Jae Bandeh

On June 27, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a Maryland district court judgment that confirmed arbitral awards issued in favor of Seiden Law’s client, the Estate of Ke Zhengguang. The case has been discussed on Law360 and Bloomberg Law; articles on the case can be found in the link after the jump. The underlying arbitration concerned a complex dispute related to real property in mainland China, which culminated in an arbitration before the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC).   Between 2018 and 2020, the HKIAC issued a series of awards.  The Estate filed a petition to confirm the awards in a Maryland district court against one of the arbitral respondents, Stephany Yu, who lives in Maryland.  In January 2023, the district court confirmed the awards and issued a $4 million judgment in favor of the Estate. The Fourth Circuit’s unanimous twenty-three-page decision addresses important questions related to the enforcement of international arbitral awards in the United States, including the availability of a forum non conveniens defense under the New York Convention, and whether arbitral awards that are denominated in a foreign currency can be converted into US dollar judgments.  The Fourth Circuit held that a forum non conveniens defense was inapplicable under the facts of this case, even if such a defense is available under the Convention. The Fourth Circuit also held that it was reasonable for the district court to enter judgment in US dollars, notwithstanding that the arbitral panel’s merits award was denominated in Chinese Renminbi (RMB). Seiden Law partner and litigation chair Amiad Kushner argued the appeal. Senior counsel Jennifer Blecher and Senior Associate Xintong Zhang were on the brief. Paralegal Lily Dempsey provided invaluable assistance. https://lnkd.in/eb_SiWh2 https://lnkd.in/eFD4zniu

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Don't miss your chance to be published in the International Law Quarterly! The Florida Bar International Law Section is now accepting submissions for the Winter 2025 edition of ILQ. 📆 Deadlines: • Express interest by October 18th • Submit final drafts by November 22nd #ILQ #InternationalLaw #LegalWriting #Publication

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Last chance to submit your interest for The Florida Bar International Law Section's International Law Quarterly publication! Deadline is TODAY, Oct 18th, to be considered for the Winter 2025 edition. Don't miss this opportunity to publish your work! #ILQ #InternationalLaw #LegalWriting #Publication

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The Pennsylvania Superior Court's decision in Spencer v. Johnson has created uncertainty around the application of the Fair Share Act, especially in how damages are divided in tort cases. In an article for The Legal Intelligencer, partners Chanda Miller, Molly Flynn, and Rebecca Trela examine the impact of this ruling and subsequent decisions. Read the full article: https://lnkd.in/gyZ65gyA

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In their latest Law360 column focused on recent noteworthy Federal Circuit decisions, partners Jeremiah Helm and Sean Murray discuss the precedential opinion issued in Ioengine LLC v. Ingenico Inc regarding the printed matter doctrine. “The takeaway,” they write, “is that the printed matter doctrine must be applied judiciously and specifically where claims are directed to the content of a communication and not to a communication generally.” Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gBzh2KQU #KnobbeMartens #IPLaw #PatentLaw #FederalCircuit

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Calling all incoming 2Ls at Penn State Law! The Write-On Competition for the Penn State Law Arbitration Law Review and the Penn State Law Journal of Law and International Affairs is OPEN, and runs until Sunday, June 16th at 5:00 pm. Please reach out if you have questions about the Penn State Law Arbitration Law Review, the submission process, or how a journal can improve your resume and law school experience! #Journal #LawReview #Arbitration #PennStateLaw #2L

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Director Daniel Kidd talks through Research Calls: who to take them and what to expect at 11.30am EDT* on Wednesday (today). Sign up to join for free below: https://lnkd.in/eXA6sqW8 *11.30am - 12pm EDT / 10.30 – 11am CDT / 08.30 – 9am / 4.30 – 5pm BST #legaldirectories #ChambersUSA #legal500usa #lawfirmmarketing #legalresearch #legalrankings #legalmarketing #businesdevelopmentprofessionals #Chambersandpartners #legal500 #BestLawyers

