Judicial Notice (12.07.25): Ain’t Misbehavin’
Misconduct allegations against a prominent plaintiff’s lawyer, dismissal of three judicial ethics complaints, and a slew of new hires by Paul Weiss—on the transactional side.
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Last week was challenging in the Lat-Shemtob household. Zach and I were temporarily without child care, so we had to juggle work responsibilities with parenting—and on top of that, both of our boys were sick (because of course they were). As I’ve done many times in the past, and as I expect to do many times in the future, I thank our sons’ grandparents for riding to the rescue.
It’s hard to believe, but today marks the fifth anniversary of Judicial Notice. If you look back at the first installment, dated December 4, 2020, you’ll see it was way shorter—but also far less comprehensive.
I believe the current version of Judicial Notice, which has evolved significantly over the past half-decade, is much more useful. But it’s also much more for me to write, as well much more for you to read (which is why I place lawyer and firm names in boldface type, so you can skim more easily.) On that note, please take my poll:
Now, on to the news.
Lawyers of the Week: Logan Brown and the many other “NewMod” lawyers.
This past May, Logan Brown, a 30-year-old Harvard Law School graduate, quit her job at Cooley, where she represented emerging companies, and launched a startup of her own. Her vision for the new venture was “a tech-first law firm that meets the routine needs of startups without the Biglaw price tag,” according to Melia Russell of Business Insider. Brown wound up raising $2.5 million in pre-seed funding for her company, called Soxton, as reported last week by BI:
Brown said Soxton does not replace a law firm when it comes to nuanced legal work. What it can replace, she says, is the shaky legal advice founders might pull from ChatGPT or another chatbot.
For $20 a month, clients can grab a contract template from Soxton’s library and tweak the language. Most clients request a custom contract reviewed by an attorney, Brown said, with Soxton turning it around in four hours for $100.
While Soxton has been operating in stealth, with only a waitlist on its website, Brown said more than 270 companies—mostly pre-seed startups—have used it so far. Many clients are founders who wouldn’t hire a lawyer so early and would otherwise turn to ChatGPT to ask questions.
Soxton’s raise was also covered by Artificial Lawyer, which situated it within the broader context of what it calls “New Model” or “NewMod” law firms—e.g., Covenant, Crosby, NormLaw, Pierson Ferdinand, Eudia, and Lex Generalis. What’s a New Model firm? According to Artificial Lawyer, “NewMods have a blend of structures, but at heart they all have one thing in common: relying on AI, rather than a pyramid of associates, to do most of the legal labour.”
Note the careful phrasing: AI tools can do most of the legal labor, not all of it. In the words of Richard Tromans of Artificial Lawyer, “the NewMods rely on AI to do the leg work—but they don’t act crazy and think that top-quality work can be done yet without lawyers.” So NewMod lawyers won’t be filing AI-generated briefs—or articles of incorporation, or any other significant documents—that haven’t been reviewed by humans. And that’s as it should be.
Other lawyers in the news:
I’m looking forward to watching Supreme Advocacy: What It Takes to Argue at the Supreme Court, the new documentary from Bloomberg Law that offers a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to argue before SCOTUS. It follows Roman Martinez of Latham & Watkins as he litigates AJT v. Osseo Area Schools, representing a teenage girl alleging discrimination on the basis of disability.
Martinez is an alumnus of the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)—which has experienced high turnover during the second Trump administration, according to Abbie VanSickle and Ann Marimow of The New York Times (gift link).
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the DOJ’s #2 official, pushed back on claims that the Department is going easy on white-collar crime, as reported by Josh Gerstein of Politico. “White-collar cases are a significant priority for President Trump, for the attorney general, and for the department,” Blanche said at a conference on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).
Douglas Clark, managing partner of Wilson Sonsini since 2012, will step down from that role next summer. He leaves big shoes to fill—so big that he’ll be succeeded by two lawyers, California securities litigator Caz Hashemi and New York capital-markets partner Megan Baier.
Remember all the unfortunate emails between Goldman Sachs chief legal officer Kathryn Ruemmler and Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased financier and sex offender? There might be almost 280 more that we haven’t seen, as reported by Jacob Shamsian for Business Insider, which Epstein’s estate is withholding as privileged. Sigrid McCawley of Boies Schiller, who represents Epstein victims in litigation against the estate’s executors, condemned their “overbroad privilege assertions” and “refus[al] to produce critical information that would uncover the inner workings of [Epstein’s] decades-long sex trafficking operation.”
It’s hard to resist clicking on this ABA Journal article, What Happens When 2 USC Gould Law Professors Divorce? The University Gets Sued. (Or if you hit the ABA Journal paywall, see Kathryn Rubino’s Above the Law story.)
