Many people tell me they want to write a book. Fewer actually write one. Fewer still stop before they begin and ask the question that probably matters most: Why do I want to do this?

If the answer is money, I would reconsider. Some authors make real money from books. Some authors turn one book into a career. But most nonfiction authors, particularly professionals writing in a niche, are not going to make enough from book sales to justify the hundreds of hours it takes to write, edit, publish, and promote a book. If you calculate your return by the hour, the math may be depressing.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write one. It means you should understand the return you are actually seeking. Maybe you have something useful to say. Maybe you have spent 20 years learning lessons that could save someone else 10 years. Maybe you want to establish yourself in a field, teach younger professionals, build credibility, open doors to speaking opportunities, or put your ideas into a form that lasts longer than a social media post. Those are all good reasons to write a book.

The book itself may not be the business. It may be a calling card, a credential, a conversation starter, or a contribution.

Before You Write, Understand Your Platform

In nonfiction publishing, you will hear the word “platform” a lot. Your platform is essentially your existing ability to reach the people who might buy and read your book. It is not limited to social media followers. It can include a LinkedIn audience, newsletter subscribers, podcast listeners, speaking engagements, association leadership, clients, professional networks, media appearances, prior publications, courses, or a recognized position in a particular industry.

Publishers care about platform because they are making a commercial bet. A terrific manuscript helps, but a publisher also wants to know who is going to buy it and how those readers will hear about it. If you already speak to 5,000 people at conferences each year, have 30,000 engaged followers, publish regularly in respected outlets, or lead an organization whose members are the natural audience for your book, you have reduced some of the publisher’s risk.

There is no magic follower number. Ten thousand people who actually care about your subject may be more valuable than 100,000 people who followed you for something unrelated. Engagement, credibility, access, and fit matter. The better question is not “How many followers do I need?” It is “Can I identify a meaningful audience that knows me, trusts me, and has a reason to care about this book?”

If your platform is small, start building it before the book comes out. Write articles. Speak. Post useful material. Appear on podcasts. Start a newsletter. Participate in the organizations that serve your intended readers. Do it because you have something to contribute, not because you are collecting human beings for a future sales funnel. A real platform is built on trust.

Traditional Publishing: What You Are Really Choosing

Traditional publishing generally means a publishing house acquires your book, pays for the publishing process, and handles editing, design, production, distribution, and at least some marketing. Depending on the deal, you may receive an advance against royalties and then royalties if sales exceed the advance.

The obvious advantages are credibility, professional infrastructure, broader distribution, and a team that knows how to turn a manuscript into a finished book. A recognized publisher can make it easier to get into bookstores, secure media attention, and place the book in channels an individual author can’t reach.

The tradeoffs are control, speed, and economics. Traditional publishing moves slowly. You may have less control over the title, cover, length, release date, pricing, and sometimes the substance. The publisher owns the commercial process. Your royalty on each copy will generally be much smaller than what you could retain through self-publishing.

And getting a traditional deal is not simply a matter of finishing a manuscript and emailing it to a publisher. For many nonfiction projects, the real first product is the book proposal.

The Literary Agent and the Book Proposal

Many major publishers do not want unsolicited submissions. They want literary agents to bring projects to them. An agent understands which editors are acquiring which types of books, how to position a project, how to negotiate a publishing agreement, and how to protect the author’s interests.

For a nonfiction book, you often approach agents with a proposal rather than a completed manuscript. A strong proposal typically explains the idea, the audience, why the book matters now, why you are the person to write it, competing or comparable books, your platform, your marketing reach, a chapter outline, and sample chapters.

That proposal forces you to answer questions you should answer anyway. Who is this for? What problem does it solve? Why will someone buy it instead of the 50 books already addressing the same general subject? What is your distinct point of view? How will readers find you?

Finding an agent requires research. Look for agents who represent nonfiction in your category. Review books similar to yours and see who represented the authors. Read agency submission guidelines and follow them. A generic blast to hundreds of agents is easy to send and easy to ignore. A thoughtful query showing that you understand an agent’s list is more work, but publishing has never been a business in which avoiding the work is a competitive advantage.

Rejection is part of the process. A rejection does not necessarily mean the book is bad. It can mean the timing is wrong, the category is crowded, the platform isn’t large enough, the agent doesn’t know the right editor for it, or the project doesn’t fit that agent’s list.

Self-Publishing Is Publishing — But You Become the Publisher

Self-publishing has changed dramatically. You can now produce a professional book, sell print and electronic editions, and reach readers around the world without persuading a traditional publishing house to acquire the project.

The advantages are significant. You control the content, title, cover, price, timing, updates, and marketing. You can move much faster. Your per-copy economics can be better. If your book serves a narrow professional audience that you already know how to reach, self-publishing can make enormous sense.

But “self-publishing” should not mean “I did everything myself.” Traditional publishers employ editors, copy editors, proofreaders, designers, production specialists, and marketers for a reason. If you self-publish, you are taking responsibility for assembling those functions. Hire a good editor. Have someone proofread the final text. Invest in a professional cover. Make the interior look like a real book. A reader should not be able to identify your publishing model from the quality of the finished product.

The biggest danger in self-publishing is that no gatekeeper will tell you the book isn’t ready. Freedom is useful. So is friction. Create your own quality-control process.

Which Path Should You Choose?

Your goal should drive the decision. If your dream is national bookstore distribution, major media, and the validation and infrastructure of an established publishing house, pursuing an agent and traditional publisher may be worth the time and rejection that come with it.

If your goal is to get a highly specialized book into the hands of clients, colleagues, conference attendees, students, or members of your profession, self-publishing may be faster and more rational. If you already have direct access to the people most likely to read the book, you may not need a publisher to build a bridge you already possess.

Independent and hybrid publishers also occupy territory between the two models. The arrangements vary widely. Some provide valuable editorial and production services. Others are essentially expensive service packages wrapped in the language of traditional publishing. Read the agreement. Understand who pays whom, who owns the rights, what services are actually included, how distribution works, and what happens if you want your rights back.

Do not choose a publishing model because one sounds more prestigious at a cocktail party. Choose the one that best serves the book and the reason you wrote it.

Write the Book Only You Can Write

The market doesn’t need another generic book that anyone could have written. Your advantage is your experience, your point of view, your stories, your mistakes, your observations, and the conclusions you reached after doing the work.

That does not mean the book has to be about you. Usually it should not be. The reader should remain at the center. Your experiences matter only insofar as they help the reader understand something, avoid something, accomplish something, or see something differently.

Before writing 60,000 words, be able to explain the book in a few sentences. Identify the reader. Identify what that reader wants or needs. Identify what will be different after the reader finishes the book. Then build the chapters around that promise.

And finish it. The publishing world is filled with people who are “working on a book.” At some point, you have to stop talking about being an author and sit down long enough, often enough, to become one.

The Book Is the Beginning, Not the End

Whether you traditionally publish or self-publish, you will probably have to promote the book. Publishers can help, but authors should not assume that a publishing contract comes with an unlimited marketing machine. You may still write articles, appear on podcasts, speak at conferences, post online, contact organizations, and introduce the book to the communities most likely to benefit from it.

That is another reason your motivation matters. If you wrote the book because you care about the subject, promotion feels less like asking strangers to buy something and more like continuing the conversation that caused you to write it.

A book can travel farther than you do. It can reach someone you will never meet. It can sit on a shelf for years and become useful at exactly the moment someone needs it. It can establish an idea, preserve what you learned, and create opportunities you could not predict when you wrote the first page.

Very few of us are going to get rich writing nonfiction books. That is fine. Money is only one measure of return. If you have something worth saying, know who you want to say it to, and are willing to do the work to say it well, publishing a book can still be one of the most worthwhile professional projects you undertake.

Frank Ramos is a partner at Goldberg Segalla in Miami, where he practices commercial litigation, products, and catastrophic personal injury. You can follow him on LinkedIn, where he has about 80,000 followers.

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Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter is reportedly the frontrunner for Blanche’s old job, according to Bloomberg Law, with strong backing from some in the White House and the support of Trump gadfly Boris Epshteyn. There’s just one catch: McCotter was one of the principal architects of the $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund. You know, the slush fund that caused Sens. Cornyn and Tillis to drag their feet on getting Blanche’s nom out of committee? Recall a federal judge found the slush fund was “akin to a fraud on the court,” and that Blanche had to formally rescind in writing (not that it’s worth more than the paper it is written on) just to get the AG role.

Are Republicans really ready for another news cycle that heavily features the phrase “Trump slush fund”?

But don’t worry! That’s not McCotter’s only baggage! After being elevated to Principal Associate DAG in April, McCotter intervened to dismiss DOJ’s blockbuster fraud charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani — charges that had been built over years by career prosecutors. A federal judge approved the dismissal on August 11 while taking the unusual step of criticizing McCotter’s justification directly, finding it contained a “baseless assertion” that was “unbecoming of his office.” That is not a great line to have in your file when you’re auditioning for the number two job at the DOJ.

All this is messy AF headed into a contentious election season, and some are questioning if it’s worth it. Other contenders for the role include Colin McDonald, who runs the newly created DOJ fraud division and has a closer relationship with Blanche; Harmeet Dhillon, who has had an interesting record at the Civil Rights division, is actively lobbying for the nomination but is considered nonviable by DOJ leadership; Stanley Woodward who, you may recall, filed a wildly inappropriate response to Judge Brinkema claiming she was violating separation of powers by asking for a sworn declaration, but who isn’t inclined to leave his current role; and Bill Essayli, the Los Angeles First Assistant U.S. Attorney, who has fans in the White House but a “polarizing” and “partisan” record that could complicate confirmation.

But finding a qualified and confirmable DAG that actually wants to serve in this administration is not the easiest thing. Blanche only got confirmed by the slimmest of margins, but he’s arguably the closest thing the administration could find to someone who fit the traditional profile while also being in Trump’s inner circle. Finding his replacement is going to be harder.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1

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Now, Wood Smith is not Wachtell, it is not a white-shoe name with a marquee M&A practice. By revenue — $244 million last year — Wood Smith sits just outside Biglaw proper, though with 500-plus lawyers it is nobody’s boutique. It is a high-volume insurance-defense shop, which is to say exactly the kind of commodity, repeat-business practice private equity has been circling, because the work is predictable and, crucially, sticky. As an M&A adviser predicted back in May, the early PE/law firms deals would come from a firm with a smaller cap table and founders still active and ready to cash out.

The mechanism of the deal is a management services organization, the structure that lets an investor own the billing, the software, and the back office while the lawyers keep control of the law part of the firm. The deal’s reported price tag, $700 million, works out to about 18 times the firm’s adjusted EBITDA of $38.2 million.

None of this means private equity has taken over Biglaw. It hasn’t, and the marquee partnerships are still not ready to hand over the keys. But the industry knows how to read a weathervane, and Wood Smith is a good one… anyone trying to read which way the wind is blowing just got the clearest data point so far.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1

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Target receives almost $1 billion in tariff refunds, plans to lower prices [Modern Retail]

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Longer-dated Treasury yields rise as Bessent’s bond buyback rally fizzles out [CNBC]
“The rise in bond yields and the Treasury’s purchases all set the stage for what will be a very important Jackson Hole speech next week, which gives Warsh the opportunity to talk to markets, which are in need of more clarity on the central bank’s plans,” said Paul Stanley, Arca managing director and founding advisor.
“It seems as though Warsh wants the market to do the tightening for the Fed, and that’s really what is happening with the recent surge in bond yields,” he added.

Private-Equity Firms Look for an Exit Three Years After Buying EverBank [WSJ]
The bank, the sponsor of the Jacksonville Jaguars stadium and brand partner of quarterback Trevor Lawrence, could pursue an initial public offering if it isn’t able to reach a deal to sell itself…. The five firms struggled to form a cohesive strategy at EverBank, leading to tension between the owners and inside the boardroom….

Two Binance Employees Detained in the U.A.E. Amid Police Inquiries [NYT]
The two Binance employees were stopped at airports in the Emirates, said two of the people with knowledge of the situation, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive legal issue. One of the employees was a midlevel staff member who was traveling through the Emirati city of Sharjah this month when he was stopped, taken to a police station and held overnight, the people said. A third Binance official, a leader of the company’s Dubai-based subsidiary, was questioned at a police station in July.

Morgan Stanley picks Dallas for expansion outside NYC [N.Y. Post]
The financial giant plans to relocate up to 4,800 jobs to the state by 2031, passing over Alpharetta, Georgia…. The Wall Street behemoth led by CEO Ted Pick — which began exploring options outside the Big Apple earlier this year following the election of the Big Apple’s socialist mayor — had been weighing the new regional hub against Alpharetta, where it already has 3,000 employees.

Victor Niederhoffer, Trader Who Went Boom and Bust (Twice), Dies at 82 [NYT]
In an industry of big personalities, Mr. Niederhoffer outperformed in eccentricity. He wore mismatched sneakers on the squash court, ordered dessert before dinner, browsed bookstores in his socks and read just one newspaper, The National Enquirer…. To some Wall Street observers, Mr. Niederhoffer appeared harebrained and reckless. But as his yearly returns soared to 30 percent and higher, big-name investors, including George Soros, began sending him their cash.

“There is no serious dispute that an objective viewer of Comey’s post could read it to mean ‘Kill President Trump.'”

Are they fucking for real with this one? There’s literally nothing but dispute over the meaning of the phrase. This case is generating explainers, dictionary usage notes, and active federal litigation. Plus a federal judge has ALREADY RULED that “86 47” doesn’t mean a violent threat against Trump!

While the seashell case was pending, a progressive group called Accountability NOW USA flew an “86 47” flag at a permitted, round-the-clock anti-Trump demonstration on Constitution Avenue. The Secret Service opened an investigation, the National Park Service threatened to revoke the group’s permit, and when the group sued, DOJ lawyers marched into court armed with a sworn declaration from a Secret Service deputy director insisting the phrase would be perceived as a potential threat against the president. Sound familiar?

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss was unmoved. He granted a temporary restraining order on June 1, then made it a permanent injunction on June 29, holding that the flag — like the signs flying beside it — was “core protected speech.” He found it “difficult to fathom” that a reasonable observer would read the flag as a true threat, and pointed out that the government had produced no evidentiary basis whatsoever for the claim that the phrase endangered anyone.

Sure, Judge Moss’s ruling isn’t binding in a precedent sense, but it sure as shit undermines the government argument that there’s “no serious dispute” over the meaning of “86 47.” A sitting federal judge weighing the identical phrase, hearing the government’s identical argument, and rejecting it in a written opinion is, definitionally, a serious dispute. You cannot lose this argument in front of an Article III judge in June and declare it indisputable in August.

It gets worse when you notice who isn’t being prosecuted. The slogan is plastered across protest flags, yard signs, and an ocean of merch, and the DOJ has charged exactly one human being over it, and SHOCKER! it’s the one Donald Trump has spent the better part of a decade demanding be jailed. Asked point-blank whether the department would start prosecuting everyone who posts “86 47,” acting AG Todd Blanche allowed that “every case is different.” Which is a roundabout way of admitting the phrase is ordinary political speech… except, apparently, when Comey is the one posting it.

Listen, the charges live or die on whether a numeric phrase in a beach photo is a “true threat,” a question of definitions, connotation, and plain reading comprehension. It is, at its core, a semantics case. And the government has now demonstrated, in a filing, that it cannot accurately describe the state of a semantic dispute unfolding in dictionaries, in courtrooms, and on a flag a mile from Main Justice.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1

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However, the Republican candidate for Minnesota’s open U.S. Senate seat doesn’t think I should be proud of where I’m from. Here’s her full quote that she had the courage to voice on Fox News so that I can’t be accused of failing to include context:

Minnesotans are exhausted, and John, quite frankly, they’re embarrassed. I have talked to hundreds of voters in Minnesota who have told me, ‘Gosh, I went on vacation this summer. I didn’t want to tell people where I was from because it’s embarrassing.’ And it’s true.

Now, I suppose she was technically alleging that it wasn’t her saying this directly, it was hundreds of Minnesota voters who thought it was embarrassing to be from Minnesota because of its progressivism. But this is just the same “many people are saying” crap that Trump is always pulling to put just a little distance between himself and his most heinous statements. Anyhow, then she stated right after that that she thought it was true, thereby ruining this tactic for herself.

Well, I think I speak for thousands of Minnesota voters when I say, “F*ck right off, Michele Tafoya.” With this kind of political savvy, it’s a small wonder she managed to win the GOP primary (though My Pillow guy says the GOP primary election was rigged, so who knows?).

Nobody has ever heard of Tafoya, yet we’ve entered an era in which being essentially unknown barely trumps being well known as an unhinged lunatic. Now Minnesota voters are getting to know her, though, and it’s not much of a prettier picture than Mike Lindell.

