growth in California and elsewhere with more than 50 lawyers from Daugherty.
Including at least 54 Daugherty Lordan lawyers who joined its ranks, O'Hagan Meyer has more than tripled in size since 2018, when the then-70-lawyer firm was already expanding on the east and west coasts.
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U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan called Donald Trump's appeal to his decision of not dismissing writer E. Jean Carroll's two defamation lawsuits stemming from her claim that he raped her as "frivolous".
He also denied Trump's bid to put Carroll's case on hold while he appeals the?June 29 decision, which found that the former president did not deserve absolute presidential immunity for calling her a liar.
The case is among a slew of legal problems that Trump, 77, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, faces as he seeks another White House term.
These include four separate criminal indictments, including two for attempting to reverse his 2020 election loss.
After U.S. appeals court judge Pauline Newman had sued?her colleagues in May seeking to halt an investigation into her competency as a judge and her refusal to cooperate with the probe, she also asked a judge in June to end a suspension imposed by her colleagues who questioned her mental fitness.
U.S. District Judge Christopher 'Casey' Cooper, who is presiding over the case, directed both parties to?engage in mediation?last month. He appointed Thomas Griffith, a retired judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, to oversee the mediation.
Lawyers for both parties said in a filing that the effort was “unsuccessful” and asked Cooper to set a schedule to resolve Newman’s request for a preliminary injunction ending her suspension.
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