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Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

According to Vault’s 2021 practice area rankings, which Biglaw firm tops the Labor & Employment list?

Hint: This 75-year-old Biglaw firm has over 1,500 lawyers worldwide.

See the answer on the next page.

For speaking out of turn, Jack Ma can’t have his share of the roughly $37 billion Ant Group’s record-setting IPO was supposed to raise, uh, yesterday, well into next year, if then. And, oh yea, it’s not gonna be anywhere near $37 billion.

Lawyers involved in Ant’s listing said the company would have to respond to Chinese regulators’ demands and submit a new IPO prospectus in Hong Kong, which could take at least six months.

“The key thing is these new regulation changes,” said one person with direct knowledge of the deal.

The draft regulations could weigh heavily on Ant’s lending business, which drove about 40 per cent of its sales in the first half, and have an impact on the company’s valuation.

It was inevitable.

It was always going to come down to Rudy Giuliani shouting lunacies in front of a landscaper’s garage door next to a porno shop north of the Tacony-Palmyra bridge. Yes, the main witness is a perennial candidate in New Jersey and a registered sex offender formerly incarcerated for exposing himself to young children. Of course he is.

The president’s supporters have gone from urging a recount in Wisconsin — a plan they abandoned when it became clear they’d be flushing $3 million down the drain for nothing — to demanding STOP THE COUNT!, then reversing course to demand that every legal vote be counted.

Now we’re back at the beginning, with the Trump team gearing up for a recount in Georgia as they call to STOP THE COUNT in Nevada.

“For democrats calling for unity you may want to actually stop counting illegal votes in NV first,” tweeted Trump ally and OG Brooks Brothers rioter Matt Schlapp. “We are not suckers anymore. We caught you red handed.”

This is an apparent reference to a “whistleblower” who happened to be walking by the election center on his lunch break and observed a Biden-Harris van unloading boxes of ballots. No, the whistleblower hasn’t come forward to Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State. Nor has the “other whistleblower,” purportedly an election worker who was told to override signature mismatches by her supervisor. None of which looks anything like it might overturn Biden’s lead in the state, which is at 34,000 and counting.

In Pennsylvania, where the Vice President is ahead by 44,000 votes, the Trump legal team petitioned the Supreme Court this morning to go beyond ordering Pennsylvania to segregate the ballots which arrived with a November 3 postmark during the judicially-mandated three-day grace period and order the state not to count those votes at all. There aren’t enough late ballots to swing the state to Trump, and certainly no indication that all of them would be from Biden voters anyway. Nevertheless, Trump’s lawyers insist they will suffer irreparable harm if the public finds out how a few thousand Pennsylvanians voted.

Axios reports that Trump is beefing up his legal team from Rudy Giuliani and former Trump campaign flack David Bossie, who’s not even a lawyer (and now has COVID). But with Biden on track to get 306 electoral votes, it would take the equivalent of ten royal flushes to pull off a victory at this point.

And they’re off to a rip-roaring start.

These cases are all small ball, unlikely to shift the vote tally in any meaningful way. Privately the campaign acknowledges that the cases serve more as a therapeutic balm to the president’s fragile ego and a means of casting doubt on the outcome of the election.

AP reports:

The strategy to wage a legal fight against the votes tallied for Biden in Pennsylvania and other places is more to provide Trump with an off-ramp for a loss he can’t quite grasp and less about changing the election’s outcome, the officials said. They spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy.

Trump aides and allies also acknowledged privately the legal fights would — at best — forestall the inevitable, and some had deep reservations about the president’s attempts to undermine faith in the vote. But they said Trump and a core group of loyalists were aiming to keep his base of supporters on his side even in defeat.

And according to NBC, it has a pecuniary motive as well. Buried in the fine print of the frantic emails and texts raising money for Trump’s legal fight is a disclaimer.

Contributions to TMAGAC made by an Individual/Federal Multicandidate Political Committee will be allocated according to the following formula:

60% to DJTP for deposit in DJTP’s 2020 General Election Account for the retirement of general election debt (up to a maximum of $2,800/$5,000) or, if such debt has been retired or any portion of the contribution would exceed the limit to the 2020 General Election Account, for deposit in DJTP’s Recount Account (up to a maximum of $2,800/$5,000); 40% to the RNC’s Operating account (up to a maximum of $35,500/$15,000); and any additional funds to the RNC for deposit in the RNC’s Legal Proceedings account or Headquarters account (up to a maximum of $213,000/$90,000).

Yep, they’re going to use that money to retire campaign debt. Grifting up to the wire.

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

I don’t know who created this meme — its having traveled through hundreds of hands before appearing in my feed — but this is the perfect marriage of politics, Kubrick, civil procedure, and Gritty to speak to my cold, desiccated heart.