Speaking of drama involving legal academics, Carlos Portugal Gouvea—a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, who was placed on pretrial probation for firing a pellet gun near a synagogue on Yom Kippur (he said he was hunting rats)—was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But instead of being deported, he agreed to return voluntarily to Brazil.
In memoriam:
Robert B. Fiske Jr.—a former U.S. attorney (S.D.N.Y.) and longtime partner at Davis Polk, but most famous for his work as the first independent counsel to investigate Bill and Hillary Clinton’s roles in the so-called Whitewater affair—passed away at 94, from pancreatic cancer.
Charles “Chuck” Queenan Jr.—chairman emeritus of K&L Gates, as well as a leading figure in Pittsburgh’s civic life—passed away at 95.
Kellam Conover, a litigator in the D.C. office of King & Spalding, passed away at 44, in a mountain climbing accident in New Zealand.
May they rest in peace.
Judge of the Week: Judge James Wynn Jr.
In an opinion issued on October 6 but made public only last week, Chief Judge Debra Ann Livingston (2d Cir.) dismissed a judicial misconduct complaint against Judge James Wynn Jr. (4th Cir.). Filed by prominent conservative lawyer Mike Davis and his advocacy group, the Article III Project, the complaint arose out of Judge Wynn’s decision to “unretire”—i.e., to rescind his decision to retire from active service as a federal judge—after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. The opinion received coverage in Law.com, Law360, and Bloomberg Law (via Howard Bashman’s How Appealing)—and it generated lots of chatter in my personal circles as well.
(Chief Judge Livingston issued pretty much identical opinions that dismissed similar complaints against Judges Max Cogburn (W.D.N.C.) and Algenon Marbley (S.D. Ohio). But I named them Judges of the Week for this last December, so I’ll focus on Judge Wynn today—although my discussion applies to them as well.)
According to the complaint, “[u]ntil Judge Wynn, no federal appellate judge had ever rescinded a retirement or senior-status letter after a presidential election.” The complaint called for an investigation of Judge Wynn, arguing that “if the facts demonstrate that a sitting judge withdrew an existing retirement or senior-status letter because of the outcome of a presidential election, that would violate Canons 5 and 2 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges.”
Canon 5 bars federal judges from engaging in political activity, while Canon 2 calls upon judges to “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” The complaint contended that unretiring based on the outcome of a presidential election—presumably because you don’t support the winner, and you don’t want the winner to appoint your successor—”is the epitome of engaging in political activity and opposing a political candidate,” in violation of Canon 5, and “strikes at the heart of impartiality and public confidence” in the judiciary, in violation of Canon 2.
Chief Judge Livingston dismissed the complaint. Although she acknowledged that “the withdrawal of an earlier letter to the President that had expressed an intent to retire or to assume senior status is unusual and unfortunate,” she concluded that the timing of the unretirement, standing alone, is not sufficient to trigger an investigation. Allowing investigations under such circumstances “could potentially inhibit the independent judgment that judges with the practical equivalent of life tenure have historically exercised as to… whether to retire or to assume senior status.”
She also offered an interesting hypothetical: imagine “a judge who had determined to retire in order to care for an ailing spouse,” but then reconsidered that decision “after the unexpected death or recovery of the spouse.” In that case, she posited, “few would contend” that the judge had acted unethically.
As someone with formalist leanings, I see where Chief Judge Livingston is coming from. But as a practical matter, it’s not crazy to think that Judges Wynn, Cogburn, and Marbley—appointees of Obama, Obama, and Clinton, respectively, and generally known for being left-leaning in their jurisprudence—acted for political reasons. (Or for more a more pointed formulation, see Professor Rob Luther’s detailed tweet: “We aren’t stupid; we all know what happened here.”)
Speaking for myself, I’m strongly opposed to unretirement for political reasons—whether done by Democratic or Republican appointees—and if the relevant rules don’t adequately address unretiring for political reasons, maybe they should be tweaked. In a 2021 opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, Laurie Lin and I floated the idea of requiring judges to “announc[e] a fixed and irrevocable retirement date,” which would curtail the ability of judges to manipulate the appointments process.
Turning to the other side of the coin—judges taking the bench, as opposed to leaving it—last week the Senate confirmed four district-court nominees for North Carolina: David Bragdon, chief of appeals in the U.S. Attorney’s Office (M.D.N.C.); assistant U.S. attorney Lindsey Ann Freeman (M.D.N.C.); Matthew Orso (W.D.N.C.), a litigation partner in the Charlotte office of Troutman Pepper Locke; and Magistrate Judge Susan Courtwright Rodriguez (W.D.N.C.).
In memoriam: Judge Andrew Kleinfeld—a judge on the Ninth Circuit since 1991, and a judge on the District of Alaska before that—passed away at 80, after a long illness. May he rest in peace.
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