LSAT alternatives, Russia sanctions, dogged wire fraud and judiciary's harassment policies
Reuters Legal
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Some aspiring attorneys might not have to take the Law School Admission Test to apply to law school in the future.
The Law School Admission Council said that it is designing a program to enable would-be law students to apply without taking a standardized test.
"The new program won’t undermine or replace the LSAT as the main pathway to apply to law school."
The program would let undergraduate students at participating colleges and universities complete a tailored curriculum before graduation, then be eligible to apply to law schools without an LSAT score.
The goal is to broaden the pipeline and pathways to law school, said Council vice president of product development and business intelligence Kaitlynn Griffith.
Sanctions imposed over the Ukraine invasion have sparked a longshot bid to freeze the assets of Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, in U.S. court, with former top Russian Olympic official Akhmed Bilalov arguing his $1 billion lawsuit against the bank hangs in the balance.
Lawyers for Sberbank this week warned a federal judge in Manhattan against freezing the bank's assets in the case, saying the move would surpass the scope of U.S. sanctions and invite "unpredictable" consequences for the bank's customers.
They asked U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan to deny the asset freeze requested by Bilalov, who said the sanctions against Sberbank could hinder his ability to collect any judgment he wins in the case.
Bilalov sued the bank and its chief executive in 2020, claiming they took steps in the years before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi to wrest control of his real estate holding company there.
New sanctions imposed in late February prohibit U.S. banks from opening a Sberbank account and processing transactions that involve the bank.
Sberbank's lawyers said in a filing that an order restraining the bank's assets would:
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"Bar defendants from conducting their day-to-day business, serving their customers' needs, and meeting their contractual obligations to third parties."
The former top lawyer for a California-based fintech company Brooke Solis has been sentenced to 37 months in prison for using company funds to pay for dog boarding and other personal expenses, according to?a new court filing.
Judge James Donato in San Francisco federal court ordered Solis to pay $500,000 in restitution to Good Money Inc., which was listed in the filing as the victim of the wire fraud.
While acting as general counsel and chief business officer, Solis submitted fake invoices to her employer from a shell company called The Paralegal Group LLC, which she owned, according to a March 15 Department of Justice statement. Even after leaving the company, she diverted a total of $400,000 from her ex-employer to her personal checking account.
Caryn Devins Strickland, a former federal public defender in North Carolina, revealed herself as the plaintiff in a high-profile legal challenge to the federal judiciary's process for handling sexual harassment complaints, previously known only as “Jane Roe.”
Strickland is shedding the pseudonym to testify publicly before a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee examining sexual harassment in the judiciary.
“There is simply no reason to trust that the judiciary is uniquely capable of responsibly handling these matters internally, without oversight and transparency.”
Strickland said in prepared testimony?released ahead of the Congressional hearing Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Federal Judiciary Workplace Conduct Working Group released a 32-page report on Wednesday recommending several reforms to improve how it addresses misconduct allegations.
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