Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo

* President Trump seems to be addicted to lawyers, and maybe someday he’ll be able to find another one like Michael Cohen who is “willing to sacrifice reputation, sanity, and perhaps a paycheck” to defend him. [Politico]

* Proskauer Rose and Jane Doe, the partner who sued the firm in a $50 million gender bias lawsuit, will be entering mediation to see if they can reach a settlement. At the same time, limited discovery will take place as to whether Doe is an “employee” under the anti-discrimination laws cited in the suit. [American Lawyer]

* Anthony Borges, a student who was shot five times while blocking a doorway to save other students during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, has filed suit against Nikolas Cruz for for assault and battery. Perhaps we should be expecting more of these lawsuits in the future. [Sun Sentinel]

* Parents whose children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 have filed a defamation lawsuit against Alex Jones of Infowars. Jones responded to the lawsuit going on a 10-minute rant on his show about how his lawyers thought the suit was frivlous. [New York Times]

* Bonus season isn’t over yet — for staff members, that is. Mintz Levin recently awarded hundreds of its staff members with special bonuses to celebrate an increase in equity partner profits. [Big Law Business]

* The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has extended a deadline to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request asking who the director of the agency is. That’s all they want. And the PTO asked for more time to respond! The absurdity of this reminds me of Apocalypse Now. [IP Watchdog]

* You’ve heard about Justice Ginsburg’s workout regimen. Well, Politico sent a reporter to do it and… it nearly broke him. [Politico]

* Divorce judge sued for allegedly spitting on a former Mintz Levin attorney. The New York legal community keeping it classy. [Law360]

* In totally unsurprising move, guy who thought the KKK was cool until he found out they smoked pot withdraws the government’s objection to Texas efforts to suppress minority voting. [NY Times]

* More law firms are changing their partner compensation models to create an even more competitive environment. There’s no way this can backfire and create a woefully dysfunctional partnership. Nope. [Law.com]

* The Jeffrey Wertkin case puts a spotlight on the whole whistle-blower unit. [Bloomberg]

* Winston & Strawn are going after laterals pretty hard. [Am Law Daily]

* Now might be a good time to make a donation to legal aid. [Litigation Daily]

* “The Department’s actions violate law and are contrary to basic principles of fairness and deeply damaging to the critical public service missions of these plaintiffs and the ABA.” The American Bar Association has filed suit against the Department of Education, alleging that some public interest lawyers had been indiscriminately dropped from the federal government’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. We may have more on this later. [ABA Journal]

* “The American Bar Association forces this young man to litigate all the way to the United States Supreme Court to prove that a blind person shouldn’t draw a picture.” After suing the ABA for discrimination for forcing him to take the LSAT — a test he can’t pass because he can’t draw the diagrams required for the logic games section — a blind Michigan man is hoping that SCOTUS will grant his petition. [Michigan Radio]

* In what’s being viewed as one of President Obama’s last hurrahs before leaving office, he used the Outer Continental Shelf Act to restrict new oil and gas drilling in federal waters in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The Trump administration will likely be forced to go to court to reverse the Obama administration’s pro-environment actions. [Reuters]

* “I am proud to have played a part in the substantial progress the firm has made toward gender equality.” After years of litigation, Mintz Levin settled a gender discrimination case filed by former associate Kamee Verdrager, who was allegedly demoted for taking disability leave when she developed pregnancy complications. [Am Law Daily]

* Baker McKenzie’s new chair has been with the firm for 30 years, and now that he’s in leadership, he’s sharing with the world why the firm decided to do away with the ampersand that once resided in the firm’s name. Apparently the ampersand’s untimely death was about “freshening up the brand” to appear “agile.” [Big Law Business]

* Despite the fact that President-elect Trump has called for the cast of “Hamilton” to apologize to Vice President-elect Pence for delivering a message to him after the show, Pence handled it well, saying he “wasn’t offended,” and that he reminded his kids that the mixture of boos and cheers from the audience as he took his seat was “what freedom sounds like.” [PLAYBILL]

* President-elect Donald Trump may be able to get a pretty hefty tax write-off for settling the Trump University fraud case for $25 million, since according to tax lawyer Robert Wood, most business settlements are fully tax deductible. Perhaps the president-elect — or his legal team — really does know the tax code better than anyone else. [Forbes]

* Libertarian vice presidential candidate Bill Weld is settling back into private practice after the election. The former Massachusetts governor has returned to the Boston office of Mintz Levin as a partner in the firm’s government relations practice, says that being back is a “pure pleasure because you get to sit at a desk and think.” [Am Law Daily]

* In an effort to slash their legal bills, rival fantasy sports rivals DraftKings and FanDuel will be merging in the second half of 2017. As the two sites are market leaders and their union would likely create a monopoly, there will be some antitrust issues to review before the merger closes. We wonder which firms are working on the deal. [Reuters]

* Kaplan’s Concord Law School, an unaccredited, for-profit, online-only institution, is petitioning several states to allow its students to sit for the bar exam. California is the only state that allows Concord graduates to sit for its bar exam, and their passage rate for first-timers on the July 2015 administration of the exam was 25 percent. [ABA Journal]

* A ray of light for Madonna as the Ninth Circuit hands her a victory in a long-running copyright infringement case, creating a circuit split in the process. [Billboard]

* The New York Court of Appeals overturns the $17.2 million award Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder earlier won against Cadwalader at summary judgment. Life’s hard for billionaires who beg regular people pay their bills for them. [Law360]

* Kirkland & Ellis plays hardball with departing partner, forcing him to repay a $120K bonus before walking out the door. [Legal Week]

* This is why we can’t have nice things. Literally. Intellectual property concerns threaten customizable goods. [Corporate Counsel]

* Texas AG Ken Paxton’s still gonna have to face those criminal fraud charges. [Courthouse News Service]

* Industry groups come out of the woodwork to challenge a Department of Labor rule requiring retirement advisors to act in the best interest of their customers. Crocodile tears abound as the groups claim they agree with the sentiment of the rule but just want the SEC to write it — knowing full well that the SEC isn’t going to write it. [Wall Street Journal]

* Add ABA President Paulette Brown to the list of people outraged that Donald Trump is criticizing a federal judge for, among other things, being of Mexican descent. [Law360]

* Irell gets sneaky in this copyright win over pre-1972 songs. [Litigation Daily]

* The 5 questions employers shouldn’t ask in job interviews. “Does this look infected?” inexplicably fails to make the list. [Law360]

* Cleveland is suing Tamir Rice’s family for not paying for the ambulance that picked him up after he got gunned down by police. In the contest for “Worst Place In America,” Cleveland just keeps racking up points. [Slate]

* Mark Cuban continues harassing the SEC with amicus filings over their haphazard enforcement antics. Being rich and a little bit obnoxious finally serves a public purpose. [Litigation Daily]

* Ikea has lost the trademark in its own name in Indonesia. This seems as good an opportunity as any to link to this video. [Coconuts Jakarta]

* Department of Justice sues Ferguson for years of pervasive racial discrimination. This comes after the city rejected a negotiated deal, because whenever the federal government has you dead to rights you should absolutely piss all over the deal they offer. [Huffington Post]

* NASA employees barred from writing “Jesus” in newsletter. Some are calling this a religious freedom issue, but that’s ridiculous — this is a scientific credibility issue. You’re NASA! You’ve been up there and know he’s not hanging around on a cloud. [Corporate Counsel]

* Sanctioned former Mintz Levin associate brings defamation claims against newspapers. [The Am Law Daily]