Milbank, Tweed, Hadley, & McCloy

What to do about Simpson Thacher (via special bonuses) and Cravath (via bumps for senior associates) beating them at their own game?

Which firm was first to copy market leader Cravath?

Look who's moving off the beaten path.

Save yourself time and, possibly, save your clients' money.

* The Supreme Court takes on an issue of major importance to the patent bar (and the Eastern District of Texas): where can an infringement suit be filed? [How Appealing]

* And SCOTUS also grants cert to a case raising the scope of what prosecutors must disclose to the defense under Brady v. Maryland and a case about a criminal lawyer’s erroneous advice to his client about immigration consequences of a guilty plea. [New York Times via How Appealing]

* Sheriff of Wall Street Preet Bharara loses another deputy to private practice: Katherine Goldstein, head of the S.D.N.Y.’s securities-fraud unit, will join several of her former colleagues — Adam Fee, Antonia Apps and George Canellos — at Milbank Tweed. [WSJ Law Blog]

* President-elect Donald Trump won’t take office for a few weeks, but he’s already inspiring new law school courses. [National Law Journal]

* And Trump might also trigger new lawsuits from state attorneys general seeking to rein in his administration. [New York Times]

* As for existing litigation between Trump and celebrity chefs José Andrés and Geoffrey Zakarian, both the real estate tycoon and his adversaries are repped by big Biglaw names: Seyfarth Shaw and Steptoe & Johnson. [BuzzFeed]

* Speaking of Seyfarth, it’s the firm representing ExxonMobil in litigation alleging anti-gay discrimination in its hiring practices — litigation that continues even as CEO Rex Tillerson prepares to leave the company to head the Trump State Department. [Washington Blade]

These two firms were the first matchers last year as well.

Who are the American Lawyer Top 10 A-List firms?

What you've been waiting for: a match of the Cravath scale from a large New York law firm.

Not a bad place to work...

$250,000 is not enough money to make Harvard Law do anything.

At least one prominent Biglaw firm won't be trying to trump Cravath.

Maybe your firm should look into this approach?

Making it to midlevel status in Biglaw isn't easy -- but once you get there, life is pretty good.

Which firms cracked Vault's list of best summer programs?

What role should firm culture play in your lateral move?

Congrats to associates at these fine firms!

Which firm decided to match Simpson Thacher's bonus scale this time?

* Most Americans want Supreme Court proceedings on video. Because C-SPAN is so popular. [Legal Times]

* It was bound to happen at some point. Eastern District of Louisiana Judge Martin Feldman, who you might remember from lifting the Gulf of Mexico drilling moratorium while holding thousands in oil drilling assets (which he sold the morning that he issued his decision), became the first judge since Windsor to uphold a ban on same-sex marriage as constitutional. [National Law Journal]

* Need white-collar representation? Milbank has Apps for that. Specifically, Antonia Apps, the federal prosecutor who took a leading role in the SAC Capital Advisors insider trading case, is decamping to Milbank. [Reuters]

* “What’s it like to be the lawyer for Mark Cuban or Jerry Jones? Depends if you’re winning.” I don’t know about that, Jerry Jones seems to be getting pretty used to accepting failure. [Dallas Business Journal]

* Gibson Dunn has left New York’s teacher tenure battle, leaving the job of gutting public education in the state to Kirkland & Ellis. [New York Law Journal]

* A professor carrying a concealed handgun shot himself in the foot. But remember the answer to school shootings is making sure all the teachers are armed. [TaxProf Blog]

* More Squire Patton Boggs defections: At least a dozen members of the IP group have bolted the newly-merged firm to open a D.C. office for Porzio, Bromberg & Newman. [Washington Post]

* This guessing game is over, even though we’d guessed this from the start. After decamping from the Securities and Exchange Commission, George Canellos will return to his old stomping grounds at Milbank Tweed. [DealBook / New York Times]

* You can’t insult Duke and get away with it. Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton secured a one-year no-contact order against Addison Chance, the e-cig retailer who sent “menacing and harassing” emails and voicemails to a partner. [Winston-Salem Journal]

* Heenan Blaikie’s talks may have fallen through with DLA Piper, but another Biglaw firm swooped in to rescue more than 20 of the failed Canadian firm’s survivors. You can call Dentons their knight in shining billable hours. [Globe and Mail]

* You can’t always get what you want. Accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsaernaev’s trial is scheduled for November 2014, despite his lawyers asking for a September 2015 start date. [Bloomberg]

* A Tennessee lawmaker just introduced the “Turn the Gays Away” bill, which would allow businesses to refuse goods and services to gay people. If this isn’t ‘MURICA, we don’t know what is. [MyFOX Memphis]

* “We have offered generous buyouts—generous by anyone’s standards—and we are now waiting for volunteers.” Yeah, good luck with that. Things don’t look great for profs at Albany Law. [WSJ Law Blog]

* “Either access to abortion will be dramatically restricted in the coming year or perhaps the pushback will begin.” We’re moving back in history. Here’s hoping pro-choice advocacy will be born anew in 2014. [New York Times] * George S. Canellos, the SEC’s co-chief of enforcement, announced his departure on Friday, and people are already wondering whether he’ll return to his old stomping grounds at Milbank Tweed. [DealBook / New York Times] * We hope legal educators had fun at the Association of American Law Schools annual meeting, but we hope most of all that they learned what needs to change to really make legal education pay. [WSJ Law Blog] * “I believe women lawyers can contribute a lot to the legal system.” Saudi Arabia now has its first female law firm dedicated to bringing women’s issues to the country’s patriarchal courts. Congratulations! [RT] * A Starbucks spokeswoman issued a defense to the cease-and-desist response letter that went viral worldwide, and it reads just like how her company’s coffee tastes: bland. [International Business Times] * Amy “Tiger Mom” Chua is back with a vengeance, co-authoring a controversial new book (affiliate link) with her husband, Jed Rubenfeld. Which cultural groups are superior? [New York Post]