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"Biblical Oil Firm" is First to Adopt Mandatory Arbitration Clause

"Biblical Oil Firm" is First to Adopt Mandatory Arbitration Clause

Plus outgoing SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw shares some concerns.

Bruce Carton
December 09, 2025

People

Negar Tekeei, former AUSA for the SDNY, has joined Eversheds Sutherland as a partner in the firm’s New York office.

Clips ✂️

Biblical Oil Firm First to Mandate Arbitration Since SEC Shift

The first company to take the SEC up on its pivot toward mandatory arbitration of securities claims is a Dallas-based firm that uses Bible verses to search for oil deposits in Israel.

Zion Oil & Gas Inc. adopted the mandatory arbitration clause last week, about 10 weeks after the Securities and Exchange Commission reversed a longtime policy that had effectively banned provisions like it. SEC Chair Paul Atkins announced the shift in September as part of a broader push to “make IPOs” great again” by reducing securities litigation and shareholder activism.

Zion, which amended its bylaws Dec. 1, is the only company so far to embrace the SEC’s new stance, according to a Bloomberg Law review of SEC records. A spokesperson said the agency couldn’t confirm that information independently of its filings database. Zion didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

by Bloomberg Law

👉 The article adds that, according to a 2006 SEC filing, Zion’s founder was “ordained by G-d” to find fossil fuel reserves in Israel. “We searched the Bible and found numerous occasions where, I believe, the Bible” makes “direct reference to the existence of OIL in Israel,” the SEC filing said.

‘I Worry People Are Going to Get Hurt in the Short Term’

We’re reducing corporate accountability. In my view, deterring misconduct is a public good. Corporate actors come into compliance with the rules because failing to do so has costs. But we’re moving away from the deterrence framework: dropping litigations, lower enforcement numbers, lower civil penalties, presidential pardons, allowing mandatory arbitration, meaning no-class action private enforcement of shareholder rights. Our whistleblower cadence has really ground down to almost a halt.

by POLITICO

👉 This is from Declan Harty of POLITICO’s wide-ranging interview with outgoing SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw. She also says during the interview that in the period following the 2024 election she has seen “behaviors that I’ve never seen before with online threats to our staff when it’s never the staff making the decision. It’s the commission that makes the decisions. But threats to staff, personal attacks on non-decision makers, letters, threats to go above our heads — all sorts of things. That type of response is — in my experience in over a decade at the commission — unprecedented.”

Why the SEC’s Top Accountant Is Weighing Changes to Audit Inspections, Conflict-of-Interest Rules

Should the PCAOB be folded into the SEC and do you expect lawmakers to revive that push?

Audit regulation is incredibly important. We need basically high-quality auditing standards so that we have a robust capital market in the United States. Whether it’s part of the SEC or part of the SEC’s oversight of the PCAOB, it’s critically important to our ecosystem. I don’t follow Capitol Hill very closely, but based on the fact that we were closed for 43 days and we couldn’t even get a simple vote on a continuing resolution, I doubt if we’re going to basically see PCAOB elimination and folding into the SEC anytime soon.

by WSJ

👉 Interview with SEC Chief Accountant Kurt Hohl. At the same event, Hohl also stated that the SEC will announce new appointees to the PCAOB by the end of the month or early next year.

US Lawyer Head Count Reaches All-Time High

There are nearly 19,000 more lawyers in the United States than there were a year ago, according to new data released by the American Bar Association on Monday.

Currently, there are 1,374,720 lawyers in the U.S. as compared to 1,355,963 in 2024—a 1.38% increase from 2024 and a 5.64% increase since 2015, according to the ABA’s 2025 Profile of the Legal Profession, which is based on findings from the National Lawyer Population Survey (NLPS) published by the ABA’s Center for Bar Leadership.

The 2024 graduating class was nearly 12% larger than any other class since 2012, according to the National Association for Law Placement, and recorded the highest overall employment rate for graduates as well as the highest employment rate in bar admission-required jobs, according to the ABA.

This upward trend is likely to continue, as law school applications have also soared to record heights this year.

by Law. com

👉 I blacked out the numbers so you can play along. It occurred to me I had never even considered how many lawyers are in the U.S. Take your guess below, answer is in the linked article.

How many lawyers are there in the U.S.?

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