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Abortion access, education funding and mandatory prison sentences are among the high-profile issues on state supreme courts' dockets in 2025, as attorneys and activists increasingly turn away from the U.S. Supreme Court and instead look to the states to protect certain constitutional rights, experts say.
As the calendar turns from 2024 to 2025, small-firm attorneys and solo practitioners across the U.S. are facing a constellation of new and old issues, from dealing with new regulations to confronting the longstanding challenges of keeping a small business alive.
Leaders of BigLaw lobbying shops expect an action-packed year as President-elect Donald Trump comes into power again and a new Congress takes over in Washington.
As the new year ushers in seismic political change in the nation's capital, office managing partners at Washington, D.C., law firms are monitoring how client needs will change amid regulatory shifts, focusing on recruiting and developing talent, while continuing to figure out how to keep people engaged in a hybrid work environment.
The U.S. Supreme Court justices will return from the winter holidays to tackle major First Amendment questions and several administrative law disputes — all arising from the Fifth Circuit — that could further change how federal agencies promulgate rules and defend them.
After an eventful 2024, industry experts are looking ahead to what might be the big topics in legal ethics in the new year, including the ethics implications of artificial intelligence and ethics opinions that may be relevant to attorneys in the incoming second Trump administration.
Law firms have experienced rapid change and growth in recent years, and 2025 will likely be no different. Firm leaders told Law360 Pulse they are bracing to respond quickly to a number of different opportunities likely to arise in the new year.
President-elect Donald Trump has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to freeze the impending deadline for TikTok to divest from its Chinese parent company or face a nationwide ban, suggesting his new administration could negotiate a deal that would end the need for the congressional mandate.
President Joe Biden vetoed a bill Monday that would have added more federal judgeships, despite the judiciary's plea that more seats on the bench are needed desperately.
President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Chad Mizelle, who formerly held top legal roles at Trump's Department of Homeland Security and is married to Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Kathryn K. Mizelle, as chief of staff at the Department of Justice.
Public confidence in state courts seems to be rising at the same time that trust in the federal courts and overall judicial system is plummeting, according to recent surveys that paint drastically divergent pictures of people's faith in state and national judicial systems.
Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP and Alston & Bird LLP told associates Monday they'd be receiving year-end bonuses that meet the prevailing scale for large law firms set by Milbank LLP in November — as long as they meet certain billable hours requirements, according to media reports.
Sheppard Mullin's New York office has launched a firmwide holiday pet calendar — featuring not only cats and dogs but also a donkey, peacocks, some lizards, a few guinea pigs and three little soccer-playing fish — that has raised nearly $11,000 for charity.
Katya Cronin, a professor at George Washington University Law School and former BigLaw attorney, argued in a recent academic paper that law schools need to do more to encourage students to examine their personal values and pursue legal careers in line with them.
A lot can happen in a year for small firms. Law360 Pulse caught up with four, some just getting started and others with long legacies, to talk about what their 2024 looked like.
As Jen Cafferty Patton moves up from chief talent officer to chief operating officer at Foley & Lardner LLP, she says she is prioritizing keeping the firm’s people-focused culture strong for both employees and clients.
In a tradition stretching back just over a quarter century, Blank Rome LLP taps into the Washington, D.C., community by hosting a competition for students at a local arts-focused high school to submit designs for the annual holiday card sent out to the firm’s thousands of clients.
Former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz regularly paid women for sex, including with one 17-year-old girl, used illicit drugs and accepted a trip to the Bahamas in excess of permissible gift amounts, according to a report released Monday morning by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ethics.
You're a rock star associate in your fourth or fifth year trying to make partner, and you just got an average review after previously receiving high marks. Although it's tempting to panic, experts say it's possible to come back after such setbacks by being proactive.
After more than two decades as an employment attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, Jenna Mooney has taken on the role of its second-in-command with a focus on running the business of the firm.
Generative artificial intelligence remained the top issue for legal tech in 2024, as vendors continued rolling out generative AI tools while law firms tested them and trained their attorneys on the underlying technology.
Sarah M. Harris of Williams & Connolly LLP never planned on being a U.S. Supreme Court advocate, or even an appellate one. She stumbled upon that career path after realizing her initial goal of becoming a national security or government lawyer wasn't the right fit.
