Free Republic

Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer said he spent several hours at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday night into Sunday morning, but was repeatedly denied access to federal detainees or an attorney who could discuss the situation with him. "My goals in going were to get information as to whether customs officials were complying with the federal order ... and to try and secure the release of the detainees," he said on Sunday morning. Feuer said he was concerned that federal officials were not complying with an emergency stay granted by a federal judge on Saturday night that was...

Hundreds of attorneys descended on U.S. airports all over the country this weekend to offer free legal help to the travelers and family members of loved ones detained under President Trump’s executive order. The spontaneous rush to help, spurred in part by social media, echoed the protests that arose against Trump's ban on travelers from seven countries at numerous airport terminals, cities and the White House. "The organic outpouring of support has been extraordinary," said Deborah Axt of social justice group Make the Road New York to reporters Sunday. "Attorneys are out en masse mobilizing like organizers."

On December 19, the U.S. Department of Education announced that as of the end of the year, it would no longer allow students to use federal aid money at the Charlotte School of Law (CSL). The reason for this unprecedented move was the decision by the American Bar Association in November to place CSL on probation because of the low passage rate among its students on the most recent administration of the North Carolina bar exam. ... Instead of an administrative decree that one (or even dozens) of the schools with low bar passage rates will be denied federal student...

'It's just not American!' Trump's press secretary slams lawyer who screamed at Ivanka and her family as she boarded a JetBlue flight Sean Spicer has slammed the lawyer who berated Ivanka Trump on a flight Press secretary said the incident was 'not the way that Americans need to act' Ivanka was with her three children when Dan Goldstein began shouting at her Goldstein, his husband and their toddler were then removed from the flight clip Donald Trump's press secretary has slammed the lawyer who berated the president-elect's daughter as she boarded a flight with her young children claiming it is...

The indictment says Hansmeier and Steele threatened copyright lawsuits against people who allegedly downloaded pornographic movies from file-sharing websites. Hansmeier and Steele filmed some of the pornographic movies themselves and would then upload those movies to file-sharing websites to lure people to download the films, according to the indictment.

In Congress and in the Supreme Court, the gun lobby has racked up some crucial victories in recent years. It won again last month when Donald J. Trump, buoyed by the gun lobby’s money and support, secured an upset victory in the presidential election. On the defensive, gun control advocates are now quietly developing a plan to chip away at the gun lobby’s growing clout: Team up with corporate law firms. After the Orlando nightclub massacre and a string of other mass shootings, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Covington & Burling; Arnold & Porter; and four other prominent law...

President-elect Donald Trump has named Donald McGahn as White House counsel and assistant to the president.

Thousands of attorneys have signed a letter opposing the appointment of Steve Bannon as President-elect Donald Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor. Bannon has a long history of making bigoted comments and has been accused of domestic abuse and being anti-Semitic. Under his executive chairmanship, Breitbart has trafficked widely in white nationalism and homophobic and sexist content. The more than 15,000 lawyers who signed the letter co-authored by Nancy Leong, associate professor at University of Denver law school, called on members of Congress to “take all possible measures” to make Trump “rescind his appointment of Mr. Bannon”: As attorneys, we...

Hey guys, it's time we give the lawyers a break ... at least for a few hours anyway. These past few months have decisively proven that lawyers are NOT the bottom feeders we thought they were. How can they even REACH the bottom when the journalists have crowded them out from that zone? Some examples..... Q: What's black & brown and looks good on a journalist? A: A Doberman Q: How do you know when a journalist is lying? A: His lips are moving. Q: What do you call 5000 journalists at the bottom of the sea? A: A good...

One of America’s top defense attorneys was deemed too controversial to host an event for President Obama, according to newly surfaced emails, mainly because of one particular client – a jet-setting billionaire accused of trafficking underage girls, who also happens to be close friends with Bill Clinton. Famed attorney Roy Black, 71, represented Jeffrey Epstein, 63, a Palm Beach finance mogul accused of trafficking for himself and his powerful friends nearly three-dozen underage girls for sex. Black, and his co-counsel Alan Dershowitz, secured a remarkable deal in 2008 in which Epstein pleaded guilty to one count related to prostitution with...