Going onto a vile propaganda network to belittle the sacrifices made by Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and the thousands of brave Minnesotans who, unlike Good and Pretti, escaped with their lives while resisting ICE’s 2026 siege of Minnesota is a profoundly stupid move politically. Huge majorities of Minnesota voters think these shootings — these murders — at the hands of federal agents were unjustified. The agents responsible have since been spirited away by the federal government and are yet to face any legal consequences whatsoever.

Unfortunately, my hometown of Long Prairie is filled with some of the dumbest voters in the state. They backed one of Tafoya’s competitors in the Senate primary (and overwhelmingly backed another losing horse by choosing the My Pillow guy to run for governor). Look, some people are a little slow, God bless ‘em.

One thing the Republicans of Long Prairie are not, though, is world travelers. Were hundreds of Minnesotans really going on all these out-of-state vacations over the summer, really being embarrassed about being from Minnesota, and then really telling Michele Tafoya the truth about it? Let me answer my own question with another question: Have you ever known an ardent MAGA supporter to be outwardly embarrassed about anything whatsoever?

I obviously can’t speak for all Minnesotans (only the sensible ones), but I can say that in the past 12 months, in addition to within Minnesota itself, I have traveled to Wisconsin, New York, North Dakota, Michigan, Washington, D.C., Poland, and Ukraine. Whenever it came up, I was not embarrassed in the least to tell people where I was from. On the country: I was very proud.

Republicans always say, “Love it or leave it,” when it comes to the United States of America. But most countries are just as reticent to accept immigrants as ours is, and in addition to that, there are all kinds of other barriers in the way of moving permanently to another country.

It’s much easier to move to another state though! If you’re embarrassed to be Minnesotan, I’m happy to report that there are two underpopulated Dakotas right at our western border, either of which would be happy to accept a few more right-wing dimwits.

Minnesota was the very first state to offer volunteer troops to fight for United States during the Civil War. Minnesota was the first governmental entity in America to offer any kind of subsidized housing when it spent $88,285.31 (about $3.5 million in today’s dollars at a time when housing was much more affordable than it is today) to build simple frame houses for those who’d lost their homes to the Great Hinckley Fire of 1894. Minnesota was the only state to vote for the Democrat over the protofascist Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. While its history is replete with instances of horrible things being done to native people like almost everywhere in America, at least Minnesota is giving some land back to the tribes these days, in addition to how it’s going to make history for American Indians when Peggy Flanagan mops the floor with Tafoya in November’s election.

You can vote Republican and still be a Minnesotan. You can’t be ashamed to be a Minnesotan, ignorant of its entire history, flying its old, long-since replaced flag, and a bootlicking MAGA zombie and still be a Minnesotan, at least not a real one. Seriously: the Dakotas are both right next door.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

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This year, we’ve finally had some peace and quiet! Against all odds, Dershowitz has fallen silent about his resort town travails, allowing us to all go happily about our lives without this manufactured drama.

So The Atlantic decided to go stir some up.

The magazine dispatched Mark Leibovich to the porch of the Chilmark General Store to eat pizza and listen to Dershowitz recount the woes of an overexposed law professor trapped in his personal pity party. Along the way, the pair chatted about the Larry David fight, unverified tales of harassment, and Jeffrey Epstein. A whole lot of Jeffrey Epstein. The flights, the massage, the island trip.

Funny… the House Oversight Committee has been trying to have this exact conversation for months. That’s when Dershowitz — who is canceled and silenced, don’t you know? — appeared on NewsNation to declare that he remains “very proud” of his role representing Epstein and is “prepared to testify about everything,” adding, “I will personally not invoke privilege. I have nothing to hide.” As soon as Congress took him up on that offer, Dershowitz balked.

Maybe instead of irate letters, Rep. James Comer should come up for a slice at the General Store!

“I never thought I would see McCarthyism come to Martha’s Vineyard,” Dershowitz wrote in The Hill in 2018, comparing the federal government destroying people’s careers and Roy Cohn sending the Rosenbergs to the electric chair to a neighbor not selling him a fucking pierogi. At least we know that guy didn’t sell Dershowitz a pierogi. The professor’s other claims don’t hold up as well to scrutiny. The book festival that supposedly blackballed his work says his claim is “completely false.” The restaurateur everyone’s supposedly pressuring to ban him refused to comment on it. Epstein victim lawyer Chuck Cooper is described as having privately told the professor that he knew Dershowitz could never have done anything — “This event that he’s reporting and this comment that he’s attributing to me are both categorically untrue,” Cooper told Leibovich.

Dershowitz claims a lot of the backlash is over his support for the Israeli government, though the article notes the ostracism he complains about predates the global attention on Gaza. Most of the disdain centers on Dershowitz’s work for two clients in particular: Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

It was his work for Trump that got Larry David yelling at him. It was his Epstein work that motivated an unknown heckler to allegedly mock him outside the Chilmark store. Dershowitz’s “stock explanation was that everyone is entitled to legal representation,” the article notes. That’s why he represented Trump and Epstein and O.J. and Claus von Bülow.

It’s like Gideon, but for the 1 percent.

That’s the problem with the “everyone is entitled to a lawyer” excuse. It may be true, but everyone isn’t entitled to you as a lawyer. And when the clients at issue have millions and millions in the bank, choosing to represent them isn’t a noble sacrifice for the sanctity of the profession, it’s a business decision. Stow the moralizing over any representation that involves the client giving you private jets to attend meetings.

Moreover, Dershowitz’s work for Trump and Epstein sound in a different register than a run-of-the-mill representation. He’s recast himself as token disaffected Democrat, a stock character in the Kabuki theater of right-wing media, trotted out to repeat Republican talking points ensconced in the authority of having at some point been a “lifelong Democrat.” Dershowitz also hasn’t spent years jumping in front of microphones to wax philosophic about O.J.’s innocence, but he does declare to the press that the non-prosecution deal he helped secure for Epstein should have been more lenient. The “everyone is entitled to a lawyer” act lands much better when coupled with critical distance.

Zealous advocacy has a terminal point when the case ends. Dershowitz has used these representations to push his personal brand as a lapsed Democrat to hawk books like “Why I Quit the Dems: And So Should You!” and provide intellectual cover for op-eds like “Statutory Rape Is an Outdated Concept.” His trick is to bootstrap his personal advocacy to his legal work so he can reject any criticism with a sanctimonious lecture on the right to counsel.

The people of Martha’s Vineyard just got tired of it.

But, the article reports, part of the reason we’re not hearing as much about Dershowitz’s exile is that he’s making new friends! He spent a recent evening at a Chabad function hosted by Paul Singer, the hedge fund billionaire you might remember for flying Sam Alito to Alaska on a private jet to go fishing as his legal interests headed toward the Supreme Court. The justice did not recuse himself in that case. Alito, for his part, said he barely knows Singer — a claim complicated by an Above the Law report way back in 2009 where Alito’s “personal friend” Singer introduced the justice at a Federalist Society event.

Alas, the long national nightmare of Dershowitz’s Martha’s Vineyard complaints might finally be behind us. At least until another magazine decides to buy him a slice.

Alan Dershowitz Won’t Forget What Larry David Did to Him [The Atlantic]

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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While the custom-made Luce was estimated to sell for $1.1 million by the auction house RM Sotheby’s, the winning bid ended up being $40 million. All the sale proceeds would go to a 501(c)(3) charity, specifically the Ferrari Foundation.

To put that $40 million into perspective, the legendary McLaren F1 — considered to be one of the greatest sports cars of the 20th century — sold at the same auction for more than $34.6 million. This model is notable for being owned for more than two decades by Pink Floyd drummer and noted collector Nick Mason.

So who paid this astronomical amount? It was Herbert “Herbie” Wertheim, a self-made billionaire inventor, investor, and philanthropist. Wertheim built his fortune through Brain Power Inc. and decades of stock market investing. He is also known for pioneering ultraviolet-light-absorbing technology for eyeglass lenses.

Wertheim also purchased a one-of-one Ferrari Daytona SP3 Tailor Made for $26 million at RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction in 2025. That car was likewise sold for the benefit of The Ferrari Foundation.

Earlier this year, Wertheim also paid $2 million at a charity event for a private visit with President Donald Trump at the White House. The proceeds benefited educational scholarships for children of Palm Beach police officers and firefighters.

There was speculation and numerous conspiracy theories as to why Wertheim would pay so much for a car that had an MSRP of $640,000. Many thought that it was a way to get into Ferrari’s good graces and get an allocation for one of their limited-edition supercars like the F40, Enzo, and the LaFerrari.

But many also thought that the purchase is a large tax write off since all of the sales proceeds would go to charity. But can he really take a $40 million tax deduction after purchasing a Ferrari?

According to IRS rules, if you donate to a 501(c)(3) charity and get a good or service in return, you can only deduct the difference between the price you paid and the fair market value (FMV) of the good or service received. So what is the FMV of the Ferrari Luce? Is it the MSRP of $640,000? The $1.1 million expected auction winning price? Or the $40 million that Wertheim paid?

The Treasury Regulations provides some guidance on this issue. According to Section 1.170A-1(c)(2), the FMV of a contribution of property is the price at which the property would change hands between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither being under any compulsion to buy or sell and both having reasonable knowledge of relevant facts. This definition matches the general definition of FMV.

But Section 1.170A-1(h) which specifically discusses payments in exchange for consideration has a special rule that allows a donor to rely on the charity’s written valuation made in good faith to determine the FMV of a good or service unless there is reason to know that the estimate is unreasonable. In fact, the regulation provides an example where a taxpayer can rely on a written good faith estimate provided at auction as the FMV.

In this case, RM Sotheby’s presale estimate was $1.1 million for the bespoke Luce. This estimate is made in good faith and does not seem unreasonable considering the Luce’s MSRP of $640,000 and its disappointing public reaction. If this is the case, Wertheim could potentially take a $38.9 million tax write-off based on the Internal Revenue Service’s own regulations.

The tax rules impose additional substantiation and deduction limitations, and the charity’s documentation matters. For a payment of this size, the donor would need appropriate written acknowledgment and other supporting documentation. The IRS also requires additional reporting for large noncash charitable contributions in circumstances where applicable.

The IRS may have a problem with a billionaire claiming a large charitable deduction after purchasing a Ferrari and may try to argue that the good faith rule should not apply either because the requirements of the good faith estimate rule are not met or that the estimate is unreasonable. If that is the case, then the general definition of FMV should apply and there will be a valuation issue as to whether someone would buy a custom made Ferrari Luce for $40 million considering its middling popularity, relatively modest MSRP and the value of getting closer to Ferrari’s limited allocation list.

While most people will not purchase a Ferrari for $40 million anytime soon, they may one day make a large donation to a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and receive something valuable in return. If they want to calculate how much of the donation they can write on their tax returns, they should obtain a written statement from the organization on the value of the item received. And when they do, determine whether their valuation is reasonable.

Steven Chung is a tax attorney in Los Angeles, California. He helps people with basic tax planning and resolve tax disputes. He is also sympathetic to people with large student loans. He can be reached via email at stevenchungatl@gmail.com. Or you can connect with him on Twitter (@stevenchung) and connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Stripe to buy OpenRouter as fintech expands deeper into AI [CNBC]
The price tag is about $7.5 billion, with $1.5 billion allocated to OpenRouter’s founders. Less than three months ago OpenRouter raised $113 million at a valuation of about $1.3 billion…. Stripe has become one of the most valuable startups in the world, with a valuation of close to $160 billion as of earlier this year, thanks mostly to its online payment technology that’s become ubiquitous in many markets. Last year it bolstered its exposure to crypto with the $1.1 billion acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge.

Crypto Stocks Continue to Surge After Upbeat White House Meeting [WSJ]
In a White House meeting with industry executives, Trump urged Congress to pass the Clarity Act, which is currently stalled amid disagreement over ethics language.

California Draws More Startup Investment Than All Other 49 States Combined [WSJ via Yahoo!]
Companies based in the Golden State have drawn around $366 billion of venture capital since the beginning of the year, according to data provider PitchBook. That's more than three times the amount of venture funding that has gone into the other 49 states combined, and nearly double California's previous record, set in 2025. New York state ranks a distant second in venture-capital investment, with $27 billion in deals announced so far this year.

Two Sigma Lost a ‘Major Investor’ Over Co-Founders’ Feud [Bloomberg]
[John] Overdeck described the fallout from the men’s clash Wednesday while he was testifying concerning another major split in his life — his divorce from wife Laura Overdeck…. “If the investors become aware that there are disclosable disputes or arbitration among the partners, it gives them reason to question whether the company will be able to conduct itself in the way they’ve expected it to,” Overdeck said on the stand. “I am concerned large investors of the company would consider reducing their investments with the company.”

NJ billionaire had cops called on him by girlfriend while fighting $6.2 billion divorce case: report [N.Y. Post]
Cops were summoned at least eight times to the 6,000-square-foot estate in Short Hills that the Two Sigma founder once shared with his estranged wife, Laura Overdeck…. Many of the 911 calls to the home — which took place between April 2023 and June 2024 — involve an unnamed paramour whom John Overdeck told cops he was seeing, the report states.
Charges were never filed in any of the incidents….

The Lurid Lawsuit, Salami Scandal and Trash-Can Thief Vexing JPMorgan’s PR Department [WSJ]
A woman who dumped out and walked off with a special-edition Knicks trash can in broad daylight. An investment banker whose lawsuit alleged sexual harassment by a former colleague in excruciating detail. A startup founder who expensed “cellulite butter” to the bank during her trial for defrauding the bank.

Big Banks Ace an Easier Annual Stress Test [WSJ]
Big banks responded with buybacks and dividend hikes, with JPMorgan saying it would repurchase $50 billion in shares and Morgan Stanley saying it planned to repurchase $20 billion worth…. The results won’t come as a surprise. Acting under legal pressure, the Fed in late 2024 said it would begin releasing the scenarios and the models they use to calculate how well banks fare in any given hypothetical. Critics of the move have accused the Fed of giving away the answers to its own test before it happens.

SEC Pressed To Curtail Hedge Fund, VC Reporting Rules [Law360]
Venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and Ropes & Gray LLP are urging the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission to rewrite the definition of “hedge fund” before putting into place proposed regulations on what those funds have to disclose about their holdings.

M.B.A. Pay Is Drifting Down—and So Is Demand for the Degree [WSJ]
Tim Westerbeck, co-chairman of the higher-education consulting firm Eduvantis, said the M.B.A. was built for graduates to get a foothold in consulting and finance with analyst jobs—the very positions that AI is structurally absorbing. When even the top 20% of M.B.A. graduates can’t find the type of roles they want, the market for their degrees is changing in a permanent way.

At This Private-Credit Fund, Exits Have Been Restricted for Four Years and Counting [WSJ]
One wealth manager estimates it could take six more years to get all his clients’ money out of the fund, which specializes in a niche corner of the private-credit world.

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Now there’s a new chair at the once-venerable Biglaw shop. And though the Trumpian deal was widely panned by those in the legal industry that was not the undoing of former chair Brad Karp. No, it was his repeated appearances in the Epstein files which revealed a much cozier relationship with the infamous pedophile than previously known. Now at the helm of Paul, Weiss is mergers & acquisitions partner Scott Barshay, who Karp crowed about wooing over from Cravath in 2016.

Barshay was reportedly a major internal cheerleader of the Trump deal, dressing up the cowardice as pragmatism. But as Above the Law readers know, that decision ruffled feathers and sent litigators packing. And more may be headed for the exits. As the Wall Street Journal reports, additional litigation partners are currently in talks to leave, while Barshay has been crisscrossing the country trying to reassure the troops that everything is totally fine, nothing to see here, please stop updating your LinkedIn.

Barshay has been steadily reshaping Paul, Weiss (pushing for the changes even before he took over as Chair) into something that looks a lot more like a hyper-corporatized profit machine than the legacy institution many of the partners thought they signed up for. The partner compensation system has been revamped to throw eye-watering sums at rainmakers. Associate staffing is now more tightly controlled, ending the firm’s generalist model and limiting who gets to work with whom in the name of client consistency. The firm’s partner meetings are reportedly more “subdued,” which is a nice way of saying the personality has been sanded down to corporate beige. And Barshay’s push to make the firm apolitical has sealed the transition from “litigation powerhouse with a conscience” to “M&A juggernaut with a carefully managed personality.”

But here’s the part that makes all of this deliciously complicated — the numbers are good. Like, really good. Revenue is up (23.8% to $3.26 billion) and profits per equity partner are up (14.5%). The money is flowing, and in Biglaw, that tends to function as the ultimate sedative. Barshay’s changes are working in a purely financial sense, but at some point, the people who came for something more than just a paycheck are going to look around and realize they’re working at a place they barely recognize.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.

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If you were to closely scrutinize a U.S. banknote, however, right now you would come across two signatures: those of the Treasury Secretary and the Treasurer. If you have bills printed far enough back in time, you could compare the relatively legible signatures of some of the more recent holders of those offices, and the inscrutable scribbles of others.

