D.C. Circuit gets first Latino judge, law firm offices shrink, Musk loses to SEC, and Winston adds partner who investigated Minneapolis police ??
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The U.S. Senate on Monday confirmed Bradley Garcia, a lawyer in the U.S. Justice Department, as the first Latino to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Garcia, 37, will be President Joe Biden's fourth appointee to the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., often considered the second-most important federal court in the United States after the U.S. Supreme Court.?
He was confirmed on a 53-40 vote, which was mostly along party lines with three Republicans, Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voting in favor of the nomination.
Garcia marks the Senate's first judicial confirmation since Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, returned to Washington on Wednesday.?Her return restored Senate Democrats' slim majority in the chamber to 51 votes.
Two of the largest U.S. law firm leases signed in the first quarter of 2023 involved big firms downsizing their headquarters in major cities, according to commercial brokerage Savills, as many law firms shrink their physical footprints.
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft shaved off about 34.7% of its office space in New York, or roughly 120,000 square feet, when renewing its lease during Q1 2023, Savills said. The firm leased 225,000 square feet in its lower Manhattan building.
Like Cadwalader, law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman chose to keep its headquarters in the same building when it signed a renewal lease last quarter. The Chicago-based firm leased 204,000 square feet, a more than 7% reduction, Savills said.
Four large leases over 100,000 square feet signed in the first quarter helped bump up the quarterly leasing volume to 1.6 million square feet, according to a report last week by Savills. That marks a 45.5% increase from the last quarter of 2022.
While the next several quarters will give a better indication of where the law firm leasing market is heading, there "definitely was a dip during COVID, and there's definitely sort of a rebounding" now, said Tom Fulcher, chair of Savills' legal tenant practice group.
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A federal appeals court on Monday rejected Elon Musk's bid to modify or end his 2018 securities fraud settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that required a Tesla?lawyer to approve some of his tweets in advance.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan rejected Musk's claim that the SEC exploited his consent decree to conduct bad-faith, harassing investigations that violated his First Amendment free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution.
Musk's decree resolved an SEC lawsuit accusing him of defrauding investors with an Aug. 7, 2018, tweet that he had "funding secured" to take his electric car company private. It required advance review of tweets that might contain material information about Tesla. Musk and Tesla each also paid $20 million in civil fines, and Musk gave up his role as chairman.
Law firm Winston & Strawn hired a partner from Kirkland & Ellis who helped investigate the Minneapolis Police Department following the May 2020 killing of George Floyd.
Eric Lansing White is joining Winston as a partner in its hometown Chicago office, the firm said. The move extends a hiring streak for Winston, which has picked up partners in?Washington, D.C. ,?New York ,?and?Miami ?in recent weeks.
White was part of the Kirkland team tapped by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights to investigate the city of Minneapolis and its police department after one of its officers, Derek Chauvin, killed Floyd.
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