SEC Urged To Adopt Insider Trading Rules For Foreign Firms

By Jessica Corso

A former member of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is among a trio of academics pressing the agency to write rules cracking down on insider trading at foreign companies that trade on U.S. exchanges, urging action before a congressionally mandated deadline runs out in March.

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EPA Begins Rollback Of Biden-Era Smog Control Plan

By Keith Goldberg

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to reapprove pollution control plans from several states as part of its effort to undo a Biden-era rule curbing cross-border smog formation that was halted by the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Ex-Google Engineer's Trade Secret Theft Case Goes To Jury

By Bonnie Eslinger

Software engineer Linwei Ding "stole, cheated and lied" when he worked at Google LLC, taking its artificial intelligence trade secrets to help himself and China, a California federal prosecutor told jurors Tuesday, urging them to convict him of economic espionage and trade secret theft.

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Law360 Seeks Members For Its 2026 Editorial Boards

Law360 is looking for avid readers of our publications to serve as members of our 2026 editorial advisory boards.

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Powell Says Cook Case May Be 'Most Important' In Fed History

By Jon Hill

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that President Donald Trump's U.S. Supreme Court bid to oust Fed Gov. Lisa Cook represents "perhaps the most important" case in the history of the central bank, defending his move to attend the high court's recent hearing on the matter.

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CFTC Taps Treasury Atty To Be General Counsel

By Sarah Jarvis

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced Wednesday it has hired a Treasury Department lawyer with BigLaw experience to serve as the derivatives regulator's new general counsel.

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Data Co.'s Brass, Top Customer Face SEC 'Round-Trip' Claims

By Emilie Ruscoe

Executives of a now-bankrupt data intelligence company face U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claims that they conspired with one of the company's biggest customers on a so-called round-trip accounting scheme to overstate the company's revenue and become a more attractive target for a special purpose acquisition company.

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SEC Says Musk Can't Fight 'Uncontested' Facts In Twitter Case

By Katryna Perera

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday further urged a D.C. federal judge to grant it an early win in the agency's enforcement action against Elon Musk over his Twitter stock purchases, saying Musk's recent opposition brief "only confirms that the court should grant" summary judgment.

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Northern Trust VP Stole Millions From Elderly Client, Suits Say

By Emilie Ruscoe

An elderly banking heiress and her nephew have sued the Northern Trust Co., alleging the wealth management firm failed to safeguard their assets from a now-former vice president who helped himself to millions of dollars of their funds.

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Nomura Unit Taps Legal Chief To Steer Crypto Trust Bank Plan

By Aislinn Keely

A crypto-focused subsidiary of financial services group Nomura has applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish a national trust bank headed by its legal chief.

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Chinese Man Gets 46 Months In $37M Pig Butchering Scam

By Gina Kim

A Chinese national was sentenced to 46 months in prison Tuesday in California federal court for participating in a global network that tricked 174 victims lured in from dating apps into pouring money into fake digital asset investments, and ultimately laundering $36.9 million in cryptocurrency proceeds to scam centers overseas.

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USPTO Seeks 'Serious Sanctions' For Chinese Co.'s 19K Apps

By Rae Ann Varona

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office says the "most serious sanctions" are warranted against a China-based company for filing more than 19,000 trademark submissions using names of U.S.-licensed attorneys who did not review the applications, saying submissions were at times filed in 3-minute intervals "or less."

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Social Media Addiction Laws Eyed By Conn. Governor, AG

By Aaron Keller

Connecticut lawmakers will consider forcing social media companies to display mental health warning labels and file state reports detailing the numbers of youth users, parental consent figures and average daily screen time statistics, Gov. Ned Lamont and Attorney General William M. Tong said in a Wednesday statement.

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FCC Sees Dead People On Lifeline, But Dems Balk At New Reg

By Christopher Cole

Democrats are bristling against a plan by the Federal Communications Commission to reduce purported fraud in the Lifeline program, where the agency says some states enrolled dead people and others who don't qualify.

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Advocates Seek Shift To 1st Circ. In Prison Call Rate Cases

By Corey Rothauser

A public interest group, backed by other public interest petitioners, is asking the D.C. Circuit to transfer to the First Circuit the challenges to the Federal Communications Commission's latest prison phone rate order, arguing the court is already deeply familiar with the dispute and best positioned to resolve it.