It has been this way for 165 years. Yet, despite how he claims to care so deeply about history and tradition whenever he’s attempting to preserve a statue of some racist he just learned about the existence of, President Trump does not actually give one sh*t about history, tradition, or good taste.

In yet another unprecedented (some might say demented) move intended to fan the dictatorial flames of a sitting president’s massive ego, Trump’s jagged, thirsty signature is going to adorn U.S. paper currency. The Treasury Department also intends to drop the signature of the U.S. Treasurer, a first since greenbacks were originally introduced in 1861.

Trump, while he does still head an ever-shrinking cult of irrationally devoted supporters, is probably the most loathed president in United States history. Some outraged citizens claim that they will refuse to use any paper currency bearing Trump’s signature.

Personally, I believe large-scale resistance to Trump-signed paper money is going to take a different form. Remember when he slapped his disgusting glowering mug on this year’s annual National Parks passes right next to a portrait of George Washington like a total f*cking lunatic? Well, it took no time at all for people to start distributing custom stickers fit to go right over Trump’s stupid face, or to just color over it with a Sharpie. The Trump administration then scrambled to try to force the hardworking NPS rangers it had treated like a mass of human garbage during its DOGE campaign to disallow people who’d already paid for their passes from using them to get into National Parks if they’d covered the Trump photo.

Well, the Trump picture on the National Parks pass went over like a fart in church, and it seems to me that the Trump signature on paper money is even more ill-conceived. How long do you think it’s going to take for someone to start selling a desktop stamp that allows a person to stamp every single Trump-signed bill they come across to read “Donald J. Trump protects pedophiles” in his own dopey handwriting so it looks like he wrote it himself?

I should note that anyone who “mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates” a banknote with intent to render it unfit for reissue (the intent part’s important) commits a crime, and I am certainly not advocating for anyone to do anything like that. That being said, it actually isn’t against the law to harmlessly write, draw, or doodle in a small space on your paper currency as long as you’re not putting an advertisement on it. Plus, unlike with a National Parks pass that is issued to and tied to an individual person, cash changes hands a lot. It would be very easy for anyone with a modified bill to claim it came to them that way in a legitimate cash transaction.

The possibilities are endless, and I frankly can’t wait to see what people come up with. The first Trump-signed hundred dollar bills are supposedly going to be printed in June, with other denominations to follow, though keep in mind that his ballroom is still a crater in the ground where the East Wing of the White House used to be, Iran is far from fully defeated, and we’re still waiting on that wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for in his first term.

Folks, Trump turns 80 in June, just in time for his new $100 bills to drop. Hard to believe though it is, everything is only going to keep getting even stupider from here. Hopefully at least we can all get a few lolz out of this one.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

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But assistant attorney general Patrick Davis wrote to the committee to “kindly ask that you confirm that the subpoena is withdrawn,” and that the DOJ “continues to believe that additional compulsory process is unnecessary in light of our demonstrated willingness to voluntarily assist your oversight efforts.” And a spokesperson for the Department said, “Because of the leadership transition at the Department, the subpoena no longer applies.”

Which, I guess if you never ask the answer is always no. But, let’s be so fucking for real right now, that argument is about as persuasive as a toddler claiming bedtime “no longer applies” because they changed into different pajamas. Unsurprisingly, the committee is not buying what DOJ is selling at the clearance rack of accountability — they’ve already confirmed they’ll reach out to her personal attorney. “The Department of Justice has stated Pam Bondi will not appear on April 14 for a deposition since she is no longer Attorney General and was subpoenaed in her capacity as Attorney General,” a spokeswoman for Oversight Republicans said in a statement. “The Committee will contact Pam Bondi’s personal counsel to discuss next steps regarding scheduling her deposition.”

Plus the committee has already heard testimony from, ahem, former Attorney General Bill Barr, proving that “ex-A.G.” is not, in fact, a cloak of invisibility. And top Democrat on the committee Rep. Richard Garcia made it clear he’s not going to let this go. “She must come in to testify immediately, and if she defies the subpoena, we will begin contempt charges in the Congress,” he said. “The survivors deserve justice.” Rep. James Walkinshaw noted the subpoena “did not become null and void when she was fired.”

Republican Nancy Mace also had strong words for the flimsy excuse. “Leaving office doesn’t mean you get to dodge accountability,” Mace said in a statement. “Pam Bondi was subpoenaed by name, not by title, and because the DOJ stonewalled Congress and refused to follow the law, she needs to appear before the Oversight Committee and answer for it.”

“She promised she would comply,” she said. “April 14 is her chance to prove it. Chairman Comer must make one thing clear: show up or face contempt.”

The committee sure looks like they’re ready to go all in to show Bondi you can’t ghost Congress like a bad Hinge date.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.

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“What has been agreed to, what’s been stated, is the Strait [of Hormuz] is open,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters yesterday morning. “Our military is watching. Sure their military is watching. But commerce will flow. And that’s what you saw the markets react to.”

Regardless of whether Tehran and Washington sustain this ceasefire and hammer out a long-term agreement, Hegseth said a host of US military objections have been accomplished over the past five-and-a-half weeks, calling it a “decisive military victory.”

“America’s military achieved every single objective, on plan, on schedule, exactly as laid out from day one. Iran’s Navy is at the bottom of the sea,” Hegseth told reporters this morning.

“Iran’s Air Force has been wiped out,” he later added. “Iran no longer has … any sort of a comprehensive air defense system. We own their skies. Their missile program is functionally destroyed. Launchers, production facilities and existing stockpiles depleted and decimated and almost completely ineffective.”

Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine provided additional context on just what damage the Pentagon believes it has inflicted on Iran’s defenses. Internal analysis, the four-star general explained, estimated during Operation Epic Fury the US struck 13,000 targets and 1,700 ballistic missiles were intercepted by US forces and Gulf partners. Approximately 80 percent of Iran’s air defense systems were destroyed, he added, along with 90 percent of the “regular” fleet of maritime vessels (not the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and 95 percent of their naval mines.

And when it comes to Tehran’s defense industrial base, Caine said, the Pentagon believes that it has either damaged or destroyed 20 naval production and fabrication, nearly 80 percent of Iran’s nuclear industrial base, and 80 percent of their missile facilities.

“We’ve destroyed Iran’s defense industrial base, their ability to reconstitute those capabilities for years to come,” he told reporters. “We attacked, along with our partners, approximately 90 percent of their weapons factories. Every factory that produced Shahed one-way attack drones was struck. Every factory that produces the guidance systems that go into those drones was struck. Their missile defense industrial base is shattered.”

Despite US claims of military success, Iran has continued to have the ability to strike targets across the region including a petrochemical complex in Saudi Arabia this week, and an F-15E fighter last week.

Regardless, Hegseth’s comments about the delicate ceasefire between Washington and Tehran followed a tense weekend and start to this week after President Donald Trump vowed total destruction of Iran’s bridges and power plants if Iran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday and present other acceptable terms.

 “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday morning. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”

But shortly before that US imposed deadline lapsed, Trump lifted the threat, instead announcing a new two-week “double sided” ceasefire during which the two sides would continue negotiations centered around a previously disclosed Iranian 10-point proposal. That proposal reportedly allows Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz, ends US military attacks on Iran, requires US withdrawal from the Middle East and grants Tehran permission to enrich uranium.

However, the two-week ceasefire does not extend to all ongoing military operations in the region and Israel is continuing to strike Hezbollah inside Lebanon.

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Stocks Rally on Ceasefire Amid Biggest Short Squeeze Since 2020 [Bloomberg]
"This is more of a relief rally than anything sustainable and we believe that ultimately we will not get anything satisfactory for either side, but taking the temperature down a notch is all that the market desired,” said Joe Gilbert, portfolio manager at Integrity Asset Management…. The sharp market rebound had hedge funds rushing to close out bets against US stocks…. Hedge fund managers sharply accelerated the covering of short positions tied to macro products — like major indexes and exchange-traded funds — late Tuesday, just after President Donald Trump announced the temporary ceasefire deal. The bank said the volume of such unwinding is on track to reach the levels seen early in the pandemic.

Retail traders sold Wednesday’s rally. They aren’t buying Trump’s Iran ceasefire [CNBC Pro]
Individual traders have shifted away from their long-running “buy-the-dip” playbook, JPMorgan data showed.

OpenAI will allocate IPO shares to retail investors as it preps for debut, CFO says [CNBC via MSN]
"AI needs to garner trust in everything that we do. That is part of why retail particularly speaks to me," Friar said. "It has to be that everyone partakes, that it isn't just that a very small group, and everyone else gets left behind."
She pointed to her time as CFO of Square, now known as Block, where the fintech company offered a direct selling program to small business owners and sellers in its IPO.

Some hedge funds are expanding in Miami — but its share of prized portfolio managers has fallen [BI via AOL]
While well-off founders and near-retirement executives might be buying property in exclusive Miami neighborhoods or Palm Beach gated communities, the average employee in the asset management industry has not yet been convinced that the grass would be greener in Brickell instead of Midtown Manhattan…. In 2025, eight of the industry's biggest employers — multistrategy funds including Millennium, Citadel, Point72, Balyasny, Schonfeld, ExodusPoint, Verition, and Walleye — had a combined 218 investment professionals in Miami, according to filings. A year later, the eight firms had 20 fewer investors in the Magic City, despite the firms' investing-focused head count increasing by more than 11%.

British computer scientist denies he is bitcoin developer Satoshi Nakamoto [Guardian]
“I also don’t know who satoshi is, and i think it is good for bitcoin that this is the case, as it helps bitcoin be viewed [as] a new asset class, the mathematically scarce digital commodity,” [Adam Back] wrote…. Back said it was all happenstance. The artefacts that had led to [reporter John] Carreyrou’s conclusion were “a combination of coincidence and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests”, he wrote.

You knew the law. You understood the procedure. You prepared your case. You showed up. You asked the right questions. You made your arguments. You learned from experience.

Technology sat on the periphery. It made things faster. It made things easier. It rarely changed the core of what it meant to practice well.

That is no longer true.

Litigation is beginning to move in real time. And when that happens, competence starts to shift.

During a recent conversation with Dean Whalen, chief legal officer of Readback, we explored what this shift looks like inside one of the most consequential moments in litigation: the deposition.

You can watch the full discussion here:

The takeaway is not that technology replaces lawyers. It does not. The takeaway is more subtle and more important.

When the tools available to lawyers change the speed, precision, and visibility of decision-making, the baseline for competent practice shifts with them.

The Old Rhythm Of Litigation

For decades, depositions followed a familiar pattern.

Lawyers prepared their outlines. They walked into the room. They asked questions. A stenographer recorded the exchange. And then everyone waited.

Days or weeks later, the transcript arrived.

Only then could lawyers confirm what had actually been said, whether key testimony landed as intended, and how the record might affect summary judgment or settlement strategy.

Dean described that experience with a mix of familiarity and frustration.

“I would hear attorneys say, ‘I think we did really well, but let’s see how the transcript reads.’”

That sentence captures an older rhythm of litigation. Act first. Analyze later.

It was acceptable because there was no alternative.

When Litigation Becomes Immediate

That rhythm is starting to break.

Real-time transcription, live annotation tools, and AI-assisted analysis are changing how depositions unfold. Lawyers can now see testimony as it happens. They can confirm whether an answer is precise. They can adjust their questions immediately.

In some cases, experts are observing the deposition remotely, reviewing testimony in real time, and feeding suggestions back to the examining attorney.

The deposition becomes less of a static event and more of a dynamic system.

Imagine a key witness gives a vague answer on causation.

In the old model, that ambiguity might not be discovered until days later, after the deposition is over.

In a real-time environment, it’s caught immediately, clarified on the spot, and locked into the record.

Dean put it plainly.

“In today’s information age, we shouldn’t have to walk out of there not knowing that we’ve precisely nailed the testimony.”

That expectation would have sounded unrealistic not long ago. Today, it is increasingly achievable.

And once something becomes achievable, it starts to influence what clients expect.

Competence Is No Longer Static

The legal profession has always tied competence to knowledge and judgment. That remains true. Technology does not replace either.

But competence has also always had a practical dimension. It reflects what a reasonable lawyer should know and do under current conditions.

Dean pointed to this directly when discussing ethical obligations.

“We as attorneys need to stay up and competent on technologies,” he said, referencing the professional expectation that lawyers understand tools that can benefit their clients.

There was a time when it was reasonable to ignore certain tools. They were too expensive. Too immature. Too unreliable.

That argument is becoming harder to sustain.

When real-time tools improve the accuracy of testimony, reduce ambiguity, and allow lawyers to correct gaps before they become embedded in the record, they are not simply conveniences. They are inputs into the quality of representation.

That does not mean every tool must be adopted. It does mean every tool worth considering must be evaluated.

The In-House Perspective

This shift is particularly important for in-house counsel.

Legal departments are not only consumers of legal services. They are managers of risk, cost, and outcomes. They rely on outside counsel to execute a litigation strategy, but they remain accountable for the results.

When depositions become more dynamic and data-rich, in-house leaders gain new leverage and face new responsibilities.

They can ask better questions.

How quickly do we know what happened in a deposition?
How confident are we in the accuracy of the transcript?
Are we adjusting strategy in real time or reacting weeks later?

These are not technical questions. They are management questions.

Dean framed it in practical terms.

“If you’re speaking to outside counsel, you want to make sure you’re using all the tools at your disposal to maximize your ability to win the case.”

That does not require in-house lawyers to become technologists. It requires them to understand where technology changes outcomes.

The Resistance Is Real

Not every lawyer is eager to embrace this shift.

Some argue that real-time tools are distracting. They prefer to maintain eye contact with the witness, focus on the flow of questioning, and avoid splitting attention between the person in front of them and the transcript on the screen.

That concern is legitimate.

Litigation is still a human process. Rapport, pressure, and presence matter. A deposition is not simply a data exercise.

Dean acknowledged this tension.

“Some lawyers want to be eye to eye with the witness,” he said. “They don’t want to be looking to the right to see how the transcript is being created.”

But he also described a middle ground.

“I call it the safety net use of it. Don’t look at it while you’re questioning. Use it during a break. Make sure you actually nailed the testimony.”

This framing matters.

The question is not whether technology should replace traditional skills. It should not. The question is whether technology can reinforce those skills by reducing avoidable error.

Guardrails Define The Future

As litigation becomes more dependent on technology, another issue becomes central: trust.

Not all tools are created equal. Not all systems protect data. Not all outputs are admissible.

Dean was clear about what matters.

“You want to make sure that your transcript is admissible. You want to make sure your data is protected. You want to make sure there’s human oversight.”

Those are not minor details. They are the difference between useful innovation and professional risk.

In many ways, this is where competence becomes most nuanced.

It is not enough to adopt new tools. Lawyers must understand how those tools work, what risks they introduce, and how to use them responsibly.

A Moving Baseline

The definition of competence does not change overnight.

It shifts gradually, almost imperceptibly, as new capabilities become standard and expectations adjust.

We are in the middle of one of those shifts.

Litigation is becoming more immediate. Information is becoming more accessible. Feedback loops are getting shorter.

In that environment, waiting weeks to understand what happened in a deposition starts to feel less like prudence and more like delay.

The profession does not need to abandon its foundations to adapt. Legal judgment, preparation, and advocacy remain central.

But the conditions under which those skills are applied are changing.

And when the conditions change, competence follows.

Lawyers who recognize this shift early won’t simply change how they practice. They’ll change the outcomes they deliver. Competence isn’t standing still. It’s keeping up.

Olga V. Mack is the CEO of TermScout, where she builds legal systems that make contracts faster to understand, easier to operate, and more trustworthy in real business conditions. Her work focuses on how legal rules allocate power, manage risk, and shape decisions under uncertainty. A serial CEO and former General Counsel, Olga previously led a legal technology company through acquisition by LexisNexis. She teaches at Berkeley Law and is a Fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. She has authored several books on legal innovation and technology, delivered six TEDx talks, and her insights regularly appear in Forbes, Bloomberg Law, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, and Above the Law. Her work treats law as essential infrastructure, designed for how organizations actually operate.

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Unpacking Saks Global’s Post-Bankruptcy Plan [Business of Fashion]

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In addition to a $3.15 billion upfront cash payment, Gilead could pay out up to $1.85 billion more if the Tubulis assets achieve milestones, according to financial terms announced Tuesday. The deal continues what has been an active business development strategy. Tubulis represents Gilead’s third M&A announcement this year.

Munich, Germany-based Tubulis specializes in developing antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), a type of cancer therapy made by linking a targeting antibody to a toxic drug payload. ADCs are already represented in the Gilead portfolio by Trodelvy, whose approvals in breast and bladder cancers have made it a blockbuster seller. Trodelvy came from the $21 billion acquisition of Immunomedics in 2020. With its latest deal, Gilead is betting Tubulis can be part of the next generation of ADCs.

