KPMG law firm is Big Four breakthrough

A newsletter by Reuters and Westlaw

By Diana Novak Jones, Mike Scarcella and Sara Merken

Good morning. Here are some of the major stories driving the day. KPMG persuaded an Arizona court committee to recommend approval for its law firm subsidiary to operate in the state. Plus, Wisconsin will weigh whether lawyers can earn CLE credit for diversity training, and Mastercard will pay $26 million to settle a pay bias lawsuit. Coming up today, Donald Trump's pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, is set to face grilling by a Senate panel. Let's dive in. 

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REUTERS/Mike Blake

KPMG is poised to become the first of the Big Four accounting firms to open a law firm in the United States, taking advantage of loosened law firm ownership rules in Arizona and accelerating the accounting industry's push into U.S. legal services, Sara Merken reports.

A new subsidiary, KPMG Law US, persuaded a court committee to recommend approval by the Arizona Supreme Court to practice law in the state. The court will weigh KPMG's bid on Jan. 28. 

The new unit could shake up competition among the Big Four and traditional law firms, legal industry experts said, giving corporate legal departments more options to outsource work.

That's the interest rate at which Capital One allegedly froze in consumer savings accounts, despite  promising one of the nation's "top," "best" and "highest" interest rates, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The agency sued Capital One in Virginia federal court, accusing the company of avoiding billions in interest payments. Capital One said it disagreed with the claims and would challenge them.

— U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker in an order blocking the FDA from enforcing a looming requirement that cigarette packages and advertisements contain graphic warnings illustrating the health risks of smoking. Barker sided with R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco companies in finding the FDA went beyond its authority by requiring packaging and advertising to contain 11 specific warnings. He said those warnings go beyond the nine that Congress specified in the Tobacco Control Act.

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