SAN FRANCISCO — Embattled biotech startup Theranos Inc. has promoted senior litigation counsel David Taylor to acting general counsel. Taylor's already got a full plate. "He's got a mess on his hands," said Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro partner Robert Carey in Phoenix, one of many lawyers suing the blood diagnostics company for alleged consumer fraud. Carey's suit is one of six similar, separate suits consolidated in the Northern District of California. Aside from that litigation surplus, Theranos is being investigated for investor and consumer fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice, respectively. The...

The same extreme sensitivity to words or conduct that might possibly offend someone that has already taken root on many of our college campuses is spreading outward to other parts of our society. In its annual meeting last month, the American Bar Association approved a rule that imports the college manias over “inappropriate” speech and “microaggression” into its regulation of professional conduct. Rule 8.4(g) provides that it is professional misconduct for an attorney to show “discrimination based on race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the...

The House and Senate met in joint session yesterday to count the electoral votes in the 2004 presidential election and certify President Bush’s win over John Kerry. Vice President Dick Cheney was presiding in his role as president of the Senate, overseeing as each state’s votes were withdrawn from mahogany boxes and totaled in a ceremony as old as the Constitution itself. The routine tally went by in alphabetical order, state-by-state without event until the session reached Ohio. Joint Session of Congress, Electoral College vote tally, January 6, 2005. The Electoral College vote tally was interrupted by Democratic Congressmember Stephanie...

A municipal court judge in Ohio ordered his bailiff to take a black attorney into custody and sentenced her to five days in jail because she refused to remove a Black Lives Matter pin in the judge’s courtroom. The incident occurred on Friday in the Youngstown, Ohio courtroom of Judge Robert Milich, reports local CBS affiliate WKBN-TV. Judge Milich cited the attorney, Andrea Burton, for contempt of court over the button brouhaha. Milich then sentenced Burton to five days in jail.

An attorney was removed from court and taken into custody after a judge declared her in contempt for refusing to take off a Black Lives Matter pin. Youngstown Municipal Court Judge Robert Milich said Attorney Andrea Burton was in contempt of court for refusing to remove the pin in his courtroom as instructed. Burton was sentenced to five days in jail, but she has been released on a stay while an appeal is underway. Burton will stay out of jail during the appeals process as long as she obeys Milich’s order not to wear items that make a political statement...

Ever since I ended my joint representation with National Review and fired my lawyers on Boxing Day, the endlessly reprised refrain has been that "Mark Steyn has a fool for a client". As I wrote here: That's an old English joke, of course. Circa 18th century, I believe, when English life was very lightly lawyered. Whether it applies a quarter-millennium on in a sclerotic dungheap of a system that, as my old boss Conrad Black likes to point out, employs as many lawyers as the rest of the planet combined, who between them invoice ten per cent of GDP is...

Airbnb is bringing on a big name to show its commitment to tackling discrimination. The company announced Wednesday that it has hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to develop a "world-class anti-discrimination policy." The high-profile appointment follows....

There are always long-shot candidates in any political race, but Democrat Scott Fenstermaker may take it to a whole new level, and I’m not talking about in a “the rent is too damn high” kind of way. Fenstermaker, a criminal defense and tax litigation attorney, made recent comments about 9/11 in a “Humans of New York” profile that has the New York Daily News referring to him as “deranged.” In the profile piece, Fenstermaker argued that the U.S. “got what it deserved” on September 11. "I think the people in those towers died as representatives for the rest of us,...

State bars across the country have become havens for the left in recent years, increasingly used to target conservative attorneys. With deep pockets — due to the exorbitant amount of dues they charge attorneys in order to practice law — it is impossible to fight back once targeted. More than half of state bars are mandatory, which means they are unavoidable if you want to practice law. This is very disturbing, considering many of these states have right-to-work laws. Why are attorneys required to join a union? Arizona has one of the most corrupt state bars in the country. Many...

The recent release of House Benghazi Committee interview transcripts includes one from a now-retired State Department official who appears to have given inconsistent statements about his knowledge of Hillary Clinton’s email practices. During an interview with the committee last year, John Bentel, the former director of the Executive Secretariat’s information resource management division, which manages records and communications for State Department’s leadership, claimed he had no knowledge of Clinton’s use of personal email account or private server. But emails recently released by Judicial Watch — as well as findings laid out in a recent State Department inspector general’s report —...