Gritty, the personification of Philadelphia and the adoptive symbol of the American Left — something that Le Monde had to explain to French readers over the weekend — has exploded throughout the meme-sphere since the election, but this response to the Trump campaign’s string of failed lawsuits to impact the election says it best.

All outlining and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

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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 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.

I think it would be nuts for him to stay at the firm. She [Kamala Harris] would consistently be faced with the allegation that people are hiring the firm to get something out of the administration.

— Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, offering his thoughts on whether Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, should remain at DLA Piper during his wife’s time in office. Painted suggested that while Emhoff could take a salary from the firm without sharing in any of its profits, the optics would still be poor. Emhoff took a temporary leave of absence from the Biglaw firm in August, but representatives from neither the firm nor the Biden campaign have advised on what Emhoff plans to do.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States. That is a fact, not liberal wishcasting. But in our post-fake news era, even the seemingly obvious needs to be said, out loud, again and again (as I was reminded after spending a chunk of yesterday in a social media argument with a childhood friend who now seems to embrace his status as a low-information voter).

Not helping the quest for truth and facts are GOP operatives that insist on parading on cable news spreading specious rumors about voter fraud in the 2020 election. And Biglaw’s own was one of the culprits.

Foley & Lardner partner Cleta Mitchell (who you may remember for her charming anti-gay rights crusade, or from not wearing a mask at the Amy Covid Barrett nomination celebration, or from working to keep the Steve Bannon PAC donor rolls secret) appeared on cable news — Fox, natch — to repeat the line the Trump campaign has been peddling about so-called widespread voter fraud, as reported by Law.com:

Foley & Lardner partner Cleta Mitchell, who appeared Saturday on the Fox News Channel, said the president’s team has been evaluating voting records, and have uncovered widespread irregularities.

“We’re already doublechecking and finding dead people having voted, or maybe people have voted across state lines—voted in two states—illegal voting, voting by non-citizens and that sort of thing,” Mitchell said. “We are building that case. We think that there will be evidence that we will have. We already know that there is evidence of that sort of thing, and there are malfunctions in the equipment, improper denial of Republican poll-watchers in certain … counties.”

Of course, there are legitimate reasons for many of these things Mitchell claims are fraud, such as someone casting an early or mail-in ballot before dying or moving. And it turns out, these plausible explanations have been true. Like when the Trump campaign’s key example of voter fraud turned out to be military members and their families who voted after being transferred:

Indeed, it should be noted that none of the legion of lawsuits filed thus far by the Trump campaign have alleged widespread voter fraud, as opposed to small and discrete issues that would not be enough to turn the election. Now, is that gap between what Trump lawyers are saying in court versus what they’re saying on TV because members of the bar have to hit a higher standard of evidence and proof before appearing in front of a judge in a court of law as opposed to the sinking standard of merely being able to keep a straight face in front of a camera in the court of public opinion? Well, yes. And where little evidence of fraud exists, those cases are being thrown out of court. (Legal nerds rejoiced at a Michigan judge blasting “inadmissible hearsay within hearsay, and plaintiffs have provided no hearsay exception for either level of hearsay that would warrant consideration of the evidence.”)

All this might be exactly why Mitchell pivoted to a canned line about “illegal votes” when host John Roberts asked if the goal of these litigation challenges was merely to cast doubt on a rightfully elected president:

“Are we trying to cast just skepticism on the entire process, Cleta?” he asked Mitchell. “What’s the goal?”

“The goal is exactly what the president said: We want every legal vote counted,” Mitchell responded. “We want all those illegal votes thrown out.”

It’s also worth repeating — one more time for the folks in the back — that the legal challenges the Trump campaign has filed (about small, discrete issues) have not been successful. And besides, the allegations in those cases are not widespread enough to change the outcome of the election.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. 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).

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Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

In a sense, the presidential election is over. There is no credible path for Donald Trump to secure enough votes in enough places to reach 270 electoral votes. At this point, Joe Biden can shed the term “former Vice President” in lieu of “President-Elect” and everyone in the reality-based timeline has already started this semantic transition.

But it turns out, the title of “President-Elect” is actually statutorily defined! And that’s where the mischief begins:

The head of the GSA is Emily Murphy. Murphy is a 2001 UVA Law grad who served as an associate at Wiley Rein for a bit, but has more or less just passed through “The Swamp” from one GOP post to another, including a run as senior counsel for the House Small Business Committee and some time at the Small Business Administration.