Though currently available ADCs enable targeted delivery, sometimes the drug payload is released before the therapy reaches the tumor, causing off-target toxicity. Tubulis’s drugs come from platform technologies that produce ADCs with better stability. A stable ADC is less likely to release its drug payload prematurely, CEO Dominik Schumacher said in a 2024 interview. He added that Tubulis’s technologies also enable the company to develop ADCs with more potent drug payloads. The startup’s technologies are based on research from the Leibniz Research Institute in Berlin and the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich.

Lead Tubulis program TUB-040 is designed to target NaPi2b. While high expression of this protein by ovarian and lung cancers make it a promising target, others have fallen short in their attempts to drug it. Zymeworks and Mersana Therapeutics are among the biotechs that have stopped work on NaP12b-targeting ADCs.

TUB-040 is currently in Phase 1b/2 testing in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer (PROC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The first interim data from Phase 1/2a testing in ovarian cancer were presented last fall during the European Society for Medical Oncology meeting. In 66 evaluable patients, results showed a 50% overall response rate. TUB-040 was generally well tolerated across all doses and the majority of treatment-related adverse events were classified as Grade 1 or 2. Soon after the conference, Tubulis was able to add new investors to its Series C round of financing, which closed at €344 million (about $401 million) total.

The next ADC in the Tubulis pipeline is TUB-030, which is designed to target 5T4, a protein highly expressed by many cancers but rarely by healthy tissue. Tubulis is assessing this ADC in a basket study spanning 13 types of solid tumors.

Gilead got better acquainted with Tubulis’s ADC technologies and pipeline through a partnership started in 2024. Gilead paid $20 million up front to collaborate on the discovery and development of an ADC for an undisclosed target. The deal granted Gilead the exclusive option to license the program for further development and potential commercialization. In Tuesday’s acquisition announcement, Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day said the collaboration gave his company conviction in Tubulis’s programs and research capabilities.

“Bringing this potential into Gilead would further expand what is already the strongest and most diverse pipeline in our company’s history,” he said.

Virology has been Gilead’s strength, but the company is also prioritizing immunology and oncology as additional areas for growth. In February, Gilead agreed to buy partner Arcellx in a $7.8 billion deal that brings a next-generation multiple myeloma cell therapy currently under FDA review. In March, Gilead agreed to pay about $1.7 billion to buy Ouro Medicines, a startup developing T cell engagers for autoimmune conditions. Both deals include the platform technologies that produced the companies’ respective drug candidates.

While Leerink Partners analyst Daina Graybosch acknowledged the potential of Tubulis’s two clinical-stage assets, her research note highlighted the biotech’s platforms, which she said give Gilead a way to drive future pipeline innovation. A note that Gilead sent to analysts said Tubulis’s next-generation ADC technologies fit with Gilead’s medicinal chemistry capabilities, which could lead to new classes of ADC payloads used in oncology, inflammation, and virology, Graybosch wrote. She added that Gilead’s comments brought to mind Merck’s $9.2 billion acquisition of Cidara. While Cidara’s platform technology produced the influenza-preventing drug that is its lead program, this technology also has applications in cancer. That is the type of novel antiviral drug conjugate program that Leerink believes Gilead aims to apply to virology, specifically for HIV drug R&D.

“This is more than an oncology bolt-on; we see real platform value in application of Tubulis’ ADC technologies to other therapeutic areas, namely virology,” Graybosch said.

Gilead Chief Medical Officer Dietmar Berger elaborated on his company’s interest in Tubulis and its technologies during a Tuesday conference call. The ADC that Gilead developed in partnership with Tubulis has advanced to preclinical development for a target that remains undisclosed. But this research gave Gilead insight into the Tubulis’s technological capabilities, Berger said.

One of the ADC platforms produces highly stable linkers connecting the drug payload to the antibody, Berger said. This capability enables development of ADCs with high drug-antibody ratios (DAR), meaning they can carry more drug payload for a more potent effect. Even with the larger payload, Tubulis’s ADCs are extremely stable in circulation, Berger said. The other Tubulis technology enables development of ADCs with new types of drug payloads, including novel cytotoxins, protein degraders, and immune modulators. Begrer said these payloads could be applied to new areas, such as immunology and virology.

“Think about potential antiviral payloads, think about potential immunologically modulating payloads,” he said. “That’s where we see the real opportunity and that’s also where our chemistry, and medicinal chemistry, but also biological capabilities come in in combination with this unique platform that Tubulis has developed.”

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Markets shift back towards potential Fed rate cut this year with Iran ceasefire in place [CNBC]
Odds for a reduction jumped Wednesday morning, hitting about 43%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool…. Prior to the announcement, market-implied odds for a cut were just 14%.
Traders had expected the Fed would be hesitant to cut this year as the Iran conflict had sent energy prices skyrocketing, threatening the central bank’s efforts to get inflation back to its 2% goal. Previous to that, markets had expected multiple cuts this year in an effort to shore up the plodding labor market.

My Quest to Solve Bitcoin’s Great Mystery [NYT]
Adam Back, a British cryptographer and leading figure in the Bitcoin movement, sat on a park bench in Riga, Latvia, his shirt untucked under a brown coat. The filmmaker casually rattled off the names of several Satoshi suspects. At the mention of his own name, Mr. Back tensed up, strenuously denied he was Satoshi and asked that the conversation be kept off the record….
I pored over Satoshi’s body of writing, especially the emails released by Mr. Malmi, and made a list of words and phrases that stood out to me…. Using the advanced search function on the social media platform X, I did a cursory search to see if any of the dozen or so people most often suspected of being Satoshi used the terms I had highlighted…. One person was a match for nearly all of my words and phrases: Mr. Back.

Hedge funds suffered worst losses since Covid in Iran war turmoil [FT]
The flagship hedge fund performance index of data provider HFR recorded a 3.1 per cent fall last month, more than any month since a 9.1 per cent drop six years ago…. “I’ve been managing money for 40 years and I’ve never been less certain on how things are going to turn out,” said one macro hedge fund manager.

SpaceX isn’t even public yet and investors are already abuzz about a Tesla merger [WSJ via MSN]
Musk hasn’t been shy about aligning his companies to achieve his life’s ambition of building human civilization on Mars. Morgan Stanley’s former Tesla analyst Adam Jonas dubbed the project the “Muskonomy.” In recent weeks, other Wall Street analysts have picked up where Jonas left off, with some telling investors they see some logic to a merger.

FDIC Lays Out Guidelines for Institutions Issuing Stablecoins [Bloomberg]
New guidelines would seek to establish requirements related to reserve assets, redemptions of outstanding stablecoins, permissible activities and capital, among others…. The plan is likely to be cheered by industry. Crypto firms will likely see it as a step closer to legitimacy while banks pore over the details to ensure the regulators don’t give financial technology companies too much room to act like traditional lenders.

Digital health startups raised $4 billion across 110 deals during the first quarter of 2026, according to data published Monday by venture fund and strategy group Rock Health. That’s a $1 billion increase compared to the $3 billion raised across 122 deals during the first quarter of last year.

The average size of a digital health financing deal during the first quarter was $36.7 million, marking the highest average deal size since the fourth quarter of 2021. A wave of 12 megadeals — financings of $100 million or more — largely drove the increase.

Wearable device company WHOOP’s $575 million Series G marked the biggest deal of the quarter. The next five largest deals were raised by precision health company Verily ($300 million), AI-powered search platform OpenEvidence ($250 million), telepsychiatry provider Talkiatry ($210 million), employer-focused GLP-1 clinic eMed ($200 million) and mental health startup Grow Therapy ($150 million).

If this pace keeps up, this year will finish with almost 50 mega deals, which would be nearly double last year’s count of 26.

As for M&A activity, the first quarter showed modest growth. It ended with 43 digital health deals, up from 30 deals during the previous quarter.

Rock Health’s report noted that two of the most notable transactions were deals in which the acquirer purchased a health tech startup to recruit its specialized talent rather than to acquire its assets and revenue streams: OpenAI‘s acquisition of health data startup Torch and Headway‘s purchase of Tezi, which makes an autonomous AI recruiting agent.

In addition to the 43 M&A deals that occurred, there was a new venture that crumbled during the first quarter. In December, reports emerged that Matt Holt, former managing director and president of private equity at New Mountain Capital, had left the New York City firm to start a new venture combining five of its health tech portfolio companies in a deal valued at more than $30 billion. But the deal collapsed last month due to disagreements surrounding governance and financing.

Overall, the exit market remains open, but companies with sufficient capital or financial stability are mostly choosing to wait.

It’s also worth noting that the first quarter of 2026 marked the first quarter for which Rock Health stopped differentiating between AI and non-AI startups in its report. In this day and age, pretty much every digital health startup is AI-enabled in one way or another, so the lines are too blurred for this distinction to hold much weight.

Rock Health also cautioned that the digital health market is likely to remain volatile as broader geopolitical and policy uncertainty continues to shape investment decisions.

Shifting federal priorities, evolving healthcare regulations and macroeconomic tensions could all influence where capital flows in the coming quarters. In this environment, investors are expected to remain selective, concentrating funding on startups with clear paths to growth and sustainability.

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Suppose Portugal announced that it wanted France to be its newest state.

Governor Macron, and all that.

How would the world react?

Lunatic at the helm, maybe?

Suppose Portugal said that it intended to take over Greenland — preferably by negotiation, but by force, if necessary.

What would we think of the Portuguese leader? Would we be coming to take him away, ha-haaa?

Suppose Portugal imposed ridiculously high tariffs on the rest of the world.

Portugal’s economy doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things, so I guess the rest of the world would just let ’em do it, and let Portugal suffer the consequences.

Suppose Portugal started blowing up fishing boats off the coast of Great Britain, saying that the boats harbored drug smugglers, and Portugal wasn’t going to let the criminals get away with it any more.

Would the U.K. sit still?

Suppose Portugal launched a military raid to capture the president of another country.

Would the rest of the world tell Portugal not to do such things?

Suppose the president of Portugal started using social media to insult foreign leaders. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was “no Winston Churchill,” “spineless,” “cowardly,” and “a loser who has no future.” Sadiq Khan was a “horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor” of London. Suppose the Portuguese president posted on social media private notes that Portugal had received from Emanuel Macron and NATO Secretary Mark Rutte, publicly embarrassing the notes’ authors.

Would the U.K., France, and NATO later want to help Portugal if it had a moment of need?

Suppose Portugal started a war in Iran without consulting its allies and later, after the Strait of Hormuz was closed and the worldwide price of oil was skyrocketing, asked other countries to step in and open the Strait.

Having spent the previous year antagonizing people around the world, do you suppose Portugal would find much global sympathy or support?

(Come to think of it, suppose the president of Portugal had posted on social media that Donald Trump was a convicted felon who had been found liable for sexual assault — an entirely accurate statement — and later asked the United States to get Portugal out of a jam. How would Donald Trump react?)

I realize of course that the United States is rich and powerful, and the American economy and military matter more to the world than the Portuguese ones. But, on a personal level, do people react differently when they’re treated poorly by the leader of a rich and powerful country than when they’re treated poorly by the leader of a less rich and less powerful one?

Despite all that Trump has done, other global leaders might continue to treat the United States with public respect, for fear of the consequences if they do otherwise.

But you can bet your last dollar that no American ally now feels warmly toward the United States or is inclined to do the U.S. any optional favors.

America has gotten away with having a clownish buffoon at the helm because America is the most powerful country on earth.

But the guy at the helm is still a clownish buffoon, and everyone else in the world knows it.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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I earlier authored an article raising the issue whether the mushrooming creation of deepfakes would jeopardize our judicial and litigation system. My concern and that of others is that the increased battles over what digital evidence is real and what is fake would embroil our system in endless time-consuming disputes and battles of experts.

And that by virtue of being exposed over and over to AI-generated fake photos, audio recordings, and videos, people — judges and juries — would come to disbelieve any and all of it. It’s known as the liar’s dividend, a phrase coined by Robert Chesney and Danielle Citron in a 2019 law review article.

Both have enormous repercussions for litigation and perhaps more significantly, the courtroom. The reliance on digital materials in courtrooms both for real evidence and as demonstrative material is pretty standard today. Indeed, it’s probably expected. But what happens when all that evidence is now questioned and fought over? At the very least, it could change the way cases are tried.

The Courts and Deepfakes

First, courts may soon come to insist on more vigorous authentication as a matter of course. The proponent of a photograph, video, or audio recording must offer evidence sufficient to support a finding of authenticity. Typically, this means the following questions and answers of a witness:

Q: Did you take this photo?

A: Yes

Q: Does it fairly and accurately depict what you saw when you took it?

A: Yes

It’s then offered for admission. There is almost a presumption of authenticity.

But in the future, that may not be enough as we move toward a spoken or unspoken presumption of lack of authenticity. This means that those offering digital-type evidence will have to do much more to convince a skeptical judge that the item be admitted into evidence. Things like providing the underlying meta data, testimony on how the image was created and “touched up,” requiring a showing of what amounts to a chain of custody of the image or recording. Perhaps even expert testimony. The “sufficient to support” standard may be about to get tougher.

Seeing will no longer be believing; seeing will require verification. All of which is going to gum up our trials, make them longer, and more expensive.

Another option for courts may be the greater and more aggressive use of concepts like those set out in Federal Evidentiary Rule 403. This Rule allows courts to exclude evidence the probative value of which is “substantially outweighed” by the risk of prejudice, misleading the jury, or confusion.

This rule is already used to exclude things like gruesome photos of accident victims. Its use has also been debated in situations where the opportunity to use immersive evidence such as that which could be viewed on a Vision Pro.

But when faced with digital evidence, the authenticity of which is hotly contested, a judge could very well conclude that the risk the evidence could mislead the jury into thinking some is real when there is a good chance it isn’t (or vice versa). And that risk outweighs its probative value. The result of course is less digital evidence in the courtroom.

One final option for the court: just let the jury decide if the digital evidence is credible and real. As a former defense lawyer, I shudder at the thought but understand the logic. If digital evidence is offered and I oppose it, it’s up to me on cross examination to raise doubts about credibility. Of course, this places a lot of responsibility on juries to understand and deal with technical issues but it’s an easy out for judges.

No matter which way courts go, the risk of deepfakes will change the courtroom, and it will be up to trial lawyers to deal with it.

What Does It Mean for the Lawyer

Trial lawyers in the future will be faced with greater authenticity scrutiny, more risk of exclusion of digital evidence, or perhaps being forced to convince a jury of an item’s authenticity or lack thereof. All the while facing jurors who are likely to believe any and all digital evidence is not real and will therefore disregard it anyway. The power of digital evidence then actually becomes a liability instead of an asset. What’s a poor lawyer to do?

First, courtroom lawyers must be better prepared to offer stronger proof of authenticity. It will no longer be the standard two or three questions. This means boning up on deepfakes and how to combat them. It means mastering the technical end of photos, videos, and audio recordings and being able to explain and show validity in simple terms a jury and judge can understand. It means explaining creative methods. More importantly, it means offering corroborating proof in the courtroom of what the digital evidence purports to show.

In some situations, it may even mean electing to use less technology and digital evidence, not more. In fact, in general, varying digital evidence with more analogue-type evidence every now and then is a good idea in any event. It keeps the jury’s interest, in my experience.

It comes down to preparation and understanding of the risks and benefits of technology, which is already ethically required.

Tomorrow’s Trials: We Better Be Ready

There can be little doubt that authenticity will be front and center in the future. There will be some tough calls that need to be made by judges, juries, and lawyers. It will mean dealing with technical issues and concepts that aren’t clear cut. Tough decisions that will need to be made by both judges and juries.

As with most technology, the key will be to understand the risks of deepfakes and be ready to deal with it. You can’t get there by ignoring reality.

Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger, and writer. He publishes TechLaw Crossroads, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law.

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The former Attorney General’s picture is barely cold in the trashcan, and already her would-be replacements are jockeying to be the next lawyer to land headfirst in the rubbish, with only a pile of congressional subpoenas to cushion the blow.

Jeanine! Alina! Harmeet! The gang’s all here.

This job is objectively a shit sandwich. An increasingly demented and desperate president is staring down the likely loss of at least one House of Congress in the midterms and a wildly unpopular war that refuses to end no matter how much he shitposts at it. The one thing Trump wants from the DOJ is the scalps of his enemies — a prize that moves ever further out of reach as statutes of limitations run.

The problem isn’t that Pam Bondi lacked “smarts and guts,” as Trump reportedly complained. The former county prosecutor and Florida state AG worked like hell to give her boss the perp walks he demanded. The problem is that the American legal system, battered as it is, retains a stubborn capacity to distinguish between actual crimes and the president’s personal grievances.

Darn you, grand juries! Darn you, federal judges! Darn you, probable cause!

This is a problem familiar to Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s second choice to lead the US Attorneys Office in DC. After Ed Martin failed to win Senate confirmation, Trump tapped the former Fox News host for the job. Pirro was a former state prosecutor in New York, but her chops are a little rusty. She’s gotten no-billed dozens of times by grand juries, suffered an embarrassing string of losses related to DHS’s “surge” into DC, and her subpoena for the Federal Reserve got quashed by Chief Judge James Boasberg, who found that the DOJ’s “justifications are so thin and unsubstantiated that the Court can only conclude that they are pretextual.”

