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Welcome to Lookzy. In today's Lookzy:

• A profile of prosecutor Damian Williams

• The resolution to Ben & Jerry's ice cream suit

• The $3 billion VC offer for the Phoenix Suns

• Jones Day bills an associate for lateraling early

WHO IS US ATTORNEY DAMIAN WILLIAMS?

SDNY US Attorney Damian Williams has been prominent in the news as his office leads the prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX's founder. Let's break down who Williams is and how he got there.

Williams has an impressive bankground. From Brooklyn to Harvard, then Yale Law, with a stop in between working for John Kerry's presidential campaign and the DNC. After clerking at the office he now leads, he clerked for Judge Merrick Garland of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and then Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court.

From there, Williams spent three years as a litigation associate at Paul Weiss. Think Williams spent his junior associate days doing doc review? Notably, SBF was personally represented by Paul Weiss for some time while FTX collapsed, before Paul Weiss dropped SBF due to "conflicts". This connection may now suggest that Paul Weiss' conflicts here were related to Williams' then-pending investigation into SBF.

Williams' years between Paul Weiss and prosecuting SBF were impressive and busy. First leading a SDNY task force before being nominated and confirmed as the SDNY's first Black US Attorney. While in the role, Williams has prosecuted high profile cases included former Goldman Sachs board member Rajat Gupta (insider trading), a former PM at Visium Asset Management (fraud) and Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin (bribery). All that, and Damian Williams is just 42 years old.

ECON SNAPSHOT

The difference between special bonuses and layoffs.

THE VERDICT

Arguing today's litigation news

Ice cream friendly fire. Unilever announced that its litigation with Ben & Jerry's board has "been resolved," but failed to disclose any terms or explain if the suit had been settled. The suit initiated when the Ben & Jerry's board tried to block the sale of Ben & Jerry's by Unilever to its local licensee in Israel and the West Bank. The sale was successful.

First Amendment suit. Netchoice, a tech industry trade association consisting of member companies such as Google, Amazon, Meta and others, sued the state of California alleging a new California child safety law taking effect in 2024 violates the First Amendment. The new law would force tech companies to require age verification and limit features like autoplay or minor account discoverability via friend-finding tools. Davis Wright Tremaine is repping Netchoice.

Elon's unhappy. US District Judge Donato, sitting in San Francisco, ruled that Twitter must notify employees of the WARN Act lawsuit against the company before having them sign severance agreements releasing the company from liability.

Wait and see. A judge announced that she is waiting for SCOTUS' ruling in Gonzalez v. Google, which addresses Section 230 liability for social media companies, before ruling on the Section 230 defense in the nearly 100 social media related lawsuits against TikTok, Facebook, Snap and others she has pending.

Seeking a do-over. Nikola founder Trevor Milton, convicted for securities and wire fraud for lying to investors of his electric truck company, is now seeking a new trial, alleging there were confusing and erroneous instructions and that one of the jurors from his original trial lied about a strong bias against "wealthy executives".

THE DEAL

Wheelin' and dealin' today's corporate news

Black gold. Williams agreed to purchase MountainWest Pipelines from Southwest Gas Holdings for $1.5 billion, part of a series of strategic actions being taken by Southwest Gas to streamline its portfolio. Davis Polk is repping Williams and Morrison Foerster is repping Southwest Gas.

NBA M&A. A small group of venture capitalists have offered $3 billion to purchase the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury, following Suns owner Robert Sarver's announcement that he would sell given his suspension for harassment. Jack Selby, MD at Thiel Capital, and Jason Pressman, MD at Shasta Ventures, are the interested VCs, with significant financial backing coming from Peter Thiel. Second round bids are due in January.

Bankruptcy action. FTX Trading will be auctioning off several of its businesses which were isolated from the contagion affecting the rest of the FTX enterprise, including LedgerX, its Japanese and Singaporean cryptocurrency exchanges, and its European digital assets and derivatives business.

Chinese audits. The US PCAOB has for the first time ever gotten full access to audit Chinese firms listed in the US, which will keep such firms from being delisted. The PCAOB also announced that it inspected and investigated the audit work of China and Hong Kong based public accounting firms for the first time.

Fundraising slog. The Carlyle Group is reportedly struggling to raise a $22 billion fund, which it had expected to be its largest ever, seeking an extension until the end of August to complete raising the last $5 billion which remains outstanding.

BUSINESS OF THE FIRM

Lateral Moves:

• Fried Frank hired partner Andrew Rearick from Debevoise.

Industry News:

• Jones Day reportedly billed a former associate for over $3,000 in bar prep expenses because the associate left the firm within two years. The two-year clawback provision is included in Jones Day offer letters (but we'd typically not expect that to be enforced).

• A DC bar ethics panel determined that Rudy Giuliani violated at least one attorney rule of professional conduct in his effort to challenge the 2020 election and faces potential disbarment.

• The ABA announced that three law schools, Ave Maria School of Law, the University of the District of Columbia School of Law and Vermont Law and Graduate School, are out of compliance with accreditation standards because of their low bar passage rates (around 67-68% of these schools). The schools will remain accredited but must respond to written reports by the ABA in February, proving that their passage rates for the February exam are back in compliance.

• 40% of the Vault 100 firms have now announced bonuses. Check out the Lookzy Reverse Bonus Tracker for timely updates to who's announced and who's left. Did your firm just announce? Reply to this email and we can update.

BOILERPLATE

Alright, back to billing. That's all, folks!