Law Firms are Big Winners as Texas Business Court "Wildly Exceeds Anybody’s Expectations"

Law Firms Join Early Winners in ‘Very Hot’ Texas Business Court

The nascent Texas Business Court is already paying off for law firms, who are using it to build caseloads, market services, and grow litigation departments.

Firms including Jackson Walker, Baker Botts, and Norton Rose Fulbright have gobbled up the 223 cases filed at the new venue so far, and they’re releasing reports about the court’s procedures to help drum up business. At least one firm is staffing up to handle the growing workload.

“No question, people are thinking about more disputes being brought in Texas than they were before,” David Harper, a Haynes Boone litigation partner in Dallas, said in an interview. “It may require more commercial litigation lawyers.”

The activity shows that a court intended to lure corporations to Texas also holds the promise of enhancing the bottom lines of law firms. While it’s still early going for the court—it only opened in September 2024 in the state’s five largest cities—practitioners so far see the venue delivering on its promise to efficiently handle business disputes.

JPMorgan Accuses Charlie Javice of More Fraud. This Time Over Her Legal Bills

JPMorgan Chase says it has been cheated by Charlie Javice yet again.

On Friday, the biggest bank in America asked a Delaware judge to reverse an order requiring it to front the legal bills for Javice, the entrepreneur who was convicted of defrauding the bank in March. The bank said she and a co-executive have racked up over $115 million in bills for high-profile lawyers.

JPMorgan bought Javice’s startup, Frank, in the summer of 2021 for $175 million. It then discovered Javice had lied about how many customers the company had, setting off a chain of events that led to her arrest and conviction on four counts of fraud. She was sentenced to more than seven years in prison, and she is now appealing the verdict.

JPMorgan has been picking up all of Javice’s legal bills following a judge’s order from 2023 that cited a clause in the original deal contract, meant to protect the startup’s executives in the event of a dispute over the transaction.

The bank said in its Friday filing that Javice and her convicted colleague, Olivier Amar, have treated the bank’s agreement like a “blank check” and used it to pay personal expenses, too.

Trump to Pick Michael Selig for CFTC Chair Amid Crypto Expansion

President Donald Trump has picked Michael Selig to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to an administration official, who asked not to be identified discussing personnel matters.

Selig is chief counsel for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s crypto task force and has been working as an aide to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins. In that role, he’s been working to align the approaches of the SEC and CFTC to broad swathes of finance and the crypto industry. Earlier in his career, Selig was a partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher’s asset management practice.

HSBC to recognize $1.1 billion in provision after court ruling in Madoff case

HSBC said on Monday that it will recognize a provision of $1.1 billion in its third quarter results following a court ruling in Luxembourg related to the Bernard Madoff investment fraud case.

Herald Fund SPC sued HSBC’s Luxembourg unit in 2009, claiming restitution of securities and cash it said were lost in the fraud.

The court denied HSBC unit’s appeal in respect of Herald’s securities restitution claim, but accepted the unit’s appeal in respect of the cash restitution claim.

‘Judge, Jury and Executioner’: How the SEC is finally leveling the playing field on its dreaded ‘Wells Notice’ enforcement process

As any experienced executive or counsel knows, even the rumor that a company or senior officer has received a Wells Notice is enough to cause a stock price to tumble—so it is critical that the defense does all that is possible to convince the Staff and Commission that an action is not warranted before the matter becomes public. With Chairman Atkins’ changes, it is critical that defense counsel consider the following:

1. Confer with the Staff openly about the facts and consider a “white paper” early in the investigation to help come to a common understanding of key facts and seek to close matters that are, at best, fringe technical violations.

2. Ask to review the investigative file to better educate your defense.

3. Request a meeting with senior Staff before a Wells Notice is issued.

4. Request adequate time—at least 4 weeks—to prepare a Wells Submission.

Elon Musk Can’t Raise ‘Advice of Counsel’ Defense in Shareholder Suit

A federal magistrate blocked Elon Musk from claiming that he had acted on the advice of his attorneys as a defense to shareholder allegations that, before purchasing Twitter, the billionaire amassed a significant chunk of the social media platform without letting the public know.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein explained that Musk’s Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan legal team can’t assert the advice-of-counsel defense while also refusing to hand over information on the legal advice given to Musk when he began buying Twitter Inc. stock.

“It would obviously be unfair for defendants to be permitted to offer evidence or argue that they had a good faith belief that their alleged conduct was lawful while at the same time barring plaintiff from examining the evidence that would most obviously put the claim to the test: the advice defendants’ attorneys gave them about that very conduct,” Gorenstein wrote in a Thursday order.