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Asset Co. Slams Conn. Insurance Chief's Plan For Liquidation

By Hope Patti

An asset management company asked a Connecticut state court for permission to intervene in the insurance commissioner's rehabilitation of struggling insurer PHL Variable Insurance Co., saying the commissioner's "surprise" plan to pursue liquidation will be disastrous for universal life policyholders that are over a $300,000 cap on death benefits.

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ArentFox Schiff Launches Longevity Industry Group

By Gianna Ferrarin

ArentFox Schiff LLP on Wednesday announced the launch of a group geared toward advising companies focused on advancing wellness, preventive health care and the longevity of life.

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Ropes & Gray Adds 3 Partners In New York

By Christine DeRosa

Ropes & Gray LLP has expanded its offerings in New York with the addition of three attorneys, one each from Debevoise, Paul Weiss and Wachtell Lipton.

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What Businesses Offering AI Should Expect From The FTC

The Federal Trade Commission's move to reopen and set aside an administrative order against Rytr shows that the FTC is serious about executing on the administration's Artificial Intelligence Action Plan, and won't stand in the way of businesses offering AI products with pro-consumer, legitimate uses, say attorneys at Reed Smith.

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Digital Assets May Be In For A Growth Spurt In 2026

All signs point to an acceleration in digital asset product and service innovation throughout 2026, and while questions of first impression still need to be addressed, some legal issues will be clarified, spurring developments namely on the tokenization and stablecoin fronts, say attorneys at Skadden.

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What To Expect From Justices' 401(k) Ruling, DOL Rulemaking

The U.S. Supreme Court's upcoming ruling in Anderson v. Intel, addressing alternative assets in defined contribution plans, coupled with the U.S. Department of Labor's recently proposed regulation on fiduciary duties in selecting alternative investments, could alleviate the litigation risk that has impeded wider consideration of such investments, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.

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FTO Designations: Containing Foreign Firms' Legal Risks

Non-U.S. companies can contain legal risks related to foreign terrorist organizations by deliberately structuring operations to demonstrate that any interactions with cartel-affected environments are incidental, constrained and unrelated to advancing harm on the U.S., says David Raskin at Nardello & Co.

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Series

Judges On AI: How Judicial Use Informs Guardrails

U.S. Magistrate Judge Maritza Dominguez Braswell at the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado discusses why having a sense of how generative AI tools behave, where they add value, where they introduce risk and how they are reshaping the practice of law is key for today's judges.

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ICE Violated Nearly 100 Court Orders, Minn. Judge Says

By Rae Ann Varona

The Minnesota federal court's chief judge admonished U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday for violating nearly 100 court orders concerning the Trump administration's immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota while another judge, on the same day, temporarily blocked ICE from unlawfully arresting and detaining refugees in the North Star State.

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Tobey Maguire Says He Rerouted Fee To Goldstein

By Jared Foretek

"Spider-Man" star Tobey Maguire told the jury Wednesday in Thomas Goldstein's tax fraud trial that he paid $500,000 for his legal services to another poker player the former SCOTUSblog founder owed money to, rather than Goldstein's law firm.

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Tom Goldstein Saga Could Go From Courtroom To Big Screen

By Rachel Rippetoe

As federal prosecutors are two weeks into detailing SCOTUSblog founder Thomas Goldstein's storied descent into the world of high-stakes poker during his tax fraud trial in Maryland, Hollywood producers are gearing up to tell the same story on-screen.

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Fla. Prosecutors' Detention Defense Met With Sanction Threat

By Adrian Cruz

The U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida, Gregory Kehoe, along with an assistant U.S. attorney have been threatened with sanctions by a federal judge for the methods their office used in defending the mandatory detention of noncitizens.

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Brief

Trump Announces Pick For New Assistant AG For Fraud Role

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday evening that he would be nominating Colin McDonald, associate deputy attorney general, for the newly created assistant attorney general for fraud role.

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Prosecutors Form New Group To Fight Federal Overreach

By Ryan Boysen

Several progressive prosecutors have launched a new group to hold accountable federal officials who "exceed their lawful authority," amid a growing backlash to the Trump administration's immigration crackdown and the recent killing of two protesters by immigration agents in Minneapolis.

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Analysis

Trade Secret Filings Hit Record High In 2025, Report Finds

By Ivan Moreno

Trade secret litigation reached an all-time high in 2025, with more than 1,500 federal cases filed for the first time ever, according to a new report by legal analytics firm Lex Machina, which also highlights trends about damages, the busiest courts and the law firms most frequently involved.

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