The U.S. Department of Justice reached a settlement in the lawsuit filed last April by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union and the American Library Association, agreeing to leave IMLS intact and allowing it to continue its work supporting libraries and museums across the country.
Racial discrimination is illegal, and government contractors cannot evade the law by repackaging it as DEI. The Department launched the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative to root out this misconduct, hold offenders accountable, and end this practice for good.
Skillz alleges that Papaya misrepresented its games by using bots, which created unfair competition and caused damages amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Skillz's attorneys argue that the company's financial decline is directly linked to Papaya's actions, claiming that had Papaya disclosed its use of bots, it would not have been able to capture Skillz's customers and market share.
The jury found that Ticketmaster overcharged consumers $1.72 per ticket. Live Nation argues the up to $280 million it pledged in its settlement with the Justice Department and a handful of states will ultimately prove larger than the sum based on the jury award.
This may be the last year that law firms can expect billing rate increases to drive financial stability, according to a new survey of more than 800 senior finance and legal professionals in large firms across North America, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Technology company BigHand's 2026 finance report suggests that firms can no longer rely on traditional measures of profitability, as clients are demanding more efficiency and predictability amid the increased adoption of artificial intelligence across the legal profession, according to Law.com.
The legal profession rewards endurance, precision and control. It also quietly normalizes stress, isolation and overextension. For patent practitioners and other IP lawyers, the pressures are uniquely acute: compressed prosecution deadlines, high-stakes litigation exposure, often unrealistic client-driven budget constraints, regulatory whiplash at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and increasingly complex technologies layered with global filing and prosecution strategy.
Leading legal departments are shifting from reactive negotiation to proactive pricing design, setting guardrails before rates are proposed rather than responding after the fact. This approach enables departments to establish parameters and expectations upfront, fundamentally changing the negotiation dynamic and improving outcomes.
From law firms to in-house legal teams, the rules of value are being rewritten. The question is: Who's ready to lead the change? In the first episode of 2026 for the UpLevel View podcast, Stephanie Corey and Ken Callander sit down with Rita Gunther McGrath, Columbia Business School professor and Wall Street Journal columnist, to talk about how AI is forcing professional services to price outcomes instead of hours.
A year or so ago, most legal departments were still testing. AI pilots. Workflow trials. Small process experiments. Everyone was learning cautiously. The stakes were relatively low, and the work was labeled "innovation," which made imperfection forgivable. Then something shifted. Those same pilots became part of day-to-day delivery, and the business started relying on them. Sometimes intentionally, because early results looked good.