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We are proud to announce that submissions are welcome for Georgetown Law Technology Review's annual writing competition. The author(s) of the first place paper will be awarded $2,000; the author(s) of the second place paper will be awarded $500. The first place author(s) also may have the opportunity to be published in Volume 9 of our journal. Read below--or use this link: https://lnkd.in/etY2nyNB --for more details on the topic and how to submit by June 3, 2024. This year’s topic is Emerging Biotechnologies and Their Relationships to Personal Freedoms. Biotechnology has played an evermore increasing part in our lives, from the biometric data collected in our smartwatch to the vaccine we took during the pandemic. But as these innovations can be utilized to solve global health crises, find early signs of disease, or even alert authorities to urgent health issues, they can also intersect with the rights of privacy, speech, and reproduction. Consider how some women, with the overturning of Roe, worried that their private data would be used to target those who sought abortions. Or consider how doctors in many states are barred from recommending certain treatments to those in the LGBTQ+ community–medical advances and the law are invariably intertwined. Requirements: - Papers should be 3000-5000 words long (not including footnotes) and be submitted in Times New Roman size 12 font, single spaced. Footnotes must conform to the 20th edition of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. Papers must be in English. - Papers will be accepted from students enrolled at any ABA-accredited law school in the United States during the 2024-2025 academic year. The paper must be the author’s own work, although students may incorporate feedback received as part of an academic course or supervised writing project. The paper must not have been published or committed for publication in another journal; the Georgetown Law Technology Review must have the first right of publication for any winning essay. - Please submit papers via email to [email protected]. Submissions are due on June 3, 2024. Please reach out to for any questions!

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Rothwell Figg's Aydin H. Harston and Alexander Shaver, Ph.D., write: The United States Patent and Trademark Office announced today the finalized fee increases taking effect on January 19, 2025. While applicants can still expect significant increases in certain areas, some proposed fee increases were not implemented following pushback from public commentators. ... Below is an updated overview of how fees are changing and how applicants can save money in the coming months. #uspto #intellectualproperty #patentapplications #patents #fees

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Associate Whitney Jenkins authored an article for Law360 discussing the Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Osseo Imaging LLC v. Planmeca USA Inc. Whitney writes that the decision has practical implications and provides helpful guidance on the qualifications necessary to provide expert testimony from the perspective of a person having ordinary skill in the art, or PHOSITA. Subscribers to Law360 can access the full article here: https://lnkd.in/gUV7tnQX

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A team of Pillsbury lawyers led by Nicole Islinger advised national security solutions provider Core One in its recent acquisition of Calhoun International, which provides human intelligence and program management support in the defensetech sector. The partnership is an important milestone for Core One's growth that will enable expanded delivery of the company's strategic defense capabilities to new end users.

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🚨Client Alert: Larry Laubach and Beatrice Bottini offer an update on the #NYLTA, which represents a pivotal step in New York State’s regulatory landscape, aligning closely with the federal #CorporateTransparencyAct (CTA). Read here: https://lnkd.in/draYGb5e #regulatorycompliance #NYlaw #CTA #legalnews‍‍

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👉 I have a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Corporation Law. It’s called “Dual Class Contracting” and is about how dual-class companies choose specific levels of voting inequality out of a broad spectrum of potential options. https://lnkd.in/e6iS_6h6 There’s a ton of literature on the “categorical” choice between single-class and dual-class structures, but dual-class is a spectrum, not a binary choice, and yet we know little about how dual-class companies make the “continuous” choice of what level of voting inequality is the “right” level for them. To shed light on this question, I analyzed a comprehensive sample of charters adopted by U.S. dual-class companies at IPO, from 1996 to 2022, and I conducted a survey of more than 3 dozen law firm partners with expertise on dual-class IPOs. Here’s what I learned: Dual-class charters can allow controllers to keep a voting majority with as little as a few shares or as much as half of the common stock. I call this measure the “control lock.” But despite such a broad spectrum of potential options, almost 2/3 of companies choose in the very narrow range of 9%-10% Similarly, dual-class companies can choose temporary inequality (Groupon: 5 years) or decades-long inequality (Google: until death of founders; Facebook: perpetual). But again, most dual-class companies choose lifelong/perpetual structures. In 2006, Mike Klausner observed that the uniformity for corporate charters was a problem for contractarians. Where is all the innovation & customization that contractarians say should happen? But even Klausner considered dual-class an example of “deliberate contracting.” My findings suggest that the story is more complicated! What do the lawyers say? How do dual-class charters get crafted? The standard story is that insiders “negotiate” with the banker, who represents the public investors (Easterbrook & Fischel).  It turns out that, according to the lawyers, investment bankers do not matter much! So what’s going on? *Norms* matter: market players are less interested in optimizing for the individual company than in following what’s perceived as “standard”. Lawyers perceive themselves (when representing the issuer) as playing a crucial function in shaping the “dual-class contract”. Classic contrarianism struggles with these findings, but the modern contractarian theories (learning externalities, agency problems) are not completely persuasive either. My conjecture: the patterns we observe resemble certain characteristics of “social norms”, as identified by sociologists and social economists: compression, stickiness, punctuated equilibrium, random mutation, innovation through the deliberate action of “norm entrepreneurs.” Perhaps there’s a role for the regulator but it’s probably neither about being purely passive nor about designing and imposing the optimal voting structure. It’s more about facilitating tailor-made structures and good norm innovation.