For the case against lawmakers who posted a video reminding service members of their obligation to disregard illegal orders, Pirro brought in a ringer — a retired state prosecutor currently working as a dance photographer. But his presentation fell flat, and not a single grand juror voted to indict.

The Atlantic reports that Pirro is undeterred, and is actively lobbying for the job at Mar-a-Lago. She’s joined by Trump’s sparklemagic lawyer, Alina Habba, who recently relocated to Florida to be closer to the action. The former dress-up US Attorney for New Jersey is theoretically a senior Justice Department official advising on US Attorneys Offices. She’s never prosecuted a federal case in her life, but Caligula made his horse a consul so … sure, why not?

Other reported contenders include EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who practiced law for three whole years in Long Island before being elected to the New York State Senate. Trump has referred to Zeldin as his “secret weapon,” thanks to Zeldin’s uncanny ability to pump out expedited permits for hydrocarbon extraction, which is just like running the world’s largest law firm.

CBS reports that Harmeet Dhillon, another of Trump’s personal lawyers, is in the mix, too. Dhillon presided over the evisceration of the DOJ’s Civil Division, reorienting the office to hunt trans kids and protect white men from academic and workplace “discrimination.” But unlike Bondi, who understood that social media is just a tool for pumping out content to keep sweet with the White House, Dhillon isn’t in on the joke. She actually boasted once to the Wall Street Journal that she wakes up and scrolls X.com for “a list of new horrors,” after which “I text my deputies, and we assign cases, and we get cranking.” She could turn the DOJ into an anti-DEI machine without blinking. (Because she never blinks.)

I’ve been stuck at the same level of followers on this account pretty much since I started my government job. What, am I chopped liver over here?

What kind of content do my folks want to see more of to like and share?

— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@HarmeetKDhillon) December 6, 2025

Senators Mike Lee and Eric Schmitt are mentioned as possible candidates as well, but the real man to beat is Deputy AG Todd Blanche, yet another of Trump’s former personal lawyers. In the post announcing that Bondi would be relocated to a farm upstate where she could run around and chase squirrels with the other discarded former lawyers — say hi to Rudy! — Trump said “our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General.”

Graded on the Trump curve, Blanche is comparatively qualified: He worked as a prosecutor at SDNY early in his career. He has actual experience in Justice Department leadership. He’s not obviously delusional.

But if Blanche wasn’t able to make those political prosecutions happen as the second-in-command at DOJ, why would he be able to do it from the big chair?

He’s also got some stink on him from the Epstein files, another grenade Bondi tried and failed to diffuse for the president. Blanche interviewed Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in person, right around the time she found herself transferred from Florida to a cushy facility in Texas that categorically bars sex offenders. It was at this meeting that Maxwell remembered that Trump was always a perfect gentleman when she knew him — an amazing coincidence Blanche will certainly be asked about in a congressional hearing if he takes the top job. Will he be reduced to screeching about the stock market when asked about his boss’s former buddy?

View the original article to see embedded media.

There is one more potential wrench in the works. Senator Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican who doomed Ed Martin’s nomination by making sure he never got out of the Judiciary Committee, says he’s a “no” on anyone who downplays the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

“For me, the threshold for somebody following Pam Bondi ends the moment I hear they said one thing that excused the events of January the 6th. I’ve been very clear on that,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “So I hope whoever they have in mind to follow General Bondi is very clear-eyed on my position on Jan. 6.”

So … none of the above?

Whoever succeeds Bondi will preside over an institution that’s been gutted during her 14-month tenure. More than 6,400 employees were either fired, resigned, or took early retirement. The Civil Rights Division lost roughly three-quarters of its attorneys. The share of top law school graduates applying to work at DOJ has plummeted, and US Attorneys are reduced to asking anyone with a MAGA hat and a bar card to slide into their DMs. Worst of all, judicial deference to the government is decimated, thanks to the terrible, mendacious arguments Bondi forced her employees to make during the past 14 months.

“I won’t believe it until you testify. That’s what has happened to the credibility of your office,” New Jersey Judge Zahid Quraishi excoriated a hapless AUSA in March. “Generations of Assistant U.S. Attorneys had built the goodwill of that office for your generation to destroy it within a year.”

None of that will change for whichever lickspittle slobbers his or her way to the top of Main Justice. Bondi’s successor may be a better manager, or have a clearer understanding of how federal prosecutions work. But he or she won’t be able to magic up crimes by Trump’s enemies where none exist.

The only thing different is the name on the next portrait to wind up in the trash.

Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast.

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In the cold open, cast member Ashley Padilla took a turn as Bondi, delivering a performance that managed to capture both the self-seriousness and the spectacular lack of self-awareness that defined Bondi’s time at DOJ. The highlight? A line that feels destined to live far longer than Bondi’s already-short-lived post-Trump tenure, “The truth is, I was amazing at my job, and I am proud to say I made history as the first woman ever to be fired as attorney general. I shattered that glass exit door!”

But SNL didn’t stop there.

Because if you’re going to twist the knife, you might as well go for the jugular.

“They threw my headshot in the trash like it was the Epstein files!” Padilla cried, summoning crocodile tears for her disgraced legal career.

You can watch the full skit below.

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The Soleno drug, Vykat XR, won its FDA approval in Prader-Willi syndrome a little more than a year ago. Since its launch, the once-daily pill has seen rapid market uptake, giving San Diego-based Neurocrine confidence that the product can complement its portfolio, contributing to growth of a revenue base includes one blockbuster drug and is now adding a product also projected to reach blockbuster status.

“What we’ve seen across thus far across all our diligence is all the profile aspects of a potential blockbuster in the making with Vykat XR,” Neurocrine CEO Kyle Gano said, speaking during a Monday conference call. “Very pleased overall with the data we’ve seen through launch and leading through all the information that we’ve reviewed thus far in 2026.”

Prader-Willi syndrome, or PWS, develops from the lack of expression of genes that play a role in regulating feelings of hunger and satiety. This rare disease leads to morbid childhood obesity, which in turn raises the risk of a wide range of complications. In an investor presentation, Neurocrine notes that Prader-Willi patients have a shorter life expectancy and about half of the deaths are in those age 18 or younger. While these deaths are often related to respiratory or cardiovascular complications, PWS can also lead to rupture of the digestive tract.

Vykat was developed and approved for treating hyperphagia in PWS. While the exact way this drug works in PWS is not known, the once-daily tablet’s main pharmaceutical ingredient is an extended release formulation of diazoxide choline, an old drug for hypoglycemia caused by hyperinsulinism. In PWS, the drug is thought to activate potassium channels that regulate physiological processes, including feelings of hunger and satiety. For 2025, Soleno reported $190.4 million in Vykat revenue, including $90 million for the drug in the fourth quarter alone. These sales swung Soleno into profitability last year with $20.8 million in net income.

Neurocrine’s portfolio is led by Ingrezza, a blockbuster product first approved in 2017 for tardive dyskinesia and then in 2023 to treating involuntary movements associated with Huntington’s disease. Ingrezza accounted for $2.5 billion in revenue in 2025, a 4.3% increase compared to the prior year. Vykat has more overlap with Crenessity, a Neurocrine drug approved in late 2024 for treating the rare endocrine disorder congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Gano said Vykat can leverage Neurocrine’s experience commercializing a therapy for a rare endocrine disorder.

Samir Siddhanti, Neurocrine’s vice president, business development & strategy, said the company had followed Soleno and the PWS space for some time, adding that Vykat’s position at the intersection of neuroscience and endocrinology is a strategic fit. The field of PWS drug developers includes Bright Minds Biosciences, Harmony Biosciences, and Rhythm Pharmaceuticals. Some efforts have stumbled. Last September, Acadia Pharmaceuticals stopped work on a PWS drug after it failed to meet the main goal of its Phase 3 study. In February, Aardvark Therapeutics voluntarily paused a Phase 3 test of its drug after cardiac observations were reported in a healthy volunteer study.

“There’s unfortunately been some setbacks in the space in the last 12 months,” Siddhanti said. “We feel good where this asset is positioned to be a best and first-in-class treatment for PWS.”

The setbacks in the PWS space include Soleno, whose stock price took a hit last August after activist short-seller firm Scorpion Capital released a report claiming Vykat can cause safety problems such as pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure. Gano said Neurocrine is confident in the safety and tolerability of diazoxide based on its decades of use. He added that in clinical testing, the risk benefit profile was favorable for PWS patients.

Leerink Partners analyst Marc Goodman said in a research note that pediatric endocrinologists told the bank they were encouraged to have an FDA-approved therapy to prescribe to select PWS patients. Clinicians also told Leerink the Scorpion conclusions were overly negative, noting that diazoxide’s safety has been well understood from the drug’s decades on the market. While experienced endocrinologists are comfortable managing Vykat’s risks, clinicians also emphasized that not all patients are appropriate candidates for the drug due to its known side effects, including hyperglycemia and edema.

“In a population where obesity and diabetes are common comorbidities, incremental hyperglycemia risk is not acceptable for many patients, which in turn limits the addressable population,” Goodman said.

Globally, Soleno has said the total number of PWS patients is estimated to be between 300,000 and 400,000. Based on an analysis of claims data, the company calculates about 10,000 patients in the U.S. have the rare disease. Soleno said in its annual report that it believes this number is growing due to improved diagnosis.

Vykat is currently under European Medicines Agency review, but Gano said Neurocrine has no plans to commercialize Vykat in Europe at this time. The deal value and financial models for the drug are based only on the U.S. market, and Gano said the company plans to focus on the U.S. opportunity. Asked by an analyst whether Neurocrine would look for a partner to commercialize the drug in Europe and the rest of the world, Gano said the company would evaluate its plans for Vykat in other markets at a later time.

The deal terms call for Neurocrine to pay $53 in cash for each Soleno share. While that represents a 34% premium to Soleno’s closing price on April 2, it’s far from the stock’s 52-week peak of $90 last summer before Scorpion posted its report. The acquisition still needs a majority of Soleno stockholders to tender their shares as well as customary regulatory approvals. The Neurocrine and Soleno boards of directors have approved the transaction, which the companies expect to close within the next 90 days.

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Universal Music stock soars as Bill Ackman plans $64 billion acquisition and US listing [Yahoo! Finance]
The deal, valued at approximately $64 billion, would merge UMG with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, an acquisition vehicle…. Pershing is Universal's fourth-largest shareholder with a 4.74% stake…. By moving UMG to the NYSE, the billionaire investor aims to make the music label eligible for major US indexes, such as the S&P 500. Such a move would force massive investment funds to buy the stock, theoretically driving up its value.

Anthropic in talks to invest $200 million in new private-equity venture [WSJ via MSN]
General Atlantic, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman are among the private-equity firms in discussions to back the project, people familiar with the matter said. The startup is in talks to raise $1 billion for the effort…. The new company would serve as a consulting arm for Anthropic that teaches businesses how to incorporate the startup’s AI tools in their operations.

Blockbuster SpaceX listing could suck the oxygen out of fragile IPO market [Reuters]
Companies have waited years on the sidelines for ​favorable IPO conditions after a prolonged dry spell. A listing like SpaceX, with its celebrity billionaire CEO, hot industry and deep-pocketed backers, could have provided the jolt others need to push ahead.
Instead, its sheer scale ​threatens to overshadow others, with Wall Street banks and investors pouring a majority of their attention, and money, into the operator of the Starlink constellation of satellites.

New Jersey cannot regulate Kalshi’s prediction market, U.S. appeals court rules [Reuters via CNBC]
A three-judge panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in finding that the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has exclusive jurisdiction over the sports-related event contracts that Kalshi allows people to trade on its platform…. A Nevada judge on Friday said he would issue an injunction preventing Kalshi from offering event-based contracts that run afoul of state gaming law, and a Massachusetts judge had issued a similar ruling that is on hold pending appeal.

'The end of the road': Market heavyweights Michael Burry and Jeff Gundlach eye trouble ahead for private credit [BI]
"I believe everyone in PE and PC knows exactly what is going on," Burry stated. "PE is remarkably proficient at kicking the can down the road, but it looks like the end of the road to me."
Burry's comments came in response to an X post from Gundlach, which said: "It's 2007 for Private Credit."

Colbert opened with what might be the most efficient takedown of the situation yet. “In tribute to Pam Bondi, I offer this heartfelt farewell,” he said, holding up a document redacted except for the following: “Dear Pam,” and “Sincerely, Stephen Colbert.”

It’s a joke works because it’s barely an exaggeration. And he didn’t stop there, “Saying that the villain of the Epstein files is Pam Bondi is like saying the lead in ‘Die Hard’ is the dad from ‘Family Matters.’”

Which brings us to the official line from Donald Trump, who announced Bondi would be “transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector.” Sure… but it did let Colbert bust out his Trump impersonation. “It’s a much-needed job at a very important farm upstate. There’ll be lots of room for her to run around. Unfortunately, we can’t go visit her,” he said. “Now let’s go to the strip mall and get you a new attorney general, buddy.”

Watch the full bit below.

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Uma Veerappan, a vice president at Flare Capital Partners, believes the companies achieving long-term success will be the ones that embed into clinical workflows, build defensible data assets and quickly figure out how to sell their technology.

Workflow integration is the key to sticky products.

Veerappan thinks healthcare tools should become embedded into operational systems rather than sitting on top of them.

“Healthcare, in particular, is an industry where any degree of friction causes issues with distribution, and also scale,” she remarked.

She cited the success of ambient AI scribes as an example. These solutions were designed to fit seamlessly into clinical workflows, then physicians adopted them quickly in an effort to reduce burnout. Clinical and financial ROI came later, not necessarily on day one, Veerappan noted.

Healthcare needs action-oriented tools, not more dashboards.

Clinicians are already inundated with various alerts and dashboards, which often become noise, Veerappan pointed out.

“Healthcare needs solutions that close the loop and actually carry out the action,” she declared.

She thinks tools that actually carry out tasks will likely have a greater workflow impact and clearer ROI.

Longitudinal data strategies could determine success.

Veerappan is hesitant to label categories as crowded because there are many AI solutions that may initially look commoditized. Instead, she evaluates startups based on whether they have a long-term data strategy, whether their product can generate a proprietary longitudinal dataset, and whether that data can become their defensible moat.

In other words, she looks for companies that can start with a single “wedge” product to gain adoption, then use the data generated through that product over time to build a broader platform that is difficult for competitors to replicate.

Distribution strategy is a major weakness for early startups.

One of the most common issues Veerappan sees in early-stage health tech companies is that they have strong technology but a weak sales and distribution strategy.

Her advice for founders is to invest early in go-to-market expertise, as well as to really understand who their buyer is and how to sell into them. Without that, Veerappan said even the best technology won’t succeed in healthcare.

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Because in a bit of poetic efficiency that would make even the most overworked line prosecutor crack a smile, Bondi’s official DOJ portrait was reportedly spotted in the trash mere minutes after Donald Trump gave her the boot. Just straight to the bin, like last week’s takeout and this week’s credibility.

The fast portraiture turnaround was something multiple people noted.

And look, there are a lot of ways to measure your impact as attorney general. But tracking it in terms of how quickly does your government-issued pic become literal garbage is a new one! And, in Bondi’s case, that honestly tracks. Her stint at the DOJ was marked less by stewardship of the rule of law and more by an aggressive housecleaning campaign where loyalty was preferred over longevity or even basic skills.

It’s also hilarious karma. Early in her tenure at the DOJ, Bondi reportedly demoted a career prosecutor for the unforgivable offense of failing to redecorate quickly enough. The man had left portraits of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Merrick Garland hanging in a front office after Trump’s inauguration. A lag in swapping out the wall art, and suddenly it’s a career-limiting move. It’s interior decorating, but make it authoritarian — man, they’ll put anything on HGTV these days.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.

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• Clear, top-down, and quantifiable demand signals for priority technologies around which new military concepts of operation can succeed.
• Stable, timely funding aligned to industrial scaling.
• High-rate production of privately backed or at-risk–funded systems.
• Measurable market share shifts toward more cost-effective capabilities.
• Evidence that disciplined risk-taking is rewarded, in the form of returns and successful investor exits.

Private capital can help reshape the future of defense, but technology alone won’t define the next era. The test is whether every stakeholder — investor, supplier, customer and policymaker — is willing to break old patterns and back what works.

If they are, this moment could mark not just a surge in funding, but a lasting shift in performance. If they aren’t, then the boom in defense for private capital may end up being merely a blip in the history of finance — which would be a big loss for both industry and the warfighter.

Dan Folliard is a former career civil servant and senior executive in the Department of Defense where he served for more than two decades. He was most recently the Chief Digital and AI Officer at US Special Operations Command and also served as a special assistant to multiple secretaries and deputy secretaries of defense across several administrations, and held roles in defense technology, strategy, resourcing, and regional policy. Mr. Folliard now advises defense companies on technology strategy.