The U.S. Senate confirmed on Friday the last two judicial nominations from President Joe Biden, making his total of lifetime judicial appointments 235, just one over President Donald Trump's 234.
The Anti-Defamation League recently honored a Holocaust survivor who went on to become the face of a movement seeking accountability from the French national railroad company SNCF for its role in taking tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi concentration camps. The movement was assisted pro bono by attorneys from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
Jurists weighed the benefits of partisan elections, praised innovations in telehearings and worried about the future of the profession in nearly a dozen interviews with Law360 this year.
With many legal professionals starting to explore practical uses of generative artificial intelligence in areas such as research, discovery and legal document development, the fundamental principle of human oversight cannot be underscored enough for it to be successful, say Ty Dedmon at Bradley Arant and Paige Hunt at Lighthouse.
The legal profession is among the most hesitant to adopt ChatGPT because of its proclivity to provide false information as if it were true, but in a wide variety of situations, lawyers can still be aided by information that is only in the right ballpark, says Robert Plotkin at Blueshift IP.
Series
Ask A Mentor: How Can I Use Social Media Responsibly?Leah Kelman at Herrick Feinstein discusses the importance of reasoned judgment and thoughtful process when it comes to newly admitted attorneys' social media use.
Attorneys should take a cue from U.S. Supreme Court justices and boil their arguments down to three points in their legal briefs and oral advocacy, as the number three is significant in the way we process information, says Diana Simon at University of Arizona.
In order to achieve a robust client data protection posture, law firms should focus on adopting a risk-based approach to security, which can be done by assessing gaps, using that data to gain leadership buy-in for the needed changes, and adopting a dynamic and layered approach, says John Smith at Conversant Group.
Laranda Walker at Susman Godfrey, who was raising two small children and working her way to partner when she suddenly lost her husband, shares what fighting to keep her career on track taught her about accepting help, balancing work and family, and discovering new reserves of inner strength.
Series
Ask A Mentor: How Can I Turn Deferral To My Advantage?Diana Leiden at Winston & Strawn discusses how first-year associates whose law firm start dates have been deferred can use the downtime to hone their skills, help their communities, and focus on returning to BigLaw with valuable contacts and out-of-the-box insights.
Female attorneys and others who pause their careers for a few years will find that gaps in work history are increasingly acceptable among legal employers, meaning with some networking, retraining and a few other strategies, lawyers can successfully reenter the workforce, says Jill Backer at Ave Maria School of Law.
ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools pose significant risks to the integrity of legal work, but the key for law firms is not to ban these tools, but to implement them responsibly and with appropriate safeguards, say Natalie Pierce and Stephanie Goutos at Gunderson Dettmer.
Opinion
We Must Continue DEI Efforts Despite High Court HeadwindsThough the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down affirmative action in higher education, law firms and their clients must keep up the legal industry’s recent momentum advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the profession in order to help achieve a just and prosperous society for all, says Angela Winfield at the Law School Admission Council.
Law firms that fail to consider their attorneys' online habits away from work are not using their best efforts to protect client information and are simplifying the job of plaintiffs attorneys in the case of a breach, say Mark Hurley and Carmine Cicalese at Digital Privacy and Protection.
Though effective writing is foundational to law, no state requires attorneys to take continuing legal education in this skill — something that must change if today's attorneys are to have the communication abilities they need to fulfill their professional and ethical duties to their clients, colleagues and courts, says Diana Simon at the University of Arizona.
In the most stressful times for attorneys, when several transactions for different partners and clients peak at the same time and the phone won’t stop buzzing, incremental lifestyle changes can truly make a difference, says Lindsey Hughes at Haynes Boone.
Series
Ask A Mentor: How Can I Support Gen Z Attorneys?Meredith Beuchaw at Lowenstein Sandler discusses how senior attorneys can assist the newest generation of attorneys by championing their pursuit of a healthy work-life balance and providing the hands-on mentorship opportunities they missed out on during the pandemic.
A recent data leak at Proskauer via a cloud data storage platform demonstrates key reasons why law firms must pay attention to data safeguarding, including the increasing frequency of cloud-based data breaches and the consequences of breaking client confidentiality, says Robert Kraczek at One Identity.