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What you need to know

SCARED STRAIGHT – These are nerve-jangling days for consultants and lobbyists with foreign clients. Until the Manafort indictment, explains C. Ryan Barber, many saw the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act as an arcane law that requires registration only for individuals directly lobbying a U.S. government official on behalf of a foreign government. That leaves out a whole lot of consulting work that lawyers say is probably covered, such as advising foreign regimes on policy matters or working for commercial entities with close ties to a state actor. The indictment of Paul Manafort, which includes a charge that he acted as an unregistered agent for the government of Ukraine, is causing a lot of firms to rethink whether they’re in compliance. READ MORE HERE

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING – It seems like a no-brainer. If you graduate from law school, you should be able to pass the bar, no? That’s proving a challenge for lots of low ranked law schools, and the American Bar Association, under fire for flabby standards of accreditation, takes up the issue starting today in Boston, Angela Morris reports. Its Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar will consider tightening the bar exam pass standards that schools must meet for accreditation. It’ll also ponder how to deal with the growing number of schools turning to the GRE as an alternative to the LSAT for admissions. READ MORE HERE

NO BARK, NO BITE – Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice has officially merged with U.K.’s Bond Dickinson to create a 1,000-lawyer trans-Atlantic firm with roughly $410 million in annual gross revenue. That’s all great and everything. But left in the dust? Winston the Bulldog, Womble’s official mascot for 22 years—well over a century in dog years, as Meghan Tribe points out. Winston even used to have his own bio page on the firm’s website. While many U.S. partners still love Winston, Womble chair and CEO Elizabeth Temple said it was important to focus on the firm’s new brand. READ MORE HERE

OPPOSING COUNSEL – Lawyers working in the Department of Justice are in the midst of an identity crisis. With Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the helm, government attorneys in key cases are finding themselves flip-flopping on positions they held under the Obama administration. As reporter Marcia Coyle explains, in two of the most closely watched cases of the new Supreme Court term—one involving class action bans in employee agreements, and the other challenging Ohio’s voter purge process—the DOJ has reversed positions. In another case, the Justice Department in February abandoned the Obama administration’s position in a challenge to a Texas voter identification law, one of the strictest in the country. Awkward. READ MORE HERE

HIS SHOT: If there’s a crime for every craze, Joseph Meli devised a Ponzi scheme perfectly calibrated for the frenzy that followed the 2015 Broadway opening of “Hamilton.” And as with the show’s central character, Meli’s plot doesn’t end particularly well. READ MORE HERE

While you were sleeping

AHEAD, BUT BEHIND – Eleven percent of Ashurst’s partners identify as black, Asian, and minority ethnic, which means the law firm is well ahead of the 7 percent average of minority partners among the U.K.’s nine largest firms, Anna Ward reports. Good, right? Consider this: The proportion of minorities in London, where most of the U.K.firms are based, is 40 percent of the general population, according to the last census in 2011. READ MORE HERE