Michael Sion is a partner in Bain’s Aerospace & Defense Practice. He advises clients on strategy and commercial due diligence across commercial aerospace, defense, government services, and space, supporting both leading companies and private capital investors. Michael has authored several Bain reports on the aerospace and defense supply base. He began his career at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and DFI International, where he focused on strategy and policy issues in national security.

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eMed secures $200 million in Series A funding

Miami-based eMed offers GLP-1 programs for employers. In addition to GLP-1 prescriptions, patients gain access to at-home lab testing and health assessments, clinical review and medication management, and ongoing weight and biomarker tracking. They also receive weekly check-ins and 24/7 support.

The $200 million round was led by AON Consulting, with participation from former professional football player Tom Brady; Jeff Aronin, founder, chairman and CEO of Paragon Biosciences; Ara Cohen, co-founder and co-managing member of Knighthead Capital Management; Antonio Gracias, founder and CEO of Valor Equity Partners; and more. The financing will be used to advance eMed’s agentic AI platform and support its balance sheet, according to the announcement.

Nitra snags $187 million in funding

New York-based Nitra aims to make administrative work easier for healthcare practices. Its services include financial automation and providing access to pharmaceuticals and medical equipment products. It also offers AI agents for patient scheduling and insurance eligibility checks.

Nitra’s investors include Actions Capital, Comma Capital, Hyphen Capital, Mana Ventures, Necessary Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Pantera Capital, Sazze Partners and Soma Capital. It has now raised $205 million in capital and $90 million in equity. The raise will help accelerate AI development, grow its engineering team and scale its operating system.

Grow Therapy raises $150 million in Series D funding

New York City-based Grow Therapy helps independent therapists set up their own in-person and virtual private practices and supports them with administrative tasks like billing and insurance claims. It then helps patients book appointments with therapists who specialize in their needs and are in their network. The company is paid by insurance companies when a Grow Therapy provider visits with an in-network patient.

The company’s Series D funding was led by TCV and Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with participation from BCI, Menlo Ventures, Sequoia, SignalFire and Transformation Capital. This brings Grow Therapy’s total funding to $328 million. The funding will help expand into employer-sponsored mental health benefits, integrate with primary care and build AI tools.

Qualified Health raises $125 million in Series B funding

Qualified Health helps health systems safely deploy and scale AI. The platform brings together workflow automation, agent development, clinical safeguards, real-time monitoring and governance.

The Series B round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from Transformation Capital, GreatPoint Ventures, Cathay Innovation, Menlo Ventures’ Anthology Fund, SignalFire, Frist Cressey Ventures, Flare Capital Partners, Healthier Capital, Town Hall Ventures and Intermountain Ventures. The funding will help deepen “existing partnerships, accelerate deployments, and expand the infrastructure required to support health systems as they move from early enterprise AI deployments to broader, system-wide transformation,” according to the announcement.

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Saks Global Nabs $500 Million in Post-Bankruptcy Financing [Business of Fashion]

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Trump Budget Does Little to Address Nation’s Fiscal Challenges [NYT]
“It’s the most number-free budget we’ve seen in recent history,” said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “I have to imagine that there’s a story that the numbers would tell that they don’t want to tell.”

Jamie Dimon warns that the Iran war could bring an economic ‘skunk’ to the party [CNN]
“While the economy may be less fragile than in the past, this alone does not mean there is no ‘tipping point’ — it just may mean it could take more straws on the camel’s back to get there,” Dimon said in the 48-page letter [to shareholders]…. Dimon also warned that though the economy remains strong, it relies on growth and stock market gains to keep fueling it. If those turn south, some of those risks present in the economy could become a problem.

Trump downplays bipartisan housing bill, shrugging at key opportunity on economy [MS Now]
Speaker Mike Johnson told House Republican leaders and committee chairs at their annual retreat last month that the president told him that “no one gives a (bleep) about housing….” He added that “we have other things we’re pushing that are bigger, and right now, more important.”

Big Banks Seeking a Piece of SpaceX’s I.P.O. Must Subscribe to Elon Musk’s Grok [NYT]
Mr. Musk is requiring banks, law firms, auditors and other advisers working on the I.P.O. to buy subscriptions to Grok, his artificial intelligence chatbot…. Some of the banks have agreed to spend tens of millions on the chatbot, and they have already started integrating Grok into their I.T. systems…..
The banks’ purchases of Grok subscriptions were not merely good-will gestures, according to three people with knowledge of the arrangements. Mr. Musk insisted that they purchase the chatbot services. He has also asked the banks to advertise on X, his social media site, which is also owned by SpaceX, but was less adamant about that request

An Inside Look at OpenAI and Anthropic’s Finances Ahead of Their IPOs [WSJ]
OpenAI expects to spend $121 billion on computing power for AI research in 2028. That means the company anticipates burning $85 billion that year even after almost doubling sales from the prior year. Such losses would dwarf those of virtually any other public company in history. Anthropic doesn’t expect to spend nearly as much, but its rosiest forecasts tell a similar story of mounting computing costs. 

Dupe Fragrance Firm Dossier Gets New Investment From American Pacific Group [WWD]

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Presumably, Trump made this decision after seeing how well Bondi was doing in the Above the Law annual bracket challenge as the lawyer most in need of having her license to practice law permanently stripped. For a president obsessed with projecting an image of strength, the ridicule of ATL’s readership was surely too much to handle.

But it could also be the fact that his administration keeps getting handed its ass in court, the Justice Department cannot miracle up anything but frivolous claims against the president’s enemies, and a bizarre rumor that Bondi tipped off Rep. Eric Swalwell about an effort to use the FBI to rehash his long ago relationship with a woman suspected of ties to Chinese intelligence.

Murder rates are at historic lows, though they’ve been trending down for decades now, making this boast similar to claiming this year marked an all-time low in people driving 1981 Honda Accords.

“Transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector” is brutal. Trump invented a fake new job in the administration when Kristi Noem got canned. Bondi isn’t even getting that courtesy. And if Trump hoped that this move could distract from the growing frustration in Congress over the Justice Department’s effort to keep Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein covered up:

Pam Bondi still has to testify, under oath, in front of the Oversight Committee regarding the Epstein Files. This does not get her out of that bipartisan, lawful subpoena.

We will see her soon. https://t.co/72h8skhtSQ

— Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@MaxwellFrostFL) April 2, 2026

This does raise the saliency of our aforementioned bracket challenge. Bondi is heading to the private sector a little prematurely, but this is the risk to the profession’s legitimacy. After supervising the Department of Justice as it racked up tons of documented instances of lying to tribunals and contemptuous acts, Bondi is poised to waltz over to a fat paycheck from a law firm who wants to put “former Attorney General” on their letterhead. And we can’t depend on the law firms to restrain themselves because they will just see the dollar signs they could secure by marketing themselves as having a former Justice Department insider around. The only way to protect the profession and the public is through ethics probes and licensing consequences.

Who replaces Bondi long-term? Blanche will take over in the short run, but despite Trump’s curiously capitalized description of Blanche as a “very talented and respected Legal Mind,” he isn’t considered the favorite. Early indications point to EPA Chief Lee Zeldin.

Happy2have new attorney general whose entire legal experience can be summed up in three sentences on Wikipedia. https://t.co/GQBZzHE73f pic.twitter.com/peAsGfUbtK

— Kate Klonick (@Klonick) April 2, 2026

That would certainly track Trump’s preference for parking garage lawyers and insurance attorneys over those with actual experience.

There’s one candidate no one is talking about out there and Trump has already publicly expressed that he believed the man was capable of doing this job. He’s tanned, rested, and ready!

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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In 2024, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based drugmaker paid $1 billion for Human Immunology Biosciences (HI-Bio), a startup whose lead program, felzartamab, was in mid-stage clinical development for multiple autoimmune indications — all related to the kidneys. At the time, Biogen said HI-Bio would help the company grow in immunology. Now with the Apellis acquisition, Biogen is continuing to hone its focus on nephrology.

Apellis already has an established commercial team with connections to the nephrology community, Viehbacher said during a Tuesday conference call. That presence will provide a foundation for the potential commercialization of felzartamab.

“This is a new area for Biogen,” Viehbacher said of nephrology. “We believe with felzartamab we’ve got an extremely valuable program in our pipeline, but we’re busy trying to acquire capability in medical affairs, in commercial. And actually, the acquisition of Apellis really accelerates that.”

Multiple sclerosis (MS) drugs remain Biogen’s top source of revenue, but the company has been working to diversify its pipeline and portfolio beyond those older products. That strategy is taking Biogen beyond what had been a neuroscience focus. Besides MS, Biogen has also developed neuromuscular medications in partnership with Ionis Pharmaceuticals as well as drugs for Alzheimer’s disease under a collaboration with Eisai.

Apellis’s drugs address the complement system, a part of the immune system. The company’s main asset is pegcetacoplan, a peptide designed to block the complement protein C3. It was first approved in 2021 for treating the rare blood disorder paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria and is marketed in this indication as Empaveli. Last year, Empaveli’s label expanded to include the treatment of two rare kidney conditions, C3 glomerulopathy and primary immune complex membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis. For 2025, Apellis reported $102.4 million in Empaveli revenue, a 4.3% increase from the prior year.

A formulation of pegcetacoplan developed for injection into the eye won FDA approval in 2023 for treating the vision loss disorder geographic atrophy, where it is marketed as Syfovre. While this is a large indication affecting an estimated 1 million people in the U.S., the $586.9 million in Syfovre revenue in 2025 represents a 4% decline from the prior year. Syfovre’s main competition is Izervay, a C5 inhibitor marketed by Astellas Pharma.

Felzartamab is an antibody designed to target CD38, a protein expressed on the surface of plasma cells. Separate Phase 3 studies are evaluating the drug in antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) in kidney transplants, immunoglobulin A nephropathy, and primary membranous nephropathy. The nearest clinical trial readout will be in 2027, when the AMR study is expected to post data.

Leerink Partners has mixed feelings about the Apellis acquisition. Analyst Marc Goodman pointed to Biogen’s $7.3 billion acquisition of Reata Pharmaceuticals, a 2023 deal that brought an FDA-approved drug for the ultra-rare neuromuscular disease Friedreich’s ataxia. The investment community still questions the Reata price tag, so investors may have similar skepticism about the Apellis purchase price, Goodman said.

The financial terms of the deal call for Biogen to pay $41 in cash for each share of Apellis, valuing the biotech at about $5.6 billion. The per share price represents a 140% premium to the stock’s closing price before the deal was announced. Apellis shareholders will also receive a contingent value right that could pay out more: an additional $2 per share if the Syfovre reaches $1.5 billion in annual global sales in any calendar year between 2027 and 2030; $2 per share if the drug achieves $2 billion in sales in the same year. If those sales targets aren’t hit to trigger the payments, but Syfovre reaches $2 billion in global sales in 2031, the deal calls for a $4 per share payment. The companies expect to close the transaction in the current quarter.

Despite Biogen’s claim that Syfovre is better than Astellas’s geographic atrophy drug, Leerink is not excited about either product. Both drugs don’t work that well for treating geographic atrophy, contributing to slow adoption by physicians, Goodman said. Both are also administered as eye injections that patients don’t like — particularly if the benefit is uncertain. That said, Empaveli is a “nice strategic fit” with felzartamab, coming with a commercial team that could support the potential future launch of felzartamab, Goodman said.

Analysts at William Blair noted that Biogen stock traded down after the deal was announced, possibly due to investor questions about the purchase price. Even so, the bank noted that the Apellis products are expected to add more than $1.5 billion to Biogen’s total annual revenue by 2030. But William Blair does not believe Syfovre will achieve the revenue targets to trigger the additional payments.

“The Street reaction suggests that this is a show-me story as Empaveli could be the bigger growth driver per Biogen commentary despite being the smaller revenue contributor currently,” William Blair said in the research note. “However, we see the deal as helping offset the near-term top-line decline of the MS franchise and providing a source of longer-term growth.”

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At the first stoplight, a woman came to my side. We crossed. A few more protesters emerged and clustered around us as we passed side streets.

The sky was a deep blue, save for a few wisps of flattened contrails. The cold was biting.

More and more people joined our group, like individual water droplets merging into a single moving mass. There was a quiet word passed between friends now and again, an occasional light laugh, but for the most part the mood was somber. It reminded me of waiting at the border to cross into Ukraine.

A chopper thwacked through the air overhead and circled. I peered up into the brightness between the high-rises but couldn’t tell whether the helicopter was the police or the news. It didn’t really matter. That sound always raises goosebumps on my flesh now.

As we got closer, several strategically parked St. Paul Police cars kept the roads closed to traffic. We crossed over the freeway, and the moment I set foot on the Capitol grounds a blast of wind nearly knocked my cap off. The group that’d coalesced around me on the way there melted into the massive crowd already present. I walked past the columnar Peace Officers Memorial and found a place where, with the aid of my binoculars, I could see the far-off stage at the foot of the Capitol building.

Speakers were already pontificating. The audio system projected their voices clear and crisp all the way to the back. As much as I understand the importance of restraint when addressing a crowd of hundreds of thousands of pissed off people, and as much as there were plenty of joyful and even silly elements (including about a dozen attendees in large inflatable frog costumes), I wanted more of those at the podium to match the simmering mood on the ground.

The crowd was very diverse, as was the roster of speakers, and that was self-evident. There were way too many unnecessary nods from the stage to those of every imaginable creed and heritage and sexual orientation. The one acknowledgement that was then needed, to recognize the demographic group that had been most harshly and most unfairly targeted of late, was to Minnesota’s immigrant community. The crowd repeatedly rewarded those who made this particular acknowledgment. However, when the first chance arose to boo the brutal federal oppression of the Twin Cities in the guise of immigration enforcement, the crowd howled deafeningly, much louder than they’d cheered. Shouts of “Fuck ICE!” sounded all around me.

Tim Walz gave a hell of a speech. The man would have made a powerful vice president. He introduced Bruce Springsteen. It was the first time I’d ever listened to the entirety of “Streets of Minneapolis.” The Boss’ tribute to Renee Good and Alex Pretti, sung there, sung then, felt like a moment that would matter beyond the next news cycle.

Around the time Bernie Sanders started excoriating billionaires I realized cellphone service was down. No doubt the network was overloaded. A good friend had arrived, and I tried to make my way to the intersection he said he was at in the last text that’d come through. I made it across two rows of short, spindly, still leafless hedges before the crowd became impenetrable. I never did find my friend, but at least now I was positioned in front of one of the jumbo screens.

Jane Fonda announced that she wouldn’t give a speech because things were behind schedule, which everyone appreciated at that point. As soon as she said this, as either a sign of divine approval or a fortuitous coincidence, a gust of wind ripped a sheaf of papers from her hands. She recovered and instead read a short statement given to her by Renee Good’s wife.

It had been about two-and-a-half hours since I’d arrived. After Joan Baez sang a song, the trickle of people who’d started to bow out turned into a surge. The very last speaker finished up around the three-hour mark. By then I could get right up to the stage. After the end, 10 women dressed as handmaids stayed pressed against the frontmost barrier, still, silent, staring straight ahead.

I wandered aimlessly for a bit with the other stragglers. A handful of State Patrol officers wearing neon safety vests remained at their posts adjacent to the stage. There hadn’t been a single violent incident.

As I departed, I noticed two more handmaids stationed at the far end of the Capitol grounds. One was off to my left. The other stood among the columns of the Peace Officers Memorial.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

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“For years, the space industry has discussed the uncertainty facing companies seeking government approval of new activities in space — a loophole that left no federal agency with clear authority to authorize commercial space operations like in-space manufacturing or space-based power generation,” president of the Commercial Space Foundation Dave Cavossa told Breaking Defense. The Department of Commerce proposal closes the loophole by setting up a voluntary framework bound by deadlines for the government to approve or deny an activity.

“By providing a predictable and repeatable pathway to launch, this proposal will help the administration meet and exceed their goal to attract at least $50 billion of new investment in American space markets,” he added.

“[At] first look, companies are happy about it,” another industry representative said.

Eric Fanning, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, told Breaking Defense that “this is the right moment” for moving out on mission authorization, and praised Commerce putting a focus on “safety and responsible operations” to support space sustainability over time.

“As implementation moves forward, it’s important to have clear accountability across agencies, guardrails against regulatory creep, and the predictability companies need to invest for the long term. We look forward to continuing to work with the government as the details take shape,” he said.

The draft Commerce Department proposal, issued March 24, was mandated by President Donald Trump’s August 2025 executive order on enhancing the competitiveness of the US commercial space sector on the global market. It would upend a proposal for a new regulatory regime for what is known as “mission authorization” of novel space activities made by the Biden administration, instead creating a voluntary certification process, with a presumption of approval, spearheaded by its Office of Space Commerce for industry planning currently unregulated missions.

