Bannon faces sentencing, bar exam pass rates rise in NY and drop in Florida, ex-NYU dean joins Kaplan, Lanier opens new UK law firm
Reuters Legal
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Steve Bannon, a prominent figure on the American right who served as a senior strategist for former President Donald Trump, is set to be sentenced on Friday after being convicted in July on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from lawmakers investigating last year's U.S. Capitol attack.
A jury of eight men and four women?convicted Bannon?after just three hours of deliberations for refusing to testify or provide documents subpoenaed by the House of Representatives select committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and efforts by Trump's allies to overturn his 2020 election loss.
The committee's leaders have called Bannon's conviction a victory for the rule of law. Bannon had sought to portray the criminal charges as politically motivated, lashing out at Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland while saying:
Friday's sentencing does not end Bannon's legal troubles. He was?indicted?in New York state in September on charges of money laundering and conspiracy, with prosecutors accusing him of deceiving donors by giving money to help build Trump's promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Bannon, who pleaded not guilty, could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted on those charges. Trump pardoned Bannon last year on similar federal charges.
Bar officials announced Thursday that two-thirds of the law school graduates who took New York's bar exam in July passed the all-important attorney licensing test.
That's up slightly from 2021's 63% overall pass rate, according to new?statistics?from the New York State Board of Law Examiners. But the percentage of those taking and passing the bar on their first try fell to 75% in 2022 from 78% in 2021. New York's bar exam is the largest in the country, with 9,609 people taking the July test.
Florida, the country's fourth-largest bar exam jurisdiction, saw one of the more significant declines this year. Its overall July pass rate fell 10 percentage points to 51% from 2021, while its first-time pass rate declined 8 percentage points to 64% this year.
The national average score on the Multistate Bar Examination, which is the 200-question multiple choice portion of the test used by all states, fell by a fraction of a point from July 2021 to 140.3, the National Conference of Bar Examiners reported in September. That suggested July's 2022 result would track closely to 2021's pass rates, though the conference predicted there would be state variations.
Bar pass rates have implications across the legal profession that go beyond whether an individual law graduate may practice law. Law schools with low pass rates among alumni risk losing their American Bar Association accreditation, and low pass rates can constrain the entry level hiring pool for legal employers.
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Litigation boutique Kaplan Hecker & Fink said Friday it has added two new attorneys to its ranks -- Trevor Morrison, the former dean of New York University Law School, and Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who lost the Democratic primary in last year's race to serve as Manhattan's district attorney.
Morrison and Farhadian Weinstein will both be "of counsel" with the firm in what they described as part-time roles. Morrison said he will resume teaching at NYU following the end of his sabbatical. He?stepped down?as dean of the law school earlier this year after nine years in the role. Farhadian Weinstein said she will continue her work as a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. At the firm, she said her work will focus on gender justice, reproductive rights, and constitutional litigation.
Since its launch in 2017, the firm has waged high-profile lawsuits against former U.S. President Donald Trump, including an ongoing defamation case, and secured a?$26 million verdict?against the leaders of a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned deadly.
Houston-based trial lawyer Mark Lanier, who is known for winning multibillion-dollar verdicts in the United States, has opened a new law firm in Britain.
Lanier is launching the new Manchester-based firm, called Lanier, Longstaff, Hedar & Roberts, with English barristers Tom Longstaff and Duncan Hedar, the firm said in a statement.
Lanier will maintain his practice at the U.S. firm he founded, the Lanier Law Firm. The Houston firm's chief operating officer Kevin Roberts will also be a partner at the Manchester firm.
The new firm said it will target "corporate wrongdoing that has harmed people on a large scale" and bring group litigation against companies in areas including pharmaceutical, product liability, and competition. "We see the UK as an emerging market for the work we do," Lanier said in a statement, adding that the "misuse of power is certainly not just an American phenomenon."
Collective actions in the United Kingdom have increased in recent years as legislative changes and court rulings have opened the door to such litigation. The firm said it anticipates announcing its first case within the next month and to hire about 15 staff within its first year.
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