A newsletter by Reuters and Westlaw |
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REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration |
Ropes & Gray is betting a slice of its potential revenues on a new initiative to build its lawyers’ skills with AI. Here’s what to know: |
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- Starting now, the firm said its first-year associates can devote nearly 400 hours of their annual billing requirements to experimenting with AI instead of charging time to clients.
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Ropes & Gray's first-year associates using the hourly AI credits "can't bill matters to clients, but they may want to think about another way, or a more creative way, to do something that they're being asked to do for clients," said Amy Ross, chief of attorney talent at the firm.
- Ropes & Gray is currently piloting the program only for first-years, who started at the firm last week.
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Large firms like Ropes & Gray charge clients hundreds of dollars an hour for their junior associates' time. A small handful of firms, including Orrick and Reed Smith, have also offered credit for innovation-related projects, though typically for a smaller number of total hours than the new Ropes & Gray initiative.
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Read more about the program in this week’s Billable Hours.
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U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut is set to decide today whether President Trump violated federal law when he sent National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, following a closely watched trial over the president's power to deploy the military on U.S. soil. The decision could be the first to permanently block Trump from using troops to quell protests against federal immigration authorities.
- Lawyers for New York Attorney General Letitia James are set to seek dismissal of the mortgage-related criminal case against her, arguing it is a vindictive prosecution by the Trump administration.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes. |
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Simpson Thacher is working with the U.S. Department of Commerce on unspecified legal matters, an official at the agency confirmed. The department declined to say if the work is related to an agreement the firm made with President Trump to devote $125 million in free legal work to the administration. Read more here.
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Moves: Weil added IP litigator Rachel Weiner Cohen from Latham … Amy Durant, former senior counsel for the CFPB, moved to Dykema’s corporate and finance practice … Kit Roth joined Morgan Lewis’ litigation practice from Goldfarb & Huck Roth Riojas … Troutman Pepper Locke added Thomas Heffernan to its energy transactional practice from Kirkland … Jerry Jennings moved to Greenberg Traurig from Citi where he was head of state and local government affairs.
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That's how much a Virginia school teacher who was shot by her 6-year-old student in 2023 was awarded in damages by a jury on Thursday, concluding a negligence lawsuit she brought against a school administrator. Read more here. |
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The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to bar applicants for U.S passports from designating the sex reflecting their gender identities on the document. The court granted the DOJ’s request to lift a block on the policy while litigation plays out. Read more here.
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U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis in Chicago said immigration officials had lied about the nature of local protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the city and ordered agents to restrict their use of tear gas and other anti-riot weapons in the area. Read more here.
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The 8th Circuit said that Home Depot did not violate the legal rights of workers at a Minnesota store when it barred them from writing "BLM" on their uniforms in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, reversing an NLRB ruling. Read the opinion here.
- The 2nd Circuit said President Trump<
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