“Our proposal expedites and streamlines today’s laborious and sometimes duplicative system for regulating the commercial space industry with a consolidated space commerce certification process,” the Commerce Department draft proposal states. Our new ‘Space Commerce Certification’ can get companies to ‘yes’ with predictability and speed, allowing them to swiftly explore new technologies and missions to bring benefits to the American economy.”

Companies would still require licenses from other regulatory bodies — the Federal Communications Commission that regulates use of spectrum, the Federal Aviation Administration responsible for ensuring spaceflight safety, and Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that licenses remote sensing operations — and those bodies would still be able to weigh in within 30 days with any objections.

However, the Office of Space Commerce would be in charge of coordinating the process and working out any kinks with other agencies, with an eye to issuing a certification within 120 days.

Further, because the plan is voluntary, the Office of Space Commerce also could “waive certain regulatory requirements imposed through current regulatory or licensing frameworks.”

That said, Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there is a likelihood that some companies won’t see any value to going through the process.

“It adds a new layer of red tape on top of existing paperwork. It would give the interagency essentially a blank check to express concerns with what innovative U.S. companies are doing in space. What happens if an agency expresses concerns? Are companies required to address the concerns? What happens when [the Office of Space Commerce] withholds a certification based on interagency concerns? Presumably, the mission could not go forward. What is the benefit to a company to volunteer for a process that could kill its business plan?” he said.

Further, he noted, although Commerce can grant such voluntary certifications, it cannot actually impose any regulations without congressional authorization — and the issue has long been a bone of contention on Capitol Hill.

“Under this plan, the process will have no teeth,” Swope said.

A decision to take the Commerce proposed scheme to Congress for codification would need to be made by the White House. And at the moment, the industry representative said, the “White House wants to hear industry feedback before they fully endorse the certification process.”

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But filing an incorrect tax return or not paying taxes, even if done to conscientiously protest policies they disagree with, is not a good idea. The IRS or any other tax agency will not see this as a prank but instead illegal and will act accordingly.

Half of the country disagrees with President Donald Trump’s policies, most notably the large-scale raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and the recent conflict with Iran which has significantly raised gas prices. A number of these people want to protest with their wallet by not paying taxes. Their rationale is that they shouldn’t have to pay taxes to fund policies they disagree with.

A few people have taken their case to social media telling their followers that they won’t pay federal income taxes as a form of protest. There are also organizations that provide information and resources for people who want to avoid paying taxes. After reading numerous news articles featuring these people and organizations, I have decided not to name them as I believe their primary motivation is getting social media clout and attention. Also, they are spreading incorrect information that could get people in trouble, both civilly and criminally.

The IRS has heard the moral objection argument before and now considers these arguments to be frivolous. The IRS notes that these individuals or groups claim that taxpayers may refuse to pay federal income taxes based on their religious or moral beliefs or on an objection to using taxes to fund certain government programs. In support of this frivolous position, these persons mistakenly invoke the First Amendment.

The IRS cites numerous court decisions which held that the First Amendment does not provide a right to refuse to pay income taxes on religious or moral grounds or because taxes are used to fund government programs opposed by the taxpayer. The First Amendment does not protect commercial speech or speech that aids or incites taxpayers to unlawfully refuse to pay federal income taxes, including speech that promotes abusive tax avoidance schemes.

The people who choose to take their chances will be liable for not only taxes but also penalties and interest. There are penalties for failing to file tax returns and not paying the tax owed which can add up quickly and raise the amount due significantly. The IRS will not waive these penalties because they do not consider protesting government policy to be reasonable cause.

Also, if the IRS considers you to be a frivolous tax protestor, they can also issue a special $5,000 penalty for filing a return containing frivolous statements and protest language. In extreme cases, this can result in prosecution for criminal tax evasion.

For these tax protestors, there are a few things to consider. First, your tax boycott must be applied consistently. Let’s suppose you are allowed to avoid paying taxes to protest ICE or the Iran conflict. Does this mean someone else can similarly protest because ICE is being too lenient on undocumented aliens or because the U.S. does nothing while Iran builds a nuclear weapon and funds terrorist groups? Many people disagree with the government’s spending on welfare or warfare for many reasons. If they are allowed to protest by not paying taxes, the government will go broke.

Second, are you really willing to accept the consequences of not paying taxes? Boycotting taxes is not the same as boycotting a TV show or a business. The IRS can seize bank accounts and garnish wages, and they don’t do this when it is most convenient for the delinquent taxpayer. This can destabilize a person or family’s finances. Once the IRS freezes your bank account holding the money for your rent or car payment, you will seriously consider whether there is a better way to protest President Trump.

Taxes are the lifeblood of government that pays for infrastructure, national defense, and public services to name a few things. It also pays for agendas you agree with and disagree with. But the system is not set up where you can veto spending you don’t like, otherwise the public treasury will be in chaos. Avoid taking advice from grifters who will tell you what you want to hear but will get you in serious trouble. So don’t think you can play an April Fools’ stunt this tax season because the tax laws are enforced on the basis of the law, not feelings.

Steven Chung is a tax attorney in Los Angeles, California. He helps people with basic tax planning and resolve tax disputes. He is also sympathetic to people with large student loans. He can be reached via email at stevenchungatl@gmail.com. Or you can connect with him on Twitter (@stevenchung) and connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Blue Owl shares fall as private debt manager caps major withdrawal requests [Yahoo!]
Two of its flagship funds… faced combined redemption requests of $5.4 billion. But the firm limited those requests to its 5% quarterly threshold for each fund…. Blue Owl co-founder and head of credit Craig Packer cited "heightened market concerns around AI-related disruption to software companies" as heavily weighing on investor perception, "despite continued strong performance across OTIC's portfolio companies."

KKR Secures $23 Billion for Americas PE in Its Largest-Ever Haul [Bloomberg]
North America Fund XIV beat its $20 billion target, making it the largest vehicle in any of its strategies on record. It’s also the biggest North America-focused private equity vehicle raised by any firm…. “Even though this will be our largest-ever fund for KKR, we’ve always left money on the table,” Nate Taylor, co-head of global private equity, said in the same interview. “We’ve always taken what we thought we could responsibly invest.”

Globalstar stock surges 15% on report Amazon is weighing an acquisition [CNBC]
The companies were still negotiating over some of the complexities of a deal following lengthy talks…. Amazon is vying to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, which has a significant head start with more than 10,000 satellites in orbit and over 9 million users.

Segantii Insider Trading Case Began on Bank of America Red Flags [Bloomberg]
[BofA lawyer Wayne] Walsh on Thursday said Bank of America’s compliance staff flagged the issue to the legal department one day after the block trade took place, then, within a week, the [Securities and Futures Commission] was made aware. Four calls with the SFC took place by late July and an internal bank review of the transaction was by then well underway.

The soap opera at hedge fund Two Sigma has a new plot twist [WSJ via MSN]
Trying to insulate Two Sigma from their strife, they settled on a new leadership structure where each of them got to name one member to the firm’s two-person management committee…. Last month, [David Siegel’s representative Scott] Hoffman resigned, citing “ongoing governance challenges since [co-founder John] Overdeck’s return” [last year]….
Siegel designated Seth Platt, a former executive at activist hedge-fund firm Sarissa Capital, to take Hoffman’s spot on the management committee.
Platt moved to fire [Overdeck’s former representative and co-CEO Carter] Lyons “given his view that the current co-CEO undermined his authority,” according to the filing. Overdeck stepped in to halt Lyons’s dismissal, which he viewed as “imprudent and baseless,” and insisted it go to a dispute-resolution process….

Quince Raises $500M Series E, Resulting in $10.1B Valuation to Accelerate the Manufacturer-to-Consumer Platform [press release]

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In many organizations, they got it. Legal is invited earlier. Executives ask for legal’s perspective before decisions are finalized. The department is treated as a strategic partner instead of a last-minute checkpoint.

That progress matters. But it also exposed a different problem: Being in the room doesn’t fix how the work actually gets done.

And right now, that gap is becoming harder to ignore.

AI Is Raising the Stakes

Generative AI is accelerating how quickly legal work can be produced. Tasks that used to take hours now take minutes. Drafts appear instantly. Research happens faster. Analysis can scale.

When execution speeds up like that, the bottleneck moves somewhere else.

It moves to the operating model around the work.

Business teams aren’t just asking legal for an opinion anymore. They want advice that is consistent and explainable. They want to know why something changed, who approved it, and whether the answer will be the same next time.

Those expectations expose something many legal departments have quietly struggled with for years: operational consistency.

Where Things Start to Break

Most legal teams can handle complexity. The lawyers are capable. The judgment is there.

But when volume increases — or when technology speeds everything up—cracks appear in how the department runs.

Questions that used to stay invisible suddenly matter:

• Why did Legal recommend this?
• Do they really understand my business?
• What assumptions did they use?
• Which version of the process applies?
• Why did costs spike this quarter?

Those aren’t technology questions. They’re operational questions.

And they’re the ones executives start asking the moment AI becomes part of the workflow.

The Teams That Hold Up

In our work with legal departments, the teams that perform well under pressure tend to have a few fundamentals in place.

First, scope and assumptions are explicit.

If the scope of the work is fuzzy, surprises become inevitable. When expectations are clear at the outset, changes can be explained instead of defended.

Second, ownership is obvious.

When no one clearly owns a decision, work slows down or gets duplicated. Strong teams make it easy to see who is responsible and when something needs escalation.

Third, standards are repeatable.

Quality cannot depend on who happens to pick up the matter. Clear review standards, playbooks, and expectations for outside counsel create consistency across the team.

Finally, metrics explain outcomes, not just activity.

“We handled more matters” isn’t an explanation. Leadership wants to know what changed, why costs moved, and how legal’s work affected the business.

None of this is glamorous work.

But it’s what makes the department dependable.

Influence Isn’t the Same as Control

The “seat at the table” narrative treated influence as the finish line.

In reality, it was only the starting point.

You can attend every leadership meeting and still have chaotic intake.

You can be consulted on every strategic decision and still struggle to explain spend.

You can adopt new tools and still produce inconsistent results.

You can be respected in the organization but still have a difficult time expressing the value that Legal brings to the table.

Influence gets legal into the conversation. Operational discipline determines whether the department can deliver once it’s there.

What AI Is Really Exposing

AI isn’t creating a new challenge for legal departments. It’s revealing an old one.

When the pace of work increases, inconsistency becomes visible. When business teams rely on outputs produced by new technology, they start asking questions about how those outputs are governed.

The departments that succeed won’t necessarily be the ones with the most technology.

They’ll be the ones who can run their work predictably, explain their results clearly, and adapt without reinventing the process every time.

A seat at the table gets legal into the room, but operational clarity is what keeps it there.

Stephanie Corey is the co-founder and CEO of UpLevel Ops. She also serves as the Global Chair of LINK x L Suite — a premier community of General Counsel and Legal Operations leaders united to transform the legal industry through collaboration, innovation, and strategic insight. Stephanie co-founded LINK (Legal Innovators Network), a legal ops organization exclusively for experienced in-house professionals, and previously founded the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), where she served as an executive board member. She is a recognized leader in legal operations and a frequent advisor to corporate legal departments on scaling operational excellence. Please feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn. 

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In fact, the dispute predated the pandemic, with Moderna’s unsuccessful attempts to invalidate Arbutus’ patents via IPR in the 2018/2019 timeframe, around the time of Moderna’s blockbuster IPO, which valued the company at over $7.5 billion. It is safe to assume that Moderna’s investors at the time never dreamed that the company would end up selling nearly $20 billion in COVID-19 vaccines in 2022 alone. The hullabaloo around the IPO, however, was more than enough to raise investor interest in the Arbutus patent issue, which is when I started discussing the case with investor clients. In other words, I have been discussing at least some of these patents for nearly half their lifespan. And I am going to miss discussing this case in the context of Moderna, now that a settlement for the ages has been reached.

For those unfamiliar, a quick detour to explain how we got here, before I turn to some lessons we can all take from this settlement. After the federal circuit affirmed the denials of Moderna’s IPRs, speculation arose as to when Arbutus would pull the trigger on a district court patent infringement case. The answer came on the last day in February of 2022, when Arbutus filed against Moderna in the district of Delaware, only to see the case reassigned to a visiting judge from Philadelphia, the Hon. Mitchell S. Goldberg. Indicative of how long patent cases can take to get to trial, Goldberg retired from the bench in 2025, taking a position as senior counsel in Blank Rome’s litigation group. Prior to leaving the bench, trial in the dispute had been moved from late September 2025 to March 9, 2026. And when Goldberg’s replacement, the EDPA’s Hon. Joshua D. Wolson took over the case in July 2025, the schedule for summary judgment and other pretrial motions had already been set. To his credit, Wolson hewed closely to that pretrial schedule, refusing to entertain a shift in the trial date and doing everything in his power to get the case ready for trial.

One key set of developments on that front was the court’s decisions on various pending summary judgment motions over the course of this February. Perhaps most important for Moderna’s purposes was the court’s handling of Moderna’s attempt to shift the damages burden from itself to the U.S. government, based on 28 U.S.C. §1498. The court’s rejection of that attempt was mitigated somewhat by a grant of summary judgment in Moderna’s favor on Arbutus’ doctrine of equivalents positions in that same decision. But in the series of decisions that followed, things got progressively worse for Moderna heading into trial. First, the court gutted Moderna’s prior art-based invalidity defenses on summary judgment, finding that IPR estoppel applied to Moderna’s obviousness defenses and that Moderna’s derivation defense failed as a matter of law. Then, Wolson granted Arbutus’ motion to exclude Moderna’s damages expert’s opinions on a reasonable royalty and noninfringing alternatives. At the same time, the court reserved judgment on Moderna’s motion to exclude Arbutus’ damages expert’s testimony, whereby she intended to argue to the jury that Moderna would have agreed to a royalty of $4 billion to $5 billion-plus for the patented technology. Those setbacks, perhaps coupled with jury research that may have suggested that a huge verdict against Moderna was possible, clearly contributed to the mammoth courthouse steps settlement announced last week.

For its part, the settlement is a creative one, with a large upfront — and guaranteed — payment from Moderna to Arbutus for $950 million payable in July of this year. That alone would make this one of the more successful pharma royalty patent assertions of all time, but there is more, namely that pending the results of Moderna’s appeal of the §1498 issue, Moderna may pay up to $1.3 billion more, for a total potential payout of $2.25 billion. While that almost-unprecedented amount for a patent settlement may be striking, early indications are that Moderna made the right call. Moderna’s stock jumped over 10% on the day after the settlement was announced, adding billions to the company’s market cap. Perhaps more importantly, the bankruptcy threat presented to Moderna from a potential megaverdict was avoided, giving the company a lifeline to try to replicate past success in an uncertain post-COVID future.

In my view, the court’s deft handling of the pretrial period contributed mightily to seeing this long-running and high-value dispute get to resolution before trial. For one, keeping the pressure of the trial date on the parties is a long-known tactic for driving settlement — one employed in courts with heavy patent dockets, (e.g., EDTX), to great effect. Keeping that threat of trial alive, however, also required the court to diligently address the pending pretrial motions, which it did to its credit. And the coup-de-grace of holding off on perhaps the most important pretrial motion outside of the §1498 issue was also a Wolson masterstroke, by keeping the question alive for both sides as to what Arbutus’ damages expert would be able to ask for at trial. That mutual risk surely helped drive the settlement into a range where both sides felt some pain, while also being free to pursue their other endeavors from a position of greater strength.

For Moderna, that translates into its ongoing efforts to replicate the commercial success of its COVID-19 vaccine. For Arbutus, focus shifts to its ongoing case pending in New Jersey against Pfizer, where it will now hope to replicate its patent assertion victory against Moderna in the form of another megabucks settlement or even a trial win. And for those of us who have been following this dispute for years, the lessons learned along the way will serve us in good stead when we are called upon to comment on other cases, whether as counsel for the parties or as a consultant to interested investors.

Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique, and Markman Advisors LLC, a leading consultancy on patent issues for the investment community. Gaston’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.

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Universal Health Services, based in King of Prussia, Pa., is a for-profit health system operating 29 inpatient acute care facilities, 346 inpatient behavioral health facilities and 168 outpatient and other facilities. New York City-based Talkspace has a network of about 6,000 professionals offering virtual therapy, psychiatry and medication management. Patients can connect with their clinicians via video, audio, chat or asynchronous text messaging. It serves both employers and health plans.

Joining forces will help “establish a truly national, end-to-end platform for behavioral health that seamlessly integrates virtual and in-person care,” said Marc D. Miller, president and CEO of UHS. Talkspace will become a subsidiary of the UHS Behavioral Health Division, and UHS will bring on Talkspace’s network of 6,000 therapists. This will expand the health system’s reach to patients who prefer virtual care, especially younger populations, Miller said.

 “Talkspace’s virtual platform perfectly complements the high-quality care already provided at our facilities,” Miller said in an email. “This acquisition enables UHS to accelerate our outpatient and telehealth efforts, ensuring smoother transitions across care settings and broadening access to treatment for patients everywhere.”