The GSA, at the risk of oversimplifying, is the organization that runs federal buildings. That would make its role seem purely functionary — which it should be! — but under Murphy’s leadership, the agency has morphed into ground zero for obfuscating real estate transactions that appear designed expressly to advance the Trump family’s business interests. Murphy has performed much of the legwork on the Trump organization’s exploitation of the Old Post Office in D.C., a Trump property that he acquired well before becoming president, but a property at the heart of many of the most compelling emoluments arguments, and a relationship that Murphy is charged with overseeing. Her oversight has been… suspect. Meanwhile, Murphy’s involvement in coordinating the FBI headquarters controversy with the Oval Office became the subject of an investigation where Murphy’s testimony did not exactly match up with the “facts” or “documentary evidence.” GSA responded to these allegations by saying that all the documents that suggested that the president said things didn’t really mean the caporegime said things directly to us, which is exactly how crime family testimony always goes.

So it comes as little surprise that when asked to perform her legal duty to authorize the presidential transition process, Murphy demurred:

“An ascertainment has not yet been made. GSA and its Administrator will continue to abide by, and fulfill, all requirements under the law,” the spokesperson added in a statement when asked if changes were forthcoming in the days ahead.

Of course, an ascertainment has been made. Fox News even made this ascertainment. And thus, the GSA and its current Administrator are actually continuing their three-year pattern of struggling to abide by or fulfill their requirements under the law.

Remember when no one had to worry about what partisan hack ran the General Services Administration?

Biden campaign pushes GSA chief to approve transition [The Hill]

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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 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.

I personally find it incomprehensible that 70 million of my fellow Americans voted for a former reality TV host who spews racist conspiracy theories (birtherism), displays utter contempt for private property rights, and is responsible for the highest tax increase in the post-WWII era and prioritizing government handouts. But 70 million went right ahead and voted for him anyway, all while making it painfully clear they did not care what I or anyone else thought of the man they were supporting. Yet, despite the impenetrable divide that only seems to be increasing, one remarkable emerging trend is being shared by a majority of all Americans from every walk of life. Indeed, whether it be in the conservative Deep South, or on the liberal coasts, Americans are demonstrating a united willingness to end the war on drugs.

During this past election in fact, every decriminalization or legalization ballot measure that was up for a vote in nine states was ultimately successful. And victory did not come by a slim margin either, but was instead universally passed by substantial majorities, even in the conservative Deep South. Of course, such results should not at all be surprising but rather seen as the continuation of longer trends where voters in state after state have chosen to legalize recreational drugs, including cannabis, mushrooms, and, now in Oregon, virtually all previously illegal drugs. The benefits of this trend and of the impact of the collapse of the drug war, however, cannot be overstated.

As I have discussed before, the direct harms the drug war causes are immense, and more than outweigh any harms that can be associated with legalization. Elevating these harms would bring about great positive change. For starters, millions upon millions of lives have been needlessly ruined for consuming substances that, even when taken all together, combine to cause less than half the harm of alcohol. Enormous taxpayer resources are devoted to the drug war, burdens on nonusers that can be substantially reduced and shifted toward more effective policy through legalization. But perhaps most destructively, the war on drugs has (wrongly) demolished our Fourth Amendment constitutional guarantees. As Jacob Sullum in Reason points out:

For decades the war on drugs has been the most important factor encouraging the Supreme Court to whittle away at the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. Among other things, the Court has blessed pretextual traffic stops, warrantless rummaging through our trash, warrantless surveillance of private property by low-flying aircraft, mandatory drug testing of public school students, search warrants based on anonymous informants who may or may not exist, and searches triggered by a police dog’s alleged “signal.”

The war on drugs is also the main excuse for the system of legalized theft known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows police to take cash and other property they claim is connected to drug offenses.

It is to the testament of our constitutional destruction that it is has proven impossible to hold bad government actors accountable in this drug war even when they falsify warrants to make violent no-knock entries into the home of innocent citizens.

Correcting or reversing the destruction caused by the drug war should be a welcome sign for all. With the possible exception of gerrymandering reform, I submit that ending the drug war is the single greatest policy shift we as a society could make to produce the most positive impact and ensure better outcomes for the country as a whole. To see incontrovertible evidence that Americans from all walks of life and views are finally supporting this shift universally, is extraordinarily encouraging.

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Tyler Broker’s work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, the Albany Law Review, and is forthcoming in the University of Memphis Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.

After days of counting, waiting and protesting (and a roller coaster of emotions in between), the 2020 Presidential Election was called on Saturday, with Joe Biden projected to win 279 Electoral College votes and become the 46th President of the United States. That night, the President-Elect joined Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris at a drive-in rally in Wilmington, Delaware, where they addressed the country about their historic victory and their plans for their administration. 

It was a momentous appearance for the Vice President-Elect, in particular, who will become the first female, first Black and first South Asian person to hold the position. And the optics of it were not lost on Harris, who used fashion to not only reference the barriers being broken that evening, but also to represent American designers.