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The average first-year class size within Am Law 50 firms has increased by 14% since 2023, from approximately 83 to 94 associates. Of the Am Law 50 firms that responded to a recent The American Lawyer inquiry: Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP increased their global footprint of first-year associates by 48%, hiring 182 first-year associates. Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP similarly increased their first-year class globally by 43% to 174 associates. Jones Day saw a 33% increase across its offices in the United States with 220 associates. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP represented one of the largest U.S first-year class sizes sitting at 210 associates. Source: The American Lawyer | Sonder Consultants

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Professor Maureen A. Edobor of Washington and Lee University School of Law discusses the new standard for Section II claims under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) in her recent JCL article titled "Brnovich: Extratextual Textualism." In Brnovich v. Democratic National Convention, decided in 2021, the Supreme Court upheld Arizona laws prohibiting ballot collection and out-of-precinct voting against claims by the Democratic Party that Arizona's voting restrictions were in violation of Section II of the VRA. Professor Edobor argues that Brnovich largely nullifies VRA’s Section II by erecting standards and guideposts to evaluate voting qualifications, prerequisites, standards, practices, and procedures that have a discriminatory effect on VRA-protected classes. Read more in JCL Vol 26, Issue 6: https://lnkd.in/ejaAnpAG

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Beautifully explained by attorney Yacub.😊 US Supreme Court Decision - implications on immigration Chevron is a case from 1984 and it created a two step approach to interpreting a statute. Chevron step 1 required the courts to review a statute. If Congress spoke on the precise issue, courts had to give the statute its meaning. If the statute is ambiguous, then Chevron step 2 was triggered. Under Chevron step 2, courts must defer to the agency’s interpretation of a statute so long as that interpretation was reasonable. That means under Chevron step 2, a court could say that it disagreed with the BIA’s holding but since the holding was not unreasonable, it was bound by that holding. A real world example of Chevron can be seen in asylum law. Congress did not define the term “particular social group.” Therefore, Congress did not speak to that term and we do not engage in Chevron step 1. If the BIA came out with a decision and said that a particular social group excludes women, one may disagree with that decision, but it is reasonable. And if it is reasonable, the federal courts are bound by the BIA’s exclusion of women in the particular social group analysis. Now, with Chevron dead, if the BIA states that a particular social group excludes women, the courts, not the BIA decides if women are included in the concept of particular social group. As the court reminded us, the courts, and not the administrative agency, decides what the law is. When Trump was in office, Jeff Sessions, his Attorney General, reviewed and decided numerous immigration cases, such as Matter of A-B- and Matter of L-E-A- II. Those cases stated that victims of domestic violence could not obtain asylum and family could only be a particular social group if the family was well known in that community. In fact, in Matter of L-E-A- II, the Attorney General said that it disagreed with the Fourth Circuit’s approach in Hernandez Avalos v. Lynch and Zavaleta-Policiano v. Sessions, our two cases. Before overruling Chevron, the fear was that if the agency made decisions such as Matter of A-B- and Matter of L-E-A- II, the Fourth Circuit would state that the agency’s decision was reasonable and was bound by Chevron deference. Now that it is not the case.

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Two major U.S. law firms are opening offices in Saudi Arabia following a change last year in the country's rules governing foreign lawyers practicing there. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP said that it had been granted a license to practice in the country. Also, Morgan Lewis said through a spokesperson it was preparing to open an office in Riyadh. For years, Saudi Arabia, the Arab world's largest economy, has been implementing its Vision 2030 reform plan, a package of economic and social policies designed to free the kingdom from dependence on oil exports. That includes plans to double the size and population of Riyadh, its capital city, through investments totaling $800 billion. Read more from David Thomas: https://lnkd.in/eZ5C94dg

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Welcome to Tucker Ellis, Carlo Spagnolo! Joining our IP Department in Cleveland as counsel, Carlo advises both solo-inventors and Fortune-size clients at all stages of identifying, procuring, and protecting their IP in foreign and domestic matters, with a focus on patents and trademarks. Learn more about his practice at the link in the comments. #TuckerEllis #BuildingOurBench #IntellectualProperty

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The University of Miami Law Review examines the jurisprudential flaw in our legal system regarding consistency of justice & criminal culpability for juveniles. Read more at https://ow.ly/NMva50RERax

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