Talkspace will also be able to refer patients who are in need of more intensive outpatient, partial hospitalization or inpatient care to UHS’ facilities.

“Integrating with UHS, one of the nation’s largest providers of inpatient behavioral health services, was a natural solution to the growing demand for comprehensive outpatient care. By uniting our strengths, we are providing patients with a full spectrum of care under one umbrella,” said Dr. Jon Cohen, CEO of Talkspace. Following the acquisition, Cohen will report to Matt Peterson, executive vice president and president of UHS’ Behavioral Health Division.

According to one healthcare expert, this is a strategic move for both companies. For UHS, the deal allows the company to recruit patients who primarily use telemedicine but may benefit from inpatient or outpatient services, as well as attract providers at a time when recruiting therapists is costly. For Talkspace, the acquisition gives them more stability.

“Think of Talkspace as a front door, as well as a mechanism to take advantage of its payer relationships across commercial and government payors. … For Talkspace, it provides stability in the face of volatile markets,” said Christina Farr, managing director at consulting firm Manatt Health. “While this might not have been a deal that resembled the pandemic peak, it is still relatively healthy overall for a tech-enabled services company. The markets are aligning around the idea that telemedicine is here to stay, but it’s a tool in the toolkit.”

“It’s mutually reinforcing in that when somebody winds up in inpatient treatment, they sort of graduate to outpatient treatment, and then this gives the institution something else to keep them tethered to the organization,” said Michael Abrams, managing partner of Numerof & Associates. “It gives the organization a full continuum reach, if you will, making it into a full behavioral health continuum. And in the same way that people can move from inpatient to outpatient to digital, people that start out on the digital end can wind up moving to inpatient services.”

The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026.

Another analyst agreed that the transaction is beneficial for both UHS and Talkspace.

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JPMorgan Chase reins in lending to private credit firms after marking down software loans [CNBC]
JPMorgan Chase is reducing its exposure to the private credit industry by marking down the value of loans held by the bank as collateral…. By marking down the collateral for that leverage, JPMorgan is reducing the ability of private credit firms to borrow against their loans, and in some cases could even force firms to post more collateral.

Justice Department Probes Iran’s Use of Binance to Evade Sanctions [WSJ]
The probe follows the crypto exchange’s dismantling of an internal investigation into more than $1 billion that flowed through the platform to a network funding Iran-backed terror groups…. The inquiry puts the world’s largest crypto exchange back in the legal spotlight after its founder Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, received a pardon from President Trump in October.

Bill Ackman’s Unconventional Public Offering Will Need a Convincing Sales Pitch [WSJ]
The type of investment fund Ackman is looking to raise, a closed-end fund, has been out of favor with investors for years. Ackman first tried to raise this fund in 2024, envisioning it as his version of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. But he abandoned plans after investors were underwhelmed.
Meanwhile, he has cast his hedge-fund firm, Pershing Square, as a broader manager of so-called alternative assets. But now investor anxiety about private credit is denting the market values of firms such as Blue Owl Capital and Brookfield Asset Management that he once saw as comparables.

Ackman’s Compensation and Other News We Learned From Pershing Square’s Filings [WSJ]
The filing details Ackman’s compensation, showing he made $142.8 million in 2025, up from $46.6 million the prior year…. For every 100 shares that investors purchase of the new investment fund, known as Pershing Square USA (PSUS), they will receive 20 shares of Pershing Square’s parent company (PSI) at no additional cost. (Institutional investors who buy in a private placement can get 30 shares of the parent.)

Goldman’s Flood Sees Potential for ‘Extreme’ Rally in Stocks [Bloomberg via Yahoo!]
“If we were to get a headline declaring the conflict over, you could see a sharp move higher at the index level,” [head of Americas equities execution John] Flood said in an interview. “It could be 2% to 3% in a straight line, and most of that would be that macro product covering.”

In my conversation with John Pavolotsky, technology transactions attorney and co-head of the AI practice at Stoel Rives, he put it plainly: “You draft to the lay of the land right now, and to where things might go in the next six to twelve months.” For in-house teams, that window is already uncomfortably small. This is the moment when legal teams either adapt or fall behind the speed of their own companies.

Understanding this tension is the first step. Acting on it is the second.

The Regulatory Terrain Is Shifting Under Your Feet

John described the current patchwork of AI regulation as a moving target. California alone has dozens of bills that are labeled “AI-related.” The EU AI Act categorizes systems into risk tiers that many U.S. companies will feel the effects of, even if they are not directly subject to it.

For in-house teams, the problem isn’t tracking every bill. The problem is staying aligned with the small subset that actually intersects your business. That requires more than scanning headlines. It requires ongoing conversations inside the company about how the technology is designed, deployed, updated, and used.

John’s point here is useful: the states remain laboratories of governance, and they will continue experimenting ahead of federal frameworks. In-house lawyers should assume that a “stable” AI regulatory landscape is years away. The job is not to predict the outcome but to build contracting strategies that survive the volatility.

High-Risk Use Cases Are Already Defined. The Market Is Paying Attention.

One practical insight John shared is that the definition of “high-risk” is not as mysterious as people assume. The EU AI Act and the Colorado AI Act list them clearly: education, housing, financial services, government services, and any domain with a meaningful impact on a person’s livelihood.

Most in-house counsel already know whether their company’s products or internal use cases touch those areas. The gap is often operational, not conceptual. Has the organization mapped its AI use cases? Do product managers know how the company defines “high-risk”? Are procurement workflows flagging these systems before a contract hits legal? If the answer is no, the issue is not regulatory uncertainty. The issue is internal clarity.

This is where legal can lead.

AI Is Software, But Contracting for AI Is Not SaaS 2.0

John made a point that sounds simple but has massive implications: AI is still software. Yet once AI becomes more agentic, “the entire risk model shifts.” If systems begin taking actions on a user’s behalf, making decisions without human sign-off, or interacting with other systems autonomously, the SaaS analogy breaks down.

In SaaS, we negotiate availability, uptime, data rights, SLAs, disaster recovery, audits. With agentic systems, we shift toward questions about delegation, autonomy boundaries, and failure modes. We shift toward:
What happens when the system does something unanticipated?
What is the chain of accountability when a system acts on incomplete or misleading data?
How do you evaluate risk when the system’s internal reasoning is not deterministic?

This is not theoretical. John gave the example of a future AI travel concierge. You tell it to plan your hiking trip in the Bavarian Alps. It books your flights, pays for your lodging, coordinates guides, and executes decisions across multiple vendors. Today, that would be a cute demo. In a few years, it may be real. And once AI tools begin transacting, negotiating, and executing autonomously, contract clauses built for SaaS workflows will collapse under their own assumptions.

In-house counsel should expect this shift, not react to it.

Experimentation Is Now A Professional Obligation

One of John’s most valuable pieces of advice is simple: legal teams can’t meaningfully advise on AI unless they are using it. He encourages lawyers to pick a couple of tools and get comfortable with them. Feed them real prompts. Ask them to draft clauses. Pressure-test the outputs. Learn where the seams are. Learn where they hallucinate, misinterpret, or oversimplify. Learn where they shine.

This is not about becoming a prompt engineer. It is about understanding the mechanics of the tools shaping modern contracting. If the business is experimenting and legal is not, legal will not be ready when the real risk decisions show up.

Experimentation also forces clarity. It helps you define what “good enough” looks like for your organization. As John noted, humans still struggle to agree on shared language, and AI will inherit those struggles. Using the tools gives you a stronger foundation to establish drafting standards, review checklists, and guidance your teams can rely on.

The In-House Advantage: You Sit Closest To The Technology

John spent years at Intel and Roku before returning to private practice, and he emphasized something in-house counsel underestimate: proximity to the business is the superpower. You see product roadmaps before outside counsel. You see design discussions. You see experimentation. You see failures. That visibility is the raw material needed to draft contracts that reflect how the technology actually behaves, not how a product sheet describes it.

AI risk will always look different inside the company than from the outside. Your engineers know where the model is brittle. Your product teams know what happens in edge cases. Your security team knows the real data flows. If legal isn’t in those conversations, your contracts will over-index on theoretical risk and under-index on the risks your company is actually exposed to.

This is the moment to lean in.

Focus Your AI Contracting Strategy On Your Actual Sandbox

John ended with a point that deserves more attention: trying to track every bill, proposal, and headline is a waste of time. Your job is to understand your slice of the world and tailor your contracting playbook to it. That starts with mapping:

What AI are we building?
What AI are we buying?
What AI are we embedding in third-party platforms?
Where are the autonomy boundaries?
Where does data go?
What decisions are being delegated?

Once you know this, you can structure contracts around the real risks, not speculative patterns.

The temptation right now is to boil the ocean. Resist it. Build targeted frameworks. Train your team on those frameworks. Revisit them quarterly. Align them with product reality, not headlines. This is how you build a contracting function that stays ahead of regulatory changes without chasing every draft bill.

The Only Sustainable Strategy Is Continuous Dialogue

When I asked John for one takeaway, he said: “Have more conversations.” He’s right. None of us will get this right in isolation. The technology is evolving quickly, and expertise will come from talking with each other, testing ideas, comparing notes, and refining our approaches over time.

In-house counsel do not need perfect foresight. They need adaptable frameworks, grounded risk assessment, and a willingness to revise their approach as the landscape shifts. The companies that thrive will be the ones whose legal teams stay engaged, curious, and close to the technology, not the ones waiting for regulators to hand them the answers.

AI contracting is moving fast. Your organization needs you to move with it.

Olga V. Mack is the CEO of TermScout, where she builds legal systems that make contracts faster to understand, easier to operate, and more trustworthy in real business conditions. Her work focuses on how legal rules allocate power, manage risk, and shape decisions under uncertainty. A serial CEO and former General Counsel, Olga previously led a legal technology company through acquisition by LexisNexis. She teaches at Berkeley Law and is a Fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. She has authored several books on legal innovation and technology, delivered six TEDx talks, and her insights regularly appear in Forbes, Bloomberg Law, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, and Above the Law. Her work treats law as essential infrastructure, designed for how organizations actually operate.

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The administration is now back in appellate court insisting those same executive orders were perfectly fine all along — and explicitly pointing to the law firms that didn’t fight back as proof that the orders worked exactly as intended.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll recall the whiplash-inducing saga. First, the DOJ announced it was dropping its defense of Trump’s orders against firms like WilmerHale, Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey. That move left the firms that cut deals with the administration looking… less than thrilled about the roughly $940 million in pro bono payola they’d promised to conservative clients or approved causes to make the problem go away. Despite the documented chilling effect on the entire industry.

Then came the administration’s “backsies,” walking back the retreat and signaling that, like a cockroach after WW3, the appeal lives on.

And now? The government has filed a full-throated appellate brief defending the orders and insisting the district courts that blocked them were completely out of line.

Deep sigh as we sort through the worst of what’s in there (full brief available below).

According to the DOJ’s brief, signed by Deputy Associate Attorney General Abhishek Kambli, the courts simply have no business interfering with the president’s decisions here:

“The EOs are well within the Presidential prerogative. Courts cannot tell the President what to say. Courts cannot tell the President what not to say. They cannot tell the President how to handle national security clearances. And they cannot interfere with Presidential directives instructing agencies to investigate racial discrimination that violates federal civil rights laws.”

To be clear, in this case, multiple courts — across ideological lines — have found that the actions of the president violate the Constitution, which is EXACTLY the role of courts in the United States.

But the most revealing part of the filing comes when the DOJ addresses the broader legal industry, and specifically the firms that chose a different, much more shameful, path than the four challengers. The DOJ points to the firms that didn’t sue, the yellow-bellied nine that cut deals with the administration:

“The President also issued (or considered issuing) EOs addressing risks and practices from other law firms not parties to this appeal. In fact, many law firms agreed to address their practices and commit to providing pro bono work in the public interest.”

Then helpfully lists the nine firms for those that don’t have their names engraved in the brain: Allen Overy Shearman Sterling; Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; Kirkland & Ellis; Latham & Watkins; Milbank; Paul, Weiss; Simpson Thacher; Skadden; and Wilkie Farr. And contrasts that capitulation with the plaintiffs, “The four plaintiff law firms instead filed suit.”

The DOJ is arguing that the orders are legitimate, in part, because other firms folded.

Which, if you’ve been reading Above the Law over the past year, is the exact argument that’s been lobbed against the firms that took a knee.

The capitulating firms have taken a lot of criticism for cutting those deals — because yielding to unconstitutional government pressure is exactly how you normalize unconstitutional government pressure. The rule of law doesn’t survive if powerful institutions decide it’s cheaper to just write a check.

And now the DOJ is using that compliance as evidence the system works.

Those nine firms didn’t defuse the threat of unconstitutional executive authority. They validated it. And it’s why the rest of Biglaw should be hoping WilmerHale, Jenner, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey win.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.

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Nonsense. We know exactly how the war will end. We even know when it will end.

But let’s start at the beginning. As the war begins, reporters foolishly ask three questions.

First, they ask a supposedly hard question for Democrats: “Do you feel safer now than you did a week ago, when Ali Khamenei was ruling Iran?”

It’s not so hard: Of course we feel safer now. The U.S. got rid of an evil man.

Second: “So that means you’re happy with how the war is going so far?”

Again, not so hard: Of course we’re happy with how the war is going so far. Generally, when the United States enters a war of choice with another country, things go swimmingly for the first few days. How were you feeling about the war in Afghanistan for the first week or two, when B-52’s were bombing the hell out of the Taliban and the Northern Alliance had them on the run? How were you feeling about the war in Iraq for the first week or two, when American troops were on a fast track to Baghdad and the Iraqis were putting up essentially no resistance?

We always feel great for the first week or two. Ask again next year. Or next decade.

Finally, a supposedly tough question for Republicans: “Will the United States deploy ground troops in Iran?”

The only answer that a senior official can give to this question publicly is: “I haven’t ruled out the use of ground troops.”

This is common sense. You never tell the enemy the limits of your strategy. You never rule out any possible escalation. You absolutely must be noncommittal when asked about ground troops, even knowing that tomorrow’s headline will be, “Trump [or Hegseth, or whomever] Declines to Rule Out Use of Ground Troops!”

At the same time, everyone in the United States knows to a moral certainty that the U.S. will never deploy ground troops in Iran. Trump promised no “forever wars”; the American public opposes deploying ground troops; the Republican party knows (as does Trump himself) that deploying ground troops would hand the midterm elections to the Democrats.

So: (1) Trump and Hegseth won’t rule out the possibility of deploying ground troops and (2) No ground troops will be ever deployed.

Finally, you know exactly how this war will end.

Pundits are saying that, “No one knows how the war in Iran will end.”

Silly pundits.

No one knows how the war in Iran will end on the Iranian side.

Everyone knows how the war in Iran will end on the American side.

The war in Iran will be over from the American side no later than June 1.

Period.

From the American side, the war might end tomorrow, or next week, or in May, but I guarantee that it will be over by June 1. If the war were to continue into June, then it would begin to influence the midterm elections. The Republicans (and Trump) will not run that risk. The war will be over (for our side) no later than May 31.

Also, Donald Trump will declare victory on the day the war ends. Trump never loses anything. (See, for example, the 2020 election.) Nothing involving Trump ever plays to a draw. Trump always wins.

So Trump will say that he won the war in Iran.

If a hardline regime remains in power in Iran, then Trump will say that he killed Khamenei. That was his goal all along. The regime — that is, Khamenei personally — was eliminated. Mission accomplished. We won the war.

If the war has accomplished a little more than that, so much the better. We put in place people slightly less radical than Khamenei, or whatever.

Trump won.

The one thing that will not have been happened by June 1 is for us to have any idea about how the war in Iran will end from Iran’s perspective.

How could we possibly know? What did Afghanistan’s future look like three months after the United States attacked?

What did Iraq’s future look like three months after the American invasion?

What did Libya’s future look like three months after Gaddafi fell?

Three months into this war, the lingering elements of this regime may be holding power. The elements of some other regime may be trying to establish power. Iran may have broken out into civil war. Kurdish troops may be running wild in the streets of Tehran. The country may have collapsed into sectarian violence. It may be obvious that Iran has become a failed state (with stockpiles of enriched uranium lying around unprotected).

We don’t know how this war will end from Iran’s perspective.

But we certainly know how it will end from our perspective: The U.S. government will announce that major military operations have ended. Trump will declare victory. Sean Hannity (and the rest of the MAGA lickspittles) will explain that Trump was a genius, and that we live in the best of all possible worlds. (Why wait, Sean? Just make that announcement now, and save time.)

Many on the left will of course insist on the opposite: Iran was never an immediate threat to us. Too many lives were lost. Too little was achieved at too great a cost.

But please don’t tell me that there’s some question about how this war will end.

From our perspective, you know not only how, but even when, the war will be over.

Before summer arrives, we’ll be able to make the announcement:

Congratulations, America!

You won!

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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